Times of minor unpleasantness

[Mongrel]

Solid Reality: The Not So Phantom Pain

(I am glad you did not have a cardiac incident, geez dude).

[Classic]

Need some :clap: emoticons now.

[Thad]

So I got a head cold about a month ago. First I had a sore throat, then I got a cough. After about two weeks the sore throat went away but the cough got worse; after about a week of it keeping me (and my wife) up at night, I went to see my allergist.

She put me on four prescriptions: antibiotics twice a day, nasal spray twice a day, breathing treatment with albuterol followed by inhaler of Qvar twice a day.

I improved immediately, and I haven't been coughing in my sleep. And the cough's not bad in the morning anymore, so I've quit taking the morning breathing treatment.

But it still gets bad around midafternoon, so I've stuck with the evening breathing treatment. And now the antibiotics are having a pretty serious impact on my stomach, even though I'm eating 2 or 3 cups of yogurt a day.

I'm still pretty uncomfortable, and it's having an impact on my ability to work (work on my portfolio, look for jobs, etc.); I'm doing much better at that stuff than I was two weeks ago, but I'm still uncomfortable enough that I'm having trouble focusing. (That and since our AC motor got replaced on Sunday, my office seems like it's not getting as much cool air as it was before; it's tough to keep writing code when you're sweating at your desk.)

I guess if it doesn't get better in the next few days I'll schedule another appointment, have them check for pneumonia. I'm not really having trouble drawing breaths; I scored about as well as usual on my breathing tests last week. But I do have a persistent cough and I'm frequently hoarse.

[François]

Iesus Cristo, what is it with brontos and health lately? Everyone who hasn't seen a medical professional in the last month, start wearing gloves, helmets, knee pads and breath masks right now.

[Mongrel]

Man... there's a couple of still-regular members who haven't posted in a good several days or more...

[hngkong]

No kidding. Jox and I seem to have come down with basically the same thing too, just different areas. We're all getting older, we need to take care of ourselves better!

[nosimpleway]

If it's any consolation, my ortho appointment today tells me that the ligaments and minisci in my knee are all intact, and I'm just suffering from figuratively-crippling and nigh-impossible-to-fix cartilage damage. Which I knew was there already!

[Classic]

Well, people used to think that nervous tissue didn't regenerate! /impossibleoptimism

[Blossom]

I made a big pot of spaghetti sauce for dinner tonight, but since I'm feeling like shit with depression today, I asked my mom if she could prepare the noodles. Which she agreed to do, and then did. And when they were drained and back in the pot, she dumped a bunch of shredded sharp cheddar cheese into them and mixed it up so it'd melt. Now I get to figure out how to make a second, edible pot of noodles without her getting upset at me.

I swear, it's like conditioning. Every time I ask her to help me with something in the kitchen, she finds a way to fuck it all up. Is she trying to train me to never ask her to do anything?

[nosimpleway]

Tell her I told you to tell her not to do that.

[ocksi]

I use cheddar in my spaghetti. It's pretty good.

[Mongrel]

We had to buy marble cheese last time because the grocery store was out of everything else. More traditional cheeses work better, but cheddar in pasta is not the end of the world. To be fair, you did post that here and not in the other thread.

[François]

Got my x-ray and sonograph done today, at last! I still don't have much info as to the next step because the results need to be analyzed by an actual doctor, but from what I could gather from the sonographer's comments, I have a couple tendons bunched up tighter than Donald Trump's panties when he's in the same room as a woman with an opinion.

I've regained nearly full mobility by now, even if some positions/movements are immediately and extremely painful still, despite the anti-inflammatory medication. At least I can raise my arm straight up above my head for short periods of time! It takes a hell of a lot of effort, but I can make it happen, so I dare hope the worst case scenario is out of the picture. I have to assume I'll need to work to undo whatever muscular atrophy happened in the last month, but at least that should be something I can take care of myself once everything else gets loosened up.

[Mothra]

How long till you can get an actual doctor to look over your scans?

[François]

I have no idea and it's out of my hands. My family doctor retired five years ago and I'm on a waiting list to get a new one, so the radiology department is sending the results to the doctor I saw at the emergency clinic* three weeks ago. And said doctor is, of course, pretty busy with emergency duty and his own regular patients. He did seem to take my condition very seriously, so with any luck it won't take ridiculously long. I've had shitty doctors before ("the medication we prescribed you turns you into a hair-trigger sociopath, but you don't sleep too much anymore, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, GOODBYE") and he didn't appear to be one of them.

*: "Emergency clinic" is a bit of a misnomer. If you want to see a doctor there, you first have to call a phone number that activates at midnight to get an appointment for the following day. I called at 12:05 AM and got my appointment for 2:00 PM. It's still better to go there than to the actual hospital ER if you don't have anything immediately life-threatening though, since the hospital staff will only see you if no one there is hurting more than you, no matter how long you wait. Which is not unreasonable of course. You just gotta be on the ball and be aware of your options.

[Blossom]

I don't know what the right thread is.

I did some math tonight, and with some very conservative estimates ... if I want to move out of my parents' house and actually support myself and my necessary expenses, I need a pre-tax income over $50k. That's never going to happen.

[Mothra]

Lot of programming and tech jobs pay around that much, so, that might be a path to great victory.

[nosimpleway]

Sure, if you're in a tech field.

Google is coming to Denver, and as someone not likely to ever make Google wages, that scares the hell out of me. Our housing market is already glutted with trust fund kiddies and massively wealthy, like, fuckin' rocket scientists and shit (no really, Lockheed Martin is a big employer around here). It'll only get worse. I'll probably have to consider where else in the country to move, again.

[Grath]

Sure, if you're in a tech field.

Google is coming to Denver, and as someone not likely to ever make Google wages, that scares the Detroit out of me. Our housing market is already glutted with trust fund kiddies and massively wealthy, like, motherfuckin' rocket scientists and santorum (no really, Lockheed Martin is a big employer around here). It'll only get worse. I'll probably have to consider where else in the country to move, again.

A friend of mine lives near-ish to Denver and is looking into some kind of "rural land development" subsidy something where he could buy a house out in a more rural area (albeit this is outside of like, Fort Collins? or something like that) with something like no downpayment and a discount of some kind? I can ask for further details tonight.

[nosimpleway]

I'm not sure what "rural land development" entails but if it's something I can do even though I can't even keep the rosemary plant on the deck alive, I'm all ears.