For a while there it looked as though my weight had dropped to solidly below 180. Maybe, but it turns out the bathroom scale is broken. So I won't know for sure until we get a new one. It's an old Healthometer balance scale; we've gotten more than 20 years' use out of it, so I'm not complaining.
Here, courtesy of cpap.com's mailing list, is the TSA's official web page on Travelers with Disabilities and Medical Conditions.
[...] TSA has established a program for screening of persons with disabilities and their associated equipment, mobility aids, and devices. Our program covers all categories of disabilities (mobility, hearing, visual, and hidden). As part of that program, we established a coalition of over 70 disability-related groups and organizations to help us understand the concerns of persons with disabilities and medical conditions. These groups have assisted TSA with integrating the unique needs of persons with disabilities into our airport operations.
Includes pages about CPAP machines, wheelchairs, Assistive Devices and Mobility Aids, and quite a lot more. Think they've taken a bit of flak over this stuff? Take advantage of it if you need to.
Note to my friends: this is a much happier post than the one I'm glad I didn't finish this morning. Things are well with me. Thank you for your patience. (/me waves cheerfully at those who have had the most to put up with from me over the last couple of weeks.)
Yesterday and today had a distinct feeling of transition; many things have become clearer in my mind, and I've started putting them into practice. Events have converged, and emotional uphevals have been processed. Things are different. The ghosts are gone, as they should be, and a few hours after the April finally left the planet by way of the International Date Line I felt as though a weight had lifted from my heart. The fires of Beltane have done their work, burning away the last of the old year's dead leaves and fallen branches.
( Let's start with work. ) ( Colleen's wheelchair arrived yesterday. ) ( Wednesday night was a little different, too. ) ( Other things, too, are sorting themselves out. )
Spring is here, and by some ways of reckoning it's the New Year. Wherever you place that mark on the calendar, I hope that the fires of this Beltane have burned away your sorrows, and that the year to come brings you joy and contentment.
Colleen's wheelchair arrived this morning. It's very heavy -- no way she can get it in and out of the van herself. We may have to see about a crane. It also remains to be seen whether it fits in the trunk of my Honda Civic. (It'll almost certainly fit upright in front of the back seat, but that only works if we have no passengers.)
It marks the start of a transition that I hadn't fully realized was coming up. I should have, but bears are not very perceptive creatures. Luckily they're somewhat adaptable.
Woke at maybe 2am and had trouble getting back to sleep. Brain wouldn't
shut up. I'm reassessing some things, mainly about travel. (The ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
flower_cat told her doctor about our zoo trip and he immediately
wrote out a prescription for a wheelchair. His only questions were
height, weight, and folding. But that's just part of it, and not
even the hard part.)
About 4am the Cat woke as well; we took turns sleeping in a close embrace until the alarm went off at 6:30. Normally we can't sleep that way; I think it was just the exhaustion that made it possible. She said as I got up that I didn't even snore. She's sleeping soundly now.
Got up with my nose congested and my throat dry; I'm probably coming down with something. Make that have come down with something.
There are dry-runs all this week at work for a major technical review next week; today's is at 9am, which is an unusual starting hour for our normally laid-back California Research Center. They've also completed the process of moving the administrative staff into the offices next door, and swapping suite numbers. Starting today they'll be keeping our door locked, since there's nobody to watch it.
It'll be a little good deal less convenient, but since my
office is only a few steps from the door, I was always the one who got
tapped when nobody was at the front desk. So that's a win.
Every silver lining has a cloud around it, though, and right now my life is distinctly overcast.
I've been feeling vague all day; detached, fuzzy; the world seems subdued, and looks as if much of the color had been washed out of it. Grief? Depression? The fact that I didn't have breakfast this morning? Quite possibly the latter, as I'm feeling much better now.
Hadn't realized that my wife's grieving (mainly over the friend she lost just before Consonance, though there's more) could trigger as much of a reaction in me as it seems to have done. My Dad and Amy are coming in out of my past to haunt me again. Well, they're familiar ghosts, at least.
Zyrtec seems to have a substantial bounce-back, even after a single dose. I'll skip it, thanks; then I can have my glass of gin in the evening. Cyclobenzaprine, on the other hand, is wonderful stuff: stopped the back cramps dead, and got me a good night's sleep. Note to self: don't take it in the morning unless you intend to stay in bed all day.
For some reason I find the long, last phase of the grieving process -- acceptance, or reorganization depending on your source -- to be creatively very productive. There will be ghosts in the song, I think.
