Whew

It's Friday. January 9th. I still have to do something about the January spectrogram, which I may play with this weekend (using Praat, &deity; help me), but otherwise, I'm taking a deep breath.

The New Year caught me by surprise. I had planned to spend Christmas back in the Seattle area seeing friends, family, eating Mexican food and Red Robin burgers, but, well, the weather didn't cooperate. The Monday flight got cancelled, and with more snow coming in Tuesday night and Wednesday morning (Christmas Eve), I decided a) the plane might not be able to land at all and b) if it did, I'm not sure I wanted to try to drive the three hours on the freeway in fresh snow. So I cancelled the trip. I'd say I'm going to try again in February, but I'm on a hiring committee where that week is probably going to be an Issue.

So I spent Christmas by myself, not cleaning my apartment, which now has shredded paperwork all over the floor because I tipped over the shredder trying to muscle my suitcase around and I just haven't gotten around to doing anything about it.

I did get some work done, in the sense of doing stuff that needed doing, although none of it is 'finished'. And the next thing I knew, school was starting. The first week is over, which I survived with only a single class. But it was still more exhausting that I would have liked.

The Unpleasant Medical Procedures Fest continues. On Wednesday I had to cancel my first class meetings for an abdominal CT scan. I've never had a CT scan so that was sort of interesting. What wasn't interesting was the stat bloodwork they needed to be sure my kidneys were functioning normally.

At least, that's what I assume they were doing when the checked my creatinine. Which was fine, but they've taken me off one of my antidiabetic drugs because it can also affect kidney function, and I assume the danger is that if the injection they gave me to help image my insides doesn't cause my kidneys to fail, the combination might.

So for what basically what turns out to be 5 minutes of lying in the machine, there's 4 hours of absolute fast, about 10 oz of icky peachy (it had to be peach) stuff that if you liked peach might actually not taste bad but blech, with stuff in it to help image the intestines, then another 10 oz about 30 minutes later. And again about 30 minutes after that. Which is when they decided they need a blood test, so then it's another 20 minutes while they wait for the results.

Then there's an IV with more stuff in it, this stuff presumably the stuff that can do something bad to your kidneys.

Then on Thursday, I had to have more blood drawn, and urine taken, for my hemi-semi annual trip to the endocrinologist on Tuesday. I got them to draw from the back of my left hand, since I figured I'd been poked cubitally twice the day before, and how many times can you get poked in the same vessel before you risk vascular collapse?

For those of you who care, the answer is 'quite a bit', because vascular collapse happens when you loose too much blood volume, not when you poke a given vessel a dozen times. But presumably it doesn't help to poke the same vessel 30 times a day, which is why if you're in the hospital and they know they're going to take blood several times a day they leave the needle in.

But anyway, where was I? Poke for the creatinine. Poke for the IV. Now poke for the endo. And this morning, Friday, I had to go in to the clinic to have another creatinine test (poke #4), to see if my kidneys have failed and if not to resume my drugs.

And in February, I get to go for another colonoscopy. Not because anything is wrong, but because, apparently, I have an interesting looking ileocecal valve. Good thing this is Canada and it's all free. I can just imagine what the doctors who examined me when I immigrated would have said if they could have forseen all this.

Never let it be said that I'm not getting my money's worth out of the Canadian medical system. And Canadians love to complain about waiting times for various tests and procedures. But so far, that hasn't been a problem. Granted, I haven't had anything that was 'urgent', like debilitating pain requiring hip replacement, and I'm not on a waiting list for any organs. But in my experience, 'getting into the system' isn't the problem. Getting out of it, well, that's a different story.

Remind me to bespeak a picture of my ileocecal valve to post here.

So at the moment, I'm mulling cider and toasting pumpkin seeds for a party tomorrow for one of my colleagues who is moving on to new adventures. That's what we're calling it. And I woudl be working on the spectrogram, but like I said, I'm taking a deep breath.

The real me?

Okay, I spent a few free minutes last week building avatars of myself. Simpsons style (courtesy of Burger King's Simpsons promotion), South Park style (sp-studio.de) and manga-style (faceyourmanga.it). Which one comes closest to capturing the real me?

Did I mention

At the moment, it's 8:51 pm, and according to the Weather Channel's Vista sidebar gadget (which isn't quite the same thing as WeatherEye, but whatever) it's -27C. If we're lucky, we'll make it up to -16C tomorrow. Although the wind is picking up...

Not that you hear me complaining. I'm not. But I am going to Mountain Equipment Co-op to buy one of those over-the-face neoprene scary Hannibal-Lechter-looking mask things.

Gastrointestinal update 3

Well, the abdominal CT adventure has been scheduled for January 7th. It doesn't sound too bad, prep-wise. It actually sounds kind of interesting, although I'm not sure I can hold still for the two hours it may require without some serious assistance. We'll see.

