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Health care

Another Day, Another Jab in the Hip…

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LOL! The spavined hip remains…spavined! Well…actually, that’s a bit of an overstatement. It does still hurt. As in HURT. But…nowhere as much as it hurt yesterday.  The pain does seem to be going down a little.

My guess is (Doctor Hay Speaks!) that the worst of the pain will be gone after about another three days.

Just now, it’s a whisper on the nerve-wracking side. Horribly light-headed! Feel like I just might faint.

Why, I can’t imagine: it doesn’t hurt THAT much. But weirdly, somehow I’m dizzy and my heart is pounding and it does indeed feel like I could pass out.

Why I would feel like my head is about to float off into orbit: that escapes me. Haven’t had so much as a sip of booze all day: no wine, no whiskey, no nothin’ in that line.

Soooo….what’s with the crazy light-headedness? Seriously: it doesn’t feel like anything near enough pain to make me pass out. Hmmm…pulse seems to be pounding a bit fast…why??? Ears whistling….woooooooooooooooo!

Probably ought to repair to the ER. But my poor son has been SO HARASSED with this stupid stuff, I do hate to call him and ask him to deal with some new episode.

Should I walk up to the ER? Doubt if I can get that far, on foot and alone.

Hmmmm….  Let’s try reclining on the sofa…phone in hand. Assuming I can get that far….

WHOA!!!

Google “Can ibuprofen cause vertigo,” and here’s what you get:

Yes, ibuprofen can cause vertigo, dizziness, and lightheadedness, though it is not a common side effect for everyone. As an NSAID, it can sometimes cause ototoxicity (damage to ear structures) or restrict blood flow to the inner ear, leading to vertigo, dizziness, and tinnitus.

LUUUUVLEEEEE!

Dammit!  I’ve been gulping ibuprofen for…what? the past three days? Hell, longer than that! The past FIVE days.

Wouldn’cha know?:

Honestly, I seem to be growing more and more sensitive to over-the-counter nostrums. This is the first time I’ve enjoyed what appears to be a reaction to ibuprofen. But…hmm…on the other hand, I wouldn’t normally dose myself with it for several days in a row.

So?????  Does that have anything even resembling significance?

Possibly: I may simply have OD’ed on the stuff.

……

hmmmmm….

Ear whistling seems to be backing off a bit. Both ears feel weirdly congested, but the loud WHEEEEEE is slowly fading.

What to do, what to do? If anything….

Hanging on for another few minutes: off to pass the idle time on the beloved Internet….

……

Next Google: Can Ibuprofen cause tinnitus?

Yes, ibuprofen, as a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), can cause or worsen tinnitus (ringing in the ears), particularly with high-dose or long-term, daily usage

. This side effect is often temporary and reversible once the medication is stopped, as it often results from decreased blood flow to the cochlea.

Uh HUH! Wouldn’t you fukkin KNOW?!

……

Hmmmmmm….   What to do here?

What to do what to do….  Well…  As we sit here fussing, the ear howling is slacking off. It’ ain’t gone….that’s for sure. BUT…neither is it still wailing like an air-raid siren. Hmmm….

Welll…..it doesn’t look like this is gonna be fatal. (Hey! if it DOES kill me, at least the ear-wailing will go away!)

So I think it probably will be safe to wait another half-hour to sixty minutes, just to see what happens. If the wailing continues to fade, then I’ll just let it go…and never, EVER swallow another ibuprofen pill.

If the ears are still howling after a half-hour…then what? Guess I’ll just walk up to the local ER and see what they have to say about it.

Goody. 😮

Spavined!

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OUCH! Ouch ouch ouchety-ouch OUCH, does that damn hip HURT!

Stupidly, the human took off for the park this afternoon with the corgi leading the way. We got about halfway around when I realized I was damn near crippled! 

Didn’t seem to hurt THAT much when we started out. But it just got worse and worse and worse as we proceeded.

This evening, in a couple of hours, M’hijito schleps me to the hated physical therapy studio. GAWD, but I loathe that stuff. An hour or 90 minutes of hup-hup-hup-hup-hup-hup, most of it hurting with every move.

