If you don't know it, a Lean Cuisine frozen meal just doesn't taste right if you really want a roast beef meal from Arby's. Yes, I do love junk food, especially when I am sick for some reason.
A few years ago, I had a boss who was delighted that I didn't mind going to junk-food restaurants with him. My predecessors had all been health junkies, and he probably had some sort of fast food about four of the five workdays. He didn't know that every time I saw him with something fried, I secretly prayed that his wife made him dinners of nothing but brown rice and vegetables, and lots of red wine to lower his cholesterol. Anyway...
My boss and I frequently had meetings in somewhat distant cities, so if our schedules were the same, we would sometimes eat lunch together. Hence his relief that I would not limit my diet to what is only good for me. The first time this happened, we got out of a meeting around noon, and he asked rather sheepishly, "Would you mind going to this pizza place I know for lunch?" I said (of course), "Not at all. I love pizza." He looked at me like I had just landed there from another planet: "You eat pizza?!"
On another occasion, I was working with an intern who was studying public health, and we got into this conversation (she was also a health food junkie):
Intern: Willow, did you know there's a new food pyramid out?
Willow: Really--where did you find it? Send me the link.
Boss walks into the room: What's a food pyramid?
Willow: Don't worry about it. It's nothing you want to know about.
Boss: I think I've just been insulted.
In other news, I have been using Quicken 2007 to update my bank accounts. It worked fine for awhile, then suddenly stopped "talking" to the bank. Because on a normal day, I don't have much time to spend figuring out what went wrong with my software, I let the problem go for awhile. Anyway, last night I tried to fix it, and ended up somehow locking myself out of my own bank account. Now I have no idea what's going on with my accounts unless I either 1: start doing my banking the old fashioned way again or 2: call someone at the bank, tell them what an idiot I was, and try to remember which secret answer to which secret question I have for that bank to identify myself to the bank as the lawful owner of the money (and debt, heh). And since the Quicken website is about as much help as the clues in The DaVinci Code, I've gotten no help from them either.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Oh, for criminy's sake!!!
I have no idea who Criminy is and why I would be saying anything for his (or her) sake, but that is the phrase that has been going through my head in the last few hours.
I thought I was getting over this cold/flu thing that I had, but as evening neared, I developed this suspicious-sounding cough and my temperature shot back up. Since I have basically been a lifelong asthmatic, I decided it was time for me to visit the local "Urgent Care" center (of course, as my symptoms became more suspicious, it was later in the day, and thus impossible to make an appointment with my regular doctor).
Luckily, the urgent care center that I visit in these times of medical inconveniences was not very busy tonight. So I got right in, and saw the doctor (who looked like he was about half my age, but I digress...), who immediately ordered chest X-rays and Motrin, since my temp had shot up once again.
I still believed that he would come back to my room and say that I had a bit of bronchitis, prescribe me some antibiotics and a cough syrup, and let me go on my way. I was actually so sure of this that I called my new boss to let her know that I may have developed bronchitis, but I would try to make it in by tomorrow afternoon. No such luck.
The doc, after telling me that I had a "mild lower-lobe infiltrate," ie. pneumonia, almost immediately told me that 1: if my symptoms don't clear up in a couple of days, I should go to a hospital, and 2: I was not destined to go to work tomorrow (or rather, today, since it's past midnight).
Of course, since I have been a lifelong asthmatic and the doc presumably knew about the effects of illness on the respiratory tract (major inflammation and irritation), he prescribed, along with the antibiotic, prednisone. This medication, which brings my breathing problems under control in a matter of hours, is also a steroid derivative (forgive me, I am rather simplifying this at the moment).
What this all means is that while taking the antibiotic, I will be very tired, but the prednisone should make up for this tiredness as whenever I take it I feel more than a bit high, and want to bounce off the walls, so to speak.
Anyway, for anyone reading this blog, I hope that you don't come down with what I have, and if you do, I hope it doesn't keep you up at night making silly blog entries as it has done for me.
