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May 22nd, 2008
03:56 pm - Spring
I made it through my first winter back in cold, snowy New England. I like the Spring ok, but it's Summer that I love. I still hate hate hate the cold, and so does Jef. I'm not sure if we're back permanently with how much we both still couldn't stand the winter. We have still been talking about moving to Hawaii at some point. Hopefully we'll stick out a few years here and get financially stable again before we make any more big moves. It's a little tough with having a house now that seems to need endless work and still having the condo back in San Diego with rent not even close to covering mortgage. We're keeping our fingers crossed that the SD market will recover in a couple of years and we'll be able to get some money back from that. We'll see.
That's about all the updating I have the motivation for right now. :)
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May 20th, 2008
11:46 pm - Hmm
I'm thinking about updating. What a novel idea. Maybe tomorrow...
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January 10th, 2008
11:38 pm - Sucky journal writer
Still haven't changed on the journal-writing front. I can't seem to remember to keep up with it.
So much has happened since the last post.. I'll just sum up some of it...
The PET/CT scan turned out fine... no malignant anything. They don't know why I had enlarged lymph nodes, but apparently it's not expected to cause any problems.
I moved back to Massachusetts in July... very sudden and not planned, but I think it was the right choice... even if it has been hellishly snowy and cold for the most part of the Winter so far... except this past week which was pretty damned nice.
I got Niko a sister when we moved back. I now have 2 rescued terriers. My new canine child is name Molly, and she was removed from an abusive home in Tennessee. She and Niko adore each other, and I think they make a great pair.
My husband, Jef, and I bought a house in Reading, MA. It's very cute and I really like it, but it needs work. We couldn't sell our condo in San Diego, so now we're renting it and that' a drain on the finances, but it'll al work out in the end I'm sure. We hope some day to move to Hawaii, but for now our cute little Tudor in Reading will serve. :)
I way over-indulged on alcohol on New Year's (including hard liquor, which I think is my particular downfall), losing control of myself for the first time in several years and ended up in the ER. I am embarrassed that I regressed to that, but it was just a blip on the radar, and other than my wounded pride I am fine.
I have been training to be a dog trainer, and that is going quite well. I just started my internship in Cambridge, MA, and I love the place I'm doing it so far. I'll be trying to get some volunteer work done as well in the next few months.
I have yet another surgery coming up. This time it'll be my left shoulder at the end of January. I'm kinda resign now to the fact that this is part of my life. My joints suck, and I just have to hope that I'll be able eventually get back to being athletic.
That's about it here. No promises for when I might next update.
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March 16th, 2007
11:29 pm - Surgery again
Two weeks ago I had hip surgery #3 in a little more than a year. It was easier than the first two: much less invasive. The doctor had talked briefly about doing micro-fractures, but luckily didn't end up having to do that. He basically ended up cutting out more cartilege and burning the soft tissue to get it to tighten up, all arthroscopicly. Hopefully that will actually help long term. I'm going to be starting physical therapy for that some time soon. I'm probably going to have to have the same thing done to my other hip eventually. Ick.
I have a follow up on my shoulder Monday. The cortisone wore off, and it's bothering me a lot again.
Tuesday I am having a PET/CT scan to try and rule out any malignant cause of my enlarged lymph nodes. I have the follow up for that with the Oncologist the next Monday.
Still way too many doctors' appointments. Now I have to decide whether I'm going to see a genetic specialist to determine whether I have a connective tissue disorder causing all my joint problems. The question is: Is it worth going to more doctors appointments to find out something that probably isn't actually going to change the way my symptoms are treated? I haven't decided yet.
I've been working from home most of the time since the surgery. I am very lucky to work at a place that is so flexible. Niko has been spoiled having me around so much. :) I wish I could get back to running around with him more.
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February 9th, 2007
09:58 pm - Hmm... 2007
I don't know why exactly it just struck me now, but it really sunk in while looking at the date on my previous post that it is 2007 which is thirty years after my year of birth. I will be turning 30 this year! Wow.
