Well, I'm sitting here in the darkness... Just after I update my User Profile at LiveJournal with a photo of myself & Parrish, the power went out to seemingly half of my city. At least, that's what it looks like outside. I can't see any lights other than the ones far away on the horizon from perhaps the next city North from here. I thought at first "oh shit! The whole house lost power!?" until I looked outside and was quite relieved to find that it was dark.

I took some cool pics of the orange-lit horizon with the trees/cityline just pitch black. If I get a chance before my laptop battery goes dead, I'll upload a couple. (I'm also on 56k dialup at the moment... I stole the cord to the answering machine and ran it in here. :)

Yep, here's a quick picture...colors are totally off for the skyline (it's more of a soft orangey-pink), but I don't have battery time to fix them and you'll get the idea.

On the positive side for the moment: the new anti-inflammatory pills are working great and no stomach problems! Woohoo!!

I just realized I've been working pretty hard all day, and while I'm a bit achy (as expected) and having some transient pain in my joints, there's no sign of the neck/nerve inflammation that was making it impossible for me to do things before.

Better yet, this new stuff only takes one pill in the morning, one at night, so I don't have to carry them around in the middle of the day just in case I'm not at home when it's time to take the next dose...and, as stupid as this sounds, they're a really attractive shade of sunshine yellow. *grin* When I filled up my two seven-day pill cases, once all of the meds were in each one, I stimmed on the bright colors, because I think that just about all of the current pills except the muscle relaxant are colored now. (I'd have to go check, but I do remember that it made for quite a nice little rainbow.)

Just heard from my father, we're going to pick my brother up at the airport tomorrow morning, so I got to tell dad that while yesterday I slept like crazy, today the new med is working and I'm doing much better. :-) My brother playtests video games for Sega, and was sent down to Los Angeles to help do final bugtesting for one of those "make this deadline or we have to announce a major delay in releasing the game" situations. I'm sure he's relieved that they're done, because he's the guy that would have to tell the programmers that they'd be working straight through the 4th of July if everything wasn't ironed out. Also, he probably wasn't thrilled at having to spend the holiday away from his girlfriend, given they've been seemingly inseperable for several years now. (I wonder what will happen with them when he moves to San Francisco for university this Fall, since I know she's staying up here...hmm.)

I'm tired out but have been doing a lot of major housework again today. Whenever I try to sit still, I become irritable and start yelling. So I washed the kitchen floor, including moving things around to get under stuff, then attacked the downstairs spare room, taking it from 10% done to perhaps 75% done. My mother worked in the family room nearby, and now we are at 85% "normal looking" in here.

*yawn*

I'm going to rest for a little bit, then decide what to do next. I might go do more work, but I might also just rest for the remainder of the evening...

I'm on the new anti-inflammatory, on the fun transition period between the end of the old one (which I quit several days ago) fading and waiting for the new one (which I started yesterday) to work.

I don't think I want to transition like that again. Yikes. I've become increasingly lethargic/twitchy/dysfunctional ever since the final doses of the Naprosyn. Today was the edgepoint I had been dreading -- I merely got in the car, sat there to accompany my mother to the doctor, had lunch, and before we had even gotten home I was falling asleep sitting up. I took 40mg of prednisone (steroid) to fight the "crash" effects, but it didn't help other than to make my legs achy.

Mother ordered my favorite kind of pizza this evening... I only had the energy/interest to pick at one slice for a few hours in between naps before (finally) wrapping up the rest of it and putting it back in the fridge. (Normally I'm a total cheese-dairy maniac, the sort that will sit up and eat it despite the nastiest nausea-inducing migraine, so for me to lose interest in deep-dish Old Chicago style pizza is bad.) I tried surfing the web, but didn't have the energy to do that, which is unnerving considering my main computer is a light notebook that I easily use lying down. I got plenty of sleep the night before, it just isn't helping.

We saw Fahrenheit 9/11 in the theater Thursday, so I need to write about that, but it will have to wait for another day. There was the one extremely entertaining glitch I can describe, though. *g* We sat there as the lights dimmed, the previews began to roll, but the the movie theater's system failed to switch from the central building background pop songs over to the film soundtrack. It took a few minutes for anybody to realize that the theater had not actually intended to choreograph exploding car chases or random sexual dancing to -- light pop waltzes. We all enjoyed it greatly, because even though it was done completely by accident, it worked better than I suspect the original sountrack would have. *snicker*

After about ten minutes, figuring the show would be starting soon, I finally went out into the main area, tracked down an employee, and told him what was wrong. He started laughing when I observed that it really makes the crappy commercials fun to watch this way, and told me that if he paid to sit through commercials, he'd feel the same way. *g* However, I don't think it really hit him until we walked into the theater, because when he *saw* the error in full progress (by then it was one of those summer love songs by a boy band mixed with half-naked undulating women and a gun battle), he stopped in his tracks to exclaim in obvious horror: "oh jeez! It's good we caught this early, let me see what I can do!" then just about ran out of the room. (It was finally fixed about one preview before the actual movie started playing, so we got the best of both worlds!)

Okay, bleh, my Clie is beeping obnoxiously at me, so I need to go take my night-time dose of meds. Besides, I've been up for a whole twenty minutes now, and my body is starting to claim that I'm being unreasonably demanding, so I had better shut up before it finds a way to force me to. I need to do updates on a few things, hopefully tomorrow I'll be up to it -- keep your fingers crossed that this new stuff does the trick!

I had a list of things I was going to do, then I screwed up and nuked the whole thing in a way that won't let me use Undo to retrieve...arrrggghhhh!!!!!!

Okay, well, the end of the list had a comment that my body is telling me it *needs* to rest at this point (it achieves this by making me want to play video games and read good books, given I won't pay attention to its physical signals) and I guess that accidentally deleting a whole post about the work I should be getting done is a sign I should be listening to it. :-/

I think I'm going to shower, grab the laundry I washed last night from the laundry room so I can get dressed, then spend the day doing non-physically-demanding things.

I started a low dose of Naproxen last night because the exhaustion/inflammation/pain was getting to me -- not just the whole body pain, but the freaky inflammation in my neck that ultimately landed me bedridden in January. So now I've got those three because it's not fully kicking in yet, *and* an annoyed stomach just from taking two doses of it. :-( I think on the agenda for the day will be calling Kaiser and requesting Ultram (as somebody that I need to add to my Flist suggested) or another anti-inflammatory drug less likely to eat my stomach lining.

The dermatologist I met yesterday said that the mystery CNS problem is breaking out all over; her theory is that it is a chemical/environmental allergy, given we're also all showing up with a certain rash pattern and most of us start seeing drastic improvements if we treat it that way. She said that her own husband has the same odd chemical allergy, so that if she uses Tide or any other artificially dyed/scented laundry soap, his nether regions break out into an itchy rash "that looks and acts like jock itch but isn't." So I've been told to start switching over to all kinds of unscented/undyed natural stuff in hope of not just curing the itchy rashes, but to see if my CNS problems respond as well. (She isn't the sort of person that is all pro-natural herself; she prefers "pretty scents everywhere" but is aware of this problem as a dermatologist and wife to somebody with the sensitivity problems.) I've known that I react rather unpleasantly to a lot of artificial scents all along, I *have* just become lazy in the past year or so about using whatever happens to be available...hmm. I guess we'll have to see.

