Category: Health

Web 2.0 and oh, nice to see you …

Web 2.0: Gaetan sent an invite to my email address to follow him on twitter, so I signed up finally.  Honestly, I had actually been meaning to sign up with twitter and facebook … My older brother is terrified of facebook, he thinks Rupert Murdoch is after him … I’m particular in the information I share but let’s be honest, if someone like Rupert Murdoch wanted the goods on you, guess what?  He’s going to get you …

There are so many times that I think of something to blog, but I never get around to it.  I think of the situation, the story and everything, but then I don’t get to it.  Or, maybe the paranoia of what I would be posting and the opinion that may come of it, or too much information shared …  Blah, tough living in this day and age, isn’t it?  The age of immediate consequences from something you may post online.  The Internet is everywhere and immediate.  Anyway, here are the current events:

Hosting: There have been several instances in the hosting area that have devastated me. One, I had a disk crash on a machine that I never thought the disk would crash.  Like, I had it in my mind that that was a pristine machine and I didn’t have to worry about it.  It’s where all my stuff was and where I could just ssh in or sit at its console and update code on the fly … No backups.  Gone. Now I have everything important on RAID5 and my personal machines have Time Machine running.

Verizon is a huge thorn in my side.  My last mile is Verizon.  Verizon is copper.  Verizon wants to run FIOS (fiber) in Philadelphia.  Comcast rules the video market in Philadelphia.  Seems contacting politicians is the only way Verizon FIOS will come to Philadelphia.  There is nothing more than I want right now is FIOS to be in Philadelphia because my connection speed would greatly increase immediately.  How this affects me now is that Verizon doesn’t want to run any new copper, they only want to run FIOS.  I have had a terrible time as of late with my connection and this is the problem.  It happened the first time in May and was dormant until Christmas Eve, from then on it was daily bouncing until the last copper pair change.  Verizon has been on site over 3 times.  It’s too late, the customers that this affected the worst have already found other solutions.  Not cool Verizon, not cool at all.

Octane: Sound for Octane continues, but with almost every venue having house sound installed, I can’t rememer the last time I needed my PA.  For that matter, the last time I had the PA in the trailer, the trailer was burglarized for one bass bin and one monitor.  They took nothing else although much was in there as well as all the band’s gear that was strewn to just the outside of the trailer.  Makes absolutely no sense.  I still haven’t been able to sell the truck since replacing it with the van and trailer.  I should try that on eBay again.  While Octane remains booked fairly steady for a band in their position, there are weekend nights that I am sitting home.

Fosterchild: I have mixed Fosterchild a couple times since the lineup change and circumstances warranted it.  It was a welcome change from the norm.  Apparently we’re going on tour soon!

Out On the Town: I have started working with the paper again. This time I am doing the layout on the computer.  Another reason for my Mac purchase. (Still steamed about that one [previous entry], but I will survive.  I have rationalized some things away.)  Hopefully this will help with the ultimate goal of sitting on my ass the rest of my life.

Windows: I found out that MS Access doesn’t scale, or self sustain.  Don’t know how to put it, but left to its devices, a web site utilizing an MS Access database will cause ASP to hang on a Windows Server.  The database needs to be regularly reorganized.  I can tell you for a fact that this will not happen on any other platform.  Thanks again Windows!  Way to mess up everyone’s life on your server cause you can’t handle something and don’t report on it either.

Health: My health is getting better. I had my last cigarette September 27th, 2008 at 10:45pm.  This was right before Octane’s first set (acoustic) outside at The Whiskey Tango.  During the set, pressure mounted in the center of me chest and by the end of the set I was getting sharp pains.  I didn’t go out for a smoke after the set, I took it easy but sharp pains came and went and I generally didn’t feel right.  I was getting scared and I decided that I thought I should go to the hospital.  I spent the weekend in the hospital while they did all sorts of fun tests.  All tests were okay.  I then went back to have a camera shoved down my throat and that turned up acid damage in my esophagus, stomach and duodenum.  I was told to take 4 Prilosec daily.  The anesthetic for the tube test was wild, like snapping your fingers, test done and two and a half hours went by.  I haven’t smoked since and have started dieting and exercising.  I may get a Brazilian and wear a bikini or thong to the beach this summer?  … and everyone knows how I love the beach.

