Filling the Scrip

This morning I called in sick to work again so I could go to the doctor. My headache was much better, though I was still running a low fever and still lacked the capacity to draw a nice, full breath. With my screwed up ability to deal with heat I'm a little leery of going out for a hike in the sunshine while I still have a fever.

So I went to the doctor.

I dozed off in the waiting room and missed my call. Someone else waiting to get in was kind enough to wake me and I went stumbling through the doorway and into Doctorland without an escort, which, it seems, just isn't done.

Whoops.

I saw the doctor, but more importantly she saw me. I got a 5 minute breathing treatment (which left me a little dizzy and with a numb face) and a prescription that I could pick up at the CVS that was right up the road, coincidentally right on my way home.

Also coincidentally, this was the very CVS I had walked out of, months earlier, in what I'll call a.... um... 'showy' fashion. I might have made an impression. They might remember me... (please see my entry titled "Here's Your Medicine - Psych!" for further clarification)

Whoops.

So I kept a low profile. I didn't make eye-contact. I spoke in a slightly different voice than my own, and I was extremely polite. All this, and the pharmacist who was assisting me still looked at me a little funny. So did the guys working behind the counter back there. Did they remember me? Did they recognize me? I had also gone to the trouble of altering my appearance slightly, so how could they have tipped to the fact that it was me?

I mean, look, would you recognize me?

Of course not! So what was with the odd looks?


I may never know.


Talk to you later!

Note to Self

I felt well enough this afternoon to get myself out of my room and take a little trip over to Handsome's for a visit. I showered, plunked my butt down in my Jeep and headed over there, seeing him for the 1st time in 3 days. I, having pretty much been in lock-down isolation for two and a half days, had no idea it was like 75 degrees when I was getting ready to go over there. I figured it out when I got out to the car, in time to take off the jacket I had put on for the trip.

When I arrived, Handsome was out back playing on the deck in the back yard. Aware that my playing options were limited, since I had all the stored energy of a rag doll on Quaaludes, I offered to play a game of 'Horse' with him. We found the basketball, and the game began.  Handsome was very happy to win 2 out of 3 games before I had to stop and stagger into the house and have a seat at the dining room table, where I had left my stuff.

Note to Self:

When already quite heat-sensitive, especially to the build-up of internally generated heat from physical work that is unable, due to your lack of an ability to perspire, to bleed off, fever exacerbates the condition.

In other words, when you usually run into overheating trouble working or playing, even lightly, in 75 degree temperatures when starting at your normal temperature of 97.5 (my usual, 'healthy' temperature), working or playing, even lightly, with a starting temperature of 100.1 gets you into trouble even faster.

To make sure I understand this when I read it later: work or play, even lightly, in any kind of warm temperatures, when you are already pretty heat sensitive, while you have a fever, is a recipe for taking a forced nap after 10-15 minutes. For at least 20 minutes. No matter how uncomfortable a chair or position you've chosen, or how crippled this nap will make you upon awakening.

That is all.

Dumb-ass.

Talk to you later!

Yes. I Have Pants.

It's December 16^th. 

9 days 'til Christmas. 

I work outside all day, every day …

...and I'm still wearing shorts.

I'm not even uncomfortable most of the time. I have my shorts, and I have my hooded sweatshirt, and I'm good.

People keep asking me if we have a bet in the Post Office, trying to see which letter carrier in my town can last the longest without putting on long pants. But it's nothing like that. There is no bet, and I personally don't care who wears shorts longer into the winter. 

I'm just still not sweating. That means I can overheat very easily, so I'm looking to manipulate my clothes to help me thermoregulate, and it's much easier to just take down my hood, or even shuck my sweatshirt altogether, than to try to change my pants out here on the road. (If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, please click this link to go to my blog post titled "No Sweat, No Problem...Not Really!" It will explain everything.)

There are still days out here, like today for example, where it is warm enough (50 degrees today!) that I have to take down my hood because I'm starting to overheat. People don't understand that as long as I'm moving, as long as I'm generating internal heat, I'm fine out here!

Until, of course, the sun goes down. It gets a little hard on my shirts when the sun goes down. I keep having to buy new ones. 

You see, when the sun goes down, the temperature drops quite rapidly. Once that happens, and a brisk evening wind whips across my bare legs, my nipples go hard enough to cut glass.

They keep poking holes in my shirts.

I hate it when that happens.

Talk to you later!

Check, Please!

Yesterday Handsome had a soccer game, and he did great! He was a force to be reckoned with on Defense, and while he was on Offense he scored his first goal ever. And he almost scored his second while he was at it! It was a great game, and afterward he didn't want to leave the field. The rest of his team all went home (or wherever, I really couldn't swear they went home, but they all left) and he and I stayed and kicked his ball around for a while. I played goalie and he shot on me, then we switched and I was shooting on him. I was kicking the ball at the goal from mid-field, sprinting after it, just playing like I was 20 years old again.

Until, of course, I started overheating from my anhidrosis. That slowed me down pretty quick. But for a while there Handsome and I were having a lot of fun.

Cut to this morning.

I awoke not feeling very well. I didn't wake up on my own, actually. My bladder was doing the biological equivalent of smacking me with a rubber truncheon and screaming Get up! Get up! Get up! in my ear. I sat up fast and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

At least, that is what I attempted to do. As soon as I tried to swing my legs like that, my left hip put a figurative hand on my chest; a large, muscular, very capable looking hand, the kind of hand that you find attached to the large, muscular, very capable men that loan sharks send out to express their displeasure over non-payment. My hip held me down with that hand. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" it asked, glaring at me from under a thick, lowered brow. 

"To the bathroom!" screamed my bladder, before I could say a word. "He's going to the bathroom! Now get out of the way, this is an emergency!"

My hip shook its proverbial head.

"He ain't going nowhere 'til he takes care of this!"

