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Health care

Adventures in Medical Science: Allergy Edition

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So, ohhhhh goodie, here I am at the Mayo Clinic (again!!! an hour’s drive through rush-hour traffic!) to be tested for allergic reaction to one of the several OTC meds that elicit tingling lips and swelling tongue.

They just gave me a tiny, tiny dose of ibuprofen and my lips are already tingling. Damn it! The wounded paw and the elbow and shoulder spavined in a fall a month ago still hurt. Though all that is slowly getting better, I still surely would appreciate being able to use some aspirin, or some ibuprofen, or some acetaminophen.

Apparently ibuprofen ain’t gonna make it, though. The microscopic dose they just gave me is already eliciting tingling lips and tongue. Of course, that could just be stress…I hate, hate, hate being in hospitals and doctors’ offices. My blood pressure goes right through the roof every time I have to come into one of these places.

Hmmm…. Interestingly, even that tiny bit of the stuff they gave me seems to be masking some of the pain, though. If I knew for sure this was not going to cause an eventual anaphylactic reaction, the trade-off would be worth it. But…if a ridiculously low dose like this one makes itself known, what would a full OTC pill do?

Nothing good, I’ll bet.

Finished the client’s latest math project and sent that off to him. He says page proofs for the book will arrive from the publisher in a couple of weeks (so he’s told). This is good. Very good.

I really, really would like to have a bunch more of these kinds of writers. PayPal having shut down my business with the mainland was NOT a good thing. I reckon if he’s happy with the results of the paper I just sent back to him, I’ll ask if he can refer me to other Chinese mathematicians and scientists around the US. He must know some, because academics have to go to conferences and they meet each other there, if they haven’t run into each other in various university and corporate settings.

Hm. In fact. Maybe the thing to do would be to see if I could get myself invited to one of those conferences. Yea verily, maybe the Kid and I could make a presentation on editing your own golden words…the implication being “Why an ESL Author Needs an Editor.”  😉

Another thing I could do, mebbe, is offer to proofread the page proofs for him. If I threw that in as a freebie, I’d have this one on the string for the rest of eternity…and he’d probably tell his friends.

But if I’m going to do very much more of this kinda work, I really, truly DO need to learn LaTex. This is the freebie software that mathematicians use because it handles equations handsomely and it sets type. Sorta…at least, it sets type well enough for a scholarly journal, or to produce a PDF to publish online.

When we first started copyediting for Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, the Kid and I took a LaTex short-course at the Great Desert University. Unfortunately, it was taught by a woman who had to major pedagogical shortcomings:

  • She couldn’t speak English — not intelligibly, at least.
  • And she assumed everyone in the room was fluently techie…an incorrect assumption.

Upshot was that neither one of us absorbed a thing. Even when you go to what LaTex’s users consider to be a beginner’s guide, it’s well nigh incomprehensible. And as you study this guide, you quickly realize the program is extraordinarily cumbersome. Its strongest recommendation is that it sets mathematical expressions in type.  If I were an art director for a journal or a publisher of scientific books, any day I’d rather use it solely to create jpegs of equations and formulae, and then paste those into InDesign.

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Welp…been here two hours. They just gave me the final “large” dose — which is just a standard OTC ibuprofen tablet. Other than a slight headache and lip tingling and the tongue tingling, nothing has happened. With any luck, maybe this “allergy” is all in my beady little brain.

The stuff sure has helped with the hand and arm pain. But the tingling stuff gives me the whim-whams, big time. Some things may be worse than a sore hand and a spavined elbow. Like…f’r example…anaphylaxis.

 

Revival Time

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Not that kind of revival! 😀

Amazing, it is, how fast we melt away when we lay around all day doing nothing. Or as close to nothing as we can manage.

I’m pretty good at that, we might add.

After falling over a broken slab of pavement a week ago Friday, I’ve been in so much pain I can barely move. And so, reasonably enough (one would imagine), I have been barely moving.

Result: taking the dog for a walk yesterday freaking wore me out!

When I haven’t been sleeping all day, I’ve been laying around all day playing computer games and cruising websites. Otherwise, when ambulatory: limping and hobbling around with great dramatic flair…like an old lady, we might say.

Well…it turns out that loafing all day is even worse for us than we think. Which, for those of us who do think about it, appears to be pretty bad.

It develops that when you take naps in the daytime, you up your chances of having a stroke significantly. This might not seem like much of a concern when you’re in your 30s or 40s, but when you’re rocketing toward 75, it gets your attention. Because…welll…sleeping half the afternoon away? That’s what I do all the time.