The Whiskey Tango: I went back to work at The Whiskey Tango May 20th 2008 to fill in the open nights with Octane and to do the off nights.  Ronnie quit to go work for Spellcaster down the shore for the summer with more nights.  Since then The Whiskey Tango changed ownership and management and those off nights aren’t happening anymore.  Status there is up in the air right now.

Coding: I recently updated some old ASP pages I did way back in the day for the Bigg Romeo site.  That was fun.  I am progressing on new web development projects and I am very excited about that.  Also thinking of ways to further promote the hosting through a better interface.  The new trickles in slowly anymore and Verizon isn’t helping with the departed.  Here’s hoping FIOS comes through.  They are sure to support that endeavor more than they’ve helped me now, right?

OH! and the biggest thing about all of this is that anything new will be in a new location!  All the servers, routers, switches, computers, etc. will be moved to a brand new location.  We will be moving but still don’t know when yet.  I am hoping for A.S.A.P., but that’s me.

That’s all I can think of right now.  Any questions?

The Doctor Appointment

I went as scheduled back to the doctor … She had all the results of my tests and said that everything looked fine … Weird that these things in my body are “fine” … But that’s a good thing I’m sure … I know from watching House M.D. that in one episode he said if they did a full body scan of everyone in the room (his medical staff) that they would see many things that would look like something to investigate that would turn up as nothing …

Anyway, we chatted and I told her of the things I had experienced since the last visit … We’re continuing the medications I’m on and I will be visiting her again in the beginning of July … Will try a little lifestyle change in the meantime, and apparently walking is something that’s good to do … Would be good to get things in order …

Hospital Visit

So I don’t eat or drink anything after midnight … I got home from Grape St. and watch Slapshot 2 until about 4AM … Wake up and get ready to go … No deodorant for the manogram … Get to the hospital at 8:10AM … I register and get a cool new bracelet with my name and birthday on it … It was free!

Go to the radiology department and first up is the ultrasound of my right side … I got a student in the bargain as well … a young girl with long blonde hair … She is present for the ultrasound … I have to pull up my shirt and they pour the jelly on me and begin sailing around my tummy with the thingamajig … After some deep breaths and holding them, I turn on my side … the same thing … Then the woman that did the ultrasound asked if I would mind having the student check it out for a while … Hey, a threesome! So I was into it … She had me doing deep breaths in no time … Done test 1.

Next up was the CT scan with contrast … I go over to that department and I’m asked questions and off I go … They prick your arm and get a tube going in so they can shoot the dye in for the Catscan … That was a bit painful … I could feel that needle swinging around in there until she taped it down … She did a little test and off I went … The thingamajigs start spinning around and then you get all warm all over … I shut my eyes … A little woozy for whatever reason, off I go back to the other side for the manogram … Done test 2.

Sit and watch Regis until they take me to the manogram room … Off with the shirt I point to where I feel the lump and she marks it with a piece of tape that has like a tiny ball bearing on it … They scan both boobies when they do this test … and they smoosh them up pretty good … I’m sure no matter what size your boobies are, they’re gonna get them in this machine … Squish my right, “don’t breathe”, take it from the side, “don’t breathe” … Then the same for the left … I sit and wait while she goes off to see if they’re okay … (I guess to see if I breathed) … She comes back and says they don’t see anything on the test but I ought to get a ultrasound of the lump … great, I was just there … and they can take me in about 30 minutes … Done test 3.

Over to the other side of radiology where they take you in the big table rooms … Xray of my lumbar spine is up next … A cute little girl calls my name and I’m off into a private room with her … After she assesses my sweatpants that there’s no metal in them, we can proceed … Lay on the table on my back, and we shoot a couple “hold your breath” … lay a little cocked to my left with a pillow or something under me … same for the right … Then have to lay on my left side and get my back perfectly straight … Then off she goes to make sure they’re okay while I wait there on the table … I hear people talking … I hear someone yell “You’re going to die!” Not the thing you’d like to hear in a hospital, but it was followed with something like, ‘You’re going to die … How could you tell such and such that about me’ … She comes back and has to redo the straight one on my left side … She positions me as she pleases … “Hold your breath” … Wait again … I can hear her talking to someone about the length of her hair … She comes back, okay! Done test 4.

