ProfessorTomoe

2:35 p.m. CDT 20171023. T-minus 2 days and counting before the operation. I just got a phone call from a representative of Nevro. She wanted to get details on my pain and give me instructions on what to do after the surgery. Their goal is a 50% reduction in pain. I was hoping for a bit more.

Mrs. Prof hasn't been taking too many diverse pictures of Loudmouth lately, so here's a picture of Baker in petting heaven: If you'll look at the tubular object in the background, that's what we call our SAFER Barrier: our Somewhat Adequate Feline Energy Reduction Barrier. Not quite as effective as the SAFER Barrier that IndyCar invented and developed, but it helps avoid damage to cats and to CD/DVD/Blu-ray shelves.

Diane looks like she's developing a "what a dork" opinion of Susan at this point. She keeps swinging back and forth from "Lion" to "Dork" on the pendulum scale. Who knows where it will wind up?

2:51 p.m. CDT 20171022. T-minus three days and counting until the operation, and it can't come too soon. I'm sitting here, watching the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix, and I'm feeling the hydrocodone's effects slipping away like a tide rushing away from the shore. I've still got more than an hour before I can take another dose. There isn't a damned thing I can do that will alleviate the pain until then: walking hurts, sitting hurts, lying down hurts. Level 7 and rising. God, make it stop, please? EDIT: I took my pain medicine about 50 minutes ago. It's working, but I've got a bruised-like afterfeeling where my pain was. It's hard to describe. "Incomplete relief" is probably the best term. I still wish it'd stop. It's 4:43 p.m. right now, and my next dose isn't until 10pm. I doubt my pseudo-relief is going to last that entire time.

I like to keep a can of all-in-one, nothing-else-required soup for emergencies. Consomme' is a good choice. Not the cheapest on the soup aisle, but a definite go-to for days like yours. Basically beef broth, but with a bit of a backbone to it (pun not intended). It's more substantial than beef broth, but just as easy on the stomach (if not easier). That's what I mean. Go here: https://www.campbellsfoodservice.com/product/campbells-classic-beef-consomm/ Forget the "food service" stuff. You can find it in the soup aisle.

Loudmouth is spending more time out of the back end of the house and in the "family" end. He's having a bit of a problem with people touching him, though. It might be due to anxiety over sharing Baker's space. I'm not sure. Baker's backing off, at least. Mrs. Prof decided to put a larger litter box in the bathtub, with an unbelievable result: Loudmouth is covering some of his poops! Not all, but some. He still smells to high heaven when he doesn't cover, but we may be onto something here. Now, if we could just get him to pee in the damned box ...

4:13 a.m. CDT 20171022. I almost didn't make it through watching the Astros game. My pain medicine is lasting shorter and shorter periods of time and letting the pain through. Allow me to elaborate. I'm on a 4/10/4/10 schedule. That's every six hours, a.m. and p.m., 15mg of hydrocodone per dose for a total of 60mg per day. I've been on this for months, and for months it's worked to alleviate my pain. Well, starting a couple of weeks ago, that was no longer the case. I've felt the pain—sometimes as a low-level, constant, nagging pain, and more recently like the hydrocodone is only lasting a few hours before it begins fading out. Yesterday, I got a bad case of the fade-outs, all day long. It got worse through the day and peaked with the 4 p.m. dose. I didn't think I would be able to make it through to my 10 p.m. dose. My pain grew worse and worse until I was pulling sevens on the one-to-ten scale and threatening to pull an eight. I made it to 9:30 p.m. and said screw it. I took my dose. Within 30 minutes it felt like a Mack truck had been lifted off of my leg. I was able to enjoy the final few outs of the Astros' victory. Right now, I'm waiting for pain medication I took before I started this post (approx. 15 minutes ago) to kick in. I woke up around 4 a.m., partly due to recurrent pain, partly due to noise from a passing line of thunderstorms. I'm only pulling a six, thankfully, but I wonder if I'm going to make it through to Wednesday.

The Houston Astros have won the American League Pennant and are headed to the 2017 World Series!!!

4:21 p.m. CDT 20171021. This post could go in the "What are you ingesting" thread if it weren't for the accompanying pain. Had any of you heard about Arby's nationwide one-day rollout of Venison Sandwiches today? They did a three-store test last year, and apparently it was so successful that they decided to go national with it. I mentioned it to Mrs. Prof a few days back and asked if she'd drive me to it. "NO!" she said. She is anti-Bambi-as-a-dish and absolutely refused to drive me. I tried asking my son: he couldn't do it. As a last resort, I asked my best friend. I offered to pay for sandwiches for him as well. He switched around his schedule and said yes. I was getting very excited as V-day approached. Then my pain started getting worse. And worse. And much worse. I've ended up pulling sevens on the 1 to 10 scale in between doses of pain medicine. I wouldn't be able to go. I got onto Facebook and sent a message to him yesterday, telling him we'd have to cancel. "I'll do it for you," he said. I couldn't believe my eyes. There's my best friend for you. Sure enough, he showed up this morning with three Venison Sandwiches in hand, two for me and one for him. He beat the two-sandwich limit by going to two stores. I paid him for all three. We each enjoyed one—very, very tender (they were cooked sous vide) and with a delicious juniper berry sauce that went well with it. It was bigger than I thought it'd be. His opinion was that it was good, but he wouldn't order it every day if it were on the menu. My opinion? Good enough to order as a special treat. Arby's is testing an Elk sandwich in three stores this year. If they roll it out, I hope I'll be able to drive myself to get one next year.

