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ProfessorTomoe

Changing Medications (Level of Trust Required)

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7 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

5:38 p.m. CDT 20170818. Still recovering. I had a moment where I almost fell due to trouble walking this morning. Right now, I'm on my second ice pack of the day on my back. The doctor says I can have up to three today, and I'm gonna need 'em. Still having trouble concentrating on things. Breathing is hard enough to concentrate on.

Get better soon, old friend. I really hope the operation did its job the way it was supposed to.

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1 minute ago, The Old Hack said:

Get better soon, old friend. I really hope the operation did its job the way it was supposed to.

Much appreciated. It's getting a little easier to concentrate now. Just had some cottage cheese to boost the metabolism and brain function. Haven't been able to keep up with my pills today, hydrocodone excluded.

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6:23 a.m. CDT 20170820. The last time I had this "procedure" done, I experienced the majesty of levels 9/10 and 10/10 when it comes to pain levels.

Not. Even. Close.

This time, I had hydrocodone still active in my system, at doctor's orders. This time, I had a doctor who used a targeting system and a catheter to put the medicine where it needed to go along my spine. This time, I had heavy metal music playing in the background and a doctor who wore something that looked straight out of Heavy Metal magazine as his scrubs, complete with goggles.

I'd say that's a troika lined up for success.

I think I'm already feeling some relief for the stone bruise pain on my foot. However, I'm still sore everywhere else. I think it's going to take the full five days for the steroids to kick in.

Outside of that, I've got that painful spot on the cartilage of my ear which has not healed, despite my doctor's treatment. Makes it painful to lie on my pillow with my right side, and I'm still spotting blood. The basal cell carcinoma, if that is what it is, is still in full swing.

Yep, I'm properly back from the hospital, me and all of my secondary ailments. :laugh:

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4:48 p.m. CDT 20170820. Had a rather painful experience a couple of hours ago, as the pre-race show for the IndyCar race from Pocono was coming on. I was trying to swap sides on the sectional so that I wouldn't be lying on my right ear. I got everything ready and laid down on my left side. As I did, I heard and felt a huge cracking along my spine. I couldn't take it for very long. I had to get up and swap back so that I was lying on my right side. It took me a while to recover from that little event. I'm still a bit stiff along the left side, and, of course, sore on my right ear.

Sigh.

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6:32 p.m. CDT 20170821. This has been a sleepy day. Mrs. Prof and I did manage to get outside and see what percentage of the eclipse we could see from the D/FW Metroplex (only 70% or so) via a pinhole camera and the shadows on the ground through the leaves (a neat trick I learned from National Geographic magazine). Other than that, most of my day has been day has been spent asleep or taking medication. The steroids have yet to kick in, and my left big toe is still hurting very badly—something I need to discuss with my pain management doctor.

I don't know when I'm going to get a chance to get to talk to my primary doctor about the thing on my ear. It's going to have to be dealt with soon.

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1 hour ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

I did a damned dumb thing. Bent over to pick up an ice cube I dropped. Oh hell. Head straight for the hydrocodone. God it hurts.

Ouch!  Sorry to hear it, and I hope it feels better soon.  Should you perhaps put one of those grabby claw things that can extend your reach on your Amazon wish list?

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16 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Ouch!  Sorry to hear it, and I hope it feels better soon.  Should you perhaps put one of those grabby claw things that can extend your reach on your Amazon wish list?

Oh, no no no. Thanks, but no. Mrs. Prof would have a stroke if I got one of those.

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7:58 a.m. CDT 20170822. Okay, how the hell did I wake up with a sore throat? It feels like a damned infection, but it could be my allergies kicking in again. I'm drinking my protein coffee to try and put it out of my misery. I've also given my nose an Afrin spray to blast out whatever is in there out of there. Not having a fun morning.

Found a well-hidden container of cranberry juice in the pantry. Am now mixing it with my tea to get that extra vitamin C burst for my throat.

Last night's disaster with the ice cube pick-up has mostly dissipated. I won't be trying that again for at least the next week.

Had to play a Daft Punk song to exorcise a Christmas song out of my head. That could be the worst of the symptoms from this morning.

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19 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Oh, no no no. Thanks, but no. Mrs. Prof would have a stroke if I got one of those.

I say ask her about it. If it means you can pick stuff up off the floor without falling over or gasping in agony, she might go for it. Or if it means you can pick stuff up off the floor rather than interrupting whatever she's doing at the moment.

Granted, lately the main use for ours has been picking up the mousetrap, taking it outside, and removing the mouse to the garbage can.

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4 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

I say ask her about it. If it means you can pick stuff up off the floor without falling over or gasping in agony, she might go for it. Or if it means you can pick stuff up off the floor rather than interrupting whatever she's doing at the moment.

I asked her. She said it would be "pretty ridiculous." She has a thing about a person being able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, as it were. I told her that if this first round of shots doesn't work, we might want to look at it then. No reply from her.