Well, moving on now!
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09:28 pm - Back from vacation
Jef and I went to Hawaii for a week's vacation. I think it did me some good. We didn't do a whole lot because my stupid hip and shoulder are still screwed up, so I couldn't hike or walk or swim for too far. It was still a wonderful trip, though. We mostly relaxed, strolled along the beach, ate good food, did touristy things and such. We stayed in Waikiki, which is a bustling area of Oahu. Next time we are planning on visiting the big island, which will be much quieter. Hopefully by then (August?) I'll be able to hike and such again.
Niko stayed at Alpine Dog Ranch again while we were gone. He loves it there, and the family takes such good care of him that I have no hesitation leaving him there. I did miss him a whole lot, though, possibly more than is reasonable! *blush*. I would love to take him on vacation with us, but Hawaii is a rabies-free state with strict policies about animals entering, so for now he must have his own vacation when we go! I think Jef probably enjoys having a little time away from Niko anyhow so he doesn't have to compete for my attention. :)
We are considering moving to Hawaii at some point. I'm not sure when, or what exactly what we will do there, but it is a nice idea! I am hoping that I can become an accomplished dog trainer here in San Diego, and when the time comes will have no problem moving my business to somewhere on Hawaii! We'll see. :)
I got sort of anti-climactic results from the mammogram & ultrasound. They said that the mammogram didn't show anything of concern, but that because of my age and resulting breast tissue density it would be hard to see anything anyway. The ultrasound showed 4 enlarged lymph nodes that don't have anything particularly suspicious about them, but they said that they should be evaluated further. I was kind of hoping for something definitive, but I suppose that's much better than definitely bad, yeah?
I'm going to have to have another surgery on my hip, but this time it will be entirely arthroscopic, so should be an easy recovery. That will probably take place early in March. I have another appointment next week to see about the next step with my shoulder. (Please please please let this be the last thing I need to deal with for a while!)
That's about it for now.
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January 22nd, 2007
09:51 am - Bonus update
While I'm in journal mode, I figured I might as well update again.
I'm feeling less stressed about the medical stuff now. I was really completely terrified on Tuesday when they told me about the lymph nodes. I just couldn't handle another thing right then. I got myself so worked up about it that I ended up sick by the end of the week last week. But, the doctor gave me a cortisone shot in my shoulder which has helped the pain tremendously, and I guess I'm just dealing better now because of it. It's amazing what a difference in mental state a reduction in pain can make. They had tried a cortisone shot before, and not only did it not help, but it left my arm unusable for 3 days because it got unbelievably sore and stiff. I was very hesitant to try again because of that, but he used a different type of cortisone this time, and put it in a different place, and it has helped a lot. So, now I just have to get through a couple of other things. I have a mammogram and ultrasound on Wednesday to check things out, and hopefully things will be just fine.
I forgot to mention my other side project. Jef and I have started keeping a blog called My Food Geek about some of the yummy things he cooks. I am unbelievably lucky to be married to such an outstanding chef!
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January 19th, 2007
10:06 pm - No change in my journal-keeping habits
Let's see... what has happened since last I posted? It's been 8 months. We went to Oahu in August with some friends. We stayed in Kailua, and had a nice, quiet fun time. We're going back to see it by ourselves this time and staying in Waikiki, so it will be significantly less quiet this trip! That's coming up in just a few weeks, and I can't wait.
My "fur-child", Niko, has kept me very busy since we got him. I've spent a lot of time training him and trying to help him become a better adjusted dog. He's extremely smart and very easy to train as well as just as loving as can be, but he is absolutely neurotic! He has a pretty bad case of separation anxiety, and tends to scream and howl as soon as I go out of sight. It's improving, but there's still a long way to go! He is not very good at meeting dogs he doesn't know, and I definitely wouldn't trust him alone with a small child, but it's a process and he's coming along. We've been trying a lot of dog sports like flyball and agility to help him have fun and be more confident. We both like agility a lot, but have a long way to go before we're good!
