I’m sorry you get migraines. I would never wish them on anybody, but I do wish people would understand. No, they are not “just bad headaches.”
Dear Facebook Friend,
Get a blog.
I accepted your friend request because I liked you very much when we used to work together, and I didn’t want to lose touch with you. But these six-times-a-day outpourings about your “searching for meaning” about “finding a home for my exuberant spirit” and the “restlessness of my soul” are starting to look like losing entries in the All-Akron Proust Contest.
And then all your disciples rally and post that you are a wonderful person (you are!) and that you must never lose your joy for living (you shouldn’t) and that you should continue to seek for peace and love (you should). Just don’t write about it so damn much on your Facebook page.
I get migraines too, and still don’t wish them on anyone who judges people about their migraines. (Well, maybe one demonstration of a migraine for people who are openly sneering about them. But just one.) Sorry that you’ve joined this “club.”
Dammit – it was something more expensive. The lamppost in the front yard (every house in our development is required to have one) runs on the same circuit as the living room. Apparently the wire’s developed a short somewhere between the house and the lamppost. The electrician disconnected the wire where it leaves the house, and now the circuit breaker stays on.
Of course, this is a buried wire, so who knows how expensive it’ll be to replace it. <sigh>
A couple weeks ago I nearly got a speeding ticket for going 50 in a 35 in town. Instead I got a fix-it ticket for my tinted side windows and a stern warning, so that’s not what my rant is about.
However, since then I’ve been making an effort to drive no more than 5 miles over the speed limit, and I’m so sick and tired of having 4x4s and Escalades driving up my ass all the time I could scream! I swear, I think it’s more dangerous to me driving like this than when I was going 50 in a 35. :mad:
I just heard the new Surgeon General talk about the importance of education while speaking at Des Moines Area Community College. Only she said “Duz Munz.” Oy vey.
Hey, I can get that anyone might mispronounce Cairo, Illinois and Pierre, South Dakota and Puyallup, Washington, but presumably someone told her that she was going to Dee Moyn, that her flight landed at the Dee Moyn airport, and that she heard people talking about Dee Moyn, so where the hell does she get Duz Munz! Did she think everyone else was saying it wrong and she wanted to correct them?
It’s embarrassing, especially from an Obama appointee.
If you’ve got insurance that’ll cover it, it might be worthwhile to double-check that “nothing shows up” opinion with an endocrinologist. There is a fair amount of disagreement among even the good docs on what constitutes normal (or acceptable, or not worthy of being treated, or whatever) thyroid test numbers. Non-endocrinologists may tend towards the “don’t mess with what’s not broken” line, worrying too much about possible side effects of treatment.
I have a broken thyroid; fixing it with an endocrinologist’s help PAST the point where my regular doc said “Your thyroid numbers are within normal levels” has made a gigantic difference in my quality of life.
Just FYI, I wouldn’t have recommended this if you didn’t sound like you reasonably think you’ve had several thyroid warning signs over several years. You will probably not be shocked to hear that thyroid treatment can be political in that lovely way that childhood vaccinations are: there are crackpots out there who will tell you *everything *wrong in your life is because of your untreated thyroid and THE ESTABLISHMENT DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW etc. etc. etc. <ptui>
Sigmagirl, you can stay friends with someone but hide their status updates. Click on the person’s name, then Hide will appear as an option. Only way I made it past the election, myself.
On a personal pit note: I pit my dog’s prostate and the cancer that has eaten it up and swollen it so much it protrudes up into his rectum.
I pit myself for being so passive about his diagnostic care and nailing down what exactly might be wrong when he seemed to feel like he had to pee and just dribbled.
I thought it might be stones since his symptoms sure looked like it, but I went with the vet’s diagnostic process and almost TWO MONTHS later we finally get a referral to get an ultrasound to check for stones and it’s cancer. Fucking cancer, right out of left field, we didn’t expect that at all, but when I’m reading up on the cancer, bloody urine and those white blood cells are one of the ways it’s diagnosed.
