3239 Situational Summary

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Divorce is tortious, tortuous, and torturous.
-- Silk --

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I had the blood draw last week. As usual, I told the phlebotomist about my problem with sticks in the arm, that the hand works better, as usual she blew me off and went for the arm, "Oh, this won't hurt at all", as usual it felt like a branding iron and the nails on my other hand gripped the armrest so hard I punctured the fabric-backed vinyl upholstery. She seemed surprised. That's absolutely the last time I will be ignored. It will never happen again. That is a vow. I'll refuse and walk out if they don't listen to me.

The next day, Friday, I went in for the CT scan and x-rays. The X-ray technician took a several shots, then came out of his little room and asked if I was in pain. I was perfectly relaxed, lying on the machine bed, eyes closed, silent, almost asleep. I said, "No, should I be?" He didn't answer, went back behind his partition and took several more, moving me a little now and then. So now I'm worried. What might he have seen that would prompt him to ask if I was in pain? Why did he take so many more pictures than were necessary?

I hope I'll find out tomorrow at the urologist's appointment. I've had no calls, so I suppose there's nothing too very exciting. Probably just another stone on the right side.

I've got a few things bothering me right now (not the health stuff, that's just annoying) and I have no one I can talk with about it. It's big, family-type things that have been growing for thirty years and coming to a head now. It's a little depressing, because I don't know what to do about it.

I'd really like to talk with The Man, but he's being a bit distant right now. He's got his reasons, but it's still another bothersome thing, but not the biggest.

Another bothersome thing is a cash flow problem. I sold stock from portfolios in my own name, not the investment portfolio Piper manages, to buy this house, and what Piper doesn't seem to realize is that much of my income was dividend checks from that stock. So my income is down by 25%, but I'm paying utilities and taxes on two houses now. I'm not going to starve, but I'm scrambling to pay the bills without selling more stock and cutting my income even more.

I canceled the house phone at the old house. The monthly bill for that phone was less than $30, but I don't need it anymore. So I freaked when I got the final bill, and it was $280! They charged me $250 for "Tier 1 Auto Renewal Termination Fee"! What!? What the hell is that!?

So I called. They said I had agreed to some special low-cost plan that had an early termination fee. I asked when this plan was supposed to end. The guy said "In five weeks." I said, that makes it the first week in May? He said yes. I freaked. "That means I signed up for it last May? Last May I was aware I would be moving. At that time I thought I'd be moving in the fall. There's no way on this God's earth a) that I would sign up for ANY plan with an early termination fee if there's any other option, b) that I would agree to that when I knew I'd be moving. There's something very wrong here."

So he checked. Turns out that I'd agreed to the plan several years ago (and I'm positive no "termination fee" had been mentioned), and the plan is automatically renewed every year. I pointed out that after the first contract term, you can no longer charge a termination fee without active renewal of the agreement. Automatic renewal changes the terms to monthly. Plus, even if the fee still existed, when I called to terminate service, the rep should have mentioned it. She didn't. There's no way I am going to pay $250 for 5 weeks of non-service when I could have just paid the $40 five more weeks would have cost!

So he forgave the $250.

I wonder how many people would go ahead and pay it? That's a complete ripoff.

[Update: Wow! I found this article dated October 2009, that says the NY Attorney General went after Frontier and told them they couldn't charge the termination fee without telling customers it existed, and they couldn't charge it on auto-renewals, and they had to refund all those fees they had collected! Wow! And they're STILL DOING IT!!! I think maybe I'll write a letter to the NY Attorney General.]

The Hairless Hunk is taking a class about 25 minutes north of here this week, and Monday of next week. We got together for dinner on Monday. That was kind of a mess. We went to a Thai place near his hotel. I like Thai, and they had some really interesting things on the menu, but the table was very wide, and the place was very crowded and noisy, and I couldn't hear him, and I wasn't there for interesting food, I was there to talk, so we left and went looking for someplace else, and since neither of us knew anyplace we ended up at a truly yucky diner-but-not-a-diner with blah food. But at least the place was empty, and quiet.

I didn't mention any of the stuff that's been depressing me, but simply being able to be with someone who does care and would and could sympathize and offer advice if I asked for it, was enough. I feel a little better, although I still don't know what to do.

We had originally sort of planned that some evening he'd come down here and see the house. I figured it might be difficult because he'd probably have classwork in the evenings. Yesterday he called and said, yeah, stuff to read and memorize. Sad. I was looking forward to showing him the vehicle buried in the backyard (his comment was that I may have found Jimmy Hoffa).

Suzy the Suzuki is still at the old house. On a visit in February, I think, the first time all winter that she wasn't buried in snow, The Hunk and I started her. I was pleased that she started right up with no hesitation, but then she started blowing gray smoke out of the vents, something was burning, so I turned her off. We checked for beasty nests in the engine compartment, but didn't find anything obvious. I need to get her down here. My cars still all have NY plates. I've got to get them inspected and registered here, but I don't want to do that until they're all here, because otherwise it will complicate the insurance. BUT, Hal is due for inspection this month! Ack.

The Hunk and I had discussed my going back with him on Friday evening, then I can spend two days working at the old house and get Suzy into the shop on Monday, and then bring her back. BUT, that doesn't work because that leaves me stranded at the old house with no car until Suzy is fixed, and there's no guarantee on that. Plus, Hercules goes back to work on Monday, and I had promised Daughter I'd be here to help when she's suddenly alone with the baby.

It would be best if I could drive myself up there this week and arrange for Suzy's fixing now, and then, assuming she's ready to go by Tuesday, I could go back with The Hunk after his class on Monday, and drive Suzy back here Tuesday. BUT I have the urologist's appointment tomorrow, and I don't know what will happen then.

If I don't go back with The Hunk on Monday, I won't be able to bring Suzy down until Piper and his daughter visit and I can go back up with them.

I've got a feeling that somehow this is going to end up involving either a rental car or an insurance mess.

Seems like nothing is going smoothly these days. All these nit-pickin' minnow nibbles --- and I still have the big "unmentioned" problem that's going nowhere.
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3238 My strange relationship with coffee

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

A girl has to have a life goal before she starts dating boys, or boys become the goal.

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I read somewhere that coffee can contribute to the formation of kidney stones.

I have a strange relationship with coffee.

I like coffee ice cream, and chocolate covered coffee beans, and the Starbucks frappuccino that comes in the little bottles in the corner store (which doesn't actually taste like coffee).

I intensely dislike brewed coffee of any kind, and especially Starbucks brewed - it tastes burned, and too acid. I intensely dislike the smell of brewed coffee in the morning. It can make me feel sick. The simple smell will make my stomach roil and fill with acid. Extended exposure to the smell can cause diarrhea. That could have been a major problem when I was working. Luckily, I had a private office with full walls and a door, some distance from the coffee machine. After about 10 am I could handle the smell better.

So, do I like coffee or not? Some people say I like bad coffee and don't like good coffee.

Over the past three years I've developed a morning taste for very bad coffee. I have three cups of it almost every morning. I love my personal mix:
1 well rounded teaspoon of store-brand instant coffee (the usual for one cup),
1 super-heaped teaspoon of Coffee-Mate sugar free French Vanilla (enough for 1.5 cups of coffee),
3 cups of boiling water
Make it in a teapot.
Yummy. It's delicious, and has none of the bad effects on my digestive system.

So, if the doctor asks how many cups of coffee I drink per day, what do I say? It might be three cups, but it's the equivalent of one. And do I count the occasional orgy of chocolate-covered coffee beans?
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3237 Revenge may not be so sweet

Tuesday, April 3, 2011

I read the papers to find out who I am, so I can be it.
-- Steve Wozniak, Newsweek 2/19/96 --

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Ok, so lots of people are celebrating because ObL is dead. Ok. Revenge. (Not very attractive, people. I think the Bible says something about that?) And the US gets to beat its chest and roar that you may hide, but we will find you. And the CIA can take satisfaction that their black torture sites are effective. And Obama gets a boost with people stupid enough to be impressed by symbols.

But - ObL wasn't running Al Q anymore. Most cells are now autonomous. ObL had a particular beef with the US over our support of the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, and that was pretty much it. The current autonomous cells have their own agendas. Nowadays, ObL was mostly a figurehead, spokesman, and recruiting tool, and was revered as the founding father of a movement.

His death leaves a vacuum, which some middle-aged fool who thinks he's been ignored too long is going to want to step into. Or several fools who want to compete for the honor.

