Category: Health

Neurosurgeon

So I go to the neurosurgeon and he asks, what’s wrong with me? So I tell him .. the tingling in my left hand, down my arm, etc … He looks at my MRI … reads the report and says yeah, there’s something there, but it’s small … Does it hurt? No. Make a fist. Push. Pull. You’re strong … Bah! Don’t worry about it … It might even heal itself … He said he has numbness in his thigh that he’s had for years … a little arthritis in the neck over 30? Bah! Happens to everybody … You just live with it … Get outta here … sorry to have made you drive up in the snow and everything … So, $5200 later … it’s nothing … Now we have to see what happens with the Ear, Nose and Throat guy …

Last week I had a sore throat for about 5 or 6 days … I finally got some Amoxicillun and that has taken away my throat pain … went a little hoarse as well … still sorta lose my voice throughout the day, but I suspect I am on the road to recovery …

Got new business cards: http://www.icuhost.net/images/icubizcard.jpg …

Hmm … that may be about it …

More Results

So the results come back for the Catscan, and I think I read it aloud to the wife … Says something about swollen lymph nodes in my neck, and I’m not very concerned about it, but you know the wife … She gets this look on her face and says ‘Lymph nodes? That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?’ … Wha? What are you trying to say, honey? ‘Well, nothing …’ You saying I have CANCER in my NECK because they referred to the LYMPH NODES in my neck?!!? So, now I am going to die and I have a week to live … I will cry now, then smoke a cigarette, and then play with all my computers …

After berating her and reading the letter over several times, it said nothing of a “mass” in my neck, nor any words like ‘benign’ or ‘malignant’ which are great cancer words … I also told her that I didn’t think the doctor would send off a letter showing the results with another specialist’s phone number to contact if it were in fact a diagnosis of cancer … You’d think he’d call me in his office and sit me on his lap and tell me … So, I forced her to call the doctor and ask how long I had … If it were more than a week but less than two, I wanted to make some plans … The wife yells at me for buying computers rather than taking the family to Disneyland … So, here was my chance, sympathy and all …

Swollen nodes in the neck, and a referral phone number to an Ear Nose Throat Specialist pointed all the signs towards a pretty serious infection in my head somewhere … I’ll buy that … I have had serious sinus problems for years … I had a doozy of a weird numbing head experience a while back, and I was sent for a Catscan at that time (no dye) and they said it was a serious sinus infection … I took these really big pills for a while, and didn’t feel any different … Way to practice medicine, huh?

So, now I have an MRI and a Catscan under my belt in the last few weeks, and they both have returned different results pointing me to two different specialists. Ugh! … In the meantime, my beck (back/neck) has grown sorer … It feels like I pulled a muscle up my spine or something … Uncomfortable … The numbing in my hand comes and goes … I am generally falling apart, but for the most part (honestly) I don’t feel that bad …

I would probably feel better if I was successful in quitting smoking, but I’m obviously a wuss … I couldn’t do it … I have cut down a lot though, but still go through periods of my past habit … When I am conscious of it, I smoke one cigarette a third at a time making one cigarette last 3 cravings rather than 3 full cigarettes … I have smoked for 23 years … Never before have I stopped … It hasn’t been an on again off again habit … I have remained loyal to cigarettes … National Smoke Out Day – Ha!

The difference this time other than the other times I attempted to quit is that I want to … I still say all the radio ads you hear about their quitting smoking aids are a money back guarantee because they’re bought by people that want to quit … I doubt they’d work on someone who had no intention of quitting … I tried that Zyban stuff … You could still smoke while taking it … One of the side affects is seizures, but I still popped those pills … Didn’t help me one bit .. I felt no different nor did I quit smoking … Turns out that Zyban is actually Welbutrin which is an anti-depressant … Has nothing to do with smoking? Another aid to help you get through the Zyban system … Stupid … I have cut down though, and this puts me on my way to quitting … I guess a gradual stop is better than a jerk?

