Category Archives: Health

Dog Days

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Mojo (Sandie’s little dog) went to the vet yesterday. He (the dog) wasn’t particularly thrilled about this, but he had (probably still has) an ear infection that looked nasty, smelled disgusting, and was obviously bothering him. Sandie spent some time Monday night torturing him by pulling hair out of his ear, and I couldn’t stand listening to him yelp, so I insisted that he go to the vet.

Ear looks better and doesn’t smell anymore. And I didn’t have to hear him scream.

In other news, it has been hot and rainy since we returned from Canada last week. The yard is slowly growing into a jungle because it’s always raining – or when it’s not it’s like walking into a steam room whenever you go outside, so nobody has felt much like mowing. I’ve been spending some time in my shop redecorating. Pulling cabinets off of walls, reconfiguring them, planning in my mind how I want things to look. It’s a slow process, but should give me a lot more bench space when all is said and done.

Work is beginning to really bore me. I feel more sorry for the folks that I used to supervise every day, because doing tech support is just so uninspiring. You fix one thing and there are 10 more lined up to look at. Half of the questions seem to be variations of “Why doesn’t report A match report B?” My knee jerk response has always been, “Because they’re different reports,” but that wouldn’t fly, so I end up going into the database and comparing the reports on a line-by-line level until I can pinpoint exactly which record is missing from one report or the other, and it’s always because, for whatever reason, that record shouldn’t BE on report A or B and the user has done something stupid. I can’t explain this to them in technical terms, and I don’t understand it in accounting terms, so I usually end up finding the issue and then asking a teammate to translate for me. It’s just…boring. I like having projects that have endings. This type of support just doesn’t have those. Don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do it.

Got a call from a group of doctors who stick cameras up your butt a few days ago. Seems that my doc REALLY wants them to do this to me. I’ve avoided it for nearly 60 years, but I guess I’ll bite the bullet and get it done, if only to get Sandie off of my back about it. Not something that I’m looking forward to, although I am a bit curious about how much weight I’ll lose during the purge process before I do it. That could be interesting.

Football season is only a month or so away. So that’s nice.

Not much else to say today. Maybe something amazing will happen tonight.

Weight Lifted

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Went to a vascular surgeon on Monday morning to get the ol’ carotid arteries checked out. That’s something I never dreamed that I’d be saying as little as 4 months ago, but apparently 2020 is just going to be one of those years where weird shit comes at you from every direction. Lose control of your eyes in January. Find out you’ve got carotid stenosis in February. Get hit by a global pandemic in March. Develop chest tightness in April.

Can’t say that I’m really looking forward to May.

However, the visit to the vasculatorium© turned out okay for me. Got my temp taken (98.4, I think), BP (140/85, I think – heart rate was 76), weight (170). Got to talk to about 14 different people, none of whom was the doctor that I made the appointment with. Got to regale them all with stories of why I went to the ER in January, and two of them made me smile and pull their fingers and raise my eyebrows and stick out my tongue. Both approved of my performances and declared that I haven’t had a stroke.

Then I went in for an ultrasound of the arteries, and that was pleasant enough experience. Had a lovely technician basically massage my neck for 10 minutes and then leave.

At long last, the actual DOCTOR doctor came into the room…and made me smile and pull his fingers and raise my eyebrows and stick out my tongue, before approving of my performances and declaring that I haven’t had a stroke. I was beginning to wonder if anyone there had bothered to read the reports from the ER saying, “no stroke.”

The dude finally got around to my carotids and told me that, yeah, there was some blockage in both. He drew a very bad representation of a carotid artery on a piece of paper and showed me where said blockage was. Then he said that it was under 50% in both of them, no surgery, come back and check again in a year.

I said, “That’s it?” Yep. That’s it. I asked what the actual percentage of blockage is, and he said, “Under 50%. That’s about as specific as I can get.” I asked if either artery is more blocked than the other, and he said, “No. About the same.” I asked what would happen if it gets to be more than 50% and he said, “If it’s under 80%, you’ll need to check it every 6 months. If it’s over, then we’ll talk about surgery.”