In order to acquire the acclaim, they'll need to pull off something big. Yeah, pissed off groups can do something like a dirty bomb in L.A., or put nasty germs or poison in the ventilation system of Grand Central station, or in the water supply of a major city (like the Ashokan reservoir - in the woods, in the remote mountains, with miles of unsecured shoreline, where fishermen are not carrying ID, and OMG! I may have just figured out why The Man never drinks water!). Any of those would be big, impressive, take out a lot of Americans --- but they wouldn't be photogenic!

If you want to get the admiration of all the other cells, you've got to do something that makes good TV. Something that will be played over and over. Like 9/11.

It will be big. It might take a year to decide what to do, to plan it, to pull it off. But most of all it will involve a big bang and lots of cameras. And this one will be a surprise to the US government. Suddenly the Mayan calendar worries me.

Al Q. was close to becoming irrelevant, you know? We just breathed new life into it.

Enjoy your revenge, folks. I hope it's worth what it's gonna cost.

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The wingnuts are, of course, screaming foul that they weren't allowed to taste the body. Last week they lost the birth certificate chewbone, so it's especially hard to take. They're not smart enough I guess to figure out why the immediate disposal of the body was necessary. We've royally pissed off the bad Muslims. It's kind of important right now not to piss off the good Muslims, too. We need them.
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3236 The Last of the Wedding Comments

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Truly, to tell lies is not honorable. But when the truth entails tremendous ruin, to speak dishonorably is pardonable.
-- Sophocles --

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Quote of the Day. . . referring to Prince William's bachelor party: "It's gotta be weird stuffing money into a stripper's bikini when every bill has a photo of your grandmother printed on it."

Photo of the Day:
Little one should be covering her eyes, not her ears.
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3235 Baby Pictures

Saturday, April 30, 2011

You don't fall in love with a person. You fall in love with the way you feel when you're with that person.
-- Silk --

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They just got home, maybe an hour ago.

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3234 The Hats!

Friday, April 29, 2011

From Babylon Five: The future should come with a label, "Some Assembly Required".

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What on earth led so many women at the royal wedding to wear gravy boats glued to their foreheads?
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3233 Baby details

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Definition: Perfluxity - the feeling that you are drowning in a sea of information.

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Daughter had wanted as natural and intervention-free a birth as possible. She had started out planning a home-birth, and had engaged a midwife. She read everything she could. She was certain she could go natural. I supported her in that, because I believed she could. She went beyond me, however, in that she had zero trust in doctors. She was scared near to death that if she went "conventional", she'd end up another of the victims of the scandalous American love affair with C-sections.

She's also a bit of a control freak, especially where her body is concerned.

However, impediments piled up. Her first choice in midwife turned out to be an undependable flake. The next was not much better. The insurance company threw up barriers. And so on. The final blow came when she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. That plus her age (35 and first pregnancy) made her pregnancy high-risk.

Quick lesson: Gestational diabetes begins at or after the 24th week when the hormones from the placenta interfere with the mother's pancreas' ability to make sufficient insulin. Without sufficient insulin, there's too much sugar in the mother's blood. This excess sugar passes through to the baby. The baby then makes large amounts of insulin and converts the excess sugar to fat. You end up with a very large chubby baby. They tend to be especially large in the upper body, and the size of the baby's head and shoulders can make vaginal delivery difficult if not impossible. In the worse case scenario, the head makes it though, but the shoulders, being softer, cannot and become wedged.

For a short time after birth, the baby still is making excess insulin, but is no longer getting all that sugar, and becomes hypoglycemic. This can cause lower calcium and magnesium levels, "the jitters", jaundice, and breathing difficulties. Most of that resolves itself in a few days with care and feeding. Gestational diabetes does not cause birth defects, since the major organs are well formed before the 24th week. However, the child may have a higher risk of childhood obesity and of developing type 2 diabetes in mid-life. For some reason, breast feeding for six months lessens those risks.

So, with the "high risk" tag, home birth was no longer an option. Daughter shopped hard for an obstetrician who she felt would be willing to allow her in the hospital the kind of birth experience she envisioned.

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The call came at 2:50 am Monday. Daughter's water had broken, although she wasn't yet in what might strictly be called labor. Ordinarily, the doctor would say it's ok to wait a bit before going to the hospital, but her amniotic fluid was heavily stained with meconium (baby's first poopy, normally not passed until late labor, delivery, or after birth). This is not good. It can cause serious problems if aspirated.

I had Fred the van in their driveway by 3:10, and she and Hercules and what looked like enough luggage for an arctic expedition (I'm not kidding!) were ensconced in a nest of blankets, foam, and pillows in Fred's open belly, and we set out at about 3:30 am. (None of us, by the way, had had more than 2.5 hours sleep.)

The fog was thick. So thick that I missed the turns out of our own neighborhood, a route I drive every day! And got lost! Four blocks from the house! None of the usual landmarks were visible. I had the GPS, and Jeeves would say, "Recalculating. Turn right on XYZ street", but I'd miss the turn because I literally couldn't see the intersection, even as I drove past it. It was so bad I could have been driving across someone's lawn and I wouldn't have noticed until I hit their house.

After maybe five minutes of stumbling around, we found the main road, and at least I could see the line down the middle. We arrived at the hospital a little after four, heavy fog all the way. Hercules took Daughter in, and by the time I'd parked Fred and gone upstairs, she was in a gown in a bed and hooked up to belts across her belly.

She wasn't dilated very much - maybe 3 cm. (I didn't write down times and numbers, and over the next 20+ hours things got a little foggy.) There was a monitor at the nurses' station with feeds from all the monitors in all the rooms, and I noticed that on all but one of them, the contraction bumps sloped halfway up the height of the strip. On one of them, the bumps went straight up to the top of the strip, ran flat across the top, and then fell down. That was Daughter's strip, echoing the monitor in her room. I don't know if it was just a difference in the position of the belly straps, or the fact that Daughter has virtually no body fat that made hers look so different, but I know she was having a very hard labor.

Very.

She tried kneeling, crouching, leaning forward against the raised back of the bed, lying on a blanket on the floor. By early afternoon it was obvious she was exhausted. But she was only up to 5 cm, and the baby's heartrate was a bit too high. The doctor was getting concerned because of the meconium. The longer the baby was in there with it, the greater the chance of aspirating it. She had to show steadier progress.

Hercules and I had a conference in the hall. We both knew Daughter was adamant about avoiding an epidural, and especially about avoiding pitocin (oxytocin). But she was obviously already exhausted. She wasn't dilating as fast as she needed to if she was to avoid a C-section. She needed a break. We convinced her to give it a try, if only so she could rest a little, and being a drip, they could taper it off when she was ready to push. She was concerned that it would slow or lessen contractions - and - this part made no sense to me - the nurse said that's an old wive's tale, it doesn't affect contractions, but with the epidural they'd have to give her pitocin to make sure. (Um, isn't that an implied contradiction?) Anyway, she agreed to the epidural and pitocin on the condition that she was in charge of the dosage level. She didn't want to feel nothing.

Now, anyone who knows me knows how strongly I feel about unnecessary intervention in the birth process. Daughter is even stronger. But as I explained to her then, unnecessary intervention, intervention only for convenience, is absolutely a bad thing. But necessary intervention can be a wonderful thing. It can help you to do what is needed. Even a Cesarean (she tensed at the very word) can be a good thing, when the only alternative is worse.

So she got the epidural, and continued with the lowest possible dose (or so they told us). At any rate, she could feel the contractions enough to make her pant.

Time passed.

She developed a fever. It rose quickly. They didn't know why, but attributed it to an infection due to the meconium (which I thought was virtually sterile, containing nothing that she didn't already have inside her). They were worried that if she had an infection, so did the baby.

Eventually she had tubes all over her. The IV sprouted multiple branches - saline, antibiotic, pitocin. There was the epidural. The Foley. They put a tube into the uterus to flush it with saline to wash out the meconium. (There was a lot of it.) There was an internal monitor - not the one screwed into the baby's head - this one just ran past the baby to measure (I gather) pressure on the baby. Because her water had broken so early, this was also a concern. There were two belts around her belly - one for contractions and one for baby's heart rate.

She finally made it to 9 cm dilated, and stopped.

She remained at 9 cm for the next seven hours.

She cried. She felt that she had somehow failed. She had the epidural reduced to next to nothing, but she still didn't dilate any more. We explained over and over that she was wonderful, she did everything right, that whatever was going on was nothing she could control, It just was.

