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Health care

Shingles Vaccine Wow II

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Holy mackerel, did that shot make me sick! If the extortionate price doesn’t make you sick, by golly, the vaccine itself sure will.

Growing up on the shore of the Persian Gulf, about as third-world as you could get in the 1950s, I enjoyed a lot of shots. Every malign disease known to prey on personkind was endemic in Arabia, and Americans living there had to take shot after shot after shot after shot. Every six months, I was hauled down to the hated clinic for yet another round of jabs: typhus, typhoid, cholera, tetanus, diphtheria, smallpox, whooping cough… They didn’t have polio shots yet, so whenever there was an outbreak, every kid in camp was dragged down to a portable and stuck with a vialful of gamma globulin — and lemme tellya, that stuff hurt! Of the routine shots, though, typhoid and cholera were probably the most painful.

But none of them hold a candle, for lengthy acute aftereffects, to this accursed Shingrix concoction. Holy shit!

Administering it is actually not very painful. But shortly after it’s been pumped into a muscle, your arm starts to hurt magnificently. This spreads up your neck, across your shoulders and back, down into your legs. Before long every muscle in your body aches. And your head? Wow, what a headache!

Unfortunately, I can’t take aspirin, ibuprofen, or acetaminophen. So these little aches and pains are just something I get to enjoy.

Hardly slept at all last night. I probably fell asleep for about an hour around 1 or 2 a.m., and that was it.

Then this morning I had to get up, climb in the car, and traipse across the city to the dermatologist’s office, south of Sun City(!!). At 9 a.m., the rush hour is still on…so that was jolly fun. Really, I shouldn’t have been driving the car at all, that’s how sick I was. BUT…I managed to shoehorn myself in to the doctor’s schedule  this a.m. to have them look at a recrudescence of this damn thing on my hand. They insist it’s not growing back and that it’s healing up. Yeah. Right.

Soaking in a hot bath for awhile helped some — which was surprising, since the stuff made me feel like I had a fever of 110 and I thought what was needed was cool water. But it’s damn cold in the house — we’re having some kind of a cold snap — and I just couldn’t force myself to stand in a cold shower. Surprisingly, the hot water helped.

That notwithstanding, I still hurt from stem to stern by the time I had to roll out the door.

God, how I hate driving in this city! It’s just like Southern California now: mile on endless mile of bumper-to-bumper, aggressive traffic through tracts of ticky-tacky housing and shoddy strip malls. And wherever you’re going, you can’t get there from here without an endless trek. Horrible place!

Especially when you feel like hell… 😀

To get out of the ’hood, I had to pull an “Arizona turn.” That’s when you dart out in front of traffic bearing down on you from the left, floor it to keep from getting hit, veer into the center turn lane, and make a Uie. This was the only way I could turn west on Gangbanger’s Way this morning. Ultimately, I had to do two Arizona turns: one to get out of the clinic’s parking lot and turn east to come home.

You wonder why I insist on a six-banger? Yeah.

All that notwithstanding, I was happy to be able to get a vaccine that at least has (heh!) a shot at providing some protection from shingles.

Shingles is decidedly not an ailment you want to enjoy.

Some years ago, I met a woman in Portal, a little dump in the Chiricahua Mountains. The Chiricahuas host a research station run by the American Museum of Natural History. It’s quite a place, and it attracts droves of high-powered scientists. These folks arrive there and fall in love with the place. The Chiricahuas form what is known locally as a “sky island”: with its own ecology, the area looks much like Bali Hai.

As a result, a number of very high-octane scientists take up temporary residence in Portal, and some of them retire there. This woman and her husband were among those who decided to retire. They built a home in a beautiful little canyon and took up bird-watching.

Shortly after they arrived there, she came down with shingles. A bad case of it. By the time I met her, she’d had it for two years, and it wasn’t getting any better. It had wrapped itself around her torso, so that she could not breathe or move without constant pain. About all she could do was huddle on the sofa, trying to stay still. She was, in effect, crippled.

