Beckdawrek, I think you nailed it (pun intended 
) I haven’t been taking my regular vitamins lately, just keep forgetting. It’s a hair, skin and nails formula and duh! I don’t know why I didn’t realize it would affect my nails. Hasn’t seemed to make a difference with my skin or hair.
kayT, I will check out the Nutra Nail! sounds like something that would work for me.
Thanks to both of you!
Maybe this is a bit to workplace for this thread but I don’t care right now. Mostly because it is also a rant about my physical fitness.
I had to check the top of some tanks in our tank farm at work. The ladder is inexplicably close to the wall and faces in such a way that you have to wedge yourself between the wall and the ladder to get access to the top of the tanks. Every time I have to do this, I always knock my knees because there’s basically no space to put my legs anywhere. Why is this like this? As an Engineer, I know we all make mistakes and end up with plants full of the quirks but I think this one really could have been fixed.
Also, I am out of shape and climbing ladders is hard and makes me winded. So, instead of my normal curses when I hit my knees, I could only huff out of breath, cursing on the inside.
I missed the Super Bowl yesterday due to being curled up in a dark room with a 101.5 fever and what I think is probably norovirus, or something close enough that it doesn’t matter. Today I have spent the entire day in bed. At least I’m blowing it out only one end now. I thought about dragging myself into work tomorrow but I haven’t eaten real food in 36+ hours, would be in the bathroom all the time, and am probably still contagious and no one would thank me for exposing them. So I guess I will just fall further behind. I haven’t had one of these viruses in about 10 years and I’d forgotten how miserable they are.
I know that’s not the kind of tanks you meant, but thank you for that image of the military kind of tanks having baby tanks 
My brain is always weird, but sleep-deprived and with a toothache courtesy of that stupidity tooth that keeps trying to decide if it wants to be in or out… that gets really, really weird.
Just got back from the ER with meds to help pass a kidney stone. Fun times.
When working with chemicals I generally assume everything might be explosive or flammable unless I definitely know better.
I’ve been on Adderall XR for a while now and I’ve noticed that it doesn’t seem to work very long for me. For instance, if I take it at 8:30 (right before I leave for work), it tends to wear off sometime between 3:30 and 4:30. That may not be a big deal for some people, but I work in a veterinary clinic until 6:00 (or later) and those late hours are when we are discharging surgery patients and hospitalized patients. I NEED to be fully functional for my whole shift. So I toyed around with taking a dose at 6:30 when I first wake up and a second sometime around 2:30. That was amazing! I was on the ball all day long and still had focus when I got home, which is a huge issue. So I sent a message to my doctor about it. I wasn’t asking for a double script because I only work 4 days a week but just to have enough to cover me for two pills a day.
NOPE. He wants to change my dose from 10 mg to 20mg. I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure that giving me MORE of the drug to metabolize isn’t going to help it work LONGER. I mean, it’s possible but the 10mg dose already elevates my heart rate and gives me dry mouth. I can’t wait to see what more does.
(Yes, I’m aware that it may sound like drug seeking behavior but I just want to be able to work a full shift without losing my concentration in the middle of a sentence at the end of the day. Plus my oldest son is the same way. He has to take a booster dose in the afternoon due to his metabolism. My middle son needs a higher dose but his works longer so he only takes one a day.)
IANAD but I would say ask your doctor if you can get the 20 mg and then cut the pills in half. It’s what I had to do for the Norco given to me last night: I took a full tablet and then threw it up an hour later. Enough was absorbed that I didn’t need another (half) dose until 5 hours later. My prescription is for 1-2 tablets every 4 hours as needed.
My specialist’s advice (from a doc whose only job is experiment on you to find the best ADD meds) FOR ME:
Have a tall, strong coffee noon or one-ish.
Is your doctor a specialist in this, or a GP? If the latter, I strongly suggest you look for someone who specializes in adult ADHD treatment (if you can find one). Good luck!
Mine’s a specialist that’s technically a psychiatrist. My primary doc recommended him, and he’s considered “alternative treatment” so there’s a copay for each visit.
Though it only took three visits to figure out that the “equivalent to caffeine” was working better than the Adderalls or anything in the Meth family.
Switched recently from a GP to a psychiatrist for maintaining the prescription. At the first meeting he said that for many people the XR doesn’t cover the whole day and they need a non-XR pill at the beginning of the day, to get going, or in the late afternoon, to keep going, or both. We experimented and it looks like I’m best off adding a small boost in the morning. If I re-boost during the day, it can be hard to get to sleep.
Also, for me the XR comes in a capsule and can’t be divided. The non-XR pill can be split. So I’m taking a capsule and half a pill every morning.
I can’t speak to whether a larger XR dose is likely to make it last longer. I suspect it might, at least somewhat, but that you might not need the larger dose that goes with it.
