In theory, being told to go home and sleep for three days sounds good, right? Yeah, well in practice it's not so much fun.
I have a mystery illness. Some sort of virus that makes me ridiculously tired (as in I fell asleep in the doctor's waiting room and am afraid to close my eyes at red lights) has been making my life hell for weeks. It got to the point that I went in early this month and asked for a battery of blood tests because I just knew I had some dread form of anemia that was doing this. I don't. Despite eating almost nothing with substantial iron and avoiding iron supplements like the plague because of side effects, I am not anemic at all. My B vitamin levels are also fine. I still felt like hell.
Went back in last week and asked for more tests because I was still tired and had also developed a weird red rash--like little pin pricks--on my legs. He guessed it was probably some virus that would run its course in 7-10 days. He did a full blood count to check for the basics and those results also showed no problem. Meanwhile, I spent the weekend in bed, barely able to get up and do anything. The doctor had given me a scip for Wellbutrin because we thought maybe it was depression.
I was almost at my wits' end Mondaywhen I got official word that my test results were all normal again --I took off work and went BACK to the doctor Tuesday. This time I saw the nurse practitioner and she asked me a zillion questions, checked the rash, which has increased on my shins, but not spread past my legs yet. She ordered another round of bloodwork--8 vials--checking for everything under the sun from mono (the most obvious) to parvo (I thought this was a dog disease?) to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (no tick bites that I'm aware of) to lupus (btdt with the testing and it was negative the last time, but that was about five years ago). She told me that I could take off the rest of the week and just sleep. Sleep will do as much as anything else to help me recover and getting overly tired will just make it worse.
So yesterday I slept like the dead for three hours in the middle of the day. I only woke up because I had to go pick up the kids. Today I'm at home alone and the thought of just hanging out in bed all day is a little depressing. There is only so much to look at on the internet and television during the day sort of sucks. I'm sure that by 10 I'll be sound asleep, of course because I'm yawning right now. I absolutely must go to the grocery store today. Sadly, that is the highlight of my day and if I don't sleep before I go, I'll be throwing weird things in my basket. Last night I went to just get some must-haves, namely bread, and came home with milk, cheese, bagels, juice bisquick, and totally forgot to get the bread. Ugh.
Yeah, I know--poor Kim. Stay in bed for three days and sleep, watch tv and play online. But seriously, it's not nearly as much fun as I thought it would be.
Showing posts with label weird shit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weird shit. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Here's A Moral Dilemma For You
Say you are walking through the parking lot of a fairly large strip mall-type place in your fair city. It is pretty full of cars, the weather is iffy and you're in a hurry to get your Goodwill purchases home so you can do laundry. Because you are a natural klutz, you have a tendancy to look down toward the ground while walking, lest you step in gum, smack into a sideview mirror, trip over a curb or just fall down. Since you are looking down (in hindsight, thank God you were), you happen to notice a rather odd-looking, rectangular pillowy-looking object directly in your path, a little ways ahead (I'd give you a feet/yards estimate, but I've tried to put a number on it and I can't really seem to get it quite right since I have almost no sense of length perception. I can do football field (this was not that long) and arm's length (this was longer) ). You ponder this and wonder what it is...
1. A sack of flour? You are in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot, after all (it's next door to the Goodwill and brand-spanking new. I have only been in there once because Sam needed to pee and the Goodwill doesn't have public restrooms--not that I would let him use it if they did).
2. A pillow? Stranger things have fallen from your own vehicle.
3. A swim float? It's a little early, but you never know.....
4. A balloon? Some people buy that kind of shit for Easter. None of these really capture the true essence of the object, so you speed up and peer closely as you approach. You notice that there is a rope, no, it's tubing attached to the pillowy thing. And the tubing is hanging from the Jeep Cherokee right beside the object..........WTF? It isn't. It can't be. No.freaking.way.
By now, you are within spitting distance of said object and, having had three c-sections as well as major abdominal surgery and visited several old folks in the hospital, you are sure. There can be no doubt. What we have here, in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly/Goodwill/new tanning salon with absolutley awesome beds that was running a special for $18.95/tan all you want for a month so you signed up/new Mexican restaurant/24-hour gym that you joined and went to once, thus paying $40 for one trip to said gym/over price sporting goods place and appliance store from which you will never make a purchase/your dentist....where was I? Oh, yeah, lying in this parking lot with the tubing still attached, and much to your disgust is a FULL CATHETER BAG. You know...the thing with pee in it? And there's still pee in the tube.
Seeing the pee in the tube, you immediately look to see (from a comfortably hygenic distance) if your worst suspicions are true. You hope in vain that it has somehow been discarded due to fullness or inadvertently dropped and left behind (the thought of this makes you almost convulse in pain), but your worst fears are confirmed---it appears to be attached to the man who is slumped over asleep in passenger seat. He is moving as he breathes, so you're assured he is not dead. The door is slightly ajar to allow the tubing some room. So now what. Who the hell puts their catheter bag out in the freaking parking lot? Obviously, this is in error, right? It has to be. So, do you knock on the car door and point out to the man that his urine-collection device is lying in the parking lot for all the world to see? OR do you just walk on by, saving both of you a little emotional distress. I mean, the thing might have been in the way, so he just put it on the ground. Maybe it needed to be significantly lower than the bladder area in order to work at optimum efficiency (judging by the content, the thing is DEFINITELY working).