At that time, there was no immunization for shingles. If you’d had chicken pox and you were pushing old age, you had a good chance of getting it. In fact, one in three older Americans get shingles. Some, obviously, are not as severe as her case. But…there’s no way of knowing who is going to get a crippling vase of it and who is gonna get off light.

I remember looking at that lady and thinking, holy shit! whatever you do, DON’T GET OLD!

Well. The alternative is fairly drastic, and so far I haven’t felt inclined to take advantage of it.

So even though the present episode was a passing miserable moment, and even though I’m really pissed that something so important to public health should be priced exorbitantly and not covered by Medicare D, I’m really, really glad to live in a time where the shot is available.

Image: Chiricahua hoodoos: By Zereshk – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4171231

$hingles Vaccine: WOW!!!

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AFTER treatment of skin with Herpes Zoster (Shingles)

So when I went to get the first of the two required Shingles (make that “$hingles”) shots, Safeway’s pharmacy dinged me $160. Shee-ut! That was in spite of what I believe to be pretty damn good Part D coverage. I was led to believe it would cover both of the two required shots.

Not so much.

Comes the time to trudge back in for the second shingles shot: they gouge me ANOTHER $160!!!!!

Like…hey, dear GSK Global (Glaxo Smith Kline)…you couldn’t make a zillion bucks by charging five bucks apiece for every baby boomer who needs and wants this shot you’re manufacturing? Noooooo…you  had to get greedy. And by greedy, we mean fuckin’ greedy.

Over $300 to get shots that are supposed to be covered by Medicare D. Why, I asked Dear Pharmacist. She said “that’s Humana’s deductible.”

When I got home, I called Humana and asked why their Part D coverage didn’t cover the shingles vaccine, especially given the savings to Medicare and to the society in general if shingles could be eliminated or at least much attenuated in the Baby Boom generation.

“Because,” their representative said frankly, “there’s so much demand for it.”

Yeah. Because everybody over 65 is responding to advertising and PR campaigns and because no one who has ever seen anyone with shingles wants to get it, they feel justified in gouging.

And that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Turns out $160 is an average — maybe even a fairly modest — ding for a single one of these goddamn shots. Consumer Reports explains: the bastards have managed to get Shingrix, an ordinary vaccination, deemed a “prescription drug,” and therefore not covered as an ordinary vaccination. Therefore: eligible to qualify as a gouge, of which GSK takes every advantage. Scroll down in the comments section of this post, you find some people have paid as much as a thousand bucks to get both members of a couple vaccinated!

If you doubt that Big Pharma is corrupt and greedy…well, let’s be frank: you’re a damn fool.

Holy Mackerel! It’s NOT…

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CANCER! To coin a phrase: WTF?

This morning I called the dermatologist’s office to ask if they had the results of the biopsy and whether, even if they didn’t, could we please make an appointment to have this THING on my paw excised because it hurts and it itches and it’s driving me fricking crazy.

Silence ensued. Eventually the office spokesindividual came back on the line: Yes, they did have the results. No, it is not squamous cell cancer, as diagnosed by not one but two medical professionals. It’s “just” (heh) a fairly extreme actinic keratosis. It can be frozen off with the application of iced nitrogen.

Well. Sumbiche.

In the aftermath, comes the weirdest feeling. It’s not “a great weight lifted from your shoulders” (gimme a break!). I mean, puhleeze…after having both boobs lobbed off, I am not frightened by slicing away a small lump from the back of my hand, thankyouverymuch.

It’s more like…

Suddenly, after six or eight goddamn nightmarish weeks, the hassles and the worries and the effing nightmares come to a DEAD STOP.

Abruptly, I realized about two-thirds of the “gotta-do-it-today” To-Do’s do not have to be done today, fuckthemverymuch. It was like…a door to normalcy flang itself open.

Cassie was coughing when she woke up this morning and plainly isn’t well today. Call vet, hurry her over there, rack up another thousand bucks? Maybe not so much. The world didn’t end for me; quite possibly it’s not ending for the dog. Watch dog; see what happens. Open back door: dog flies out like a rocket. If that was Death’s door, she seems not to have minded.