The iMac arrived … I am working on the paper so I haven’t been able to dive into it … It a real beautiful machine … I wonder if it’s okay to have a smart looking machine to do work on … The desktop graphics alone are impressive … More on the iMac later …

Dye

Okay, so the dye wasn’t what I thought at all … See, I thought they were going to shoot me in my neck … That’s not how it went down at all … The technician chick found a vein on my arm and hooked up some sort of contraption that I couldn’t see that she could shoot the dye in right before they do the Cat Scan … So, I didn’t feel the needle go in or anything … I guess that means that she’s good at it … So, she gets the machine fired up and me put in place … She comes back and says, okay, I’m going to shoot the dye in now … You will feel warm and may have a funny taste in your mouth … This is normal … So, she shoots it in … I don’t feel anything … I’m waiting for something to happen, and nothing … Then suddenly, my nether region … The “jewels” become awfully … hot … and then I feel it spread through my body … Like going from today’s 10 degrees to immediately 95 in direct sunlight … A warming sensation like I have never felt … Wild! While this happens, the scan is done, and poof, I am out of there … Took all of 5 minutes? I was a little woozy afterward, but I also hardly slept the entire day … I think I was very nervous about the 20″ needle that was going to be inserted into my neck that evening … Now I need the Midas Touch neurosurgeon that will tap the back of my neck with his index finger and make it all better …

iMac will come Monday … Gold car is in for inspection … Time to sleep …

Update

So Alex was upset that I didn’t update the bLog here and mention the fact that he visited and helped me clean up some of “the Shop” … In fact, what he did was throw away things I have had a hard time parting with … I admit it … I keep everything … Why? I don’t know … I guess I think that I will eventually use something, or I will refer to it, or something great will happen if I get rid of something that seems to hold some sort of value … Okay Alex, there’s your mention, now get back over here and let’s do more …

Why no update til now? Been very busy (sorta) … Many things on my plate right now … I find that sleep very much gets in the way … I also find that lack of sleep makes waking hours not as productive … We really need to get rid of this sleep thing … There just isn’t time for it … I have also gone off on many tangents that keep me away from doing actual work … There is also this thing where when on the web, one link leads to another link and that leads yet to another link … 4 hours later, what was I looking for? So, along with sleep, I think we should work on piping information subliminally to the brain while we’re doing other things so that we don’t have to go looking things up …

eBay is the devil … No matter what, if you go to eBay, there is something that you’ll want to buy … I have been toying with the idea of getting an iMac … it’s BSD backended with the OS X operating system these days … This will further my separation from Microsoft who I have had nothing but bad things to say … The longer I have been running Microsoft systems, the more I have been exposed to nothing but problems … In the past, the thing that turned me off about the Apples was their proprietary hardware and software, now there is a break in there with the possible ability to run Open Source software on their machines … Once I receive this iMac that I purchased off of eBay and get to know it, I am sure I will share my experiences with it … I hope for great things, but I will certainly be honest if those things aren’t as great as I expect … I have to reiterate though, I am not “anti-Microsoft” … I am just disappointed with the results I have had with Microsoft … I could certainly go into specifics, but I don’t feel like it …

So in passing yesterday, my wife says ‘You know you have to get the dye for this Cat Scan.’ … WHAT?! I didn’t know I had to get the dye for this Cat Scan … Made my last night not very enjoyable, and I think I have a bit of stress over it … People I mentioned it to said that it wasn’t a big deal, so I offered that they go in my place … No one offered … She says that they asked if I was allergic to shellfish … So now they’re going to shoot up my neck with seafood … Just what I was looking forward to do today … Having health problems sucks … In many more ways than one …

That and in the course of the last couple days we find out that the MRI cost $5,000 … I sincerely find that hard to believe … I would buy $500, but this is supposedly what someone told my wife … So, the crappy insurance that we could afford pays $1,000 towards outpatient testing or something, so I am now in debt $4000 … I should put a PayPal Donation link on this site now? I had a CatScan (no dye) before, and it cost $600 … I cannot believe an MRI costs $5,000 … Another thing to keep everyone informed about … (This is a short semi-rant on insurance; I’m SURE this will get even better in the future).

And that’s just some of what’s been going on … *sigh*

2003 Ends …

Just about to head off for my final job of 2003 … This year it’s The Interns at Whiskey Tango where I work for the bar and not the band … My pay will be substantially less this year … Probably about 10% of past years … Maybe The Interns will tip? =)

Haven’t been playing Counter-Strike as much … Played Monday night for what looks like 9 hours … Played about 4 hours on my server, then another couple hours scrimming on pick up games .. and then an hour or so goofing off … the server sits idle most of the time … That P4 2.4G machine sitting there doing nothing … I’d move the CS Server to a wimpier box, but then the server wouldn’t run well when people did join … It stinks …

