Obviously, the header image is different. I briefly considered making it temporary and replacing it with the normal 'update' theme once I got my desktop back but I like the idea of keeping this one unique as it will call attention to the fact that I was having computer problems.
Migraine
The migraines continue to feel better and better. Since my last update on the 4th, I finished that ongoing migraine on the 6th, making it a 5 day migraine. I haven't had another migraine since and don't feel like I'm going to ramp up to one today. If that holds true, it would make this a second eight day run without a migraine. It's not much time to establish it as a new pattern, but I can optimistically see it getting better.
Mental Health
I didn't see my psychologist last week. I had a pretty bad migraine that morning and we'd gotten a significant snow, so I was worried about my safety driving out to see him. I started typing up a text to his scheduler to let her know I wouldn't make it when I got a text from her. Evidently my psychologist had to call off our appointment. It's silly, but my whole demeaner changed from "Hey, I'm sorry that I wont' be able to make it to the appointment" to "Well, I'll let it go this time, but you owe me!"
Otherwise I've been good mental health wise. I see the nurse practitioner on new year's eve and I've decided I'll discuss the side effects with her. The night sweats, while they're not every night, are becoming problematic. It's cold out now and we keep the temperature in the house at 60 degrees at night. So when I wake up at 3 AM and I've drenched the sheets and comforter, I don't have much dry bed or blanket to keep me warm. A few nights ago I just had to accept that I was going to wrap up in a wet spot.
Physical Health
So, here's the biggest update. Part of my annual physical was getting a low dose chest CT scan. I've been a heavy enough smoker for long enough that it's considered a lung cancer screening. Hey, if we can find lung cancer early, it's FAR more treatable than finding it once you're symptomatic. Dad found his when he was symptomatic and he was given months to live. People now find out through these low dose CT scans and they can live for years and years, even with 'bad' lung cancers.
Getting into the appointment was easy. I barely had time to sit down in the waiting area before they called me back. They bid me to lie down on the scanner bed, put a cushion up under my legs, and started the machine moving, putting me into the tube. The machine told me when I had to hold my breath and when to breathe normally and I moved in and out of the machine like three times. When they told me it was over and had me out of there, it had been all of 5 minutes. I actually left BEFORE my scheduled appointment time.
As they normally do, they told me the results would appear in my online chart in two or three days. A couple hours later, they were there. I got to read them even before my doc. My big takeaway was that there is a 3mm nodule in my lower left lung. It's small enough that it doesn't warrant any further testing, just upping my CT scans to be annual affairs so that it can be monitored. There was other stuff, bone deterioration, signs of emphysema and signs of bronchitis, but nothing big in my opinion.
Well, evidently my doctor disagrees. While he does want to have the annual scans to monitor the nodule, he also took the objective signs of emphysema and chronic bronchitis and added a new diagnosis to my chart. COPD.
A quick definition of those three terms.
- Emphysema is damage to the lining of the lungs. It decreases the amount of area where air/blood exchange can occur and leads to more mucus in the lungs, more wheezing in breathing, and lower tolerance for activity. If the damage continues, you'll eventually lose the ability to breathe easily even during normal activities of daily living. That's where mom is, needing oxygen even at rest. Again, the damage doesn't go away, it can only be slowed by stopping smoking.
- Bronchitis can be caused by a lot of things including bacterial and viral infections. But when it's chronic, it's most often caused by smoking. This is a swelling of the airways in and out of the lungs. It makes the area irritable and leads to more coughing and reduced airflow. If it keeps happening over and over, it can cause permanent damage, hence there being a big difference between bronchitis and chronic bronchitis.
- COPD stands for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. It's two major features are emphysema and chronic bronchitis. It's not a static condition, but once you have it, it doesn't go away. It can get worse for a short period of time when it's called acute COPD.
My doc took that seriously. And even though he's never heard wheezing in my lungs and I've never noted having any trouble, he prescribed an albuterol inhaler. I kind of wanted to talk to him (he'd done this through the online charting) and ask when I'd use it since I'm not symptomatic... but then it hit me. Many mornings I'll wake up with a lot of phlegm in my throat. When clearing that phlegm, I'll feel it wheezing in my chest and I can clear that as well. I also notice those symptoms through the day, especially when I'm holding relatively still, like I do with a migraine. Yeah. That's the symptoms I need to look out for, and use the inhaler for.