Niko has inspired me to pursue a dog training career on the side, which has turned into this business. I've started volunteering working with dogs, am just finishing up a distance learning program which will be moving into the intership phase in the near future. I'm still doing the computer geek thing as my main job, though.
I've still been spending way too much time at doctors for this and that. It's been a tough couple of years for injuries and illness. My left hip, the one they operated on first, seems to be getting bad again. I go back the week after next to talk about it more and see what we need to do next. My left shoulder is now joining the "fun" of failing joints. The joint problems make it very hard to do everything I want to do. I'm really hoping that one of these days we can get everything all fixed up and I can be active whenever I want to be.
The swollen lymph node I talked about last time never went away (but also did not grow more), and further tests could not determine what caused it. They did a biopsy by fine needle aspiration which didn't show any malignancy, happily. I thought that meant we were fine on that front now that it's been close to a year without change, but unfortunately while they were doing an MRI on my shoulder, they discovered I have multiple enlarged lymph nodes under my armpit, too, so now that's starting a whole new round of doctors and tests. I'm trying not to panic about it since there isn't really any information yet, and it's most likely just my body being weird (because it always is), but it's hard not to get nervous, not to mention just being frustrated about having to spend more time in doctors' offices.
I've been playing a lot of bridge lately. I now have a regular partner, Vi, who I play with on most Wednesdays at Adventures in Bridge where they hold ACBL sanctioned games. Some day I want to be a bridge life master!
That's about it for updates here. I'll try to come back to update about test results, but with my track record on journal updates I wouldn't hold your breath! :)
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May 7th, 2006
02:08 pm - Been a while
As usual I've stopped updating, so there's lots of news to report now. Where to start?
Jef and I bought a condo at the end of February. It all happened very quickly. We hadn't been planning on buying anything for a while, and we just were occasionally looking at internet listings to get a feel for the market and all. We've been doing that now and then probably since we moved to San Diego, so it really wasn't anything more than just research. We had talked about maybe starting to look seriously this coming summer when finances would be more stable (with Jef having started a good job this past August after totally draining his savings with a year unemployed after moving to SD and then going to pastry school), and to wait and see if the supposed housing bubble would burst or at least sag by then. Then, we saw a condo listing that caught our attention. It was the first one that came up that we both seriously wanted to look at in person. I emailed the realtor whose website we saw it on, and she called the next day, Sunday, to say that we could see it in person that day if we wanted. We went, and we both loved it, so we started talking about whether we could really do it then. Monday I looked into financing, Tuesday I had the realtor show me some other places just to make sure, which only made us love the first place more, Wednesday we made an offer, and by Friday it was accepted! We closed February 23rd, and we are loving it here! We painted it interesting colors inside, got lots of nice rugs, and are settling in nicely. It also happens to be three and a half miles from my work, which is just wonderful! There are so many more details to talk about how the purchase process went and all, but I think I'll leave that for another entry. It'll give me a reason to update again soon. :)
After mostly healing from getting my left hip fixed in December I started having very similar problems with my right hip. I went to the doctor to look into it, and found out that I had the same problems in the right hip as I had in the left, just at an earlier stage. It started interfering with daily things just like the left had, so we decided to move forward with dealing with that one as well. I had been hoping to at least get a summer of disc in before having to do anything else, but that didn't work out. I just had surgery last Monday, May 1st, and it went really well. They said there was quite a bit less damage in this on than the left had so it should be and easier recovery, which is good to hear. The hospital where I had it done took really good care of me. I ended up having to stay two nights this time around because some sort of pain medicine they gave me this time didn't agree with my body so my blood pressure was running very low, leading me to nearly pass out whenever I tried to crutch around. By Wednesday I was feeling much better, though, and I got to go home. Next week I'll be working from home. My company is very understanding and doesn't mind how I work as long as things get done.
