Category: health

Send Some Happy Thoughts

It’s 2:15am, why am I still awake, you ask?

My mother had a fall tonight and she’s in the ER. I’m here with her. She seems to be okay. In fact she’s been sound asleep for a little over an hour.

They want to take some images to make sure she’s okay, but things are moving very slowly around here.

If you have some happy thoughts to spare this morning, feel free to send some my mom’s way. I would be very appreciative.

Been a While

It’s been almost a month since I played my guitar. It’s starting to effect my mental health.

At least I think it is. The lack of playing combined with the daily construction combined with the approaching surgery combined with the approaching lifetime of dietary and lifestyle changes that follow the surgery have all contributed to my current mental state. Given that information it’s hard to say if the guitar is all that big a part of the stressedness.

I think it is. I need to play.

Vaccine Booster Blues

I am sure that only getting about 4.5 hours of sleep last night has really exacerbated this whole thing, but I feel sick and feverish and not terribly good. Granted, if I hadn’t already been off today I likely would have made it through the work day without calling in, but I would not have been terribly useful.

The handyman we hired to do the 10,000 jobs we still have planned has been in the cellar all afternoon. We keep hearing loud metallic crashes as he takes down chunks of the drop ceiling grid. We’ve also been hearing lots of banging and crashing as he rips down ugly paneling. I can’t wait to see his progress after he leaves tonight. It’s going to be effin’ glorious.

Marvel Cinematic Universe Chronological Rewatch Update:

  • Captain America: The First Avenger
  • Captain Marvel
  • Iron Man
  • The Incredible Hulk
  • Iron Man 2
  • Thor
  • Marvel’s The Avengers
  • Iron Man 3
  • Thor: The Dark World
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier
  • Guardians of the Galaxy
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron
  • Ant-Man
  • Captain America: Civil War
  • Black Widow
  • Spider-Man: Homecoming
  • Black Panther
  • Doctor Strange
  • Thor: Ragnarok
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp
  • Avengers: Infinity War
  • Avengers: Endgame
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home
  • Eternals
  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home

Captain America: The First Avenger isn’t even close to as good as the two Cap’n flicks that followed it. Those two might be my favorite over all (excepting the mega one-two punch of Infinity War and Endgame, of course) but I still really like it. I like the steampunky, low-tech vibe of it.

Next is Captain Marvel. The rest of my family thinks this one is pretty blah, but I like it. I think that might be nostalgia for the 90’s or something. I just dig it. Of course it could also be because I’m 100% a cat guy. Maybe. Meow, brah.

Good News for Mom

Just got home from taking my mother to a doctors appointment. All went well. Everything her blood test was looking for is stable and happy. Nice! We’ll get it checked again in three months. She was pretty confused about the whole experience. She kept saying that the appointment wasn’t for her, it was for someone else. Generally speaking she was able to follow what was going on. She answered as many questions as she could, and I filled in what she missed. I’ve taken her to this office three times now. She kept saying she had no memory of being there before. As good as the good news is, stuff like that is heartbreaking.

The office staff was in a state of discombobulation. They went live with a new medical record software today and nothing was working. Now I know that many of my company’s customers have similarly stressful live days but given that the system they were implementing is not the system I work on, I was able to be a snooty snob and laugh inside my heart. I whole heartedly apologize for being a douche, but it was kinda fun.

One final healthcare point. I had my second Covid booster yesterday. I can’t tell if I am feeling run down and achy because of the shot, or because I didn’t fall asleep until 1:00am today and I am just too exhausted to function. It’s a question for the ages. I don’t know if we’ll ever know the true answer.

Less Than One to Go

On February 3rd, two months and one day ago, I was told to lose 5% of my weight in preparation for the weight loss surgery. I weighed myself this morning. I have 0.4 pounds to go. I would do the math to figure out what percentage I am at with 0.4 pounds to go but then you could use that to figure out exactly how much I weighed on that first day and I don’t want to let you do that.

I just drank my morning protein shake and had my morning vitamins and supplemented it all with a fist full of Tylenol because holy shit my back is killing me. I don’t know that my back has ever hurt as much as it does at this moment. Oh my shit, my back hurts.

Today’s plan involves going to my parents and picking up my mother and taking her to a doctors appointment. We’re going to get the results of her last blood test and see how her cancer numbers look. They’ve been pretty much perfect for the last year-plus and I am very optimistic that those results will continue.

After that I will come home and find some demo happening in the cellar. First on the list is the grid that until recently held the drop ceiling. After that it’s the rest of the ugly paneling on the walls. Most of the paneling came down during the flood clean up last year. You might recall me bitching about the paneling in the dining room recently. Suffice to say that the paneling in the cellar is 100 times uglier. Tomorrow the electrician is coming to replace the existing fluorescent lights that don’t really work anymore. There used to be six banks of lights with two tubes each. Only two of them still work, (it’s not the bulbs, I replaced the bulbs and the lights stayed dead) and one of those two only works some times. It’s been good the last week because it knows its end is coming and it wants to stay alive, but more often than not it doesn’t work when I flip the switch. Replace ’em all!

On top of that there is something going on at work that I am not going to be around for and I am feeling pretty shitty about that. I feel like I am dropping the ball. I don’t think anyone else feels that I’m dropping the ball, but I do so that’s that. Hopefully it will be quiet today. Fingers crossed.

Did I mention my back was hurting?

0.4 pounds to go. Oh yeah, and the surgery happens one month from today. Yikes!

Sunday Night Pain

Rob’s writing about pain on a Sunday night. Why? Is he watching Fear the Walking Dead or something? No. That’s not for a couple of weeks. We are still safe.

No, I’m talking about exercise. I still have 24 minutes to do today and I only have 2.5 hours left. My legs are killing me. My back is killing me. Everything is killing me.

Fear isn’t on, but the main show is on. Shits getting weird at the Commonwealth, right? There is 25 minutes left in tonight’s show so I can probably finish my 24 minutes of exercise during the commercial breaks. Har Har Har.

Work was rough on Friday. It spilled over into Saturday. I didn’t hear anything today. Hopefully nothing happened. I’m out tomorrow because I’m taking my mother to a doctor’s appointment. That means I’m worried about work and worried about her at the same time. It could be a fun morning, right?

I don’t feel any negative effects of Covid-19 vax shot #4. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

Okay, the Zombies are back on. No spoilers, but who woulda thought that Daryl was Rick’s father. What a twist!

Another Request for Happy Thoughts

I think this is the third time in two weeks that I have had to ask for this, but if you’re finding you have some cosmic positivity lying around that you can spare, could you send some my mother’s way today? She’s in the hospital right now. This one isn’t directly related to the last two trips, but maybe it is. I don’t know.

I’m a little late to the happy thoughts request this time. She got to the hospital while I was on the road to work and it sounds like they are already prepping her for discharge. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong this time, which is great, but it’s still really scary. Every little bit helps, right?

Thanks, internet people. It’s appreciated.