Back over to the ultrasound people … We watch Tony Danza talking to Mrs. Brady herself, Florence Henderson … David? … I turn around and there’s this girl that looks at me like she knows me … It’s the blonde student from earlier, but she put her hair in a pony tail … This time I go behind a curtain to get “unchanged” … Put on a hospital gown backwards, with the opening to the front … More goo … The student does all the testing this time followed by the teacher … Was in there a while as they played with my boob lump … Had to stay there again while they asked the people that requested the test if they wanted anything else … Nope, I wiped off the goo and got “unchanged” again … Done test 5.

I decided to go full tilt with my first meal of the day and took a ride over to Applebee’s … I think it was 11:15AM when my wife and I went in there … I told her about the tests and the things I had heard in there … The different things they made me do, etc … The student and the teacher said the most things, and it sounded to me like they didn’t see anything, but who knows? They thought there was nothing out of the ordinary the first ultrasound, and then the one of lumpy was just muscle tissue … But again, I think doctors review the pictures that they take and decide from there … So those were the tests … We’ll wait and see what the results say …

Here we go again

While I was sitting at my desk watching these DivX files, I felt a lump in my chest … My wife was worried, so off I go to the doctor … I went Tuesday … I told her I saved up all of my ailments for her (heir doktor) … A cold that never seemed to go away, the things I feel in my body that you go to feel on the other side to see if it’s normal (like having it on the other side too makes it okay) … my lower back pain … chest pain … and the back of my neck revisited …I left there with 6 pieces of scribbled paper … and they took three tubes of my life blood …

Pre1.) a prescription for a pain killer for what she thinks is arthritis in my lower back; Pre2.) a request to X-ray my lower back; Pre3.) a mammogram (which I will be refering to as a man-o-gram); Pre4.) an ultrasound of my right abdomen area, there’s some weird things floating around in there; Pre5.) prescription for Nexium to see if that relieves the tightness and pain in my chest; Pre6.) a CT scan with contrast (like I had before) to check up those little nodules in the back of my neck and see how they’re doing …

I worry, but I take this in stride … My wife worries, but she doesn’t say much … She goes to the pharmacy to fill the pills, and the pain medicine is around $30 but the Nexium is $175 or something … No generic, but Prilosec (which I was presecribed years ago) is now over the counter … She called the doctor to see if this was okay, and they told her to stop by the office, that they had samples we could get … In the meantime my blood results came back, and I’m back on some cholesterol medication … I go this coming Wednesday for a day of poking and prodding fun …

Dye it

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was growing hair on my face to see what I could do in the middle of my face after shaving away what I felt was not necessary, or what would be my choice in look … I decided to ask Greg from Octane what to do with my hair if anything … He’s a hair dresser as well as a rock guitar god … His response was to dye it … Been there, done that and I wasn’t very interested in doing that again … I told him I’d have to dye my hair every two weeks or something … He says, “So?!” … I have to tell you, it wasn’t very fun dying my hair in the past, why do that every two weeks? I think I’ll pass on that … I also have this feeling that I will certainly resume shaving my entire face and using the Conair hair clippers to shave my hair down to a 1 every month …

… speaking of dye it … I got the book “The Abs Diet” back before Thanksgiving … Decided to start on the diet after Thanksgiving, but that rolled into Christmas and eventually the New Year … Finally starting trying different foods and consuming different types of food … Types in the way of what the book suggests you eat and such, but not changing from Italian to Indian food or something … I know from experience that if you eat right, you will simply lose weight … When I was 14 years old, I went to Weight Watchers with my father … All that you had to do was eat what was on their menu and you lost weight … In fact, it was usually a lot of food to eat …

