Monday, June 30, 2008

Yeah so the beast headache is working on what, week 3?

I wish I could say this sucker was gone but nope, not so much. The Tramador did not work on Friday night/Saturday morning. Instead the headache took over, made me nauseuous and shakey. Now here's the problem with mondo headaches, they are like dragons. Once you let them run amock getting them back down is really not so easy. So where before the ibuprofin could take it down to a 0 (on a 1-10 scale) now it can only take it to a 2-4 or so. It makes life hard to be in. So now I take my pills every 5-6 hours and wait for the dr to call back. I've made 2 calls into him but it's Monday, you never know if they'll get back to you on a Monday. They do have a number of my pharmacy to call something in to. I also have some vicodin or something at home I can probably slap myself silly with this evening. Which may be my best option. Then maybe I can go back to taming this bitch of a dragon headache cause damn if I have not had enough of this chronic brain pain.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

We are sucky parents

No really, we are. The dd was sooo looking forward to the birthday party slumber party at her friend's house. As were we! And for some reason we thought it was Saturday night. Nope, it was Friday night. We totally missed it. The dh called this afternoon to see if we were supposed to feed her before coming over and figured out that we missed it. The kid was not happy. Anyway the other girl's dad suggested that they have our dd for a sleepover at their place Sunday night. We're game so lets hope that goes over fine because at this point the kid thinks we're total losers. Which we are and totally own up to but we'd rather not have that proven to her so young in her life. So as a kind of treat we took her to go see Wall-E this evening. OMG what a fabulous movie. We loved loved loved it. Couldn't recommend more! As a really cool extra added bonus there are very few words in the movie so you can take very young kids to it and they stay riveted through the whole thing. The story line is fabulous even for adults. Actually especially for adults. Go see this movie, it will make you happy. As will checking all invitations for kids b-day parties to make sure you get the day right. Damnit.

Tramadol, I seem to be immune...

It's the 'atypical opioid' my neurosurgeon prescribed me for my headache. It doesn't work for me. Like at all. Period. Nothing. And mind you ibuprofin does work but you probably don't want to be on it every 5-6 hours for 3 weeks straight. Which is what I'm going on now. The headache was getting better, a 3 on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the worst pain ever. I took a Tramadol last night and went to bed. I woke with a bit of a headache so I got up, had a small bite to eat and then took my meds including Tramadol. Within an hour the headache was back up to a 7 or so and I was feeling nauseous and shaky from the pain. Not happy at all so I took 600 mgs of ibuprofin and layed down for a bit. It took another hour but I was better. I think if the headache is allowed to get started and get a leg up it just gets out of control. It hasn't this bad for at least a week, when I needed to up the ibuprof. So I'll give the neuro a call Monday to let him know the pain pills don't work and keep myself pumped up on the usual other stuff. I don't want to go for the hard core pain meds though since I still need to get to work and drive and drop the kid off at the place she stays at this summer. Yeah I want to be pain free, not catatonic.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Blog surfing

I do it, all the time, constantly, all day long. Of course I have nothing else to do at work so this is no big surprise but it also made me think about how often I update and what I write about. I'm not too bad about updating. I post a few times a week at least and I try to take pics to post too. That reminds me, I have pics of the big guy Jayne in the little guy's bed to compare to the pics of the other 2 in the bed. I lag, it's terrible I know. Any way back to my ramblings on, I am going to try to post regular every day stuff that may or may not be interesting but may be distracting at the very least. This week end the dd has a sleepover b-day party. I am so excited. It's from 6pm Saturday night to 3 pm Sunday. Oh hell yeah baby, we're doing movie theater marathon weekend. All the grown up movies we can squeeze in, we're going to do. I'll let you know what we end up seeing and you'll probably get my totally unrestrained review of them too. I'm un-opinionated like that...