Sniffelingly yours,
Willow
I thought I was getting over this cold/flu thing that I had, but as evening neared, I developed this suspicious-sounding cough and my temperature shot back up. Since I have basically been a lifelong asthmatic, I decided it was time for me to visit the local "Urgent Care" center (of course, as my symptoms became more suspicious, it was later in the day, and thus impossible to make an appointment with my regular doctor).
Luckily, the urgent care center that I visit in these times of medical inconveniences was not very busy tonight. So I got right in, and saw the doctor (who looked like he was about half my age, but I digress...), who immediately ordered chest X-rays and Motrin, since my temp had shot up once again.
I still believed that he would come back to my room and say that I had a bit of bronchitis, prescribe me some antibiotics and a cough syrup, and let me go on my way. I was actually so sure of this that I called my new boss to let her know that I may have developed bronchitis, but I would try to make it in by tomorrow afternoon. No such luck.
The doc, after telling me that I had a "mild lower-lobe infiltrate," ie. pneumonia, almost immediately told me that 1: if my symptoms don't clear up in a couple of days, I should go to a hospital, and 2: I was not destined to go to work tomorrow (or rather, today, since it's past midnight).
Of course, since I have been a lifelong asthmatic and the doc presumably knew about the effects of illness on the respiratory tract (major inflammation and irritation), he prescribed, along with the antibiotic, prednisone. This medication, which brings my breathing problems under control in a matter of hours, is also a steroid derivative (forgive me, I am rather simplifying this at the moment).
What this all means is that while taking the antibiotic, I will be very tired, but the prednisone should make up for this tiredness as whenever I take it I feel more than a bit high, and want to bounce off the walls, so to speak.
Anyway, for anyone reading this blog, I hope that you don't come down with what I have, and if you do, I hope it doesn't keep you up at night making silly blog entries as it has done for me.
Sniffelingly yours,
Willow
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Fever and other strange occurrances
For the first time in quite awhile, I have become terribly sick with what I am guessing is some strain of influenza. The really bad symptoms, like fever, terrible aches and pains, congestion, cough, etc. lasted only a day, making me really glad that I got my flu shot. Anyway, I thought I'd share some of my fever-ridden, cold-medicine-driven dreams.
I was called back to work in the ICU (as if!!!!). The guy I had been dating and who dumped me so maliciously was in a room with a patient, trying to start an IV. He'd just been unsuccessful, and I came in and offered to help. The guy (we'll call him Gollum, so I don't have to use his real name. Anyway, Gollum's close enough, heh) skeptically said I could help. Gollum, for the time that I knew him, truly viewed himself as God's gift to the medical community. But I digress...
Anyway, back to the dream. The patient for some reason had veins outside of his body. I got the equipment to start the IV, and Gollum and I got into this weird, third-party argument:
Gollum: So what's been going on?
Willow: Well, I have this friend who was totally in love with this guy, and then he dumped her without explanation.
Gollum: Well, maybe she just dumped him and doesn't want to admit it.
Willow (more heated): Well, that wouldn't take into consideration the five or so times she tried to apologize, without her even knowing what she did wrong, and he completely ignored her!
The dream got a bit blurry here, but I do remember a scene in which I said something like, "Denial is more than a river in Egypt," and Gollum didn't "get it."
Then the dream morphed into this scene in which I was at home in my living room and I found a two-headed earthworm in the middle of my floor. I picked it up and put it outside, wondering how a worm had gotten into my house. Yes, I know, Freudians and probably therapists in general would have a field day with this. Go ahead.
My final dream scene, possibly as an apology from my unconscious, was of me looking happily out of the window of my new house at Lake Superior in northern Michigan.
Anyway, for those of you who may be wondering, there is only ONE CURE for flu, cold, and similar viruses: Pizza with pepperoni and hot peppers, heavy on the pepperoni, from your favorite pizza establishment.
I was called back to work in the ICU (as if!!!!). The guy I had been dating and who dumped me so maliciously was in a room with a patient, trying to start an IV. He'd just been unsuccessful, and I came in and offered to help. The guy (we'll call him Gollum, so I don't have to use his real name. Anyway, Gollum's close enough, heh) skeptically said I could help. Gollum, for the time that I knew him, truly viewed himself as God's gift to the medical community. But I digress...