More things I've learned over the last few days:
Ok, so it seems that one egg and the equivalent of a slice of toast in the morning is not enough to sustain me through a walk before lunch. Not quite as bad as some of my past crashes, but I definitely need more protein in the morning.
On the other hand, it was a nice walk, around and through the Rose Garden. It's starting to bloom.
ohiblather posts about her follow-up to an abnormal mammogram (lj followup here.)
Thankfully, Debbie's case appears to have been a false positive.
But with breast cancer on both sides of their family, my daughters are likely to be going through this some time in their lives. Yes, it's scary. But it's better than dying because you didn't catch it early. My Mom's a 55-year survivor at this point.
In the end, rather than haul out the XO, I pulled out a book and read, by the reading lamp in the living room. Most of the lights are still off, as is one of the two computers I turned off. I'll have to turn it back on in the morning, since it's the one that backups are done on.
A small gesture, and mostly an empty one. It may raise awareness a little.
Right now I feel cold, and my legs are stiff. Paying for this morning's walk, no doubt.
(Cross-posted to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
healthy_fen and mdlbear.)
It's been a while since I posted one of these, so let's see...
Went out for a walk this morning (twice around the Rose Garden -- yay! there are finally buds after the winter's drastic pruning) and somehow fell back into power-walk mode. I was a little surprised at how natural and unforced it felt, even after several months of walking with my hands at my sides or in my pockets.
I have been walking, but I haven't been keeping good track, or particularly consistent, since sometime in mid-January. (In part because I was doing other things with my lunch hour, for reasons that have mostly gone away now.) The last couple of weeks, though, have been pretty consistent.
My weight is down to 183 or so, from about 198 at the beginning of the year. I'm using a high protein, low glycemic index diet, and it seems to be working.
I've cut my flonase dose down from two to one squirt per nostril, twice per day. This seems to work even better than the old dose did before nasal irrigation, and doesn't seem to cause any bleeding. I sometimes forget the flonase after nose-watering; it's taking me an annoyingly long time to form new habits. But I can actually smell the flonase now; yesterday evening on the way home I smelled the star jasmine blooming next to the parking lot.
The CPAP is working. The flower_cat no longer complains about
my snoring, and she reminds me to put it back on if I've taken it off to
snuggle. I seem to need about an hour less sleep; 5 hours isn't unusual
these days. They can have my facehugger after they pry it off my cold, dead
face.
On the down side, I still tend to become easily addicted to things like LJ, blogs, and (more recently) IM. I need to stay the hell away from Second Life.
On the other hand, having finally gotten my life together, I seem to be in danger of forgetting where I put it.
Woke up at 5am this morning with a cramp in my left leg. Calcium and potassium seem to be helping a little.
This whole "getting old" thing is, um, getting old.
I can haz stroon nao pls?
No.
The last couple of days I've been particularly low on cope. I absolutely lost it last night when I knocked over the pills while I was sorting them. Tonight I nearly lost it between discovering that MacOS is brain-dead in an unexpected new way, and discovering that our badge ribbons had been delivered to a nonexistant address.
Lots of things haven't gotten done. I'm exhausted. OTOH I'm packed and the sales tax is in the mail. I suppose that's something.
(Cross-posted to healthy_fen and mdlbear.)
There have been several major changes in my approach to health this year, mainly brought on by a belated awareness of impending mortality and a couple of alarming sets of symptoms.
Walking: I've been getting in roughly three-mile walks most of this week. It's very frustrating: in order to avoid leg cramps I have to either walk slowly (i.e., my old pace that didn't give me much actual exercise) or shorten my stride to what to me is an unnatural degree. These days I usually pick the fast pace and short stride, but it's annoying to have to make the trade-off. I end up walking at about the same speed (3mph) regardless. I've gone back to power walking to compensate. Hopefully when I'm back at work I can cut off the usually-fascinating lunchtime conversations and the temptation to dive back into LJ in time to walk for an hour during the week, too.
Facehugger: I finally built a little shelf on the dresser beside the bed, and just last weekend bent up a piece of coathanger wire to hold up the hose. The combination really helps; it's a lot less likely to leak now. I can also sleep on my back without waking up -- that's a big win. I can't say there's been a huge difference in how sleepy I get or how much sleep I need, but I think there's been some. The silliest thing about it is having to shave about 1cm off the top of my mustache in order for the mask to seat properly -- first time I've had to shave in about 40 years. Well, it was a good excuse for a new backpack, anyway.
