ProfessorTomoe

BTW, her Amazon wishlist is empty.

To be honest, the person who really needs something is Mrs. Prof,, for putting her life on hold to take care of mine. I'm not sure she'd accept it, though—I'm not even sure what she'd want or could use right now. She's as stubborn as I am, probably even moreso. If she did receive anything, though, she would be grateful beyond compare. Let me talk to her when she gets back from her community T-N-R business and I'll see if I can wheedle some bit of information out of her. She might need a cat trap or something similar. I'll check.

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2343 Have at thee.

We both appreciate them, as always. Personally, they're about the only thing holding me together at the moment. (A week from today I'll have to include screws and wires in that statement.)

4:36 p.m. CDT 20170512. I'm going absolutely [redacted] crazy dealing with doctors, nurses, insurance, and everything else regarding my health. Even Mrs. Prof is losing her cool, and we're even arguing with each other over the interpretation of our insurance plan. I'm tired of it all and I want it to go away. Ahem. Saw the electrophysiologist today. He wanted to put me on a beta blocker. I told him I have allergies (bad hay fever type mainly, with one or two others), which might complicate things. I asked him about an echocardiogram, which his nurse mentioned. He said that's a possibility if he's going to treat it more aggressively, but the medicine he'd use there is something my primary care physician doesn't want me on. End result: stalemate. He's sent me back to my primary doctor with a suggestion to use a beta blocker. If that's too dangerous, I live with my PVCs. If I take the beta blocker and it doesn't work, I go back to the electrophysiologist for the echocardiogram, after which I don't know what the hell will happen. In short, I don't need to see the electrophysiologist again unless something screws up. One less doctor to deal with. Good. Had chicken fried steak for the first time in ages after the appointment at a "diner" in north Dallas. Not bad. Very loud noontime atmosphere. Sounded like it was one argument short of a free-for-all. The podiatrist's nurse called while we were out. Got in touch with her and got handed a laundry list of things that have to be done between now and next Friday (20170519), which is when my foot surgery is scheduled. To wit: I have to have a CT scan done tomorrow (yes, on a Saturday). On Tuesday the 16th, the same day I have my lumbar caudal injection, I have to check in to the same hospital approximately two hours earlier and have pre-op stuff done (not sure what) for my foot operation. I go straight from there to having my injection. I had to initiate the creation and faxing of a bunch of reports from my doctor to be sent to the podiatrist and to the hospital no later than the 17th. Don't know why they couldn't have done that themselves. Finally, I have to check in at 5:00 a.m. Friday the 19th for the operation on my foot. We got a phone call just a few moments ago from the nurse/receptionist/doctor's wife (yep) about the insurance charges. Mrs. Prof went in armed for bear and got things billed on her terms. Did I mention Mrs. Prof negotiates contracts for a living? Finally, I got a phone call from the spine doctor's office saying that all of the above was safe to do around the date of the lumbar caudal injection. There's no overlap danger. Hooray! Now, the biggest worry I have out of all of this is going to be pain management on the 16th. I have to go in fasting at 11:00 a.m. for the pre-op, then move over at 12:45 p.m. for the injection. I'M NOT GOING TO HAVE ANY PAIN MEDICINE IN MY BODY FROM MIDNIGHT THE 16TH UNTIL AFTER THE INJECTION PROCEDURE. Let that set in for a moment. I have acute lumbar nerve root disorder with searing pain from my waist down my right side. I have a severely fractured toe that is going to require screws and wires to repair. Both of them hurt bad enough when I have pain medicine in my system. I have no idea what kind of agony I'm going to be in when I'm dehydrated and completely without any medication of any kind, pain medicine included, in my system. If I were still doing sound design, I would want to bring a portable field recorder into the hospital to record myself, because I know I'm going to be generating some new and interesting horror sounds. The only sounds more scary are those created by Mrs. Prof when she argues insurance coverage with someone trying to bill us. [see above] So, things are set. We kick off tonight, with night one of the Abilify tapering off. Tomorrow is CT scan day. Sunday and Monday are "stop list" medicine withdrawal days. Tuesday is big day #1. Wednesday and Thursday are recovery days, and Friday is big (toe) day #2, with a follow-up on May 26th. God, I want this to be over before it even starts.

