Saturday, March 28, 2009

I've Been Bad

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It's been too long since my last post. OK, I'll say seven Hail Moscow's and have someone beat me with a dead carpe diem.

We have been busy. There are two birthdays to celebrate, one car to fix, one house to sell, and one house to finish and a spring break to celebrate with the college girl and we have been burning the candles at both ends to accomplish these things.

I got the White Whale running and back up to Duluth a weeks ago. Since then, I have driven down and back to the Cities a couple of times. I have also driven to Madison to pick the girl up and delivered her a week later to the Cities to catch the megabus back to Madison.

I have also been gobbling pain meds like chicklets to keep the alien in my sinuses happy so it doesn't chew its way out any time soon.

The carpenters, the electricians, the plumbers, the HVAC'ers, and the painters all left the house yesterday saying they were done and they were never coming back which, of course, is not true but it is fun to imagine it that way. They took away almost all of their tools and equipement to help us believe they were really done, but I know better.

It helps though because tonight we are having a party. In part it is for my birthday (a couple of days early); in part it is for my (er, um) girlfriend's birthday, and in part it is to invite friends and neighbors over to welcome the new house as it nears it's completion. So, if you are in the neighborhood tonight, be sure to stop in. We will never finish the beer otherwise.

Just to complicate matters however, Sophie the Wonder Dawg decided to go into her "I've had a stroke and can't stand up" routine about eight this morning. This put a damper on the festivities. Instead of getting going on my killer pulled pork recipes, I was wondering if she was going to make it. A call to the vet had me watching her and hoping that things did not get worse, but they did. Over the period of about six hours, she went from normal to unable to walk. There was diarhea and vomiting as well and I thought this might be it. I was trying to figure how I was going to put on a happy face with my canine friend of thirteen years suffering a room away.

Finally we decided to make a run to the emergency vet clinic since it was the weekend and the normal vet was unavailable. After weighing, listening to heartbeats, taking of temperatures from the southern end, the vet opined that Sophie was suffering from "Idiot vestibule" disease (not really that, but I couldn't remember the technical term). The good news is that if she really is dealing with Idiot Vestibule disease, then there is a 98 percent chance that she will recover within 24 to 48 hours. The vomiting is caused by vertigo which is cause by the palsy and muscle control problems which are caused by the irritation of the vestibule nerves coming out of her little doggie brain.

So, we have a name for it, and the hope that she will get better, but in the mean time, we will have to bring food and water to her, dose her with dramamine, and carry her outside to do her business.

Meanwhile the guests are arriving at six.

What a life.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Not Dead - Yet


So, instead of going out to dinner with friends last Thursday night, I went down to the local hospital and had a couple of CT-scans - one of my lungs and one of my head. We were looking for clues as to why I have been saddled with lungs full of goo and a head that feels like it's going to pop off any second. This has been going on for over five months.

The results came in the next morning. The lungs are fine, which is important because the chemo drug I am taking can cause lung infections and if the scan showed something like that, I would have to stop taking it.

The head however is very sick. I have a raging case of sinusitis which means all of my sinus cavities are filled up with some fiendish bug that has resisted all attempts at eradication. And when I say filled, I mean packed solid. The scan showed almost no clear space in there at all. Finally I have confirmation that something real is going on.

Since I have been taking antibiotics daily for almost four years as part of a long ended chemo treatment, I am afraid that I have grown a resistant form of bacteria in my little nasal petri dishes. Therefore my doc prescribed some form of super antibiotic that will kill all the good guys as well as the bad (I hope). This means probably diarrhea just in time for me to make the seven hour trip to pick up my daughter for spring break. I'll have to wear some of those diaper things.

Oh, and then there is the snow that is supposed to hit then as well and my only true winter driver is 150 south of here waiting for me to finish a radiator transplant (see previous posts for details of son's pickup truck kiss). This means that I take the Prius, which is a fine car but came equipped with a set of POS summer tires that turn into butter dishes at the first sign of snow. It's going to be quite the ride.

In other news, we are planning on celebrating a couple of birthday's and a housewarming in a couple of weeks. For me, it's one of those decade birthdays which are the only ones I celebrate now and deserves a good party. For someone special to me, it is just another BD that she feels the weight of. For the house, it's been a year under construction and is almost done. If the weather is friendly, we'll be out on the decks, sipping under the stars. It will be a good time and you are invited if you are in the area on March 28th.

As I said, I will be going down to Madison on Tuesday and back with a couple of passengers on Wednesday as I deposit them in the Twin Cities. Thursday I go down to the Mayo for one of my regular checkups and then back to the Cities where I have one day to stick a radiator into the White Whale and put everything back together and test it out by driving it to Duluth in time to make my beer making class at the local co-op. My fingers will be crossed.

My daughter will be joining us for a week when her Model UN session is done down in the Cities. It will be great to see her as her first year at college is slowly coming to a conclusion. What won't be so nice will be the inevitable squabbling over who gets to use which car when. Kids.

So, I think that's it for now. Sorry about being so tardy on the posts. Other things distract.

TTFN