Am I broke? Yeah, I am broke. BFD. I’ve been broke before. Remember the time when I was stockpiling canned goods whenever I could find them on sale? Perhaps that predates my blogging period.

Today I do not give a damn that I am broke.

Today I am not calling the vet yet again.

Today I am not spending another hour or two online with an Apple tech trying to figure out why my MacMail doesn’t work.

Today I am not driving halfway across the city and paying to have the half-baked ID card (NOT) from the Medigap provider encased in plastic.

Today I am not posting a damn thing to Plain & Simple Press.

Today I am not finishing the chapter I was writing to post to Plain & Simple Press.

Today I am not depositing Crystal’s check for the latest paid post I published at FaM.

My son gave me four packages of chicken parts, thighs & drumsticks, which have been residing in the freezer. Remembering these and then remembering, from many MANY years ago when I was a young thang and had a young husband for whom I cooked dinner every evening, an accidentally marvelous chicken recipe that involved braising in a LOT of garlic and white wine and chicken broth after laying slices of lemon across the pieces of dead bird, I thought: I’m celebrating with this.

Trot down to AJs, pick up a bottle of cheap white wine, a new chunk of overpriced cheese, a package of made-in-Italy pasta, and some other delectables.

Drive home. Chow down on freshly made rye bread and overpriced cheese and a glass or two of said cheap wine. And am now about to put the dog and myself on the bed. Whenever we roll out of the sack: it’s on to chicken in garlic (one hell of a lot of it) and wine and Meyer lemon. And…oh, yeah…the rest of the bottle of wine. 🙂

Onward.

State of the Chaos

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A little quieter here today… let’s hope it’s not the calm before the next storm. Let’s see how the various crises are doing:

1. In the department of Funny’s Money: I have no idea. I don’t even want to know, it’s such a chaotic disaster. This month I never got an untrammeled moment when I wasn’t too exhausted to sit down and work on the budget, so I’ve just been spending left and right. Financial manager sent over enough to cover the down payment on the pool rehab, which starts Monday. I reset the checking-to-emergency savings automatic transfer to move less than half of what I originally thought I could manage, so that (at least) will leave a little more basic survival money in checking.

2. Hand cancer: still waiting on the biopsy. But I’m calling the doc’s office on Monday to ask if we can accelerate the process. I want this damn thing OFF. Where they shaved off enough to send to the lab, it’s growing back with élan. Whatever it is, it’s very fast-growing and so presumably aggressive. And at times it really hurts. Hurts and itches. Turns out pain and itching are defining characteristics of squamous cell cancer. Why exactly we have to wait for biopsy results until the cows come home to cut the thing out escapes me.

3. Dog decedence*: No credible sign of croaking over yet! Matter of fact, this dog is getting much better. Just now she remembered the chicken jerky treats that reside in a jar on the kitchen counter and decided to do the Dance of the Manipulated Human, thereby eliciting a chew treat for herself and for Ruby. The cough seemed to come back a little: it had subsided to the point where she coughed only when she slurped up a lot of water (which she’s always done…corgis do that). She had stopped coughing when she barks and stopped coughing when I lifted her off the bed. So I cut back the Benadryl from 1/2 tab in the morning and 1/2 tab in the evening to just 1/2 tab at night. A-n-n-d…the cough started to come back. This morning I gave her a dose at doggy breakfast, and lo! No coughing.

*Yes, yes, I did invent that word. Why do you ask? Etym: Late Modern English, from decedent (a deceased person)

4. Car: It seems to have survived its brush with the flatbed trailer with no very serious damage. The gouged tire is still rolling. It hasn’t blown, at least not so far…and yeah, it has been on a freeway or two. I’m trying to stay off the freeways, because I don’t trust the thing. But to get out to the new dermatologist’s office sometime before the end of my life expectancy, I pretty much have to ride the 101 for a number of miles. So far, so good.

5. Cord-cutting Cox escape: Last night La Maya and La Bethulia invited me over for dinner. In the course of conversation, I remarked that I need to get rid of the fake “land line” (Cox’s new version is really VoIP, and not very good VoIP at that), replace my extensions with cheap clamshells and get an iPhone.