Ouch. Naproxen and muscle relaxants aren't enough to keep my body not freaking out today...neck all sore. :-/ I'm going to take an extra half-pill of the relaxant, get that shower done, and then *really* rest, because I don't want January Take II to happen.

It's a warm day here (77 F / 25 C), and I am tired from not getting to sleep until 3am followed by getting up at 8:00am as usual. I went on down to Terra Linda Kaiser to see the dermatologist this morning, came home, rested, went back out, bought cat food, and now...

Now I'm sitting downstairs on the comfy (if tattered) couch relaxing with some icewater, my laptop, and the air conditioner blowing lightly across my face, enjoying the results of all the hard work in here! :-) Well, not the complete results, given it's not done yet, but it's getting there.

Just got done cooking up a batch of biscuits with cheddar cheese embedded in them, and of course had to have one for brunch. Now I'm wondering: why is it that drinking milk works to get rid of the mouth/throat dryness brought on by bread products, but water doesn't?

Yikes. My sleep needs are all over the place. Last night I felt tired out (as I have the past few days) but I only slept for a short while before waking up at 2:40am and was then unable to go back to sleep until almost 6:00am. I slept until 10:00am, got up, then crashed back into bed sometime in the early afternoon -- waking up again around 5:30pm. I couldn't sleep any more only because it was too warm in my room. So now I'm awake and downstairs, but feeling cold (again) and still tired out. In a few hours, my guess is that I'll fall back asleep and stay that way until early tomorrow, at which point hopefully my sleep schedule will have stabilized.

Evening's mostly over, and I did manage to get a few more things done, though not much.

I went through all of my incoming messages from past buyers and gave feedback to all of the folks that had already given me feedback. I'll add feedback for everybody else in a week or so. (I don't give feedback otherwise until a good while *after* they would have received the item. I've had one bad case in the past where somebody waited until I had left feedback, THEN decided to change her mind about the item and gave me a neutral on top of it. Grrr.)

I answered a couple of new posts asking for info at the LJ Asperger community. Also finally cleaned my Inbox, setting up new filters so it doesn't become a clogged mess quite so quickly now. (Or so I hope...) I've only got one recent email left to reply to, and then I need to get back to the comments!

I filled my new seven-day pill thingy with meds. Now I have one container for night, and another for morning, so I don't need to fiddle around in frustration twice a day to get the right pills out. :-)

What else...fed the cats, did the litterboxes... I think that's about it. I just need to give Damien his evening meds (though that'll have to wait till later as he just ate quite a bit of kibble), then feed Max his share of the canned food that I use to pill Damien. Maxwell needs to gain some weight, whereas Dami almost needs to lose some, so I only use 1/4 of the can for his meds, then give the remaining 3/4 of the can to M.

I'm rambling, so I think I'm going to shut up and have some acidophilus key lime nonfat yogurt. I've been getting more of the gastro (and cognitive) signs that my system is out of whack, so I need to get back to treating it regularly with the enriched dairy stuff, I guess. Gee, poor me, forced to eat/drink my favorite casein-laden food group. *grin* Think I'll do that, maybe play a little Bejeweled or NES Zelda, then give Dami his methionine and go to bed.

Much to my surprise, today went remarkably well!

I had originally planned to just go to the store for more envelopes & printer paper, then over to the post office so I could drop off the latest book sold on Amazon.com. While we were at the store, I decided to try one of those high-caffeine "energy drinks" just to see if they'd give me the boost that I keep hearing about. Hahaha, no, I forgot: high doses of caffeine don't make me wired, they make me placid! So after the errands were accomplished, I was relaxed enough that I felt like not going home for a change -- so I suggested to my mother that we check out a used bookstore I'd found up in Santa Rosa.

Traffic heading up there was a total nightmare -- one of those trips where something that takes perhaps a half-hour on most days takes at least an hour, if you get my drift. Still, we were both in a good mood, so we just bantered about things. I can't even remember the topic of conversation, but at least it was pleasant.

Up in SR, we found the bookstore I was interested in and wandered around it for a bit. I found a copy of Thinking In Pictures by Grandin, but I already own a copy of that, so I figured there wasn't much of a point in spending $11 on another copy. (If it sells for more on Amazon, however, I might go buy it just to put up for resale. Bad me.) As we were walking out, however, we noticed that there was another bookstore right across the street, and decided to stop in there as well.

Ooooh, Moggy hit the jackpot! I found DWJ's Cart and Cwidder in paperback pretty cheaply, so I might see how much I can sell my hardcover edition on Amazon.com and go back to get the paperback instead. (I'm weird -- I prefer paperbacks as they're easier to hold up, and I treat my books so well that it's not like having a soft cover makes them any more prone to damage.) More to the point, I found an autism book I've wanted for a while (Shore's Beyond The Wall) for only $5 and one I'd never heard of before that looked promising called Gentle Giant for only $9.50. They were both in perfect condition but the total for both combined was considerably less than for a single of either brand-new, so I am one happy reader!

On the way back home, we stopped off in Rohnert Park to visit the drive-thru Starbucks and have venti chai frapps. The wind, or possibly the pollen in it, had made our throats a bit sore, so an iced beverage of some kind was absolutely needed.

Back at home, I rested on my bed, basking my legs in the sun for quite a while, then finally got up again a little while ago. Wrote out a little essay for PalmAddict's weekly contest, all about how I use my Clie as an autistic to compensate in an NT-designed society, which was fun and made me feel pretty good. (I'll link to it if they put it up on the site. :) Now to figure out how to spend the remainder of the evening... There's a lot of interesting stuff I'm tempted to do, I'm just not sure which one to try first!

I need to get one of Oddizm's sweatshirts that says "I've Been Good, Can I Go Home Now?"

I seem to be (for unknown reasons) back to sleeping insane amounts, then being half-shutdown when awake. I went to bed early enough Wednesday night, but then slept in until 10:00am for the first time in months. I only got up then because it was my second medicine alarm time -- I voluntarily slept through my first.

I did my washout, took a shower, then started feeling thoroughly sick, so I took one of the anti-emetic pills in hope that would help. It did make the nausea go away, but I noticed as I felt better, I also became really lethargic. Not just in the sense that I was tired, but I just felt empty-brained listless blah as well. (I read, a few hours later, that the pills I've been given are neuroleptic. I need to experiment before I can say whether that's the cause of the bizarre zoned-out ugh issues, though.)

I went on outside with my mother to take care of the front yard. Usually I mow the lawn while she uses the weedwhacker to clear out the semi-lawn and rocky regions. I had to start out by totally emptying the past few sessions of lawn-mowing into the recycling container, which almost did me in. Then, I was, for the first time in several months, almost unable to mow the lawn -- I had to brace my arms and just shove my weight against it, instead of pushing it the way it is normally done. I very nearly didn't have the energy to get all the way through, either.