This also struck me that I'm quite young to get this diagnosis. I can't compare myself to mom exactly as she also had heart issues to deal with, including congestive heart failure which acts much like COPD. But when she got the COPD diagnosis, it was the beginning of her downhill decent. She went from getting winded when active (if I'm honest with myself, I'm there... I just blamed it on being old and overweight), to getting winded with very little activity, to being winded all the time, to being on a little oxygen when active, to being on oxygen all the time, to being on oxygen and increasing it with activity. She now uses 5 liters of oxygen at rest and 6 liters when active. And if I'm honest, my nursing side says that she could use more oxygen when active. That trip took her about eight years.
So, will I be as physically disabled as my 73 year old mother is when I'm only 58?
When dad died at 63, I was roughly half his age. I thought that that was it. I'd last as long as he did. Maybe a little longer. But my life was technically half over. Now... now, I'm wondering if I'll even make it that long. I was texting with my friends A and E last night and I wrote something that's echoing particularly loudly this morning. I feel like I'm entering the last chapters of my life. Not THE last chapter, but certainly its the beginning of the ending. Between the migraines, the diabetes, the family history of cancer and heart disease, and now this COPD diagnosis... how fucked am I?
On another physical health note, I saw my endocrinologist for a normal follow up. Everything is looking good. Changing the insulin to the morning has stopped my continuous glucose monitor from going off at night (or at least made it particularly rare), and increasing the Ozempic has reduced my A1C down to 6.9. He had no notes and prescribed no changes. I'll see him again in April. The bombshell part of the visit was actually him telling me that he's retiring in June.
Fuck!
I like my endocrinologist. He's a good doctor and has managed my diabetes with a lot of skill and care. He actually listens to me and we together make the treatment decisions instead of him just laying out what he wants. He respects me as both a patient and a nurse. And he even keeps track of and cares about non diabetic parts of my life. For the last couple years, the first thing he's asked about during our visits is my migraines as he knows that's the main thing on my mind at all times. Even when diabetes isn't going well, I'm more focused on the migraines.
I'll obviously see him at least one more time before he retires and he said we'd talk about my ongoing care at that time. He hinted at him being happy if I wanted to return my diabetic care to my primary care provider, but would also be happy to refer me to another endocrinologist. They both have their advantages and disadvantages and I've flipped between the two several times in the days since our visit. I'll wait until I see him and get his honest opinion on my future care at our next visit.
And lastly, when it comes to physical health, my tooth has actually gotten a little better. It still hurts and throbs at times every day, but it doesn't hurt and throb all the time every day. I got up this morning at just before 6 AM and it's now 30 after 10 AM as I write this, and I haven't needed any meds to control the pain. I was worried as I was going through the Vicodin I had pretty quickly, but I still have one left and I see the endodontist in four days for my root canal.
Finances
Nothing different here. Finances are one of the things that come up in my worry time each day, but I have the same conclusion every time... I have to wait until anything changes before I can do anything. So there's just no need to worry at this point.
Family/Friends
As I said above I was texting A and E last night when E mentioned he's almost sure to move from his current home in San Francisco to Austin Texas in the spring. That would put him only a 3.5 hour drive from A in Dallas. It's also make getting together with both A and E a lot easier. I could drive down to Dallas, pick up A, and we drive to E in Austin together.
Entertainment
I decided to skip watching Billions and move straight into The Americans. I'm about a quarter of the way through the second season now. I know I've watched all of these episodes before, but I don't remember how far I got. I can say though that I'm really enjoying it and I don't like putting it aside. It keeps me drawn in. In fact, I haven't gone back to Top Gear at all since starting The Americans.
I do still get caught into other things like a dog seeing a squirl. I enjoy watching the YouTube shorts and it's algorithm has picked up on my enjoyment of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. While I don't want to re-watch either of those series, I do enjoy the little clips. I enjoyed them enough that I watched the last episode of Breaking Bad and then the Netflix El Camino movie. God, that series is SO good!
And last night I caught a clip of the movie Hell or High Water. I'd watched it before, but it wasn't firm in my memory so I watched it again and wasn't disappointed. It's just a really well written and directed movie. After finishing that on Paramount Plus, the streaming service recommended Finestkind. A movie with Tommy Lee Jones, Ben Foster, and Jenna Ortega. I'd seen clips of it before and it looked good so I watched that and again wasn't disappointed. After that it recommended No Country for Old Men and while it was too late to start that last night, I think I'll watch that this afternoon since college football has moved into the bowl season (and doesn't get good until next week).