Qualifying for the United States Grand Prix from Circuit of the Americas in Austin, TX.

I won't have to torture you with *** TEA PORN *** any more, you'll be glad to know. I found a forum about tea (TeaChat.com) where I can geek out all day long about tea.

I'm just glad you're not in Oklahoma anymore. My Longhorns have been having trouble with anything in that part of the country. Can you believe it - three overtime games in one season?

By my own definition as a young adult, I'm living in yankeeland now. Anything north of the Lower Colorado River (the one in Texas) is what I used to consider yankeeland. Still do, sort of.

Yankees at Houston. Top of the 9th. Houston leads 7 to 1 with one out and a Yankee on first.

Utah "Seahive" cheese with rustic chocolate/almond/cherry crostini. Got it from Woot.com.

5:00 a.m. CDT 20171020. Got an appointment time for my surgery next Wednesday. They'll be implanting the Nevro HF10TM unit sometime after I check in at 8:30 a.m. CDT. It should be an outpatient procedure as long as there are no complications, and no copays since I've his my catastrophic limit. Had a psychiatrist appointment yesterday. Talked (kinda) to him about losing words when I speak. He said "no wonder," basically, considering all of the drugs that I'm on. I'm the equivalent of stoned or drunk, and that's why I can't talk without forgetting words. I also got laughed at by both my wife and my psychiatrist simultaneously. I found nothing funny about the situation. Gross material follows. . My doctor burst into laughter, after which my wife started laughing (even though she's been here for the aftermath). I felt like shouting, "That's not funny!", or at least saying, "I find nothing funny about the situation." Instead, I kept my mouth shut about the laughing and mentioned that I'd scraped the porcelain of my wife's fancy Toto toilet working the snake while totally grogged out and at her command. That stopped her laughing, at least. I also discussed hitting what I think is a physical tolerance to the hydrocodone. I'd make an appointment to see the doctor about it, which is SOP for the pain management center, but my surgery is so close that any appointment might come after the operation. I told him that I'm asleep most of the time, again diagnosed as all of the pills I take. Finally, I told him (and my wife) that not seeing her so much is a definite depressor. She's doing great work with the TNR program and the pet adoption center, but she spends so much time there that I don't see her much anymore (working from home doesn't count, since she really works from home). I said if you take all of the above and wrap it all up into a great big ball, you've got something that's got "DEPRESSION" stamped on it. One thing I didn't add was a Zofran emergency I had halfway through breakfast this morning. I'd hardly eaten anything, and I still got the barf signal. I had to spit out what I was chewing on and take an emergency Zofran pill. Good lord, that's depressing enough on its own. Wrap it up with an involuntary episode of Project Runway last night. (She is so losing the TV to the Astros game tonight.) All in all, with the exception of getting my surgery time, yesterday sucked.

Trying to avoid that. Out of curiosity, how much caffeine would that be for you?

Sounds like they'd be ass over tit over the whole situation.

Pretty much anything he wants.

From today's post in the Scribophile moderator's forum: *** TEA PORN *** Having my first go at the 10g piece of 2005 pu-erh tea. Initial notes: Breaking it into two 5g pieces is not easy when you don't have a tea needle. My wife knows exactly when the worst time is to get in my way. Once I got the piece broken in half (with some shreds, alas) and my wife out of the kitchen, I got everything going: 5g tea rinsed in 12oz. water at 212°F. I immediately dumped the first rinse, then refilled the steeper with the same amount of fresh boiling water over the same leaves, then let it steep for 4 minutes. BTW, for my tea porn friends, I use an IngenuiTEA Teapot from Adagio Teas to steep. Don't let that be a turn-off: it works, and has for me for years. First steep results: strong tea, with a little astringency at the back of the throat. N.B.: I always have to let things cool down some, lest I fry my tongue. Today, I fried part of my tongue. Note two: it's hard to enjoy tea while one's wife is talking business on the phone (loudly) nearby. As it cools, the tea gives off a woody aroma. There are traces of woodiness in the taste as well as it cools. A slight warming sensation spreads throughout the upper body. It's at this point that I wish I'd committed a blasphemy. I have some amber crystal sugar that I got as a sample from Adagio Teas. It's like rock candy, except that it dissolves faster. A rock or two would be nice at about this point. I'm assured, though, from the description on Teavivre.com, that a rock candy sweetness will develop after about the third steeping. The last drops go down smoothly. Unfortunately, I'm left with a combination burnt tongue / astringent feel in my mouth. However, the bitterness isn't so bad if you're used to drinking unsweetened tea at the drive-thru (another blasphemy, I know, but spare me the carbonation and sugar). I'm looking forward to future steepings, but after 12oz. of a liquid that's old enough to have a driver's license, I need some rest at the moment.

I got accused of spreading tea porn in the Scribophile moderators forum.

So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and that's it hangin' on the shed ALL TOGETHER NOW Tie me kangaroo down, sport, Tie me kangaroo down Tie me kangaroo down, sport, Tie me kangaroo dowwwwwwwwn!

I don't know ... maybe this ... (Ashley <-> Elliot) ^ <---- (oo) Susan Catalina

Lapsang Souchong Smoky Black Tea. Two teaspoons steeped in 12oz. water for 2½ minutes at 192°F. I definitely need to let it steep longer. The suggestions on the tin said 1-5 minutes, so I played conservative. Got all smoke and little tea flavor. Still, every sip brings back memories of Central Texas barbecue joints that I grew up with, so that's a plus. Yeah, I never thought I'd say this, but it needs to be stronger! Wow.