Anyway, back to the dream. The patient for some reason had veins outside of his body. I got the equipment to start the IV, and Gollum and I got into this weird, third-party argument:
Gollum: So what's been going on?
Willow: Well, I have this friend who was totally in love with this guy, and then he dumped her without explanation.
Gollum: Well, maybe she just dumped him and doesn't want to admit it.
Willow (more heated): Well, that wouldn't take into consideration the five or so times she tried to apologize, without her even knowing what she did wrong, and he completely ignored her!
The dream got a bit blurry here, but I do remember a scene in which I said something like, "Denial is more than a river in Egypt," and Gollum didn't "get it."
Then the dream morphed into this scene in which I was at home in my living room and I found a two-headed earthworm in the middle of my floor. I picked it up and put it outside, wondering how a worm had gotten into my house. Yes, I know, Freudians and probably therapists in general would have a field day with this. Go ahead.
My final dream scene, possibly as an apology from my unconscious, was of me looking happily out of the window of my new house at Lake Superior in northern Michigan.
Anyway, for those of you who may be wondering, there is only ONE CURE for flu, cold, and similar viruses: Pizza with pepperoni and hot peppers, heavy on the pepperoni, from your favorite pizza establishment.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
I went to a conference on aging. To be more exact, I went to a conference on how to treat elders with memory problems, and how to avoid becoming an elder with memory problems yourself.
One of the topics was on sleep patterns, and how they change as we age. The physician giving the talk spoke about "sleep hygiene," which is basically "how to get to sleep if you have insomnia 101." This doctor said that the bedroom should be used only for two things. One of them was sleep, and as the doctor said, the other one also begins with an "S." And to think that I thought the kitchen table was for the other "S." Silly me.
But seriously, I couldn't imagine only using my bedroom for sleep. I usually read before I go to sleep because it relaxes me. I don't like the television in the bedroom because I think the sound and light interfere with sleep. But I am obviously in the minority here, if my hospital experience is any measure. Most people in the hospital keep their TVs on 24/7. Sometimes after work I don't even put on the radio after work, because of all of the beeping monitors, ringing telephones, and blaring of televisions all night long. Ick. But I digress...
Anyway, there was another person at this conference who spoke about nutrition and aging, and by the end of the lecture, I wondered if it would be ever safe to eat again. She not only advocated for eating all organic food, she said that the only vitamins that we should be taking are "pharmaceutical grade" vitamins, available, of course, for a price, from certain physician-run formularies.
During lunch, I spoke with the other people at my table and we decided that if we followed this doctor's recommendations, the only food items that would be safe to eat would be organic red wine and potato chips. I'm okay with that, as long as I can have the occasional dose of chocolate.
It was interesting to listen to these people who are definitely leaders in their fields, talking about ways to prevent excessive aging if you only followed their rules. The doctor who advocated "pharmaceutical grade" dietary supplements also said that if we use microwaves, all the nutrients in our food would be lost. She also advocated for the reduction of caffeine in the diet. As I said to my colleagues, "I can't imagine getting through graduate school without caffeine and a microwave oven."
I guess the thing that bothered me about this particular nutritional talk was that for most people that I see in my career, the goals that the doctor advocated would be unattainable. Many of the elders that I have encountered in my career have had at least deficits in their mobility, if not multiple health problems. Often, they also live in either subsidized housing for low-income individuals, or live in their own homes, and continue there on limited incomes. They also have very limited transportation options. Unfortunately, one of the disadvantages of living in the Mitten is that our state has relied too heavily on the "power" of the automotive industry, and never developed a viable public transit system. So those patients who either cannot drive because of deficits, or who cannot afford to own a car or pay for regular cab service, are at a monumental disadvantage.
To tell these people, who already are either very ill or living at poverty levels (or both) to eat only organic foods and do away with their microwaves (and possibly their Meals on Wheels, which may be the only balanced meals that they receive), is laughable, in a sad sort of way.
