doolittle

this is not about that thing on my face

   Yeah, believe it or not there's more to life.  This is about NaComLeavMo, the brain-child of Mel from Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (incidentally, WHY had I never read Mel's blog until I saw that Sam was doing NaComLeavMo?  She's SO COOL!  Now I'll be up half the night stalking her archives...), which if you want the full scoop you'll have to click on the link (or hey, look over there to your right at that big party-hat-looking thingy I after much cursing and many bitter tears masterfully added to my sidebar--you can click there too!) but it all boils down to COMMENT, COMMENT, COMMENT.  Each participant agrees to leave at least five comments on other blogs from the list of participants (and "answer" one comment from their own blog by going to that person's blog and leaving a follow-up comment there) for the entire month of May 25th-June 25th, which isn't any more than I generally do on a daily basis anyway.  BUT!!!  Anything worth doing is worth overdoing (it's the Doolittle family motto don'tcha know!) and for the truly hard-core there is the "Wall of Honour" where "Iron Commenters" will be listed--those are the few, the proud, the insane who agree to go through the ENTIRE GINORMOUS LIST (it's over a hundred blogs now and growing strong) at least once a week and comment on EACH AND EVERY ONE.   I love it!  I love comments like tortilla soup on a cold rainy day, and I love "discovering" new blogs to add to my groaning feed-reader at least as much, so it's win-win.  Plus I get to "meet" a lot of cool new people who will hopefully be stopping by as part of the comment love-fest, and that's always a lot of fun.  Maybe some of them will like it here and stick around as regular readers and commenters, and I know I'll probably find all kinds of new places to rub my scent glands all over read and comment regularly.  Plus the fact that so many new eyes could be reading will force me to actually put some thought into what I write on here during that month, as opposed to just whining about the giant pus-wart on my face or how I have a migraine.
   Hopefully this will go better than NaBloPoMo, where I invariably fail at the last minute.  However, unlike NaBloPoMo, where the only reward aside from greater use of stream-of-consciousness is the bragging rights, even if I lapse into a long-term coma after the first week of NaComLeavMo I will still find lots of new and fascinating blogs to read, and garner a few more commenters wondering where the heck I went, so I can't lose!  I like those odds...

update, of sorts

   Well, it's arguable whether the thing looks any better, but it isn't any worse, which if it was MRSA it almost certainly would be.  Since Sunday medicine isn't any worse than Saturday medicine and I still do not have a fever or flu-like symptoms, or any MORE lesions, I'm going to keep watching it and alternating Mupirocin with Benzyl Peroxide, which is good for drying things out.  I'll let y'all know if it declares itself either way...oh how I wish I could still get something like this and be all "ew, EMBARRASSING," apply some concealer, and go about my business.  Sigh...

doom?

   Aaaaaand from the Dept. of My Life Is Never Boring, a big red lump on my left temple, midway between my eye and my hairline, that came to a head and drained yesterday (okay, giant zit, weird but stranger things have happened) and was looking a LITTLE bit swollen earlier but just now when I looked in the mirror for the second time today was HUGE and OW and the middle was all gooey and yellow and the skin was peeling around the edges...looked kinda like cellulitis.   Remember the last time I had THAT?  Oh, how we all did laugh, no? 
   I decided that because it is night-time and this isn't NECESSARILY MRSA I would slap some Mupirocin (which kills MRSA and did successfully eradicate an outbreak of non-MR SA-boils on my face one time, even though the physician who prescribed it to me didn't think it would)(no sillies, this isn't the same crusty old tube--we go through Mupirocin in this house like WATER, in fact The Very Small Animal is just getting over impetigo, which I was dressing with Mupirocin, and it is entirely possible that this THING on my face is just regular staph from being exposed to the baby's cooties)(oh and you didn't read about us going to Giant Pediatric Practice because we didn't--I know dang-well what impetigo looks like because my children have had it before and Dr. Dude trusts me to recognize it when I see it, so the last time someone had it he wrote for a tube of Mupirocin with numerous refills because he's cool like that) and a band-aid on my face and see what it looks like in the morning.  I do not have a fever or any flu-like symptoms and even if you DO have MRSA the ER won't do anything for you unless you LITERALLY go crying to a specialist like a little girl, and specialists tend to be more receptive to such things during daylight hours.  Also, it's probably prudent to give it until morning anyway; as I recall, the non-MR SA boils responded dramatically to Mupirocin overnight, so this way I'm giving myself the benefit of the doubt, and if it's going to get better it will.  If not, I'll cry about it (to the universe at large and whoever is covering for Dr. Cootie in particular) in the morning.