My hip was handing me a check, and it was one of those giant, oversize checks like the ones you see people getting when they win the Publisher's Clearinghouse, smiling and crying and holding the check as they shake Ed McMahon's hand. And I was crying, but not in a good way. This wasn't a check that was made out to me,  this was the kind that comes to the table after a big, expensive dinner, and I was the dufus reaching for his credit card.

"You remember yesterday, when he was all running around like an idiot?"

"Of course I remember," shouted my bladder. "But this is an-"

"Well all that acting like a kid again costs," went on my hip, as if my bladder wasn't shouting in its face. "It all costs big. And it's time the bill was paid!"

My bladder was screaming something back, but I wasn't listening. Pretty much forgotten by the two of them as they argued, I was quietly staggering toward the bathroom, dragging my left leg behind me since moving my hip cost me tremendous pain. I staggered as fast as I could, since as soon as I moved I realized that my bladder wasn't the only thing feeling tremendous pressure, and the only reason I hadn't heard from my bladder's neighbor was that it was concentrating all its energies on keeping it together. Figuratively and literally. I was just trying to get to the john before I wound up having to clean my room. With a hose.

I made it.

15 minutes later I made it again.

15 minutes after that I made it again. 

Every time, dragging that leg.

I didn't make it in to work today.

Reminder: Please check out the Coffin Hop, the button for which is in the upper right of the blog page. October 24th - 31st, it should be a lot of fun.

AND check out my website, the button for which is right below the one for the Coffin Hop. 

For more detailed information on either reminder, please see yesterday's blog entry.

Talk to you later!

It Begins Again :-(

Today I came to believe that my anhidrosis is back. (please see "No Sweat, No Problem - Not Really!" for information on anhidrosis)  Parts of me are sweating, but parts of me are not. I went ahead and made a doctor's appointment for tomorrow to see if I should go in for some tests or if I should start the steroid infusions right away. I've decided to keep a little private diary, or log, about the treatments this time, as well as the symptoms to try to keep track of my progress, or lack thereof. I can't believe I never thought to do this before. What I'm thinking is there may be a book in all this crap. After all, according to the people I've spoken with, I'm kind of a medical miracle. So I started my sweat log, or Slog (Think it'll catch on? Me neither). I chronicled the date, the weather, my sweating issues in detail.
But then I got distracted by that book idea. A book about a man who, for no known reason, loses the ability to sweat. Hmmm... what would I call it?

• No Sweat!
•  - No, that sounds like I'm trying to be a self-help guru. Tony Robins would be parked on my lawn trying to call me out!
  
• Feelin' Hot Hot Hot!
• Well... that sounds like it's either a dance number, or women will be buying the book thinking it's a calendar of half-naked firemen. Um... no.
  
• Sweating Like A Pig!
• That would be technically accurate, since pigs do not sweat, but I think a lot of people wouldn't get it. The Richard Simmons crowd might think it's something he put out to go along with 'Sweating to the Oldies', and I'm not all about that. Going to a book signing and being charged by an angry crowd of 300 lb-ers who were expecting a small, effeminate man in ridiculous shorts sounds more like a nightmare than a dream come true.
  
• Bone Dry.
• Sounds like an AA pamphlet.
  
• The Quest for Salty Gold
• Okay, that sounds like a pornographic fetish video - Noooope!
  
• Adult Onset Exacerbating/Remitting Ideopathic Anhidrosis - The Story of a Medical Miracle
• The only thing drier than the author would be the title. I'd be guaranteed to sell at least one book.  Thanks, Mom.

Okay, not having a lot of luck here. I still think there might be a book in all this malarkey, I just need to find a hook. An eye-catching title.

A little help here? Does anyone out there have any suggestions for a title? Throw one in the comments section below. Serious, funny, or in-between, I'd love to hear from you!

Talk to you later!

But I'm Not Thirsty!

Tonight on the way home, Handsome was thinking about my anhidrosis. Our conversation made him laugh quite a bit, so I'll try to recreate it here, for you.

"Dad," he said, "I think it's weird that they thought you were dehydrated when you weren't sweating. Where did they think it was all going?"
"They didn't know I wasn't sweating yet," I told him. "All they knew was that I was having signs of heat stroke and it was barely 60 degrees out that day. Usually, when someone gets heatstroke it has to do with them sweating all the water out of their system until their body just runs out. Then, with no water cooling their system, they start to over heat really fast and *bam* they get heatstroke."
"But couldn't they check you?"
"Oh," I replied, "they did. They took some of my blood and checked to see how much water was in that. I could have just peed in a cup, I guess, but I had been drinking water all day and not sweating any of it out. I was going to the bathroom every fifteen minutes, and the water that was going into me was coming out right away, practically unchanged. I could have peed it right back into a bottle and still sold it as spring water, for crying out loud!"
In the seat beside me, my son started laughing.
"I probably could have peed in a cup for them, but they would have said "Hey, slow down there, pal! You just took this from the tap, didn't you!""
"'No,' I'd have said. 'I'm just super hydrated is all. I'm sloshing. Look, I've been drinking grape flavored water all day, right? Well smell that sample! Does it smell like urine to you? Nope, smells like grape, doesn't it? Enticing, right? Make you want to try a sip?"
Beside me, Hansome was laughing fit to bust. Feeling like a funnyman, I went on.
"Put two bottles side by side! In one we put grape Propel, in the other we put some Propel that's gone through me! We'll call it Propee! Propel and Propee, a blind taste test! What do you think?"
The passenger window rolled down suddenly, and Handsome stuck his head out.
"What are you doing?"
"I was laughing so hard," he said, "I threw up a little in my mouth!"
I took up a bottle from the cup holder between the seats and held it out to him.
"Wanna wash it out with some grape Propel? I promise it's Propel."
I made an evil face.
"...or is it?"
He started laughing again, turned a little green, and his head went back out the window.

