My doctor faxed all my stuff over to a rheumatologist, and told me to call her on Monday. I did, and she said she needs time to study the information. I haven’t heard back from her.
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for my god-damned insurance company to approve a perscription for Celebrex.
I went out today to the back yard for a little while and sat in my kayak. And cried.
I think that in spite of the pain, I’ve got to get out for a few minutes in it. Not for long - I don’t want to get too painful. But I’ve got to feel my own kayak beneath me on the water.
I started to write this earlier but I went to a Quicktime VR site that illustrated one of the locations and it hung up my browser.
I don’t often remember my dreams, and this one I only remember the last part. In the part I remember, I was walking down Wellington Street in Ottawa and ticking off the locations (I think I was making mental notes to give somebody directions) - first the National Archives, then the Supreme Court building, and the Confederation building, but then I got a shock.
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…how much I hate the fucking US medical care “system”?
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Today on the way into work I was thinking about my next flying club bill, specificially the fuel credits part. And I realized that I never saw a fuel slip at the FBO on Sunday. And then I realized that I’d given them a credit card for the car rental on Saturday, but never given them a credit card on Sunday. Oh, I thought, what are the odds that Vicki paid for the fuel while she was inside waiting for me to pre-flight. Probably not good, since I never mentioned it to her and so she probably assumed I took care of it.
Luckily, the “Weather on your cell phone” service I signed up for has FBO phone numbers on it, so I was able to look up the phone number, call them, apologize profusely and give them my credit card number all on the walk across the parking lot to work.
…how glad I am that I have an instrument rating.
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Last night before going to bed I put in my earplugs. I use the disposable squeezy ones that you have to roll between your fingers to make them small so you can jam them in your ears. They were brand new, so they fit extremely well. When I woke up this morning, they weren’t in my ears. It’s unusual for new ones to fall out - usually after I’ve been using them for a week or so they get so unsqueezy that they don’t go properly inside my ear canal but just sit in the “porches of my ears” (to quote from Hamlet). I wondered why they’d fallen out, but when I woke up I didn’t find them in the bed clothes like I’d expected. Instead one was on the side table, and one was placed on the tiny bit of flat space on top of the headboard. I guess I somehow managed to remove them in the night without even waking up enough to remember afterwards that I’d done so.
I wonder why?
We’re in Mt. Holyoke for Stevie’s parent’s weekend, and getting here was a bit of an adventure. Or a series of adventures, starting when Vicki suggested that we take a club plane.
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Today I had to go over to the legal office to sign a patent application. Have I mentioned before how much I hate the very fact that software is patentable? And that I was relieved when our first patent application was rejected by the patent office?
Still, it would be an ego trip to get my name on a real patent.
I know about 5 people who live in the New York City area, all of them interesting, intelligent and witty people. One of them, as well as being all those things, is in an open relationship - both she and her husband “take lovers” or whatever the au courant term is for having a piece on the side. She told me more of the details of the way their relationship works, but frankly I didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s not the sort of relationship I’m likely to find myself in, but if both of them want it, more power to them. I know lots of people on-line who are in open relationships, some of whom even tell their spouses that they’re in open relationships. For clarity, I’ll call her “M” because that’s not her name.
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After Friday’s revelation by the orthopod that the elbow pain is most likely joint related rather than tendon related, my physio changed tactics and did some pulling and pushing on my arms that seemed designed to loosen up the joint. And I think it worked at loosening things up.
For all last evening, and most of the night, my left elbow would get feeling “out of joint”, and then I’d rotate my wrist and you could *hear* it snap back into position, and then it would be relatively painless for some time until the next time it needed to be snapped back, usually within 10 or 15 minutes. It’s still doing it now. It feels weird and just a little disquieting.
I got back three more rolls of film from our Alaska cruise. The best pictures are at 
Gallery :: Alaska Cruise 2004
I took two of those pain pills before going to bed last night, at about 12:30. I woke up about 9:30, and immediately had to run for the bathroom - I thought I was going to throw up, but I didn’t. I was nauseated and sweaty, so I went back to bed. And woke up at 1:30, still feeling a little nauseated and sweaty.
Googling for “ultracet side effects” shows that about 3% of people in the clinical trials reported nausea. So maybe it’s not the pills, but I don’t think I’m going to risk it.
As I blogged about earlier, last night the pain in my elbows was so bad I could barely sleep last night, even with a massive overdose of Alieve. I called my physiotherapist, but she doesn’t work on Fridays. I called my doctor, but he doesn’t work on Fridays. I had read somewhere that sometimes tennis elbow responds to cortisone injections, and so even though the only cortisone injection I’ve had hurt like hell going in and didn’t do much, I was desperate enough to try it. The doctor’s nurse does work on Fridays, however, and she arranged an appointment for me at a “urgent care” orthopedist.
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In spite of 3 weeks of physio therapy and behaviour modification (better typing position, taking breaks from typing to stretch), and a month and a half of not kayaking, last night my left elbow was more painful than it has ever been before. I had to ice it and take three Alieve tablets before bed, and I still didn’t sleep very well. Shouldn’t I be seeing improvement, not worsening at this point?
