Self-Medicating With a Keyboard

 I have gone al-in with journaling in recent weeks. Well, I started journaling in earnest sometime last year -- offline, not anywhere that the general public can access it. However, it's been in recent weeks that our dear friend who has received a serious health diagnosis has started having major issues because of said diagnosis. They were asymptomatic for a long time (relatively long, given the nature of the diagnosis). However, that has changed within the past month or so. I have no idea if the docs have a set of remedies that could bring back the asymptomatic state. I can hope, but I'm not a doctor. Or, if symptoms have arrived and will be here for the duration, I don't know what treatments exist that could get the symptoms to be as minimized as possible.

All I can say is that symptoms are here, and with them, tremendous emotional pain for that loved one and for everyone who loves them.

In the past, deep distress has sent me right to the refrigerator to stress-eat. Well, thanks to Type 2 diabetes, stress eating is most emphatically NOT on my list of options anymore.

Fortunately, I have rediscovered that journaling (and, at this point, trauma dumping in print) is effective as a form of therapy. That's a place where we can just open the floodgates without judgment, and mentally process things that we might not feel at ease discussing with anyone else aloud (especially when everyone else in the immediate vicinity has been hit hard emotionally, as well). It's not that I don't want to talk to anyone aloud, but I am cognizant that I don't want to vent all over someone who is dealing with pain of their own. 

I think our entire friends group should track down the nearest rage room. Maybe we can get a group discount to go there and start whaling on punching bags and other assorted things. But with this amount of rage we're all carrying, I would be afraid that the place wouldn't be left with one brick standing on another once we were through.

Bleep bad diagnoses. Bleep progressive diseases. Bleep the specific diagnosis and disease that we're witnessing right now. Bleep them all the way to the bottom of the infinite Pit.

Mourning

As a form of self-care, today is not going to be a day where I spend much time on social media. I will spend my day off reading and listening to music.

 

Might I recommend the Woody Guthrie station on Pandora? Because that's my music of choice today.

 

Yes, I'm wearing black. Yes, I have the mourning armband on. Yes, my Dexcom shield and overpatch match my clothing and the armband. No, I'm not OK. Yes, I"m determined to outlast the upcoming 4-year maelstrom.

And if, perchance, I depart this planet before the maelstrom is over, the maelstrom will have to figure out how to withstand ME, because I will use the new, improved vantage point to fight the maelstrom on behalf of whoever is still living under it. Bank on that!

Observations

In 2016, it was possible to have some benefit-of-the-doubt to grant, and presume that a lot of well-meaning folks were hoodwinked.

But in 2024, after the long and very public track record has been established, there’s no doubt remaining from which to benefit. I can only perceive anyone who still supports him now as doing so because they approve of the bullying, the misogyny, the prejudice, the dishonesty. They can’t possibly not know what he is anymore. If they choose him now, aligning with evil is a feature, not a bug.

In short, my country is infested with monsters, and that’s disappointing, at best.

My conscience is clear. I voted for the good person who will not disgrace America before the world. I’m disgusted that it was ever a challenge in the first place to see the torch passed to her, given the debased nature of her competition. We should be better than this. Much better.

I have no grace left to grant for people who support him. He’s made it clear, on a daily basis, as to who he is and what he stands for. Whoever can remain un-repulsed by the sight and sound of it is a disappointment to the Founders’ efforts to establish this country based on justice and freedom. If their conscience is clear, it shouldn’t be, for they have knowingly aligned themselves with evil.

A Heartbreaking Week

 Our friends group lost one of our own last Sunday. John R., who has had legions of serious medical issues for a long time, had gone back to the hospital with sepsis (and numerous symptoms connected to that) in the wee hours of Valentine's Day morning. The hospital managed to get his 103.8F fever down, and get his too-low blood sugar and blood pressure back up into the low end of the normal range.