Nose-watering: Watering my nose seems to be roughly as effective as taking a standard dose of sudafed, and lasts for roughly as long: 6-8 hours. I've fallen into a routine: morning, before dinner, and about an hour before bed. Morning is, of course, combined with making coffee, and takes about 15-20 minutes. The evening wash is combined with brushing my teeth; I've gotten a bit better about that, too.
Diet: This is the newest bit of attempted behavior modification. It's my understanding that a reduced-carbohydrate, low-sugar diet is good for reducing both cholesterol and weight, so I'm going to try it. It's hard -- potatoes and pasta are both popular in this family. At least the rice we use is basmati, which is unique in having a low glycemic index, and I prefer whole-grain bread anyway. I've stopped eating fried-eggs-on-toast for breakfast and switched to omelettes. At least dark chocolate, and one alcoholic drink/day are still on the diet. By doctor's orders. So there.
With a little luck and more determination than I've shown to date, I might even survive another decade. We'll see.
My CPAP pillow arrived Monday, and my nose-watering pot came this morning just as I was leaving for work. Here are some first impressions:
The CPAP pillow is a great design, and a size that looks good for traveling. The shape keeps my head in the right place, keeps me on my side, and gives lots of clearance for the nost-mask and hose. So it's particularly unfortunate that it's too hard and too high for comfort. I woke up Tuesday morning with a stiff, aching neck, and went back to my old memory-foam pillow.
I'm going to trace the CPAP pillow's shape onto some memory foam (from the
other pillow sitting in the closet because the flower_cat
doesn't like it) and see how that works.
My neti
pots (nose-watering pot) arrived this morning, skillfully packed into
a box that was just barely big enough. Guess they ship a lot of them.
The package also contained an instructional video on a CD meant to play on
a PC. Worked fine on Linux (with totem) once I mounted the
disk and identified the video file.
Worked beautifully, though I had a little initial spillage. Gentler than the NeilMed kit, but seems to be at least as good -- maybe better -- at cleaning out the gunk. The video and instruction book both had directions for drying the nasal passage after washing, which is something the NeilMed kit omitted.
I managed to sneeze while starting to blow my nose. I don't recommend it -- the affect appears to be similar to rubbing the roof of your mouth with sandpaper.
I set out for to take my walk
At Noon on Doggerel
Day
The route the same as yesterday;
So there's not much to say
The weather cool, my pace quite slow
Not much to my report
Except that when my muscles cramped
I nearly cut it short
And since anything in ballad meter can be done as a talking blues, I can take advantage of that to include my stats: time: 1:01; avg: 112; max: 141. But at least I'm walking.
(Cross-posted to healthy_fen and mdlbear)
(Cross-posted to healthy_fen and mdlbear.)
Same route as yesterday, and my muscles still aren't trying to tie themselves into knots, so I may be back in the groove. On the other hand, the neuropathy may be increasing, in spite of the assortment supplements I'm taking. It seems to be affecting my feet now. Well, we'll see...
update: forgot to mention that I bought a cheap pedometer a couple of weeks ago. 10643 steps yesterday.
![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/roshi/palefaces/good.gif){kind=small}
calm (Cross-posted to healthy_fen and mdlbear)
Finally had a chance to walk yesterday. Skipped the monitor, since I didn't want the kind of positive feedback that seems to lead to pushing it too hard. (I still have to get some professional advice on that.) But I walked for an hour -- up the hill and twice around the pond -- and didn't get cramps. So I must have done something right for a change.
Things I've learned: stretch, start out slowly, take small steps. Apparently years of sitting cause your leg muscles to shorten. Taking smaller steps means that they don't get overstretched. And I'm finally (I think) figuring out how to stretch properly: you have to remember to fully relax the muscle you're trying to stretch. That's hard.
I don't appear to have gained weight over the weekend, though I haven't lost any, either. I have gained about three pounds in the three weeks or so since I started getting leg cramps to the point where I couldn't walk regularly. So I'm glad to be getting back to it.
From solarbird via this post by
technoshaman, a pointer to a
particularly well-written article about depression and suicide.
(Could be depressing in itself -- think before clicking.) But one of the
points it makes is that sometimes the right thing to do is to take
medication to correct a chemical imbalance in your head.