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Brain is fine

Or at least the neurosurgeon thinks so. Others have differing views but I'm happy as long as my neurosurgeon is. He doesn't see anything wrong in the MRI scans so he's put me on Tramadol, which I will take sparingly. Fortunately the headache has toned down a lot so I don't think I'll need much for much longer. I still have my films since I have my regularly scheduled neurologist appt in 2 weeks. I'm to take them to her so she can see them. Like she really cares....
That's a terrible thing to say though, she's really nice. I just hate her Nazi staff.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Random musings and the like

Fortunately other than the headache life here has been pretty dull. I have half an instrument set up at work so I don't have any real work yet. Once Thursday comes I'll have the installation engineer for the other half of the instrument so hopefully after that we can get things rolling. I have been creating quite an expensive mess though, they'll be doing a bunch of remodeling because of me. I don't think they were expecting quite this much re-working of space but I am a chemist, I do chemistry, I need a hood. That needs ventilation, out the roof, with a blower. Well since they put me on the first floor that means they needed to figure out how to pipe out a 12" ventilation tube. Sooo then they decided to wall off some of the new reception area (on the 2nd floor) and create a room for the hood. The big panic was that they thought they'd have to move my instrument up there too. Oh hell no. I don't need the instrument next to the hood. That seemed to make them happy, all I need now is a cart so I can wheel my chemicals onto the elevator and down to my instrument. Much cheaper than trying to get my instrument upstairs. That would be a nightmare of large proportions.
So I spend my day flitting through the internet on my limited computer (they have a computer department here that restricts access to some average websites, whatever!) and waiting for my friends on the west coast to wake up and get to work so they can get on gchat with me.
I have my appt with my neurosurgeon on Thursday and hopefully he can look at my MRI films and make use of then and get rid of this damn headache. For those of you keeping track the pain has gone down to about a 3 on a 1-10 scale. It used to be a 5-6 so that's better. Until then though, better living through chemistry.
Oh I did forget to mention the kid though, you are going to love this. So we have friends (religious ones) that have volunteered to take care of her over the summer. It's never a full week though since the dh works 4 days on 4 off. So they have a 6yr old son and he and the dd are sent to vacation bible school (which here in SA is free) and it's different churches every week. The week they went to Community Bible Church the dd came back saying that if Satan comes up to you all you have to do is repeat Jesus over and over again louder and louder. The dh was horrified and I just started busting out laughing. It was funny! Then I explained to her that it was not true and that life does not work that way. I did not go into detail that if Satan did come up to you she wouldn't recognize him nor would the repitition of Jesus' name scare him off. She seemed ok with that and went about her business. Good thing too since the next step of explaination would probably have been more complicated. Lots more complicated. Ah religion, sad that the kid is the most religious person in our household. Unless you count the worshipping of food wherein which the dogs are A #1 followers of that god.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Day 10 of headache, and cute pic


Oh yes, Corbie went upstairs to bed one night only to find the Princess Roxy in it. Not that there are any other places for her to sleep in the room. There are 2 couches and 2 large dog beds that the dogs sleep in. Roxy wanted the little Corbie dog bed though, because she's a 55lb dog that can squeeze her ass in a 25lb dog bed. It's like a woman proving to herself that she can still fit in those pre-pregnancy jeans. It can happen, its just not pretty. Corbie stared at her for awhile, gave us those "Woe is me" eyes and when we ignored him he just crawled on up and slept on top of her. It's now been like that for the past 3 nights. I don't know when but at some point in the evening Roxy makes her way somewhere else and Corbie gets his bed all to himself again. We don't bother rearranging them, we figure they can dang well work out their sleeping arrangements themselves plus we're sure Roxy will soon get over it since she really doesn't like sleeping buddies anyway. Damn strange dogs. FWIW our big dog Jayne also sometimes squeezes his 75lbs butt into that little dog bed too. Why? We have no idea. Maybe just to prove to the little man that he's not so special. Spoiled little brats.

Friday, June 20, 2008

MRI done today, results Thursday when the doc checks out the films

Check out the eyeball shots!

