Yzjdriel

English muffin toasted. Topped with Tiptree Little Scarlett Conserve, which (according to the novels) was James Bond's favorite jam. That should give me a positive energy rush for a little while.

There is nothing strange about that, old friend. You have been through medical hell and it is hard to believe that it may finally be nearing its end. I can relate to it -- all too well, in fact.

...you have no idea of how hard I just had to struggle to stop myself from making a joke about LGBTQ* insurance policies and reparative therapy for them.

I'll take it. Thanks.
9:42 a.m. CDT 20170904. It's been a few days since I tried my protein coffee. I gave it another shot this morning. I think that's the last shot I'll be giving it. It's given me an upset stomach. I hadn't eaten anything, but that usually doesn't make a difference with coffee, protein or not. And, stubborn-assed me, I'm not going to give it the courtesy of a Zofran or a Phenergan. It can sit down there and grumble all it wants—I'm not giving in. All you're getting is a simethicone gel-cap, jerk.
Can you tell my mood is less than optimal? I don't know why. Could be the proximity to my grandmother's funeral. Could also be the footnote that my sister added to the funeral announcement that I saw after sending flowers (and after making pleas here) about, "In lieu of flowers, send donations to ...." Well, by God, she's my grandmother, and if I can't be at her funeral, then there's going to be some sort of physical presence from me (and @The Old Hack and anyone else who sent something—thank you!) there for her service!
But I digress.
Mrs. Prof has been trying to treat my depression with varying forms of chocolate. A shake, pudding, and most recently, brownies from Pizza Hut. I'm going to let her have the last brownie, just for her being nice. Gotta say it's perked me up a little bit, as long as I don't invoke a Zofran emergency. Earlier, I would have just brooded about the above two paragraph topics. With some theobromine in my system, I'm able to properly vent in the right directions.
I think I'm going to go and get a regular cup of coffee now and see how my stomach handles it.
EDIT: Regular coffee helped tremendously. Going back to toss the protein mix in the trash.

I am nonetheless happier knowing that you have a better doctor this time. I trust he will do the best he can and that over time you will see improvement.

I am not sure if my own reflexive reaction is any better. It leans towards gallows humour. At one time I fainted while having an injection of a drug needed so I could donate stem cells to my brother. I woke up on the floor with a very worried nurse trying to take my pulse while looking at her watch. I did the to my mind only logical thing, which was to quote Groucho Marx. "Either my watch has stopped or the patient is dead."

Still here; I just have nothing meaningful to add.
The regular updates are good for both you and us - we all know you're okay, and you know we're all here for you.

Your coffee maker is a self-aware AI.  It passed the Keurig  test...

My sister's pills live in a small blue backpack.  The anti-rejection drugs have to stay in their blister packs until she's about to take them, so that makes things a bit more bulky.  She has two different week-long AM/PM pill organizers for everything else, plus a couple of different gummy vitamins (a format I've adopted too now).  When she flies, the backpack is always her "personal item" instead of a purse.  If she's going to be away from home for more than a week, she has to bring the various bottles so she can refill the pill organizers, making the backpack a lot fuller.  Some meds are heat-sensitive, so if we're driving and stop for a meal, she has to remember to bring the backpack with her if it's at all warm or sunny.
But, that backpack holds what keeps her alive and relatively healthy, keeps her with us, so I love her blue backpack.  :-)
*Gives Prof's shoebox a nice pat*
Thank you, shoebox, for keeping our Prof with us.

I mentioned that I wrote a poem about the shoebox of pills I have to take one day after going through a rather depressing and frustrating series of medical appointments. I posted it to Scribophile and got good reviews, so I figure I'd share it here, concerning the medical frustration I've been going through lately. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you ...