Recently I heard Bill Maher talking about the food we Americans eat … As a culture, America is getting fatter … They’re widening seats in movie theaters, airplanes, stadiums … The average shoe size has gone up per year … Apparently, we’re basically killing ourselves with the food we eat … Completely makes sense to me … So not only is the decision to eat differently based on a diet, it was simply a guide which seemed to not exactly change yourself completely … The guy that turned me on to the book recently said it’s a “lifestyle change”, I don’t necessarily agree in that I think it’s a decision to change the quality of food you’re putting into your body … There are plenty of things to eat on this diet that “other” people eat every day … I usually just chose to eat different things … I also decided long ago, and even after watching “Supersize Me” that I wouldn’t eat fast food if I didn’t have to … There is a convenience to it, it’s just not the best thing you could do … Think about how you feel about 2 to 3 hours (depending on your metabolism) after you eat fast food …

So, I sorta started this diet, but in moderation … It’s tough to completely get away from what I’m used to, and it’s also tough to try to get the whole family eating right … My wife bought the fries that the book suggested … She cooked them up for dinner and my 7 year old ate one and began to complain saying it tasted horrible and shrieked “Why are you doing this to us?!” … He’s complaining that I am trying to get the whole family to eat healthier … so my wife and I tried the fries expecting the worst, and they were fine … The 4 year old didn’t complain, and after we all gave the fries our approval, my 7 year old ate the fries, and even asked for more … So, I believe also in the mentality that if something is supposedly “better for you” or supposed to be “good for you”, there is already a mental block in place that this is going to taste bad … That’s simply not the case … I am finding a lot of the stuff utterly too sweet … But that’s just me …

I write this just after consuming my “smoothie” … vanilla yogurt, milk, banana and peanut butter … This one was much better than the smoothie recipe my wife followed from the yogurt package … This smoothie was void of oatmeal which you can chuck in there as well, or whey powder for protein … My biggest problem is the weekends in the bars with what to drink and eat, and during the week my wife and I like to have some wine … The author, David Zinzcenko, discourages drinking alcohol drinks … They’re full of calories … In fact, the local news just did a story on how high in calories drinks actually are …

Oh well, I will continue to wean myself into this diet to not shock myself into the change, but there are the success stories of those who committed entirely and lost a lot of weight in a short period of time … I do like the fact that the author is conscious of losing fat, not muscle and the way in which to accomplish this … There’s even a companion book to let you know what to eat when you’re out and about from the fast food joints, restaurants and parties … I will certainly keep this blog posted on the results, and if I see favorable results, then this is the diet for anybody … No matter what, everyone should eat better …

The Nose Knows

So I woke up yesterday, and I touched my nose … How often do you touch your nose? Welp, I never noticed how often I touch my nose, but what I did notice, it hurt … Hmm, weird … There seemed to be no reason what-so-ever that my nose should hurt when I touched it … Then throughout the course of the day, my nose started hurting all on its own, without touching it … I looked in the mirror … It looks a little swollen, maybe a little redish … Like there’s a knobby thing going on at the bridge of my nose … Did I break it? I didn’t remember getting slammed in the face by anything … Was it a sympathy injury from watching Million Dollar Baby? … Did my wife pound me in the face while I slept just cause I was sleeping and she wasn’t? Getting me back for all the sarcastic remarks I make to her from time to time? No. At least she says she didn’t … Hmm … Why does it hurt?

By late evening, I was sitting on the couch tilting my head back and it seemed there was some sinus stuff going on … Looking in the mirror, the swelling got a little bigger … Maybe I should go to the hospital? Maybe it’s a clogged passage and if I don’t go to the hospital my head will asplode? She went to bed and told me to wake her if I decided to go to the hospital … I fell asleep …

In the morning she asked how it was … it still hurt all on its own … She said ‘Oh my god, look how big it got!’ so I ran to the bathroom to check it out … It wasn’t any bigger … See how she says things that warrant my sarcasm! So, it’s to the family doctor I go … My appointment is at 2:00pm … I go, the doctor asks me if I had a good picking session lately … Honestly I didn’t … She said it was most likely a bug bite. A bug bite?! Why would a bug want to bite my nose? … In the doctor’s professional opinion, she thought the bug may have been hungry … She looked up my nose with that plastic flashlight thing and said yup, it’s infected … Scribbled on a piece of paper and now I have huge white horse pills to take twice a day until they’re gone … Bugs suck!

