Viscous Lidocaine

Health Magritte, v. march

Today i get to prep for a colonoscopy.  this includes drinking everything i consume today (no, i mean broth, gatorade, broth broth gatorade water) and taking an inordinate number of laxatives, both OTC and rx. 
I made the fam laugh when i looked at the veritable jug of Miralax powder and noted its adorable dosing cup secured to its cap.  i said, how sweet.  a dosing cup.  Useless, as i have to take the WHOLE FUCKING JUG.
Tomorrow is the proceeeedure.  No one calls it like it is, this will be my second proceeedure in 2 months involving anaesthetic.  I am a great fan of anaesthesia.  Huge.  Love it.  Wish i could get some at home.
Wednesday I get to talk to an mdoc about my adenoma.  Right now the armchair md'ing we do, the Otherh and I have thought that maybe my inordinate weight gain and all around slothiness isn't a depression symptom so much as a factor of the pituitary tumour i'm sporting.  There's a medication tx for it, so I'm going to approach for that.  The downside of the med treatment is that it's a dopamine agonist, and the last thing i need is to go stark raving psychotic. 
Thursday is the pdoc that I haven't fired.  I'm considering getting a longer appt with him to tell him that i'd like to fire him but I can't find anyone else in a reasonable amount of time who can rx the psychotropics and/or will rx the psychotropics, and it's no good that he's the pdoc all my mdocs would ref. to me anyway.  So he (i hate this bugger so much) gets another chance. 
Friday I'm taking off from anyone having anything to do with medication.

The big hope this week really isn't that they'll find something wrong with me, but it's that the Otherh's interview people will call him and say "Come, work for us!" sometime in the early part of the week, preferably around 930 this a.m. so we can all rest a little easier knowing that work will be had soon. 

I watched the oscars all day and all friggin' night.   I have new found inspiration to go write a script.  perhaps i'll see me some movies in order to do so.

And now I must away, for there's a dog trying to eat my couch.  my vintagey gold couch that's 8 feet long and weighs more than my house. 

more notes from a small town

our post office is very tiny, but very efficient (mostly) and quite friendly.   today while i was waiting to send a box, one of the clerks there was engaging a fellow in bright, cheerful conversation as he filled out his forwarding info.  asked how was his wife (used her name) and hoped that their trip to (other country town) would be healing for her.  it was so quaint.  and then the priest came in, italian he was and explained that someone had lied to him, and all clerks were all ears and helpful in locating his mail.    it was just a nice thing.  then i went to pay (Dearly) my water bill and the admin there knows who i am by sight, even though all i do is drop off my water bill once a month.   

there were some aspects of this when i lived in L.A. and TO, things like the coffeeshop knowing who i was, and the guy who sold cigarettes remembering what i smoked.  but the post office?  not so much.

a good mood!

I'm in this fantastic mood!  How do i keep it?

For now I'm going to just be giddy cheery happy playwithdogsish etc.

trying...

I'm trying to think of  how to phrase how I feel about the legislation introduced by Domenici and Kennedy and others,  but I don't know quite how I feel about it yet.  Most of me is saying "not good enough," which is sort of what they're saying too...

Domenici called the bill "a winner for millions of Americans" who have mental illnesses. "What we are doing here is simple fairness," he said. Kennedy said the bill represents a historic compromise between the health insurance industry and proponents of equity in mental health coverage. He added that while the bill is not perfect, it is a "very important down payment."

More later, when I've had more coffee, and after I sort out this clusterfuck of an article.

tonight there was live music, oysters, and more appointments set

Remember that whole business a few weeks ago, fair reader, when i had that "procedure" and i posted those fab-u pics of the innards?  more are coming...

Survey says: colonoscopy! 

This procedure is covered in detail, I'm sure, somewhere over at dooce, but the gastro. was kind enough to mention they "lube the tube".    Really. 

Yep, in a mere eleven days I will advance to years beyond  my current youthfullish ones by undergoing this procedure usually advertised to those over 50.  Anyone for versed? 

So after getting this fantastic news, the Otherh and I took in some actual Live Austin Music with a friend and his sister at a very yum delish louisiana-cuisine-serving cafe.   Oysters were consumed, so we've made a hasty exit (after three hours) and are now sitting next to each other, each on a laptop, under our respective methods of music assumption.  He hath the minidisc and I've got a working ipod. 

The moods have not totally sucked lately, but tomorrow I'm auditioning a new pdoc to address the "i can't really do anything" thing.    This includes cooking dinner and walking dogs, two things I know I used to not be able to live without. 

For those of you playing along at home, i have one more ologist to find, this being  an endocrinologist, otherwise known as She/he who can fix the tumor.   Medicare's website lists 16 within 25 miles of me, which is good!  Unfortunately, they all want referrals, or have the wrong phone number listed, or have receptionists who can't hear.  "HelLO?  Cha-shh.  Fuck."   

Some time i'll remember this winter to a bunch of people sitting around a very large table.  Talk about the "slightly cold days of '07"  when the rest of the country was under like 5 feet of snow.   we were in a shopping mall today and I'm not kidding, there were women wearing fur.  It was 38 degrees outside.  Not very fur-trappy sort of weather imho.