It does seem to help though. Some. Trouble is. the “some” part doesn’t last any length of time. By the next morning (these sessions take place in the evening), once again I can barely limp from the bedroom to the bathroom.

A dose of ibuprofen seems to help. Some…. Trouble is, it seems to make me kinda sick, too. Which would you prefer:

*Can’t crawl across the room”?  or
“Get into that damn bathroom before you barf all over the floor”?

Ibuprofen makes my ears whistle, too. And just now, they’re wailing like an air-raid siren: WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Jeez! Stop the world! I wanna get off!

Doggie Resistance

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Ruby is lobbying to head on out of the Funny Farm and go for a good long walk around the ‘Hood. Her human, however…not so much. The human doggedly resists…

Cripes. I’m so crippled I can barely limp from the dining table into the kitchen. Why?  Dunno.

Best guess is I must have slept in an odd position. A fine jab of pain hit the minute I woke up and tried to climb out of bed. So…about the most reasonable explanation is a cattywampus position in the bed.

Or…last night my son dragged me to the physical therapist. I suppose some of his hour’s worth of manipulations could have spavined some muscle or tendon. But you’d think I’d have noticed that at the time.

At any rate, just now I’m in no shape to trek around the neighborhood behind a lunging dog.

Whatever. It sure does HURT.

And y’know what? I am tired of hurting!

The nightmares never stop

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O Gawd!  There really IS a point when it’s time to hop off from the merry-go-round that is life!  WHAT a flickin’ nightmare just living has become.

My poor son — make that my HEROIC son — has been dragging me from pillar to post: doctors, therapists, thisses, thats, and whatnots. Seems to be no end to it: we just go on and on and ON.

This evening we’re back from the physical therapist,  where what I accomplished was to spavin the hip even worse than it was already spavined. Ohhh my GAWD does this stuff hurt. 

No kidding: I hurt; I hurt; I hurt; and then I hurt some more. And frankly: I ain’t gonna be able to handle a helluva lot more of this!

JAYZUZ!  Just get sat down, and ringie dingie dingie ringie dingie dingie… a clear and present phone solicitor.

But with all the sh!t that we’re going thru just now, there IS an outside chance that this could be a real call from a real person.

Human Answers: Hullo. How may I help you?

Scam Artist Answers: Hullo. May I speak to Mr. or Ms. Human.?

Human replies: GET THE F*** OFF MY PHONE, GODDAMN IT!!!! Shrieked as loud as humanly possible into the phone.

Dammit. 

Need to get an airhorn to blast at the bastard phone solicitors. Hmmm…wonder if those things can be had from Amazon?

****

Mwa ha hah!  Looks like I’m not the only one who’s thought of this. There’s a whole collection of “air horns loud” 😀

Ohhhh yeah! Gotta order up one of these.

Hmmmm… Wonder if there’s a way to blast the phone solicitor without deafening oneself…  Yeah…

Suppose you got a sturdy wooden or steel box, set the phone receiver down in that along with the air horn, closed the box, and then let the air horn have at the ba*tard.

Hmmmm…that doesn’t look very promising. There’s gotta be a way, though.

Let us think on this…

Owwwwww!!!!

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Was it REALLY only a day ago that I was whinging on and on about the pain in the hip?

Feels more like about a year. HURT? Hoooleee Gawd, does it HURT! To get up the hallway from the bedroom to the kitchen & front of the house, I have to stick out my arms and balance myself on the walls, s-l-o-o-o-w-l-e-e-e limping along. Every step — every s-l-l-o-o-w, interminable step — HURTS. 

M’hijito will soon be on his way over here to tote me out to the damn Mayo Clinic. Is there a REASON we couldn’t first (pleeze!) visit one of the nearby hospitals?  Hell, no! Nothing will do but the (putative) best: the Mayo.

The Mayo is in Scottsdale. On the freakin’ far side of Scottsdale: a good half-hour trek each way. And that’s just to get there and back. I can’t drive in the state I’m in (even had he not purloined my car some time back). And so now he has to take a half-day off work — which he sure as hell can’t afford to do — to drag me across the city.