New Forum

I have posted a forum application for use here on my site … If you’re interested in starting a little online community, please sign-up for the forums and begin to forge what is ours … The link to the forum is under the links section on the right … I like having web applications such as these, and maybe it will stimulate more of a conversation than what this bLog actually does or doesn’t do …

ENT Visit

I didn’t get a chance to post yesterday, but I went back for my ENT visit. They shot that stuff up my nose again, and placed the ominous device there for nostril probing for me to stare at while I waited for the doc… well, specialist. After asking me how I was, I described that I didn’t really feel any different. The original reason I went there was discussed, and he explained to me once again that the size of my swollen lymph nodes were just beyond the size to even worry about. He mentioned that even he has some swollen ones that he’s been living with for 10 years. Damn! Another high priced doct… uhm, specialist, that deals with the things that ail him! So, he looked down my throat, checked out my nostrils (but didn’t shove that thing all the way in this time) and said everything looked okay, just a little irritated … He then asked if the stuff they sprayed in my nose helped me to breathe through my nose better … I told him that I really couldn’t tell … I mean, I don’t normally spray things in my nose, and it just feels weird having this junk in my nose that I normally don’t, so I couldn’t answer him honestly. So, he slipped me a sample bottle of Flonase, and told me if it worked for me that he would write a prescription for it for me. I was to use this as an alternative to taking some sort of sinus relief pill … From what a guy told me at the bar last night was that that wasn’t how Flonase worked … You were supposed to use Flonase twice a day or something and it took 2 days to start working. Well, I guess I will try what the do.., specialist said to do, and if that doesn’t work, I will tell him in August … So, he patted my head and sent me on my way … Whole visit took about 10 minutes …

Ear, Nose and Throat

So I finally went to the ENT Specialist … It’s another one of those things where it’s not much to worry about … but this time he’s given me an antibiotic prescription and one for blood work. Plus I have a return appointment after the pills are all gone to see if there’s any change. I guess this would mean having to do another Catscan maybe? That would suck .. sorta .. at least it wouldn’t be an MRI … He tells me that lymph nodes become swollen when you’re sick or have an infection … and the reason I was sent to him was because mine were bigger … Not by much mind you … So, maybe they’re being really careful these days … Anything out of the ordinary they send you off to get a test … then if it shows something, you go to a specialist … Plenty of money for and from the insurance companies too I guess …

So the visit was neat … Filled out the paperwork (there really ought to be a central database) and then was led to an exam room by the nurse. She stuffed this thing in my nose to shoot “litacane” into my nostrils and told me to sniff it up. Then she leaves and comes back with this thing that looks like the thing doctors look in your ears with, but it had a very long black tube coming out of it and a white strip about every 2 inches … The tube’s total length was probably about 12″ … She says the doctor will be in soon to give me my Ear Nose and Throat examination … So, I had plenty of time sitting there wondering what it’s like to have a 12″ tube shoved up your nose.

So he came in and asks, “What’s wrong with you?” and I says “You tell me!” … (After all, he had the Catscan and MRI results that I brought with me.) So he looks in my nose with a little nose pryer thingie … Breaks out the ol’ reliable tongue depressor … He used the ear thing-a-ma-bob … Then, here we go .. The 12″ tube! It was shoved into my nose … ‘You will feel a little pressure’ and yes, I did … but, it wasn’t that bad … Seemed to slip around in my head easily enough … Once it went past one point, it wasn’t that bad, and I think I felt it in my throat, and he told me to go “Eeeeeee” and I obliged … Pulled that puppy out, handed me a tissue, and everything was great …

After I told him about the ringing in my ears and such during the examination, he said while I was there I may as well have a hearing test … So I did that … A bit different from my elementary school days … A couple things seems to do their own testing … Then I had the test with the headphones on … She said words and I had to repeat them … I even said to her when she started that I could hardly hear her … DUH! It was the test … hehe … So she says these words and I have to repeat them … I wish I would have known cause I would have listened better … at the next volume everything was easily heard … Then the beeping and I had to press a button when I heard the beeping … They were very quiet tones … So, hearing them over the sound of having headphones on over the sound of my constant ear ringing, to me it was difficult … But, the end result was that my hearing is fine …

So off with my prescription for bloodwork and antibiotics and an appointment in May … we’ll see if anything happens … Fun to practice medicine …