The infection was coming from a bone in his foot, which has had a longstanding wound on it (due to diabetes and poor circulation in the extremities). Things had reached a point where amputation was being seriously considered. He didn't want this, and none of us wanted it for him, but it had to be discussed and he was at least listening and considering the option. 

But then came Sunday morning, and his BP was dropping again. All the alarm bells in my head started going off when JFM posted that to our text group. If they can't keep a person's vital signs stable, that's a serious problem and it could be the fast track to a very unhappy outcome. They were giving him fluid to try and get the BP back up, but when a person's already on dialysis, that treatment brings with it a set of risks, too.

JFM reached out to a priest friend, who drove down to give John an anointing and communion in the early afternoon.

Three hours after that, JFM got a call because John had coded and they were trying to bring him back. He hurried to the hospital to be with John, and arrived just as they called an end to the CPR.

We attended the funeral yesterday morning. We are all devastated, for obvious reasons, and none more athan JFM. John was a person who, despite having a body that rebelled continually and caused suffering every inch of the way, remained a good and kind person throughout it all. It's a gift from God to be able to maintain goodness in the face of all the things he went through over the years. And it's a gift from God to the rest of us, for having known such a person. 

We will all miss him immensely.

Many fabulous things!

 Since my most recent post, many fabulous things have happened.

Primary among these is the fact that Mark and I closed on a condo in our VitaminSEA neighborhood. Mark's brother's house, where we have stayed since 2014, is right across the street. It will be a combination investment property, rented out to other vacationers, and a shore place for us when the place is available and we have some time for a brief getaway.  

We also have had some horrid news, in the form of a dear friend getting a terrible diagnosis. But the bright side of that is that the problem was caught before it caused any symptoms and, even more importantly, before it had time to spread or inflict major damage. Chemo and radiation are going on for the next few weeks, but as a preventative measure to knock out any microscopic issues that the surgery could have missed. The surgeon thinks they got everything when the surgery was done, but there is no room for error with this particular disease. Knocking out even the *possibility* that there's a microscopic remnant is crucial. But the prognosis is good, so KNOCK WOOD everything stands a good chance of proceeding well. Let us pray!

A New World Record!

 Before today, the largest document I’d ever had to scan was 492 pages long.

This morning, I received one that had been shipped to us in a cardboard box. It’s the Mother of all Documents: 1754 pages long.

😳😵‍💫😵 Yeowza! That obliterates my previous record!

I reached out to the company that sent us the document, asking if it would be possible to send it to us in a digital format.

I can only get a finite number of sheets of paper to physically go through the scanner during a given workday. Scanning 492 sheets took an entire morning, years ago, because dealing with paper jams and proofreading every page of the results has to be factored into the scanning process. I hesitate to calculate how long scanning 1754 pages would require. I have a newer scanner now, which is faster than its predecessor, but even then, it’d take a good chunk of time for a project of this scope.

I hope the medical records company can send a digital document; otherwise, I’ll have to craft a battle plan to divide and conquer this document. I’m mulling over the process I’d have to use to handle the situation, regardless. Better to have a plan and not need it, than to need a plan and not have it. The document was separated into five reams by the sender, so maybe I could handle it one ream at a time.

We’ll see if they can honor my request. Fingers crossed! 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

And God be with all the folks whose medical history looks like an unabridged dictionary. 🙏🏻 Scanning all that info is a piece of cake, compared to LIVING all that info.

Happy Blogday to Me!

 I never thought, 20 years ago today, that I still would be updating a blog here and there. I might be here less frequently now, given the rise of social media, but I do enjoy keeping a blog that has been running this long.

Here's to a few more decades! 😀

Fixed!

 Late last night, I received a message that Blogger had rescinded the warning label on my post. Hurry, go to my 06/30/03 post and read it, before someone changes their mind!😆

Bizarre!

 Well, THAT was bizarre! I just got an email from Blogger, alerting me that one of my posts was put behind a warning screen for having sensitive content.

Then I tracked the post down. It was from June 30, 2003. Say what? The post has been sitting there, minding its own business and troubling no one, for almost 20 years. NOW they decide to put a warning label on it?