Because…I routinely wake up at two or three in the morning. Often I can’t get back to sleep. Or if I do, it’s just for another hour or so. This leaves me in Zombie Mode throughout the daylight hours. Which means I usually take an afternoon snooze.

So that article about napping and stroke definitively caught my attention.

Ohhhkayyyy…. So no more of that sleeping-the-afternoon-away business. Revival Time!

Yesterday I managed to stay awake all day, without too much discomfort. Surprisingly, too, I slept till around 7 a.m. — which is very late for me. That, I expect, was because I dropped half a Benadryl…but whatever, it worked.

Today for a change I was not so exhausted I couldn’t hold my head up. But did realize that the dog and I have lost our habit of the two-mile doggy-walk, mostly because I hurt too much to walk to the front door, much less wrangle her all the way through Lower Richistan, Upper Richistan, and back.

So it was out the door. But the walk was cut somewhat short, first by my overall sensation of weakness and then by a moron neighbor who was standing on her front lawn yakking with someone while her large, batshit dog stood guard. I had to pick up Ruby and carry her past them as the dog stared greedily at us and the nitwit cooed “oh, don’t worry, he never hurts anybody!”

Uh huh. This is the hound that she allows to snooze on a table or shelf in front of her large living-room picture window. Every time this critter sees me and Ruby and I walk up that street, it goes ABSOLUTELY SCREAMING BATSHIT. It growls, it barks, it slams itself against that window. Over and over. I avoid walking past the nitwit’s house, because sooner or later that dog is going to break through that damn window.

And that will be one hot mess.

I mean, really: do you seriously suppose this stupid woman just doesn’t notice that her 90-pound mutt goes freaking out of its mind when it sees a dog and a human amble by on the front sidewalk? How do people who have taken leave of that many IQ points remember how to put their shoes on?

But I digress.

Two doggy-walks a day, while a good thing, are rather more than I feel like doing, with one hand too maimed to manage the dog and one knee and the other hip hurting at each step.

So decided a yoga routine would be good. Or better: three of ’em: one in the morning, one around noon, and one in the evening.

The problem with having Jim the Incredible Pool Dude around is that because he does such an amazing job on the hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour-money, I no longer have to go out in back every day and wrestle with pool brushes and hoses. So that is a source of exercise that has gone away. However obnoxious it may be, it did at least get me off my duff and require me to slam around for 15 or 20 minutes. Or more.

A short yoga routine actually worked very well: painless and strangely refreshing. Well…almost painless, as long as nothing touched the hand or the knee.

So I think I should try to do about three of those a day, preferably lengthening each session considerably. And then somehow get back to two miles on the doggywalks. At a time of day when the morons aren’t swarming…

Image: Wikipedia. Erling Mandelmann / photo©ErlingMandelmann.ch

How much longer, dear Lord?

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“Probably at least four more weeks, wimpy Human…”

{sigh}

So I picked this bug up on the 15th from the Mayo’s ER. That was about three weeks ago. Not all that long ago, but yes, God is (as usual) right: I am a wimp. Videlicet: I am damn tired of being sick!

The last time I enjoyed a comparable bug, it took four months to get over it. This would suggest we have another three months or so to listen to me whine…assuming a bolt of lightning doesn’t shut me up before then.

Maybe that’s what the recent blast from the clouds was all about? A divine comment, on the order of “Please shut up!”

Ruby the Corgi is no more pleased with the whiny Human than is God Herself. Most offensive: the dog walks have come to an abrupt halt. We’ve managed two strolls with the dog over the past three weeks, one of which ended when I couldn’t get enough air into my chest to keep going. My enthusiasm for being dragged through Upper Richistan, it must be allowed, has fallen to exactly nil.

Worse yet, the Human keeps climbing into the bed and parking there. Not wanting to be rousted out of a snooze by a dog campaigning to get onto the bed, the critter insists on lifting the Dog up there, too…willy nilly. In the Dog’s case, the sentiment is more nil than will.

This predicament elicits the gratifyingly terrifying Llama Drama from the Dog. She perches on the edge of the bed’s footboard and leans precariously over, peering down into the void as though she were contemplating plunging from the top of the Andes’ highest peak. This is part of an elaborate dance whose ultimate purpose is to extract a doggy treat.

The Human, alarmed lest the Dog decided to throw itself onto the tile floor — thereby creating an elaborate veterinary bill, to say nothing of two or three hours of frenzy — now has to get up and gently lift the Dog off the bed. Result? The ever-effective Doggy Treat Dance, in which the Dog does a joyful whirling dervish thing, up the hallway and out to the kitchen.