“I have two old iPhones that I’m not using!” says La Bethulia. “Want one?”

Do I want one???? Grab!  Well, she quite reasonably wanted to delete all her data on the thing before I trot it over to the Apple store to get it set up. And they’ve forgotten the password for the thing. But it turns out it’s not hard to reboot the thing all by your little self. So…I may try to do that with my son’s help, or just hire an Apple tech to do it. Paying someone a hundred bucks or so would be a lot cheaper than buying a new iPhone! 🙂

6. MacMail fiasco: Still not fixed. Right now the only way I can get to my email is through the Web interface, which is less than ideal. It does allow me to access incoming mail, but all my carefully designed preferences have been screwed up. Not erased — which would have been far preferable — but all jumbled around. So it’s a mess. And I guess I’m going to end up either having to pay Cox for an email account, the bastards, or start using Gmail, which I really really REALLY do not want to do. This, I will figure out later.

7. Other little dramas: Have yet to decide whether I’m going back to choir. The associate director has kindly put me on the women’s chant choir, which I love.  She urged me to come to choir on Sunday despite having turned on my heel and marched back to my car and gone home after last Wednesday evening’s unpleasant exchange at the door (not with her but with a woman who makes no secret of her dislike of me).

I don’t know. I’d pretty well decided to quit — just never go back, that’s how disgusted I am. And besides…

Really, the only thing that keeps me from feeling a great deal more serious about moving out of Crime Central is the choir. I can’t afford any other close-in district — this neighborhood is cheap because Conduit of Blight Blvd, Gangbanger’s Way, the Blightrail, the meth clinic, and the population of bums keep the property values way down. Comparable homes anywhere else are at least a hundred grand higher, and these days more like two hundred grand.

Abandoning the choir and the church would open two housing options: Fountain Hills, wayyy on the east side of the Valley, and Sun City, wayyyy on the west side. Both have the advantages of low crime rates and pretty decent nearby shopping. They’re both quiet and peaceful, and there’s no way any politicians and their greed-driven backers are going to build a boondoggle through the middle of either one. Sun City is a ghetto for old folks, which I really do not like. Fountain Hills is one helluva long way from everything but the Mayo Clinic, a distance that I also do not like. I don’t know anyone in Fountain Hills and, because I don’t make friends easily, this would make me feel isolated and unhappy. But Fountain Hills has pretty scenery and it is close to upscale shopping and to my favorite second-hand store, My Sister’s Closet. Sun City has the advantages that it’s very cheap to live there, and that I do know some people there and so would start with a kernel of a social life. Which would be good. I guess. And the writer’s group I favor meets way on the west side, so it would be easy to cultivate more friends there. I guess.

Well, if I’m going to snab that phone, I need to get up and do it now…La Maya’s relatives are about to descend on the house. And so, away!

Month from Hell: It gets even BETTER!

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Honest to God. If you wrote this stuff into a novel, no one would believe it. Really: it has been just about a disaster a day for the past month or six weeks. Today’s disaster: cancer.

Yeah. The thing I thought was ringworm? Young Dr. Kildare believes it’s skin cancer. He thinks it’s a squamous cell carcinoma.

Charming.

Mine doesn’t look quite like the things in those images. There are some infections you can get that actually look a lot more like it. Whatever it is: dayum! Another little drama…another PITA.

Truth to tell, though: this is a blessing in disguise. I have not been able to get in the door to a dermatologist since my last dermatologist fell off the radar. In our parts, their schedules are so jammed with skin cancer patients and Baby Boomers seeking rejuvenation treatments (which apparently is where the big bucks are…) that many of them won’t even make an appointment with you. Even at the Mayo, where I’m a patient, the wait list is six months.

He gave me a referral, and incredibly, when I dialed the number…are you ready for this?…a live human being answered the phone!!!!!

Jayzus. I don’t know when I last ran into a human being on the phone at a doctor’s office…not in living memory. 😀

Anyway, they arranged to see me on Tuesday. Not only that, but the doc will do a full-body exam, which will give me a chance to ask is there’s anything she can do about the damn neurofibromas. And of course, get rid of the current crop of actinic keratoses, which anyone who lives in Arizona for many years routinely sprouts.