New Tech
Update on the mouse... I got sick and tired of the primary mouse button losing the ability to keep pressed down. I bought an exact replacement from the local Best Buy and even had it delivered the same day. Since it was literally the same mouse, all I had to do was get it out of its packaging, turn it on, and let my computer wirelessly connect to it. It treated it as a twin of my old mouse, same settings and all. I then deleted the profile to my old mouse, put it in the new mouses box (just in case a problem crops up in the next couple weeks) and set it aside. Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeasy.
I talked about the issue with my desktop getting borked in the last post so I won't cover that, but I'll at least mention this new temporary setup. I have my laptop sitting on my desktop closed. I have a USB C power cable, HDMI cable, keyboard cable, and USB A to RJ45 networking cable plugged in. I have it pushed off to the side enough that I can fit it snuggly between the monitor and the keyboard. It's ugly there, with all the cables coming out from both sides, but it really doesn't take up that much extra space. The only issue is the keyboard being pushed closer to me, but I can still type on it comfortably. And when I want that desktop space in front of me back I can literally put the keyboard on top of the laptop.
I was using the laptop's MX Anywhere Mouse 3S and it was fine, but I've used the MX Master Mouse 3S for so long that I missed the two features the anywhere doesn't have. The thumb scroll for volume and the thumb button for switching between desktops. Thankfully Logitech is easy to work with, so I turned my anywhere mouse off, turned the master mouse on and it hooked right up. As I wait the next week for my USB Recover Drive, I can use this setup. Sure, I can't play my games and I'm missing my extra drive, and the screen flickers whenever there is video on it, but it's fine.
Writing
This is the tough part. I was SO in the mood to write when I decided to reinstall windows. If I'd just saved my outline in the cloud, I could have continued to write here. I wouldn't have the 'details' document nor would I have the inspirational images, but I could write without those. But without the outline? Shit, I've set the outline up to specifically keep up with all the things I'd laid out before and to continue lay out hints to what is to come. If I wrote chapters without it, I'd likely mess up something.
I can't even write in You're Not The Boss Of Me as it too is on the extra drive. I went to CHYOA this morning and read up on the contribution chapters I added to 'Automatic House' and I might add more to that. It's been a year since I wrote the last chapter. I honestly hadn't intended to add more, but now that I have the creative desire and no other outlet, why not?
Michigan Football
There's that saying that goes something like "Be careful what you wish for as you might just get it" that's been running through my head since Michigan beat Ohio State in general and when they announced the College Football Playoff teams in particular.
You see, if Michigan had lost to Ohio State, they'd be going to a lower tier bowl and playing a lower tier team. But since Michigan DID beat Ohio State, they get to bump up to the top tier Big Ten bowls. Especially since the Big Ten got 4 teams into the playoff. So instead of being pushed to the Rate Bowl or the Duke's Mayo Bowl where they'd play Kansas State or Virginia Tech, Michigan gets the ReliaQuest Bowl against... Alabama. The same Alabama team who was on the cusp of making the playoff.
Now, with how Michigan played in its last two games, this shouldn't be an embarrassment. But Alabama is going to be the second best team Michigan plays all year (of course, Michigan DID beat the best team they faced, Ohio State!).
Being the first year of the playoff, this will be an interesting bowl season. It hit me yesterday that there are playoff games on Friday and Saturday next week! Indiana AT Notre Dame, Tennessee AT Ohio State, SMU AT Penn State, and Clemson AT Texas. SWEET! Then the winners of those games will play at the big bowls a little more than a week later on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Then a couple more games on January 9th and 10th with the championship on the 20th. It's an awesome way to stretch out the championship bracket.
But, much like Michigan moving up to the ReliaQuest Bowl, what is this going to do to the lesser bowls. I'm not even sure if all of Michigan's players are going to be on the field that day as a lot of their big hitters will want to get ready for the NFL Draft and not risk injury.
Computer Issues
Obviously, I borked the desktop and you can read about that in the previous post. But I did want to mention that it's either something I'm doing in mixing up the slide show images for the desktop wallpapers, or a glitch in Windows itself. Before yesterday, I used the laptop in a way different manner than my desktop. I did have a slide show for the wallpaper, but I only used a single desktop. So the problem of it going to a single image from the slide show never happened. Well, now I'm using this as a replacement for my desktop, including moving between multiple desktops. And guess what? It is doing the same damned thing, slipping into single image mode after I flip from one desktop to the other.
On my desktop, I'd mentioned that it had stopped going to single images, but it came back. And then it went away again for about a week. It was fine. But as it had been six months since I updated the images, I found 51 new images to use and changed the folder for the slide show. And low and behold... the issue came back. j
So, I'm back to 'I have no idea where this problem is coming from' and can only deal with it and hope it's a windows glitch that Microsoft will fix.
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