What a fukkin’ waste of time and gasoline!

Young Dr. Kildare used to practice right up the road. He, however, fled our sylvan dales to take up his career in Sun City: halfway to California from here. So it’s as far to YDK’s office as it is to the Mayo…and M’hijito does NOT trust any doctors other than those at the Mayo.

Myself, I can’t tell much difference. A good doctor is a good doctor. A narrow-minded dimwit is a narrow-minded dimwit. Doesn’t much matter where they practice.

{sob!} What a gorgeous day. This is the time, this is the day to be walking with Ruby the Corgi from one side of Timbuktu to the other.

But nooooo. Here I am, barely able to hobble across the room, waiting for my excellent and long-suffering son to come pick me up and drag me out to the far side of Scottsdale.

Just the gawdawful drive out there and back eats up over an hour of his work day. And that doesn’t count trudging through the garage and across the grounds and around the clinic to get to the doc’s office. So that means any time he drags me out to the Mayo, he gets in trouble with his employer

Legally, an employer is not allowed to fire you for taking time off to go to a doctor — or, interestingly, for having to drive a sick relative to the doctor. So…he’s not likely to get canned for today’s excursion. But you can be sure he’ll be swamped with fell-behind work and nagged interminably by the bosses.

I probably could get the Uber driver who lives across the street to schlep me out there — to the tune of about a million bucks. But (he being no fool) M’hijito likes to be present at the pow-wows with the docs. Which is good: years of unpleasant experience have left me aversive as hell where doctors are concerned. And no doubt I often barely hear what they say…in my eagerness to get out of their office.

GOD, I hate going to doctors!

When I was an infant — this was a year or two before we went out to Arabia, and I just turned three when we arrived in those sandy realms — as an infant I almost died at the hands of a brilliant doctor. One evening, hospital staff told my mother I would be dead by morning.

Can you imagine?

Well, they seem to have been wrong. I’ve 0utlived her, the poor woman. And she lived almost to a ripe old age. Would have made it ripeness if she hadn’t smoked herself into the grave.

Tobacco manufacturers and vendors should be prosecuted as the murderers that they are…

Oop! Sorry: sidetracked!

But seriously: if you smoke, quit. Someone is getting rich on your dying. A number of someones, actually. Cut the ba*tards off in their tracks!

Oh well: speaking of tracks, I seem to be easily sidetracked this morning.

Ohhh damn. Here he is!

 

Ah hah! Back IN!

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Thought WordPress had locked me out of Funny about Money. But nay! Here we are!!

Actually, M’hijito is probably the one who got me back in. He’s in the study right now, wrestling with the computer and the Internet. Must say: you have to own a LOT more IQ points than I do in order to make this online stuff work. The frustration level is bracing.

Oh well…we’re back online. Fully.

Also bracing, in the Department of Frustration, is trying to work with doctors when you’re chronically ill. And that, alas, is the predicament in which I find myself.

One runs into any number of roadblocks, here in this predicament:

* Doctors often only half-listen to you. Consequently, they miss much of what you say.

* They are right and you are wrong. No argument, you!

* If you are a woman, you are by nature stupid.

* If you are a woman, you are  by nature wrong.

* Often they will prescribe an OTC drug — or even a prescription drug — without being fully aware of all its potential side effects. These side effects can be highly unpleasant, and some are even dangerous.

You see: this is WHY, over the years, I’ve developed an aversion to medical care. And to doctors. It also is why, whenever a doctor prescribes a drug, I look it up in the PDR (Physician’s Desk Reference) before I gulp it down!  

When you do this regularly, often you realize that your doctor has not looked up a given prescription drug, does not know its potential side effects, and even — incredibly enough! — does not realize it should not be given for your specific ailment.

And that’s the issue: Too often, doctors don’t fully understand what they’re giving you. Not because they’re incompetent. But because they’re busy; they’re overworked; they’re going by what they’ve heard from a colleague or at some conference; and because they assume they know better than you. Especially if you’re a woman.

So, as you can imagine, I’ve about had it.