ow...neck...raining...migraine...

   Thunderstorms and torrential downpours since last night.  Entire body in revolt.  Ow.

look y'all--I broke the blog AGAIN! (this post may disappear)

   Depending on when you stop by today, you may see some funkiness going on with the sidebar content.  That is because I've been trying to tweak my @ds* and add a G.00gle se@rch bar while on massive amounts of narcotic pain relief.  This has been both maddening (WHHHHHYYYYY won't the G.00gle @ds show up?  The se@rch bar did--why not the @ds???) and hilarious (heh, I broke the blog again, heh heh heh that's kinda funny, maybe I'll have another Valium and that'll make it better, yeeeeees), but I'm sure y'all aren't nearly as well-medicated as I am, and so I apologize for any annoyance and/or inconvenience it may cause while things are waiting to pop up (currently we're waiting on the G.00gle @dsen.se fairy to come, hence the blank-ish spaces). 
   Also, "Eva**" let me know that the interstiti@l @ds were annoying as all hell.  These are the ones that when you go to click on another page within Doolittle you instead get a full-page @d (that DOES give you an option to click a button and skip it, but apparently crashes SOME people's browsers cough cough Eva cough), and so I took them down initially but then realized that I had been running three "z0nes" with interstiti@ls, and while I had set them to only show up after your third page view, and to only show each visitor ONE interstiti@l @d within a 6-, 12-, or 24-hour period.  However, with three z0nes running, even though I had them set to pop up only after the THIRD page-view at twelve-hour intervals, that added up to...well, a pain in the arse.  I initially took the interstiti@l @ds down entirely, but then in turning to the more lucrative G.00gle @ds for the most part I ended up with only one active @dBrite z0ne, and set it to show just ONE interstiti@l @d per user per 24 hours.  Hopefully y'all can live with that, although if your browser starts crashing because of my @ds, PLEASE let me know, because I'd rather miss out on the @dver+ising revenue than on having my lovely readers and your wonderful comments.  This blog is about sharing my life with people I like, not making money, although if I could make enough to at least pay my own Typepad fees cough thanks Sam cough cough then that would be FABULOUS.
   Because this post is JUST about @dver+ising and not really about my life or family, or particularly entertaining, and also because I don't want my @d c0mpanies jerking their @ds from my site, I might take this post down in a day or two, which I DO NOT do as a general rule.  So consider yourself warned--your window of opportunity to be bored by this sorry excuse for a post is short.  Bask in its mediocrity while you still have the chance!

*  Yeah, G.00gle doesn't like it when you talk about your @ds, so I am trying to thwart their bots.  I DO NOT want anybody clicking on any @ds on this site unless it is because you are genuinely interested in the products and services being @dver+ised; "inv@lid c.lick.s" (like if someone in a misguided attempt to help me out clicks on the @ds repeatedly or something silly) will get an @dver+izer banned by G.00gle FOR LIFE.
**  Eva's blog is about Second Life, which I find amusing in general, and she has just put up a new post on "Vampires" in SL.  I love Eva's blog because it is well-written and researched, and also because she has a sense of humor about SL, unlike some of the groups she profiles on there.  It creeps me out a little when people take SL too seriously, but Eva manages to write informatively about it with tongue planted firmly in cheek, and her blog is a great read.