Stasis. She still had the fever.

She agreed to the Cesarean.

That was about midnight.

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Now, it wasn't exactly a red emergency, but I've seen this happen before in non-emergency situations and it always amazes me. Within seconds of her saying yes, a SWAT team of nurses poured through the door to unplug everything she was attached to, and she was being wheeled down the hall before we even realized it. Another smaller team rushed in and pushed a papery set of scrubs on Hercules, shoved him into the bathroom to change, and rushed him down the hall, and in seconds I was standing alone in the empty room, with scraps of paper swirling down to the floor, like a scene in a movie shot in an abandoned city.

I suspect they do that so you don't have a chance to change your mind.

Then a nurse stuck her head in the door and told me to gather up their personal belongings, and take them out of the room. "To where? Where will they be going next?" "Don't know. Take it all to the waiting room."

The arctic expedition, remember?

It took me three heavily loaded trips. By the third trip, the room had been cleaned and there was a new bed all made up in there. I felt like we'd been ignominiously kicked out.

I found Hercules' mother in the waiting room. She had driven 12 hours up from the Carolinas.

Hercules showed up in his scrubs sometime a little before 1 am, with photos.

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The baby (she still has no name) is now in the NICU. She has ALL the usual gestational diabetes symptoms. Daughter breastfed almost immediately after delivery, and goes to the NICU very few hours. She has a lot of milk, had no problems with "letting down", and Baby latched on tight right off the bat and drains Daughter thoroughly. I hear she's loud - when she's not eating or sleeping, she's screaming. That's a GD thing, too. The jittery thing. I hope that clears up soon.

It's actually very lucky that Daughter got stuck at 9 cm. It may have saved some lives, or at least bodies.

If she had made it all the way to 10 and the pushing stage, she would have done her utmost to push that baby out. The head would have made it out, because it's smoother and harder, but the shoulders would have gotten stuck. Baby's got shoulders like a football player, a common GD problem. (See the photo below. Hercules' new nickname for her is "Mack Truck".) The shoulders, being softer, don't make it through, an obstetrician's nightmare because in that condition, a Cesarean is difficult, and vaginal delivery often results in shoulder damage - broken bones or nerve damage.

Maybe two minutes old:

Now THAT'S a fat baby. Cheeks, lips, thighs, even the feet. Catch the Mommy-killer shoulders:

I'm left with some questions. Howcome ultrasound can detect a penis, but not a linebacker's shoulders? Shouldn't they know about this before labor even starts?
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3232 Treasure at the end

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

From Something to Talk About: Poison - homeopathic aversion therapy.

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It's a girl.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011, 12:38 am
8 lbs. 4 oz.

Labor was long and difficult, Daughter and Hercules were heroic, Baby-Still-No-Name-Yet was finally delivered by cesarean. It was the right decision.
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3231 Carpenters

Sunday, April 24, 2011

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast,
would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
-- W. Somerset Maugham --

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When my porch glider was delivered last fall, the woman said to cover it and let it cure over the winter and then finish it this summer. It was built last summer, and should dry for a year before being painted or varnished.

I may have to get on that pretty soon. There was a pair of carpenter bees (http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/notes/Urban/carpenterbees.htm), a male and a female, out there a few minutes ago, inspecting it carefully. If the bees are interested in it, it's probably pretty well cured, and I'd better get some coating on it before they start drilling a hole. Once they decide the glider is suitable, they'll be very hard to discourage.

They are pleasant bees, actually. Won't hurt people. But their nest tunnels weaken wood.
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3230 If you like it put a jingle belt on it

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Laugh hysterically for no apparent reason,
and they’ll leave you alone.

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Many wedding receptions feature a bellydancer. This one was a bit unexpected. (Skip ahead to about 1:50. Gypsy, catch the drop and rise at the end. Frankly, he's in a LOT better shape than he looks.)

(I don't think he realized it, but he had some pretty good mid-eastern-styled moves there.)
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3229 I'm yelling at Dr. House.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

“Time is like a sausage skin. It has no set length of its own.
How long or short it is depends on what it’s filled with.”
-- Silk --

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The writers for House were lazy for the December 28, 2004, "Fidelity" episode.

House just said that for a glioma causing the woman's seizures to NOT show up on a scan, "it must be smaller than a grain of sand."

Bull poopy. The scans are slices. There's space between the slices. Jay's first scan after his first seizure showed a glowing white spot with sharp edges, only 1 cm wide, and the doctors were amazed that the scan caught it at all, because if the scan slices had been to either side of it, it wouldn't have shown up at all. One centimeter is much larger than a grain of sand.

Then seconds later, House said that it couldn't be Lyme Disease, because Lyme "always shows up with a rash, and her husband wouldn't have missed that." Um, not everyone gets the rash, many people don't, and even if you do sometimes it's very mild and could be hidden in a fold of skin, and it also depends on what strain of Lyme you get, and even if there was a bulls eye rash, sometimes the symptoms of a problem don't show up for ages, and the rash could have been forgotten....

Bad writers! You just tried to make it easy on yourselves!
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3228 Probably not raccoons

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Swedish proverb: God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest.

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It's 7:45 PM, and still no action on the baby front. They've had three ultrasounds, and swear they don't know whether it's a boy or girl. Also no printouts. When asked if they have any favorite names, they say no, they figure they have plenty of time to wait for the baby to name itself.

I think they just don't want any "help" or opinions. That's ok with me.

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Remember when my neighbor George said there were raccoons living in the car buried in my back bank? Well, I'm not so sure that they're really raccoons.

George calls the daffodils in his front yard "tulips". He calls the day lilies in the back "daffodils". He started ripping out a vine climbing one of my trees, describing it as "an ugly weed". It's wisteria. He has caribou horns over his shed door, that he described as "moose". He calls painted turtles "snapping turtles". I think George is a 70+ city boy.

So heaven only knows what's living in the vehicle. Could be groundhogs (a.k.a. woodchucks or marmots), or opossums, but I'm beginning to doubt that it's raccoons. That's fine with me. Raccoons are smart and can be fun to watch, but they're smart enough to be destructive, too. I prefer that they stay in wilder areas.
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3227 Due Date

Saturday, April 23, 2011

The fly that doesn’t want to be swatted is most secure when it lands on the fly-swatter.
-- G. C. Lichtenberg --

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Today is Daughter's due date, but there doesn't seem to be anything happening other than that Baby has dropped and is head-down. On the other hand, I suspect she'll do the same thing I did when I was expecting her - keep quiet and delay going until the last minute. That way there's a lot less "helpful intervention".

They want me to drive them to the hospital with Fred, the van, because of the dropped floor and large open space in the body, so she can lie down. I've cleared out all the empty boxes in there that were to go back to the old house for reuse, swept the floor, covered the floor with a blanket, and laid out a folding foam "spare bed" in there. I put the EZPass (for automatic toll payment) in Fred, filled his gas tank, and made sure the GPS was plugged in. And I packed a little bag with my knitting, a book, a camera, toiletries, and so on for myself, just in case.

I'm not too happy about the fact that she (and probably Hercules) won't be belted in, but I guess that's the least of their worries. I do have belts that lock into slots in the floor for tying down a wheelchair, that could be criss-crossed over her, but I can guarantee she won't want them.

So, we wait.
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3226 Blood

Friday, April 22, 2011

That which one man receives without working for,
another man works for without receiving.
-- Kenneth W. Sollitt --

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When I was in the hospital, they took blood several times a day, and I had the stupid IV in constantly.

I don't do well with holes poked in me.

I and my siblings have a problem. It's a little bit different for each of us, and to a different degree for each, but we three girls and two boys all have it. We bruise very easily. When we were small, the doctors thought it was a clotting problem, some type of hemophilia.**

For me, it manifested itself as nose bleeds. My nose bled constantly. Literally constantly. Getting hit by the father didn't help, but even when there was no hitting it bled. Sometimes heavily, but mostly it just seeped blood, which would dry and clot as it seeped. I'd wake every morning with obstructing clots and huge dried scabs in my nose, and I'd have to clean them out just to breathe.

By the time I started high school I had a hole clear through the septum. In high school we lived on the base and I was addicted to APCs, and that certainly didn't help.

Cleaning out my nose every morning for the past 55 years, and flaring them to breathe when I couldn't clean them, might explain why my nostrils are so large.

