• Medicated me

    This is how medicine works for me.

    Last month (around the time I was living in the attic) I found a treatment that seemed to work. In this case I slept… all night… really well. The next day I felt great, except for a nagging ache in my right shoulder and tingling feeling radiating down my arm into my hand (like it went to sleep). I called my doctor’s office and they said, “you need to stop taking (that drug) immediately.”

    According to The AMA Guide to Liability Mitigation, Twenty-Eighth Edition (Revised), this phrase is reserved for those circumstances when potential liability is greater than $999,999.

    Sure enough (according to a thorough review of the internets), in extremely rare cases the drug can lead to sudden coma and death. Although the symptoms leading those poor, rare exceptions down life’s off-ramp didn’t exactly match mine (did I mention the extremely rare part?), try telling that to a hypochondriac. I needed medication to deal with the anxiety caused by a vivid imagination for poor prognosis.

    It occurred to me the tingling could have been from sleeping soundly yet awkwardly, twisting and pinching tissues that would rather not be pinched – or twisted for that matter. Now two sets of doctors agree – on one hand proving my keen intellect and medical instincts, but also making it harder to ignore my inner hypochondriac. As a bonus, one doc says I may be developing a pinch of carpal tunnel syndrome.

    Setting aside two Doctor’s reassurances (a degree, no matter how well deserved, is no match for irrational fear), we arrive at a hypochondriac’s dilemma: do I risk near certain death for a good night’s sleep? There are so many things left in life I want to accomplish. I want to finally buy a new pair of shoes for work. I want to follow through on growing a beard. I want to be the first man to swim across the Straits of Florida naked, while confirming the south Florida legend that a 24 hour marinade in alligator urine is an effective shark repellant.

    It’s very likely the only thing standing between me and a good night’s sleep is fear, and it’s killing me. Not literally, mind you… I think you’ve got the gist.

  • Checking in

    I’ve been away for a little while, so I thought I’d check in… make sure no one’s broken in or vandalized the place.

    Although I run a considerable risk of being sat on, I’d like to discuss something that’s plagued humanity as long as modesty. However, in typical fashion, I’m going to wait a bit for the grand unveiling… long enough for me to ramble on a bit and fluff the word count on my blog stats (not that I’m keeping track, of course).

    There’s something in my life that gets me up almost as reliably as a child in distress – and with almost as much dread. The difference is it’s not a surprise. It happens all the time, more than once a day. It only feels constant. It’s the buzzer on the washing machine or dryer.

    Forget about wrinkle free – I could care less about wrinkles. Someone needs to be working on dirt, liquid, grime, and smell free. Imagine a fiber that made the washing machine obsolete. Imagine “doing laundry” meant taking the clothes out back, giving ’em a good shake, and all the extra stuff they picked up during the day magically sloughed away on a breeze. That’s what I’m talking about. I’d own two outfits – only because I’d be paranoid I’d destroy one in a freak scissors accident, leaving me with nothing to wear.

    What? You’re not afraid of Mr Shears? We show the metal dude respect in this house.

    Any-hoo, this entry is really an excuse to foist my latest theory on you. Some folks say the bad stuff in life makes you stronger, as long as it doesn’t kill you. Well I was thinking about laundry (fresh off a triple header) and decided I had to disagree. The stuff that doesn’t make you stronger or kill you drives you crazy. There ain’t nothin’ strong about bein’ crazy.

    All I need is a slick name for this particular crazy, but the well’s running dry. Laundry loony and washer wacky is all I’ve got left.

    I’m sorry.

  • Going against the grain

    Weather wise, it was a great weekend. Emotionally, it wasn’t so great. Depression had the claws out. And yet, it was a productive weekend. Determined to do something, I did – a project I’d been putting off for cooler temperatures. Unfortunately, this meant while many of you were enjoying the mild weather, I was crawling around in our attic.

    Why? I’d been meaning to expand our network to Adam’s room and while I was buying cables, I decided to go ahead and buy enough to upgrade the rest of our network – making it gigabit ethernet “ready.”

    Why? In my defense, I do a lot of file sharing between my Macs, and eventually I’d like to hook up a network drive for backups and storing large files. Transfering data measured in gigabytes makes you appretiate network speed.

    Why? Wouldn’t doing something fun ease the blues more than a close encounter with fiberglass and pine?

    No. Depression eats fun for breakfast, but it can’t touch my kid’s smile and what it does for my soul. Putting in a day of work to put it there, running cable through the attic and snaking it down through the walls, was just what I needed.

    I’m wearing my battle scars proudly today – countless nicks and scrapes from crawling/swinging around and through rough cut trusses. In between mindless tasks at the office, a smile of my own creeps up.