I even have the films with me to take to my neurosurgeon's on Monday. Unfortunately that means I still have a headache (and probably and ENORMOUS MRI bill) but hopefully the dr will figure out something for me next week. I have been to get a CT scan before and probably an MRI at some point too but I don't think any MRIs were done that I actually remember. It's an interesting experience. The CT scan I had while in rehab back in December 07 was fast, easy, and well, fast. MRI, not so fast. I was at the hospital for 3 1/2 hrs today getting it done. It was very very interesting. And loud. I can't imagine a child being able to do it and not be fully sedated. It takes awhile. And did I mention it was loud? In a very tight space. At least it was just my head being done so I didn't need to be in it fully. It took like a good hour inside that tube to be done. I was not expecting having to get gowned up and have an IV placed, apparently I was having a contrast done. And the IV guy didn't believe me when I told him where to place it, he thought he'd just put it in the back of my hand (which was ice friggin cold and the veins were miniscule). I told him he'd be better off with the crook of my arm. Sure enough, after beating the back of my hand a few times he checked the crook of my arm and was like "Whoa, lookie that vein!". Told ya dork. I was a vet tech for 5 years, I know what a vein looks like. Try hitting a leg vein on a screaming 5 week old kitten. Damn vein collapses every time you hit it. So yeah, when I tell you where to hit my vein listen man listen!
The MRI has the weirdest noises. The chugging of a pump in the background actually put me to sleep although I tried not to go to sleep all the way because I was sure I'd totally try and get comfy and roll over and they'd have to start over again. Did I tell you it took awhile? It took awhile. I think I did start quietly snoring at some point. Hey, it was Friday afternoon and I was tired! There was some seriously loud noises in that thing though, did you know that they put earplugs in your ears before they start? And even then I could tell the dang thing was cranking out some serious clanging. It's like those 1980's video games, strange repetitive noises that change ever 5-10 minutes or so. Only louder. I think older people would be freaked out by these things too. It's a really strange experience. Let hope it gleaned some good into for the doc. I scanned some of the x-rays in so you guys can see the defective insides of my head...

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Headache day 6

Finally got a hold of my neurosurgeon. Apparently they couldn't find my chart, they never asked for the spelling of my last name. They thought it was SanMiguel. For those of you that know my last name (it's hyphenated and swiss-irish for those of you that don't) you know that it's impossible to wing it and get the right spelling. But they had my number and didn't call...WHATEVER. Sooo they say that since my neurologist didn't want to prescribe me anything (of course she doesn't, she probably doesn't even know I am having any issues, damn receptionist) that they are going to get me another MRI and then an appointment with my neurosurgeon. 2 days for them to figure out this oh so difficult problem. And we want to socialize medicine, can you just imagine? No. Oh hell no, I'd be long dead by now. So until then I am dosing myself with 600 mgs of ibuprofin every 6 hours, lets hope my kidneys can take it.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Headache day 5...

Yeah that's right, same headache has not gone away for 5 friggin days. I am now at the point where I have to take 600 mg of ibuprofin every 6 hours to take the edge off. I still feel the pain but it takes it down a few notches. I called my neurosurgeon and then my neurologist. The neurologist is impossible to get any thing out of. Her receptionist told me to give them a call back with what the neurosurgeon had to say. Wow, such great care! And fwiw, the neurosurgeon's nurse called me back after 5 hours to ask a few questions and said they'd get a hold of me later this afternoon. Yeah right, sure you will. And they didn't. Novel! Not. So we'll see if I get any feed back tomorrow. I might be annoying and call them back, it's not like they can penalize me for it or wow, maybe make it so they are less likely to call me back. Hah! I'll let you all know what and when I hear of anything.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Turbo, a Power Rangers movie

Haven't actually seen the movie before...and yeah so the kid decides it's on Cartoon Network and we watch it. Oh it's so bad I can't even describe it. The climax is them all getting together in this thing that's kinda like a toddler version of a Transformer. I know, it's kind of an insult to Transformers but that's the only thing I can liken it to. I don't think I've ever watched something this corny. Ever. It's really really bad and the bad guy (girl in this case) had the full on Xena warrior costume, pooched out titties and all. Completely inappropriate and I'm not conservative at all but dang! Oh and the good guys were a little family of trolls. WTF? It's just so bad I can't even begin to get over it. I think it may leave a mental scar, this is way worse than The Wiggles and Barney. Even if those shows bred and had babies. It was bad. Oh sooo bad...