Until my daughter was born when I was thirty-one, my menstrual periods were what is now known to be hemorrhagic. Ten days minimum with tea-cup sized clots. I don't know why her birth changed that - I'd had three miscarriages and a stillbirth prior with no effect. Maybe a full term delivery "cauterized" the uterus?

It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I got a more reasonable answer. I have fragile capillaries. They break and leak at the slightest provocation. The nose is loaded with fine capillaries, and that's why it bled. I constantly have mysterious bruises on my thighs and hips, which is one reason why my legs from the ankle up never see the light of day. When I was in my twenties and thirties, I'd often get huge bruises behind my knees, just from crossing my legs or sitting in a too-high or too-deep chair that put pressure behind my knees.

In my late twenties I discovered another problem. When someone pokes a hole in a vein, like to draw blood or put in an IV, sometimes, but not always, my veins go into spasm. When they do, it burns literally like fire until the IV or whatever is removed. The worst part is that the phlebotomist doesn't believe me that it hurts that bad. One time I woke up after surgery with an IV that had been put in while I was "out", and I woke to my right arm being held in a fire. I cried and cried, begged and begged, but they wouldn't remove it. Imagine a white-hot branding iron being held to your skin for two hours. That's really what it felt like.

When the vein goes into spasm, you can't draw blood. Not enough, anyway. And often when it spasms and rolls, the poke goes all the way through the vein. The only place that consistently works for drawing blood is the back of my hand, with a pediatric butterfly. And I get very annoyed with nurses who don't believe me, and have to stick my arm painfully three or four times before they give up and listen to me. The bruises from those abortive sticks wrap all the way around my arm and are spectacular, but they don't appear until two or three days later, so the perpetrator rarely gets to see them.

There's another almost-but-not-quite amusing side effect. When doctors look in my nose, they assume I'd been using cocaine. Cocaine use will erode the septum, exactly as mine is eroded. A few have asked, but most don't - I just notice an immediate change in attitude when they look in my nose. I have to bring it up and explain that I have never touched cocaine, it's fragile capillaries, and I think some don't believe me.

So. Now the urologist wants more blood.

Sigh. Why does everyone assume it's so easy? Not a big deal? I'd rather have a baby out in the fields.

-------------------------------------

**It's weird that doctors decided that for my brothers it was a mild form of hemophilia - without, by the way, doing any testing - but said it was impossible for us girls to have hemophilia, because only boys get it. Well, they were wrong on all counts. Of course it isn't hemophilia that we have. But even if it was, girls can have it! There are many clotting factors, and a few are not sex linked, and a lack of any one of them can cause the problem. Secondly, even if it is the classic sex-linked form, factors VIII and/or IX, girls can still have it if the mother is a carrier, and the father is too! It's rare, but rare doesn't mean impossible. And it's only rare because in the past hemophiliac males didn't generally live long enough to become fathers. It's becoming more common.
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3225 Local urologist visit

Thursday, April 21, 2011

The past belongs to those who control the present.
-- George Orwell --

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good news: He says we can probably blast the stone to break it up, and the stent can be removed in his office with local anesthesia.

Middlin' news: He wants another urine culture, CT scan, blood panel, and abdominal x-ray, then I'll see him again in two weeks. (Two weeks?)

Middlin' to bad news: It might be a few weeks, perhaps three or four, before I get the stent out.

Horrendous news: No sex until the stent is out!

ACK!

-------------------------------

As I was leaving, the receptionist was giving me the scripts for the tests, and advice on where to have the tests done, and she asked if I had any questions. I said yes, uh, can I have sex with the stent in? She seemed startled, said she didn't know, and said she'd ask the nurse. She whispered to the nurse, who looked startled, and said she didn't know, but she'd ask the doctor.

The nurse came back and said, "In answer to your question, no", and at that moment the doctor came out to give some stuff to the receptionist. He was standing next to me at the counter when the nurse said no. He didn't look at me when I turned to him, but he was grinning. I said to him, "No?! This thing has got to come out pretty darn quick, then!", and hit him on the arm with my Readers' Digest.

He cracked up.

(I'm just a wee tad insulted that the nurses looked startled at my question.)
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3224 More conspiracy theory

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

On abstract art: The subject is limited, and there's no emotional connection.

-------------------------------------------------------

Wow! Companies are hiring! 60% of employers report that they plan to hire this year, and almost none plan layoffs. The economy is in danger of improving. (Much of this is due to a little-known initiative of the Obama administration last year which allows writeoff of capital equipment. Republicans were solidly against it, and now they're claiming credit for it. Oh, well. To be expected.)

However, now we have a panic. We can't allow the economy to improve while the beige man is in the White House! Oh, my, what to do? Hey, great idea! Whisper a few words to our friends and raise the price of oil! That'll do it! And with the disruption in the middle east and the growth in China, no one will ever blame it on us!

Snork snork....

(Think I'm blowing smoke? I'm not. I'm perfectly serious.)

-------------------------------------

I took many pounds of paper that I brought from the old house to the recycle center today. It felt good.
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3223 CLASSmates, fellas, not classMATES!

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

In the United States, sex (and everything related to it) is an obsession; elsewhere, it's a fact.

--------------------------------------------------------

I wouldn't mind finding some old high school or college classmates, so to further that end, I have a profile on Classmates.com, and through them have located a few old friends here and there.

I went to school in Benton for part of first grade through part of fifth grade, then to two schools in Canada, then back to Benton for eighth grade and part of ninth, then to the mountain for the rest of high school, then to college, then after some time teaching, to The Company.

So all those schools and The Company are listed as my "communities".

What really gets me is the huge number of guys who seem to think that Classmates.com is a dating site. There are guys (and it's always males) who were at one place or another so far before or after me that it's impossible that we ever met, let alone were friends, and yet they visit my profile over and over, and keep signing my Guestbook like they hope I'll visit their profile, and sometimes they even send me notes: "Hey! I think I remember you! Wanna get together some time?" Impossible, man. I was gone ten years before you even arrived.

It's very annoying. Flattering I guess, but annoying.
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3222 Nibbled to death by minnows

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Love means seeing someone’s wounds and broken places and loving them not only in spite of them, but also because of them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The old expression is "I'm being slowly nibbled to death by ducks." I laugh when I hear it, because it reminds me of our vacation on a narrowboat on the canals in England.

We would tie up at night along the tow path in the countryside, and then we'd be kept awake all night by loudly baa'ing sheep and a strange sound coming from the hull of the boat. It sounded like we were rubbing against rocks. I'd get up and go check that the bumpers were in place and that the lines were holding us tight to the canal side, and I'd poke with the push stick to make sure we weren't in a shallow spot, and I'd notice that the sound stopped when I was on deck, and started up again as soon as I went back to bed.

We quickly learned that we should tie up near cows, not sheep. Sheep are LOUD! And they baa all night as a safety thing. Cows sleep. It took a while, though, to find out that the scraping sound was ducks nibbling the algae on the side of the boat, and there was nothing we could do about that. (I'd have expected fish, not ducks, doing the nibbling, but fish sleep when it's dark, too. Ducks don't.)

So, anyway, minnows now.

I have so many big things to do. Like clean out the old house, finish painting here, move furniture down, and so on. Unfortunately, that's stuff that can be put off. I'm being held up by little things that have to be done RIGHT NOW! OR ELSE!

The Angel worked on my taxes over the weekend, and electronically filed them Sunday evening. Again, he filed them before I reviewed them. He does that every year, and every year I find something wrong and we have to file an amended form, and we have this "run it past me first even if that means we have to file for an extension" discussion. He sent me a copy by email. After they were filed.

Yep, errors. A bunch of stock was listed as short term gains that should have been long term, because TDAmeritrade reported them as short term because they counted from the time the distribution account was opened by the executors of my late father-in-law's estate, but I actually owned the stock dating from the time of death, which was a year earlier. Stuff like that.

Anyway, I ended up owing a few thousand over the estimated tax payments I'd already made, and The Angel arranged for payment to be made by direct transfer, on Monday, from my checking account. Yeah, we've done that before, but back then I owed only a few hundred. ACK!

I spent early Monday scrabbling to make sure there was enough money in the account to cover the transfer. I have the new account here, and that's what he used. But that account has a debit card (I hate the very concept of debit cards, and resisted as long as I could because I KNOW what's bound to happen), and no matter how I try, I'm very bad at keeping track of when I use the debit thing, and for how much, so "balance" is a rather hopeful but nebulous concept.