Once I was done with the lawn, I turned figuring the weeds would have already been taken care of, but no, my mother hadn't taken care of them. Grrrr. She said her back was hurting, so she wanted me to mow them. I refused quite loudly (and angrily) and she pestered me to do it again. Um, listen, I'm having major problems moving the lawnmower perpendicular to the slope, and you expect me to pull it UP the slope repeatedly? I think not. So I set up the weedwhacker and spent the next hour or so taking care of all that.

I came inside, sat around in a daze for a while longer, then got a load of laundry going. Did another washout in hope it would magically make me feel better; it did to a degree, but not that much. While the laundry was washing, I loaded the dishwasher... Put my laundry into the dryer, came up here, and remade my bed. Not properly, as I just don't have the energy to fight with the sheets (stupid extra-long waterbed argh) but in my own "quickie" sort of way.

It doesn't sound like much but considering I've felt like I should just be in bed, it's actually quite a bit.

Now, I'm going to take my meds, give Damien his, and get into said bed for the night. Tomorrow I need to go to the post office to send yet another book, plus pick up dishwasher soap, so I need to get the rest this evening to make sure I'm up to going out again. :-/

Just couldn't fall asleep last night... First my brain wouldn't shut up, so I took 300mg Neurontin to relax. Then, even before the N could kick in, I discovered that merely lying still was setting off strange "chronic pain" type feelings all over my body. I tried Ibuprofen, waited for the N to see if that would help, but ultimately (unable to tolerate the pain any longer) took half of a Vicodin just to make it stop. I think I finally fell asleep around 3:30am or so.

Slept in until 9:00am, got up, ran errands (had to drop off books at the post office and get canned kitty food for Damien's nightly meds), had lunch at a favorite Chinese restaurant called Hunan Garden or similar. Came home, laid down, and fell asleep for a few hours -- though one of the cats kept waking me up by trying to groom my hair while I slept. Cat tongues were not meant for cleaning human hair!

I'm now awake, but still too tired out to really do anything, so I'm not sure what to do with the rest of the evening until it's late enough to go to bed. Might read a book. Might try to reinstall XP onto Moggz Tower or alternately yank its hard drive out so I can plug it into my external enclosure and access the files. Then again, I might play emulated video games if I can find an emulator that won't make my head hurt...hmmm.

Anybody run into that problem, incidentally? I enjoy playing old NES games, and can quite easily on a traditional CRT monitor, but if I use my notebook LCD the results give me vicious eyestrain. I'm not even entirely sure what about it is hard to look at, just that I can only play a few minutes without getting a headache. The few emulators that don't do that are insanely slow on the 1.2GHz notebook, which again is bizarre as they run fine on the 600MHz tower. (I'd play on the tower, but then, as I said, that's not possible considering said tower currently is giving kernel errors whenever I ask it to boot.)

Hmmm. I'm starting to feel more "human" again today... I had another book or two sell on Amazon yesterday, so technically I should ship them, but the post office is probably going to be a total mess after the long weekend. *shudder* I think I'll wait until tomorrow or the next day to ship.

I think it's going to be a slightly slow day anyway... It was warm enough last night that I slept with no sheets, which was nice, but the downside is that without something heavy on me, I can't sleep deeply! :-p So I'm awake and doing okay health-wise thus far, but feeling a bit out-of-it still. Of course, that also could be from taking double anthistamines to handle whatever is irritating my sinuses.

I've bene using the anti-nausea medication whenever the headaches (or whatever they are) start making me feel too sick to function, and it's making a great difference! :-) I also took a break from the Naproxen for a day, which evidently healed whatever was causing the stomach pain. I tried dropping down to zero Naproxen, but after missing two doses was in so much joint/muscular pain that I decided to go back on it. I'd forgotten how much this body hurts without anti-inflammatory meds...even large doses of Ibuprofen weren't handling it.

OK, time to go shower and figure out how I can use my health productively today. I do know that I might go to the drugstore for a couple of things, and might stop at the hardware store while we're out to pick up more replacement power outlets. I can redo the ones in my room that way, though I'm not sure whether I can safely turn the power on, as it's on the same circuit as my brother's old room, and I haven't been able to access those outlets yet.

Got back from Kaiser a little bit ago.

Words do not describe...gah. Actually, no, I can just quote one short conversational clip:

Me: What about the edema listed? I didn't think the lesion would be problematic, but an edema/swelling certainly would be.

Doctor: What edema?

Me: The one on the report, under "Impressions."

Doctor: Oh, that's probably a typo.

She did look at it after I stared at her in disbelief for a moment, and said she'd check with the doctor that had dictated it, but... I'm speechless.

I've been given new meds to try to take for the unrelenting migraines, another one for the nausea, had my abdominal pain totally brushed off, visual problems brushed off, seizures totally brushed off... Nobody except the nurse said anything about my blood pressure suddenly being out of the "safe" range and into Hypertension I for the first time.

I'm to reduce the Naproxen, in hopes that it magically cures the "stomach irritation."

So we're back where we began. I feel like ****, nobody knows why, and the doctor made it quite clear that nobody there cares, either.

I don't know anymore... I'm going to figure out which of my countless drugs to take for how I'm feeling physically (headachy, nauseous, a bit disoriented). I don't think drugs could cure how I'm feeling emotionally after an encounter like that. (I think that feeling unhappy is appropriate in this case, at the very least.)

I'm starting to think that something in my anti-histamine is setting off uncontrollable anger. Every time I take it, within an hour I'm miserable and just plain angry at everything in the world.

Unfortunately, I can't just not take anti-histamines, because then I'd be sneezing my head off -- I have *horrible* sinus/respiratory allergies to seemingly everything.

Anybody ever hear of this or have a clue WTF is going on?

Another step towards wherever I'm going on this mad hunt -- I called Kaiser yet again and managed to get an appointment with my doctor for tomorrow afternoon.

In completely unshocking news, meanwhile, my head hurts and water is wet.

(I'm starting to find all of this humorous.)

Why does it take four phone calls to find a person that can put a rush on a prescription with Kaiser? :-/

More importantly, why on Earth do I have test results indicating that there's swelling in my brain and they're doing positively nothing about it? As I said to my mother a little bit ago:

"When I had to do all of the research into surgical methods to resolve my bowel issues, I kinda understood it because hey, my body is weird. When I was left to do all of the handling of my asthma on my own, okay, well, I could somewhat understand. But this is my brain! Why the hell is it up to me to do enough research to realize that one shouldn't mess with stuff like edema? I shouldn't have to actively request treatment for brain swelling!"

I tried to tell myself that it's absolutely nothing, the doctors probably are just figuring that it will resolve on its own. Then I realized that it's now been three-quarters of a year without the situation spontaneously resolving. Then I looked into how edema is usually handled, and saw, over-and-over again, words indicating that it's absolutely imperative that it be treated... I couldn't find anything saying that it resolves on its own. So I have to wonder, why isn't Kaiser doing anything at all? :-/

Only Kaiser could send a letter informing a patient that she has a brain lesion, that they have no idea what it means or where it came from, but that since it's "probably" not causing any problems, they'll just go ahead and do another MRI next year.

