Thursday, July 19, 2007

Neo-Con Jokes

AS has been collecting them and, why not? My favorite so far:

Q. How many neocons does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. Neocons don't bother with light bulbs. They declare a War on Darkness and set the house on fire.

Phenegan, begin again.

When I was in the hospital earlier, I was prescribed Phenegan in fairly generous does for nausea. It became obvious to me within a few moments of the first does that the stuff has neurological properties, I started shaking uncontrollably and recognizably started to hallucinate, although very lightly. Pleasant, vivid colors and a few interesting closed-eye patterns (mostly like complex Chinese brocades). I’m not sure most people would have noticed. It absolutely made me sleepy.

Interesting though that this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen a connection between CNS impacting meds and the stomach. I’m not sure what it means, but it seems to be true. When I was in the emergency, they kept checking on me and one of the nurses mentioned that Phenegan sometimes "makes folks go a little loopy", and made the universal crazy sign with her hand. Given it's origin as an anti-psychotic, I'm not terribly surprirsed that sometimes happens. Human brains are complicated and no two are really the same, a flexibility I find quite amazing really given that we have 95% of the same cognitive functionality.

I have 5 pills left which they shipped home with me. Hopefully I can save them for "later".

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Coming Home Early

This week is our big annual meeting in Florida, for which my team and I have been planning for 8 weeks.

I got extremely sick on the plane down. Extremely sick. My stomach has been bothering me for a while now, so much so that's it's not uncommon for me to throw up after dinner. I've been meaning to see a doctor about it, but there hasnt been much time (see above). I also commonly drink red wine with supper, so the dark, reddish/black fluid I had been barfing up with a coffee-grounds texture was not immediately alarming.

Except Monday when I landed, was throwing up every ten minutes, and realized it was the same substance, but I had not had any wine. The I realized, "Hey, maybe that's blood!"

It was.

I've been in the hospital in Orlando for the last 2 days, getting stablized. I'm flying home to seattle tonight via Delta (who, quite generously updated me to First Class for free when they heard why I was coming home), and then I'll get treated in Seattle.

There is a condition diabetics get where the little flap in your stomach that prevents food from going back up, breaks, causing exactly the type of problem I have. The blood was coming from my esophagus which has been damaged over the last few months by the breakdown of this part. The debate at this point is whether or not I'll need surgery to correct it, and I expect an answer when I see my doctor at home.

Not great.

BTW, I missed my speech today which involved giving away that ounce of gold I purchashed last month. One of my co-workers gave the speech (and presumably the gold) today, but I'm very dissapointed I didn't get to pull my coup d'grace myself.

ugh.