He is my best audience.

Nothing says funny like vomit in your throat!

Talk to you later!

Sweat, Handsome, and the Poo-Hole

So today, I started to sweat! Just a little, while I was cutting the grass after work, and I had to wear a sweatshirt and a hat to do it, but I started. Not dripping or anything, just getting damp in places, but those have been some pretty dry places for a lot of months, let me tell you! Huzzah for steroids! Not only did they not break my netbook, but they seem to have fixed me again! Yeah baby!

So, since that sums up the best thing that happened to me today, I'll have to throw in a story about Handsome.
Last year, I took Handsome on his first real camping trip. He'd been 'camping' before with Mom; in a cabin at the edge of a small lake, one with a bathroom, electricity, a stove, a shower... you know, camping.
I took him out on the local river in the canoe, loaded with stuff. Tent, camp stove, sleeping bags, food and water. We went out to an island owned by the Audubon Society, of which I am a member, where they have three camp sites. You can only get there by canoe, and you only have what you bring in with you. In other words, don't forget the shovel and the toilet paper.
That was one of Handsome's first questions when I proposed the trip.
"Where will we go to the bathroom? I mean, like... you know..."
"We'll dig a latrine."
"A what?"
"A latrine. Basically a latrine is a hole, or trench, that you use as a bathroom when one is not available. You dig a hole, and then as you use it you bury what you leave behind."
He just stared at me for a second.
"So... we're going to dig a hole. For poo."
"Yes. Yes we are."
He was an 8 year old boy who was all smiles at that.
So, we made the trip. Drove out to the landing, packed up the canoe, and paddled a couple of miles upstream to the island. When we got there, Handsome set up his tent while I unpacked the canoe and set up the rest of camp. I was still situating the food stores when he finished with the tent, grabbed the collapsible shovel and started into the woods. I watched him walk by me, shovel on shoulder and smile on face, and I just had to ask.
"Hey Handsome! Where are you going?"
He stopped and turned back to me, striking what for an 8 year old would count as a 'heroic pose', and answered proudly.
"I'm going to dig the poo-hole!"
Laughing, I went with him to make sure he was doing it right, explaining the need for a tree to rest your back upon, and a log to hang your nether-works off of.  Then I stood and watched as this boy, whom I can not get to clean his room, nor pick up his clothes, happily digging away, making his first latrine. He did a pretty good job, and we spiked a roll of toilet paper to the tree and left it at that. We played and romped and ate and generally had a good time for the rest of the day. We had our fire, toasted marshmallows, and went to bed.
We were up early for a camp breakfast of pancakes and bacon, and started playing again. Suddenly, though, in the middle of a little soccer game, Handsome spun away from me and trotted off into the woods in the direction of the latrine.
I let him have his privacy.
A short time later he came strolling back down the trail, looking much more relaxed.
"Dad, can we go home now?"
I blinked.
"Really? We have this place for the rest of the day, and we could stay until tomorrow if you like..."
"No, I'm kinda bored. Last night was fun, but there's nothing to do now. Can we go?"
"Sure, I guess. You gonna help me strike camp?"
"Okay."
I had figured it out by then. Handsome had done everything he had set out to do that weekend. A canoe trip, sleeping out in the woods in a tent...
...and most importantly, he used the poo-hole!
Oh, the stories he must have told when school started, the bragging he must have done.
Kids are fun!

TTYL!

Treated Right but Still Planning a Murder

So, the last of my steroid treatments for this round went off without a hitch. No need for JS to come save the day, Tall Girl wasn't there. Instead I saw Not So Tall Girl and someone I'll refer to today as New Girl. New girl came in and threw the hep-lock in there and slapped the IV line onto it, no muss no fuss, no bubbles no troubles. I even got to write for a while in there, since she used the crook of my arm rather than the back of my hand.
Huzzah!

Now, what was I writing about? Obviously not this blog, or it would have been posted hours ago! No, I was doing something called 'pre-writing'. For those of you who are not writers, I'll explain. Say you are going to write a novel. There is all kinds of stuff that you might want to know about the backstory, the stuff that happened before your current story is taking place. How the characters interact, how some things came about, how people feel about that, etc.
Now, this stuff probably doesn't need to be in your book, it just needs to be in your head. You can skip all this part and just kind of wing it, and I tend to do that with my short stories. In fact, with my shorts I seem to be reading them as I write them, and am taken by surprise by some things that my characters do even though they are coming out of my head! I've done that with longer things, and while it's fun, it doesn't make a story that hangs together well for me. So, for my next NaNoWriMo I'm trying some pre-writing.
What the hell is a NaNoWriMo, you ask?
Go ahead. Ask. I'll wait.
Done?
Okay. NaNoWriMo, or NaNo for short, stands for National Novel Writer's Month. Thousands of us word-geeks sit down for the month of November and we each try to bang out a 50,000 first draft of a novel in 30 days. From scratch. Everything that is to go in the book written within that 30 days. Sound like fun? It is. Sound like an insane amount of work? It is. The idea is to just sit and write, even if you think you're writing crap. Last year, that's exactly what I did. I wrote crap.
Well, it's not crap, exactly. Most of it is actually pretty good, if I do say so myself. And I do. But what happened was that I wound up with lots of really great parts to a story, that don't all hang together as a whole story. Bummer.  But I didn't even find out about NaNo until the 3rd of the month, and I sat down with a short story idea I had that was just way too big for a short story. That was all the pre-thought I had put into it. None.
So. This year I'm giving myself a loose outline to follow, or, more likely wander from, and doing some pre-writing. The pre-writing is fun, since no one's ever meant to see it but me. It's just writing stuff down as it occurs to me with no thought of revision or anything. This is the kind of writing that can tell you about yourself as well as the characters you are writing about.
For instance. In the story I am writing for this Novembers NaNo, there has been a murder. It doesn't take place within the NaNo story, it happened before, but they find out about it. So that I have something in my head when they find out about the murder, I'm writing the murder scene. Will it be in the story? Nope. But it will be  in my head, so that will make writing about it later on easier.
Here's the funny part.
So there I was, sitting in the doctor's office, happy as a pig in a poke, writing a first person account of breaking into someone's house to kill them. Off the top of my head, with no forethought or planning.  And I was having no problem with it at all. I had method of entry, restraint, killing, clean-up, disposal and escape, all just rolling out of my head like I had done it all before. When I look back at it, it's pretty damn good.
Now, I'm not sure who actually reads this blog. I know of a few people, like 5 or 6, but there are about 2 dozen people occasionally reading this, as far as I can make out by reading the hit stats. I'm kind of thinking that, once it gets out that I get such a charge out of writing murder scenes, fairly brutal ones, that I'll have even fewer people out there willing to hang out with me than I do now.