Saturday, June 14, 2008

All fathers of a daughter MUST read this post

Or men who may have the luck of having a young daughter at some time in their life. Soooo damn funny, true, but that just makes it more funny.
Rite of Passage

Friday, June 13, 2008

My head hurts

Sitting in a small room with an air compressor and a vacuum pump running all day takes it's toll in one's skull. Hopefully Monday they will move my desk out of that room. Before my head explodes. Again....

Thursday, June 12, 2008

A review, for girls only

No really, if you're a guy you probably don't want to read this. Actually if you're one of those girls that don't want graphic reviews you probably don't want to read this either. Really, stop now. You've officially been given fair warning.
So this is one of those reviews you only see on those strange websites that talk about products that the general populace (female in this particular case) does not normally use. It's a feminine product review and for this you must get some odd tmi background info on myself that you probably never wanted to know. Again, consider this fair warning people, it's not to late to stop and click on some other website!
I am one of those lucky females that had the exquisite luck to start menstruating early, like at age 8. No lie, elementary schools are just not set up for that kind of thing. And this was no mild period either, we're talking HEAVY flow for 5-8 days and dwindling on for another few days after that. Usually it lasted a total of 10 days. And the cramping would make me black out. The blood loss made me very very tired. It was bad. Birth control pills did not help and I swear they put me on every one on the market. Low doses gave me mild spotting 24/7/365. Heavy doses made me homicidal within 4 days of starting the high dose. Either way it was always a horrid part of my life that I just lived with. I mean what choice does one have really? And for those of you who have never experienced that type of flow before you do have to modify your life around it. Tampons alone did not work, pads alone did not work. I would stand sometimes and it quite literally felt like I had just expelled my entire bladder. Don't even think about going swimming for at least 1/3 of every month. Sometime in my mid 20's I tried a product called Instead. It was like a diaphram only it was meant to hold your mensus. Odd but hey, nothing else works so why not?OK so does that picture give you the idea? Scary? No really. My problem with this product was that it filled up. Really quick like. It looks like it can hold a lot but remember it's in a limited space so it doesn't look like that after you put it in. Oh and the other problem? It sets up right around the cervix so prying it out, not so fun. My cervix is tipped and the Instead is not set up for us backwards people. You really have to be a contortionist. I can barely sit cross legged. I'm not big (and no woman with a round belly can use any of these products, you have to fold yourself in half to do this stuff. No lie.) but I'm not flexible either. Plus this product is disposable and got to be expensive after awhile. Especially since I had to keep buying pads for the overflow. Oh and you're not supposed to use these with iuds because you can pull out the iud if you grab the strings when pulling out the Instead, can you say ouch? My strings have been totally cut off (that's going to be another post too since next month I have to have it taken out and replaced) so I am not going to have that problem. So much for that idea. It had so much potential though!