the one where I have a pain in the neck I DIDN'T give birth to

   I think therapy is kind of zapping my energy, emotionally AND physically (remember, stress triggers comas), which is a bummer.  If it is affecting me that strongly then plainly I need it and will have to get through this initial "blah" phase, but that said it is very frustrating to feel like something I deliberately do is setting me back at a time when I can so little afford to BE set back, emotionally OR physically!  Also, while I laughed right along with him, being called a "freak of nature" and informed just how very screwed I am from a genetic and gastrointestinal standpoint by Dr. Napoleon Dynamite was a little bit hurtful.  I totally forgot in all the "WHAT bone?" and "please define 'permanent damage,' and how that will affect my quality and/or quality of life in relation to my vocal chords" I forgot to even complain about "Nurse We" and her fearmongering telephone demeanor.  Oh well.  In some ways I think it made the bad news about the reflux and the state of my voicebox and vocal chords, and my freakishly large and calcified hyoid bone easier to hear--if I'd gone in there without expecting the worst that might've really pole-axed me.  Instead today, #93, I am grateful that we're not talking about trachs or g-tubes (because as much bad fun as it would be to blow bubbles through a hole in my neck to freak people out and as informative and helpful in understanding my youngest as it would be to experience a g-tube firsthand, at the end of the day I can live without the bad fun and the extra knowledge just fine, thanks).
   Last night my neck started bothering my on the right side pretty badly, and by bedtime I was in AGONY.  I took a double dose of my evening painkillers and muscle relaxers (by which I mean I actually took the full prescribed amount--I usually take half if nothing is hurting because I prefer to go easy on the downers), laid down on an ice pack, and finally got to sleep around midnight, but then woke at four because of the pain.  So I took more drugs, applied some topical Diclofenac (anti-inflammatory NSAID I can't take systemically because of my bleeding issues), and tried heat this time because I was cold in general and I wanted to see if a heating pad would feel better than ice (kind of a toss-up--when you're in THAT MUCH pain sometimes it's hard to tell if something is helping at all).  The Patriarch woke up and was very sweet to me, very concerned, and rubbed the knot in my trapezius muscle where it was in spasm (that allllways happens when a nerve root in my neck is getting pinched or inflamed), and we cuddled a while before I urged him to get some sleep if he could, since there was no sense in both of us being dead on our feet today--the past week or so we've been snuggling in bed quite a bit; usually he is asleep before I am, but when I am ready to stop reading and listening to the Pain CD I situate my neck and body pillows and scoot back toward him, and he automatically in his sleep lifts the covers up and over me and pulls me to his chest, and wraps his warm ankles around my freezing feet.  Even when we are fighting he does this, and it reminds me that under all of the meshugaas we do love each other.  I finally did fall back to sleep around 6:30, which gave me an hour before the children starting waking up.  Ugh.  I HATE not getting enough sleep.  Especially since even when I get twelve or thirteen hours I tend to nod off into comas lately.  SIGH...so apparently I have Done Something to my neck--it's been a while, for which I am grateful, but that doesn't make it any more fun this time around.  Especially since The Nervous Wrangler, in addition to being booked solid as usual, has Done Something to his own back and mentioned at my last appointment that it was a good thing my neck was doing okay because he couldn't exert the necessary force to correct it if it wasn't.  That guy better hurry up and get well!
   And now I have to go and make lunch for the two littles.  It is a rainy, dreary day in Doolittleville, and I took a half-dose of migraine meds this morning as a preventive measure when I woke up and looked out the window, which seems to be working pretty well, although I'm sure it's not helping me any in the not-falling-asleep department.  But that is what Diet Store-Brand Mountain Dew is for!

