Thursday, April 30, 2009

My Friends are Funny!

I feel incredibly fortunate to have so many truly clever and eccentric people in my life. It makes this journey so much more interesting. Here is a brief dialogue from my recent time in Tulsa with my delightful Gilmore-witty-esque friend Jeni Copelin.

Jeni (to me): I have a haircut at 1:45, help me remember.
Me: Okay, but you know I can't remember things either.
Jeni: I know.
Julie (Jeni's aunt): Write it on your hand.
Jeni: Yea, I'll write a little note in marker. Oh, I'll draw a line for a hair. When I look at it I'll wonder, "Why do I have a line on my hand? Oh yea, it's a hair. Why do I have a hair? Right, I have a haircut." And I'll put a 10 by it, because 1 plus 4 plus 5 is 10.
Julie (sarcastically): that makes sense
Jeni: I don't want everyone knowing my plans.

We took almost no pics while I was there and as I feel most blog entries should have at least one pic I'm including these from our fav Gilmore Girl epi.

I want to go to a secret gauzy tent party in the forest!

And I REALLY want to jump off a tall scafoldy thing with an umbrella...

while wearing a fancy dress!


(photos of Season 5, Episode 7 You Jump, I Jump, Jack)

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A Tale of Two Drugs

I have some new insight into why my last blog and all my facebooking on Tuesday came so effortlessly, in fact, so joyously. There was nothing in the world I wanted to do more than write, chat, muse. Already I’m finding the writing of this blog and subsequent replies to all my Tuesday correspondence a bit harder. It isn’t in the least that I don’t want to communicate, I do, but with a chemical free brain I just find it so much harder.

So I posted that I was given a new pain pill to replace my old marvelous one that made me totally pain free typically in one dose, occasionally two. The new one I got did not work nearly so well. I took the first one at 1 AM, after which I never went back to sleep. It lowered the pain enough to survive, but didn’t get rid of it, at all. However I did feel mentally very on. And this is why:

Side effects
Commonly reported side effects for butalbital include:

  • Dizziness

  • Drowsiness

  • Intoxicated feeling

  • Light-headedness

  • Euphoria

  • Addiction

  • Severe impairment of judgement

I’d again like to highlight the two that really made Tuesday special: Intoxicated feeling and Euphoria, which translated into a most delightful time spent on the computer and watching TV. Usually if I watch TV for too many hours in a row I start feeling depressed. Many people have thought this quirk insane, but it’s true. However Tuesday I actually commented to myself, “I’m in pain, but I feel great. I could watch TV all day. I could watch TV and write emails ALL DAY!”

The bottle said not to exceed 6 pills in 24 hours. Well in 12 hours I’d had 7 (this could have been the "severe impairment of judgement" side effect kicking in). I was having a very hard time walking straight, speaking coherently, or putting my glasses on without poking my eye out. I called the pharmacist to discuss the dosing.

Me: I just need to know how serious this don’t exceed clause is?
Pharmacist: Quite serious.
Me: But I’ve had the max dose and there are a great many hours till I can go to the doctor tomorrow. When this wears off I’m going to be in serious pain, emergency room pain.
Pharmacist: If you exceed the dosage you will be in the emergency room.
Me: ....
Pharmacist: I suggested you go ahead and go to the emergency room now.
Me: ....I’ve been awake since 1 AM; it has no bearing on anything, I just feel the need to say that.
Pharmacist: I think you should go to the emergency room.

He was very lovely.

Rachel called me on her way home from work and I broke the news that I might need her to take me to the emergency room. It should be stated that it was also Jared (her husband’s) birthday. She, without hesitation, agreed. They are both very, very good roommates!

We chose an urgent care place over an emergency room. I think it was a good call. I took my old empty bottle of pills that used to work and my new full bottle of pills that didn’t work, at least not in the way I needed them to.

Nurse: This old medicine was for stomach pain, ulcers, etc. This new one is for headaches and it has caffeine.
Me (light dawning): I’ve been awake since 1 AM.
Nurse: I don’t want to speak badly about another doctor...but...
Me: I’ve been awake since 1 AM

(I’ve never fully understood why you have to tell your story twice. Once to the nurse who you think is maybe the doc, and who after you’ve poured out your heart and feel somewhat connected to, says, “Okay, the doctor will be in in a few.” Then you have to tell it all over again. I’m usual tired the second go round and leave stuff out.)