This gives me an excuse to clear another of my browser tabs to quote from a comment I made in a locked post elsejournal:
Over the years I've accumulated quite a large "pill salad" of drugs and supplements, mostly for the various chemical imbalances that cause high blood pressure and high cholesterol. When you get down to it, neurotransmitter imbalances are no different. Sure, changing the way your brain works is a little scary in the abstract. But that's what caffeine does, and I don't think you'd turn down a cup of coffee to get you going in the morning.
I often need a bit of a nudge (well, ok, usually it's the flower_cat going behind my back and talking to our doctor about
me) to go get checked for health problems. But you out there
don't have to be equally stupid. Sometimes the hardest part is figuring
out that there is a problem. Other times the hard part might be
admitting to someone else that there's a problem you can't handle on your
own -- I tend to fall into that category.
Whatever it is, if you have some problem you've been putting off having a doctor look at, just go and get it looked at.
We're back. The facehugger has really made a difference -- this was the first return trip in several years where I wasn't yawning continuously and fighting sleep for the last 150 miles. I yawned a couple of times, and felt a little sleepy a couple of times (a seven-hour car trip will do that), but I didn't feel as though I was about to fall asleep. Yay!
Many goodbyes and a couple of good conversations this morning. Having a CD out gives me something new to talk about, which is always a good thing.
Total CD sales at the con: 1. Oh, well. Eric sold a few, I think. Having a CD also gives one an excuse to hang out with the dealers.
It went a little easier last night. I shaved off about 1/4 inch of mustache to give the nose-mask a place to sit; it was much more comfortable. Got a couple hours of good sleep, but spent the rest of the night waking up with either a stiff neck or a noisy leak. I was never able to keep the air from leaking out, cold and noisy, onto my face.
I use a memory-foam pillow with an abrupt, not tapered, edge, so I was able to let the air-hose hang off the side. It helped a lot, but I'm going to go looking for CPAP pillows -- there seem to be several varieties. Some nasal congestion, but not as much as the night before. Tonight I took my timed-release phenylephhrine around dinnertime -- that should help.
I was still feeling achy, so no walk at lunchtime. And it may rain over the weekend, which would be unfortunate.
Felt a little more alert than usual in the morning, but still felt a little sleepy after lunch. And now. But I'm not sleeping well, or nearly long enough. We'll see.
(Side note: I'm not putting the name of the medical condition (s. a.) or the device (cp@p) in the post or the tags because they seem to attract comment spam. Follow the tags if you can't figure it out.)
So I got to bed somewhere around 11:30, and got a couple of hours of good
sleep. Was awakened somewhere around 2:00 or 2:30 by the flower_cat, and had trouble getting back to sleep due to a stuffy
nose (treated with Afrin) and problems finding a comfortable sleeping
position that didn't make the mask leak. That's going to be an ongoing
problem, but I expect I'll eventually get used to it.
I speculated at the time that the three hours' sleep I got at first might have been the equivalent of my usual six, but probably not.
I'm going to try shaving a bit off my mustache to see if that helps in seating the mask.
I need an icon for this, don't I? Anybody with the appropriate screencap from Alien?
![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/roshi/palefaces/awake.gif){kind=small}
awakeToday I went in to Kaiser to get the results from last week's sleep apnea test. I passed. Or failed -- I'm not sure which result is which. Anyway, I tested firmly positive, so they sent me home with a facehugger. This one, on loan for a week, is the test version: it varies the pressure and figures out what I need. Then I go back in a week and get a permanent one programmed for whatever it figures out.
Stats: Recording time: 6.75 hrs. Apnea/hypopnea index: 23.5/hr; O2 saturation: 91% average, 80% minimum; RERA (wakeup) index 4.5%. (I actually got only about 4.5 hrs sleep, so the number of events is actually higher.)
Had a flu shot at work this afternoon; I think it just hit about an hour ago. My arm hurts near the injection site, and I'm sleepy and achy.
Got in some practicing in preparation for my concert set at Loscon, with
the chaoswolf doing djembe and chorus vocals. She's getting
better; next time I'll haul out the little H2 recorder.
... um, bed definitely looks like a good idea.
(Cross-posted to healthy_fen and mdlbear.)
Yesterday's walk was just half an hour or so down to the pond and back; I'd spent the entire morning getting my sleep study set up and running other errands, and wanted to catch up on email and trip reports.
Today was an actual exercise walk, the first in nearly a week: down to the pond via the hill in back, 2.5 times around, and back. This gets in a reasonable amount of exercise with a minimum of downhill and tilted sections that might tend to damage my left ankle. As it is, it was hurting by the time I got back, but no shin splints. So, yay!