and since it's not ALL about my larynx

   I did in fact make it to my appointment with the EMDR fairy on time yesterday after seeing Dr. Napoleon Dynamite, and she and I talked about how that had gone and I showed her the picture of my larynx (you'd think that thing was an ultrasound image of my unborn and unlikely fourth child, the way I've been showing it around) and she thought it was rather Georgia O'Keefe-ian (which if by Georgia O'Keefe-ian she meant yonic and borderline obscene then you betcha it is) and was glad to hear there would be no trach or g-tube (AS WAS I).   She then wanted to talk about my parents and early trauma, which I thought was unnecessary, explaining that I'd already been there, done that, and gone to therapy over how my parents sucked and continue to suck, assuring her that I'd accepted them for what they are.  She then asked a few pointed questions and MADE ME CRY (okay, SHE didn't make me cry, but evidently I still have more feelings to work out in the area of my parents and their wretchedness than I thought I did; it was strange, I was talking to her very calmly and then out of nowhere tears just burst out of my eyes--very embarrassing).  So apparently I still have some work to do in the area of my childhood, which is disappointing because I am impatient to get to the part where we talk about The Patriarch and his and my current troubles, but The EMDR Fairy wants to start at the beginning, and she seems to be rather invariably right so far (I copped to my wrongness in scoffing at the Pain CD, by the way, and she was very gracious about it and even praised me for listening to it faithfully).   
   She then proceeded to do a little EMDR on me, which she described as "resource development and installation of positive imagery" (sounds like something to do with computers, no?).  She had me put on some headphones where music and soothing sounds of nature travelled from one side to the other and back, and waved her magic wand (a different one this time--this one was a telescoping pointer like the ones teachers use with a faceted crystal drawer-pull from Home Depot that she had affixed to the end for a nice sparkly effect--I love that she has a sense of humor about what she does and uses fun things for her "wands"--Redzils the almost-psychologist and I agreed that this can only mean good things) to direct my eye movement, and instructed me to think of the happiest time of my life.  The music played and she waved her wand to direct my eye movement, and periodically asked me what I was thinking about (turns out a lot of my happiest memories involve falling in love with and marrying The Patriarch--who knew?), and it did rather smack of hoodoo but I left her office oddly calm and composed, if exhausted.
   This morning The Patriarch reported that I thrashed around and appeared to be fighting off attackers in my sleep all night long, and yelled my mother's name a lot.  Huh.  I did dream about my mother making me miss a flight to SOMEwhere--dunno where, but it was important, and there was a child on the plane who desperately needed my help; in the dream it seemed that there was some sort of medical crisis and while I don't remember much about the child I know that it was not any of MY children) due to her general selfishness and the fact that she was busy having a torrid affair with the pilot of the plane.  It doesn't exactly take a dream interpretation savant to figure THAT one out, but it is interesting that The EMDR Fairy and I only discussed my mother for a few minutes of our time together and still she invaded my dreams.  When I got home from my appointments yesterday I was totally WIPED OUT, which crying always does to me, and went to bed early.  Fainting goat, much?  SIGH...

yay, boo, eww and ooo

I.  YAY!

   Dr. Napoleon Dynamite looked at the x-rays and said there was only one way to be sure, and asked if I thought I could deal with being scoped while awake (apparently there IS some anesthesia involved for the squeamish, but I wanted to know TODAY what the deal was and didn't get any last time, and it kind of feels like being stabbed in the back of the nose with a skewer but oh well), and I said DEAL with it, I DEMAND it!  He said atta girl and sprayed some local up my nose (which I SUPPOSE it could have felt worse than it did, but I don't think the spray made any difference), then busted out the endoscope.  He looked here, and there, and had me breathe and sniff and swallow, and used the end of the scope to poke and "feel" around the soft tissue back there.  The good news?  THERE IS NOT A MOUTHGUARD IN MY THROAT!  WHOOOOO TITS!!!