THE SHOEBOX
by D. Lee Jackson

I really ought to replace it.
It's a bit lighter than usual today. Some of the medicines I used to keep in it are on the coffee table behind my laptop, ready for my midday dose. Others are still on the bookshelf, waiting until my doctor clears me to take them again. Mainly herbal supplements.
When did I start using it, anyway? I wonder if a date's printed on it somewhere.
There's also another bottle missing. A bottle of pills that were supposed to help me with my allergies, help me to breathe so I could go outside and enjoy nature at its fullest.
Suggested Retail $75.00—Our Low Price $64.99. No date. Just bars and codes.
One that would help me get out of the house so that I could take care of some “much-needed exercise,” as several doctors have told me, without having to worry about explosions of pollen from nearby trees. Exercise I needed before they would help me with my other problems.
“Made in Indonesia.” Damn. Had to turn it upside down to read that. Jumbled the insides now.
Exercise that would help me lose enough weight before they'd work on my knees, my back, my ankles. “Lose thirty pounds and call me in the morning.” Right.
The lid fold is getting seriously warped. I wonder how long it'll stay connected.
Self-serving bastards. They'll give out expensive medicines to help me “deal with the situation,” but won't do an operation to fix the cause. Of course, that means other meds for the resulting depression, the anxiety, the heart problems, sleep problems, illness-of-the-week problems, and so on.
I've put too many stickers on it, I think. Who needs to know about a Houston radio station in Dallas? About which university I went to? At least they cover the goofy company logo.
But there was a sinus problem which absolutely required an expensive operation by doctor number … hell, I've lost count. Couldn't fix the other problems without it.
It could just barely hold all the pills I took before the sinus surgery.
And then, post-op, the one allergy medication that was supposed to help me breathe so I could finally exercise. The one that almost made me suffocate instead. How the hell do you survive a dream where your lungs are collapsing? Another few minutes asleep and I would have stayed that way forever. All thanks to a bottle of pills that was supposed to help me “deal with the situation.”
I know at least my feet would fit inside it. I mean, it's a shoebox, right? Shoot, it'll probably out-live me.
What's my motivation? Well, doctor? How do I get out of this vicious cycle?
I wonder if my ashes will fit inside it one day.

©2015, 2017 D. Lee Jackson. All Rights Reserved,

If you "swish and swallow" you're swallowing the active ingredients.  If you swish and spit out, then you're at the least exposed to a whole lot less of them.  We do occasionally see a little steroid get absorbed through the skin or mucous membranes, enough so that they don't recommend doing any steroid-related or altered-by-steroids tests while using, say, a steroid ear medicine on inflamed ear infections.  We don't routinely see steroid side effects when using them topically (eg drinking and peeing a lot), so most pets don't absorb a clinically significant amount.  YMMV with that one weird species, I can't say anything about those....
So, yeah, don't stress if you're not swallowing it, but keep it in mind if you do see any ill effects developing.

My impression from past experience is that the insurance company would have a hand in going after someone they felt was liable for an injury.  I know that's not a hard and fast rule, but when my car was sideswiped by one with four teenagers trying to merge into an already-occupied left turn lane, the insurance companies sorted it out among themselves, and when my mom's leg was broken at the dog park she carefully didn't find out whose dogs it was that ran into her, but the impression the insurance company gave was that they would have been the ones to get payment if she had known.

Well, I may have said that already anyway. I had some of your Parmesan sausage for breakfast, this time on Club crackers (nom), and chased it with my morning pills and a cup of coffee with two SToK depth charges. All of this got followed by a dose of ibuprofen to stave off a developing headache. Once the headache clears, I'll reassess the situation.

Actually it was a buck-and-a-quarter quarterstaff but he didn't say so.

I must engage in one of my own addictive / compulsive behaviors
Waiter!  What is this fly doing in my tea?
The Backstroke.