Stats: time: 53:22; avg: 119; max: 146.
I did not have a good night last night: straps, wires, and tubes
are not conducive to sleep. Last night was my night for the sleep apnea
test; they give you a gadget to wear that straps on and includes two
strain-gauge bands, a tube going up to your nose, and an oxymetry sensor
that clips onto a finger. They really prefer 5 hours worth of sensing;
they'll be lucky if they got four. I think I finally got to sleep around
2:30, after taking a flexeril at 2:00. After trying the couch -- the flower_cat was wakeful for different reasons.
Tried adding niacin and B12 supplements to my daily pill salad. The recent tests for those were in the normal range, but I figure it's worth seeing whether they help the neuropathy and triglycerides anyway. I'd forgotten about the facial flushing effect from niacin -- impressive.
(Cross-posted to healthy_fen.)
thatcrazycajun reminds us
that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
My Mom is 87 years old; she had her double mastectomy roughly half a century ago. My Sister-in-Law is fighting it now. My Mother-in-Law died of it, among other things. (Her smoking didn't help, either. Don't do that.) Don't push your luck: get your mammogram. Give generously. Race for the cure if that's your bag. Don't give up.
(Cross-posted to healthy_fen.)
Stopped off at Long's this morning on my way to work to pick up some alpha-lipoic acid and a knee brace (plus a couple of other items which don't come into the matter at hand).
Today was cool, overcast, but not raining -- at least when I set out. There were a couple of light sprinkles while I was walking, but I ignored them. I was unable to get my heart rate over 120 on downhill segments; in fact, I was halfway around the pond before I got up to 120 at all. Went around four times, at which point I was feeling a few odd pains and decided not to push my luck.
I had the new knee brace on the right knee, and had no trouble with it. There was some pain in the left knee when I was most of the way back; I sat down on a convenient phone electronics enclosure and slipped on the old knee brace, which I had put in my pocket for just that eventuality.
Very little shin pain; either I'm gradually working past that point, or I wasn't pushing the pace as hard as I thought I was. Probably the latter, considering.
Stats: time: 45:39; avg: 122; max: 144.
(Cross-posted to healthy_fen)
No walkies today, not even a little. My left knee was giving me trouble -- possibly I twisted it during the night. In any case, the only walking I did was the tenth-mile across the parking lot from and to my usual spot. And in the morning I wasn't even sure about that. Very annoying.
A knee brace helped a little, but not enough to make me want to risk a walk. Started hurting in the late afternoon, so I took it off.
Picked up a couple of chipset coolers yesterday hoping to silence the
video card that I borrowed from work a week or two ago. Only to find that
the heatsink is glued onto the chip, and the fan is non-standard.
I am now looking for an AGP video card that's old enough to be fanless and
new enough to have a DVI connector. That, or banish it to the
bedroom recording studio with an old, quiet video card and the
Delta-1010 sound card. Need to do that anyway, since it's time to start
recording again. I'm going to go down to Micro Center this
afternoon and rummage through their bargain bin, if they have one this
week.
My left shin is grumping at me; I'll probably have to take it easy on my walk today. Rose garden, I think.
The office is a mess. So's our bedroom, which I told the kids I'd clean up (as part of a challenge which we all failed miserably at).
awake (Cross-posted to healthy_fen)
According to the neurologist I saw at Kaiser this morning, the kind of peripheral neuropathy I'm experiencing is normally associated with diabetes, but it's also not all that unusual with metabolic syndrome, which is basically the condition of being an old fat guy. The relevant symptoms include fasting hyperglycemia (borderline), high blood pressure (being treated), central obesity (check), decreased HDL cholesterol (check), elevated triglycerides (check, in spades).
So I'm about to start what amounts to an approximation of a diabetic diet, along with increasing my exercise. Meaning I can look forward to being sore, tired, and hungry for the rest of my life. Grumble.
My legs and arms haven't quite recovered from my exercise over the weekend, so I dropped back to my old walking pace with no arm motion. I did take in the extra hill on the way out; total distance about 3 miles.
Stats: 55 minutes, average heart rate: 111; max: 135. So not too bad, considering.
After lunch (which consisted of half-a-dozen potstickers and half a block
of tofu to use up the rest of the dipping sauce) I went out for a drive
with the flower_cat. On the way home we stopped at Bed, Bath
and Beyond to buy a new quilt for our bed. Most of what they had was
appallingly expensive, but they had a nice black, king-sized comforter on
sale for $55. Less a 20%-off coupon. Win.