II.  BOO! 

   The suspicious-looking thing on the x-ray is...drumroll please...my hyoid bone.  Turns out there is a horse-shoe shaped bone in your neck that isn't attached to any other bones, and when you relax your neck you can move it back and forth and feel it clicking--who knew!  So why did it look so bizarre-o on the x-ray?  Well, apparently MY hyoid bone could kick YOUR hyoid bone's ARSE!  It's all bulky and calcified.  Dr. ND says that this is something that normally happens as we age, although he doesn't usually see it to this degree in people MY age.  I reminded him that Freakishly Rare Condition Z Syndrome has some premature aging aspects to it (remember, it is related to Progeria) and he said "ooooooohhhhh...that would certainly explain it."  Then he remarked that I did not appear to have normal secretions in the back of my throat, and that they were very dry and thick.  I reminded him that the syndrome with the umlaut in the name causes scant production of both tears and saliva, and he said "AHA!  Wow, you really ARE a freak of nature.  I mean, I'm sorry, it's just...you REALLY got the short straw in the genetic straw-pull, anyone ever tell you that?"  Um, why NO, imagine my shock!  For the moment we don't have to do anything about my overly-robust hyoid bone--it's not bothering us and we're not bothering it.  "Damn," said Dr. ND, "I was kind of hoping I'd get to fish something really COOL out of there."  Then I reminded him that I have a bleeding disorder and asked him if he REALLY wanted to do neck surgery on me.  "Oh..." he said, frowning and flipping through my chart.  "What the hell has happened to you since I took your tonsils out nine years ago?  You used to be so HEALTHY!  Yeah, I totally wouldn't want to mess with your throat now.  Good thing you grew that funky little growth back there when you still had two platelets to rub together."

III.  EWW!

   Now for the eww.  Dr. ND observed that I appear to have a RAGING case of reflux (which I already knew but hadn't been bothering me--when I had MRSA the first time they took me off of my PPIs because they would interfere with my absorbing the MRSA-killing drugs and I hadn't missed them.  Or at least I didn't THINK I had.  My larynx, apparently, did, but couldn't say anything because the reflux has eroded my nerves back there).

   
If you click to enlarge, you will note the following:

1.  Bright-red voicebox (because of reflux damage)
2.  These are my vocal chords.  They're not grossly asymmetrical, but there is some damage to them (from...you guessed, REFLUX)
3.  This thing that looks like I swallowed a Pringle whole?  That would be my epiglottis.  There's nothing wrong with it, I just found its appearance to be rather startling and wanted to know what it was, and then thought I'd pass that knowledge on to you.  YOU'RE WELCOME.
4.  This would be an example of the abnormally thick secretions Dr. ND noticed.  So, in essence, that egg-white-looking stuff would be mucus.  Perhaps my larynx is ovulating?

