I just scratched a little bug bite on my shoulder and it’s bleeding like an open tap now. Gimme a second to deal….
I grab one tissue from the box and four come out. Chaos! I guess it’s just one of those nights.
I’ve gotten consistently bad sleep over the last week or so. Last night I even turned in without putting on the CPAP mask. Jen woke me up an hour later with a yo, ‘sup? That wasn’t enough to cause the bad sleep that followed, but when all was said and done it probably didn’t help much.
Did I mention we got an unscheduled call from Bellana today? No reason, just saying hello. How cool is that? Both kids will be home for Thanksgiving break on Friday. I can’t flippin’ wait! harry is already planning out when we watch Shang Chi together. Bring it on!
Okay, I’m going to try to sleep now. I promise I won’t forget my O2 mask.
Six years ago today was a Friday. Friday November 13, 2015. It was the worst day of my life. No question. There have been other bad days, but none of them can hold a candle to 11/13/15. That was the day we almost lost Harry. I was working from home while he was home sick. All morning he just kept getting worse. I called Jen and she came home and probably saved his life by taking him to Holy Family Hospital. One of the nurses took one look at him and said he had Diabetes. Oh good, we thought, you can treat that. He’s going to be fine. The nurse saw the look of relief and let us know that it wasn’t going to be that simple. He wasn’t just really sick. He was really sick.
They moved him to Boston Medical Center where an ER doctor was straight with us. There was a chance he wasn’t going to make it. There was also a chance that his system was so fucked up it might cause other damage on top of just not being able to produce insulin anymore. We were scared shitless. You may think you know what being scared feels like, but this was so much worse than that. The head of Endocrinology told us that he had never seen a kid that far gone come back, but Harry, being the 12 year old bad ass that he was, pulled through. He was right as rain after a couple of days. You might think you’ve felt relief before, but it’s nothing compared to what we felt that day. Believe me.
The story has a happy ending though. One that has continued unabated for six years now. Harry was not only up to the challenge of managing his diabetes, he thrived on it. I have lost count of the number of doctors I’ve heard say they were impressed with how well he handles it. Sure there are days when his blood sugar spikes and it scares the crap out of everyone, and there are days when his blood sugar takes a nose dive off a cliff and scares the crap out of everyone. There are even days when they both happen. Still, Harry has been amazing. He continues to be amazing. He is amazing.
I just wish he didn’t have to be. I wish he didn’t have to manage things. I wish his pancreas was still holding up it’s end of the bargain and he didn’t have to track his blood sugar and manually inject insulin. That would be great and all, but fortunately Harry was and still remains more than up to the challenge. Again, he’s amazing and I love him and I am so thankful for the way things turned out, and I am thankful that he still lets me be a part of his life.
My holiday wish, year round wish really, for everyone is that they never have an 11/13/15 of their own. Hug your kids.
Twice today I have tried to get some exercise in. Just a few minutes here and there. When I start walking I’m fine, but after a few minutes my back just starts screaming at me. Come on, back. Leave me alone. Let me get my friggin’ exercise in!
I’m not sure yet, but I may be going to my parents’ place after dinner tonight. They need to have something picked up at the house and dropped off at the new place. I couldn’t do it yesterday and I don’t know if anyone else was able to take care of it. If not, then I’ll get ‘er done tonight.
Now if my effin’ back would quit it’s bitchin’. Tylenol is trying to help, but so far it’s not doing enough. I still have 11 minutes of exercise to go before I hit my daily 30 minute goal.
I have four things going on that the clinical over-sharer in me wants to talk about but I can’t. Well… I can, but I just don’t want to… even though I want to. Ugh.
Three of the four things are related to being a home owner. The fourth is a personal healthcare thing. One of the home things is pretty huge, another is kind of huge but dependent on the first thing and after the first thing is squared away there are two other things that have to happen before we get to it… confused? Me too. The third is pretty minor but still nice. The healthcare thing has the potential to become utterly gigantic, in a really positive way, but at the moment is just a teeny tiny thing.