Great Big WTF.

I'm going to get to work researching this evening, calling tomorrow, and in the meantime here are the detailed results for anybody bored enough to look into it.

Test done: MRI, technique was routine plus peripherally gated sagittal spin echo proton density/T2/FLAIR to the are of the corpus callosum.

Findings:
The ventricular system and brain signal and morphology are unremarkable except for a single, curvilinear (about 9mm long and not exceeding 1 or 2 mm in thickness) focus of elevated proton density/T2/FLAIR signal in the white matter of the right occipital lobe in the projected area of the occipital horn of the right lateral ventricle (occipital horns are asymmetrical) with no visual occipital horn on the right (normal variant). This finding is nonspecifiic, but could represent an area of demyelination, although typically multiple. Corpus callosum is not involved.

Impression: Focal signal alteration involves the white matter of the right occipital lobe as discussed above. There is associated peripheral edema or mass effect.

Last night, as I was hanging out at my computer, chatting with Parrish about the Infomercial Twin Midgets, I distinctly heard footsteps up on the floor above mine. Heavy ones, particularly around the trapdoor above my desk that leads up there. There's one major problem, which is that the only thing above this room is an attic, and there's thick insulation up there. Clomping around in heavy boots wouldn't make noise like that.

I went out into the hall to make sure none of the cats had somehow gotten into the closet that somehow might let them somehow leap up and down making boot-clomping noises. Nope, and none of them were upstairs, either.

Following that, there was heavy tapping on the inside wall that divides this from what used to be my brother's room. I thought, again, that perhaps the cats had gotten in there and were running around, perhaps causing things to crash eight feet in the air against the wall. Got up again, went to check, but saw nothing.

After I'd decided to go to bed for the evening, I went downstairs to make sure that the cats had enough food and water until morning. On the way downstairs, I heard a belch from the livingroom, halted, and peered down there. Nope, nobody present. No signs of break-in, no person that could have belched. I got a bit creeped-out at this point, but went about my usual routine.

Came upstairs, settled in bed to write some final email, and heard Kadie chattering *at* something in the hall. Kadie doesnt mrow to come in; she talks to people, usually me. So that she was sitting there having a nice little conversation was rather strange. A moment later, I heard her "mrow" excitedly and bound stiff-legged down the steps, accompanied by another set of *human* type stepping heading down. Believe me: we have a hard plastic covering along the middle of our stairs, the auditory difference between a six-pound cat and a large human wearing heavy shoes of some kind is fairly obvious.

After that weirdness, and some intermittent banging on the wall, I finally fell asleep with the light on. I woke up a couple of hours later, light still on, and noticed two small red glowing things, horizontally parallel and only a couple of inches apart, reflecting in my bedroom window. I didn't see anything in my room, but the way this street and my room is set up, the angle made it close-to-impossible that the reflection was coming in from outside. Nor could it have realistically been anywhere other than the area between my door and my closet, where there's absolutely nothing six or so feet in the air.

At that point, I got a bit annoyed at all of the disturbances. I looked at the reflection, back to the empty space, back to the reflection, then decided that if something was going to start harassing me, it had damn well better wake me up to do so. I shut the light off, still saw the same nothing/reflection, and went to sleep.

I'm starting to wonder if I should get some or all of that medication adjusted. :-/ Admittedly, this kind of weird stuff has gone on here intermittently all along, sometimes involving quite a few people at once, but it has been a long time since I started noticing physical-sensory stuff, and I could do without it returning. If nothing else, it makes it very hard for me to get a good night's sleep. :-p

I got to bed fairly late last night, so I decided to sleep in this morning -- when my wake-up and medication alarms went off, I just hit OK and went back to sleep, figuring I'd get up when the second medication alert of the morning went off.

Oh, for those that have wondered, my medication schedule at the moment:

8:00am Acid reducer, anti-histamine, anti-gas, Albuterol (asthma)
8:30am Naproxen, 2 Vitamins
9:00am Painkillers (2 of an OTC or half a Rx) and/or Neurontin
10:00am Robaxin
10:30am Cecostomy washout
2:00pm anti-histamine
3:00pm Painkillers (3 OTC or 1/2 Rx) and/or Neurontin
4:00pm Naproxen
8:00pm Acid reducer, anti-gas, anti-histamine, albuterol
9:00pm Painkillers (3 OTC or 1/2 Rx)
10:00pm Naproxen, Robaxin, Zovia, Zocor

I don't mind taking all this stuff, because it only takes a minute each time, and it's a lot better than the way my body behaves/feels without them! (I don't like thinking about how much I take, because that's just...disturbing somehow.) Sometimes I combine all of the meds that should be taken within a two-hour block of time into one, if I can.

Anyway, so, having crammed all of my morning's medications into the 10am slot, I'm up. I've got an entry to write on the fun that is living in this house, but that's rather long so I need to write it separately.

I really need a category for the Mystery Illness!

I was doing great, and I'm still in no pain...but going out set *something* off. It was a good thing I came straight home instead of going places other than to UPS for my father!

Just as I parked the car, I felt a funny sensation in my brain, and noticed that it was suddenly a LOT harder to control where my hands were going. Within a minute, my body started seizing (not muscle spasms, just jerking around aimlessly)! I grabbed the box I had picked up for my father, and started walking inside as casually as I could, keeping a tight mental clamp over my upper body. By halfway to the front door, however, my *lower* body started behaving bizarrely, so I was walking with almost a limp, listing slightly to the side. I couldn't figure out how to fix that, so I just limped on inside.

I told my mother when I got in, holding myself very self-consciously still, that I was having problems with the seizure-like things again. She said she could tell, because I was holding myself rigid and slightly hunched over. I guess I need to work on a new way to hold myself when I'm keeping this mess under control... Perhaps I'll practice in the mirror.

Typing is becoming difficult... I'm getting bizarre pains in the back of my head, a strange sensation in the back of my throat, nauseous, and sort of light-headed dizzy. I'm now starting to have a meltdown, though I can't tell why. Going to go take some Neurontin with extra-casein chai to calm down...

Woohoo, the Excedrin worked pretty quickly and I feel all better now! :-) Now I can get more than just the one thing done...yay!

Maybe by the time I get back, Kaiser's Rx-request pages will be functional again. They were having some funny problems when I last tried -- first the whole site went down, then (much to my confusion) every prescription I tried to request got stuck in a never-ending loop where it'd tell me that they had to get the doctor's permission, ask that I press continue, then go right back to the same "we must get permission" page! I'm going to have to double-check to make sure that the one prescription I did manage to request was registered in the system...

They should just hire me to do the whole site; I'd do away with all the fancy malfunctional Javascript silliness and make it really work. (What a concept, huh?) Except, of course, that I'd get stressed out within perhaps two days and not get the job done. (I still have a major site to design that I agreed to do a *year* ago. Maybe I'll work on that tonight if I feel up to it and actually remember.)

Mother @(*%@% Kaiser. I ordered prescriptions online like usual, and they lost half of the order! It somehow just didn't register with the pharmacy. Grr.