One of the topics was on sleep patterns, and how they change as we age. The physician giving the talk spoke about "sleep hygiene," which is basically "how to get to sleep if you have insomnia 101." This doctor said that the bedroom should be used only for two things. One of them was sleep, and as the doctor said, the other one also begins with an "S." And to think that I thought the kitchen table was for the other "S." Silly me.
But seriously, I couldn't imagine only using my bedroom for sleep. I usually read before I go to sleep because it relaxes me. I don't like the television in the bedroom because I think the sound and light interfere with sleep. But I am obviously in the minority here, if my hospital experience is any measure. Most people in the hospital keep their TVs on 24/7. Sometimes after work I don't even put on the radio after work, because of all of the beeping monitors, ringing telephones, and blaring of televisions all night long. Ick. But I digress...
Anyway, there was another person at this conference who spoke about nutrition and aging, and by the end of the lecture, I wondered if it would be ever safe to eat again. She not only advocated for eating all organic food, she said that the only vitamins that we should be taking are "pharmaceutical grade" vitamins, available, of course, for a price, from certain physician-run formularies.
During lunch, I spoke with the other people at my table and we decided that if we followed this doctor's recommendations, the only food items that would be safe to eat would be organic red wine and potato chips. I'm okay with that, as long as I can have the occasional dose of chocolate.
It was interesting to listen to these people who are definitely leaders in their fields, talking about ways to prevent excessive aging if you only followed their rules. The doctor who advocated "pharmaceutical grade" dietary supplements also said that if we use microwaves, all the nutrients in our food would be lost. She also advocated for the reduction of caffeine in the diet. As I said to my colleagues, "I can't imagine getting through graduate school without caffeine and a microwave oven."
I guess the thing that bothered me about this particular nutritional talk was that for most people that I see in my career, the goals that the doctor advocated would be unattainable. Many of the elders that I have encountered in my career have had at least deficits in their mobility, if not multiple health problems. Often, they also live in either subsidized housing for low-income individuals, or live in their own homes, and continue there on limited incomes. They also have very limited transportation options. Unfortunately, one of the disadvantages of living in the Mitten is that our state has relied too heavily on the "power" of the automotive industry, and never developed a viable public transit system. So those patients who either cannot drive because of deficits, or who cannot afford to own a car or pay for regular cab service, are at a monumental disadvantage.
To tell these people, who already are either very ill or living at poverty levels (or both) to eat only organic foods and do away with their microwaves (and possibly their Meals on Wheels, which may be the only balanced meals that they receive), is laughable, in a sad sort of way.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
So now I know...
Thanks for the link, Agatestone! To think of all the aptitude/personality/intelligence/other b*llsh*t tests in my life and career, and this was all I needed to know.
I will let the (occasional) reader guess whether I decided to give up either sex or the Internet. And for anyone who knew me in my younger days, no, I have never owned a lightsaber. But I still have sort of a thing for Luke Skywalker.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Pandemic?
Yesterday I attended a conference on "The Coming Pandemic" at the local medical school. It was interesting, a bit nerve racking in some parts, but all in all, I am not convinced that we are headed for a horrific, 1918-like pandemic any time soon.
There were some sobering facts to consider. First of all, the virus strain that epidemiologists are worried about is the "bird flu" virus: H5N1 for the medically inclined. The epidemiologist at the conference said that this strain has been mutating regularly, and is one amino acid away from making it easily transmissible from human to human. Right now, it is basically endemic in the chicken and migratory bird population, and I think he also said it had spread to fish, but he didn't specify which fish.
Another cause for concern is that since the virus is in migratory birds, and migratory birds go all over the world (the epidemiologist had a picture of the routes they took--for the really scared, it looked like the only place that they didn't visit was Antarctica), it is possible that the birds themselves can spread the virus to humans.
But don't go vegetarian yet--the doc assured us that the virus does not survive in well-cooked foods. But the areas that had cases of H5N1 also have some interesting cuisine, like duck's blood pudding. Ick!!!!!