For the record, it was a post about a couple of blogs that were created with respect to the US i.n.v.a.s.i.o.n of I.r.a.q. Those blogs were written by people who were in the country at the time: one Iraqi and one US soldier.

Why the post got flagged as sensitive, two months shy of its 20th birthday, is beyond my understanding. But so be it.

I requested a review of their decision. I'm sure they have bots running through all the blog content looking for keywords. I would like a human being to review the post and realize that there is nothing in it that needs a warning label.

Madame Secretary

 I was the recording secretary of the Philadelphia Phantoms Phan Club for at least the final 6 years of the team's tenure in Philly. So when Mark and I recently joined the Philadelphia Flyers Fan Club, I found it novel to be sitting in on a meeting and NOT taking minutes.

Well, that lasted all of three meetings, lol. Last month, at our second meeting, they were nominating new officers. The existing recording secretary had to be coaxed to accept the nomination, because no one was offering to take over the position. The actual elections were this month, however.

In order to run for office, a member has to have attended three meetings. They said that if the April meeting is someone's third meeting, they technically could offer to run and be elected in the same day. So I reached out on FB to the President of the club, explained who I am and my experience level, and said that April's meeting would be my third one. Therefore, if the current recording secretary didn't want to continue, I offered to take the position.

Long story short, that worked out well. So I will be the recording secretary for the PFFC, starting next season. We have a summer break from meetings, though there are social events happening, and then in the fall, I will start as recording secretary. So feel free to address me as Madame Secretary, lol. 😄

Meanwhile, the DynaWrite brownies are on hold. The device has decided to have some issues with powering on, and as long as that continues, I can't access any of the files on the device. I will keep trying.

DynaWrite Brownies

 I have a collection of various and sundry distraction-free devices on which I like to write. Basically they are non-internet-connected word processors, and there is quite a variety of these things to choose from.

I picked up a DynaWrite last week from eBay. When it arrived, I saw that it still has some old files on it. The first one I saw is a recipe for brownies. 

I got some USB sticks, and I am going to migrate the files onto a thumb drive so I can clear out the device and start fresh.

But even though I'm not a baker, I might just try making the brownies, for the heck of it. 😄 I think I'll call them DynaWrite Brownies.

The Week from Purgatory

 Welcome to my week from purgatory.

Last Saturday, another unauthorized withdrawal was made from our bank. The NEW account, that we created because the OLD ones were compromised, was hit.

We now have multiple kinds of flag on our bank accounts, including the ones that were not affected, so that (among other things) the teller must ask for a password before allowing a withdrawal. (All three of our account compromises involved teller withdrawals, done in Alabama where neither Mark nor I have ever set foot. If it happens again, the next meeting we have at the bank branch will involve pulling our money out of the bank entirely.

I have had to deal with a crapped-out SIM card, so my phone was not working for most of Wednesday. Fortunately, a new SIM card resolved the issue.

I have had various and sundry forms of digestive distress all week, and this is WITH the truckload of prescriptions and OTC remedies I take religiously. Pain and multiple types of incessant organ recitals are involved, and I am getting tired of feeling like this. I was at the doctor a few days ago, and we think it was a norovirus that's going around. Sadly there aren't norovirus-specific remedies out there, other than just medicating the symptoms and waiting it out.

And some of my prescription refills were held up by Prior Auth issues, because medical insurance in this country is a royal pain in various unmentionable parts of the anatomy. It won't be fully straightened out until Monday at the earliest, so here I am dealing with symptoms because I am out of a couple of meds. (This is separate from the digestive distress mentioned above.)

I'm about ready to spit fire. Calgon, take me away.

Two Decades of Blogging

 I am thinking about the fact that in May, I will have had this blog for 20 years. 

I will have to celebrate on that day. I'm not sure how, but I am going to do it!

I also am this-close to my 3,000th post. Maybe I should schedule my posts such that I hit 3,000 on the same day as the anniversary.