   Dr. ND was impressed with both my tolerance for discomfort (he actually scoped me twice; the first time just using his eyepiece since he says that gives him better resolution, and then when I expressed doubt as to the non-mouthguardness of the thing on the x-ray he asked me if I felt like going for "double Jeopardy" and letting him scope me again with the monitor on so that I could see, too).  And as unpleasant as the scoping is, I wanted to see WITH MY OWN EYES that there wasn't anything in there that didn't belong (lately I don't trust doctors when they tell me scans are "clear," plus okay, I wanted a picture to put on my stupid blog--there's no shame in that).  When I asked him for a picture Dr. ND was amused.  "You know you are the first person EVER to ask me for a picture of their larynx?" he said, pressing the "print" button.  "Yeah, I'm sick like that," I said, snatching my prize from the printer and giving it a squint.  "Plus I want to put it on my website."  He laughed again.  "Your readers must be sick, too."  I thought, but did not say, "of course they are--that is why I love them!"
   The REALLY eww part, though, is that Dr. ND wants me to see a GI doc ASAP for upper and lower GI endoscopies, because he said that it was VERY likely I had Barrett's Esophagus from the syndrome with the dangling-five-thingy hanging from a C and the little house-y thing over the E, and that syndrome can also cause ulceration and/or cancer at any point in your GI tract.  Which I already knew, but didn't really want to hear.  My maternal grandfather had esophageal cancer secondary to Barrett's Esophagus that spread to his stomach; in fact he died of it the summer before last.   
   So all in all it was a Doolittle day--no good without some bad mixed in for seasoning.  I left the office with a sore nasopharyngeal cavity, a picture of my funky larynx, and a prescription I'm not sure I can take for Nexium--Dr. ND wanted me to take it in the morning two hours before a meal, but I pointed out that I had to take my Armour Thyroid in the morning ONE hour before a meal and couldn't mix it with PPIs or antacids.  So he said to take it at night, and when I asked him if it would interfere with the white and yellow antiepileptics that I take then, admitted he didn't know and suggested I speak to the prescribing physician or maybe my pharmacist about that.  I have a call in to The Nervous Wrangler's office and am waiting to get his input before filling the prescription, so if he gives it his blessing I will start the Nexium tomorrow.  Which to my great dismay puts me back in the double digits per day on prescription drugs, not counting the new migraine pill.  Alas.  But that brings us to...

IV.  Ooo...

   Since last month, I haven't gotten charged for a single prescription.  That's right, no co-payments.  I hadn't been aware of this since The Patriarch always picks up my medications for me, but apparently I have met our HMO's out-of-pocket spending cap all by myself, three months before the end of the insurance calendar year.  Free drugs!  Ooo...

More to be forthcoming...

Redzils here, since Eliza is not currently at a computer. The good news is she is also NOT in the hospital, NOT unconscious, and NOT being held hostage by TLA, TMA, and TVSA, in exchange for a ransom of the special juice boxes.

I heard from her after her doctor's appointment, and it sounds like there was good news and bad news. She wanted me to let you know that all is (mostly) well(ish) and that she will post as soon as she can, so stay tuned...

WHY...just...why?

Eliza:  (dials number for Doolittleville University Hospital Physicians to call and double-confirm time of scoping appointment, so as not to miss The EMDR Fairy two hours later, after having futilely searched for him in the book by name)
Phone Tree:  To speak with a medical call center representative, press one, to speak with a nurse, press two...
Eliza: (presses one)
Phone Tree:  To schedule or cancel an appointment, press one, physicians, please press two (oh THEY get a PLEASE, eh?), to check on the status of a DUH patient, press three...
Eliza: (presses one)
Operator:  DUH Scheduling, how may I help you?
Eliza:  I need to speak with someone at Dr. Napoleon Dynamite's office to confirm an appointment.
Operator: (snottily) This is the number to SCHEDULE or CANCEL an appointment, not confirm one.
Eliza:  Ooookay, could I please have Dr. Napoleon Dynamite's office number, then?
Operator: (even more snottily) This isn't INFORMATION.  Do you need to schedule an appointment?
Eliza:...YES! 
Operator: With what doctor?
Eliza:  Doctor Napoleon Dynamite...I also need to see if he takes my insurance, could I please have his number?
Operator: (sighs heavily)...555-1212
Eliza:  Thank you!
Operator:  Do you want to schedule an appointment now?
Eliza:  No thank you!
Operator:  (click!)

   It turns out that the appointment is at two, which is what I thought, and with any luck (HAHAHAHAHA) I should be in and out in time to make it downtown for the EMDR fairy.  After I see her I won't be home until close to six, but I'll try and give Redzils a shout so that she can tell y'all what's going on after I get scoped.  And in case any of you were, as was the EMDR fairy when I spoke with HER this morning to double-confirm my appointment with HER, wondering, driving to her office won't be a problem because sadly there is no anesthesia involved in the scoping.  Just some deep breathing and a lot of icky sensations.  Still, it's no worse than having an IV started, really.  The fear is in what Dr. ND will FIND in there.