So, what are you doing Friday? Wanna hang out?
No?
... See what I mean?
 they're not real, right? Yeah ... fictitious ...
...yeah...

Talk to you later!

P.S. - Yes, last year I beat the deadline set by NaNo. I had 52,000 words by the 30th. I didn't stop working on it until it was 64,000 words, and 176 pages, but hey, I was having fun. I'll go back and fix it, someday. I think I've figured out how. Now all I need is unlimited time...
Anyone out there want to fund a hard-working unpublished writer?
No?
I guess I'll sit at home and plan out how to kill fictitious people. Yeah ... fictitious ...

ttyl!

No House Here

So I went back in for my second steroid treatment in the series this afternoon. I made sure I was hydrated, and I had eaten before I went in, so hopefully I wouldn't pull a 'turn white and drop' like I did yesterday. No worries. I was so hydrated I was begging for a bathroom on the way in to the exam room. The closest one, please. Like, now!
So I went to the bathroom and then to the exam room and had a seat in the big recliner with the butcher's paper on it. I love that butcher's paper. It's for catching germs and fluids. Like blood. Real confidence-builder when she's about to stick a little spike into my vein!
So the tall girl was going to stick me again. Yesterday she worked on my left hand, so today she wanted to give that hand a rest and work on the right. I had my little netbook with me, so I could read one of the books I have loaded into it. My friend JW wrote it, and it's good. It's called "Hotblood: A House of Slide Novel", and clicking on the title will get you to it's listing on Amazon, in case you're interested. I told Tall Girl I wanted to have my right hand free so I could type. What I didn't tell her was that, more than wanting to type, I wanted to localize the damage. Sheesh!
Well, she decided that the left hand had taken quite a beating yesterday, so she really wanted to work with the right today. I relented. Typing or not, spreading the damage out or not, the reason I was there was to get the dang treatment and start sweating again. I got the netbook (a 7" amazingly cheap netbook, a Sylvania purchased at CVS for $99. Barely lets me do anything but read and write on it, but that's good enough for me.) out and ready to read, with the book called up and already on the right page. Then Tall Girl went to work.

• 1st vein - straight through the whole vein and into the meat below. Bad stick. And a little painful! I recently read somewhere that when men are unwell they are worse than pre-pubescent teenage girls. I protest! I took this sticking like a man! A man who was not acting like a pre-pubescent teenage girl!
  I said "Ouch? Ouch?"
• 2nd vein - straight through the whole vein and into the meat below. Just re-read the 1st vein thing.

TG called it quits and called in JS, the experienced nurse she is training under. JS sets up, chooses a vein in the crook of my right arm, and before you can say "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", or if you can't say that then 'really fast', I had a hep-lock in my arm. 
Take that, Tall Girl!
So they had the hep-lock in my arm, and now all they had to do was attach the line from the IV bag. The bag was hanging on my left, but they were working on my right. JS was holding the hep-lock down with one hand, until someone got her some tape. She asked the other girl, who was tall but not as tall as Tall Girl, to hand her the line. Not So Tall Girl took the line and handed it over, but the end was still capped. JS had one hand busy holding that hep-lock down, so she held it back out to Not So Tall, holding it right over me, and asked her to pull the cap off. Not So Tall did just that, and to all of our surprise a jet of Prednisone Solumedrol solution shot out of the uncapped tube. 
Directly onto the keyboard of my open netbook.
Huzzah.
JS pinched off the tube, stopping the jet, and told Not So Tall "You didn't clamp it."
Not a year, a semester, a single class of medical training, and I already knew that.
They clamped it, and attached the tube to the hep-lock, and paper-toweled off my keyboard. I still read "Hotblood", and the 'scroll-down' key seemed to be working fine. That's all I did. I didn't bother to try typing since all I had was my off-hand, and if I started to freak out that they had destroyed my netbook right there in the chair, I may have pulled out that hard won IV line. 
Flying jets of medication or not, fried netbook or not, the reason I was there was to get the dang treatment and start sweating again.
Grrrrr...
So I got the treatment, and I didn't feel ill or anything. Everything was fine. Until I got the netbook home and actually tried it out.
It was impossible to use just one key. Hit the 'T' and the machine typed 'TG'. 'D' was 'DC' '4' was '4R'... you get the point. I had a very hard time not losing my temper at that moment. I had gotten the dang treatment, and I wasn't sweating. There had been flying jets of medication, and it seemed that I had wound up with a fried netbook, so why the hell wasn't I drenched in perspiration? My son watched me warily for a few minutes as I stared off into space and focused on breathing deeply. I didn't count to ten, or anything. It would just remind me that the '8' on my netbook was the one key that didn't work at all now.


At one point yesterday I compared my visit to the doc to the TV show "House". Today I realized that there is no House where I go.

It's a little more "Keystone Cops".


Talk to you later!


