ProfessorTomoe

Second nebulizer treatment finished. (The first one was last night.) COUGH COUGH COUGH WHEEZE COUGH GASP COUGH Still sounds like an old Stutz Bearcat trying (but failing) to start. Next treatment in eight hours. Now waiting for the hydrocodone to kick in. Sleeping was hell overnight. The pain relief wore off around 2:30 a.m. — woke me up. Couldn't get back to sleep until almost four. Woke up just after five and went straight for the hydrocodone, then the aforementioned nebulizer. Then the coffee.

Thank you. Very much obliged, especially now. Do you know how hard it is to cough when you've got a nebulizer mouthpiece in your mouth? You'd best aim away from your computer, or you're going to end up with ipratropium bromide on your keyboard. It's also best that you're not prone to hearing voices from nowhere, because I swear the nebulized solution is trying to form coherent words. Either that, or I'm picking up Mexican radio from the nebulizer unit ...

More like Mrs. Prof taking care of me at the moment, but I get the idea. I'll do my best. Thank you for letting me rant.

Back from my primary care doctor. Result one: I'm on a nebulizer, taking ipratropium bromide every 8 hours. Result two: I'm being referred to a pulmonologist. That's doctor number nine, for anyone who's keeping count. I didn't have this many when I was in ICU back in 2009. Result three: he doesn't want the back doctors doing any surgery on me while I've still got this laryngospasm cough. Too dangerous, he says, and in retrospect, I can see why he said so. No matter how much my back and right leg hurt, if I go into one of my coughing spasms while recovering from back surgery, I'll tear things all to hell, and then some. What the farking hell did I do to bring this onto myself? Huh? Can someone answer that? I am in full-on vent mode, and I've got my engine tuned to belch as much smoke as possible. I'm sorry, but there are just some things that tear the crap out of me, and today's events fall under that category. Damn it, who the smeg decided it was going to be "gang up on the Professor day" today? Well, by God, I am NOT going to take this lying down (actually, I probably will, thanks to the damned hydrocodone, but I won't go gentle into that good medicine coma). If someone wants to take me down, they're going to have to do it with me kicking and screaming as hard as my body and my laryngitis-afflicted voice box will allow. If this is going to be the death of me, it's going to have one hell of a fight on its hands getting me there. Thus endeth the rant. Go in whatever mood you choose.

You said a double-red-tape mouthful, which must now be recorded in triplicate, signed, reviewed, stamped, reviewed again, re-filed, and submitted to the appropriate department head who will stamp one copy and send the rest back through the whole damned process. I told you I worked for the Internal Revenue Service (the U.S. tax agency). I got to see it at its worst when I was something called a "Payment Tracer" back in the mid-to-late '80s. That's sort of a White Hat position among the IRS staff. Lots of authority to go digging through records, looking for records of lost payments. I got to see just how relatively ancient some of the technology was during that time. Case in point: some payments had problems with their identification that made them "unpostable" to an account. Those were recorded on trays of punch cards, which were Xeroxed after being run through the mainframe. Usually, if the taxpayer provided sufficient proof and we could match it to an unpostable record, we could "force post" the money onto their account. However, we had a long-standing problem with a certain range of unpostable ID numbers—no one could match anything in that range to any documentation the taxpayers sent. One night, I went back to the dusty hall where the records were kept (yes, it was an old, poorly lit, brick-walled, dusty dead-end hallway) and did some deeper-than-normal research into the issue. You won't believe what I found. Someone had dropped a pair of punch card trays and had put them back together out-of-sequence. It resulted in Taxpayer A getting Taxpayer B's money, Taxpayer B getting Taxpayer C's money, and so on. At least a thousand taxpayers were affected by this "slipped unpostable" problem. My finding resulted in the closing of a metric crapload of lost payment cases. Ahem. Back to the topic at hand. Going back to my primary doctor for my laryngospasm cough today. I'm expecting him to prescribe a nebulizer plus some medicine to go with it.

See you when your body lets you back on the internet. Man, even with all my ailments, I feel you drew the shorter straw. Get better soon.

Incidentally, I got curious and pulled up Continental's website last night. Guess what I found? Rich Beefy Mince! It's in a new packet, which means they may have temporarily stopped making it and then restarted. In either case, I shot off an e-mail to AussieProducts.com and asked them to order some the next time they do an import container (that's how they get their stock from Australia into the United States). I said I'd buy at least half a dozen. I'm not trying to plug their site, but I am encouraging the adventurous among us to go to Continental's Recipe Bases website and see if there's anything there that appeals to you. If so, send an e-mail to AussieProducts.com and ask them to bring some over. Don't bother telling them I sent you—they wouldn't know me from a hole in the ground, and they don't give out "referral points" or anything like that. There, tOH. I'll shut up now. I hope I didn't overstep the bounds of the Off Topic forum.