So I made an appointment for April, 2021, and I left. And I felt much better than I have since the first week of February, when my GP made it seem as if my carotids were both about to explode. I’ve got another appointment with him in a few weeks and I might tell him he’s a jerk…or I might just get a prescription refill and be on my way. In either case, I won’t be as stressed as I was a week ago.

In other news, the family had a zoom conference call on Sunday afternoon, and it became apparent that I need to get remote access into Dad’s computer so that I can get him set up correctly should we do it again (and I hope we do, as it was enjoyable).

I’ve been trying to get some estimates from landscapers to see what can be done with my back yards. So far, I’m having a hard time getting any of them to call me back. Guess they don’t want money?

Insurance agent is supposed to be coming to look at my roof next Monday – I’d really love to get THAT fixed.

Oh yeah – Right Networks acquired another company yesterday – Rootworks. As I understand it, that acquisition puts us in a pretty good spot to become the go-to cloud company for any CPA firms with fewer than 300 users. I’ve decided to be positive for a change and to believe that I’ll be able to work at RN until I retire. Maybe not as lucratively as I’d once assumed, but comfortably enough, I guess. And if the house has a new roof and good-looking backyard, maybe I can even get a nice chunk of change for it if I want to move to a shack in the mountains.

Magnificent Saturday

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I felt pretty good this morning, which was nice – because the weather today has been fantastic. It rained very early (like between 0600 and 0800), and I sat on my deck in my bathrobe, drank coffee, and read my phone during that time. In addition to the rain, there was a pretty strong breeze and it felt amazingly like sitting under a tarp during a camping trip. Very relaxing and a nice prelude to the rest of the day.

I should mention that the featured photo for this entry is one that I took of sunrise over Lake Superior in October, 2016. It was at Au Sable Lighthouse at Pictured Rocks National Seashore, and a few hours after I took that shot, I was on a call with my (AT&T) boss and getting the first inkling that my job was in jeopardy. One of the most beautiful mornings juxtaposed with one of the worst. I need to get back to Pictured Rocks, though. I haven’t been since that autumn, and I don’t want to conflate that wonderful place with bad memories.

After the rain had stopped, I put on a shirt and some pants, along with a windbreaker, and headed out for a brisk walk. “Brisk” in the sense that it was still a little chilly – probably 60 degrees. I didn’t set any speed records, but after two days of not really walking (and about six of those days in the last two weeks), I really wanted to just have a nice long walk. I got 5.5 miles in and averaged about 15.5 minutes/mile. I’ll take that every time.

Back at the house, I jumped into yard work. Mowed both of the back yards, as well as the front-side one, cut down a lot of weeds and shrubs in the back of the house, cleared crap out from around the deck, and fixed the “blow it all out” hole on my lawnmower. The cover had come off – what a pain THAT was to get back on! It was a perfect day for this kind of work. Sunny, high sixties, breezy…one of the nine perfect Georgia days that I’ve written about previously.

In the afternoon, I played around with my router a bit and discovered that it will do an admirable job of cutting some miter-jig grooves for my table saw, so I’m going to try to do that tomorrow. I also did a few loads of laundry and took another 2.5-mile walk in the afternoon, during which I tried to take a picture of a squirrel standing straight up in the middle of the road. Said squirrel took off as soon as I brought my phone up, but I did managed to get him with all four little feet off of the ground…which was nice.

For dinner, I cooked the first of my Rastelli’s pork chops. Like the chicken and salmon before it, the pork chop was fantastic. I took a chance on Rastelli’s a couple of weeks ago and put in an order for $140 worth of chicken, salmon, and pork – mainly because I saw a good review for them and because I wanted to stock up on meat that I could eat without health concerns. I’m now a devotee. When this stuff runs out (a couple of months, probably), I’ll be making another order.

