utilitygeek

I haven't really posted much on here lately, but I'm feeling a need to let e everyone know what's going on with my health. This year, I've had three exiting medical adventures.

The first involved a stomach virus that was going around work. 48 hours of being intensely sick, and then you're fine. Unless you're diabetic, in which case there seemed to be an additional side effect. I woke up with tubes in my arm, confused by why my bedroom as full of large men. Specifically, two EMTs and 3 firefighters. My blood sugar had dropped to 33, and my wife couldn't wake me. She rolled me over, so in my sickness I wouldn't go out like a rock star, and called 911.

The second adventure involved the flu, pneumonia, two trips to the ER, and 6 days of hospitalization. I had walking pneumonia in college, and remember feeling crappy, but it was nothing like this. I had a large number of medical-grade holes poked in me, numerous x-rays, a CT scan, and an upper GI inspection via a tube shoved down my throat. This last was interesting, as the numbing agent for your throat burns like the fires of hell for about 15 seconds. The nurse laughed when I compared it to cherry napalm. Then she told me they were going to give me a sedative. My next memories start + hours later. Apparently, I had a 45 minute conversation with the infectious diseases specialist that I don't remember. Good drugs.

Third, I've recently finished a course of laser eye surgery to slow the progression of my diabetic proliferative retinopathy. If yu're curious, spell -check has no idea what that is. Anyway, I'm legally blind, and won't ever be improving, so if I see you on the street and don't wave, cut me some slack, OK? Of the three adventures, thisis the only one that will stick around as more than a memory, but I'm coming to terms with it. I got a laugh when, over the phone, some poor receptionist told me, "There it is! I must be blind." "I know how you feel," I replied.

Work is going reasonably well. My employers were kind enough to supply me with a giant monitor, rather than deal with fallout from the ADA. Actually, I think I'm valued enough that that wasn't even a consideration, which is nice. My desk is the one with the 32" HDTV instead of the 19" Dell monitor.

My wife takes good care of me, chauffeuring me around. She also helps me cook dinner since I can't read the instructions on boxes, and by the time I have sniffed about 5 different jars of herbs, I have no idea if that's basil or not. She reads me menus and sometimes bedtime stories.

All in all, it could be much worse, and I'm being as philisophical as I can about it. If you have questions, feel free to ask. If it was a secret, I wouldn't put it on the internet.

So, I figure a lot happened over Thanksgiving, so I'll put it all in one place.

First, when Jamie got her job selling yarn et. al. at Michael's, she had a conversation that went like this:
J: I'll be out of town Thanksgiving weekend.
Manager: Um. No one has Black Friday off.
J: I'll be out of town Thanksgiving weekend.
M: You can't have that weekend off.
J: You can schedule me if you want, but I'll be out of town.
M: Well...OK, I guess.

So she didn't work (or shop) on Evil Weekend. The original plan was to be in KY with my folks, but they (and my mother's sister and her family) rented some cabins way out in western NC, so we went there.

At one point in the 5-hour drive further and further out in the mountains, we decided we were lost, and that we would stop at the next good spot and consult GPS. The next good spot was the turn we were looking for, so GPS was not consulted, after all.

Early Thursday morning, I woke up in our bedroom on the 2nd floor and trudged down the stairs, half-awake and bleary-eyed. Well, I trudged down most of them. I forgot that there was another step after the 90-degree turn at the bottom of the stairs. I stepped off onto nothingness, and had time to think, "Oh, this is going to hurt," before it did.

For some reason everyone wanted to pick me up and get me on my feet. My response was more along the lines of "please don't touch me until I figure out if all my pieces are in their correct spots". After a few minutes, inventory completed, I got up and hobbled to the recliner, where I basically lived for the rest of vacation.

For Thanksgiving dinner, I hurt too much to have much of an appetite. I ate a couple slivers of pie, and the whole family played Charades. Jamie's social worries were soothed when it turned out she was one of the best players there, despite the rest of us having something like a decade of practice.

On Friday morning, my anxiety got the best of me. Traveling, family events, sleep loss, and pain all piled on me until I got sick. eventually, I napped on the couch. Eventually, I felt better, and joined the rest of the family at the other house.

Saturday was better. Still some pain and a lot of stiffness in my left side, but we hung out and all was good. The original plan was to leave on Saturday afternoon, but Jamie and my mother started bonding over Jamie's genealogy, so we stayed on and the two of them played at being historians. They actually discovered some cool things, including the fact that Jamie's ancestors seemed to have moved to Wilkes county, NC shortly after they left the Garden of Eden.

Sunday, we finished packing up and worked out way back. Long drive, and some annoying traffic, but Jamie's plan to avoid the worst of airport traffic panned out, so it wasn't too bad. Except that I got sick again on the way back. But, that's a minor detail in the scheme of things.

So after I write it out, it sounds pretty miserable, but I spent most of the time lounging on couches and recliners and talking to people I liked, so it ended up being a good holida, all-in-all.

Last night, my friends, I had a dream. A dream of great import.

There were people. Not many, just a handful. These people had the plague. So we put them in an elevator.

To feed these people, I made biscuits. Not just any biscuits, no, but ones made with molasses and butter-flavored shortening. The dough was a thick dark brown bread dough, that became floury in color and texture when I began to add the shortening with that most symbolic of kitchen utensils, the pastry cutter.

Heed my dream, friends. Know what it means for our fates and the fates of plague victims in elevators across the world.