Skipping the onions for now. Just finished off the last of a pack of Black Forest Tim-Tams. Nom. Mrs. Prof gave them a "meh." I swear, if we ever do go to Australia, she's going to die of starvation once we're there, since everything I've bought from http://www.aussieproducts.com has received a "meh" from her, with one exception: Continental's Rich Beefy Mince, which the company doesn't make anymore.

I tried some Keurig-brewed Pinhead Gunpowder green tea today. Not as effective on my horking as jasmine oolong. Then again, neither is effective against the hydrocodone I'm on now. It tries to put me in a coma around three hours after I take it. I fought it with coffee today. Eighty percent success. I stayed awake, but I got nausea to the point where I had to dump a promethazine after it. Still stayed awake, though, even if the coffee didn't help my coughing. In other news, Mrs. Prof announced yesterday that she was making a trip to the local Albertsons. I asked her to bring back soup—Campbell's—cream of something. I figured she'd know what a sane person would eat for a meal. Again, 80% success. Among the rational stuff, she brought home a can of Cream of Onion. Let that sink in for a second. Cream of Smegging Onion. Who the hell eats that as a standalone meal? That's an ingredient, for cryin' out loud. All I can think to do is mix it with a can of Cream of Mushroom and have a bowl of Cream of Onion/Mushroom soup. Geez. Cream of Onion.

Update: we got lucky. Mrs. Prof tried the one trick I hadn't thought of—going into the pharmacy and saying, "We're supposed to have a discount card on that." It worked. They'd left off the discount card codes. They re-ran the prescription with the discount card and came up with the old price. Hallelujah. We both feel so relieved. I feel so dumb.

Dear God. With everything else that has been going on, I did not need this. I logged in to CVS to check on my Trintellix anti-depressant prescription refill. It's a 30-day supply, and I have a discount card from the manufacturer. Even with that, the price is usually around $106. This time it was listed as around $208. My mind went into panic mode. What's the deal? Why the increase? I received an e-mail from them only a few days ago, reminding me of their wonderful discount program. Did they cancel it? Then I realized—I've been on the stuff for about a year. The discount is good for 12 months. I'm screwed. Still, I printed out the latest e-mail with my enrollment information and put it next to Mrs. Prof's purse so she could check it when she goes to CVS (I still can't drive due to pain and hydrocodone). Maybe it'll still be good. An increase from around $1200 a year to $2400 a year, Mrs. Prof's about to retire, and I've still got musical and computer hardware supplies I need to buy. I did not need this.

Austin, Texas. August 1st, 1966. I was about 2½ years old then. Don't ask me why I'd want to go there, I've just always had this morbid curiosity about this horrible event that took place in the city where I was born. I would want to visit it from several angles—close up and personal (but not targetable), nearby and listening to radio coverage, and somewhere where I could see the television coverage with a group of people (like in a lunch counter or similar).

Part of the reason that I want Mrs. Prof to drive me to my appointments is so she won't grill me over what the doctor said afterward. She has a nasty tendency not to trust my memory of what goes on during my doctor's visits. Bring her with me == no problems. BTW, she got to witness me going through a painful procedure on Friday—the electromyogram to help diagnose my back pain. It wasn't as invasive as I thought it would be (picture the scene from "The Right Stuff" where they insert that huge needle in Alan Shepard's hand and send electric pulses through it—yeah, it was nothing like that), but it was still bad enough. I didn't have to disrobe beyond taking off my right shoe and sock. Afterward, the doctor zapped me in multiple with something that looked and felt like the business end of an oversized 9v battery. The worst part came when he was trying to detect breaks in the signals coming from my back to my foot. He inserted needles in several spots along my lower right leg and then had me move my toes, foot, and leg around while some electricity went through me. All the while, he was listening to the shortwave-like signals generated by my movements. I had one spot where my signals sounded broken up, but he figured that was due to my formerly broken ankle and the nerve damage that went with it. Everything else sounded more-or-less normal, he said. Basically, I'm going to have to hope that this coming Wednesday's CT Myelogram is able to pinpoint the problem. If not, I'm afraid I'm going to be left with a team of stumped spine doctors and a massive pain from my back down my leg.

Joe Kendra has started working on his webcomic, One Small Step, again. Here's the latest issue as of 4/22/17: http://www.osscomic.com/comic/clumsy-worm/

We had a nice line of storms come through at around 11:00 p.m. or so last night. The neighborhood storm siren went off. Last time that happened, an EF4 tornado destroyed most of far southern Garland and a good swath of Rowlett. Time to pick up the cat (a feat in itself), wake up the wife (similar), and get everyone into the bathroom. The cat was freaked and kept pawing at the bottom of the door, trying to get out. He got a freeze-dried chicken treat in exchange for his anxiety after the siren stopped. Turned out the siren was for large hail coming through the area. It missed us. We saw pictures of hailstones that fell earlier last night—one was as big as a large orange. Impressively dangerous stuff. One of my friends' house was right in the path of the storm—he and his wife were on vacation. A bit of texting revealed that they were less concerned about damage to their house and more concerned about window damage that would let their cats escape.