Decisions, decisions. 😊

Freakin' Rona

 Well, this is going to be a relaxing vacation week, possibly a tad quieter than we had anticipated. We are isolating for 5 days. Mark took a side trip to Urgent Care this morning, where they confirmed that his at-home COVID tests were accurate. Blah. Paxlovid is in the house.

I have no symptoms and have not tested. But I will isolate anyway, to make sure that I am not handing out copies of any germs to anybody. I will definitely test prior to returning to work next week, unless I have symptoms that inspire me to test sooner than that. If I test positive at any point prior to next week, I will ask my manager about working from home for however long I need to isolate. Unless I get deathly sick, I see no reason to not work from home. I am sure a ton of electronic documents will be coming in all week. By January 3, I expect that there will be no shortage of emails for me to process, and I can do that remotely.

For what it's worth, Mark didn't test positive, either, until about two days after symptom onset. He tested negative on Christmas Eve, which was when the coughing started. So even if I ran and did a test right now, it might not show anything anyway.

Fug this virus. Seriously. Nobody needs it at any time, but we really could have done without it right now. We had some holiday-week things that we were looking forward to, that are now off the table for safety reasons.

Fortunately, we are both up-to-date with boosters, so I hope that will help keep the symptoms mild. And we do have lots of chicken soup in the house. :) My former boss (who is Jewish himself) used to call chicken soup "Jewish penicillin", lol. We will help keep Campbell's and Progresso in business for the next few days, along with various food delivery services.☺

Kitty Tunnel Follies

I have two black cats. Merlin is petite at 9.5 lbs. Houdini is huge at 15.7 lbs. We have three cloth kitty tunnels, cloth tubes with a wire framework that allows them to stay open all the time, because Houdini is OBSESSED with them. If you wonder where he is, wander around to the kitty tunnels and chances are, there will be a black kitty hiney protruding from the end of one. He goes halfway in, and considers himself hidden. lol. I won't tell him that his stealth leaves something to be desired, if you won't. One of the tunnels lives near the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor, and if I head in that direction, Houdini will come speeding over to hide in it, so he can get his share of tickles and skritches as I walk past.

I was about to walk past a kitty tunnel en route to going upstairs. A black kitty hiney was protruding from the tunnel. Plot twist: Houdini came running to take his place in the tunnel, so it was actually Merlin whose rump was protruding from the tunnel this time!

Houdini, clearly flummoxed that his brother was in his spot, emphatically sniffed Merlin’s rump. Merlin refused to budge. Houdini tried entering the other end of the tunnel. Merlin refused to budge.

Houdini took his massive, chonktastic self and pounced on the half of the tunnel where Merlin was. Merlin came charging out the other end of the tunnel like a furry cannonball.

Houdini promptly installed himself halfway into the tunnel, in the spot Merlin had vacated, with his hiney protruding.As far as he was concerned, all was right with the world.

I have spoiled cats!

That was unexpected!

 To make a very long story short, I wound up subscribing to a background check site for 3 days of unlimited usage. I had to find a person whose name was on a piece of mail that my mom got at her address, and I thought this was the most expedient way to figure out where the mail should go. The person actually lives across the street from my mom, as the person addressing the envelope messed up while writing the house number. So that mystery was solved quickly.

However, here I am with three days of a subscription to this search site.

And I thought about what might have happened to the person who I broke up with in college, whose behavior in the aftermath would qualify as stalking if someone did those things today. Sadly, anti-stalking laws didn't get passed until 3 or 4 years after my graduation, so he wasn't doing anything illegal at the time.  

For obvious reasons, I have made a point of NOT having contact with this guy in the decades since graduation. I have also made a point of trying to minimize identifying info that might crop up in search engines, specifically so it would be less easy for this specific person to drop my name in a search and decide to start his antics again. I was hoping that he was happily married and moved far, far away, where he would not have an reason to start any further trouble here.