I'm now 24 hours behind schedule, that is, where I thought I would be on Monday. Yesterday turned into a great black hole of non-accomplishment. Today I finally got out to my favo(u)rite coffee place at the Forks and did a lot of marking (test-grading). I still have an essay-answer question to mark in one of my stacks of papers, and the posters from Communication Disorders. But then grades will be done and in and all will be well.

Okay, so tomorrow is Friday. I plan to a) finish marking those exams, b) get some solid work in on the review I'm doing for Language and Speech which is now two weeks late, and c) maybe get Xmas stuff to the post-office. Maybe. Depending on the weather. And my indolence.

Next week, it's letters of reference, and possibly a PhD defense that I have to 'Examine', which means I go and read the official statement of gravitas from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and make sure no one pulls a fast one, but otherwise I don't think I have to do anything, critique-wise or anything, so I'll use it as something of a deep-breathing and meditation moment. Then on Thursday there's the Dean's holiday reception on campus and at 7pm the Fringe performer lottery at MTC Warehouse. Woo hoo!

Periodontal update

Well, not good news. Well, not bad news, but not good news. I used to have a 9mm 'slit' across the root of my lower left first molar. I underwent a periodontal graft, and now I have a 6mm slit at the back of my left first molar. Periodonist is very upset with me. Fortunately, he's not talking immediate second surgery. We're going to see how it goes for six months and if it doesn't get any worse, we might just live with it for a while.

So the good news is that this is presumably the last time in a while that I'll have to get up in time to make a 7:45am perio appointment. .Which is good because it was supposed to have been yesterday. But I had a mind-blorf.

Thursday it's the ophthamologist, then I'm off the hook until the first week in January, when I have to have some blood work done in preparation for my Jan 13 endocrinology appointment, and my Jan 15 dentist appointment.

Still no word on scheduling the CT scan of my ileocecal valve (and, one presumes, adjoining areas), but I expect to be hearing about that shortly.

Never let it me said that I'm not getting my money's worth out of Canadian medical care.

Gastrointestinal update 2

Well, 72 hours later, and the GI doctor is having second thoughts. Just to be 200% sure, he says. Biopsy showed only normal tissue, but he still wants to have another look. So now he's talking about a CT scan. Which would actually be sort of interesting, depending on what sort of unpleasant prep would have to occur first. And possibly another colonoscopy. As long as the same drugs are used, I'm okay with that, I guess. And this is Canada, so it's all free.

But this time, I want to see an actual image of my ileocecal valve.

Gastrointestinal update

For those of you who were waiting. Doc says my colon is fine. The 'irregular' thing he biopsied was perfectly normal tissue. Turns out I have an atypical-looking ileocecal valve. Who knew?

So we still don't know where my hemoglobin is going or why my total iron bindability (?) is up. But at least I don't seem to be bleeding from anywhere, nor do I have any scary diseases. Or rather the list of scary diseases I could have has shortened somewhat.

Just chillin

It's currently -6C, which is warmer than last night, but it's morning and I'm cold anyway. I was trying to enjoy a hot cup of coffee but I managed to spill it all over. I woke up this morning with a weird orange stain on my radial fingers and thumb that isn't washing off, but for the life of me I can't figure out what I could have been fiddling with in my sleep that would actually stain my skin like iodine. There is no iodine in the house, not even in the salt.

But I'm taking it a little easy this morning. I have an appointment with the GI guy regarding my Unpleasant Medical Procedure a couple of weeks ago, after which I have to go to school and accomplish something, and then it's Yoga class.

Last night, I had a fairly successful read of an early draft (let's say version 1.2) of one of my plays in my playwri(gh)ting class, with a lot of good comments and some very good ideas for making actually work. So now I have to put it away and accomplish work. Today, in office hours before yoga, I'm going to try to run a Praat script and come close to understanding what's going on. That's my big goal for the day.

Although depending on what the GI guy says, I may just come home and take a nap afterward. We'll see. Stay tuned.

Neologism report

This is just for the historical evidence value of the observation. On Thursday evening, November 13th 2008, John Sauder (meteorologist at CBC Manitoba) claimed to have made up the word "snizzle" for mixed drizzle and snow. "Made up" in the sense of it not being an official meteorological term. But he took personal responsiblity for it.

I mention this only in case "my very good friend" Katherine Barber (editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary) is paying attention. ;-)

End of a loooong week.

Which considering Tuesday was technically a holiday it shouldn't have been, but there you go.

Plans for the weekend? Cleaning house, cooking stuff, catching up with work, trying to finalize new drafts of two playscripts.

Just for fun (watch through to after the credits) (and yes, this is work-safe--this is a family blog):