So I sort of pit the vet. I know my boy’s young and neutered and otherwise healthy, but why didn’t you offer us the option of referral for an ultrasound earlier? (Can’t get them without referral here.) I know the whole horses/hoofbeats/zebras thing but when the first urine sample looks like it might be cancer, let’s step up the game. Treat the probable infection at the same time, but let’s just get the ball rolling to get a definitive test to rule out/pinpoint the worst case scenario, the other likely culprit of stones.
Especially since it turned out to be so much worse.
I know the delay wasn’t a concern about saving us money.
I coughed up for urinalysis every week, Clavamox, then Baytril, plain films and tubing of the urethra to check for obstruction and a blood panel that came back clean. We jumped through all these time consuming expensive hoops that cost three times what that fateful decisive ultrasound did, and in that time his tumor got bigger and extended into his rectum making him feel like he had to poop and getting nothing out but walking and straining (we’ve added psyllium powder to his food now, and that has improved things) so he got worse! I should have insisted, I thought it could be stones and I should have insisted on the definitive imaging to rule out the worst right away, then we could have found out how much worse it was than we had thought, and started treatment sooner. Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference. We’re starting chemo on Monday and I’m really hoping it will shrink the tumor back down to at least where it was just two weeks ago when he started having the discomfort while defecating.
Also, in dealing with the other vets, since this is emerging as a theme: why do we have to ask very specific pinpointed questions to get information out of you? Why is a link provided by a relative stranger on a message board more helpful in finding out what we will need to watch out for in signs of pain progression, what we might have to deal with in treatment? Why can’t you walk us through the “so, your dog has a highly aggressive terminal cancer” information and inform us as to the specifics as they will pertain to our dog, since you’ve seen him, handled him, done $1300 worth of testing and imaging on him? I know we’re depressing to be around because we’re sad, but for pete’s sake, don’t make us beg you for information. Help us be informed about his options for care, pros and cons, what we are looking at…
We had a dog diagnosed with bone cancer and it was the same damn thing. I actually found out by a fax left for me on the desk at work (I worked for a greyhound rescue group) that seemed to say that the test for fungus was negative, but it was just a lab test result sheet, no notes on it…and since that was the only other explanation that had been presented for what could be seen on the x-rays, I had to wonder, did that mean my handsomegoofus had bone cancer? I called the vet’s office, and she couldn’t or wouldn’t come to the phone, and couldn’t or wouldn’t call me back, even after five phone calls and messages to please call me back. Needless to say, we never visited that vet again.
Just talk to us, just tell us what we should know, what we should expect, what we should watch out for. I ended up calling the vet’s office (back to the present situation here) the afternoon we got home after I saw a bloody urine mixture leaking from Tahoe’s penis. It was hours after the biopsy, so I called, and the receptionist asked the doctor and relayed the response of, “I’m not surprised.”
Well. That’s nice you’re not surprised that my dog has a bloody urine mixture leaking from him, would have been nice to have a heads up that this was something to be expected and not a cause for concern. In case you missed it, we’re just a little bit attached to this dog and just a bit concerned about his wellbeing.
Wow. Just - no words. I’m so sorry you are going thru this with so many different vets. I suppose one of the good things about living in overpopulated S Cal is we have so many more choices, so we didn’t have to go thru this sort of thing when Diver had cancer. I’ll keep your boy in my good thoughts!
Yeah, I know. I just wish I could stay current on what this person is doing (planning a vacation, getting a new job, dating a new man) without having to view every pixel of her stream of consciousness. Regretfully, I think I am going to have to hide her, and maybe unhide her once in a while to see if she has actually posted anything of substance. I really do like her, but I’m not her camp counselor.
The mini-est of mini-rants, but I do wish people would hang up the posters at the office in a straight line. None of them match, even the posters that are obviously part of a set, and intended to be hung in a line. I want to fix them. But fixing all of the damn things would take me at least an hour (I work at the HQ of a *big *company) and probably just piss off the group admin.
Things hung up crooked just irk me. I can’t get from my cube to the ladies’ room without passing at least one set of descending posters.
I feel your pain. Before I started telecommuting full-time, I was occasionally known to stay late, very late, later than anyone else, to fix the ones I passed every day. Now that I work from home, I can flaunt a level at any time of day or night!
