Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

My back isn't broken yet, but I'd really appreciate it if the world would stop piling straw onto me.

[Rereading this post, I decided to add something positive to each point -- the other side of the coin. I'll add it in brackets.]

Weight: Two months ago I had hit my lowest number ever (200.2 SO CLOSE to being under 200!) and I never was able to get below it. I've gained seven pounds as of this morning (though this morning is unofficial, five pounds gained from official weighing date). It's just so amazingly frustrating as I'm not cheating, I'm not eating badly. [On the plus side, I'm off my high cholesterol medication, which means I'm down to one single prescription. As I used to be on four different diabetes meds and two other ones, that's a wonderful thing.]

Exercise: With my toe still not healed (seriously, I've had an open wound on my toe for months now, and I've been on antibiotics just as long) I can't do my usual exercises. There are still hand weights and pushups, but that's not the same as aerobic exercise. Which of course adds into the weight problem... [The good part is I'd be ready to do knee-high pushups if only I were willing to try. I worry that the position might put too much stress on my healing toe though. SOON! And then next will be doing pushups on the floor!]

Running: I decided there's no use waiting. Once my toe heals (if it ever does...) I'm going to try to start running. I wanted to use that "couch to 5K" app... but apparently my phone is too old to run it. An iPhone 4 is NOT that much older than an iPhone 6! It's utter BS that I cannot run what appears to be a simple app on my current phone! [All my life, I've wanted to be able to run. It was the one thing I felt like I was missing out on when I was heavier. I'm not sure if it will work for me, it might kill my knees, but I'm excited to try. SOON! As soon as my toe heals!]

Money: Adding into all that, money is still really rough. As in I'm living on my savings even though I have a full time job in the tech industry. This adds into the other issues, as in constant doctor bills for my toe ($250 per visit, weekly visits, even with insurance) and being unable to splurge and upgrade my apparently-ancient phone... [Hard to see a positive one on this point. At least I'm not homeless?]

Toe: I'm really so sick of dealing with it. My toenail was removed over a year ago, and it's never healed up since then. It reopened/re-got infected a couple months ago, and the infection is resistant to all antibiotics other than one. The pills cost $250 per pill, and I have to take them twice a day, and I'm on my third 10 day renewal of them, so the insurance company is being an ass about it. It's a constant fight with them to get my renewals, and they won't even cover a full renewal at once. I have to pick up 5 days, then the other 5 days on the day I run out of them, and the insurance has to approve it every time. It's nonstop calling, stress, and worry that I'll run out before the renewal is approved. [At least I do have insurance, so it's not all out of pocket?]

Vacation: I had the "good" idea to get a mileage credit card so I could fly home to visit my mother for free. I spent enough on it (and paid it off) to get the miles I need, but apparently it takes EIGHT WEEKS to credit the miles to you. Add to that the EXTREMELY limited number of seat options, and I doubt I'll be able to go home in June. (Seriously, a month ago, when I checked what was available in June, there were six seats for the whole month.) [Blah.]

Taxes: My mother's tax guy offered to look at my taxes and see if he could do better than the $1,000 TurboTax says I owe, but it's been about three weeks and I haven't heard back from him, even though I've emailed him multiple times since then. It's less than ten days until I have to file... [Well, I'm prepared for the worst. If he can't do any better, I was already mentally prepared to pay that $1,000...]

Life isn't supposed to be like this, you know? I work a full time "good" job. I have health insurance. I live about as far from an extravagant lifestyle as you can get. I have no children and no debt. [Hopefully things will get better soon... Money is unlikely, not until my lease is up and I can move to a smaller/cheaper place, but hopefully my toe will heal up soon and I can get back to exercising, which will help with the weight issue...]

This post was like talking to myself! :P

I meant to write about my MRI after it happened, but life got busy.

MRIs: Terrifying for the first moments, then very, very, very boring.