Suggestion re: monsters. Why do they always have to be so much stronger than humans? Reference the "Skinnies" in the original novel version of Heinlein's "Starship Troopers." Can't they be different while remaining just as vulnerable as humans?

I will look into it. Thank you! Don't know how much it'll cost, since both the spine doctor(s) and the hospital are several miles away—that might be the real deal breaker. My primary care doctor is marginally closer, so it might be more workable for him, but given the average length of a doctor's appointment, Mrs. Prof might want to save the money and just come with me if I have to see him.

I am "very no" on lipstick. Just doesn't strike me as a good thing.

Ah! Something we have in common (I think)! Want a little story? This tale takes place during Mrs. Prof's traveling days with the IRS (she negotiates multi-million-dollar logistics contracts and has nothing to do with taxes, in case you're getting ready to throw stones). We decided to do something fun in conjunction with one of her trips to Chicago—I would fly up there to meet her, we'd spend the night, and then we'd take a sleeper cabin on Amtrak's Texas Eagle back home. (She met me at the airport with a fantastically delicious Giordano's pizza waiting for me in the trunk of her car). After staying overnight, we returned her car to O'Hare and walked straight to the train station beneath the airport. Now, whether or not this was a Metra station, I can't say, but we rode the train all the way downtown to the stop closest to Union Station. From there, we walked a couple of blocks, stopping for her to take the obligatory photo of Willis Tower while I watched the luggage, until we reached Union Station and checked in at the Amtrak station. Turns out a sleeper cabin means you're traveling first class on Amtrak. We had great service, free meals in the Diner car, and just an overall wonderful trip back to Dallas. Once we arrived at Dallas's Union Station, we took DART's rail to the Garland station, then rode a bus to the stop at the entrance to our subdivision, two blocks from our house. We were pretty stoked about that—a trip from Chicago O'Hare to our house, using public transportation the whole way. That's going to be a fond memory that we'll pass down to any grandchildren we may have.

I don't know, and I doubt I'll be able to find out. I have a Nokia Lumia 1020, otherwise known as a Windows Phone (Win 8.1). Great camera on it, but I doubt there's an Uber or Lyft app for it. Besides, I have to have someone who I know drive me home from the CT myelogram, just like any other outpatient hospital procedure where you're sedated.

Thanks again, and I'll definitely pass along thanks to Mrs. Prof once she gets back from trapping feral cats tonight. Mrs. Prof has to drive me everywhere, since 1) the pain going down my leg is too severe, and 2) the hydrocodone screws up my reaction time too badly. She's having to take time off from work to get me to places, especially to the CT myelogram, since it's a hospital outpatient procedure that requires a 3 hour recovery time (they do an epidural to inject contrast medium, so there's the possibility of an epidural-induced headache).

Very much appreciated. However, since that last post, things have become weirder with my back. I got lucky and got an appointment just after noon today with my spine doctor. He wrote me out a prescription for enough hydrocodone (3x daily) to tide me over until the scheduled May 16th procedure date. However, that date might not matter anymore. The doctor was confused by what I said the nurse had told me would happen on the 16th. He says my MRI and diagnostic shot data doesn't jibe with a simple single-cause issue on my right side. So, he's ordered an electromyogram to be performed this Friday at the doctor's office and a CT myelogram to be performed at the hospital (the hospital with call and schedule, hopefully tomorrow). After all of that, I'm supposed to follow up with a different doctor at the practice who specializes in spinal surgery. That doctor will determine if I get a major epidural cortisone/anesthetic injection through my tailbone into my spinal cord, or if some kind of back surgery will be required. In one day, I've gone from a simple cortisone injection to a possible major epidural or even spinal surgery. This is going the wrong farking direction. There is one upside, however—the doctor was more than happy to let me continue taking the Topamax, since it's helped me lose almost 20 pounds since I started taking it.

It's knocking it down a bit. Pollen.com's website shows a slight downturn from the 11.4 ratings (out of 12) that it was listing last week.

The pain itself is pulling almost a full LI at the moment. I'm going through Tramadol at the label dosage (1-2 every 4-6 hrs) instead of one twice a day (chronic pain management dosage). That's taking the razor edge off, but not for long. I'm going to need something stronger than Tramadol, which means Mrs. Prof is probably going to have to drive me out to Rockwall so that I can get a paper prescription from the doctor, if he'll prescribe hydrocodone or stronger.