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4:18 a.m. CDT 20170823. Somewhere around 4am? It must be time for the Prof to be awake, taking his pills, going into the kitchen, and not remembering what he went in there for.

Oh. Right. Coffee. /* goes back to the living room, fetches coffee cup, and returns to kitchen */ No protein coffee today. I need the straight stuff. to cut through my allergy phlegm.

Tried two twists to my right. Still found back pain. Right twists still cause crunching and back pain as well. If I had to say right now whether or not I'd received any relief, I'd have to say yes, but only about 10% relief. This is the time that the steroids are supposed to begin kicking in—five days after the procedure.

I'll have to call the doctor on Monday the 28th to do a post-procedure check-in, and I'm notoriously lousy about what I say during those things. I hate doing them. I either under-describe my symptoms and sound like I don't know a whit about medicine, or I try to sound like a doctor and wind up making a crucial mistake which ruins my credibility with the real doctor. Then, there's the doctor side of the equation: he'll either be in a hurry, forgetful, insensitive, overworked, or something else, depending on the doctor (or the nurse, which introduces an entirely new set of variables into the conversation). IMHO, that's the biggest problem with health care today: communication between the patient's true symptom's and the doctor's brain.

This is why medical science should concentrate on developing a real-life Star Trek-type medical scanner, so that this problem can be removed. When you remove the verbal element, you remove another block to effective medical care.

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30 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

This is why medical science should concentrate on developing a real-life Star Trek-type medical scanner, so that this problem can be removed. When you remove the verbal element, you remove another block to effective medical care.

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."

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I sat down and took a long look at my migraine ladder and have changed step 1.

It used to be 2 "Migraine Strength" generic Acetaminophen/aspirin/caffeine as step one.  Noticed that dosage level was half the stage 3 "Extra Strength Acetaminophen".  Modified both stages to be one ES  Acetaminophen and two of the "Migraine Strength".  Seems to help, a lot more than I would have expected, as I've found that just large doses, even overdoses of Acetaminophen don't really do that much by themselves for a migraine.

Granted I haven't had a "please, God, kill me now" level migraine to really test this on, but, to be honest, I'm willing to wait a while on that.  Like I'm willing to go a long time with out needed to test it.  Forever if need be.

 

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Exceeding the recommended dosage of acetaminophen is a good way to trash your liver, so I hope you're keeping track of the total amount of it in whatever combination of pills you use, and not exceeding 1000mg at a time or 4000mg per 24 hour period.  We want to keep you around!

(If your MD has expressly approved your dosing then ignore me, I'm just a layman here.  ;-)

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3 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Exceeding the recommended dosage of acetaminophen is a good way to trash your liver, so I hope you're keeping track of the total amount of it in whatever combination of pills you use, and not exceeding 1000mg at a time or 4000mg per 24 hour period.  We want to keep you around!

(If your MD has expressly approved your dosing then ignore me, I'm just a layman here.  ;-)

The "extra strength" pills are 500mg each, the migraine pills are 250mg each, so 1ES and 2 migraine is the same as 2 ES, just with caffeine and aspirin.  It's right at the limit, I'm aware of the wait 6 hours for the next dose effect.

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1:18 p.m. CDT 20170824. Zofran emergency. Mrs. Prof went Sam's Club shopping yesterday and picked up a tub of white queso. My tolerance for this is practically non-existent, but I keep thinking that there's got to be some way I can doctor it to make it acceptable to my stomach. Once again, no joy. Chips, white queso, shredded cheese, sour cream. Dumping syndrome, therefore a Zofran emergency.

While I'm trying to recover, my son finally calls. We touch base about what arrangements we know about (none) and what we're going to do (God only knows). I'm guessing my sister will call on her way home from work and give me further details (I hope).

On the up side, he tells me he's finally going to pick up his completion certificate today from the local community college. We have waited a long time for anything resembling this to happen.

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1:00 a.m. CDT 20170825. I'm going to have to call the ENT doctor for a refill of my "magic mouthwash." I've been developing a sore throat, having trouble swallowing, my voice is going hoarse on me again, and I'm starting to cough again. If it's not one thing, it's another, as Rosanne Roseannadanna used to say.

Tried standing up and petting Loudmouth for an extended period of time tonight. Lower back pain set in after about five minutes. Still hurts on the right side.

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1:12 p.m. CDT 20170825. Well, so much for the stone bruise pain on my foot being fixed by the spinal injection. I've been going through the web for a couple of hours with my left foot flat on the floor. As each minute passed, the stone bruise pain got worse. There's something physically there, I'm almost 100% certain. Not even the hydrocodone is making the pain go away as long as I put pressure on it.

One positive development today: I've been able to bend my broken left big toe down more than just a couple of degrees! I can almost bend it to the same extent that I can bend the rest of my toes. Felt good, too. Imagine needing to pop a knuckle but not being able to do it for months. It was that kind of relief. Now, I just need to be careful not to overexercise it and bring the pain back or re-crack the thing.

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