It was going to be close. Very close. Uncomfortably close.

I also have several accounts back at the old upriver address: one checking and savings pair used for PayPal only so I have tight control over debits, one checking and savings for everyday, and one savings for business use.

I have online access to the old accounts. Browsing through them to figure out where to get some money to cover the taxes and for the rest of the month, I noticed that I'd been debited $2 every month since October on all the savings accounts for "Bad Address". Huh?

The morning was spent moving money around. Much of the afternoon was spent trying to figure out what was wrong with the address on those accounts. I had changed the address on what I thought was all my accounts in person with a teller back in early November, and I had later verified it online.

I'm getting the monthly statements for one of the accounts, which include checking, savings, and signature loan info all on one statement, at the new address. The monthly statements didn't show the Bad Address fee being charged on that savings account, even though it did show up online. How's that for weird?

I wandered around the website, and could find no other address stuff. I had done everything I was supposed to do, or could do, for changing the address. I called the bank. This is what the guy on the phone told me to write:

Dear Folks,

I have two checking and three savings accounts with you under the name [Me], SS# nnn-nn-nnnn (Phone aaa-xxx-xxxx).

I recently moved from [old address], to [new address].

I have online access to my accounts, and all of them show up in the list on the online summary page. I changed the address in person in the [old location] office, and then I went online to the "Self Service" tab, then to "Personal Options", to "Personal Information", to "Change Address", and verified that the address was correct.

THE PROBLEM: The address change apparently did not take effect for ALL my accounts. I have been receiving the hardcopy statements for [account#] checking and savings at the new address, but not for the other accounts. Worse, I have been assessed a monthly $2 fee on the ALL savings accounts for "Bad Address". See especially savings account [other account number] for an example.

I spoke to B[....] in the call center, and he spoke to W[....], who agrees that it definitely wasn't my fault, I did what I was supposed to do, so the fees should be refunded, but that I needed to write an email (or letter, or whatever).

Please ensure that the address is changed on all accounts under my name, and refund the fees.

I appreciate your attention to this matter.

[Me]

This is what I got back:

I have refunded your accounts for the charges and I will send you copies. I will also be sending you a form to have notarized. Please print this e-mail and take it to a notary with your signature on it. I will be sending you the form for the notary to sign. I will send it in today's mail with a postage paid envelope so you can return the paperwork to me.
Thank you,
[Her first name]
Branch Manager

There were no attachments.

Ok. I went online and checked, and the fees have been refunded. But why do I have to print "this email", sign it, and "take it to a notary with your signature on it"? (She's snail-mailing the real forms. And why do they have to be notarized anyway?) And does she really not know that you have to sign in front of the notary? Or is it just unfortunate wording? Also, the branch manager when I'd last been there was a very intelligent, business-like, impressively tall and handsome black guy. What happened to him? Why is this fool with poor communication skills now in charge?

There's been some stupid thing like this every! single! day! for the past three weeks, that keeps me from getting the real work done. Minnows. Not even the size of ducks.

I'm being nibbled to death.
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3221 The hospital bill

Monday, April 18, 2011

There are those who will believe only what they see,
and those who will see only what they believe.
The potential for reward is far greater if we are neither.
-- Silk --

------------------------------------------

I got the bill from the hospital stay today. I cannot BELIEVE it! I went in through the emergency room Saturday noonish, and left Tuesday early afternoon.

$17,004.00

That's SEVENTEEN THOUSAND!

I don't know for sure how much of that will be covered by insurance. Almost all of it, I think, but I shudder to think of what it would mean if I had no insurance.

When Jay was battling the brain tumor, 1998-2001, he had an MRI with contrast about every other month or so. The MRIs were about $800 then. They said then that a CAT scan (or CT - the terminology seems to be changing) would have been cheaper, but wouldn't show what they wanted to see.

My CAT scan was $1891. Holy crap! That's at least three times what it was ten years ago!

They cultured my urine twice. Total for two cultures - $1134.00! That's totally ridiculous.

I am fully aware that different patients are charged different amounts for the same services, depending on what insurance they have, and what deals the insurance companies have struck with the hospitals and doctors. That's what "in network" means. It means your insurance company has a deal with that provider.

When I was working for The Company in St. Louis, one of my customers was the billing department of a large hospital, and I read computer core dumps when they had a problem. I could see what the hospital expected to receive from all sources. I was incensed to see that some people were charged as little as 20% of what others were charged for the exact same procedures.

Guess who was billed the highest?

People without insurance.

They'd have to pay as much as five times what an insurance company would pay. That looks to me like the uninsured were SUBSIDIZING insurance companies. The hospital had to make up the difference somewhere, right?

And guess who paid the second highest?

Medicare. Apparently the federal government doesn't set limits on what they'll pay like the insurance companies do.

Gah!

I wonder if my bill is so ridiculous ($567 for one urine culture? My doctor's office sent it out to a lab, and charged $50 for the same thing) because Medicare is now my primary payer, and The Company is now secondary, and they know they can get away with it with Medicare?
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3220 Ominous Pain

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it - and eventually they will believe it.
-- Adolf Hitler --

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, this is not good. Remember the pain in my lower left back that turned out to be a blocking kidney stone and kidney infection, and landed me in the hospital in White Plains on April 2, where I got a four-day stay and a stent in the left kidney? Today I have a pain in the exact same spot, but on the right.

The appointment with the local urologist isn't until next Thursday.

This might get interesting.

------------------------------------

I mentioned my admiration for the conduct of the Japanese people. Here's an article that says it well: http://www.goiit.com/posts/list/community-shelf-10-things-to-learn-from-japan-1094859.htm
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3219 Blah

Saturday, April 16, 2011

First rule of leadership: Everything is your fault.
-- A Bug’s Life --

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am very unhappy today, very unusual for me. I don't know why I just can't get anything going. The thermostat says it's 73 in here, and I'm wearing closed shoes, socks, jeans, and a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and I'm still freezing. My fingers and my nose and toes are almost numb. They want to curl up and hide somewhere warm. It's dreary and drizzling and cold-windy outside. I've been pretty productive the past few days, got a lot of little things done, which was very satisfying, but today I can't get started on anything, and there's so very much to do. There's nothing on TV, nothing on the radio, I don't want to watch any DVDs, and reading a book is just too much effort. I should have eaten lunch two hours ago, but didn't feel like putting anything together.

I'm just blah.

I've got that old feeling I'd had so many times in the distant past, where I want to go home, but I'm not sure where "home" is. I want to curl up next to someone strong and warm.

Sigh. Rain rain go away. Silk needs the sun to come out and play.

I've got a can of New England clam chowder around here somewhere....

3218 Thoughts on despair

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being.

-----------------------------------------------

In a recent post I took issue with the declaration that this is the greatest nation in the history of the world (or maybe the phrase was "that the world has ever known", whatever).

I'll back that up.

The US spends less on infrastructure than any other developed nation, by far. Other nations spend three to five times as much.

Our dams, roads, and bridges are deteriorating.

Generating plants of all kinds are aging and inefficient, and we aren't seriously considering the development of alternate sources of energy.

Railroads are falling apart. We have no high speed rail. Every time it comes up, it's stomped down. In Europe, you can get anywhere you have to go by train and bus, quickly and cheaply, and even in Asia trains are efficient. And fast.

All of our materials are transported all the way across the continent by truck! That's incredibly inefficient, given how little one truck can carry, the amount of gasoline it requires to do it, and the amount of additional wear on the roads. Trains can do it quickly and cheaply, with trucks used only for local delivery.

We may have good doctors and hospitals, and medical research, but only if you are rich. The average citizen can't afford decent medical care. And even if you can afford it, many treatments and options available in the rest of the world aren't allowed here.

We don't take care of our elderly. It's a scandal the way we turn our backs on them.

All we're really good at is making money and waging war. And the top 1% makes all the money while the bottom 50% does all the dying.

This is not "great".

-------------------------------

I have enormous admiration for the Japanese people. In all they've been through, the devastation, the dislocation, note that there has been no looting. None. A shortage of food? Rather than grab and run, they share. Looting from destroyed homes and stores? They have actually gathered salvageable bits and pieces and put them in small bins in reclamation centers, where people can go and look for their belongings and claim them. They have centers where people are cleaning found photographs and then posting them on a bulletin board so people can find them. People stand very patiently in long lines, waiting for food distribution. No pushing, crowding, or shoving.