After that we stopped at Cosentino's -- the Cat's favorite upscale grocery
store -- to get ingredients for dinner. Which chaoswolf cooked! It was delicious -- a tomato, mozzerella,
and basil salad (which the Wolf ate!), and an odd but tasty
concoction of kielbasa, hot and mild Italian sausage, potatoes, sweet
onion, and garlic baked in a big package of crimped Aluminum foil. So
basically steamed. Yummy.
Found my missing arch support, so I won't have to buy another pair. Found it in the trash, where I had tossed it along with a couple of genuinely dead insoles from other shoes.
Got my lab results back from Kaiser -- or at least, on the web. Their website sucks. The results weren't all that great. LDL low (35, should be >40), triglicerides high (292, should be <199; still, a third of what they were 6 months ago, so the new statin is working). The disturbing one was creatine kinase: 437, should be <200. Could mean heart problems, though there are other possible explanations. The shoulder problems? We'll see; I'll probably hear from my doctor next week.
Made a little progress on clutter in the bedroom, mainly triage on footgear. Tossed some shoes that were clearly dead, and packed a bag of old-but-useable pairs for Goodwill. Swapped quilts.
Some more progress on re-organizing the fileserver; things are pretty much all in the right places now, except for moving a couple of CVS modules around. CVS, unfortunately, doesn't handle this kind of thing very well, which is why I'm looking at replacing it with git or svk. Anyway, things are ready for tomorrow morning's backup snapshot. Which will be archived, seeing as it's the first Sunday in the month.
(cross-posted to healthy_fen)
Thanks to the fantastic shoulder massage I got Wednesday night from bookwyrm172006, I now suspect that some of the problems I've been
having with my shoulders may be mostly due to muscle spasms. Probably
from a combination of keyboard, mouse, and tension.
Running shoes and wrist weights for my walk today; didn't get more than a mile before my arms got too tired, but I kept the walking pace up to the top of the hill at about 1.5 miles. Just barely. Most of the pain this time was in the back of my calves, so it's probably not shin splints. Still hurts, though. Felt a lot like the pain in my arms, come to think of it.
I seem to have gained back four or five pounds, probably traceable to having stopped taking a stimulant-based decongestant. I seem to be sleeping better, though.
Numbness in my lower legs persists; I have a neurology appointment Monday morning.
Definitely overdid it on the exercise over the weekend. I'm sore in places I didn't realize I had muscles. Or maybe they're tendons. Not to mention muscles I know damned well I have, but that haven't hurt since the little bit of weight training I did back in college. Not fun.
Managed about ten minutes of walking today at lunchtime. Could have done a little more, but I was running late between meetings. Maybe just as well.
My afternoon shopping expedition was, I think, an unqualified success. Got one set each of five and ten pound wrist/ankle weights at Play It Again Sports on Camden Avenue, and a pair of New Balance 1010 running shoes at their store in Santana Row. Also picked up some catalogs in Orvis -- I've always been intrigued by their pages in various airlines' seatback catalogs. In particular, they had a carry-on rod-and-reel case that looks to be about the right size for my travel guitar plus a little bit of other stuff. I'll have to bring it in and check.
My pace seems a little quicker than formerly. We'll see how long that lasts.
Y'know, I probably shouldn't post these two headlines together, but I couldn't resist.
6 Die From Brain-Eating Amoeba in Lakes
It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
Today, I think of Vista as the zombie operating system. It stumbles around, and from a distance you might think it's alive, but close up it's the walking dead.
[Meant to cross-post this from healthy_fen yesterday. Update
below.]
My treadmill test was this morning. The good news is that there's nothing at all wrong with my heart. (The pain in my left shoulder immediately went away, and has not been back. Right.) The bad news is that 3mph on a 15% grade was hard -- harder than it should have been. And the way my pulse shot up as they ramped up to it says that I'm not getting enough exercise.
Walking 2.5 miles at lunchtime is all very well, but I can apparently walk all day on the flat at that pace without breaking a sweat, so it's doing my cardiovascular system very little good. To get a proper workout I'd have to push the pace a lot, and I'm not sure I can do it without injuring myself. May have to look into the gym (there's one in the building where I work, and it's free for everyone who works there (a personal trainer is $50/hour or so) -- I've been working there for over 15 years and haven't been inside once).
Another option is ankle and wrist weights; I'm definitely going to try those, because even if I do use the gym occasionally I'll want to keep walking. And a treadmill at home is a definite possibility.
