ProfessorTomoe

This is an instance where Tedd's ability to disenchant himself might come in handy ... if he wants it to ...

6:23 p.m. CDT 20170628. Low energy day. Spent much of it dragged down by the constant fight against what my hydrocodone does to my guts. Some progress there, but I won't dare go into detail on it. Spent most of the day knocked out. When I haven't been out, I've been on the laptop. Haven't trusted myself to be anywhere near my music computer—it needs more brainpower and concentration than I have right now. Most of the distraction has been due to pain coming from the sesamoid bone that broke in my left foot. I have no idea what kind of shape it's in, and I won't until my podiatrist appointment on Friday, where X-rays will supposedly be taken. I may be stuck in the moon boot longer than I'd hoped if it hasn't healed or at least made some sort of progress toward healing. I called my PCP and let him know about my hydrocodone count, as instructed. After today, I've got 12 days of pills left. This is vital because I still haven't heard from the new pain management doctor's office, and my back pain isn't getting any better. Mrs. Prof has until 7:00 p.m. CDT to pick up my ENT doctor's "magic mouthwash" from the compounding pharmacy, since that's when they close. Speaking of the ENT, I haven't heard back from him about the GERD test. I seem to be on hold with a lot of doctors nowadays. Story of my life.

I don't know how to compare. Some of the stuff I went through with my gall bladder and liver had me biting on a seat belt strap on the way to the hospital to keep from yelling out. Similar for the back pain on the Day of the Nightmare Lumbar Caudal Injection, although I only had a bedsheet to bite on. With that one, neither 2x fentanyl before nor 2x dilaudid after did anything to alleviate my pain. I wouldn't know where to place these on your scale, since the kinds of trauma are completely different.

You rotate your owl. I'll pump up the volume while you do.

Ah, if it's a case of ownership, that falls to me. I have to elevate both my feet at night—my left one because of my (formerly, still healing) broken toe, and my right one because of the edema/venous stasis. Kitty only gets the pillow if I'm not using it, and I was about to use it again. He got moved off.

I can see this, but it doesn't help my anxiety level over the whole situation(s). Makes me worry that Blue Cross might come back and say, "We're not going to pay for your medical expenses." I can't handle even the thought of that right now, regardless of my anti-anxiety meds. I really am on edge here, and Mrs. Prof is doing whatever she can to help keep me from tipping one way or the other.

Or one step closer to him grabbing the gauntlet, Pandora getting in the way, and her accidentally getting zapped? It has been said that an immortal would not fare well in a fight on the Earth plane against a strong enough magic user. Would The Dan do this to his readers?

Check panels five and six of this installment. With today's revelation, Tedd now has the knowledge that he'll be able to regain the functionality of the tech and whatever other magic things he cares about which he might lose, should magic change. It just hasn't sunk in yet. He needs to calm down first.

Parmesan-ringed sausage, kindly provided by @The Old Hack, wrapped in a flour tortilla. (We're out of anything else to put it on. It's a parmesan salami burrito now. )

Cat "herding" behavior. No, not herding cats, but the way a cat will try and herd its humans. I'm at times tempted to rename my own cat from Baker to Roadblock, given the amount of time he spends just getting in my way and refusing to move. Not even a poke from my cane will budge him. His motives are never clear: sometimes he wants treats, sometimes he wants play, sometimes he just wants to impede my progress for no discernible reason. Tonight his goal was to get me sitting up on the sofa at 3:30 a.m. (just before my 4am hydrocodone dose) so he could jump up and go to sleep on the warm spot where the pillow for my feet had been. I'll never fully understand cats, especially this one. In addition to "herding," he is also the arbiter of our kitchen counter. He decides what is supposed to go on the counter. If it doesn't meet his standards, it gets knocked off. Case in point: Mrs. Prof and I were sitting in the living room when we heard this metallic BANG BOOM CLANG from the kitchen, like sheet pans being knocked over. We both looked, but couldn't find any large metallic objects on the floor. As it turns out, we were looking in the wrong place. Mrs. Prof had left a relatively heavy can opener on the counter earlier in the day and forgot about it. Baker had decided it didn't belong there. SWIPE! He'd knocked it off of the counter and onto our pressed steel trash can. Of course we couldn't find anything—neither of us had bothered to look on the floor between the counter and the trash can.

Amazing how something that small can cause so much pain, eh? The "grit" from my pigment stones that got out of my gall (not French) bladder and went up into my liver back in 1998 put me back in the hospital a week after having the gall bladder itself removed. The stuff was no bigger than sand, but it hurt like the world was going to end. I know what a 10 feels like on the 1–10 scale from several different parts of my body.

Overreaction, you might say.