And then there are the people who volunteered to work in the damaged reactors, with the certainty of early death, but no promise of reward beyond the knowledge that they are helping the country and their people. I can't imagine that anywhere else.

The Japanese people are working together for the good of all, and they don't seem to be aware there is any other way to act.

(Yeah, ok, I know about what they did in China, and in WWII, and whatever else "Jap Haters" want to bring up, which is also an outgrowth of the culture. Go away.)

-------------------------------

Every single time I have gone north to the old house, The Hairless Hunk has seen me, even if I didn't see him. It's getting creepy.

I drive past his house on the way to my house, and I always automatically look to see if he's working in the yard, or if his vehicle is there. Mostly I don't see him --- but he always sees me. Often he passes going the opposite direction on the road. It's weird.

Last Tuesday, I took the tax documents to Piper's office in the village, but I didn't go to the old house, which is 2 miles farther north. I was in the village, in Piper's office, then walking with Piper up the street a little less than a block to the diner, then back down to my car outside Piper's office, then I left to head back south.

The next day, I got an email from THH that he'd seen me in the village!

It's like he has a GPS tracker on me or something. ESP. Strange.

--------------------------------

I guess everyone has heard by now about the young woman who drove her car, with her four children in it, off a boat ramp and into the Hudson River in N3wburgh, NY, last Tuesday evening. The oldest of the four kids was 10, and he managed to get out of the sinking car and swam to shore.

And people are wondering why?

She was 25 years old (although I've also heard 24). The oldest of her four children was 10. That means she was pregnant at 14 (or 13), which means she likely has no education, training, or skills to support herself and her children. She was married to the father of her youngest three, but I gather he was not living with her. She had recently moved to N3wburgh, into an apartment in a slummy area of God-forsaken N3wburgh (if you've ever been there, you'd know what I mean. The newspaper describes it as a "humble river city").

According to neighbors, she was a good mother, and had a job. There was apparently a "domestic dispute" that evening. She finally had confirmation that her husband was not only cheating on her, but had been a serial cheater all along.

This is speculation, but I think I can figure it out. The husband had probably left her wherever they had lived and "went north" to find work, so he could support her and the children. That happens a lot. She probably moved to N3wburgh because she didn't like the separation. He'd been able to hide the girlfriend(s), but now he couldn't. He didn't want to move in with her. She suddenly realized that she couldn't count on him any longer.

What else is there to understand? Her world collapsed and she could see no other possibilities.
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3217 Observe

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.

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It has been said many places that Obama's presidency has unearthed the shallowly-buried bones of racism. Yeah. I remember when John F. Kennedy was elected, as the first Catholic president. A lot of people muttered then, too. Like that the Pope would be the actual unelected president. Americans in general are third graders, still using playground rules. They don't like or trust anyone who's different.

-------------------------------

I drove 2.5 hours north yesterday to deliver the tax stuff, had coffee/tea with Piper, and then drove back south. The weather was nice while I was in the village, but the drive all the way up and all the way back was in pouring rain.

I got annoyed because I'd be potting along just fine, and then a huge truck would pull in front of me, and throw so much spray I couldn't see. So I'd slow down and drop back a bit, and because (*) there was now a wide space between me and the truck, another car would slide over into the space behind the truck, and then he couldn't see, so he'd slow down and drop back, and because ... repeat from (*). That's how traffic slows from 65 to 45. I wish those damn trucks would get some mudflaps or deflectors or something.

--------------------------------

On the drive, I heard some senator or something on the radio say something about this being "the greatest nation ever in the history of the world". My eyes were rolling so hard I almost had to pull over.

In history? Ever? Um, what about the ancient Chinese dynasties? The scientific and mathematical advances of the Arabic world and the Golden Crescent? How 'bout the Roman Empire? The British Empire? ...and more.

I get annoyed when I hear people say, "The rest of the world wants to be just like us! They copy our culture!" Bull poopy. It's not our culture or lifestyle or even our system of government or economic system that's getting exported, and certainly not because it's so admirable. It's corporations exporting their products, pure and simple. The American penchant for jeans didn't get adopted because we're so wonderful. They got adopted because they got advertised and SOLD. Unfortunately, we believe our own advertising.

In all those other nations that influenced the world, the great fall came right after they stood up and said, "We're wonderful. We're the greatest!" That's the first sign that they're about to get kicked in the teeth.

--------------------------------

Quick lesson for Spring:

Do you know the difference between a shovel and a spade? A shovel has a straight end and usually curved up sides to hold the material, and is used to move stuff from one flat place to another. A spade has a pointed end with shoulders next to the handle to push with your foot and is used to dig holes. So you'd use a spade to dig the hole for planting a tree, and then a shovel to fill the hole.
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3216 Taxes

Monday, April 11, 2011

We don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.

-------------------------------------------------------------

I finally finished pulling together all the various pieces of paper for the income taxes. Wasn't easy.

Were you aware that when you sell stock, the 1099-Bs the brokers send you (and the Feds) have the total of the sale on it, but not the cost basis? You have to provide that yourself. Otherwise you end up paying taxes on the entire proceeds, not just the profit. Not to mention getting to deduct losses. And I sold a LOT of stock (60 lots of various sizes from 57 different companies) in 2010 to buy the car and the new house, and most of it I'd purchased 10 to 20 years ago.

That's stupid. They know exactly when I bought it and how much I paid for it. Why can't they just list the cost basis too?

I had the information, of course. Finding it was the problem. Some was here, some was up north at the old house. I was certain that I had brought all the files down south, but I couldn't for the life of me find them - until yesterday afternoon, when I opened a drawer in the "unused" side of the new desk, and there they were.

So now I have to get the stuff to The Angel. We'd already agreed that he'd file for an extension for me, but I was worried that maybe I hadn't paid enough estimated taxes, so I wanted to have at least rough numbers.

I did better than that! He ought to be able to do my taxes in an hour from my summary sheet alone.

I'll leave it up to him to figure out whether I was a resident of NJ for any part of 2010, and if so, how much of 2010. That will be interesting....

After I finished the tax packet, I started calling urologists, so I can get this stent and stone taken care of. I can feel the stent in my bladder, and it's starting to get annoying. The earliest office appointment I could get is the 21st. That's awfully close to Daughter's due date, but frankly, due dates are arbitrary anyway, and I don't suppose any other date would be any safer.

Today was beautiful, so Daughter and I went for a ride with the top down, walked around a classy little village a half-hour down the road, and had dinner at this place: http://www.nauvoogrillclub.com/. The building was stunning - art deco lighting fixtures and Frank Lloyd Wright-esque inside walls. (The photo on the site is not the most interesting view.) The food was excellent, but two iced teas, two appetzers, two entrees, and two desserts came to almost $90, so I won't be dining there often. (The individual prices weren't that bad - I'm wondering now if there wasn't maybe a mistake in the bill. Wouldn't be the first time....)
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3215 Raccoon Palace

Sunday, April 10, 2011

No matter how good a friend is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.

-----------------------------------------------

A few days ago, my neighbor George mentioned raccoons in my back yard. "They live in the 1950 Dodge buried in your bank."

Huh?

My back yard goes out fairly flat until it hits a steep cut that goes down to a tiny foot-wide creek that drains into the lake down the street. Then it goes up again to the yards of the people behind me. I was aware that someone in the past been dumping junk down the bank. George says the builder, when he tore out the little house that had been here, dumped a lot of the heavier material there, then filled over it to make my back yard. Standing on the bank, I could see cinder blocks, chunks of concrete, a rusted water heater, and several tires embedded in the bank. But a whole 1950 Dodge? You've GOT to be kidding!

George took me to a lower part of his yard, where I could see across the bank rather than down it, and sure enough, there's the top of a CAR sticking out of the dirt. You can look into the broken-out windshield, and see the steering wheel.

George says raccoons live in it, have been living in it for years.

Oh good grief!

The car:
It's half buried. You're looking at the driver's side roof and windshield, and you can see the hood to the right. (Does that look like a 1950 Dodge to you? It looks older to me, or more foreign, because it's so square. Maybe it's a truck?)

This next one illustrates why I can't see it from the top of the bank, in my yard. These photos were taken from George's yard.

This one is from the top of the bank, in my yard. Four tires, a water heater tank, and a chunk of foundation from the demolished house:

I own all the way to the top of the bank on the other side, so all that landfill is MINE! Joy. I can't wait for the local EPA to come and demand that I clean it up.