My brain feels like it's trying to exit my head right through my skull today. Day three of the !(*# migraine. I'm not only out of pain medication for it, I'm also out of decongestant and antihistamine, so I'm having the entertaining experience of having, simultaneously, both a migraine *and* a sinus headache.

Need to go pick up a package for my father. He had bought himself a PocketPC recently, but decided after a couple weeks using it that he doesn't like the interface and was having all kinds of weird problems with it, so he returned it and went back to PalmOS. Got a color Sony Clie based on my love of mine -- though his has a camera and integrated 802.11b wifi. (Mine has 802.11b but it's through an add-on card.) *g* As I said gleefully, "ooh, now we can beam programs to one another again!"

OK, I'm going to take a couple of Excedrin. Maybe that will make me feel better.

This is interesting. I felt like hell, I took an early dose of my meds, and now I'm back upright again, feeling a good deal better. Not "cured" but at least functional, if a bit tired out.

I have to admit, now I'm *really* curious what is going on. I wonder if it was the naproxen (anti-inflammatory) plus three aspirin, or if it was just taking my muscle relaxant.

Meanwhile, of course the neighborhood children are out front yelling as loudly as they can. It's not like the universe wants me to actually be able to enjoy an evening, right?

I've been too busy freaking out over list battles to post for the past day or so. *chuckle*

Today -- er, Tuesday the 18th -- is my MRI with Kaiser. Lucky me. I'm just hoping, in a slightly admittedly panicked way, that this won't require dye injections. I've been told it will be neat, that I should request an MPEG of what they see, but to be honest: I've had MRIs, I hate them, and I'm terrified of needles. I'm especially freaked out by dye injections that go into my brain. I'm trying not to think about where they'd need to place an IV to do that.

I have no idea how long it will take to get results back. One neighbor heard that I'm being tested for MS from my mother yesterday, and his reaction was, "that poor kid, doesn't life EVER give her a break?" Ignoring that I'm a "kid" at 27 years old -- he moved in when I was about five, perhaps? -- I think he sums it up quite well.

Lame body or not, I managed to rip up quite a few tiles this weekend, then paint the floor, the short staircase, and some of the wall in sealant. It made quite a nice difference! The vacuum bags are here now, so I can vacuum the floor in my room, behind the dressers, and finally restore power to this dump. Perhaps tomorrow or Wednesday -- Woohoo!

I tried some kind of "fruit smoothie" today. It was extremely thick, had chunks in it of some kind, and generally was not appealing. I handed it to my mother to try, and she figured out the problem: "it tastes like pineapple-orange Maalox!" She was right, except that we'd then have to add "that has been sitting around so long that it grew chunks." Not appealing, to say the least.

In the weirdo body department, the rash is mostly gone, the weakness is under control... The only thing I really keep having trouble with is muscle spasms, dyspraxia, and my balance. I've always had *some* problems with that, but now I'm up to 4 muscle relaxants each day just to keep everything from spasming, and that doesn't stop all of the twitching. I keep suddenly finding my body not realizing which direction "down" is, and making already severe dyspraxia worse is scary.

On the other hand, the acidophilus seems to be making quite a difference cognitively -- this is the first time in quite a while that I've been *able* to join in a discussion, let alone a heated one, for more than one or two posts. I'm also finding that it's helping my gastro system if I stay far away from soda; I used to live on the stuff, now it makes me all bloated and sick if I drink even a quarter of a can! :-( Chai makes my system happy, though...can't complain about that. Aside from the fattening aspect, but isn't that what the gym is for? ;-)

All of that work -- on top of the cleaning, errands, plus the usual chores, I cooked chicken breasts for the next couple weeks' worth of sandwich meat -- then I just settled down for a rest with a nice container of...

...fat-free low-cal peach yogurt.

It tastes good enough, but "fat-free low-cal" anything just doesn't strike me as an impressive "self-reward" dessert, if you know what I mean. Good thing my tastebuds and stomach aren't ruled by the media, or I'd actually be feelnig as deprived as my brain tells me I'm "supposed" to be. *snicker*

Woke up early, decided spontaneously to tackle my bathroom today. Worked on it for an hour, then showered, went out to run errands (post office, new shoes, grocery store), came back and just spent another hour on it.

Don't ask. I'll avoid scaring anybody by explaining, beyond that if anybody knows of industrial cleaners for toilets (that is, stuff that will clean it without requiring I use steel wool) I'd be quite happy to learn. Scrubbing the floor was enough, I don't really want to get that friendly with my toilet. Anyway, the bathroom is mostly clean now, aside from the personal belongings that tend to accumulate in any room that a person might get stuck in for a few hours.

My chai came today from New Jersey. Now I need to find something I can use to store all of it in between cups, because with as clumsy as I am, the *last* thing I need is to have non-sealing bags of powder sitting around. Also, with cats in the house, having anything with chocolate as a major ingredient sitting around is asking for disaster. (I got two pounds of chocolate, two of vanilla bean latte, two of peach.)

Now that I've rested a bit, back to work... Want to get as much done as I can before I collapse for the evening. I want to be properly exhausted tonight so I can sleep without having disturbing dreams.

I've got an annoying and increasingly uncomfortable bump on my right hand where it meets the wrist. There IS supposed to be a bone at that particular spot, and I can feel it in my left hand if I try, but it's not protruding or red like it is on my right hand! It's becoming sore, as it's precisely at the point where the outer part of my hand/wrist rests when I'm typing. I started to compensate naturally by twisting my arm slightly, but that's starting to make the whole lower arm hurt instead! :-(

So, what is this? Is it possible to get a bunion on a hand/wrist rather than a toe joint? That's exactly what it looks like, and it is precisely where most of the pressure sits when I have my hands at a keyboard, just as a bunion is where most of the pressure is at when one stands. I didn't whack the wrist against anything, so there's no known "cause" for the problem.

I suppose I should call Kaiser (ugh) because the mild pain is interfering with my ability to do things, not to mention making me irritable. I'm hoping somebody else will have a better idea of something *I* can do. Aside from not typing, that is. (Like that'd ever happen...ha!) I've put a picture of both the OK left hand and the painful right one under the "More Woobieness" link

The arrows point to the area being affected... On the left hand, it's non-swollen, not painful, and actually impossible to notice unless you happen to be feeling around for a bone there. On the right, as you can see, there's something quite visible, reddish, and sore. :-(

It was a long, slow, stressful weekend, so I was off hiding in my room for most of it. :)

I just sent my across-the-street neighbor an email with some information he wanted. I've lived here my entire life -- I think he has, too -- but only know a few of the other people on the street by name. I feel bad for that at times, as it likely looks like I shun them or don't think they're worthy of speaking to or something, when in reality it's just that I have no fricking clue what I'd say if I did. At least one, J, already knows that I'm autistic; I made sure to tell T in email that my strange/avoidant behavior (including why it took me so long to send him a message) is because of autism as well. We'll have to see what, if any, response I get to that.

*yawn* Gah, I'm tired; I couldn't manage to fall asleep last night until fairly late. I think I have tasks I should be attending to, but despite being up for three hours, I still am too sleepy-headed to do more than sit here sipping the usual morning chai. I think I'll go shower, that might help get my brain in gear...