Enter the next contestant. During the Great Cloth Diaper Hunt I noticed a lot of mommy products like cloth pads (I don't do tampons anymore and I'm not writing a post about the reason why or I'd never see any of you again, trust me on this one) which seemed cool since living in Texas and wearing these plastic-like pads can give a person diaper rash. Soooo not pleasant. I have yet to try these cloth things but I have some on the way, my friend has some she's sending me. No, this time I am trying the Diva Cup. Same general concept as the Instead but bigger capacity, stiffer cup and it doesn't wrap around the cervix. Still not an easy thing to use but it can hold more and is reusable.
So enter night one with this new fangled device. Insertion was no big, you just squish it and shove it in. You're supposed to then spin it so that it pops open. Yeah, spin it around, I can do that. Not. I can get it in there just fine but it's not going anywhere. Like ever. I read on Mommy Gossip that one woman found it easier to insert and remove in the shower. Nope, didn't work for me at all. I was afraid this morning after trying for like 15 minutes in the shower that I'd have to wake up the dh and have him pull the dang thing out. Would have never heard the last of that I'm sure. Turns out you don't pull the sucker out by that little nub on the end, nope that don't work. Oh and it did leak over night too, I think because it didn't pop open after I put it in. Couldn't spin it around and all. Whatever. Anyway I wasn't ready to give up yet so I wore it to work hoping the act of walking and such would get it to fit right. Nope, leaked all day too. Not bad but I am not flowing heavily right now either. The Mirena IUD fixed that heavy flow problem. Oddly, pregnancy and child birth didn't, old wives tale I suppose. I did find out when I got home that removal is totally easy while sitting on the toilet. Thank God. I am not into the whole contortionist thing, I was going to pull something out of socket and be very unhappy. I'm going to stick with it and see if I don't get the hang of it. With pads as back up of course. A girl can't be too careful ya know.

So are you still reading? Did the pictures not scare you away? Really, comment, tell me how freaky you think I am. Do it. Do it now. Oh and visit some of the websites on The Great Cloth Diaper Hunt. That whole diapers filling up land fills? Same goes for those pads. I think OB tampons are biodegradable but not the other brands. Great to know those things are going to hang around forever isn't it?

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

So the Mass Spec is up

Of course the installation engineer for the LC is busy so we could only go so far with the MS installation. We are now waiting on Shimadzu to come in, lord only knows how long that will take. I am, of course, deaf from sitting in a small room with an insanely loud instrument. There are a few different ways we can solve this problem (and we will solve this problem) but I need the HVAC people to come in and determine what will work best. I know what I'd like to happen but we'll see what's most practical before I start in on them. Hey, I can be practical. HVAC comes in tomorrow morning so we shall see...

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

So the installation started today...

And there a few minor issues. As per usual of course. Now if I had worked with this particular brand of instrument before and the things attaching to it I could have avoided these problems. Unfortunately I hadn't and when the sales person came in to sell it to my boss he said "Sure it'll all fit in this room no problem!". Heck he even said 2 would fit in there. No, not really. We also need a chemical hood in there and I now know that isn't going to happen with me in there too. Of course I don't mind moving my desk space out of the room (even if it is a window office). With all the instrumentation in there it's DAMN LOUD. Like you couldn't talk on the phone and you'd leave at the end of the day with ringing in your ears. They have this think called a PEAK Nitrogen generator (rather than using a dewar of liquid nitrogen) and it has a compressor in it. Damn loud. And the instrument has a vacuum pump attached to it. Damn loud too. In a tiny room. The two together, hella damn loud. So soon we will find out if I move from the window office to the closet. And I mean that in the most literal sense...

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Tuesday is the day...

On Tuesday the installation engineer arrives for my new instrument. As of Tuesday I will officially be a mass spectrometrist again. And maybe it'll take him less than a month to get the thing set up again and I'll be able to get some work done! In the meantime I've just been surfing the net and it gets boooring after a few weeks. We'll see come Tuesday!