Jef and I went to Massachusetts for a few days to visit friends. We had a blast. There were parties for us every day we were there. It was just wonderful getting to see everyone again! My parents also drove down from Vermont just so we could have dinner with them and Jef's parents. It was the first time everyone got together like that, so I was a little nervous! We treated everyone to a wonderful meal at a nice Italian restaurant in Nashua, NH, called Villa Banca. Everyone seemed to have a very good time, so that was a big relief!
While we were there we started making plans for an August vacation to Hawaii to celebrate our one year anniversary. Some of our Massachusetts friends are coming with us. We will be going to Oahu this time. (We did Maui the first time, and I'm sure we will go back some time, but we wanted to try another island). I am very excited! We bought our plane tickets already and everything! Now we just have to arrange a nice beach house to stay in. I can't wait!
When we got back from Massachusetts I found a small (just a little bigger than 1 cm) painless lump at the base of my neck that I'm pretty sure wasn't there before. When it didn't go away after a week or so I went to the doctor at work to check it out. He said it's a swollen lymph node and to keep an eye on it. He didn't want to do anything before hip surgery, but said if it didn't end up going away by the time I'm back at work that he'd biopsy it. I think it's been about 4 or 5 weeks that it's been there now, and I don't believe it's changed at all in that time. It makes me nervous, but most likely it'll turn out to be nothing. They did blood work which all turned out normal, so that's good. I'm going to go back probably the week after next to find out what the next step is there.
Jef and I adopted a dog! We got him a little more than a week ago. His name is Niko, and he's a very small Jack Russell Terrier mix. He weighs about 12 pounds, is mostly white with brown ears and a polka-dotted belly and is about a year old. He was rescued by St. Nicholas Hope for Animals from Tijuana. He is the sweetest little guy I've ever met! I'm so happy with him so far. He is keep me company while I recover from surgery. He is very snuggly and loving, and extremely quiet, except when he sees another dog or thinks you are leaving him alone. He got very attached to me right away, which is just adorable. He's a little scared of men in general, and gets nervous around Jef a lot of the time. He's definitely going to take some work. He isn't completely housebroken yet, and needs other training including how to behave around other dogs, and currently has pretty severe separation anxiety whenever we try to leave the house, but I am soooo happy we got him! He's going to be just a great pet. I'm looking into dog daycare places to take him to maybe once or twice a week during the work week because I think that will help him get used to meeting other dogs and get him lots of exercise and such. We took him to the vet last week, and he has ringworm and an ear infection right now that we are treating him for. Hopefully that will clear up quickly , because the poor guy is pretty itchy!
There are lots more pictures at my photo site of the condo and of Niko as well as other random things here.
Ok! That was a big update, so I'm going to sign off for now. Hopefully I'll get around to updating more later.
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December 21st, 2005
11:42 am
I went to a friend's house last night. She hosted a ladies' dessert night and yankee-swap type gift thing (I think she called it a white-elephant party). It was really a lot of fun. I don't get a lot of opportunities to hang out with the female contingent of friends around here, so it was a really nice change. We just chatted and drank eggnog and did the gift thing and had fun. It was also good just to get the chance to get out of the house for a while. I ended up with a box of lucky charms and some lucky charms pj pants. :) I think I'm going to be going back down there tonight to play some poker as well, which should be fun.
My parents are going to be coming to town on Friday night. I'm excited to see them. I'm not exactly sure how we're going to spend time while they are here yet since I'm still on crutches, and Jef has to work every night that they're here. I think we might go to the zoo or wild animal park on one day and they'll push me around in a wheelchair or something. I'm a little stressed about how dirty the apartment is. I don't really think I'm going to be able to clean it much before they arrive, either. Ah, well. I also don't know what we're going to do for X-mas dinner, either. Hopefully we'll think of something in the next couple of days!
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December 16th, 2005
05:05 pm
I had hip surgery last week. I am very relieved to have that over with. It's been 6 months now since my hip got bad enough that I haven't been able to exercise or even be as mobile as I'd like, but now I'm on the path back to health.