Ow, ow, ow... I put my slippers on rather than my shoes, and suddenly remembered the hard way why I normally don't do that! I was fine for the first step down the stairs, but on the second one my foot slipped out from underneath me and I landed hard enough on my butt to make my *head* feel distinctly jostled. Now my neck is sore... :-p

It won't be up much longer as it's from yesterday, but I liked the latest Ashleigh Brilliant Pot Shot, particularly as it occurs to me that it's precisely how I tend to feel. I think. Depends on how one interprets it, I guess?

Hmmm. So for two mornings in a row, now, I've woken up with serious burning in the abdomen and fairly strong nausea. I get up, grab a container of yogurt, and soon after eating it, I start to feel better, at least in that regard.

I also spent the night feeling achy-restless, with increasing abdominal pain (feeling like all of my organs from hip up to lungs are inflamed) until I got up. I'm really tired out and still achy as a result. :-p A lot of the other things that vanished with the introduction of the acidophilus are still gone -- I'm thinking more clearly with fewer EF issues for example -- but in pain nonetheless.

WTF is going on now? I can't call the doctor because she said not to come back until after the MRI, and that's not scheduled for until the 18th. Maybe I'll pick up some anti-ulcer meds while I'm out today, assuming I feel up to going out. (Not sure whether I'll feel like going to exercise tonight or not, I guess I'll just have to wait and see.)

Just got back in. I wandered the feed store comparing ingredients, then picked up a 20lb bag of Felidae to try. (Ingredients and cost were both extremely good, while the store keeps running out of Chicken Soup Cat Food so I had to start trying other things.) I then went to Safeway, picked up acidophilus low-fat yogurt, a gallon of acidophilus low-fat milk, and of course chai. Both Tazo for use with the milk during the day, and Safeway Powdered for use with water in the mornings when I take all of those damned pills. (I currently am on about 12 pills each day minimum, and that's when I *don't* have to take multiple Excedrin or Vicodin for a migraine. No wonder I have an ulcer.)

I once again enjoyed myself immensely wandering around Safeway with my earphones in, listening to Dar Williams instead of all the chaotic ick. Woot! That fixed my mood pretty well.

My suspicions were pretty much confirmed about the yeast being an issue. I went off the acidophilus stuff for a couple of days, ate homemade bread and deep-dish pizza, and wound up gassy and increasingly "out of it" all over again. (Though not to the degree I was before I started the acidophilus. I was able to count all of my pills in my head using my own internalized language, which would have been impossible before.) I'm eating my first yogurt right now, will have some milk after I finish it. I'll have to, because aspertame leaves a nasty aftertaste...ugh.

I'm also pretty sure that the abdominal pain is an ulcer, probably from taking so many meds on an empty stomach. It stops bothering me entirely if I eat/drink something coating (like dairy products) which would certainly be a strong indicator towards an ulcer of some kind. I'm going to keep "treating" it this way, and if it doesn't heal in a couple of weeks, I'll pester Kaiser for that med (oh zod, not more pills!) that gets rid of ulcers.

If anybody else likes chai, GotChai on eBay is a good seller. Her chai is *really* good (drank a lot when I visited Parrish), she only charges the actual cost of shipping, and her prices are incredible even after that. My shipping cost was $15.45 to move 12 lbs. from NJ to CA, and even with that factored in, the total was *half* the cost I pay in stores. Kudos to Parrish for suggesting her!

I'm now going to go have some chai, in fact, to get rid of the revolting aspertame aftertaste from the yogurt...ick ick ick.

Being productive again today. :)

-- did a load of laundry

-- misc. cleaning stuff around the house

-- went to Kaiser to pick up meds and put in a request for every-three-month refill instead of every-month refill to save copay/time

-- dropped off another four books at the Post Office

-- picked up more acidophilus milk at the grocery store

-- mowed the front lawn, whacked the weeds in the other areas

I then went out with my mother, got sodas at a drive-thru and promptly upended mine onto my crotch. (Time to do laundry again...) I hate this new trend towards making "large" substantially too big for a standard car's cup-holder.

Not sure whether I'll do some cleaning or list model horses on eBay next. I think the latter, since it's Tuesday and I can then make all of the auctions end neatly on Sunday afternoon. I still have no idea whether the acidophilus is the thing making a difference, but today I'm feeling better than I think I have in about two years -- I really am hoping that this isn't just a "good day" for me and I've actually discovered a semi-cure for some of my problems. That'd be a dream come true at this point.

Bleah. I was planning to mow the lawn and do various things today, but I'm nauseous plus my upper abdomen feels incredibly sore and bruised, like all of the organs are swollen and irritated from pressing against my ribs. Or, in more common terms, like somebody punched me in the gut, though that would be quite a feat considering I have ribs in the way. Whatever the cause, today will be fairly quiet. I think I'll grab a soda or something and lay back with a book; it hurts a lot less than sitting up.

I guess I got *too* much done yesterday -- too sore today to accomplish anything. :-p Bah. I'm supposed to go exercise tonight, I think I'll use the exercycle but avoid adding additional strain to my neck muscles.

Kaiser called this morning and set up the MRI appointment for late afternoon on May 18th. (Sadly, just as last time, there's enough of a waiting list that it was the earliest they could manage.) I'm really hoping it will give us some answers. At this point the tics and spasms alone are driving me batty. They're only in places already hidden by clothing most of the time, but it's still disturbing to have a muscle in my back start twitching or be dealing with a full-on cramp from what used to be minor exertion.

I'm irritable because my neck did *not* like carrying groceries and has been all inflamed-painful since then. It doesn't help that it's all my fault for being too stubborn to use a shopping cart or make multiple trips to/from the car, either. I want this problem fixed, blast it...

I actually went out and did things today! ;-)

I started getting one of those determined "okay, I've had it" type feelings sometime yesterday, fed up with stasis in my life, and started Getting Things Done. So the evening was filled with major cleaning unlike any done since 2002, resulting in my being able to walk everywhere that there isn't heavy furniture in my room! :-) Next up is the official furniture-moving, but I need to wait for the vacuum bags my mother ordered to arrive... The ones that fit our good-for-asthmatics-but-so-strong-it'll-eat-socks-at-three-feet vacuum cleaner are no longer available in stores, so we have to buy them online or direct from the manufacturer.

Today I went grocery shopping, prepared & dropped off three manila envelopes of books sold on Amazon at the post office, and picked up my latest cholesterol medication at Kaiser.

(Between concerns about the bleeding/inflammation that cropped up whenever I took it, plus my family history of Lovstatin-resistant cholesterol problems, the doctor decided to put me on some other stuff called Zocor. I hope it works -- when last checked, while I was working out a few times each week, near my correct weight, and hardly eating anything, it was 395, all but 70 of which was the bad sort.)

Kaiser is being Kaiser. I couldn't refill my prescriptions on the web, so I figured I'd use the in-person drop box and pick the meds up in a couple of days. (They won't mail some of my meds due to federal regulations, evidently.) Haha. That would have worked fine, except the drop box had mysteriously only been filled with mail-order Rx forms, making it useless to me. I guess I'll give in and order my meds through their phone system after all. Drat.