So I don’t feel like it’s exactly world-ending. It’s just another damn nuisance to soak up time. The drive to YDK’s office takes a good 40 minutes, and this dermatologist is even further west — basically out in the vicinity of Sun City, only further to the south.

Dispatches from Hell…

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Day after day after day after day has been yet another Day from Hell, lo! these several weeks. Why don’t things get better? Why does everything break, bust, explode, crash, or die? Finally figured out the explanation. These are not days from Hell. We are actually in Hell. Hence: these are not blog posts. These are Dispatches from Hell.

Case in point: The least of today’s hassles, only because it’s a hassle left over from a week ago…I’ve tried twice to re-up my subscription to The New York Review of Books, one of my favorite broadsides. First time was my fault: I used the credit union’s bill-pay function, but paid for it from my personal account (which, oddly, did have the the NYRofB’s listed as a previous payee). Of late I’ve been making the S-corp pay for it.

That payment bounced. Why, I do not understand: what do they care which account pays for it? Ohhkay… Eventually they sent a desperate “Don’t Leave Us” ad in the snailmail. I replied to that by filling out the form and entering the S-corp’s AMEX account number. This no doubt would have worked if I hadn’t indulged in a moment of stupidity.

As you know, the ‘Hood is not the best of all possible neighborhoods. We’re inundated with drug-addicted transients, who support their habits with petty theft. Including mail theft.

The payment envelope in hand, I raced out the door to run a bunch of errands and get someplace on time. In a hurry, I really did NOT want to drive to the Post Office to deposit the thing in one of their mailboxes. That would entail waiting half my lifetime for the blightrail signal at the interesection of Conduit of Blight and Feeder Street E-W to turn green, then waiting the rest of my lifetime to get back across the damn blightrail tracks to get to my various destinations. So instead of traipsing to the PO for this one small item, I stuck it in the outgoing slot of the Fort Knox Mailbox and flipped up the red flag.

Bad move. Very stupid indeed.

Two or three days later, I went out to get the mail (it’s almost all advertising now, so there’s no hurry to pick it up) and noticed the red flag was still up. Whaaa? Did the mailman not come by? (He often doesn’t….)

Check to see if he’s failed to pick up the outgoing: no envelope in there. Days go by. A couple weeks go by. No payment at NYRofB’s.

Shit. That means someone has stolen the thing and now has my name, the name of my business, its address, and its AMEX credit card number. I wait a few more days to see if the payment goes through. Today I call NYRofB’s phone reps and they say they never heard of it. I need to pay the thing on my corporate AMEX card over the phone. Then I need to cancel the card and order a new one, ASAP.

But ASAP ain’t very AS…because I’m waiting on the PostalPerson to deliver a new personal AMEX card. Yes. Somehow I managed to LOSE a whole cardholder full of cards!!!! The personal AMEX card, the Safeway card, the new Medicare card with a new Medicare number on it (the one that doesn’t work at the pharmacy), the old Medicare card bearing my Social Security number….GONE, every one of them.

I believe they’re somewhere in the house, because I paid the AC guy to fix the thermostat and the leaking roof with my personal card, and I did not leave the house between the time he drove off down the road and the time I realized I couldn’t find that cardholder. Since I’ve habituated that locksmith for a good 12 or 15 years and Steven (locksmith dude) has worked for them for 7 years and he’s a fine upstanding workingman, I don’t believe he walked off with it. Without a doubt, I set it down in the house somewhere and managed to lose it…same as the pair of prescription glasses that got tangled up in a knitted bed throw and disappeared for three months.

Fortunately I have photocopies of the Medicare cards. And fortunately, I had the sense to black out the SS number on the old Medicare card. The AMEX card has been canceled and a new one is on the way, but the weekend coming up, I don’t expect “tomorrow” (no kidding: that is what she said!) to arrive much before Monday. And fortunately, my debit card, corporate AMEX card, and Costco cash cards are in a different card holder. Which is not, after all, lost. Yet.