The surgery was supposed to be on Monday at 8am. Jef brought me there to check in at 5am, and they had no record of my surgery, and the Operating Room had not been booked. They sent us home, and when I paged the doctor, he was in his car driving to do the surgery. I guess there was some mix up with the scheduling, and there was nothing they could do to get me in that day. He was nice enough to juggle his schedule around to do it on Tuesday evening instead, and I ended up having to stay in the hospital overnight to recover since the surgery started so late.
The surgery was actually two procedures, with two surgeons. First, they put my leg in a harness to pull the hip joint out of socket, and then the arthroscope doctor went in to clean up the tears and bumps in the cartilage. When that was done, the other surgeon opened my hip up, and shaved down part of the bone at the top of the femur where some bone spurs and junk had accumulated due to some sort of impingement there. Afterwards, both doctors were raving about how well it went, which is wonderful news. I guess they've only done that combined procedure a handful of times, and they said that mine was the smoothest that it's ever gone (although I was still in surgery for 4 hours!).
Now I'm on crutches for a few weeks, and I have to spend 8 hours a day in this motion machine that moves my leg up and down. I actually like the machine, though, because it makes it feel better somehow. It's already more comfortable to sit than it was before surgery, which just seems absolutely amazing to me.
I've been working from home from my couch with my leg in this machine this week. I went in for a few hours today, and that went pretty well.
Jef has taken wonderful care of me through all of this as usual. He cooks lovely dinners for me and just generally makes sure I'm as comfortable as possible.
This year I think I've had more than my fill of injuries and illness. Hopefully this will mark the end of all of that, and once I'm healed from this I'll be back to health again! I can't wait to play disc again, and in the next couple of months my hip should be well enough to allow me to finally ride a bike for the first time in 5 years!
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October 24th, 2005
12:41 am
It's late and I have to work in the morning, but I'm having trouble falling asleep. I've been having on and off troubles for a while. I used to be constantly plagued by insomnia, but it hasn't really been a problem for me since college. I really hope it won't start again.
I played poker at a friend's house tonight, and ended up making a little money. I think maybe the game wound me up and that's why I can't sleep now.
The rest of the weekend was fairly quiet. Jef and I were going to go apple picking Saturday, but we could?lt figure out if the place was done for the season, and it didn't seem worth the hour drive without knowing, so we stayed home instead. We went out and had some very tasty Greek food for dinner that night.
I'm stressed about work this week. That may also be keeping me up. I haven't been getting my work done like I should and time is getting short, so I know I have to buckle down and work harder this week, but I not sure I'm prepared for it.
Ok, back to trying to sleep now.
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October 19th, 2005
12:54 am - Poker and Brew
The home brew definitely did not disappoint. Jef didn't come along because there wasn't enough time before he had to work. It was a good time anyway, but I'd rather have had him there.
I lost at poker, though. I had tripled my money, and lost it all in one hand on a called bluff. It was my own fault that it was called, too, because I went and let myself talk when questioned and gave it all away. I know I still have a lot to learn.
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October 18th, 2005
03:24 pm - Looking forward to brew
Since I won't be going to bridge tonight, it means this will be the first time I have a Tuesday available when a friend of mine will be having a brew party. He is a very good home-brewer, and occasionally has parties when he finishes a batch, but they are always on Tuesdays which means I never get to go because bridge is every Tuesday and I schedule it pretty far in advance, so I'm am excited that I am available tonight for a change.
I'm hoping Jef will come along for a while. He has to work at 8:30 tonight, and I'm not exactly sure what time the gathering starts. I'm also hoping that we will get to play some poker! I really enjoy the friendly poker games we've been having. It's a pretty good bet that there will be a game based on the folks who I expect to be there.
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October 17th, 2005
09:37 pm
I'm lying in bed right now, waiting to sleep. I'm a little loopy because I took painkillers for my foot which probably doesn't make this the best time to post. I'm frustrated with how slow my foot is healing and my worsening hip. I'm not getting my work done because I'm distracted and discouraged. I'm finding myself considering taking a leave of absence at work because I've been so useless and down.