I think my appointment for the follow-up on the MRI with a neurosurgeon is January 26th … Before I go there I have to get a CAT Scan done … I have to bring the MRI and CATScan results with me … I really hope this is a no surgery case … I don’t like the idea of surgery and especially when it has to do with me and my spine … My neck has been hurting the last couple weeks … I don’t know if it’s psychological or not … I really don’t think so, I think it simply just hurts … I don’t think I could stand living with this pain … The other concern is the insurance that I have … I don’t know if it will cover the tests or the neurosurgeon … My wife spoke to the insurance company and they said they will cover a neurosurgeon office visit, but not a consultation … So it’s all in the billing … Insurance … a rant I will leave for another time …

I hooked up my brother with one of these MovableType sites on Christmas day … Registered his name and popped him up on a web server … Same server as this site as a matter of fact … a FreeBSD 4.8 Server running Apache Web Server and using a MySQL database on the Windows MySQL Server … In the coming weeks I will complete the “computer room” and get the DNS Servers and MySQL server over to FreeBSD machines … The Bugcheck crashes aren’t fairing the network very well … Yeah it’s only every month to month and a half, but is still a huge hassle … Too bad Windows is the way it is … Besides the fact of these errors with no offered resolution, those servers run fine …

Anyway … that’s about all the has been going on … Web work has continued with many site updates for multiple customers and the birth of some others … Not all of the sites that I mentioned previously have panned out … Doesn’t mean that they won’t, just that other people must have ideas and take a while to act on them as well … so …

Happy New Year!

MRI Results

I got the results back from my doctor on my MRI … Apparently the MRI showed I have some problems in my neck … The letter written on the MRI report said that I needed to get in touch with a neurosurgeon, and there was a prescription for a CAT Scan paper-clipped to it … Just the mention of neurosurgeon scares me, but I don’t know that it necessarily means surgery is something that needs to be done in my spine … I just hear the statement in my head “We will do this, but understand that since we’re playing with your spine, we may paralyze you for the rest of your life.   Sign here.” … and bands complain about the cost of production … It’s cost me my neck and the tingly feelings in my left arm which should be reserved for the ensuing heart attack for someone my age and weight who smokes.

Speaking of which, before this test was even done, I have decided to quit smoking cold turkey for this New Year’s … I have been tired of all the radio commercials .. especially the one from Megan where her father quit “too late” … I look at my 5 and 2 year old and think that it’s a good thing to do at this point … I sincerely hope that I can accomplish this … I have been smoking for ~23 years …

Well, Merry Christmas with this information, huh? But I will start reading some of the presents that I shipped to myself with the others … Going to start looking into this CSS layout thing for sites since I am hearing more and more how embedded tables will break down the road … I think it’s almost the same thing as the Open Source/Proprietary argument, but I think if it works, it makes more sense for the client browser to do the work with sending less information down the pipe … In the long run it will save bandwidth etcetera for both parties … thus making the sites load much faster … That seems to be one of the major concerns as of late too, and wouldn’t you know it, I was able to purchase a book on that topic as well …

I also brought a couple other books into the house that also had me thinking about my mortality … The Neverending Story and The Princess Bride … Classics …

MRI

I had an MRI done, and I don’t know if they’re all the same, but I had the one where you’re loaded into a tube … I never thought I would have issues with it, but I did … Shortly after being loaded into the tube I had a brief period where I almost called out and had myself removed … But, I talked myself out of it … Shut my eyes and got it done … I knew it had to get done, and if I didn’t do it then, I would have to do it eventually … and other means may have been … worse …. After that initial feeling of distress passed, my heart pounding, then the sensation of having to throw up, I was able to get through it by closing my eyes … I think anyone should be told this … Just close your eyes … even before you’re loaded in … cause I think that’s what freaked me out … Having the ceiling of this tube about an inch from my nose … Forget about the pounding noises they say you’re going to hear … They were more like buzzing sounds … like someone cutting wood with a power saw next to your head … The nurse had put earplugs in my ears before I went in … She informed me I could scratch an itch or something when I didn’t hear the loud noises, but in all honesty, I don’t think I could have moved my arms … So I didn’t even try … That may have freaked me out even more … In between each “scan”, the nurse came over a speaker somewhere over my head … Or technician (whatever they’re called) … The whole time there is a stream of air blowing over your head and down through the tube towards your feet I guess … This also helped after I shut my eyes, cause you could imagine you were just on your back at the beach or something … It’s the same thing for rides at an amusement park … If you close your eyes on any ride, they’re all about the same … You feel like you’re in a car with the top down … It’s when you open your eyes that you realize you’re going in circles way above the ground, etc …

So, to sum up .. when getting an MRI, close your eyes … wear earplugs … and realize that you will hear power tools next to your head … If you know all this ahead of time, I think you’ll be fine … I was after the first minute or so …