P.S. - FYI, the netbook came back once it dried out. Mostly. If any of you see me putting down my area code as "97(4+4)", it's because the freakin' '8' still doesn't work!


TTYL!

Paging Dr. House, Dr. Gregory House...

So I went in to the doctor today to begin the steroid treatment for my anhidrosis (See "No Sweat, No Problem", and "Stubborn or Stupid"). I happened to run into someone who reads my blog there in the waiting room. I'll call her T-. T- told me I'm funny.

Cool, that's what I'm going for. Thanks T-! You made me feel like I had a fan! You da bomb!

Anyway. I went in and sat in the chair so they could set me up with a hep-lock and run the IV line. It took a little bit. The girl who was working on me is learning. She missed one vein and when she tried to push saline through the line to clear it, it didn't go into a vein. It started to blow up the back of my hand like a water balloon.  I was on the way to having Mickey Mouse hands. Funny, but not what we were going for.
It took her some time to place a new line, but she got it. I'm a little squeamish, so I don't look. I just look away or close my eyes and go to my Happy Place.
Said 'Happy Place' is really anywhere they are not sticking a thingie into the vein in my hand. Yuck!
So there I am, hep-lock and IV in place, and the steroids are starting to drip into me. Huzzah, right?
Wrong.
I had a...reaction... to the medication. Now it may have simply been a reaction to having a thingie in my vein. I told you, I'm a little squeamish. When I went for the blood draw for my marriage license I went a little white and had to lie down. I was better in a couple of minutes, and I went on my way.
Not today.
I started feeling a little nauseous. I mentioned it, and they asked if I was going to be okay. I replied that I did not know. It started getting worse, and I asked if there was a bucket or anything I could hold on to. They gave me the trash can from the corner of the room. It had a spring-loaded lid on it, so I was still concerned that I might make someone have to clean far more of the room that they had intended, but it was what they gave me. I lost my color (what little of it I have), got dizzy and short of breath.
Eventually, they stopped the steroid drip and went to get J-, the more experienced nurse the girl is learning under. She started to do things like take my blood pressure, get me a drink of water, elevate my feet and recline my chair so I could relax more. She decided I may have been a little dehydrated, and started a saline drip, a fast one.
So, there I was, lying on my back with the saline dripping, my eyes closed, just taking deep breaths and concentrating on not proving to one and all that yes, I did have lunch that day. The saline started to work, and I started to feel like I was not going to audition for that Exorcist re-make, and I opened my eyes. I started to giggle, which made the people in the room look at each-other in concern.
"No, don't worry," I said. "I'm not delirious." I went on to explain why I was still chuckling.
When I slowly opened my eyes, here is what I saw. A white tile acoustical ceiling. Two flourescent light panels. A ring of three faces with concerned expressions looking down on me, with an IV bag taking up the fourth spot in the circle.
My very first thought was My God, it's just like on TV! Where's House? [Dr. House, from the TV show, "House"]
Thats when I started to giggle.
Okay. Maybe I was a teesnsy bit delirious. Or a whack-job.
The rest of the treatment went well, and I'm going back for the second one tomorrow.  I wonder what else I'll do to amuse myself while I'm there...

Talk to you later!

A Hot Guy Cutting the Grass

If that title pulled in a few more female readers, then it did exactly what it was supposed to do.

Sorry, ladies, this is what we call the old bait-n-switch. It wasn't a hot guy in the sense that I know you are all thinking, it was just me and I was really hot. Temperature-wise. Not the good way.

It was in the low 80's, and I was heating up quickly. (Search 'anhidrosis' in the field in the upper left to get entries explaining anhidrosis. The earliest is probably best) I was determined to get the grass done today, figuring that the house was right there and I could go in to cool down whenever I liked.

I am, however, as I noted in a previous post, stubborn. Or stupid. It was never resolved which.

I had made certain the gas tank on the mower was filled to capacity. I was working away industriously, and had taken off my shirt in an effort to keep it clean. This would also let the cool breezes waft across my skin and ferry away the heat I was building up. I was wearing the hat that Handsome picked out for me last year that happens to be the bomb at keeping my head cool. Straw, vented all the way around, it is an awesome hat to keep cool.

I decided that I was going to just get the grass done.

I cut my way through the front, and around the side, and was working on the back when the heat really started to hit me. Remember that gently wafting breeze I was looking for? It had gone fishing. The hat was helping, helping a lot, but it was just too hot. But I'm stubborn, and I kept on working. I was panting, and I could feel myself turning red, it was happening so fast. I was looking at what I had left to do and convincing myself in my head that I could just get it done... when the mower ran out of gas. It was while I was filling the tank that I saw the steam.

Steam was coming from the tank as I poured in fresh gas. Now, I have heard that there are parts in there that are usually not exposed to air, the fuel normally covering them and keeping them cool. Run the machine dry and expose those parts to air, and they can get hotter than usual. Throw some fresh gasoline in there over those parts that are hotter than usual, without letting those parts cool down a bit, and boom!

I had heard that rumor, but I have never seen it happen. I had also never seen steam coming from the tank as I refilled the machine.

I looked up at the church that, as I have mentioned before, can be seen quite clearly from F-'s house. I quite clearly heard God talk to me for a second. To me, God sounds like George Carlin. It's possible, I suppose, that George, having passed away, has been assigned as my Guardian Angel. Either way, I heard the voice in my head.

“Yep. You have been given a sign, a sign that it is time to go in the house and let the mower cool off. While you're at it, why don't you cool yourself off, you moron? I mean, I can't make you go in the house; I don't work that way. But if you insist on ignoring My sign, and pull the starter cord on that thing right now, I can blow your ass up! I do work that way! So, what's it gonna be, Dumbass?”

I went in the house.

As I passed my son, who was playing a computer game this whole time, he took one look at me and said “You okay, Dad?”