I cancelled my bridge game tomorrow night because I can't sit at the tables for that long. It sucks. I'm very ready to be healed.
Jef is at work, which is sad. He just moved to graveyard shift, which I hope will be temporary. I won't get to spend as much time with him while he is on this crappy schedule.
I'm hoping I'll be able to kick myself into work productivity tomrrow because otherwise I'm not sure what's going to happen...
I think I'd better sleep now.
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October 7th, 2005
01:17 pm - My entries
I was just reading back through my journal and realized that the vast majority of my entries are about my either being sick or hurt. Although these past six months or so have been unusually full of those types of incidents, I think I need to make an effort to write about other things, too.
I've been playing poker a bunch lately with some of my disc friends. I played for the first time about a year and a half ago. It was a friendly tournament style game of no limit Texas Holdem that a friend put together. I did really badly, but I really liked it, so I started to try to get people to play more often. We've been playing once or twice a weekend for the last couple of months. We play very low stakes, and usually cash games. I'm definitely improving, and I really have been having fun playing. I played a casino no limit cash game a few months ago, and actually ended up winning a decent amount of money, but I'm not sure I'm really ready to play much outside the friend games yet. My mom got me a nice set of clay poker chips for my birthday, so I've been hosting games occasionally lately, too.
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September 28th, 2005
11:50 am - Update
Boy am I bad at keeping a journal! It's not even that I forget, I think I mostly just don't feel like writing in it, even though I like the idea of writing things down. Hmmm.
Jef and I went on a 2 week honeymoon in Maui. It was a wonderful, wonderful time. There are pictures of the trip up here. I haven't taken the time to label and order them yet. We did a lot of snorkeling and a lot of eating of good food. The weather was beautiful, and it was a very relaxing trip. My hip kept me from doing everything I wanted to do, but we still got to do a lot of fun things.
Last Tuesday I had a little accident before work. I knocked over a picture in a heavy metal frame, and the (very sharp) corner landed on my foot and cut it pretty badly. I called Jef at work and he came home and took me to the ER to get stitched up. I went on Thursday to the doctor to make sure the stitches were ok, and he noticed that it looked like I had cut a tendon in the foot as well (the "extensor hallucis longus", the long tendon that goes to the big toe). I had to go to a foot surgeon later that day, who agreed with the assessment and said it needed to be fixed ASAP, so on Friday morning I had surgery to sew it back up! I'm on crutches right now (just for a few more days, I think), and then I will have to wear a removable walking cast/boot-type thing for 6-8 weeks. Ick. It's on the same side as my bad hip (left) which is making things very inconvenient, because there is a lost of hip-bending involved in dealing with a hurt foot. Jef has been wonderful through all of this. He's been taking good care of me, cooking even more than normal, and just knowing all the right things to say and do. He's a wonderful husband!
I had an appointment with the hip doctor yesterday, and I need more imaging done on the hip. It looks like I will need surgery on that as well, but not the big surgery that I was originally told about, happily. It's a much easier surgery with quicker recovery time. They can't do that until my foot heals, though, because it involves dislocating my hip using a harness that pulls on the foot. Despite the sound of it, it's apparently a fairly simple outpatient surgery that hopefully will fix me all up. I'm hoping that once that is done I'll be back to normal and be able to play disc again!
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July 27th, 2005
10:44 am - New issues
So, I've been married more than a month now. It is going well so far. We are moving into a smaller apartment in less than two weeks since our roommate went back to Massachusetts. It should be nice. The area looks really good, and it's a little more convenient to work.
I've been having hip problems lately. I've actually had a bad hip for a number of years, but never figured out what exactly was wrong with it. A lot of the women on my Mother's side of the family also have hip problems. I haven't been able to ride a bike because of it for more than 5 years now. I started to get it looked into once, but they were much more interested in a stress fracture I had in my leg at the time instead.