One of the presenters asked how many people in the audience have a week's supply of water stored up in case of emergency. I was surprised at how many people raised their hands. I haven't been one to store up rations for an emergency, although I do have a full set of camping equipment that includes a sleeping bag that will keep me warm in weather down to -20f, and two water purifiers. I also have hunting equipment so I guess if anything really hit the proverbial fan, I could just go up north and live off the land.
But since I am a highly trained RN living in a large metropolitan area, and since I also am on my state's Volunteer Registry (meaning that I can be called to help out in a large-scale disaster) I always figured that if something really bad happened, I'd be out in the field anyway.
But I think what makes me a bit skeptical about the likelihood of a pandemic is the amount of knowledge that we have, and the availability of technology to disseminate the knowledge. I mean, H5N1 was discovered on the other side of the world, and scientists in the U.S. have been studying it for years. Although the ease of world travel can increase the spread of a virus, I think our knowledge of prevention and containment can mitigate its effects.
But of course, I had all of these thoughts before reading Agatestone's account of her co-workers coming into work and spreading their colds around.
If anyone is interested in learning more, the CDC has a website: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/. For some reason, I can't get the "insert link" function on my blog. Oh, well.
By the way, there have been two more pandemics in our recent history: one in 1957, one in 1968. The number of people who died from these pandemics decreased dramatically each time.
Disclaimer: If there are any inaccuracies in the information provided above, I apologize. This conference did not include any information like Power-Point slides, that we could take home for reference, so I am relying on my memory here. I suspect that we didn't have any take-home references because the information in this field is still developing.
There were some sobering facts to consider. First of all, the virus strain that epidemiologists are worried about is the "bird flu" virus: H5N1 for the medically inclined. The epidemiologist at the conference said that this strain has been mutating regularly, and is one amino acid away from making it easily transmissible from human to human. Right now, it is basically endemic in the chicken and migratory bird population, and I think he also said it had spread to fish, but he didn't specify which fish.
Another cause for concern is that since the virus is in migratory birds, and migratory birds go all over the world (the epidemiologist had a picture of the routes they took--for the really scared, it looked like the only place that they didn't visit was Antarctica), it is possible that the birds themselves can spread the virus to humans.
But don't go vegetarian yet--the doc assured us that the virus does not survive in well-cooked foods. But the areas that had cases of H5N1 also have some interesting cuisine, like duck's blood pudding. Ick!!!!!
One of the presenters asked how many people in the audience have a week's supply of water stored up in case of emergency. I was surprised at how many people raised their hands. I haven't been one to store up rations for an emergency, although I do have a full set of camping equipment that includes a sleeping bag that will keep me warm in weather down to -20f, and two water purifiers. I also have hunting equipment so I guess if anything really hit the proverbial fan, I could just go up north and live off the land.
But since I am a highly trained RN living in a large metropolitan area, and since I also am on my state's Volunteer Registry (meaning that I can be called to help out in a large-scale disaster) I always figured that if something really bad happened, I'd be out in the field anyway.
But I think what makes me a bit skeptical about the likelihood of a pandemic is the amount of knowledge that we have, and the availability of technology to disseminate the knowledge. I mean, H5N1 was discovered on the other side of the world, and scientists in the U.S. have been studying it for years. Although the ease of world travel can increase the spread of a virus, I think our knowledge of prevention and containment can mitigate its effects.
But of course, I had all of these thoughts before reading Agatestone's account of her co-workers coming into work and spreading their colds around.
If anyone is interested in learning more, the CDC has a website: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/. For some reason, I can't get the "insert link" function on my blog. Oh, well.
By the way, there have been two more pandemics in our recent history: one in 1957, one in 1968. The number of people who died from these pandemics decreased dramatically each time.
Disclaimer: If there are any inaccuracies in the information provided above, I apologize. This conference did not include any information like Power-Point slides, that we could take home for reference, so I am relying on my memory here. I suspect that we didn't have any take-home references because the information in this field is still developing.
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