3214 Believe your instincts

Saturday, April 9, 2011

It’s not the load that breaks you down. It’s the way you carry it.
--Lena Horne --

-----------------------------------------------------

I mentioned in a previous post the hospital roommate, and her telling the surgeon on Tuesday about how she'd been complaining of bloating and a "wrong" feeling in her abdomen for almost a year, and how her complaints had been ignored or attributed to whatever was convenient.

Her situation is much more serious than mine, with lethal consequences, but the story is similar.

Over at least the past year and a half, close to two years, I'd been complaining that my morning urine was very dark, and smelled very bad. It lightened after I'd been up for the day and drinking water, but the strong "wrong" smell remained. It was so bad smelling I was almost ashamed to use public bathrooms. No other symptoms.

I'd use those urine test strips occasionally, especially after time with The Man, just to check, and they'd say UTI, so I'd go to the doctor, they'd use the same strips and say "UTI", and prescribe four or five days of twice-a-day antibiotic, and that would be it. It didn't fix the darkness or the odor.

The darkness and odor had started shortly after I started taking the thyroid supplement, so I thought maybe that was it. On the trip to Morocco last April, I didn't take the thyroid pills with me, because it was easier not to take a prescription through customs, and because I thought I'd find out if that's what was causing it. Oddly, it turns out, the odor did lessen. It shouldn't have, but it did, so of course I thought I'd found the cause. When I resumed taking the thyroid pills, the odor came back.

At least twice, possibly three times in the past year I had pain in the same area as last Saturday's, with a bit of bowel and bladder urgency and some nausea, but it wasn't so bad, and it went away after a few hours. It usually occurred after I'd been lifting and loading boxes for the move, so I naturally figured it was just my back. And, it was simply too low for kidney, so that never even entered my mind.

For the past six or eight months I've had a feeling that there was something very wrong in my abdomen. No particular reason, just that feeling of something "off", of foreboding, of impending doom. And for no reason in particular I settled on my liver and kidneys, instead of any of the other vulnerable organs hanging around in there.

I mentioned it to my doctor this past February. She poked at my tummy, and that was it. I walked out of there with another 4-day prescription for a UTI antibiotic, and she took me off the thyroid suppliment, saying I didn't seem to need it any more.

The urine darkness and odor continued, and the feeling of impending abdominal doom increased.

I don't think my complaints of the constant dark color and odor, or my concern that something wasn't right in there, were taken seriously. I did ask once if it was the thyroid supplement doing it, and was told no, but there was no further attempt at explaining it.

I'm a bit annoyed by that.

I've probably had the kidney infection (not just bladder infection) for two years, and stones for at least the past year. Luckily, the doctors said that the kidney seems to be functioning even though it was blocked and very swollen, but I wonder how much longer I could have gone with the infection if it hadn't gotten blocked by a stone and thrown a fit. How long before the kidney died.

Moral of the story - when your body says something's wrong, something's wrong! Kick and scream until someone helps you figure it out.
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3213 Daughter Takes Charge

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Caring isn’t what you feel, it’s what you do. If you don’t do, you don’t care.

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Friday night at the hotel I fell asleep with pillows piled all around me, while reading a book. I woke Saturday morning all twisted over to the side. My back hurt. This is normal. I have four areas of my back with delicate disks. It usually works itself out in an hour or three with a little stretching and some aspirin to take down the inflammation and swelling around the nerve. Once every four or five years it goes out so badly that I can't straighten up or walk. Then I find a comfortable position and stay in it for a few days until the inflammation settles down.

A pinched nerve in the back can cause other problems, depending on what that set of nerves does - like shutting down peristalsis and the "bladder-is-full" nerves, or exactly the opposite, causing a sense of urgency in those areas, or as with Ex#2 causing incontinence. My right foot and ankle still have some residual numbness from a back attack in 1983, when the nerve was pinched so badly it died, and shooting pain down my left hip is common.

So naturally, I thought that's what this was. I washed and dressed to go downstairs because there was a presentation I wanted to attend. I didn't put any makeup on because I felt pretty rocky.

A half hour into the presentation I was back in my room, panting from the pain. If you put your hand around that large muscle on your hip bone with the fingers pointing toward your spine, the pain would be right under the tips of your fingers. Too low for kidney, right? Has to be spine, right?

The urgency hit, both. Over and over, until bowels and bladder were absolutely empty, but I still felt like I had to go. The pain was so bad I was unable to stop moaning and panting - deep deep fast breaths - and I knew the panting could cause nausea, and sure enough - after five trips to the bowl I was throwing up only foamy yellow water.

This was bad. Real bad. I'm too far from home to hurt this bad. Today is Saturday. I have to get home, now.

I thought of a dozen ways to get both me and my car home. I knew I couldn't drive myself (even though I did drive myself to the ER in 2002 with the gall bladder attack with almost the same degree of pain and throwing up, but that was a 10-minute drive, and this is two hours). I could ask some Mensans for help, but that would be complicated, because I couldn't accept leaving Hal all alone here - at $12 per day for parking, and the possibility of towing once I left the hotel.

I called Daughter and asked if she had any plans for the day, and if not, could she and Hercules come get me, and yeah, I need both of you because someone will have to drive Hal home for me too, I can't leave him in the hotel garage. She said she'd come, but that I should call 911 and go to the hospital. I said I didn't want to do that. She said ok, and she'd be there in a little over two hours.

I guess I sounded pretty bad to her, because within minutes hotel security was at my door, followed by a hotel manager, and I could hear the ambulance siren coming down the street. Yeah, Daughter had made some calls.

I gave up to the pain and the experts and let it all proceed. ER, CT scan, xrays, grateful for pain meds, grateful for the urologist willing to come in. Immensely grateful that within minutes of my saying I was freezing, I was wrapped in the most wonderful hot blanket, that held its heat for the longest time.

The anesthesiologist planned to use that "twilight" stuff, but I told him either we went with a simple sedative, or completely out, because the last time I got that other halfway crap, I had no short term memory for literally years. I do handle full anesthesia well. I rebound from the deep stuff quickly.

The kids arrived before I went to the OR. They stayed in my hotel room Saturday night, and actually went to some of the activities and programs Saturday night and Sunday morning, with Daughter wearing my id badge. Hercules returned home Sunday evening, and fed Jasper. The hotel was willing to extend the room through Monday at the Mensa group rate for Daughter (on my credit card). Daughter drove Hal back Monday evening. She said that after the first few miles, she enjoyed driving him, but once she got home she chickened out and didn't attempt to put him in the garage.

[At one point, a doctor asked me if I would be sure to do something-or-other. I said, "You met my daughter. Do you think there's any chance I won't?" He laughed.]

We didn't know when I'd be discharged until it actually happened late morning on Tuesday. I considered renting a car one-way if possible, or finding a bus/train combination, or a limousine, since I didn't have to worry about Hal. I called Daughter, and she said she'd come get me, but I wouldn't be until later because she had some appointments.

She picked me up around five-thirtyish, I think. Or six-thirtyish, maybe. I forget.

What she didn't tell me was that one of the appointments was with her OB. She's 80% effaced and 2 centimeters dilated. The doctor said "See you in two weeks." I was shocked. If she'd told me that during the phone call, I might have faked an aide coming in with the news that they'd found a limousine service for me!

Yeah, moving down here was a good idea.

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When I was young, I had extremely low blood pressure, like low 70s over mid to high 30s. It climbed slowly, and lately it's been like 123-128 over the low 80s. I've been very unhappy with that.

In the hospital, it was consistently mid-70s to low 80s over low to mid 40s.

Shocking!

It wasn't just from lying in bed. I was up and roaming the halls (speed walking, actually) when I wasn't hooked up to an IV, right out of the OR, and I wasn't on any meds other than the antibiotic. Actually, I now recall that I used one of those machines in a drug store a few weeks ago, and it registered so low I thought it was broken.

I'm anxious to check it now. My own cuff and stethoscope are in the Suzuki at the old house, so I can't do it myself. I need to find one of those machines again.

I wonder what caused that, why it has fallen so much in the past year or so? The new diet, maybe? I hope it's a good thing, not another ominous sign we're ignoring.
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3212 Bits and Pieces

Friday, April 8, 2011

Omission is the greatest form of lie.
-- George Orwell --

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Predictions:

Remember when I said that Nature's mothers reject their babies only when the babies are unlikely to reach reproductive age? So Knut the polar bear probably had something wrong with him that his mother could sense? Turns out he had a congenital brain malformation that caused him to stop breathing. One point to me.