My MRI took 60 minutes. So that was 60 full minutes of laying on a cold, hard slab, naked but for those paper gowns, in a cold room, with a cold breeze blowing on me. And you cannot move. You can't shift, you can't stretch, you can't move at all, you have to stay as perfectly still as you can. It was very long, very cold, and very very boring.

The first moments were scary as heck -- what if I had metal inside me that I forgot about/hadn't known about? I know, it's a silly though now -- if you had a metal pin in you, you'd remember it. But when you're being pushed into a machine with a magnet so strong it would rip a metal pin right out of your bone and out through your body, it seems a more reasonable fear.

There was no music, no pictures to look at, nothing at all. Just a white room and a very loud machine. I've never been in a situation like that before -- being perfectly still with not a single thing to do, see, or listen to. Even as a kid, punished by being made to stand in a corner, you never have to stand there a whole hour. (Or I never did.)

I got it done on Tuesday, and Wednesday my doctor's office called me to make an appointment next week to go over the results. As bone infections are very, very serious, if the MRI had found something, I'm sure they would have wanted to see me sooner than a week later, so I'm not worried about the result.

But that leads us back to the original question -- why has my toe been getting infected on and off for more than a year now? And I'm slightly worried, because I think the usual antibiotic isn't working this time. I've been on it a week, and while it's not getting worse, it's not getting much better either (or if it is getting better, it's very slow). I'm allergic to three antibiotics, two of the best ones against this strain of infection I have, so that makes it even harder to deal with this.

Darned toe, stop being infected!

Oh the joys of ingrown toenails. After having my toenail removed five or six times, my podiatrist decided we should remove it permanently. Unfortunately that's a bigger deal than just removing it -- actual surgery (outpatient). They have to cut into the bone itself to kill the nail bed so it won't grow back. Stitches after, all that. Fun.

For three days, I have to keep the same bandage on. That's a challenge, as in the first hour I bled through it. Luckily I had planned to work from home yesterday, so I was able to keep it elevated the whole day, which helps a lot with the pain. It does make showering a challenge though. This morning I stuck my foot in a plastic bag, rubber banded it around my ankle, and kept my foot on the edge of the tub. Not the best solution, especially since I had to wash my hair facing the shower head, but better than no shower or washing in the sink.

With all the bleeding, I'm worried about taking the bandage off on Thursday, but she used nonstick bandages so hopefully it won't be too painful. A week after (on Monday) I have to go see her again, I assume to have the stitches removed.

Hopefully, once this heals up, it will be the end of this toe issue. I try not to think about having nine other toes that could act up in just the same way...

Yesterday was also my first day back to work after my vacation. Worst First Day Back Ever. :P

I really need to make a post about my weight loss surgery. I missed posting about it on the one year anniversary (approaching 13 months now), I just never feel like writing about it.

This week was a pretty stressful week, but at the moment things are going smoothly.

- Gauze in wound: It's still there, but the doctor finally replied back and said it would fall off on its own (changeling72 was right!). I worry the skin will grow in around it, but I'm not a doctor. Pulling it off would be painful as hell, so I'm happy to just leave it there. Two days of worrying I'd have to run to their office on the drop of a hat (whenever they had a time they could see me), whew! Done!

I do have to see my regular toe doctor again on Wednesday, hopefully she'll agree with this other doctor that it's okay to just leave it.

- My new computer: After having parts in stuck in that port strike, they still got it shipped out on time! And somehow UPS Ground shipping was overnight shipping. o.O I suspect because their location is so close to where I live.

Once it arrived, I carefully unpacked it and set it up, then turned it on... nothing. Dead. Though I don't like opening it up, I checked all the connections I could find, and it looked fine. Turns out there's a second power "button" (a section of the case/housing), I found it only by chance. Who in the world would think of poking random parts of the case to see if that would start it!

I've spent most of today reinstalling stuff. Still not done, but getting closer.

The tower is bigger than any tower I've ever seen before. It has to be nearly three feet tall, and about as wide! One side is see-through with a blue glowing light, which would be seriously cool if I didn't have to set it up with that side facing the wall. There's not much I really need to use on the front, maybe I'll turn it around and just have the wires in my face all the time.