“Nope.” I replied, as I went straight into the bathroom and took a cool shower. Not cold. Cool. When I'm overheating, cool feels like an ice-bath on my skin, and I didn't want my son to hear me crying. It worked wonders, though, and I was out in about 15 minutes feeling much better.

“I'm going out to finish the grass,” I told Handsome. “If you get hungry enough, in like an hour or two, and pry yourself away from that game for long enough to ask me about lunch, and you look out that back window and see me sprawled on the grass out there, just call 911. And bring me some ice. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He's pretty used to me, so he didn't get too alarmed. Not alarmed at all, really. As I recall, he never looked away from the screen as we spoke. I went back outside.

The thing about overheating is that once I start to do it, it takes a long time for my core to cool down. That means that it's pretty easy for me to overheat again for a long time afterward. So I rapidly began to overheat again. Did I go in? Nope. Stubborn (or stupid!), remember? I finished the yard, panting most of the time, and I could feel the redness setting in again as I put the mower away in the garage. The garage. Where we keep the trimmer. I took the trimmer down, telling myself Well, this is a quick thing. I can just walk about with this and get the trimming done nice and fast, and then it's back in the shower for me...

I started the trimming, working my way along the driveway to the front of the house, then across the front, doing the walkway, and then -whazzap! The trimmer was out of line.

I tried to open the line-feeder to make sure that it was empty, and that the line had not simply snapped off just inside the feeder, and I could just feed more out by hand and continue. It was while I was doing that I heard George again.
“Look, stupid, go in the house. I know the trimmer has never done this before, but I work in mysterious ways. Yes, it's empty. And no, there is no replacement line in the garage. You think I'd forget something like that? You think this is My first time having to deal with an idiot? I swear to Me, sometimes it's like you don't have the brains I gave you...”

I went in the house again. To stay this time. Handsome gave me a funny look as I passed him on the way to the shower, probably because I was quietly giggling. He may have thought I was delirious, but nope. I just have voices in my head.

And I just love George Carlin!

Talk to you later!


P.S. - I promise, I'll get away from the anhidrosis thing soon, and tell a few funny stories. Pinky swear! 

Here's Your Medicine... Psych!

So, the warmer weather is here and my last steroid burst treatment did nothing for my anhidrosis (For info on anhidrosis, please see my entries "No Sweat, No Problem", and "Stubborn or Stupid"). I did call from Colorado last week and set up a series of new appointments along with a prescription for the steroids I will need for the treatment. They should have been available for pick-up at my local CVS (a New England pharmacy chain) by last Friday, but I was out of town so I couldn't stop by for them until Monday night. Since I was scheduled to start my 3 day treatment on Tuesday, this seemed to be perfect.
Monday rolled around. I was going to stop by CVS on my way home from visiting with my son. I wanted to make sure they were ready, so, like the commercial says, I called.
They had no record of a prescription for me being filed from anywhere in the world.
Terrific.
I hung up with the nice lady and looked at my watch. 5:10 pm. Too late to call the doctor's office and try to get the prescription straightened out. No worries. I would simply call the doc in the morning and have them file the prescription at the CVS near their office and I could pick it up there on the way to get my treatment after work. Easy.
In the morning I did just that. The woman at the doctor's office with whom I spoke said that CVS, the one near their office now, claimed that my prescription would be ready by that afternoon. That afternoon rolled around and I stopped at CVS to pick up my medication.
They had no record of a prescription for me being filed from anywhere in the world.
They had no record of me in the entire CVS system, nation-wide. By either name or birth-date.
I began to get annoyed.
I informed them that I was in the system. That I have a CVS card in my name, and that I get prescriptions filled at CVS all the time. That my wife has been getting all the medications associated with Multiple Sclerosis and it's symptoms from CVS, using my last name and insurance card, for the last 17 years. That prescriptions for my son have been filled at CVS for the last 8 years, also using my last name and insurance. That if prescriptions gave frequent flyer miles I could zip off to Russia on their dime. That I was pretty sure that if I filled just a few more prescriptions at CVS I would get my name on a parking spot in front of the CVS of my choice.
Right about this time, my name popped up in the system. Hurrah! It popped up because the CVS near my house, the one that the prescription was originally sent to, days ago, was just acknowledging receipt of the prescription and was filling it. I was 3 minutes away from the doctor's office where I was to get the treatment, and my appointment was in 20 minutes. My medication, however, was now 40 minutes away. One-way.
I took a deep breath.
I took another.
What the hell, they're free; I took a third.
I was on the phone with the doc, trying to clear this up. She was on the phone with me and the pharmacy I was currently breathing in, trying to clear this up. The pharmacy I was breathing  in was on the phone with the doctor, the pharmacy near my house, and two other pharmacies, trying to clear this up.
A pain began to throb behind my right eye.
The doctor hung up with me to try some other calls to try to clear this up. I believe I sounded calm when I said goodbye to her. I had lost count of my breaths a while back, and they didn't seem to be doing squat for the pain behind my eye, which, I was pretty sure, was my brain getting ready to explode.
The woman behind the counter was watching me breathe and explaining that they could stop the prescription near my house and try to transfer it to them here, and it would be ready by tomorrow, or, since I wasn't going to make it to my appointment in 15 minutes I could just pick it up near my house, or was it possible that I could get a later appointment with my doctor to get the infusion done, or...
I wasn't listening anymore. I was breathing. And doing one hell of a job at it.
My phone rang. I answered it.
It was another woman at another CVS. The CVS near my house, in fact. The place that had, ostensibly, gotten this horribly screwed up prescription faxed to them almost a week ago. She was pleasant, I was pleasant. She appeared to be completely unaware of the giant screw-up that was happening, telephonically, in two different cities at the same time. She was calling to inform me that my prescription, which was for a three huge doses of intravenous steroids followed by a prednisone weaning off program so that I wouldn't go into steroid shock or something, could only be half-filled. They did not have the prednisone. Would I care to stop by later in the day and pick up my half-prescription?
I took one more breath.
I said "I quit." into the phone and snapped it shut.
The woman behind the counter, who had continued talking to me while I was on the phone with the other woman, started a little and said "Excuse me?"
"I quit." I repeated. I then began to use... language. I questioned their work ethic. I questioned their competence. I cast aspersions on their apparent intelligence. There was a man behind the counter who just kept staring at me. I questioned the legitimacy of his birth. Interspersed in amongst all the questioning were words that everyone knows, but polite people do not use.
I was not being polite.
I stormed from the building, continuing to hurl 'words of low character' back over my shoulder at the pharmacy counter. If there is such a thing as a 'ban-list' at your local pharmacy, I'm pretty sure I'm on it.
I went to the doctor's office, just three minutes away and tried to cancel my appointment. Right when it was scheduled to start.
They allowed it.
They went so far as to work on CVS on the phone, and got their assurance that the prescription would be filled, in whole, by 2:00 the next afternoon. This afternoon. 2:00 should have given me plenty of time to get to my 3:30 appointment. Today was my day off, so I called at 1:00, just to be sure, and warn them that I was going to be there in a hour.
My prescription, I was informed, could be 1/3 filled. I could have one of the three doses I need. I was advised to start the treatment today, with the dose they did have, and they promised they would have the other two doses in by tomorrow. 3:00 pm. Latest.
Yeah. Sure.
I called my doctor and cancelled my appointment for today, and the ones I had in place for Thursday and Friday. When asked why, I replied that I had absolutely zero confidence in CVS's ability to get me my medication when they said they could, and that I would wait until I actually had the medicine in my hands before making more appointments to have the intravenous infusions. She said that 'might be for the best'.

