So let's start off and look at them individually. First let's look at my health and why I have a known past and unknown future. Health actually splinters into several areas that are all bridging known and unknowns. I thought I was on a pretty steady path for my migraines. Try out a few standard therapies and when they don't work go for the newest therapy (botox) and maybe even a newer, just out of testing, treatment. The topamax kind of worked. But the side effect of language loss was just unacceptable for me and I could honestly say that it didn't reduce the frequency or the severity of the migraines enough to even consider staying on it. Next up was Depakote. The biggest complaint about depakote for migraines is it's side effect. Weight gain. And as should have been expected, the weight gain hit me full in the face. I am now constantly hungry. I can eat until I'm full... full as in I'm about to burst at the seams and leak out food... and still be hungry 5 minutes later.
Now I've had meds that messed with my hunger before and I learned pretty quickly to just ignore the hunger and try my best to eat reasonably at normal times. But this hunger is different. Let's say I eat Lunch at noon (I don't, but lets just play this game out mmm'k?). I get hungry around 12:15. I had a good sized lunch and shouldn't feel hungry, so I ignore the hunger. But at 12:30 it's worse. At 1:00 it's much worse. By 2:00 I feel like I haven't eaten all day and I can't stop thinking about food and eating. When I finally get the chance to eat a snack I eat almost a full meals worth of food... and then feel bloated and stuffed. But at 2:30 I start feeling both bloated AND hungry. So as should have been expected (and is in fact part of the warning of Depakote), I've gained about 10 pounds with no end in sight for the weight gain.
This should be as simple as the topamax. I mean, I'm diabetic and cannot go about gaining weight. I'll send myself into insulin if I keep this up as I'm already maxed out on three different anti diabetic medications. But when I look at my migraine journal.... my last migraine was September 20th. 31 freaking days ago! I started keeping good records of my migraines in December of last year and the longest I've gone without a migraine is 2 weeks.
So I absolutely HAVE to stay on the depakote... right? Well, that's the known past and the unknown future. I might just be having a natural lull in my migraines, and that lull might be helped by the depakote as I've been on depakote for almost 3 months. 2 months at full strength. So I had 4 early migraines while on depakote and it doesn't take 2 months to get to saturation in the blood stream. So I have to wait and see. I see my neurologist on October 31st.
It would be nice if I was only actively dealing with the migraines, but I also have my left shoulder. I've talked about it briefly, but here's the cliff notes edition: I started feeling pain in my left shoulder when I was moving it about 1 and a half years ago. It got progressively worse and worse. I did some exercises that should have helped, but they didn't. I mentioned it to my Doctor and he gave me some other exercises to try. They didn't work. I saw the Doc again and he sent me to physical therapy. It didn't work and I actually lost ground while at PT. Doc gave me a consult to an orthopedic specialist and after many X-Rays he said the bones look good and there's no sign of arthritis, so he believes it may just be a frozen shoulder made worse by my diabetes and the late exercise regimen to help it out. So he sent me back to PT.
That's just about caught up. I've had my 4th of 8 sessions of PT and I feel a little better, but not good in any way. Right now I have some kind of tape all over my shoulder that helps encourage good posture and helps pull at the skin to assist in reducing swelling.... even though I don't have any swelling on my shoulder. I'm afraid I'm not making good enough progress and that by the time I see the orthopedic specialist again (November 12th) he's going to want to do a procedure that will 'break up' any scar tissue in my shoulder. He explained it like this... he puts me under with some twilight drugs, manipulates my arm around in a very painful way (I won't remember it with the drugs on board), let it sit in a sling for a few days and then do more PT. That doesn't sound appealing at all!
I guess I'll just have to wait and see. That's the known and unknown.
As long as I'm updating you on health issues I should include my dental escapades. It's not a known/unknown situation, but it's the processes I'm going through. I had the dentist carve out one of my molars and put a temporary crown on it last week. About 3 weeks from now he'll have the replacement full crown and I'll go in for him to glue into place. At which point I'll schedule up the next crown procedure. Yeah... I'm getting two more crowns this year. Ick.
So that's health... onto my career.
In short, I got the job! I wrote back in May that I was going to start looking for another job. Specifically a job as a nurse supervisor at the department of corrections. It took about a month longer than I predicted, but I finally got the job at my original facility. I learned about the hire 3 weeks ago and had my last day as a clinic nurse on Friday. My first day at the new (original) facility is... well it's in less than 24 hours!
I have such mixed feelings on this. Here are some of the advantages:
- It's moving forward in my career. Clinic nurse to nursing supervisor to health unit manger to director of nursing... that path is more or less what I had in mind about 4 years ago. It should take me about another 15 years to get to director of nursing, and that would be my career at the MDOC.
- It means outside of extraordinary circumstances I won't work any weekends or holidays again.
- It technically has a pay bump (see disadvantages below)
- Its new ground. New things to learn, new things to do, new responsibilities to take on.
- I get to help out a group of nurses that are in turn helping patients. By extension, I'm helping MORE patients than before even if I'm not providing any direct care.
Here are some of the disadvantages:
- I didn't make this choice all on my own. If it wasn't for that really bad nurse at my, now previous, facility I'd probably still be there and enjoying that job. I did want to move up into nursing supervisor at some point, I just don't like that someone else's job performance pushed me into that decision earlier than I wanted.