7:00 a.m. CDT 20170512. Busy medical day planned today. In about a half-hour, I've got to call the spine doctor and explain my broken foot surgery predicament. I'll need to know if my back shot will interfere. At 10:00 a.m., I've got an appointment with the electrophysiologist to discuss my cardiac event monitor. I think he's going to suggest that I have an echocardiogram run, whatever that is—I haven't done a search on it yet (shame on me). I'll look it up if he decides to do it. Once I get things squared away with the spine doctor, I'll be expecting a call from the podiatrist with details about my surgery. I really hope he can do it next Friday without interfering with the lumbar caudal injection. Note about the podiatrist: both Mrs. Prof and I had the name "Jimmy Buffet" running through our heads as we saw him. All he lacked was a pair of flip-flops and he would have been a perfect candidate for residency in Margaritaville. Nice guy, though. Good chairside manner. I've got to do something about the back injection, since the doctor doing that is also handling my pain management for Chronic Pain Syndrome, my lumbar root nerve disorder, and now my fractured toe bones. I can bet that he'll probably get a laugh out of the situation. However, the back situation has dragged on since February, and he's not going to keep prescribing hydrocodone unless he performs a procedure on me. I'm rather stuck here.

This has gone a different direction than which I thought it would. I thought it'd lead to Elliot trying to convince Tedd to make the TG technology more available for transgender people. Instead, it's become an introspection about whether or not Elliot's sexual identity is changing. Looking back, I can see the foreshadowing, but the full-bore dive into Elliot's feelings instead of the former subject still comes as a bit of a surprise.

Children's hospital? Ohmydearlord. Those are two words I do not like to hear used together. Best of luck to him and everyone involved.

6:26 p.m. CDT 20170511. Lesson one: never leave the house without your prescription bottle of hydrocortisone, especially when it's within a couple of hours of your next dose and your itinerary involves a stop at a doctor's office for an appointment. I learned that the painful way today. Anyway, I did see the podiatrist, and he did verify numerous severe breaks in the bones of my left big toe. Those breaks will require surgery to repair. He wants to schedule it next Thursday or Friday, but I've got that lumbar caudal injection thing scheduled for Tuesday next week. The podiatrist said I should go ahead and get that done. So, I'm going to be on the phone tomorrow with Spine Team Texas to find out if I can have both done during the same week. If not, I'm going to be walking around in a moon boot (the podiatrist swapped out my ski boot, since it was irritating my leg) for at least a week longer, and believe me—if you could see this thing, you'd want it operated on as fast as possible. I'd post a picture of it, but tOH would probably call it a violation of forum rules and have to kick me out. It's that scary. Even the doctor and his nurse were taken aback when they saw it. Lesson two: hydrocodone on an empty stomach hits you like a head full of stupid. I feel like a whack job, but at least my foot doesn't hurt so badly anymore. So, I'm going to have screws and wires put into my big toe's bones. He's also going to explore a couple of things which were inconclusive on the X-ray, but which hurt like hell when he manipulated them. They may not need anything but immobilizing, but he won't know until he's in there. My previously broken ankle complicates things, he said. Next update will most likely come tomorrow. For now, I've got to figure out how Franklin Covey screwed up an order of FranklinPlanner notepads I placed last week.

Jeebus H. Fark! I haven't heard of anyone doing that since the 70s/80s, when hospitals would voluntarily X-ray your kids' Halloween hauls for razors and pins. That is sick. Ugh.

I thank you for the offer, but our house is small. About 1289 sq. feet small, with three computers, a music composition/mixer system, and a cat (with accessories). Getting up is a little difficult right now, thanks to the ski boot, but I don't have any choices in the help market other than using my hands to push myself off of the sofa. I thank you, though. The gesture is very much appreciated. Right now, I can only use my cane through the house. The walker is more like a bulldozer, given all of the cat paraphernalia lying around. It gets used outside. Mrs. Prof mounted wheels on the front of it. It's still unwieldy as hell, since my boot and my shoe put my legs at different heights.

