Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: Health

  • Day 4

    I woke up this morning without the ‘lack of caffeine’ headache I’ve had since day one. I actually expected it to be worse and last longer, so I guess my dependency wasn’t as bad this time as it has been in the past. Of course that shouldn’t really be a surprise. In the past I was usually cutting off a 6 pack a day of Diet Coke habit plus coffee. I wasn’t nearly that bad this time (many days pass where I don’t even drink a caffeinated soda), but definitely was getting too hooked on the coffee.

    What kind of fucking moron quits the caffeine and the sweets and (most importantly the booze) right as she is neck deep in paperwork and taxes? Yep, that would be me.

    It is a good thing that the weekend and holiday have created an extension until the 17th, because I have run into a few problems (I fucking hate Intuit) and am still not done. I firmly expect to be done before midnight tomorrow though.

  • Friday the 13th – An Anniversary

    On April 12th, 2002, I had surgery to remove my thyroid, which was slowly trying to choke me to death. On the 13th the pathology report came back, with that word – CANCER. It has been 5 years, and as of my last blood test, no signs of it returning (although admittedly I am extremely far behind on my blood tests).

    You can read about my thyroid saga here.

  • nightly news report

    I’ve made it home, but I feel awful. I would be in bed except that my gut is hurting too much to get comfortable, so here I am sitting at the computer and just feeling generally gross.

    In other news, outside it smells like… not rotten, but definitely not fresh, salmon. Since I can think of no reasonable explanation for why outside should smell like salmon, I am just figuring that it is a brain tumor. Maybe not, since I don’t smell it inside.

    Everybody else is asleep, or I would drag other people outside to ask if they smell it. “Hey come here, smell this. It is gross.”

    Yep.

    Outside stinks. I don’t feel well. And that’s the way it is.

  • IT

    There is a certain art to feeling sorry for oneself, and I definitely have an aptitude for it.

    There is a simple test to determine if you have an aptitude for this art too. Consider the following two statements.

    If things are going badly and something else bad happens, it goes to show that the universe is committed to kicking your ass and pissing on you while you are down.

    If things are going well and something bad happens, it just proves that you can’t even get enough time to enjoy the good before you are slammed with more problems.

    Do these statements both sound true to you? If so, you may already be an artist. Please draw Tippy or Cubby and send it to me for a full assessment.

    “Woe is me.” It isn’t pretty, but it sure does come easily to me.

    On Saturday we had two cute little zebra finches. On Sunday one fell suddenly ill. I made an attempt to save him, but while we did manage some improvement, in the end it was not enough. I failed. By afternoon, we only had one cute little zebra finch.

    This morning that sense of failure was still hanging on pretty strongly. As good as I am at feeling sorry for myself, I am much much better at feeling guilty. The Sunday guilt made way for the Monday guilt. I didn’t sleep well Monday night, probably the result of an over consumption of caffeine during the day. This morning I woke up “LATE”. I wasn’t actually late. It was 7am and I didn’t have anyplace I needed to be. I just woke up in the midst of that “oh crap I am so late” panic and started my day with the accompanying big dose of adrenaline. By around 9:45 I was seriously crashing and having an adrenaline hangover.

    However, I was determined to pretend to stay focused and get a little more caught up on one or two of the many things I am very far behind on. Then Indy started barking her fool head off, and the echo started London howling. Soon it became apparent that the cacophony was in need of some intervention. I went to the top of the stairs to call Indy up and let her know that while it was great she was protecting us from some horrible nasty, that the threat had passed and she could settle down.

    She came upstairs wondering if she might score a treat. I grabbed her around her middle and gave her some rough bouncy squeezes that cause her to make funny little grunting sounds. London is all about belly rubs, he will stay on his back for long stretches at a time as long as somebody will pay attention to his belly. Indy, she is a bit ticklish and prefers rougher treatment. She especially likes feet. She’ll lie down near where you are sitting and push her way under your feet to encourage you to step on her. She likes that. Apparently, the smellier the feet, the more she likes it. We’ve never had an in depth conversation about why, so don’t ask me. The point is, that she does not ask for, or often get, a lot of hands on attention to her belly.

    So here I am, making her squirm, and I find it. It. Not the Stephen King sewer clown. It. The thing I feel incapable of dealing with today. It. A lump on her abdomen. Now I am smart enough to know that I wouldn’t actually be any more enthusiastic about the discovery on any other day, but I have sufficient self-pity skills, so that I am able feel like it is happening at precisely the wrong instant.

    My immediate inclination is to go hide in a closet and just stay there, maybe until 2007. Instead I allowed myself a contained nervous breakdown and then pulled my shit a little bit together. I made a choice about which vet to take her to (I picked the one I have the least overall confidence in because a) she has the closest and least busy office b) all I need today are some basics, and that she should be able to do c) closest, quietest and least busy=the least trauma to myself and Indy d) I can always go see a preferred vet after I have the test results). I scheduled an appointment for this evening and then took some time to let my daughter know what was up.

    ETA: Biopsy says it is not cancer. This is good.

  • Do you have a frog I can borrow?

    I feel like crap.

    CRAP

    CRAP

    CRAP

    I woke up feeling bad, sore throat, nose totally dry, but sinus cavities totally stuffed. Just yucky. My apologies to anybody I have breathed on in the last few days. I stumbled downstairs and looked in the cabinet to find something, anything, to make me feel less like crap, and I find this Zicam throat spray stuff.

    So, I spray some, and I am like:

    <i>huh

    that doesn’t taste good</i>

    I get my vitamins together and take them with water, and try to keep going about my business – but the not good…

    is turning bad…

    and getting worse…

    and soon I am making faces and twitching…

    and feeling gaggy.

    Since KFZ doesn’t happen to be blind, deaf, stupid, or comatose, she asks, “WHAT is wrong?! What are you doing?”

    Twitching and gagging, I tell her that I used the Zicam and mention that it tastes bad.

    <blockquote>bad

    bad

    bad

    BAD

    BAD

    <b>FOUL</b></blockquote> This cracks her up, and she just keeps saying:

    <blockquote>I told you so.

    I told you so!

    I told you so!!

    You just got mad, and said it couldn’t be that bad, but <font size=”+1″>I TOLD YOU SO!</font></blockquote>Now, “I told you so” is not very pleasant to hear out of any mouth, especially if you are not feeling well. It is something I am even less interested in hearing out of my kid’s mouth.

    Did I haul off and hit her? Nope.

    I just went and got the Zicam out of the cabinet and threw it the fuck away.

    Unfortunately, I think everything may taste bad FOREVER.

    The thing is, she just said it tasted “bad”. She didn’t say it tasted a special kind of bad, that grew and grew long after the moment you sprayed it, and sent your body into convulsions over the sheer nastiness of it. She just said “bad”.

    The child obviously needs to learn some new and improved communication skills.

    In the meantime, I am wandering around looking for something to wipe my tongue off on, hoping to make the taste go away. Perhaps some sort of poisonous frog will work.