As you chose the latter and make your way quickly to the car, you are suddenly wracked with guilt. What if the driver of the Jeep comes out of the Piggly Wiggly and, seeing the passenger is asleep, starts the car and quietly drives off without waking him, never realizing, until it's too late, that trailing alongside the car, much like some macabre Just Married regalia is a full catheter bag bouncing along the highway...until a wrong turn or a close pass from another vehicle or gravity and some sort of physics laws (I didn't take physics, but I'm assuming one of the laws would apply here, yes?) intervene and the bag or tube or everything is suddenly detached and left to fly into the windshield of a passing car? Or bounce into the path of a local biker? Or be lobbed into the air and land in a brilliant yellow explosion at the feet of a local homeless woman searching the shoulder of the road for cans or 20 million in cash lying in a ditch (okay, if that were guaranteed to happen, this would be no dilemma).
You are tempted to stay in your van and wait for the driver to emerge, but sadly, you must haul ass across town to pick up the middle child from bball at the Y, so you cannot stay. As you leave, you wonder, what happend? What should I have said? What should I have done? Is there a right answer for such an obviously WRONG situation?
WWYD?
PS: if you have any stray catheter bag stories you'd like to share, please feel free to do so in comments.
1. A sack of flour? You are in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot, after all (it's next door to the Goodwill and brand-spanking new. I have only been in there once because Sam needed to pee and the Goodwill doesn't have public restrooms--not that I would let him use it if they did).
2. A pillow? Stranger things have fallen from your own vehicle.
3. A swim float? It's a little early, but you never know.....
4. A balloon? Some people buy that kind of shit for Easter. None of these really capture the true essence of the object, so you speed up and peer closely as you approach. You notice that there is a rope, no, it's tubing attached to the pillowy thing. And the tubing is hanging from the Jeep Cherokee right beside the object..........WTF? It isn't. It can't be. No.freaking.way.
By now, you are within spitting distance of said object and, having had three c-sections as well as major abdominal surgery and visited several old folks in the hospital, you are sure. There can be no doubt. What we have here, in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly/Goodwill/new tanning salon with absolutley awesome beds that was running a special for $18.95/tan all you want for a month so you signed up/new Mexican restaurant/24-hour gym that you joined and went to once, thus paying $40 for one trip to said gym/over price sporting goods place and appliance store from which you will never make a purchase/your dentist....where was I? Oh, yeah, lying in this parking lot with the tubing still attached, and much to your disgust is a FULL CATHETER BAG. You know...the thing with pee in it? And there's still pee in the tube.
Seeing the pee in the tube, you immediately look to see (from a comfortably hygenic distance) if your worst suspicions are true. You hope in vain that it has somehow been discarded due to fullness or inadvertently dropped and left behind (the thought of this makes you almost convulse in pain), but your worst fears are confirmed---it appears to be attached to the man who is slumped over asleep in passenger seat. He is moving as he breathes, so you're assured he is not dead. The door is slightly ajar to allow the tubing some room. So now what. Who the hell puts their catheter bag out in the freaking parking lot? Obviously, this is in error, right? It has to be. So, do you knock on the car door and point out to the man that his urine-collection device is lying in the parking lot for all the world to see? OR do you just walk on by, saving both of you a little emotional distress. I mean, the thing might have been in the way, so he just put it on the ground. Maybe it needed to be significantly lower than the bladder area in order to work at optimum efficiency (judging by the content, the thing is DEFINITELY working).
As you chose the latter and make your way quickly to the car, you are suddenly wracked with guilt. What if the driver of the Jeep comes out of the Piggly Wiggly and, seeing the passenger is asleep, starts the car and quietly drives off without waking him, never realizing, until it's too late, that trailing alongside the car, much like some macabre Just Married regalia is a full catheter bag bouncing along the highway...until a wrong turn or a close pass from another vehicle or gravity and some sort of physics laws (I didn't take physics, but I'm assuming one of the laws would apply here, yes?) intervene and the bag or tube or everything is suddenly detached and left to fly into the windshield of a passing car? Or bounce into the path of a local biker? Or be lobbed into the air and land in a brilliant yellow explosion at the feet of a local homeless woman searching the shoulder of the road for cans or 20 million in cash lying in a ditch (okay, if that were guaranteed to happen, this would be no dilemma).
You are tempted to stay in your van and wait for the driver to emerge, but sadly, you must haul ass across town to pick up the middle child from bball at the Y, so you cannot stay. As you leave, you wonder, what happend? What should I have said? What should I have done? Is there a right answer for such an obviously WRONG situation?
WWYD?
PS: if you have any stray catheter bag stories you'd like to share, please feel free to do so in comments.
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