- Weight: Most weeks I lose 1-2 pounds (or less...), which I'd be overjoyed about if I were on a normal diet. This week was a good week though, six pounds lost! I have ZERO idea why. Losing weight is such a mystery.

I wanted to do "diet math" for a while now. I meant to do it on the six month anniversary of my surgery, but that would have been five days ago. Close enough!

While I had my surgery on 9/15/14, I started losing weight for it on 7/9/14.

Total lost since 7/9: 104 pounds in 36 weeks = 2.8888 pounds lost per week
Total lost since 9/15: 82 pounds in 27 weeks = 3.037 pounds lost per week

Those are interesting numbers, but let's see if I'm slowing down like I think I've been.

Total lost since 1/1: 26 pounds in 11 weeks = 2.36 pounds lost per week

Well, brain, you see the numbers now. It's slowing down a little, but not horribly badly.

Before surgery, I expected to lose 15-20 pounds per week, so I was just a tad off there. Wait! Let's do another bit of math. If I keep losing at that rate for the next six months, I'll hopefully lose another ~80 pounds. (Okay, I didn't need to do math there, since we already had the six month calculations.)

Oh, and I saw the doctor about my bloodwork (to make sure I'm not short on vitamins and my organs aren't failing and such). I had good numbers on everything except magnesium (only slightly low, so I'm taking a pill twice a week) and protein. Blah on protein! I don't know how I'll eat more of it, since I mostly only eat protein now and I don't want to drink shakes (too many calories). Will have to ponder.

Well, enough babbling on about weight. Yay weekend! I haven't slept more than four hours a night all week, so hopefully tonight I can sleep.

Edit: OMG, my computer is so cool! And I mean that literally! Curious, I checked the temperatures, and the highest one is 32 degrees! One of the readings is -55 (must be the heatsink thingie or an error). My laptop was ~100 all the time, even with a cooling mat and a stand to keep it off the desk. This new machine has like 12 fans (and a nice screen covering them, to keep the cat hair out!). I'm not getting the FPS they advertised (261), but I'm getting in the low hundreds with all settings on max, which is still quite nice.

What a way to spend a day off from work. Was pretty sure I had an infection in my toe (I keep getting ingrown toenails), so went to the walk in clinic. He sent me off to the podiatry department. The same toe that had the nail reduced by 50% six months ago now has another big chunk gone. There's only like 25% left of it. Since I was going through all the pain of removal anyway, I kinda wish they had taken the whole thing.

It is, quite literally, a bloody mess at the moment. I'll resist going into details beyond that.

---

Informatzia by Catherine Keegan (loupnoir)
Rating: 4/liked (1-5/hated-loved)



I've been waiting for this book for so long. :) How hard is it to not bug the author when they're right there on your LJ friends list? It was really great to see all the characters again!

In a way, you could say this book series was Harry Potter fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, but that's not really the case. The Durmstrang Chronicles (written by this author and what the Informatzia trilogy was based on) was always pretty stand-alone. It had no canon Harry Potter characters (Lupin had a walk-in role in one of the stories, but that's it). The whole world was so wonderfully dark and mature. So it's more like Informatzia is two steps removed from Harry Potter.

The main character of Informatzia is an animagus werewolf, but neither that nor magic were the focus of this story. It was more a tale of spies and the Russian culture.

While I love the main character, I found myself wishing to be able to see so much more of this world. The few glimpses of the "magic cops" (special members of the FBI) made them seem so interesting! And the few mentions of Rose Jones (main character of Durmstrang Chronicles) made me itch to have her show up in the story.

Not so totally unrelated, I named one of my Flight Rising dragons Rose Jones.


Ahem! Anyway, I quite enjoyed the book! I can't wait until the third one. :)

Currently reading: Survey Ship by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I've had it on my Kindle for a while, well before all the rape/abuse stuff around her and her husband came out. I feel a little icky reading it; I hadn't even originally realized it was by her (the covers on the Kindle are so small, all I can generally see is the title).