Gee, ya think?

Talk to you later...

Stubborn or Stupid?

So... today it was in the low 80's here in Massachusetts. It had reached 77 degrees by the time I left work this afternoon. I left two hours early because I had an appointment with the doctor to start a new steroid treatment, attempting to beat my anhidrosis into submission. (For information on anhidrosis, what it is and what it can do to me, see my entry titled "No Sweat, No Problem... Not Really!") The fact that it needs to be beaten into submission indicates to those of you who are paying attention that it is still in full swing. I can't sweat a drop.
Just for fun, I'll describe what it feels like to very slowly go into heatstroke, like I did today.

• First, I start to feel hot. Extremely hot, like I am laying out in the sun at the beach, even when I am in the shade or inside. Have you ever been standing in the sun and you can feel that your hair is hot? Not reached up and touched it, but felt through your scalp that your hair is hotter than the rest of you? I get that feeling, though I have no hair, since I am heating up from the inside out and heat rises. Lots of heat is trying to get out through my head, and the skin gets hot enough that I can feel it, just like you feeling that you have hot hair.
• Next, I notice that my heart rate is high. Much higher than would be normal for me while exerting myself as much as I am at the time. I know my at rest heart rate is 50 beats per minute. When I start to overheat I've taken my pulse at rest and found it to be upwards of 120 beats per minute.
• Now I begin panting. Like a dog. I'm not out of breath, I can stop panting and breathe normally if I think about it, but if I think about something else I start panting again. My body is trying to do a little heat exchange through ventilation.
• At about this point I notice I'm turning pink. It looks like a sunburn, but if I lift my shorts-leg, or raise my shirt a little, I can see that the pinkness extends into places where the sun cannot reach. There are no potential tan lines from this reddening, since it's not a reaction to the sun. That increased heart rate I was talking about? My heart is pushing all the blood it can to the surface, like a whole body blush. It's trying to cool my blood before re-circulating it through my body. Good luck.
• Quite soon after the reddening, my hands start to feel funny. Swollen. They are swollen. Blood is flooding my extremities as my heart continues to try to cool me down. 
• Sometimes coinciding with the hand swelling, sometimes coming slightly later, is the numbness. I start to lose feeling in my face, like the skin is going to sleep. Eventually the feeling in my hands becomes compromised as well. I'm not sure if this is a result of the amount of blood that is pumping into my head and hands or if it is my brain warning me. Maybe it's a part of my brain shutting down, or being effected by my rising core temperature. I don't know.
• Shortly after the numbness sets in I start to lose my fine motor skills. It takes me a few tries to pick up a letter. I look a little like a drunk as I stab the key at the keyhole three times before getting it in. My balance is a little off, and I know my reaction time is slowed. This is probably not the best time for me to be behind the wheel. 
• At some point during all this, serious exhaustion sets in. It most likely has a little to do with my heart running at 120+ bpm, sustained for hours. 
• The loss of motor skills grows until I have a hard time speaking without slurring my words, and balance becomes a bit of a problem for me. Unless I cool down, this will progress until I fall down. If I fall down in the sun, or someplace else hot where I won't bleed off heat very well, it will be a Very Bad Thing.