I did go out for a walk at lunchtime; a little faster than usual, and I went over the hill on the way out. Not on the way back, though; I felt the whole time as though I was on the edge of shin splints, which I don't need. Been there.
Sleep apnea test tomorrow class today.
Wednesday: The questionaire I filled out at the snoring/sleep apnea class pegs me at 14 or so on the sleepiness scale. 7 or higher is abnormal. There may be other explanations, but it's pretty clear that a sleep study is at least indicated.
Managed a 2-mile walk today at a brisker than usual pace; not clear that I can keep that up without shin splints, and it probably wasn't long enough to be a good workout. Grump. Taking shorter and faster steps seems to help, but I may need a consultation in the gym to figure out what the real problem is.
(x-posted to healthy_fen)
After lunch the weather finally cleared; the sky was still dark with clouds, but I got my walk. I went around the Rose Garden -- no sense pushing my luck; there are usually enough people passing by that somebody would have noticed if I got into trouble. There was a wedding party there with no guests -- I imagine it was a photo shoot -- and a couple of new blossoms on the Royal Amethyst.
My weight continues to hover within a pound or two of 190. Grumble. Need more walkies and less food, I suppose. I was pleased to see that my blood pressure was down to a healthy level on Thursday; since I haven't changed either my meds or my diet I can only assume it's because I haven't taken any stimulant-based decongestants for the last couple of days.
According to this Real Age Calculator,
Went in to Kaiser yesterday afternoon to see whether the brief pain I felt in the vicinity of my left shoulder on Tuesday was heart-related. Probably not, was the conclusion; since it lasted only a couple of seconds rather than half an hour or more it was unlikely to have been an actual heart attack, and nothing showed up on the EKG. I'm scheduled for a treadmill (stress EKG) test next Tuesday morning. That's to go with the sleep apnea test on Wednesday.
It was a lot different from the tendinitis pain I've been having in that shoulder: different location, different feeling. Could conceivably have been a muscle spasm, and there was a very tender spot on the shoulder blade afterwards.
In any case, with a duration of only a couple of seconds, not even high explosives (nitroglycerine tablet under the tongue) would have made any difference -- it takes about 5 minutes to take effect. So I'm unlikely to be arrested as a terrorist on my way to OVFF.
I did not get a walk in at lunchtime. Grump. Won't get one today, either -- there's a lunchtime pizza-and-brainstorming session scheduled, right after a 10am meeting.
Did I mention that I hate getting old? I could really use some nice young body parts about now. I think my warranty has expired.
After a brief pause for dinner, went over to the Younger Daughter's back-to-school night. A couple of her teachers recognized me from the album cover. They all seemed to think she was doing well so far, especially her English teacher, who she had last year and likes a lot.
Yesterday I got up at 7am, walked five miles, had a big dinner, stayed awake all evening, and stayed up until after midnight. Not today: got up about 8am, walked only three miles, and I'm fading fast at a quarter to 10. Grumble.
Wonder if the difference was the cup of espresso I had with dinner last night. Hmm.
We did manage to go to Costco and sign up; we'd let our membership lapse
when the flower_cat wound up her little flower business. Now
I'm the one with a tax number...
Well, the flower_cat is officially a crone: she's been
diagnosed with Crohn's Disease. This is a good thing -- it's not cureable,
but it's eminently treatable, and the treatment appears to be working.
I, on the other hand, have something mysterious going on -- patches of something like numbness on my right calf, left foot, and maybe my hands. So far tests for the usual causes of this kind of neuropathy have been negative. As the doctor I consulted said, "it may be ideopathic, meaning we're idiots and don't know what causes it." At the moment it's more of an annoyance than a problem, but I'm not happy about this ageing body my software is currently installed in. Can I have an upgrade?
I'm also scheduled for a sleep study in about two weeks. The Cat (who has to put up with my snoring) suspects I have sleep apnea and may need to be fitted with a face-hugger. Gaak! I'm skeptical, but it would be good to know for sure.
The chaoswolf had her teeth cleaned today and is headed for
a rather large amount of dental work. Fortunately insurance will cover
most of it. Well, she wouldn't be the first one in the family; my teeth
were pretty bad at that age, too.
I need to walk more. Missed today, and may miss tomorrow as well.
Scientists Say Common Virus Could Cause Obesity
The study showed that Ad-36 caused fat accumulation in animals infected with the virus. The research team then carried out an epidemiological study that showed 30 per cent of obese people were infected with Ad-36, compared with only 11 per cent of lean people.
