whatcha doing?

[DerGolgo]

So, I've got a whole menu of causes for my dementing headaches.
Lacking any other alternative, really, the hospital neurologist decided to give me a treatment that they have recently introduced for treating migraines and tension headaches.
Since the idea is to anesthetize the nerves themselves that provide all the pain-signals, it may just work.
So, today, I got my first Botox treatment.
The jokes may commence NOW.

The idea is to inject not into the muscle, but according to a different scheme. Bypass the muscle and let the Botox work on the endings of my trigenimus nerve, which has been giving me all that grief. If it works (which is by no means certain, it's more of a "can't hurt if we try" apprach), it will be four to seven days before it takes effect.

The doc also mentioned a new sort of spray they use for MS patients with chronic pain, a mouth-spray with THC as the active ingredient. Supposed to be absorbed through the mucous membranes in the mouth and throat.
Despite the manufacturers sales pitch, though, the doc explaind that none of the patients he's got on it finds that it works. Not even a litte.

[DerGolgo]

Back home.
Still dealing with the pain and trying to adjust pain-meds.
Visited the parents today, as did my eldest sister and her family. My youngest niece still won't talk to me, or even wave goodbye. Something all my nieces 3 and under are doing currently. I think I should get my beard trimmed.
Smartflix let me find the entirety of MacGuyver on some foreign Netflix. Little blessings.

[guitargeek]

You tell those toddlers that I said to stop being such uppity bitches.

Fingers crossed for you.

[DerGolgo]

Not counting multi-vitamins, I'm on 9 different medications right now. Spread out over 17 pills and three doses of drops every day.
Call me irresponsible or daredevil, but in my uneducated estimate, one glass of 12 year old single malt can't really make much of a difference anymore.

If my kidneys or my liver do give out, I'm taking the whole damn block with me. Cheers!

[Bigshankhank]

Not counting multi-vitamins, I'm on 9 different medications right now. Spread out over 17 pills and three doses of drops every day.
Call me irresponsible or daredevil, but in my uneducated estimate, one glass of 12 year old single malt can't really make much of a difference anymore.

If my kidneys or my liver do give out, I'm taking the whole damn block with me. Cheers!

I'd say you take off and nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure.

[guitargeek]

Not counting multi-vitamins, I'm on 9 different medications right now. Spread out over 17 pills and three doses of drops every day.

Everything's a competition with you people...

[guitargeek]

By the way, if you need a quick pick me up, throw one of these into the mix...
https://www.etsy.com/listing/122801892/glitter-pills" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Bigshankhank]

By the way, if you need a quick pick me up, throw one of these into the mix...
https://www.etsy.com/listing/122801892/glitter-pills" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Seems like more of a club thing...

[DerGolgo]

Tried going back to work today.
I had just decided a week ago that, this is it. Off-sick since end of January, that's it. If they couldn't fix the pain with the NSAID withdrawal and all the fancy new meds, this is it, I gotta deal with it somehow.
I managed to deal with it from 8AM till about noon. Took the drops that make me a bit woozy, didn't do enough, took a big does of NSAID (it's okay as long as I don't take more than ten a month, this was two). Didn't do much, either.
Headache is driving me up the damn wall. Gonna spend the rest of the day in a drug-induced stupor and see my pain therapist tomorrow.
It's a busy practice, three or four doctors, easily more than a hundred patients a day in total. And yet, the receptionist knows me by name at this point. Yipee.

[guitargeek]

I'm jealous of your painkillers.

[DerGolgo]

I'm jealous of your painkillers.

Don't be. It's not a fun stupor, but the other kind, and it doesn't make the pain go away, only dulls it.

[guitargeek]

Rescuing a dog.

Pics or it didn't happen.

Today is the first anniversary of our "Gotcha Day".

[guitargeek]

I love my doggie!

[Bigshankhank]

Dogs rule. Good on ya for providing a forever home to that one, Geek.

[guitargeek]

With a little help from my friends, including several ootmiks, including (but not limited to) Mk3, Sweetpea, Skkot, Mea, Der Golgo, Stiles... and probably some who I'm forgetting (I got my infusion today, and it's tough to think straight).