So what other dispatches from Hell since I had to pay $40 out of pocket for a flu shot?

  • The dog got better off the fluconazole, then worse.
  • Dog continuing incontinent, I ask the new vet if they’ll test her urine for a UTI.
  • Wednesday after volunteer receptionist duty, I race the refrigerated pee up to 40th Street and Thunderbird and drop it off there. I drive up there through the rush-hour traffic, drive back in even worse traffic. Changing lanes to maneuver into place to turn right into the ‘Hood, I misjudge the length of a flatbed trailer being towed behind a pickup in the lane next to me and clip the goddamn thing. The driver doesn’t even blink. He doesn’t slow down, he most certainly doesn’t stop…I think he may not even have noticed that I bumped his trailer. My car sure did, though. Pulled over to find the front bumper was half pulled off, scratched and gouged, flying in the breeze. Shee-ut!
  • Back here, I walk in the door and find…NO Charley! He’s freaking GONE! A worker has been here in the afternoon; I’ve left strict orders not to let that dog slip out the back gate. But he can go in and out the dog door…dollars to donuts that’s exactly what he’s done. He’s old, he’s sick, and now he’s LOST. Try to reach said worker: no answer. Totally, utterly panicked. My son is supposedly in Colorado, which is why his dog is here. I think maybe he got back while I was out and picked up his dog, but he won’t answer his phone, either. Neighbor texts him (I have no cell phone). No answer. I am in utter despair. After a bit I calm down enough to notice that even though the dog’s food is still sitting on the kitchen counter, the dog’s leash and collar are gone. SOMEONE took the dog on purpose…at least he’s not roaming around the neighborhood and ambling across Conduit of Blight Boulevard.
  • Eventually the kid calls and says yeah, he picked up the dog but was too tired from driving in from southern Colorado to bother to leave me a “thanks for keeping my dog” note.
  • Now late for choir, I feed the dogs and fly out the door without any dinner of my own.
  • Get home about 9:15 p.m. and go to enter the (locked) office.
  • It’s been raining for a day and a half. The solid-core door is swollen tight. The key goes in but I can’t turn it. I get a wrench, try to open the thing, and…SHEAR THE KEY OFF level. with the fucking deadbolt! All my computers, all my financial stuff, all my credit cards, all my cash, even my cheesy little clamshell phone are locked behind that door.
  • Call the locksmith’s emergency line. He says he’s sure he can fix it. For a hundred bucks he’ll do it right now (pushing 10 p.m.). I say if he’s sure it can be opened, I’ll be able to sleep at night and so can wait till tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll be wanting to break the front window and climb in to get my computer, which I’d druther not do.
  • Next day have real difficulty getting them to come over — but because I’m an old customer who’s spent a lot of dollars at their shop, they squeeze me in.
  • Steven comes over, takes a screwdriver to the thing, flips out the stump of the key: takes him all of 30 seconds. I’m in love. This love affair costs me 70 bucks. And now I have to go take the fancy key over to the shop to get a new one made. That’ll be another 20 bucks. Later. But not much later.
  • Somewhere in here I lose my credit-card holder. I search from pillar to post, empty out the trash cans, go through drawers, look under the furniture: no luck. I’m sure it’s in the house, probably, but when I can’t find it the next day figure to be safe I’d better cancel the AMEX card. Two or three days without a personal charge card. Yeah.
  • Insurance guy says I’m in luck. Because he bought me a “prime” policy, I have a one-accident-no-fault deal: get out of jail free. AND because I haven’t tried to kill any of my fellow homicidal drivers lately, I also have a zero deductible. He asks me to get estimates from a body shop but suggests that if it doesn’t cost much it may be better to foot the bill and not let the company know about this little fender bender. My son, also an insurance guy, recommends taking the money and running: he thinks I should go to the best body shop in town (which is 20 miles from my house) and have them do a decent job fixing it.
  • The vet’s office calls to say something’s out of whack with Cassie’s pee and they want me to bring her in Saturday morning. I say “wrong”? Like what? Well, like it might be a UTI. Ooookayyyy…