- I have to drive 45 miles to and 45 miles from work again. 90 miles a freaking day. My day is also now transformed from 8 hours with a 10 minute commute to 8 hours with an hour commute. More or less 10 hour days, 5 days a week.
- I technically lose my pay bonus. The loss of the bonus and the pay bump from above equal each other out, so I'm staying at the same annual pay... I just get more per pay period and no big honking bonus each year. Of course, tie that in with all the extra money I'll be spending on Gas and I'm losing money in the deal.
- I have to learn to be good again. I was a good nurse and now I'm a newbie supervisor.
- I don't get to perform direct patient care any more. I'll have been a 'real' nurse for just over 5 years.
- The lease on my car (more below)
So... it's not good and it's not bad. I know about half of the staff at the new/not-new facility but it's not like I loved all these people. Yeah, I like most of them, but there are several that I was happy to be rid of three years ago. I do get to stop wearing scrubs. I've always felt that scrubs are more akin to pajamas than professional wear and not really necessary for a clinic nurse. But that was the uniform of that position. Now my 'uniform' is slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie. Yup... shirt and tie every day now!
Oh... and did I mention that my office will be in 4 block? The block with the mentally unstable patients? How close will I be to these patients that tend to scream and hoot and hollar at the top of their lungs? Well my 'office' is a converted cell. By converted, I mean that they moved the bed out and put a desk in. Otherwise it's the same thing. And being a converted cell, I'll be right next to the inmates.
As for the lease. Well, if I drove just the miles to and from work I'd owe an extra $2000 on my lease when it's finished. Obviously, I'd rather not pay Ford any more than what we agreed upon and it's not like I'll just be driving that amount. So with some quick calculations I figured I could add about 10,000 miles to Mom's Escape by driving it twice a week and that would save me enough milage. I'll just have to calculate it every few months to see if I'm calculating it right. This also means that when the lease is up, leasing will be out of the option. I'm going to have to find a nice 2 or 3 year old car at that time and buy it. It'll have to be something that I like as I'll likely be paying on it for 4 or 5 years.
So I know what my job was as of Friday and I don't know what it will be on Monday. Truly a known/unknown.
And then there's the computer. My computer is still flaky and untrustworthy, so I went ahead and ordered my new computer. And lemme tell you, it's a BEAST (with a beast of a price). Here's the build sheet (remember, this has no parts from my current computer):
- It's from Origin PC and it's their Neuron line which means it's a Mini ATX system.
- ASUS TUF Z390M PRO Gaming Wifi Motherboard
- Intel i5 9600k that will be overclocked by Origin's pros.
- 16 GB DDR 2933MHz HyperX Predator RGB memory.
- 500 GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD
- 1 TB Samsung 960 EVO Sata SSD
- 8GB GeForce RTX 2080 Founder's Edition overclocked by Origin's pros.
- 650 Watt EVGA SuperNOVA G3 Power supply with blue sleeved cables.
- An LED light strip
- A 240mm All In One water cooling system for the processor.
- Windows 10 Home
- All in a custom bright yellow case with a tempered glass side to show off all the wonderful LED goodness inside.
- Lifetime 24/7 Support and Labor warranty. 3 year parts replacement warranty with free shipping.
- 3 Years parts upgrade service which allows me to have them swap out parts at cheaper prices.
- Built and assembled by pros who will route all the cables for maximum performance, look, and thermodynamics.
- Tested for 72 hours to make sure there is no problem before shipping.
- Shipped in a wooden crate with form fitting foam inside and out to keep it safe.
Now this is what is hopefully coming later this week. The listed expected ship date was the 22nd, but I changed the build mid way through their process. My original build had an older case that I thought was acceptable, but not great. The better case was their Micro ITX case, but I didn't like it being so small. It also included the ASUS ROG Z370G motherboard and the Intel i5 8600k processor. I changed it because the very day after I ordered it, Intel announced their 9th generation processors. It wasn't a huge jump in performance, but it WAS better for the same price. I thought long and hard about changing it at that time, but decided it wasn't a big enough change to warrant slowing down the build.
But then 2 days later, they introduced their new case. It looked exactly like the Micro ITX one, but was sized up for Mini ATX. That, along with the newest motherboard and processor, was enough to warrant a change. I contacted them to see if it was possible and the replied back that it would be no problem. They had me build up the 'new' system and they'd compare it to see what exactly would need to be changed.
It turns out the new build was indeed just a change in motherboard, processor, and case. As these were all newer, it cost slightly more, but they waived the change in fee! Free upgrade! They didn't even charge for the change, even though the old motherboad and processor were already seated in the old case. They jsut set that aside, got a new case/mb/processor, and started over for no charge! I'm loving Origin PC right now if it wasn't already obvious!
So, the system might be delayed by a few days, but I should still get it by this weekend. And then I'll have a banging top notch custom built computer that has a perfect 3 year full warranty. And in the meantime.... my system continues to freak out and crash (three times while I've been writing up this post).
I know I had more things I wanted to write about, but after all the crashes I just can't remember. I might update this later.
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