[DerGolgo]

So ... easter Saturday in Germany, North-Rhine Westphalia to be specific.
The radio-alarm awakes me and I ponder whether I should get up and do something about the usual mother-finagler of a headache, or endure and just remain in bed.
The radio announces that, in yesterday's drawing of the "Euro-Jackpot" lottery, the record sum of nearly €77 million has gone to a player from North-Rhine Westphalia. I get up in a jiffy, indeed.
Yes, I play the lottery. Yes, I pay the "idio tax". Actually, I know there is no realistic chance of even getting back what I put in. But I don't consider this an investment for a monetary return. A lucky few do win, and buying a ticket every couple of weeks lets me dream and feel nice and things. It's an investment for my soul.
I do this and that and, finally, check my numbers and, yep, you guessed it - I DIDN'T WIN NUFFIN!!
Well, actually, €7.00, which is less than my wager. But fuck it.

Click to see a rant about public-broadcasting wasting my money and constructing fear of Islamist terror out of nothing.

Spoiler

Show

Later today, on the way to the hardware store, to build furniture items from massive chunks of spruce cut at the sawmill to be structural members in a roof or something. My pa gave me a ride.
The radio reports that a security guard at a Belgian nuclear power plant has been murdered!!
Well, actually, he works at a nuclear power plant, but he was murdered at his home. Which is 50 miles from one plant, 40 from another, so it's anyone's guess which one he worked at. Huh?
Yes, yes! And don't worry, his security pass has already been deactivated!!
Aha, cool. We know what an unknown nuclear plant has done how?
A Belgian newspaper reported it, front page!! They are sometimes known for sensationalism, but this seems legit! You see, Muslim terrorists ....

This was NOT a cheap, fly-by-night station, this was not a mutated hothead screaming because political-agenda.
The host who spent the next solid five minutes yabbering on about how this might be related to islamist terrorism, he was on WDR. That's the public-broadcaster around here. An entity established by an act of law, not for profit, to provide broadcasting media on behalf of and in the interest of the people. They make every damn household pay an exorbitant monthly fee to keep WDR free of comercial interests and shit. Used to be I only paid a fiver a month, since I only owned a radio, no TV, but they changed that, everybody has to pay for it all because internet.
I listened VERY closely. For all that crap about the press-conference, what Belgian law-enforcement is saying in reply to inquiries, etc., etc.
NOPE.
None of that.
The fucker spent five minute lecturing about "Muslim terrorists". NOT regarding the Brussels atrocities, just in a hypothetical regarding this one incident of a guy, shot, dead in his apartment. With ONE SOURCE. ONE. That is known for sensationalism and, according to radio host himself, and that in the original front-page article didn't even mention any possible terrorist ties!!
I get that people are edgy. But that should be EXACTLY why we have public broadcasting. To report only the facts, avoid mass-hysteria by not practicing audience-grabbing sensationalism.

Coming out of the big-box hardware store, I thought I had spent maybe 30, 40 minutes. Was informed it had been two hours. Hardware stores are, for me, what shoe stores are to some women, I guess. Later found I had totally forgotten half, well, a third of the stuff I had been intending to get.

Also began a painful parting by taking ALL my books off of the bookshelf. Sorting for "keep in apartment", "store in a box in the basement" and "give to a charitable flea-market".
Most painful: Taking approx. 5 years worth of vintage motor rags, a whole bunch of mix and match bike rags and 12 almost complete years of the biggest, and my favorite, custom-bike rag off of the shelf.
Those go to ebay. Gotta say farewell.

[guitargeek]

Paring down can be rather liberating...

[DerGolgo]

Yeah, but I felt I should rant as much about this asshole on the radio as he fabulated about terrible Muslims.

[DerGolgo]

I just found out that the guy playing the extravagantly ossum supervillain in, well, everything, and now portraying Hank Williams, too, none other than Mr. Tom Hiddleston is ... fuck, he's younger than me.
Only three months. But ... I'm older than the villain of the piece?

Fuck I feel old now.

