Danger! Offensive comments ahead!
Posts tagged medical
Hehehe
Jun 10th
Saw my orthopedist today. He was supossed to assign me to physical therapy today. As he was going over my chart, I asked him “Do I really need to see anyone about P/T?” His response: “P/T is really for people that aren’t that active and need some help getting things working again after surgery. If anything, you need someone to hold you down.” Needless to say, I’m not going to any P/T 
Been lazy with posting lately…a few updates.
May 24th
First, my arm is much better. I have full range of motion now in the shoulder joint itself. After the doctor told me I could move it as long as I kept to a 1 lb weight limit it had a few ways that it didn’t like to move. After a couple times of reaching for something and having it pop rather painfully, it was suddenly able to move through the full range of motion and the popping quit and totally went away. I’m happy
The only thing still wrong with my shoulder is that the pin keeps the collar bone from moving as freely as it should be able to move. Things like I can take my left hand and move it over my right shoulder and actually place it on my back. My right arm can’t do that. About the time my hand reaches my left shoulder, the pin in my collar bone starts putting pressure on the bone itself (which doesn’t feel all that good). So, shoulder joint itself moves fine, collar bone/shoulder blade junction it limited in movement by the pin. All in all, I’m happy with the recovery.
Work this week was less productive than I wanted. I had to deal with lots of email that kept interrupting my ability to get things done. On top of that, the laptop I’ve been using was OK for email and things like that, but it was too wimpy for real work. That meant I had to log into other machines to do real work, and they weren’t always available. So, today I’m trying to get some real development work done. In order to make that easier, I went to Circuit City Thursday and bought a new laptop. The one I have now isn’t one of those small, light laptops, it’s a beast! But, it kicks ass performance wise. It’s actually quite a bit more powerful than my desktop machine at work (which is a couple years old now). The laptop I got is a p4, 2.4gHz, 512MB DDR 2100 RAM, 40gb disk, dvd/cd-rw, ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 video (which Linux supports rather well, thank God) w/32MB video RAM, and the best part is the LCD panel on the laptop does a native resolution of 1400×1050 so I have *tons* of screen real estate 
Between Thursday night and last night I managed to get it installed and working the way I want so that I’m ready to actually get to work on this thing now. My one bitch about it? It’s got a full sized keyboard. Between that little Vaio I was using and the keyboard I was using on my computer prior to my accident, I’m *tired* of readjusting to different keyboard sizes and layouts. Typos suck…
One of the things I did with this laptop is to finally track down the software I need to make full use of the things I own…I can play my mp3s and dvds on this thing under linux even though rh9 doesn’t ship with software to do that. Sshhh, don’t tell anyone that I like to be able to listen to and watch the shit I’ve paid for. RIAA can kiss my ass, fair use doesn’t mean shit to them.
Healing sucks…
Apr 25th
You know, they had to make an incision in my shoulder to do the surgery. In the process, they cut the nerves that ran to the downside of the incision (just the local ones running through the skin, not any big bundles of nerves or anything). Now that I’m healing, the nerves are getting reconnected differently. The sensation of touch now doesn’t feel anything like touch. Weird.
Doctor followup visit today…
Apr 24th
Well, that was good. I’m feeling better than I was two days ago, that’s for sure. Two days ago I finally felt bad enough to go see the doctor. I was actually in bad enough shape that she sent me over to the hospital across the street for a CT scan and alerted a general surgeon in case that was needed. It turned out I didn’t need to surgeon and they just gave me a prescription and sent me home.
I went back in today for a two day followup and both the doctor and the assitant that takes you back to the exam room commented on how much better I looked today. My T cell count was less than half of what it was 2 days ago. I’ve gained back 5 lbs. in just 2 days. I feel much better now, but it’s going to take up to 2 weeks before I’m fully back to normal.
Damn I felt bad. The actual symptoms started on Thursday of last week, and I took that day off and rested. I felt better Friday, so I acted normal. Then Saturday it started up again, and it just got worse on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. My problem turned out to be colitis caused by the antibiotics they gave me during my shoulder surgery. A layman’s description of colitis is that it’s a yeast infection of the colon. Now, any women reading this consider that the typical vaginal canal is only about 6 inches long and the colon is roughly 3 times that at 18 inches long and you can imagine how bad a severe case of colitis might hurt. Next, consider that a woman can quit having sex when she has a yeast infection, my colon has to work just as long as I’m still eating and drinking. So I don’t get a break, and considering how long I put off going to the doctor, you can imagine how bad the problem was…
Now they have me on Flagyl to correct the problem. Flagyl comes with a nice warning: Don’t take with alcohol. I did a little research, and as it turns out, if you drink alcohol with Flagyl, you’re subject to acetaldehyde poisoning. You see, your liver first breaks ethyl alcohol down to acetaldehyde and then another enzyme in the liver breaks the acetaldehyde down to acetic acid (vinegar). Acetic acid is a normal metabolite that the kidneys recognize and flush out of the system. Acetaldehyde on the other hand is a toxic chemical and when it builds up in the body it makes you *very* ill. So, Flagyl keeps the enzyme that breaks acetaldehyde down to acetic acid completely busy all the time. If you drink alcohol with Flagyl, the acetaldehyde builds up in your system and you start “vomiting like a madman” (direct quote from the doctor at the hospital that prescribed the drug for me). Hmmm…methinks I want to avoid “vomiting like a madman”…
Anyway, that’s all for now.