I actually almost enjoyed the grocery store, because I had my noise-blocking headphones in and that seemed to annoy everybody else! How dare I not listen in rapture to the squeaky shopping carts or the screaming/whining toddlers in them? Hahaha... The rhythmic music helped bring me back from being spaced-out-overloaded and let me handle the grocery store with a clear mind, though, so I don't care. If people want me engaged with their world, they can bloody well make their world less fricking obnoxious! *grin*

It's early evening, and I'm not sure what I'll do now. I failed to get onto IRC last night -- I had found the right server and channel I wanted, but just as I was about to sign on, I was informed that there was a loaf of bread fresh out of the breadmaker downstairs. Well, it was a handy excuse to chicken out, at least. ;-) I'll likely try again later tonight, once I've done everything I feel up to doing around here.

Itching all over still, and I still have no idea why. I've eliminated ALL of the colored/perfumed stuff from my daily routine. The odd thing is, I am currently (and inexplicably) coming out of the shower smelling like perfume. That suggests to me that there has to be *something* triggering this, but after trying to secure hypoallergenic status, I'm at a loss as to what it could be. Unless it's related to everything else I'm dealing with (given that's misbehaving simultaneously) or I'm allergic to stress. ;-) I tried putting anti-itching cream on it, but oooooh that was a painfully bad idea. My skin immediately turned bright red and started burning viciously... Not the first time I've reacted to "soothing" or "anti-itch" creams that way, so I guess either it's an allergy or the stuff can't be used on inflamed skin? (Anybody know?)

For the moment, I think I'm going to change into evening/lazy clothes and figure out what to do next.

Aren't I a font of joy today?

I went to reorder some of my meds, as I do at the same time every month, and thus discovered that the only useful part of Kaiser's site is shut down until further notice. Great, now I have to use the phone. Bah.

On the creepy side, considering how inept this HMO tends to be and the recent problems other firms have had with private info on the Web, I saw this tidbit while browsing irritably through their site:

We're implementing an advanced electronic medical record system that will enable you to directly access your own medical record [...] Once our new system is fully in place, you'll be able to:

* See lab results and explanations of what the results mean.
* See your current diagnoses, with customized links to relevant health information.
* Check your list of allergies or medications

You know, if this were any other company, I might be excited about how cool this is. However, this is Kaiser. Any bets on how long it takes for there to be some big fat security flaw that exposes the private medical information of hundreds? I mean, keep in mind, this is a website that can barely process prescriptions reliably. (About a fifth of the requests I put through vanish and have to be re-requested. I think that's a bit odd considering it means they're often disappearing from within a list of other simultaneous orders; it's like a shopping cart randomly losing every fifth or sixth item.)

Not that I care much if my information gets released by accident, it's practically all here on my blog anyway. I feel sorry for the rest of the people out there that won't be terribly pleased whenever it is that the first major "oopsie" takes place.

Eventually at this rate I'm going to have to go back and edit all of the entries about my health to fall under a category heading matching the name of whatever it is that I'm dealing with. Not looking forward to that.

It's been a rough few days. We're having rapid weather/pressure changes here right now, and I'm getting some seriously nasty headaches alternated with fuzzy-headedness as they come-and-go. More problematic, though, is that my stress levels are high, and that's causing virtually everything else to go berzerk, including some new things I've never encounered before. For instance, I've discovered that not getting enough sleep now makes my equilibrium vanish so I stagger around with almost no sense of balance at all. I seem to have largely recovered from that, but I'm still having some reading issues -- my tendency to read two lines at once to come up with something totally wrong is being a PITA right now.

I'm waiting for the call from the MRI lab. They need to assign an appointment to me...almost been a week now. :-p I'm guessing that they'll give me a slot in a month or more. Any bets? *snicker* I was supposed to be in Maryland right now, but that's been pushed back -- like I said, major stress going on. :-/

My brain is shutting down now, so I think I'll go...er... well, I'll do something.

So now, in addition to not feeling right, and having intermittent headaches that only taunt me about going away, now I'm sleep-deprived. Fell asleep around 5:45am after taking some Neurontin to shut my brain up, then woke up at 8:30 when my medication alarm went off. I was going to go back to sleep, but I just couldn't. Now that's it's already 10:15am there's no point in going back to sleep unless I want to be miserably depressed the rest of the day.

Okay, tired or not, I'd better do *something* with myself...

Since I've been almost totally down (or at least useless) for the past two days with a vicious weather-headache, here is some random weirdness to fill in the gap where I should be posting an essay right now but can't becase I haven't finished it yet. (I'm about halfway through dissecting the second Schafer Autism Report article.)

Codeman38 just had this supremely bizarre link in his LJ: HumanDescent

The further through the list you go, the weirder it gets! I particularly liked the baby with multiple screaming mouths (that's sure what they seem like to me!)... The baby that was nothing but dark alien eyes and a screaming mouth of some kind is basically what they *look* like in the memory of my odd prosopagnosia-brain as well.

Parrish meanwhile just sent me to Subservient Chicken -- and I admit that I was afraid to even TRY telling it what to do. (No, I don't know why either.) Has anybody tried it?

I thought I'd try to get an appointment with my doctor by using Kaiser's web interface, thus avoiding the phone. I think this response is indicative of my HMO and why I'm still not "well" yet:

Options you have selected
Facility: Petaluma
Preferred dates and times: First Available Appointment

We're sorry, no more appointments are available.

I'm not sure if I should grumble or sigh at this point. Maybe I just somehow selected something wrong...but I doubt it. [Edit: nope, it's their fault. Argh?]

Up half the night, unable to sleep, because of horrible cramping burning pain in my abdomen, up where I assume the stomach is. Ugh. It started a couple of weeks ago... Goes away with the right meds but I usually can't think straight enough when it's going on to take them. Which would be the case right now. :-(

No idea what it is. Ulcer? Spasm? Who knows?

I've been back from Tahoe for a couple of days now, but am only now feeling up to beginning to post. The day of skiing, or the stress, or possibly something else entirely triggered another January-like flare of the Mystery Illness, so I wound up mostly just sleeping since I got back. I missed going to be around fellow auties and see Dawn Prince-Hughes read from her book in Berkeley because of this, which is upsetting, but I'm hoping to see her at the end of April in Washington D.C.

Theoretically, I'm supposed to go out in a little while -- I've got a couple of books to ship that sold on Amazon over the weekend... I'm just not sure if I'll go do that today, or wait until tomorrow. We'll see how I'm doing once I've managed to find said books in the boxes of "books I'm selling" and get them all packaged up for shipment. I probably should also go to the store and pick up some soda, because I've managed to run out again; I've suddenly had the urge to drink Coca-Cola or other clear/semi-clear things rather than milk products. It could be the change of seasons, mixed with my not going out for chai frapp this year because of the expense. (Unfortunately I still don't care for water. I seem to have odd problems with feeling unwell and *not* hydrating properly if I rely primarily on it.)