  • I take the car to my mechanic to check for damage under the hood. They find no structural or engine damage, AND they manage to wrest the bumper back into place and secure it with the car’s clips and a few extra bolts. It now looks dead normal except for a scrape on one side, as though maybe I got too close to a guard wall. The men of Chuck’s Auto also opine that it would be best to hide this incident from the insuror. However, they do find a nick in the tire’s sidewall and recommend replacing the tire soon.
  • I call my insurance guy with this report and with the advice from my son. He reiterates that his thinking coincides with the mechanics’ but he will support me whatever I decide to do. (He’s not a sales agent: he’s a broker.)
  • Cassie seems to be getting better. By yesterday I observe that she’s about back to normal and surmise I must have been right that she didn’t have Valley fever.
  • At 3:30 this morning she wakes up and pees in the bed before I can set her on the floor. In doing so, she manages to miss the double layer of pee pads I’ve laid down on the bed: three more loads of laundry!
  • In a flash I haul off the sheets, the bed pad, the blanket, and the dog blanket. Fortunately this five-layer barrier keeps the dog pee off the mattress. Dazed with exhaustion, I toss the sheets and blanket into the washer and start the thing running.
  • Cannot sleep, so go back to reading 8000 words of Korean-accented scholarly writing.
  • Somewhere in here it dawns on me: this lesion that developed on my hand, the one on the same arm that got the ferocious Shingrix shot, is not a zoster pox. Noooo….Y’know what that is? THAT little fucker is ringworm. Look it up and find ringworm image after ringworm image that looks just like it. And ringworm being not a parasite but a fungal infection, y’know what the treatment is? Ohhhh yes! Fluconozale, the same damn stuff that made my dog so sick I thought she was going to die! TWICE!
  • Shit. Well, you can get a topical treatment over the counter. The standard course of treatment, if you believe the Internet (yeah!), is first to try to get rid of it with an OTC ointment. If that doesn’t work, then you move on to poisoning yourself.
  • Eventually I go out to move the bedding from the washer to the dryer and…can you guess? Somehow I’ve missed two of the pee pads! The inside of the washer is now chuckablock full of shredded, wet puffed-up paper stuffing crap! HOLY shit!!!!!!!!!
  • I go inside to finish reading the client’s paper.
  • Eventually go back out to the garage. Realize I can’t put this stuff in the dryer. Haul each piece out into the driveway and shake, shake, shake, shake, snap, shake, snap, SHAKE, shake, shake. This covers the driveway with snow-like stuff but doesn’t get all the crud off the bedding. Hang the sheets, blanket, and mattress pad on the clotheslines, hoping most of the rest of the stuff will shake off when it’s dry.
  • Clean out the washer. Yeah, right.
  • Take the shop-vac to the washer. This clogs the shop-vac but apparently gets most of the crud out of the washer, except for the stuff I have to dig out with a coat-hanger wire. Use the rest of the vacuum’s capacity to pick up the white snow off the driveway and the garage floor.
  • Haul the vacuum tub and two baskets of garbage out to the alley trash bin. On the way, pick up a bum’s fast-food cup out of my yard. On the way, observe that the mess the city water guys made of my front landscaping is pretty well fixed, after I shoveled and broomed gravel back in place. Hope they didn’t fuck up the plumbing under there. But don’t have much hope.
  • Brush out and wash the shop-vac’s clogged filter; set it aside to dry.
  • Finish the Korean professor’s paper. Interesting guy, interesting subject. Learn a lot about international law on freedom of expression and journalistic privilege. That’s good, anyway. Run it past a prospective intern, am impressed with the kid’s response. Ship the edits & clean copy back to the client.
  • Decide I cannot bring myself to do the Costco run that was planned for today.
  • Realize that isn’t gonna do me any good, because I still have to go out to a Walgreen’s and try to find the anti-fungus stuff (miconozale) to treat the frantically itchy lesion on my hand.

And so, away. Let’s see what I can do to my fellow homicidal drivers on the way…