Throughout today, I’ve been running scripts to delete old profiles from all of my firms. This will result in them all having less data on our servers and they’ll save money because of it. They’ll probably never know I’ve done this for them, and that’s fine. I really just wanted to script something cool, and this fits the bill. I’ll continue running the scripts tomorrow and I should be able to have all of my firms cleaned up by Monday. Then I’ll have to come up with something else to interest me.

Looking forward to sleeping well tonight. This has been a really good day.

More on the Health Front

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My last entry, written last Sunday, indicated that maybe I’d caught the virus, and – if so – it wasn’t all that terrible. Man. I need to learn when to keep my mouth shut. Six days later, I’m not going to make that mistake again.

After resting through most of last Sunday and going to bed early, I felt pretty good on Monday morning. Told my team as much, indicated that I wasn’t at 100% and that I’d be in and out during the day, but that I’d be working. And, for the majority of the day, I did.

Then came late afternoon.

At around 4:00 or so, my chest once again tightened up, my neck started to hurt…and back to bed I went. I sat in bed and tried to decide whether I was having a heart attack or dealing with the virus. I looked up symptoms of both (they’re basically the same). I did my best to fall asleep, with very poor results. I worried myself basically to death and felt completely helpless.

When you don’t know what’s happening, but you do know that if you go to a hospital these days you’re probably either going to get sent home or get sent to ICU – and in either case, you’re going to be on the hook for a few thousand dollars – you feel helpless.

So, eventually, I just lay there. Pretty much all night. I got up at some point to pee and had major chills – which actually came as somewhat of a relief, because that let me lean more towards COVID and less towards “heart giving out.” I still didn’t have a thermometer, but having the chills helped; because (after peeing) I could just curl up in a fetal position under the covers and wait them out. My chest was still tight when I took deep breaths and my neck still hurt when I coughed, but those two things were no longer keeping me awake – which was a huge relief.

I only managed to get about two hours of decent sleep on Monday night, though. I told my team on Tuesday that I would not be working. I had Jenny bring a thermometer and some expectorant to the house (she left them in the garage), and I spent most of the day in bed. Unfortunately, the thermometer consistently showed that I had no fever (was, in fact, a degree LOW) and the expectorant did very little. So, as I lay in bed all day, I tended to magnify every little ache or twinge and wonder if I was about to die.

Felt better on Wednesday morning after getting a pretty decent night’s sleep, but again told my team that I’d be taking the day off to continue to rest. Which I did. Drank a lot of hot tea, took my temp regularly (never high) and my BP (fairly normal for me) and my heart rate (normal), and dozed all day. I felt a lot better after late afternoon came and went with no chest tightness, so I took a shower and went back to bed. Slept okay.

Thursday, I worked normally, though by then I was stressed beyond all recognition because I still didn’t know what the issue actually was. Every time I felt a twinge in my neck, I’d think, “My carotid artery is about to explode.” Every time I’d feel a tingle in my arm or neck or chest or leg (and guys, I’m getting up there – twinge happen!) , it felt like an indication that something was terribly wrong. And every time I got stressed, my heart rate went up, which stressed me more and…you get the idea. Not a happy camper at all.

So on Friday, I made the call and made an appointment with a vascular surgeon. I’ll go in a week from next Monday to find out exactly what type of blockage I’ve got in my carotids, what my heart is doing, etc. At that point, I’ll have to make a decision (maybe) on surgery. But at THIS point, I can at least tell myself that I’m taking steps to do something. I’m doing something, even if it’s just asking someone else to do something. And I’m can hopefully stop stressing myself out.

Not a fun post, this, but it’s getting the facts out there.

In NORMAL news, I did a lot of yard work today, particularly when it came to cutting down trees (well…SMALL trees – diameter of under 3 inches) by my fence at the back side of the house. Cleared out a lot of them, and discovered that I’ve got a fairly large tree on the right side of the house which is leaning towards the house and is going to have to go.

So I guess I’ll be looking for some tree removal people. Can’t do that one myself.

More yard work planned for tomorrow (need to mow the back lawn and I still want to trim SOME of the branches that are scraping the house), but for now it’s bedtime. I put in a lot of work today and I’m looking forward to sleeping like a log tonight.