Tuesday, January 31, 2006

evening

Four Things About Meme

Keely tagged me like a year ago (okay, maybe a week), so here are my “four things” things, even though it pains me to do something with even numbers.

Four jobs I’ve had:
Paralegal
Babysitter at a gym
International res agent at United Airlines
Search Engine Marketer

Four movies I can watch over and over (I’m clearly not into watching movies over and over):
Airplane
Flashdance
Buffy (the series, but pretend it’s the movie)
Dirty Dancing

Four places I’ve lived:
San Francisco
Las Vegas
Pacifica, CA
Like Omigawd, The Valley (er, San Fernando Valley...from the “Valley Girls” song)

Four TV shows I love (there are many more, past & present - I love tv):
The Amazing Race
Veronica Mars
Gilmore Girls
The Daily Show

Four places I’ve vacationed (I don’t get out much):
Hawaii
San Diego
Upstate New York
Atlanta

Four of my favorite dishes:
Sushi - I think all sushi can count as one dish
Pizza
Menudo w/ lots of cilantro
Fresh crab

Four sites I visit daily:
Huffington Post
Google News
The Daily Mumps
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Four places I would rather be right now:
Hawaii
San Francisco
Toronto
Costa Rica

I’m supposed to tag four people for this, but if you’re reading, consider yourself tagged if you’d like to be.

Monday, January 30, 2006

evening

January 30th - A Double Miracle Happens

Both miracles are so miraculous that they compete for the best miracle of today.  We’ll start with the more immediate one - the Leafs, they won.  They won a game!  How about that?!  See, told you it was a miracle. 

The second miracle - I do believe that the nerve root block injection is working somewhat.  Just hanging around the house, the pain is noticeably lessened...even when I overdo it and sit at my computer too long.  We went grocery shopping early this evening, which is one of the bigger pain tests for me.  The ambling that grocery shopping requires usually ends up making both legs hurt.  Tonight, it hurt after about ten minutes, but not as much as before - and it didn’t last as long either.  The bad news is that the bladder thing wasn’t helped at all and might be a touch worse.  I hate that most of all.  It’s so stressful.  But, I’ve decided to go ahead and have the second injection, which is scheduled for next Thursday.  Hopefully, since this one helped, maybe the next one will go to work on whatever is affecting my bladder.  I would be soooooo happy.

I have so many book reviews and other tidbits to write about, but my concentration level is at maybe three, on a scale of one to ten.  It’s horrible.  Starting tomorrow, I’m going to force myself to write every day.  Don’t worry, you don’t have to force yourself to read every day.

Friday, January 27, 2006

late morning

Selective Nerve Root Block:  The Day After

I know it can take up to a week to get relief from the injection, so I won’t write it off yet; although, from the heavy duty questioning I got at the surgery center, they seemed to expect me to get some relief right away.  There wasn’t any.  Today, I feel exactly the same as always, except I have a big ugly bruise on my hand, three injection dots on my back, and one injection spot that’s bruised.  I have some bruising pain across my lower back - it feels like I was hit lightly across the back with a 2x4.  In all, not the worst experience in the world if either it doesn’t work at all or it works a little and I have another procedure in two weeks.  The only damage from yesterday will be financial.  I was informed that the surgery center was out of network and that the insurance company would pay, but that they would pay me directly and I’d have to pay the surgery center.  My guess is that the surgery center will send bills soon and that the insurance company will take their time sending me the payment.  I also expect that the payment will fall short of what the bill is.  In the past couple of weeks I’ve gotten bills from every single doctor I’ve been to in the past few months.  Not one single visit was covered in full by the insurance company.  In addition to my $30 co-pay, I owe each doctor about $90.  I guess that’s better than the $250 I paid for the doctor who spent five minutes with me, after I’d waited three hours for him.  Then, a week before my procedure was scheduled, he had emergency heart surgery.  While I feel badly for him (although he’s out of the hospital now and recovering), I paid $250, spent three hours waiting to see him, countless phone calls trying to get his useless scheduler to do something...and I got nothing.  Canada is looking mighty good right now, medically.  I know there’s a wait for an appointment with specialists, but even here, seeing any doctor I wanted, it’s taken since mid-October to get anything done.

Oh yeah, and the bladder thing - no improvement there either. 

Thursday, January 26, 2006

mid-afternoon

Injection Day Update

I’m home.  It really wasn’t a big deal.  If I do it again, I won’t be nervous beforehand.  On the other hand, I definitely don’t feel better than before I went in, but we’ll see as the days go by and the steroids start moving around in there.  Right now, the injection sites are getting really achy and I’m going to have a big bruise on my hand from the IV.  I knew it was a good idea when I told her not to put the IV in my “mouse hand”.  She looked at me like I was crazy, but hey, I need to use the mouse.

I watched the whole thing on the fluoroscope, but frankly, it just wasn’t that interesting.  I was completely awake through the whole thing.  It lasted maybe ten minutes, then off to recovery I went.  I got a Pepsi, got dressed, then practiced walking.  I was a bit wobbly at first, but that went away pretty quickly.  Not an overly exciting adventure, except while I was waiting for my turn (it was like an injection production line), we were watching the Travel Channel.  I saw some lovely yachts and some fabulous ranches.  Plus, some interesting commercials with Jonny Mosely in Torino, traveling around doing fun stuff.  Perhaps I’ll check out his show.

We’re ordering pizza and we’ll be watching our TiVo’d Leafs/Sabres game.  I suppose I need to get some ice for my bruising.  Other than that, everything is pretty much the same as it was.  I guess I need to do some walking in the next few days to test things out.  My educated guess though is that I’m headed for surgery eventually.

I did learn one thing from their pre-injection testing - I’m definitely not pregnant.  I was terribly terribly worried about that.  Heh.  I told her if I tested positive, I wanted to sell that sample on eBay.  Also, Leigh-Ann discovered that the surgery center isn’t that comfortable working with gay people.  They kept my (paid for) driver updated on my condition, but not my partner, even though when she asked, “Single, married, etc.”, I answered “partnered”.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

late evening

Mad Photo Skillz, Man

Bow down before me, I say.  But seriously, I’m sure he was facing me as I started taking the picture.  They’re so fast.