Last night I was just about to sit down to my nice hot dinner, and I look over to my thermostat to check the house temperature and what do I see?
Nothing, that’s what. It’s completely unpowered. Note that nothing else on this floor is lacking power. So I start out to the garage to see if a circuit breaker got thrown, and what happens? My foot slides off the step, I land on my side sorta and bang my face (luckily not too hard) on the car bumper, wrench my knee a lot and twist my neck some and get some road rash on the heel of my hand. My nose hurts. The supraorbital ridge over my right eye hurts. My shoulders and upper arms hurt.
And the circuit breakers are just fine.
I called my HVAC folks immediately, and they tell me to try to change the battery. The panel is wired into the house power. There is no battery. There are no hinges, when I removed it from the wall there was no battery compartment, and the soonest they can get someone here is sometime tomorrow (now today). It’s rather chilly here this morning, and since I have to take my car into the shop, I’m not (currently) running the gas fireplace.
By the time all this was done, my dinner was cold, which was just one. more. straw.
These last two weeks have already been incredibly stressful for other reasons. My dad went into the emergency room and ICU for a respiratory infection, and has been discharged into hospice. I’ve got contractors working to finally finish the refinishing of my bookcases, because the people I hired to do that didn’t finish the job, and it’s going to be expensive®. I downloaded the wrong damn 1099-INT form from the IRS set (seriously? they have the 2019 forms on the site already?) and have to redo it. My car is flashing all sorts of warning lights at me. And now this.
I do not need this. I want this sort of thing to STOP.
That’s a lot at once, Morgyn. I’d throw a toddler level tantrum just after all the falling and cold-dinner-eating alone, and that’s before I got to any of the really sucky stuff you mentioned at the end.
Thanks.
And you know something? My time memory sucks. All of this is since last Tuesday, so it’s one week, not two. The contractors started last Tuesday, and that’s also the day Dad went into the hospital. The car started throwing warning lights Thursday. I found out about the stupid IRS form Sunday. And last night was the thermostat and the fall.
ARGH. The HVAC tech won’t be able to come today. His first call this morning turned out to be an emergency.
He won’t be here until TOMORROW.
I realize that in the great scheme of things I’m still better off than a large part of the planet, but it’s just one more thing and I’m about to cry.
On Monday I got a text from my husband saying he was short of breath, lightheaded and almost passed out at work and did I think he should go to the ER? I got another text seconds later saying someone had called an ambulance. I met him at the hospital and, four hours later, he was diagnosed with a pretty massive anxiety attack and, oh, by the way, did you know your husband is pre-diabetic? Okay, this is workable - diet is relatively simple (not easy; simple) and with respect to the anxiety, we’ve been going to therapy for a while together and largely been discussing my husband’s challenges with dealing with anxiety and how it’s transferred frequently to our son. Who was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder about a month ago. Oh, look! A pattern!
So we get home, my husband promptly eats a couple of plates of pasta with garlic bread. Okay, I’m thinking he could probably get a good GP and a referral to a nutritionist, but the guy’s been in the hospital all day, so no biggie - I’ll make sure we have healthier leftovers to choose from. Next day, I ask my husband whether he thinks he should maybe talk to our therapist by himself or wants me to continue going with him and he said that he’s confident he can deal with both the prediabetes and anxiety through diet and exercise.
Okay, I get that the man is an adult and if I continue to treat him like a man-baby this isn’t going to get better. And perhaps I’m pushing too hard too soon since I’m sure landing himself in the ER for anxiety is a lot to stomach; the prediabetes diagnosis is probably just the icing on the cake and then laying out a play the very next day might be too much to expect. But dammit, man, please at least plan to plan if nothing else.
On a more selfish note, my mom has surgery today three hours away from me. My sister is there to help her through, but my “shift” for taking care of my mom is next week. All next week. And my daughter has burst into tears and begged me not to go at least twice. My husband keeps talking about how shitty it will be that I’m not here. I’m worried about my husband’s health. I’m concerned over my son’s mental wellbeing and I don’t think I can be everyone’s conscience, emotional dumping ground, therapist and mother without breaking into pieces myself, which helps no one.
But there are several upsides to all this:
Update: The HVAC thinks they can be out here this afternoon, after all. Of course, this may interfere with me getting my car back this afternoon. Maybe I can get the dealership to come get me tomorrow morning instead.
Day three at home on the couch after this stomach virus. I had every intention of going to work today but then I woke up dizzy and with a headache and my heart going about 120 and realized that getting through a whole day of work when I have not eaten anything at all since Sunday afternoon except 2 pieces of matza, is not gonna happen. So I’m guzzling down Gatorade and trying to work up an appetite for real food.
The thought of how behind I’m going to be when I get back is not helping.
Man, I was going to kvetch about my hand surgery, and trying to fix my stranded car one-handed, but that’s nothin’ compared to what y’all are goin through!
Hang in there everyone!