Rainbow Goddess posted this site to her LJ a few minutes ago -- as she put it, it's safe for work unless laughing out loud is discouraged:

The Commandments of Ted Jesus Christ Living God

Some of them seem like standard traditionalist rules, but then there's quite a few sprinkled in there that really make a person wonder. I almost snorted chai out my nose when I encountered (in a list of sexual no-no's) "don't bite too hard while having sex"!

I'm on day two of my latest experiment in seeing whether my body still needs the Robaxin muscle relaxant... I decided to drop the morning dose and only go with the late-night one -- so far, so good! I had no signs of spasms yesterday at all, and I am still feeling fine today. I'll probably use the original dose the night I work out at the fitness center (or do any other strenuous activity) and the next day, but it looks like for everyday activity I'll be fine with the half-dose. With any luck, I'll be able to drop the Robaxin completely aside from those periodic spastic days I've always had. It's not so much that I mind taking it, but that it makes me drowsy. I *hate* being dulled out, I won't put up with any med for long that damages my ability to function at my normal high-speed. It's nice to be fully alert again, instead of over-relaxed.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the anti-inflammatory Naproxen, but I'll deal with it after I've sorted out the Robaxin. I want to make sure that I don't confuse the effects of removing one drug with the other! Nap doesn't have a dulling sedative effect, but much like aspirin, it does cause problems with my acid reflux. *sigh* Besides, I prefer to manage problems at the source, not just keep treating the symptoms that there is something wrong -- or keep treating symptoms that might not even be present sans-drug anymore!

My arm strength is almost back to what it was before the illness, and in general I'm starting to do fairly well on a physical level as long as I don't overdo it. The one problem I'm having is that the left arm is, after a certain amount of strain, just refusing to work. I had a fun moment when I was at the gym last Thursday -- I had gone through quite a few of the upper-body machines when my left side tired out, but instead of giving any normal sign of fatigue, it just let go of the machine when I went to do another repetition! Now that's a sign to quit exercising that I can't ignore... *snicker* We'll have to see how it does this week; I'm just doing Thursdays right now while I build up some strength, then I'll go back to my Sunday-Thursday routine.

1. What was the last song you heard?

"Trouble Me" by 10,000 Maniacs.

2. What were the last two movies you saw?

Er... *thinks* I think it might have been Return Of The King and The Hulk? (I don't get out much.)

3. What were the last three things you purchased?

Vanilla Chai, Rantidine acid tabs, Mentadent toothpaste.

4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?

Who said I have to do anything? *grin* I'll probably take pictures of model horses, start eBay auctions for them, post more books to Amazon.com, and do laundry, if I feel up to it.

5. Who are the last five people you talked to?

My mother, my father, my brother, and...er... *searches memory* Kyle a couple of weeks ago, I think. (Again, I don't get out much.)

*sneeze*
*sneeze*
*sneeze*
*sneeze*

I don't care what anybody else says, my sinuses tell me it's full-blown Spring. Thank zod for antihistamines, though whether I need them because there's been visible pollen in the air or because every cat in the household is shedding simultaneously, I'm not sure. *snicker* I love Spring around here; the hills all go bright green, temperatures are cool without being frigid, and the periodic rains leave the world feeling clean in general.

I'm supposed to go skiing in a few weeks, with any luck! My father, brother, and I are going to drive up on a Friday, spend the night relaxing (oooh, reading, mini-vacation *drool*) then ski all of Saturday and drive back that night. [For those unaware: we live on the North Bay coast of California, about 3.5 hours from the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics and plenty of other ski areas.] I love skiing, it's one of the only two sports I have any natural skill in. The other is horseback riding, which requires the same limited motion with a forward center-of-balance (and general stance) as skiing.

The only question is whether my body will let me attend or ski... I've started exercising every few days at the fitness center again, trying to learn what combination of medications it takes to sustain physical activity without turning me into a mass of spasms. Not to mention building up my stamina so I can ski for prolonged periods. :-)

I thought this was a pretty cool meme. *g* Heh, I'd love to see do this one, he's got more names than anybody I've ever met!

What you call me meme

If you refer to me as...

D or DeeDee or Neice you're a member of my immediate family.

D.D. you were in my fourth grade class, or otherwise have gotten to know my informal catchall nickname when I don't feel close enough to be called by my first name yet.

Fighting Mite I probably drove you up the wall as a patient with my unruly behavior and tendency to yank IV lines or catheters out.

Murderer or Mage then you read my violent satires in high school and probably thought of me when those Columbine kids attacked their campus.

Lady D.D. you're an Ultima Dragon and your nickname is probably no easier to take seriously than mine is.

Amergin or CyberCat you knew me at Berkeley or were an online friend between 1997 - 2001.

Fuzzy a number of people would still like to string you up by your balls, except the ones that are armed, in which case they'd like to shoot them off afterwards.

Friscrone you're a black-haired blue-eyed elf, and even though you carry a Glock rather than a longbow, you're still more femme than I am.

Bluejay you were adventuring on the Ultima Dragons Ultima Online server back in Winter 2000-2001, and likely saw my ex abandon/kill me repeatedly.

Moggy you probably read journals/blogs online, and almost certainly love animals or are autistic, if not both.

Denise-Marie then you're my mother, and you're REALLY annoyed!

Hmm, a quiz that got it right for a change...

A dreamer. You are the Faerie of the Moonlight. A calm spirit who feels alone. You sometimes find yourself crying, but can not figure out the reason. You have a fear of being used. People have hurt you, and you do not know if you can trust them. You lose yourself in writing or reading, a very creative faerie. People want to be your friend, but you don't know if you want to be theirs. Sometimes you classify yourself as an outcast, but you try to be content with your tears. At least you'll always have your fantasies...

The weekend was fairly quiet aside from two key events.

One was that my notebook Mordion started having Blue Screen Of Death troubles, so I decided to reinstall Sony's copy of XP on it. Unfortunately I forgot, in my haste, that Sony's XP discs are fatally flawed, so the result of using them is a wiped boot partition and half a Windows installation. *sigh* It took me far more hours than I want to think about to straighten things up again.

The other bit of wildness came when I was using Wanderer (my old Toshiba laptop) as my primary computer while I tried to repair Mordion (current Sony sub-notebook). I brought the two downstairs to the kitchen table, as it seemed a nice enough day, and then discovered the latest short in the wiring by plugging Wanderer into it. The flesh on the top of my thumb (holding the plug when the flames and sparks shot out) literally cooked, and there's a nice large blackened mess on the wall. The plug melted enough to lose a prong in the outlet; luckily the part that died was a standard enough one that it cost me only about $5 including shipping to replace it on eBay.

My thumb has no hair on the top, but it's a really interesting pink and "feels" strange. It started hurting pretty quickly, but I applied Tanac (topical anesthetic) to it, and that kept the initial pain under control. I haven't needed to do anything else with it... I suspect that the nerve endings were fried pretty well at the same time, because the area feels a bit like the section of my lip/jaw that went semi-numb as the result of that wisdom tooth operation I had a while back.

Sometime this week, perhaps Monday, I'll shut the power off to the house, yank the fried outlet, and wire in a new one. For now, it's time for bed.