No, she does not want to go out. (Are you kidding? It’s dark out there!) She wants a doggy treat, and she will not give up until she gets one.

Very effective. The Human goes back to bed. The Dog, munching, retires to her nest beneath the toilet.

{moan}

I’ve lost my beloved two-cup Pyrex measuring cup. Where it could be, I cannot imagine. One of the less charming functions of old age is the habit of setting things down and then forgetting where you put it. Hours may go by, days may go by, yea verily even weeks may go by, and the beloved object is GONE.

Eventually, you may find it…but…not until you have replaced it.

Alas, though, this particular item cannot be replaced, except by a piece of knock-off junk. The only way I’ll be able to find one like it will be to find one in an antique store someplace.

Goodie. Just what I feel like doing when I’m at Death’s Door: stumbling from Goodwill to St. Vincent de Paul to the Mormons’ second-hand store searching for a piece of real Pyrex.

It couldn’t have gone far. Either I set it down carelessly and can’t remember where or the cleaning lady put it “away,” in which case I’ll never find it. Another possibility: I could have dropped it in the trash. But fortunately, I haven’t taken the trash out to the alley in days. So…tomorrow I’ll have the pleasure of fishing through the two trashcans in the garage, one piece at a time. The likelihood that it’s in the garbage is almost nil…but…I can’t afford to take that chance.

Ohhh gawd, i am soooo sick! The last thing I feel like doing is driving from pillar to post trying to replace that thing in a thrift shop. Let’s hope it resurfaces soon, like a dim message in the inky Magic Eight-Ball of my life.

This is gunna kill me…

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…isn’t it?

Still sicker than sick. Coughing till I’m blue in the face. Too tired to eat.

This last, despite sleeping 15 hours last night and the previous night. And if the cleaning lady weren’t holding forth I’d be asleep right now, too.

Hm. I hear she has a cough, too. I hope it’s not some different bug. Not needed just now: ANOTHER disease on top of the UTI and the bronchitis. Holy sh!t.

Please. Please please please PLEASE stay the fu!k at home when you’re sick! Just because you throw off every little virus as though it were nothing doesn’t mean everyone else does the same. For some of us, there’s no goddamn such thing as “just a little cold.” Keep your bug to yourself. Please.

The last time I was this sick was when I picked up a bug at a publishing conference at Stanford University. The magazine — Arizona Highways — had picked up the tab to send me to this three-week shindig, and it was one BIG fuckin deal. It was an incredible privilege, a fantastic opportunity, and a gigantic day-glo gold star on my résumé.

Or so it appeared. About three days after I got there, I came down with this…THING. One of the worst respiratory illnesses I’ve enjoyed since…oh, about the last three weeks. I had to pack up and come home, and then I was down and out for a good month. It took four months to recover from it.

That was an expensive bug. If I’d managed to go all the way through that course and come out with its certification, I would have ended up as the magazine’s editor after my boss retired. My immediate supervisor, then the managing editor, wasn’t interested in the editorship — he was just marking time until he could retire. If I’d had that Stanford publishing course, the Ph.D. and the years of magazine editorial experience and the two books in print (one of them on magazine journalism) would have made me a shoo-in for the senior editor’s job.

So…basically what happened there was some fool’s “just a little cold” deep-sixed my career.

Updates: Bleach and Bugs

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Item: The no-chlorine, oxygen laundry bleach.

Holy mackerel. Since the stuff seems to have disappeared from the nearby grocery stores’ shelves and I couldn’t even get it from Amazon, I dropped by a Fry’s Marketplace (Kroger’s) on the way home from an appointment with Young Dr. Kildare. And yes: I did find it there. Try to guess the price…

SIXTEEN BUCKS for 88 ounces! That’s 16 cents an ounce….

So pretty clearly this is a product that’s being taken off the market. I was going to buy two bottles of it, but thought I really couldn’t afford that.

I’ve already looked at Target — they don’t have the stuff, in any brand.

Tomorrow morning I’ll go over to the Walmart — the full-service Walmart, not the grocery-store version, which we already know doesn’t carry it. Failing that, I may drive back halfway to the White Tanks to grab another bottle of it at the astonishing price. Which is, we may say in glorious understatement, not what I want to do just now.

Once the stuff is no longer available, though, it looks like you can use plain hydrogen peroxide in its place. And in the glorious tradition of the great Trent Hamm, the grand-daddy of all personal finance bloggers, you could combine the H2O2 with washing soda, fifty-fifty, to make your own DIY knockoff.