Doctor: So what’s going on with you?
Me: My stomach hurts and I’ve been awake since 1 AM.
Doctor: This medicine is for headaches and it has caffeine.
Me: I know.
Doctor: I don’t want to speak badly about another doctor...but...
Me: I know.
Doctor: Here is a prescription for a pain pill that’s actually for your stomach.
Me: I’m so tired.
Doctor (patting me on the knee): This will help.

And it did. The new, new drug works WAY better; but I must be honest, while I don’t miss the pain or insomnia, I do miss the euphoria; that was nice.

p.s. I will be making an appointment with a GI doctor very soon...and I promise not to blog about it.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Non-readers Beware

It's 2:42 A.M.; I'm awake and my mind is roaming wide plains of thought, and so I anticipate a wildly stream-of-conscious blog. The first roam being that the use of pen and paper has become, in my life, highly obsolete, resulting in an odd clenching of my entire arm and hand as I write. I have an absolute death grip on this pen. And yes that means this was first a hand written blog entry, because its 2:44 A.M. and I've heard that the light from a computer, much like that of a TV and hand-held video game (another option I considered), interrupts the cardia rhythm, which is entirely the wrong term. But word on the insomnia street is that those lights are decidedly bad for inducing sleep.

The reason I'm awake at this awful hour is because my stomach is killing me, and by stomach I don't mean the euphemismly vague catch all term of stomach, but the actual organ located here (I did write that on paper in anticipation of a google image search):


I had/have (?) H.pylori. You can get it in America, but my stomach pain seems to date back to sometime after a trip to Mexico (94 or 95 ?). And it's pretty much the worst pain in the world (at least my world) and I've had malaria.

It's panic-inducing pain; a pain that I've always been certain ought to kill me. I've thought, one can't be in this much pain and continue to be alive. At its worst it feels like a creature, made of fire, trying to eat it's way out of my stomach (yes, think Aliens). I actually passed out a couple of times, but I think I was just hyperventilating.

I saw an ER epi once about a severely burned guy. His breathing got really odd and the docs ran around trying to figure out what was wrong and toyed with the idea of intubating (any ER fans notice how in every epi at least one patient was intubated?). (Okay, I've no idea if that's actually how the scene played out, but I'm going with it.) My memory is vague but I think the dialogue ran thusly:

doc 1: He's hyperventilating.
nurse 1/intern doc 1: Why?
doc 1: He's in so much pain.

Anyway that's this kind of pain, well not right now since I'm able to write out a blog, but that's the kind of pain this can become. I used to have an absolutely beautiful, divine, sent from heaven pain pill that nipped it in the bud, but I recently ran out and when I went to have it refilled, discovered that it's been taken off the market because of adverse side effects; like what, sweet relief?! There's nothing to take it's place, so the doc gave me a dif pain pill, and since I took it two hours ago and I'm still awake and my stomach still hurts, I'm going to say it's not sent from heaven.

So with that monstrously long disclaimer on why I'm awake, at now 3:04 A.M. I'll move off this old lady ramble of ailments and drugs.

I need a new phone with a higher pixel camera, or, here's a thought, I could keep my actual camera on me at all times. I took this pic many months ago. You can't tell, but there's a fawn outside the window (I wanted to write baby fawn, but that's rather redundant):

This is roughly what it looked like. (I stole this off the internet).

Where I work I frequently see wildlife. I've seen a doe, rabbits (personal fav), chipmunks (another personal fav), turkey, and the fawn. I feel like a Disney character, except I can't sing and these animals run from me rather than help me clean my humble, yet homey, cottage in the forest. But anyway, I stopped my car so I could just bask in its little fawn sweetness. This was a bad idea as that meant stopping here:

I nearly caused a three car pileup; embarrassingly, all three were coworkers.

Coworker 1: I thought your car had broken down.
Me: There was a fawn.
Coworker 2: I almost plowed into the back of coworker 1.
Me: There was a fawn.
Coworker 2 (as Coworker 3 silently looks on): That was a really bad idea.
Me: But there was a fawn. A FAWN!

I later told Jen, who really is a Disney character. She can sing; and once, we visited a sheep farm and while they wouldn't come within a mile of me, they were draped across her lap looking languidly and adoringly up at her.

Me: (fawn story)
Jen: It was alone?
Me (sensing she has made a keen and undesirable observation): Yes. It was just on the edge of the woods.
Jen: That's not good; it shouldn't have been alone. That means something happened to it's mother.
Me: ....oh, that really changes my feelings about this story.