I've had FOUR hip-surgeries, and an eye-surgery, I'm actually prohibited from operating a motor-vehicle on the public highway due to my shitty eyesight, I have Osteoarthritis and two of the 17 pills I munch each day are for my hip. I spend every other day in the doctor's office, get to use the reserved seating on public transit and grumble about fucking hipsters.

But at least I was never older than the villain!!!

Damn I feel old ...

[DerGolgo]

Sitting in yet another hospital.
Or, rather, out back of it. The rooms have balconies, but NO SMOKING!
This includes vaping.

No WiFi in the rooms, either.
Place is in the MIDDLE of nowhere. The admitting staff didn't make an entirely competent impression. Like admitting a patient happens only every other week ...

[Rench]

I had a little ER visit as a patient the other day. It is amazing how much they give 0 shits about patients coming in. Good luck to you!

-Rench

[DerGolgo]

It's not that they didn't give a shit or suchlike ... it's that they were surprised by, and unfamiliar with, the forms they and I had to fill out ... I had to remind one that something needed her signature, not just mine ...
The medical staff I've met so far, cool. Doctors are doctor-y, nurses are top notch. They seem to know their stuff, friendly and professional. A little more eager to help than nurses I've met in urban hospitals.
But maybe that's because this isn't an A&E hospital. They get chronic cases, or people in need of rehab or suchlike.
The big sign says "Gereontology & Neurology", and they are definitely set up to care for the former, primarily.
But all I've been told about their neurology department, and neurologists, they are top-notch.
For one, this is a fairly small hospital. 212 beds. The single-lane, pothole ridden access road is definitely NOT suitable for ambulances blasting in at high speed (yeah, I guess I'd be surprised by what an ambulance, driven by our favorite ugly-canine-afficionado in particular, can go full-blast hang-on-for-dear-life-miles-per-hour on). Not on a regular basis, at least.
And yet, from what I understand. If it's a piece of neurlogy diagnostic equipment, they got it.
It's a full half-hour to anywhere, and yet the two chiefs-of-medicine the neurology department has for some reasons are both full-blown Professors of medicine. So I guess they probably know what they do.
Heck. One of these guys has, on top of an MD (which in recent decades was no longer handed out akin to candy, as it once was), he's got a full blown PhD, too. And he scored a professorship at some point. Damn overachievers ...

[guitargeek]

Do they have a machine that goes "PIIIING"?

[motorpsycho67]

Eating some Iberico cheese and contemplating housework.


Yay.

[Bigshankhank]

Tomorrow morning I head to Austin to marry off my daughter. Well, the wedding itself is Saturday, but there is still a lot to do between now and then.

[guitargeek]

MAZEL TOV!

I'm tucking into a rather large portion of the House Special Lo Mein from Maple Garden, with a side of fried dumplings.

[Rench]

BSH! Good luck man! Congrats!

-Rench

[DerGolgo]

Tomorrow morning I head to Austin to marry off my daughter. Well, the wedding itself is Saturday, but there is still a lot to do between now and then.

Good on yer! Congrats!!

Do they have a machine that goes "PIIIING"?

They do, they wired me up to it tuesday night. But it was set on mute, so as not to disturb my sleep, which they wanted to measure.
With about a dozen sensors wired to my head, a throat-mic, mouth-mich and not one, but TWO nostril microphones. And a bunch of other stuff attached to my chest, my side, my legs ...

[DerGolgo]

Trying to convince my father not to let them discharge him from hospital without an EKG or ECG or whatchamacallit.

He got out of bed, "stumbled", and broke some ribs when he hit a table.
He's been having problems climbing stairs, just carrying a bag of groceries from the car into the kitchen will leave him breathless for a few minutes. My pediatrician sister told him to get his heart and lungs checked out, everybody tells him that, he doesn't want to hear it.
He's 75, has been smoking for over fifty years, he was on two or more packs of 100s a day for a lot of the time. And would down a bottle of wine every evening.
He doesn't smoke or drink as much anymore, but won't see a doctor, either.
He doesn't want to let anybody tell him he might be old or sick.
Fuck.

[Bigshankhank]

Sounds like the Old Man knows what he wants, an how he wants to live out his final days. Its a tough line to walk, between taking away his independence and allowing him to shorten his remaining days. Good luck.