Personally, I feel washing soda is, as chemicals go, a little harsher than I want to use on my clothing and sheets, especially in the new-fangled washers that don’t do a very good job of rinsing the laundry. So I think once actual laundry-quality O2 bleach is gone, I’ll be using just plain hydrogen peroxide, available in gay abandon from Costco.

At any rate…it’s annoying. Personally, I’m damn tired of seeing every product that works taken out of our sticky little hands.

Item: Pounding on Death’s Door

The bastards still aren’t letting me in!

Source: Merck Manual

Schlepped across the Valley to see Young Dr. Kildare, with whom I had a long-standing appointment. He was less than thrilled with some of my reports from the battle scene at the Mayo.

To start with, he reviewed the contents of this year’s annual physical from the Mayo and was surprised that my assigned doc there did not flag what he believes to be unacceptably high cholesterol levels. That, I think, is arguable: some might say they’re marginally high but do not yet need medication. He would put me on a med right now.

We compromised: I agreed to lay off the booze (pretty easy, since I haven’t even been able to look at a bottle of beer or wine since this damn bug set in), and he agreed to stand by for four months. Silently, I also decided to replace my regular breakfast fare of several pieces of high-quality cheese with something a little less…rich. He doesn’t know about the roquefort, the cheddar, and the assorted other spectacular dairy products with which I regularly start my days, and he ain’t about to know. 😉

Nor was he pleased to learn that the Mayo had scheduled no follow-up testing for the UTI. He felt I should head for a lab in a few weeks for another urinalysis, to be sure the E. coli in question is really, truly GONE gone.

Although this is somewhat questionable, given my age and the fact that the antibiotic made me so sick I couldn’t take an entire course uninterrupted, it made sense to me. And one good thing about doing this through his office is that he uses labs that are close to my house, as opposed to demanding that I schlep 15 miles across the Valley to use the Mayo’s facilities.

As for the present respiratory ailment that still has me barking like a sea lion, he characterized that not as a “cold” (Mayo’s diagnosis) but as bronchitis, no doubt viral. When I said I’d never had a stuffy nose with the thing, that was what elicited his present opinion. He wants to keep an eye on that, too.

Well, I think the respiratory thing is on the way out, though I’m still so exhausted that at this very moment I can barely type these words. The cough and the fatigue will, if prior experience speaks truth, continue for another four to six weeks, at which point the whole mess should start to pass.

I hope.

Coff! Coff! Coff!

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So now for the usual two to four weeks of nagging, barking cough, the inevitable follow-on when one of these ailments afflicts me. Cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough…. I can’t go out in public because the frantic nonstop coughing scares the locals. And of course, I’m afraid I’m infecting some poor innocent wretch passing by in a store or a parking lot.

The cough med — 30% dextromethorphan — works for an hour or two. BUT…ah yes, always a “but,” eh? It leaves my mouth so parched it feels like someone stuck a hair dryer in there and turned it on “high.” The dry mouth that results from a couple doses of that stuff is so extreme it actually hurts. Thanks, but I’ll take the nonstop coughing.

Outdoors, a cold wind howled through the night: 20 mph and gusting. Majorly gusting. Whenever they get Santa Ana‘s in Southern California, we get a wind very much like it, only cold instead of hot. Last night it was pretty extreme, though: made such a racket it actually scared Ruby the Corgi — and she is decidedly not a scaredy dog. She huddled on the bed and whined in fear…a first for this hound.

So at any rate, another night passed without much sleep.

The pool guy surfaced around 8 or 8:30. What a mess! Mighty nice to have someone on the payroll to deal with that fine job. Nevertheless, by dawn’s early light I did haul Harvey out of the drink before he could choke on the debris that settled to the bottom during the night and switched out the new-fangled skimmer gadget for the old-fashioned basket that I wisely refrained from throwing out. Pool dude cleaned the pods and leaves and palm-tree debris off the bottom and got the system working again. How long that will last remains to be seen…probably about eight hours, unless this weather settles down real fast.

Trying to figure out if I actually paid the current AMEX bill. I can’t remember, between being harassed and then being sick as a dog. Apparently I did make a payment in October. But…forgodsake. There’s only $6,000 left in checking. That’s barely enough to cover another three months. I may have to take another drawdown in January…let’s just hope the stock market is up by then. If they impeach that asshole Trump, you can be sure it won’t be up.

In any event, it’s penny-pinching time again…no doubt of that.

So, so, SOOOOO magnificently sick. And soooooo goddamn tired! What an excellent opportunity to practice my whining skills…