Saturday, June 7, 2008

It's the little things

With the price of gas lately being astronomical we've been trying to limit driving (like the rest of the nation). So my drive to work is not that bad, 8 miles each way. The dh carpools so out of his 4 days on he only drives once (that's 168 miles total). We decided to get pizza two nights ago and there's only 1 Pizza Hut that services our area, we usually pick it up. We order pizza when we want food faster than we could prepare a meal, if we wait for delivery it defeats the purpose because it takes them 50 minutes or so to get it to us. So the dh calls in the order and sends me to go get it. Fine, I drive over and they haven't heard of our order. I call the dh and he had called the wrong store. He called the store further away in the opposite direction. Way to go, tossing gas down the drain! I was less than pleased.
So this morning I check my phone (dh leaves for work around 3 am) and there's a message from him at 3:49am. He says he can't remember if he locked his car and could I go and check for him? Now he doesn't tell me where it's at. I know from last week (when he had discussed with me his new car pool that he was switching to) that they were to meet at the HEB on Bandera. For those of you that don't know about San Antonio the HEB is the only brand of grocery store we have out here. We hate it but that's a whole other blog post. Oh and Bandera Rd is reeeally long and probably has no less than 10 HEB's on it. Last I heard he was meeting them at the one closest to us. Around 1pm I get the dogs in their crates and the kid in the car and drive on down to the HEB. Drive around the totally full lot (how many people are at the grocery store at 1pm on a Saturday do ya think, a lot?) for like 20 minutes. In my SUV. Pissing gas down the drain. Do I find his car? Oh hell no. Did he leave in his message where it was parked? Oh no, why would he do something like that when he could get me to waste gas like it was free? Right, so once again I was irritated with his complete and total lack of directions for a trip that I should not even be making. Hell the car is insured, steal it. I don't like the damn thing anyway. Ford did not make the new Mustangs for short people, especially the stick shifts. Plus he beats the crap out of his cars. He's ripped off the passenger side mirror on the side of the garage doorway. He ripped off the running board on the driver side. It smells like boy stink on the inside. I have no love for this poor car and we should really only buy him a p.o.s. because that's how he treats them anyway. But back to the story. I can't call him of course because cell phones are not allowed in prisons. I do call to leave him a message though letting him know hat I tried but could not find his car amongst the 200+ other in the lot. At 2:30 or so he calls me to see if I got his message and I explain to him how it went down. He then apologizes and tells me he parks his car near the paintball store. Um, the paintball store is halfway down Bandera Rd towards the city proper. And he says "Oh I didn't tell you that we changed where we were meeting?" Lets see, no. What a huge waste of time and money. It's the little things that make the difference, like changing locations by ummm like 5 miles. I'm hoping someone stole it. Maybe tomorrow he'll leave the keys in it and somebody will take it. Hey one can always dream right? I mean how often does that stupid amount of money you spend every month on your car insurance really come in handy?

Monday, June 2, 2008

90-100 calories?

So is this the new magic number? Has anyone else noticed that all these individually wrapped snacks that boast either 90 or 100 calories? We buy these little snacks for the kid to take to school for her snack time. It's during class time so it isn't practical to send a fruit cup (too messy) or grapes (they get so squished in her back pack), instead she gets fruit sticks (love these) or these nifty little fruit 'n yogurt things. The problem is that she needs more than 90-100 calories. I swear she lives off of air, she's a terrible eater. When she visits her friend's the parents always give me an update with what she's eaten all day and it's better at other people's homes but their kids eat like two to three times as much as she does and you don't have to shove every bite down them. I swear my kid has taken chewing to an Olympic level. She can chew one bite for up to and beyond twenty minutes just to avoid taking another bite. I'll bet if I had a boy this wouldn't have been a problem. Of course I married the wrong man for breeding boys, everyone knew he would only have girls. And be able to do their hair all nice and pretty. Have I mentioned how many times inmates and other corrections officers have asked him if he's gay? It's gotten to the point of being tedious now. And really, the man loves women waaay too much to give them up.
But I digress, the point is that what is so special about 90-100 calories? I mean you are either going to eat the whole box of Oreos or you aren't, little bag o snacks be damned. Exercise, don't bother dieting! You either eat healthy or you don't, self control and exercise is what's going to get you there, not the little bag o snacks! Denial, that's the main problem with people. It's not the 7 deadly sins, it's denial. Think about it, all 7 of those sins are rooted in denial. The Catholic church just named their 7 favorites to make it so that people didn't have to think too hard about it. The Catholic church hates it when people go off and think for themselves. That's like their 8th deadly sin.....