5:21 p.m. CDT 20170619. I managed to shock a doctor today. My own primary care physician, no less. I told him the story of what happened to me over at UT Southwestern, including at their "Pain Clinic." He was absolutely stunned that anyone, much less THE premiere research medical hospital in the area, would want to use acupuncture and biofeedback on someone with my level of pain.
Mrs. Prof, while looking up the name of the person we want me to be referred to, found a rating (1–5 stars) for the UTSW pain "doctor." It was two stars. The new person is rated at 4½ stars. Needless to say, my doctor agreed to the new referral. I shall not be returning to UT Southwestern.
My PCP also looked at my right leg and agreed with the podiatrist's diagnosis of mild venous stasis. No need for Lasix this time around. Compression stockings will do.
To wrap up for now, @The Old Hack: your gift of Parmesan-coated sausage arrived about 30 minutes ago! The picture and description were a bit deceptive—it showed a whole sausage, but they sent pre-sliced sausage—however, the amount they delivered was 4 ounces (113.4 grams), as advertised. (The description has since been updated.) The temperatures around here have been in the mid-90s (in the mid-30s in Celsius), so the frozen-paks were melted. The sausage is therefore chilling in the refrigerator until it comes down to a safer temperature (it's cured, so it's probably safe anyway). Regardless of all of the unusual aspects, I still appreciate your gift very much! I will be relaxing with some of it later tonight, as will Mrs. Prof as soon as she's finished a cycle of syringe-feeding the kittens.  

There once was this Danish TV show that made a truly horrible attempt at deconstructing Oedipus Rex in a science fiction setting as, I swear to God, an opera. The prophet was replaced with a supercomputer and the King was a dictator. Interestingly, while the chosen method was rather painful to watch, the actors themselves did an excellent job and the story itself was well crafted. In brief: the King was told that his son would kill him but refused to have him put to death as the computer recommended. Instead he had him anonymously adopted into a privileged family. What made the story so interesting was that the King persistently refused to believe in the prophecy and every time the supercomputer made a recommendation he refused to follow it. However, the resulting policies nonetheless made life harder for the population and his son eventually became a revolutionary who led a resistance against his father. Finally there was a confrontation between him and the dictator where the embittered ruler confessed to all he had done and why. His son then asked if the computer had also foretold that he would die at his hands, and his father shouted, "Yes! That was why I did all this!" And then, finally understanding, the son stepped back from the precipice. He asked his father if he would resign, and his father agreed. The two of them embraced, the son refused to succeed his father, and the resistance began the painful return to democracy. The supercomputer, its prophecy thwarted by the human variable, went into an endless loop and ceased to be a menace, or at least ceased being annoying.
It's odd. I hated the singing and the music, but the rest of the story I rather liked. As a deconstruction it worked very well and its message was basically that prophecies, self-fulfilling or otherwise, may be thwarted by refusal to surrender one's free will. A rather hopeful ending for a dystopic story, really, and since most pretentious Danish taurine ordure has unhappy endings imposed by mandate, that gave it another plus point in my book.

Oedipus gets a bum rap.
He was separated from his parents at a very early age (due to a prophecy that he would kill his father the king), so he didn't know his biological mother and father.
Years later some stranger attacked him on the road for no apparent reason, and he successfully defended himself from the murderous stranger.
Continuing on his journey, he arrived at a city in crisis. In addition to said crisis, its king was missing and presumed dead, and had no heirs. He resolved the crisis and in exchange was offered the throne if he would marry the prior king's widow - whom he had never met before. He accepted the deal.
Later he found out that the stranger who had attacked him was his father and the widow he had married was his mother. Which he got more than a bit upset about.

This could also go in "Weather."
I would fully support the Darth naming system.

I personally think that Sandy and Swampy are kind of unusual. In fact, they are the only heterosexuals I know of that keep themselves closeted.

Right after I posted that I remembered that I wanted to have an NPC that passed a particular sort of test.
Everyone, meet Maria Suzanne Spieler.  That's right, Mary Sue, the Player.  She goes by Suzi most of the time.
I'll keep your names in mind for the rest of the crew.

Yes, YouTube. I understand that you make money by ad revenue. Yes, I understand that the new Planet of the Apes movie is coming up. Yes, I understand that 15-second videos there's no point to being able to skip them since they're so short. No, I don't want to watch the exact same unskippable commercial for LITERALLY EVERY VIDEO I WATCH!

Where do we post about getting smileys back for the board? It's been ages since the board crashed. There should be time to put them back now, I would hope.

I will be searching for the optimum antimalware and antiviral software for it. If G. DATA makes something, I'll probably go with it. I like its abilities on my laptop.

Well duh, you're from the family that thought a throne mounted on a massive sphinx on wheels pulled by captured princes and kings was a reasonable way of getting around. Of course you'd like SUVs.