The Otherh saw a news blurb on his gorgeous blackberry that keeps fucking up about some "politician [i've] never heard of" deciding to vote with democrats about not upping the number of troops in Iraq.  And it was news.  Big news.  First story on Google kind of news.   And as much as I really lurve not being beholden to news for the time being, i always get a little head rushy when the Otherh feels compelled to tell me something he's read or heard about what's going on in the world, because if someone is not beholden to the news *ever* it's the Otherh.
Which actually brings me to a good point he makes about "news". 

The Moth saw on the news this story.   I found it by looking for it, after she and i had a bit of a chat about it over orange juice at 3a.m.  The blip is full of shitty erroneous statements, even bad psychiatry, because anyone experiencing these sorts of manias really should be considered in the realm of psychotic, and not bipolar type II.  hypomania can be a thrill-a-minute, especially when it's the fun kind (i know few people who have the fun kind anymore, but the Otherh get 'em), but if you're hiding under your desk, friends, please consider yourself warned that paranoia is a psychotic symptom, not a sort of energetic euphoria.  (eu=good, phoria=mood). 

The point the Otherh makes is this, and it's valid: "if they get shit so far wrong when I know about what they're talking, how much shit do they get wrong when I don't know about what they're talking."    I see this reasoning, much more than I necessarily agree that news is just gossip writ large.

things the moth says that make sense....

i actually turned on the news to a hearing about Anna Nicole Smith's DNA/dead body etc.  TheMoth came down in the midst of my horrorshow watching and I said, "why is this news?"  She said, very sagely,
    "how can we miss a day in the death of Anna Nicole?!"

The thing that gets me, and will ultimately send me to some npr station this afternoon is this:  they don't refer to her as "Smith", when they would do that for nearly anyone else.  They keep calling her "Anna Nicole", which to me seems rather off.    

a very expensive case of heartburn

recently,  (like thursday) a friend of ours went to an urgent care clinic (covered by his admittedly sparse insurance for a mere $25) complaining about chest pains.

they ran an "indeterminate" EKG, which could mean "anything" and decided he should go to ER.  At ER they said "well, there's a lot it could be"  (i paraphrase), and decided to admit him to the hospital for stress testing.  this would take all day friday, round figures. 

Our friend is a fit 40something who exercises regularly and eats fairly well, and he drinks here and there, mostly because I do, and we're over there an awful lot.  (let's just sayhe drinks one glass of wine, i have four.)

He performed really too well on his stress tests for them to suspect that it was much more than heartburn, and eventually sent him home with an rx for Protonix, but said he could just use double-doses of prilosec if he wanted, either would work. 

Because the Hefriend is in good shape,  he & his wife (the Shefriend) opted for pretty minimal insurance, and figured they'd just pay for it a lot if he ever had to get admitted to the hospital/er/that kind of thing.   Not everyone is experiencing a plague upon them as i am, it seems.   I have tonnes of coverage, and i use it.  He has nearly none and he doesn't.  except this week. 
But because The HeFriend *did* get admitted, he will probably pay upwards of Two Thousand Dollars for the privilege of that Protonix rx.   SheFriend complained "It's 2007!  Why can't they just tell me what's going on with him?!"  I understood.    They joked about the bill, but it was obvious it still smarted.

In Toronto, I had reason to be rushed to hospital and spend a night in a crisis-care unit.  Details not important.  The whole thing was no charge because I was under OHIP at the time.  (which was soon to expire with my work visa.)  No charge.  and there _was_ something rather wrong with me, requiring copious amounts of IV things and oxygen, etc.   

What I want to know, really, is these people who believe we have salient health care in this country--what in the hell is going so well in your life that you don't have to worry about bills?  Are you, all of you, so well-off that you're in cloverfields of insurance and/or gold?

It occurs to me that even with insurance, your ass is not entirely covered.  Neither is your heartburn.

so i finished a book...

Year of Wonder by Geraldine Brooks. 

Aside from the interesting thing connecting the village at the center of this story to AIDs, the nut of which i heard about in the middle of reading this, it's a well-written bit, except for the end, which smacks of a miniseries ending or something.

Right now it's after eleven and the Otherh is trying to get another laptop up and running on the wireless.  I'm considering throwing my right-now useless Ipod out the window, and I'm thinking that I only have two errands tomorrow.   

i have new pictures!  Soon to post to some photo album off to the side there, but here is the little dog getting the big dog into the house.

wtf is that MD for?

i have doctors that are afraid to rx things and it's getting rather frustrating.  i have an md for insides, one for breathing, another inside one, etc.  none of them see fit to treat what's really ailing me, my brain.

i'm considering an 80mile drive to see a pdoc.  one way.  seriously, Austin, is this the best you can do?

blehs and ct scans.

tell me...

why can't people just turn?  why do they have to come to a dead stop before turning right?

why do people ride up fast on the right side when there's only a shoulder and you can't get over if they're there.  does that even make sense?

why is marzipan so good?  why do i always forget about it?