Oh, my, I leave for twelve hours and look at all the things you do…
{{{Kai and Neighbors}}}
The previous house where we lived… eeeh, meaning, the one where Mom lives now is the one after this one I’m telling you about… we lived in the first floor (second floor Amurkin) and there was a fire in the top floor one morning, about breakfast time. So every family in the building (about 16 families) were across the street watching the fire in our jammies and morning robes. Those who had robes. It wasn’t very cold, but still no weather to be out in your jammies and flip-flops and an old pink robe. The fire only burned the room where it had started, although there was water damage in adjacent rooms. The firemen figure it’s better to water up some books and pictures than to let the fire extend and I agree. The school bus came and half the kids it was supposed to take at that stop were in our jammies. We couldn’t get back into the house until past 10am, and then Mom got us dressed and sent us to school.
Ever since we’ve been getting dressed before breakfast. Lilbro once remarked that it’s funny how he can stay in bed until 2pm if he doesn’t have anywhere to go, but he can’t eat in his jammies. It’s ingrained, first you dress.
Cute pic, Drae. Gratz on the job improvement 
(hey, serious, I’ve changed jobs quite a few times and the only time that was for the worse, it involved a nosy relative)
Pugs, if that positional thing means “I get dizzy when I’m laying down and get vertical, or when I’m sitting down and get up”, that’s the diagnose I got at 19. The doc told me it was related to having low blood pressure and to do “all those things we tell people not to do, except smoke. Make sure you keep salted nuts handy.” Caffeine in moderate doses (as opposed to Black Spanish Coffee, which should be classed as a WMD but please nobody tell Bush) and salt help. I’ve had arguments with factory-canteen cooks who insisted in cooking everything salt-less and not placing salt-shakers on the table. In one factory, there were at least six people with low blood pressure and we went to the EHS guy and pointed out it was a damn safety issue and we damn well wanted our food-grade ClNa damnit! (chemical factory)
But there’s that dizzy and this other dizzy. This other dizzy happens at any time, even when I’m sitting down. It’s milder when sitting down, though. Specially because I’m a lot more sure that I’m not really falling ( me)
When SiL’s father was pre-diagnosed with ALS (they still had some tests to run), initially I was told it was “some sclerosis thing”. Searching the 'net, I ran into a list of MS symptoms which threw me into a panic. I was looking at that list and it was like exchanging collectible pictures… have, have, have, have… there were a couple of “uh?” but mostly it was have. Non-positional dizziness (have); tremors in extremities (have) more common near the trunk (have) and on the legs (yes, well, my left thigh followed sometimes by the right, have, cut it out already, you’re scaring me)… most of the other stuff are things that can be caused by a pochillion common things (tummy troubles, being very tired for no apparent reason), so it would be easy to do what I’ve been doing for 23 years: say “must be something I ate” or “man, I’m tired”. Oh, and it gets worse in the heat: the times I spent in Miami and Costa Rica where the ones where I had more episodes (the worst episode I’ve ever had was in CR), but I used to attribute them to not eating right.
IF, big if, I do have MS, it’s a very mild case and it may never go beyond “sometimes my thigh decided to dance without asking the rest of me for an opinion”, but it would still be nice to know for things like being able to take what little medication there is; raising the numbers (the AMA and others recommend not attempting to get a positive diagnose in mild cases - ok, this saves diagnosis money but it also means less likelihood of research in the area); and being able to give a specific illness name to bosses rather than “man I feel like shit today, not coming in to work and I’d appreciate it if anybody took that truck’s number”.
It’s a neurology thing and I’d never been seen by a neurologist, so I got an appointment with one and she signed me up for the first test, but I was supposed to get it “sometime in 2007”.
The contract I now have is until April, but everybody is making plans about what to do with me after April, so the assumption is that they’ll do something with me, right? So I figured I better get a local neurologist and get tested before my retirement comes along. Maybe I’m just being a pussy, but I hate not-knowing. I’d rather have bad news than no news. And now I’ll stop whining and get my ass into gear and work some.
Someone asked (Shibb? sorry, there’s so much going on that it slid down!): I’m in Basel. Cute town. I look at the Rhein and it’s already bigger here than the biggest river in Spain at its widest… some day I have to go see it where it really gets big!