11:49 a.m. CDT 20170511. Mrs. Prof is about to get ready first for our trip to the podiatrist. I'll be getting ready second. At some point before we go, my support boot is going to have to come off so I can shower/get dressed. Mrs. Prof was an old hand at putting me in my "moon boots" when my ankles had been broken. Let's see how good she is with my new "ski boot" for my foot. Frankly, now that I know how many fractures I've got in it, the whole idea of taking the boot off scares me a good deal. Then again, the thing is DAMNED UNCOMFORTABLE, so I really want out of it for all the wrong reasons. I've managed to get sleep on my right side—the one with my back nerve issue. It could be because the other pains that I'm dealing with are outweighing it at the moment. Who knows. What I do know is that I overslept my 10:00 a.m. pain medicine dose, and everything is hurting again. I don't set alarms because I rarely get more than four hours of continuous sleep anyway. This was an exception. Anyway, all I can do is wait for my hydrocodone to kick back in. Was told yesterday by the podiatrist's nurse that I'm going to have to fill out 8 pages of paperwork. That's why I've got to be there at 2:45 p.m. when my appointment is actually at 3:15 p.m. CDT. I usually cheat a good part of these paperwork traps by bringing three things of my own: printouts from a spreadsheet I maintain, where I keep track of my medications, my operations/procedures, and my medical allergies. When I get to those portions of the paperwork, I can just write, "SEE ATTACHED" and move along to the next section. I hope that it either makes the office clerk's job easier or, if they take satisfaction in putting people through paperwork hell, pissed off the little twerp to no end. I'll report back on the appointment as soon as possible. That'll depend on what happens—whether they do nothing, schedule an MRI (the biggest medical cop-out there is, IMHO), or schedule me for surgery. I doubt he'll throw me in the hospital for an inpatient procedure, but you never know. If that happens, it might take a bit longer for me to get back to you.

4:03 a.m. CDT 20170511. I think my cat realizes something is wrong with me. He's spending a lot more time next to me on the sofa lately. I woke up to take my pain medicine, and he got up and curled up in the corner next to me. He was freaked out by the ski boot when I came home yesterday, but he just got a good sniff of it and decided it's harmless (I guess he doesn't know about what the steel bars can do if they step on his tail).

Don't forget Australia. At least one Aussie Rules player has come over as a punter. My own alma mater, UT-Austin, had an AFL kicker, who I think graduated this year.

The Crow. Eric Draven has taken down Tin-Tin and Fun Boy.

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=613 Have at thee.

You ain't just whistlin' Dixie, as the Looney Tunes cartoons would say. I can barely walk with this damned thing on, since it raises my left leg so high above my right one when I'm not wearing a right shoe. I'm supposed to keep weight off the ball of my foot and put pressure on my heel, which isn't broken. However, the bit of wrapping above my ankle makes that difficult. Sitting down is difficult, too, thanks to the iron bars that run up both sides of the thing. Just when I think I've got the rubber tread braced against the laminate floor, I wind up slipping on the support bar. I'm probably scraping the hell out of the floor, which Mrs. Prof is going to just loooooove. Even sitting on the toilet is difficult now. I'll leave that one to your imagination.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be. /* takes the polonium and disappears through a PlotHole */

My podiatrist appointment is scheduled for 3:15 p.m. Thursday. I guess I'll find out then if I need surgery to fix the bones in my foot. I'll also find out if I can have the back procedure on Tuesday of next week.

10:00 a.m. CDT. Home. Wearing a support boot that covers my left calf down to my left toes. Waiting for a podiatrist to call to set up an "urgent" appointment. The line of bones leading to my left big toe are fractured in "five or six" places, according to my primary care doctor. I even have a blister forming over the top of one fracture that is close to the skin. Unknown at this time whether or not I'll need surgery to repair things. It is now doubtful whether I'll be able to go through with the lumbar caudal injection on Tuesday. I'll have to ask the podiatrist.

6:18 a.m. CDT. Been awake since just after 4am. Ate breakfast, had two cups of coffee, and took all of my pills before Mrs. Prof woke up. Now waiting for Mrs. Prof to "get some coffee in her" so she can help me take a shower. We've got a shower stool left over from a previous injury, but I'm going to need help with moving clothes into position, pre-placing of soaps and toothbrushing requisites, getting dried off, getting dressed, and so on. It's not going to be an easy shower, since everything below the waist is kaput (we miss you, Madeline Kahn). She needs to hurry, since we need to be out of the house by 7:25 a.m. CDT to make the 7:45 a.m. check-in time. I'm going to freak out the doctor, that's for sure.

You know, they have pills that can help with those nowadays.

It's screwing with your vestibular system response—lift, in this case. A wild guess says all axes of motion are affected. I'll bet if you were to roll or yaw your head quickly you'd get a similar response. (Not saying you should try!)

Ah, but the memory of it will live on for hours.

What I'm drinking: https://www.freshroastedcoffee.com/bali-blue-moon-organic-frc-cup.aspx ... although, if you need Keurig 2.0 compatibility ... https://www.freshroastedcoffee.com/p/325-Bali-Blue-Moon-Organic-Single-Serve-Cups.aspx Very nice. A good kick in the pants for any time of day.