My hip suddenly got a lot worse in the last few weeks, though, so I finally had to get a doctor's appointment again. That was yesterday. He said that I have a genetic hip socket underdevelopment called hip dysplasia as an underlying problem, and probably currently have a cartilage tear called a labral tear that is giving the current symptoms. He said I'd probably need major hip surgery (a Periacetabular Osteotomy) to fix the underlying problem, and if I don't, I'll end up like my aunts and need a total hip replacement in my early forties because of arthritis. I don't have any sign of arthritis yet, but apparently it starts very young with this particular structural problem, which is what happened to my aunts. He is sending me to another doctor who is a specialist in the procedure to discuss options. That appointment is August 16th. I'm really scared about the whole thing. I'm afraid if I get it done I won't be able to be active anymore. I figure I should get a second opinion other than the specialist if he says I need the surgery, because both these doctors are surgeons, so they usually think first about surgical fixes. I haven't been able to find anything online indicating that there are really any non-surgical options, though.
On the lighter side, Jef and I are going to be having a honeymoon starting at the end of August. We're going to Maui for two weeks, which I'm really excited about. We're going to be going a fancy luau on our second night, which should be a good time.
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June 13th, 2005
09:48 pm - As usual, not updating regularly
I can't believe I didn't even update about my ER visit after I finally recovered from being sick. It was pretty much the first week of feeling almost normal again after the kidney infection, and I went to a barbecue, and was horsing around with a friend. I was play-wrestling him, and trying to knock him over, and couldn't (because he wrestled in high school and was having none of that) so I recruited someone else to help, and he basically tackled us both. The three of us fell over and my head broke our fall on the corner of a wall. I was knocked out briefly. We went to the ER, and they did a CT scan of my head and proclaimed that my diagnosis was "head injury". Um. Thanks. It's I think a little more that three weeks later now, and I still have a little sore bump on the skull, but no lasting ill effects.
This weekend I'm running off with Jef to Vegas and getting married at a drive-thru chapel. :) We want to do something really low-key and fun, so that's the plan. We're going to be stay at Mandalay Bay which I've been wanting to check out for a while because they have a really cool wave pool and "beach". It should be a good time. I haven't told my parents yet, but they are expecting it to be spur of the moment in Vegas, so they will be ok with things.
That's about it here.
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May 14th, 2005
07:01 pm - Long, long week
After my Monday entry I continued to be extremely sick for most of the week. On Wednesday I went back to the doctor's for a follow-up appointment, and was still running a pretty high fever. They said the rest of the labwork wasn't 100% consistant with a kidney infection, and that they thought the antibiotics should have made more of a difference by then. Because of my bad back pain they decided to send me in for an abdominal CT scan. I had that Thursday morning, and later that day they said it hadn't shown anything wrong, luckily. I was finally starting to feel like I was moving in the right direction by then, but I was still running a bit of a fever, and they had me go back in and got more bloodwork done. By yesterday I was finally feeling like I might be back to health soon. They didn't get the bloodwork back yesterday, so I'll have to wait for Monday to hear if they found anything else. In the mean time I'm doing much better today other than being really worn out. I went out and watched a disc game this morning, which was pretty much the first time I left my apartment in more than a week other than to go to the doctor's.
I'm planning on going back to work this Monday. I'm pretty annoyed with HR at the moment, though. I was out for 6 work days because of this. I the internal web site it says that absence of more than 5 days require a doctor's note and will require a leave of absence to be applied for if the absence is going to continue for an extended period of time. Well, one day more than 5 is clearly not an extended period of time more than 5 days, so I'm figuring I'll just need a doctor's note and everything will be fine. The HR lady says that I'm interpreting the policy wrong, and that *any* absence over 5 days needs a leave of absence to be taken. It's a big hassle, requires paperwork to be filled out and all sorts of crap and it's *unpaid*. So if I had gone back in yesterday, I would be paid for all of it and everything would be fine, but because I was out one extra day I don't get paid for any of it unless I use vacation time? That's ridiculous. I still think she's wrong about the policy, and I'm going to keep fighting them. I'm really pissed off about the whole thing... there was more to it that this particular HR lady pissed me off about, but I think I'm not up for explaining.
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