Ok class, time to pay attention.....

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." -Eleanor Roosevelt-
Here, then, is my mistake gift to you:
Daily, I take medication. The why isn't important. (no, not hormone pills for my upcoming gender change....) (wait! i'm not having a gender change. i'm not even due for an OIL change in my car...)
Anyway, I should have said that I am prescribed to take medication daily. To say that I actually take it every day is a bit of a stretch, but i would say that i miss maybe 4 doses a month. I am mostly ok with that, because a year or so ago i would be lucky to TAKE 4 doses in a week. But things changed a few weeks ago.
Remember when Irene hit, and I was stuck out of town for 2 days? That's when i started to forget. I missed a total of TWELVE doses. The medication warns NOT to stop taking it suddenly, and NOT to do so unless under the close supervision of a Doc. (MD, not PhD.) In reality, when people are taken off of this med, they are tapered down to nothing. Huh? Let's say that the dose is 20mg per day. You might taper down to 10mg per day, then every other day, then every 3rd day, etc., but you SHOULDN'T go from 20mg per day to NOTHING. Why did I do it, then?
Because I am forgetful. I have discovered that keeping the pill bottle on my headboard, next to where i put my coffee in the morning, has helped me to remember to take it. Apparently I knocked the bottle off of its place, and therefore didn't see it. No visual cue, no med. Dumb.
Then last week (remember the tweets about PVC's?) i started to experience Premature Ventricular Contractions. In a nutshell, your heart is supposed to beat like this: lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. MINE was going lub-lub-dub, lub......lub-dub, lublubdub, etc. Not constantly, but probably twice every five minutes. Very annoying, very scary. Very fun, actually, to watch on an EKG while you are having them. Totally cool.....See?



http://www.colorado.edu/intphys/Class/IPHY3430-200/image/figure9i.jpg

 It wasn't until i received an email warning about a high dose complication for the same med I take. The warning stated that people should NOT be given more than 30mg per day,  "as higher doses have lead to abnormal changes in the electrical activity of the heart". Hmmm....my inquisitive mind started to wonder that if high doses caused this, might not suddenly LOW or non-existant doses cause the same? Well, the literature from the drug companies doesn't say that, but I can personally attest to the fact that it does. Common listed withdrawl symptoms include: "dysphoric mood, irritability, agitation, dizziness, sensory disturbances, anxiety, confusion, headache, lethargy, emotional lability, insomnia, and hypomania". Good times!
So I found the bottle and started taking it again. After 4 days, the PVC's have all but stopped. As for the other things, well, i THINK that they are better.
Why did I tell you this? Because I don't want you to make the same mistake that I did. Yes, after i came back from being stranded I should have started taking the med again. I would have only missed 1 day, and not experienced any withdrawl effects. But i completely blew it off. dumb, dumb, dumb.
I promise that my next post will be more FUN!
Be Well,
Gene

nearly wordless funny friday

Seems as though the lunatics are running the asylum. We received a wake-up call at 0530 this morning from the school, announcing that schools would be closed today. My first thought was, "crap, i didn't get up early enough to shovel the driveway before the first daycare parents arrive!"
So i went to the window and looked out.
Very.
Disappointing.
Here's a picture looking down our driveway at 0630 this morning. No school today? Seriously?



Hey, ATX....this is how we do snow days in VERMONT.

 

George Orwell.......

when i got to work tonight (330 this morning), i expected to hop online and read some blogs as i usually do while my patient slept. imagine my surprise when i tried to go to the page and was BLOCKED. here is the text that appears.....


"To view sites in this category you must use quota time. You have 60 minute(s) of quota time remaining. Click the Use Quota Time button to start a 10 minute session for viewing this site and other sites in quota-limited categories."

to which i reply.....WHAT? here's the email (minus the screen shot) that I sent to a few folks earlier this morning:
====
Big Brother won’t let me go to some blog sites (mine, below, is blocked. Many others that I read are, too. This one, www.ncrunnerdude.blogspot.com, oddly, is NOT).

Big Brother will, however, let me go to facebook, twitter, verydemotivational.com, and tallmomontherun.com (which is a FRONT for tallmomontherun.blogspot.com). I checked into some Registered Dieticians’ sites that I follow, too, and they, too are blocked. But I CAN go to www.ruger.com (check it out. They have a SWEEEET looking rifle up for auction on their home page!). Can’t go to budweiser.com, but CAN go to www.magichat.net (at least SOMEONE in the computer department has good taste in beer).
=====
So, yeh. Runnerdude.blogspot.com is allowed. so is enduranceisntonlyphysical.blogspot.com and some others. Tallmomontherun.com is ok, but not lastmilelounge.com. I really don't understand the logic that was used to grant/deny permissions.
I had planned an apologetic blog post for today, but have been delayed. It might be 'disguised' as part of my Three Things Thursday.



peace out, geno.