But what I found is that he died last year. THAT wasn't what I expected to see. I found the obituary, which contained the memories that his sister wrote, and I saw his birthdate. I am 100% positive that this is the person I knew back then.

I am a bit shocked, as he was only a few years older than I am. I don't know what info I expected to find, but this wasn't it. 

At least I never again have to be concerned about whether something will trigger him to start making trouble again. That has always been in the back of my mind for the past 38 years, more than half my life. When the shock wears off, I suppose I will feel relief.

New E-Bike

 I ordered an electric bike a while ago via Indegogo. It arrived on Friday. Mark was kind enough to make sure he was at the house when the FedEx arrived, and he also took care of the minimal amount of assembly that was needed to get the bike ready to go.

I took it for a spin today. I spent about an hour and a half riding all over the neighborhood, since there is very little traffic in most of the streets here. We have a few state highways on the perimeter of the neighborhood, but for the most part, the residential streets are quiet. I even went past the house where our late, much-missed friend Joan used to live. I saluted the house as I went past. I still think about how glad I am that she met Mark before she passed. 

I'm considering surprising my mom with a visit one of these days, provided I can get back on the road for home before the sun starts going down. My night vision is improved, now that I know about the dry eye syndrome and use eyedrops daily, but the cataracts are still there so I'm still not too sure about driving any sort of vehicle after dark.

Freakin' nutria!

 An online friend of mine is awaiting humane traps because there is a sizeable rodent in their house. Her story reminded me of something that happened to me years ago, during my commute home from work. I promptly recounted my story:

 

I  am reasonably sure I saw a nutria years ago, on a subway-surface trolley platform. (SEPTA has some trolley lines that run underground for part of their route, and on the street for the rest.) I didn't know nutrias existed at that time, but what I did know was I was looking at a cat-sized rodent. I thought it was a rat, and was momentarily astonished that "rat the size of a cat" was not an exaggeration.

 

Being the skilled decibel-generator that I am, I proceeded to exclaim "HOLY SH*T" loudly enough to drown out a jet engine.

 

EVERYONE remaining on the platform turned to stare. None of them had seen the rodent, which had promptly made itself scarce when the Very Loud Human became very loud.

 

I asked the staring people, "Did you SEE that rat? It was so big, it should have paid a fare!" And whoever remained on the platform either decided to either Walk Quickly Away Like Nothing Happened, or stare at me with pity because as everyone could plainly see, there was no rat on the platform.

 

Freakin' nutria! Making me look even more nuts than I already am! 😂😂

Distraction-free writing

 I have jumped back into the "distraction-free writing" arena. My most popular articles on Medium were the ones that discussed various forms of tech where you can just sit down and write, with no distractions from the internet, incoming messages, various popups, and so on.

As such, I invested in one upcoming device that should be hitting the market next summer. I already have, and have reviewed, another device from that same manufacturer, Astrohaus. But because I'm me, I also managed to find a reasonably-priced version of an AlphaSmart Neo2 on eBay, which is a device made about 20ish years ago, and bought that, too.

Now I just have to build writing into my daily schedule. 😀

Of all the times..!

 Of all the times for me to forget to take the post-gallbladder-surgery medication, I had my brain-lock moment yesterday. 

Months ago, I went to a GI doc and got a med that helps with post-gallbladder-removal intestinal rebellion. I got fed up with the bouts of being jet-propelled, and made the appointment. The good news: it works VERY well! The other news: if I miss my daily dose, it takes 3 or 4 days for my intestines to calm themselves back down. After discerning this via trial and error, or really just error, I have been extra-careful to take that med every day.

Yesterday, however, was not a normal day. I went with Mark so he could have his colonoscopy. All was well, and he can wait ten years for the next one. But I somehow forgot to medicate at lunchtime yesterday, and I am living to regret that mistake today. 

Considering that the side effects of the Ozempic also cause a person to become jet-propelled, I fear there are going to be a lot of organ recitals in the next few days. Talk about "May you live in interesting times", lol.