Remember when I said that although the Egyptian military seemed to be friendly toward the revolutionaries, it seemed to me that the army brass was just using the movement, and would be unwilling to give up power once they got it? According to Lisa Goldman, a journalist currently in and blogging from Egypt, the Army is "acting in an increasingly repressive manner." See her report at http://lisagoldman.net/2011/04/03/1276/. Two points to me.

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Annoying People:

We have all known at least one person who made us cringe when we saw them coming. There's usually something a little "off" about them, an intellectual or social deficit of some kind, that isn't their fault exactly, they try, but it's just "off".

They are very aware of their alienation and desperately want to be liked, to be friends, and it's painful to them because they don't know why it's not working, so they try harder to be friendly and helpful. They give too much. They're like puppies, panting, watching you for reactions, licking your hands and frantically wagging their tails, which is endearing in a puppy, but not in a human. It's beyond simple neediness.

It's so sad. Their attempt to get past the passive alienation turns it into active alienation.

You don't dare take pity and let them in (you can't even say "thank you" when they give), or they'll smother you with their gratefulness. You'll never take another free breath unless you can be cruel enough to cut them off.

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Something I wish I'd never heard:

In the hospital, I acquired a roommate on Monday. She'd had major surgery Monday morning, and arrived in the room early Monday afternoon accompanied by her husband. Within minutes, her children and their spouses and her sister arrived. (They were pretty loud. I kept thinking please let the woman rest!) Anyway, I heard her say several times as people arrived, and a time or two to phone calls, "It was cancer, but the doctor said they got it all. But they want me to do chemo anyway, so they put in a port." People congratulated her on the "got it all".

Very early the next morning she got a phone call from her sister, who had gone straight to the ER from our room the night before and was admitted with diverticulitis. She was on the floor directly below us.

A bit later, but still before breakfast, her surgeon came in to talk with her.

Now, I understand that when there are two beds in the room, sometimes there's not much privacy, especially if the person in the other bed can't just get out of bed and leave. But I had been walking all over the floor, and when he came in I was standing at the window. He had to have seen me when he came in. Given what came next, I think he really should have asked the nurses if I could easily leave the room. I wish he had. But then, surgeons are not noted for their sensitivity.

The curtain between the beds was partially closed, so I couldn't see her and she couldn't see me. I was unaware of what was to come next, or I would have left then, but it quickly became too late. He confirmed that she had ovarian cancer, stage three, and she would start chemo as soon as her incision was healed. She said "but you got it all, right? The chemo is just in case?" He said, "well, we got all we could see, but with ovarian cancer, there are always cells that have traveled and set up camp elsewhere, and we can't see them." "So the chemo is to kill them?" "Well, it won't get them all. The chemo will just give you maybe another three years."

(What the hell? Has he never done this before?)

She said, "you mean I'll die in three years?" The shock in her voice, and what must have shown on her face made him backpedal fast. He said, "well, maybe five. Or even seven. Who knows?" But even I didn't believe that. He sounded too panicked. He was also fool enough to point out that she was actually lucky (yes, he did use that word) because there are many cancers that would have given her even less time.

She talked about her son's new baby. She talked about how she'd been complaining about bloating for the past year or more, but doctors always blamed it on something else, like her trip to Mexico. How maybe if someone had believed her, had taken her seriously....

I didn't know what to do. I wanted to climb out the window. What could I say after the doctor left? I'm a coward. I decided to pretend I'd been still asleep.

Now, what happened next caused me to have enormous - make that the biggest word possible - respect and admiration for that woman.

Almost as soon as he left she got another phone call. She pulled herself together and chatted happily, suggesting that whoever had called, when they came to visit, should visit her sister, too, "she's right below me, if I stomp on the floor she'd hear it, isn't that amazing?", and "yes, cancerous, but they got it all". During breakfast, her other sister, the ICU nurse (at another hospital) visited, and again she was cheerful, and didn't mention the prognosis. Given her reaction with the surgeon, I don't think it was denial. It was more like she just wanted to keep it to herself for now.

After her sister left, the priest arrived. She looked at him and said, "You here for last rites?" and her face fell. I left the room.

And then her husband arrived, with the son, daughter-in-law, and their 3-week-old baby. Again, no slightest hint of anything wrong. I went for walks several times while they were there, and every time I returned, they were still being happily raucous.

She must have enormous amounts of strength. I don't think I could have done it.

They discharged me somewhere between noon and 1 pm, and I left as soon as they let me. Went to the drugstore down the block to fill the antibiotic prescription, and then waited for Daughter in the lobby. When I had left the room her visitors were still there and I didn't say anything to her beyond goodbye.

I'm a hopeless clod.
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3211 What Classic Movie Am I?

Friday, April 8, 2011

The hardest memories to rewrite are the ones stored before language, before there were words to describe them. Those are the ones that continue to influence our reactions for the rest of our lives. We may be aware that there's something unreasonable going on in there, but we don't know what it is, because it isn't in words. We reason in words, but we react without words. And even when we reason, it's built on a foundation of no words, something we can't describe, and therefore can't easily change.
-- Me, in post #2179, 12/23/08 --

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What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Every time you take the test you get a different set of questions. I took it several times with the maximum number of questions, trying to answer as honestly as possible (except some statements make it confusing, like "People find it difficult to read me, and that's fine with me" - well, what if I DON'T think people find it difficult to read me? That kind of thing.), and it came out the same every time.
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3210 Aaaaarrrgh!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to,
it doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.

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I have three dirty toilets. I have three bottles of toilet cleaner and three brushes, one in each bathroom. For months now, I have been cleaning the bowls with just plain water and the brush, or a shot of liquid soap, or a bit of bleach, because

I CAN'T GET THE FREAKIN' BOTTLES OF CLEANER OPEN!

"To open, push down and turn." Push down. Turn. Click... click... click.... Nothing. Push down harder. Turn bottle under my hand. Click... click... click...." Nothing. Push down gently. Turn. Click... click... click.... Nothing. Nothing but clicks and no rising of the cap toward, like, opening.

I don't understand.

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Later, evening, same day -- I took the bottle across the street and handed it to SIL Hercules. "Here. Open this."

He laughed. It's the A&P house brand toilet cleaner. Daughter had bought a 2-pack of the same stuff a while ago and had made the same request. He'd finally resorted to punching a hole in the neck of the bottle.

I fully intend to take the flippin' thing back to the A&P and hand it to the store manager. "Here. Open this."
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3209 Interesting weekend in White Plains

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry,
but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.

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I went to a weekend Mensa gathering last Friday, at the Crowne Plaza in White Plains. I had volunteered to work at the registration desk, handing out the id badges and the programs, so I arrived early. I like working the registration desk because you get to meet almost everyone who comes in.

After my shift I hung out in the hospitality room until about midnight.

The next morning, I got visited in my room by hotel staff and security, and then got a ride to the White Plains Hospital Center (strange name...Hospital Center?) in an ambulance with sirens and lights and everything, followed by a CT scan and a bunch of stuff, and then into the OR.

My left kidney finally got thoroughly pissed (that's a pun) at being ignored for the past year and a half at least, and attacked me. It was very nasty about it. It should have obeyed that green quote above.

The short story is that there was a large stone firmly wedged in a tube (and a smaller stone further down) but they couldn't remove the larger stone because the kidney was very infected, lots of edema and general nastiness, and they didn't want to touch the stone until the infection was gone. So they put in a stent (they went in through the bladder, no cutting) so the kidney could drain, put me on four days of IV antibiotics, and kept me captive until my temperature stayed below 99 and the cultures told them what oral antibiotic would work. (It turns out all of them.)

So now I'm home. Pills four times a day for 21 days. I have to find a urologist here, and once the kidney is no longer infected, the stent and stone need to be, uh, addressed. Exactly what and how remain to be determined.

In the hospital, I walked. Round and round the halls of my section, over and over, whenever I wasn't actually attached to the IV (the IV was for 1/2 hour every six hours), until they gave me permission to widen my route, and I walked the whole fifth floor. But today I still feel wrung out. (Snork. Probably from blood loss! They drew blood like every four hours. Or sleep deprivation. You're not allowed two consecutive hours of sleep. When I left the hospital I noticed a sign in the lobby that they were having a blood drive. Hmmmmm.)

That's the me part, but I figure I should get this out now so folks don't think I disappeared.

Later, the rest of the story.
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