Months and months later, while carpooling with Rachel, we were recounting all the animals we've seen driving up to the building. The fawn story came up and she said, "Oh yea, I saw that fawn too. I called animal control since it was alone." (the good animal control, the kind that takes sweet, abandoned fawns and rehabilitates them, resulting in email chains of little fawns curled up with the center's cat, dog, or rabbit, as the case may be).

So, Jen, I don't believe I ever told you the ending to this story, but it's a happy one...I think...I hope.

I doubt anyone is still reading this; it's WAY too long, but I've tried to throw in pics for today's word-adverse society.

So my tum still hurts, my mind's still roaming, and my death-grip-clenched hand's spasming; I think I'll just stare at the ceiling for a bit, and/or rummage through my drugs and see what other treats I can find.

"Adieu, to you and you and you." (My fav movie)

Well, except for this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And:

(I hate that they didn't make a sequel. I LOVED the gothic feel to this. It was visual amazing!)

So anyway, Sound of Music is "one of the top thirty [movies] of our time. Anyway, at least." (a nod to, yes, another top fav)


For real, I'm done.

(shoutouts: Google earth; random internet images; copyright infringement; photoshop; Samsung camera phone; wikipedia, which all my copyediting friends will scoff at, with good reason; stong barbiturates, even when they don't quite remove the pain they still make you chatty)

Monday, April 6, 2009

Toby, Wrinkles, and Deer, oh my

Well, it was another delightful weekend. I'm not even sure what to do with myself and all my plesantly spent days. I'm used to being asked, "What did you do this weekend?" and replying, "Nothing really."

I went with Rachel to her parent's house to stay with her younger brother while her parents where out of town. Her cousin Codie, who has featured in earlier post, came as well and we had a merry time of movie watching, sunbathing, snacking, and reading. You can of course read about it all here: Twilight, the Directionally Challenged and Sun Bathing and here: Good Eatin' and the Movies

Toby found a basketball, which is the joy and delight of his life. He can play like this for hours, literally! He won't stop, even when he's exhausted. I have to take the ball away from him or he'll just keep playing until he throws up. That's Miami (Rachel's dog) doing the fly by.





I have reached that age where the sun is no longer my friend, gone are the days when it kissed me, leaving that nice glowy color of health. Instead now it cackles at me, trying to lure me with it's seemingly innocent comfy warmth, all the while leaving sunspots and crepeing up skin that doesn't have the collegen count it once had. I stayed covered with 30 sunscreen, a hat, and as many clothes as possible. I still had a perfectly lovely afternoon reading under all my protection. I'm reading The Sisters Grimm series. They are for kids, but way fun! (leah, rachel, codie)


The pier we reposed on. (codie)


View from the pier.


I got up early on Sunday and was sitting by the window that looked down to the water. Codie had told me the morning before that sometimes you could see deer swimming from the island back up to the shore. I was thinking about how cool that would be when down on the path a little fawn stepped out. Then another one came after it. Followed by several does. I jumped up and sprinted to the bedroom for the camera.


It's a tad too far away to see but I circled the doe.






Low pixel, close up.













Wednesday, April 1, 2009

More Piggy-back Blogging

My very exciting weekend (by Rachel):
LOST
Geiger First United Methodist Church and Riding Horses with New Friends

These are a few of my fav things, all of which took place over the weekend:
1. Spontaneous adventure
2. Land so vast you can get lost in it (seriously, I've always wanted enough land to get lost in)
3. Nature
4. Fried foods

Thanks Rachel!! Life is WAY fun with you!!!

(sidenote: What she didn't relate in her post about breakfast was that I had gotten up early-ish. Her dad and his friend were off turkey hunting and she was still asleep. I assumed they'd have already eaten so I began to rummage for food. There were plenty of very tasty, sugary substances that I would have loved but knew would make me feel awful...then I spied the eggs. There weren't very many of them and I debated and debated. Should I eat them, should I not. What to do?! I thought, "we'll they've probably already eaten so okay, I'll just go ahead and have a few." After about an hour of very merry morning reading and coffee sipping, everyone returned and awoke. Rachel's dad said, "Now we'll have breakfast. Rachel get the eggs." My heart skipped a beat, but they were kind and there were JUST enough eggs to give them a taste. But I think next time I'll go for the Oatmeal Creme Pie!)