It was not until this latest study that they were able to show how the virus actually increases fat in humans, according to the researchers.
The research team has also identified a gene in the Ad-36 virus, called E4Orfl, that seems to play a key role in switching on the fat accumulation process in infected animals. The gene could be a target for a range of human therapies, including vaccines and anti-virals, to treat obesity, said Pasarica.
Apart from discovering that stem cells turn into fat cells in the presence of this gene, the scientists know little else about the virus, and they don't rule out the possibility that other viruses could have similar effects, creating a picture of obesity as being a complex disease involving different viruses.
Yesterday's schedule turned out to be a little too tight. By the time I'd finished with my doctor's appointment (my shoulder problem appears to be tendinitis in the biceps tendon; I also gave him a signed copy of CC&S) and the associated pharmacy visit (prescription-strength naproxin and a change of statins from lovastatin to simvastatin) I had to fly low to have any chance of getting to my group meeting at 10am. Figured I'd go to the post office at lunchtime, but forgot to factor in the fact that we were having our Service Awards Lunch.
Lunch was delicious -- Il Fornaio in Palo Alto. I had salad, salmon, and tiramisu for desert. I also got my 15-year service award, which came with a lovely (and very heavy) stainless-steel-cased clock from Tiffany & Co. Do you have any idea how many engraved clocks and pen-and-pencil sets one accumulates in 30-odd years at a small number of jobs?
Never did make it to the Post Awful, because my OpenMoko phone arrived mere minutes before lunch, and by the time I looked up from playing with it, it was after 6pm. Still definitely a work in progress -- I'm not even sure it's a phone at this point. Nice little linux box, though, with a VGA display, USB, and BlueTooth. Twice the pixels of an iPhone at half the price, and unlocked as well. Sweet. The consumer version, due in October (which may be optimistic) will have Wi-Fi and accelerometers.
I will get to the Post Awful today. In about 15 minutes. Really. (Most pre-orders will nevertheless have to wait until after ConChord to get mailed. We're driving down tomorrow.)
Yesterday morning was spent signing CDs and stuffing envelopes in preparation for the Casa de Chaos Bash. Even so, I missed a couple of people: I should have had the sense to just load the entire box of envelopes into the car, and number disks as needed. (Note: remember this for the next one!)
Finally left about 9:30 and got home to find a slightly upset flower_cat, who had misconstrued a remark I made as she left to
mean that I was following almost immediately. Sorry about that, Love!
I'll try to be more explicit next time. Some good conversations. My
apologies to the folks whose disks I forgot to bring -- I'll have them in
the mail tomorrow.
The schedule for tomorrow morning looks a little tight:
I might actually get some work done in the afternoon. And I need to stop at Staples on the way home and get some "Fragile" stickers and lables the right size for return addresses, and eventually practice for my concert at ConChord. Which is looking like sometime around mid-day on Sunday.
Just got done entering my album info for CD Baby. Took a lot longer than I expected, but it's done. Would have taken less time if I'd had a suitable bio and album description ready; instead I had to cobble it together from scattered pieces. A good exercise anyway.
( Let me preface this by saying that the rational part of my mind -- what little is left of it after six decades of neglect and under-use -- has a pretty good idea of what constitutes a genuine health problem. The irrational part, however, is stupid, stubborn, quick to jump to conclusions, and difficult to convince. )OK, so I'm a stupid old bear. I already knew that.
calm My left shoulder is much better today; it tightened up almost immediately
after I got out of bed, but it still doesn't seem as bad as it was
yesterday. Not clear whether sleeping on my right side or an extra hour
or so of drugged stupor sleep is what did the trick, but I'm
not complaining.
The flower_cat and I tried a new restaurant last night: a
"Mediterranean" place called Shish Kebab, in Los Gatos. Small, friendly,
family-run; very tasty. Specializing in lamb. Not clear exactly what
nationality but possibly Turkish, since they had Turkish coffee on the
menu. (The last place we tried in Los Gatos, Transylvania, seems to have
disappeared. Pity.)
I seem to have done something unpleasant to my left shoulder. Possibly slept on it wrong, or maybe too much backpack-toting in Portland. I'm guessing a muscle cramp. It hurts like heck, but this has happened before, and I'm not particularly worried. Took a short walk after lunch, and a couple of aspirin. Naproxen just after dinner.
Now I'm going to take a nice hot bath in hopes of loosening it up a little, and then go to bed.
Navigate: (Previous 50 Entries)