10:44 p.m. CDT 20170627. Had to deal with some medical bureaucracy after working hours today. I'd put in a call to my primary care doctor to find out about the referral to the new pain management doctor, at Mrs. Prof's request. His nurse called back with details: said additional details had been requested by the new doctor, which had just been faxed on Monday. In short, I should hear from the new pain management specialist within the next few days. More annoying, I got a call from a medical verification company hooked up with Blue Cross called "Equian Integrated Payment Integrity Solutions" tonight. Of course, they didn't show a good caller ID, so I didn't answer the call. It took me three tries going through the voice mail message before I could get down their phone number and case number. You see, they'd sent a letter last week because I'd had a back procedure (the lumbar injection), and they wanted to know if it was anyone's fault that they could sue, basically. Cold blooded bastards. I answered the letter online and gave them the bad news that it was just a spontaneous illness. Well, tonight they wanted to know about procedures around that same date. Those were for my toe, when I fell. I could hear the agent licking her lips when I used the word "fall" in my description. Sorry, lady—this was in my own house, and it was treatment for something that was my own damned fault. So was the operation later in the week after my back procedure. She thanked me and said that was all they needed to know. Rat bastards. Let me suffer in peace, please.

Say good night, Gracie.

You will have to wait until National Gaul Bladder day. But ... but ... I don't have one. They had to remove it in 1998 due to pigment stones, although some of the fragments went back up into my liver and had to be flushed out. My liver never forgave me, because it kept slamming my bile duct shut. Doctors had to put in a stent for a few weeks to keep it open. I guess my liver was like Henry V, since it loved my Gaul Bladder "so well that I will not part with a village of it," or in this case a sphincter of it.

Wasn't it on the right yesterday? Or do you have two now (oww oww oww)?

I think it's just him. I've seen him for two situations—once for re-hypertrophied turbinates (on which he operated), and now this. He gave me a compounded nasal antibiotic back then. However, when it didn't work, he hauled out the regular non-compounded antibiotic pills. BTW, he also helped me find out that I was allergic to Singulair. A few doses of that stuff and I was wheezing and coughing so bad I didn't think I'd make it.

11:16 a.m. CDT 20170627. Yesterday's energy has ebbed away for the most part. The music computer is in dire need of attention, and I don't have what it takes to deal with it at the moment. Honestly, I don't know if it's a lack of energy, anxiety over what's going to happen, or both. All I do know is that I can't physically handle it right now. The pitting edema is staying put on my right foot. I'm guessing a part of that may be due to my foot slipping off of the pillow I'm using to elevate my legs at night (yes, I still have to elevate my formerly-broken-now-hopefully-healing left big toe). I looked up some elevation pillows on ACG Medical Supply's website, but the one that looked like it might work wasn't recommended for side-sleepers like me. Mrs. Prof and I are going to go by their store on Friday after my podiatrist appointment to see if they've got anything else. (BTW, we had a bit of a look at my big toe last night—it still looks rather inflamed. I don't know if the Augmentin is doing its job or not.) The "magic mouthwash" compound prescription from the ENT doctor is ready and waiting for me at the specialty pharmacy. Mrs. Prof is going to make the rounds after work (I assume) and hit there and CVS for everything waiting for me. I should hear something from the doctor about the GERD test soon. I'm also still waiting on the referral to the new pain management specialist at Baylor Scott & White downtown. No word since last week, but it's only Tuesday.

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.

Sorry, I'm not N2 that kind of thing.

So tempted to mention France right now ... please, tOH? Please???

Oh, man. We gave him his monthly flea-ear mite-worm-whatever treatment yesterday. It's in the form of a gel that you put between their shoulders, where they can't scratch it or lick it. Well, Mrs. Prof must have missed this zone by just a tad, because he went over to the water fountain and started sucking down water as fast as he could before running off down the hallway. Next thing I heard was a "splat!" sound like a bucket of water hitting the ground, not your usual cat hairball or horking sound. He'd gone and just projectiled everything that was in his stomach. Not as bad as a hairball, but much more dramatic.

I was eating Tacos al Carbon last night. Does that count?

12:04 a.m. CDT 20170627. Monday's energy managed to hang around long enough to get the music system backed up. I just hope I get sufficient energy and mental clarity to take care of the remaining music system tasks Tuesday, as there are plenty and not much time left to do them. I finally made it over to Quest Diagnostics for the GERD testing. They make you blow into a bag, then they give you some fizzy concoction to drink all of. Uh oh. Shades of my painful colonoscopy purge at first. I thought I was going to lose my lunch in the waiting room. Lots and lots and lots of gas. I asked a nurse if it was supposed to be making me sick. She said no, then warned me that if I did barf the test would be invalid. She reassured me that I only had a few more minutes left before the final part of the test. That kept me hanging in there. I had plenty of gas, but no barfage. The second half of the test was just like the first: blow in a bag. I guess they do a before/after comparison, for whatever good it'll do. Next stop was the compounding pharmacy. It wasn't much fun, since I forgot to bring my wallet. Had to write everything down before they'd mix up the prescription. Left that in their hands and moved on. Mrs. Prof decided that the next stop should involve Mexican food. I went along with it, although I did so carefully since my stomach wasn't 100% recovered yet. Still, I can highly recommend the Tacos al Carbon at Norma's TexMex in Garland. Mrs. Prof had tamales and an enchilada, but she wound up going for my leftover beans when we got home—you could tell that they'd been cooking all day long. Not quite as good as Cooper's Barbecue in Llano, TX, but a close second.