The huge thing will never be discussed directly, the big thing will be, but not until it happens and maybe not until after it happens. The small thing probably won’t be, but in oversharing other things you might get a clue. The healthcare thing is probably going to be discussed in excruciating detail, but not until the process advances quite a bit further than the baby step I’ve taken thus far.
I want to talk about all of it! AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
On a completely unrelated and unimportant note, I just asked a HomePod to play a specific podcast episode and it worked. Nice! Hey Siri, play the newest episode of The Walking Dead ‘Cast. It worked!
Watch, I publish a post saying that there isn’t much going on and five minutes later I am going to get run over by a mac truck sized issue at work. Just you watch.
Anyway, nothing much going on today.
Work has been quiet, which is nice on a Monday. I got a little exercise in this morning, but I am having a hard time getting as much done in one sitting as I could even a few days ago. My goal is 30 minutes and I usually try to do it in two 15 minute chunks. Over the last three days or so I haven’t really been able to do more than 10 minutes at a time. Either my back will start screaming, or my calves, or my knees, or something. Isn’t exercise supposed to get easier the more you do it? Apparently not.
Intermittent fasting has not been all that great lately. One or two days each week I have been failing. Not completely, but I’ll be shutting it down after 13 hours or 14 hours or whatever. The goal is 16. Having said that though, today’s fast just ended at 18 hours. So that’s a good day, right?
I have Veteran’s Day off on Thursday. It’s bitter sweet. Starting in January my company has changed the way we handle time off and it includes some of the non-national holidays we’ve enjoyed for decades being changed to floating holidays… which means next year I don’t get 11/11 off. This is my final Veteran’s Day. Unless of course I put in for a floating holiday on that day next year, but that’s neither here nor there. I plan to honor the holiday by playing the guitar, and ending World War I.
It’s almost midnight. I haven’t been able to sleep at all. Here’s hoping that changes soon. There’s a lot going on this weekend but most of it is on Sunday. I am hoping I can spend some quality time on music tomorrow and I don’t want to be exhausted all day.
I got my 30 minutes of exercise in, and my 16 hour fast. Now I just need some sleep! Come on, body. Let’s get this done!
I was sitting at my desk at 8:30am, 30 minutes before I start work, and I thought: Robert, you are going to do 15 minutes of exercise by walking very briskly in place. Hells yeah, you are.
Five minutes later I stopped because my back was hurting like crazy. Hells yeah, it was.
The same thing happened yesterday while I Was trying to do a second round of 15 minutes to close the 30 minute exercise ring on my Apple Watch. I powered through that time, but I couldn’t today.
In the immortal words of Austin Danger Powers, ouch babie… ouch.
I need to keep an eye on this today. I don’t want to hurt myself, but there’s a bag of Hershey’s Kisses off to my left and karmically speaking I need to do the 30 minutes so I can eat those suckers. I do understand that this arrangement makes no actual physiological sense, but shut up and leave me alone.
Jack Eichel was traded from the Buffalo Sabers to the Vegas Golden Knights today. The reason for the trade had nothing to do with hockey and everything to do with healthcare.
Eichel needs surgery. He has a herniated disk. He wanted to undergo a procedure that had never been performed on an NHL player. The team wanted him to have a more common procedure. I have to imagine that conflicts like this are probably common. The team doctors want to do X and the player’s personal doctor wants to do Y. In this case the two sides refused to budge and it lead to a stalemate where Eichel didn’t get either procedure and the team traded him to get rid of him.
It all seems dumb to me, but what really surprises me is that based on the collective bargaining agreement, the team is 100% in the right. Now I understand that the team has millions of dollars invested in the player and all of that, but try to look at this from your own healthcare perspective. Imagine you have a condition that requires surgery. You and your doctor come up with a plan of action, and your employer says no and tells you that you have to do something different. Now imagine that you signed a contract that gives the employer that right.
Wow. I mean… wow. Do the other pro sports leagues have this right too? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.
Inside the Red Head's Head 