Today, with a high of 77 degrees while I was on the clock, and knowing I was leaving early to go to the doctor's, I decided to forgo wetting my shirt down to cool off and tried to control it simply through use of the fan in my mail truck. Most of the people working with me to try to cure my anhidrosis have never actually seen it in action. Since I know that without wetting my shirt it takes me hours to cool down, even when inside an air-conditioned building, I just wanted the fan to slow the heating process down enough that I could finish my work and get to the doc's.
By the time I got back to the office I had reached the "loss of fine motor skills" portion of my day. I was exhausted, and since my heat was almost all internal I continued to heat up for a short time even though I was now in an air-conditioned building. Now, this may seem a little off-color, but to show how bad it got, I'll describe my trip to the bathroom.
Standing in front of a urinal did not seem to be an option. I was wobbly, and my balance was off. I didn't want to have to be cleaning the walls or anything. So I went in a stall and had a seat. I did what I had to do, and then tried to get up. It seems that there is a little bit of balance involved in rising from a seated position, and I just didn't have it. There are also some muscles involved, and mine just didn't want to work anymore. After a couple of failed attempts, I took hold of the toilet paper dispenser and used it to heave myself to my feet. Luckily, it did not just come off the stall wall.
Now, my shorts were still down, and that was not an option for leaving the bathroom. My leg muscles being pretty much on strike seemed to remove the option of squatting, and my balance was pretty crappy, so I wasn't sure exactly what to do. Eventually I just leaned forward and rested my forehead on the door and stretched my arms down to get a grip. I got everything most of the way up, then let go with one hand to use my old friend, the toilet paper dispenser, to get myself standing upright again, where I finished the job. It took me a while to get the belt buckled, but that was okay.
It took me four tries to get a grip on the small knob for the sliding bolt that was locking the stall door. That set me to laughing. Eventually I was able to get out of the stall, and subsequently, the bathroom. I went to my route and had a seat on my stool for a while before trying anything else.

Doesn't this sound like fun? In the 70's and lower 80's I can usually avoid all the worst symptoms by wetting my shirt down occasionally. Today I didn't do that intentionally, trying to get to the doctor's office while still showing symptoms of heatstroke while perfectly hydrated. This was the result. I know all these symptoms and stages quite well by now, and I was monitoring myself out on the road as well as I was able. I was feeling horrible, and yes, it was dangerous. But I would like my doctor to actually see what she's dealing with sometime.
It was a horrible day, but I'm stubborn. Or stupid. Sometimes I'm really not sure which....

Talk to you later!

Logan on a Monday

Hello from Colorado!

Okay, I was at Logan this morning, flying out here, and I was struck by just a few thoughts.

• People with small children - Security at Logan is the perfect place to take your child if they are learning how to dress; they have plenty of examples to follow. Everyone's either tying their shoes, putting on a belt, etc. And some of them are doing it in such a hurry that you have examples of what not to do. "See that man there? The one who is walking funny? Look closely, you'll see his shoes are on the wrong feet. Don't do that."
• The sign in front of the big bio-scanner, that you can read as you approach the machine, is not explicit enough. "Stand with your feet in the footprints on the floor. Raise your hands so they are above your head, palms facing out." It's so confusing! It should mention that the footprints on the floor by the sign are just a mock-up, and you don't actually have to do that until you you are in the machine. While I was there some poor bastard stood in the mock-up footprints, outside the machine, hands raised and waiting for the all clear. Quite a few people were laughing at the guy. Luckily one of the security personnel came and asked him to repeat the maneuver inside the machine.  So I did. Thank you TSA Agent Darla. I appreciated it.
• Anhidrosis is not a great thing to have on a plane (For more on Anhidrosis, please see my entry titled "No Sweat, No Problem... Not Really!"). Plenty of bodies in a steel tube, no dearth of body heat. Thank god for that little personal air thingie. It's a life-saver. Especially when you're bald. Quite the little rush!
• There is no farting on a plane. See above paragraph on anhidrosis. Steel tube. 'Nuff said.
• Lastly, a flight seems to be different things for different people. For some people it is a chance to get to know your neighbor, to make a new friend, to be social. For others it seems to be a time for looking straight ahead and not talking and never making eye-contact with the people around them.  The guys reading this will understand if I say that for these people it's a little like spending five hours standing at the urinal in a public bathroom. No talking!

There was other stuff; the flight crew was a riot, I was napping and got a hell of a stiff neck. I was so visibly happy with the air thingie that I'm pretty sure the woman seated next to me thought I was special needs. I'd have asked her but she was one of the urinal people. No talking!

Well, that's all I have for today. Once again, thank you Agent Darla. Talk to you all later!
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No Sweat, No Problem.... Not Really!

So, everyone's heard the saying "no sweat', right? It means that something is easy, no problem, no worries, right? No bubbles no troubles!
Actually, it can be a bit of a problem. I have something called Anhidrosis, which is a condition in which I do not sweat. At all. People tell me to drink water, or run around and get hot, and they think I'll sweat that way.
Nope.
I'm a little like a car with a broken water pump; The water's in there, full to the brim, but it's not doing anything. Just like a car with a broken water pump, I overheat. Very easily. I was first diagnosed with this in April 2008, when I went into my physician's office in the first stages of heatstroke. I was fully hydrated, sloshing in fact, and the high temperature for the day was 58 degrees.
I have had steroid treatments before that caused my anhidrosis to go away, into a kind of remission, apparently, because it keeps coming back. Like right now. The nicest day we've had so far this year, Sunny and a high of about 73 degrees, and I'm overheating. My last steroid treatment didn't work, aside from making me sleep even less than before (and I usually average around 4 hours a night). So, today at work, as I delivered the mail, I controlled my heat the only way I know how: I hose off my shirt and wear it wet so as to simulate perspiring and the evaporation effect.
That's how we get to the funny part.
I don't want to hose myself off, because then I wind up walking about in wet underwear, and the only words I can think of to describe that are squidgy and squodgy. Neither of them sound like fun to me. How about you?
I didn't think so.
So, I take off my shirt, hose it off , wring it out and put it on. I'm 5'10", weigh 215 lbs, and shave my head. I imagine the poor woman who was in the house. She hears her hose go on, and she figures it must be the kids walking home from school, playing with her hose as they pass by. She jumps to the window, peeks out, and comes face to face with something that looks a bit like a low-rent Mr. Clean, shirtless and wringing something out on her lawn.
All I know is the just appeared at the window, staring out.
I finger-waved.
Her expression got a little weird, and she backed slowly away from the window. Kind of sideways, out of view. Once she was gone, and all I had to see was the blank window, the shade went down. Slowly. I never saw her hand, just the shade going down.
There's humor almost everywhere, my friends.
...think I lost a Christmas tip there?
*shrug*