Skip to main content

Not Everybodies Got to Get Stoned

It's cool in the upstairs bedroom. A cool front has crept in over night and with the windows open it's almost cold. but that is not what wakes me up. I have mild but persistent pain in the lower left quadrant of my stomach. I've had this before. It's gas or maybe early signs of some problems in my bowel, either constipation or diarrhea. Normally the pain will abate and I can continue to function. I can't sleep an I don't want to wake up Maria, so I get up, make my coffee and start my day.

As I sit reading the columns from Urban Milwaukee, The Guardian, Bloomberg, and Slate, I m getting more pain and concern. I gut it out until 8:30 and then ask Maria to take me to the ER at Thedacare.

I'm laying on the exam table in room 10, gowned and in far more pain then my previous episodes exhibited. Nurse Wendy is going over some basic questions given my symptoms. Doctor McCloy comes in and does in indepth exam and postulates it's probably diverticulitis.

They ask for and get a urine sample and take two panels of blood. They also give me mrorphine for a quick relief of pain and another injection of a longer lasting pain relief medicine. The morphine works immediately. I mean no pain, almost at once.

The sleep I lost last night is paid off in the sleep I enjoyed in the exam room waiting for test results. Doctor returns with the two door quiz show problem. It's either diverticulitis or kidney stones. A Cat scan will tell us. I will restrain myself from trying to fit any number of jokes about Cat scans at this point. I've done enough diversion by pimping Urban Miwaukee in an earlier paragraph.

I have a kidney stone, actually this could be called a kidney rock. If it was a diamond, it would be worth thousands.

I now am the proud owner of a plastic urnil, small screen strainer, medication to make the stone
easier to pass, medication to relieve pain and medication to make it easier to take all of my other medication.

Yes, I have a kidney stone, but thankfully, it too will Pass.

If there is anything that can be done to fix my soon to be declared antique MiniMac, I will be back in the business of editing the social media sites I've been I trusted with. Oh yes, I can still post. It's not like I've abandoned them. Now I'm working on a I-Pad, version 2. I know. Isn't amazing. I might be the last person in the world, still using these versions of Apple Equipment.

The process of harvesting relevant information for my readers is simple. It's posting it that becomes a little like playing tennis in the dark.

Currently, my MiniMac is in the competent hands of our local and longtime Apple Dealer, Computer World. I can't believe they still had me in their database. I'm waiting for the analysis, cost of repair and state of operation estimate. It is, in all probability, a software problem. That amounts  to a wiping of the hard drive and reinstalling the OS. Than we get to the "is it worth it" question.

My computer is not something as close to me, as say, my dog. But we've been together for quite awhile. Countless entries, comments, and futile story attempts have passed from my keyboard to it's digital arrays and to it's dark disk drive

It knows what angers me. It knows how I think. It knows what I dream of. It's all in there. I have it saved in the cloud and in an external hard drive. Only time and a skilled technician will set it's fate. Stand by for news.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ring The Bell

 It appears there is a tradition in the radiology department at Ascension Hospital that patients, upon completing their course of treatment, ring a bell. ( We know not for whom this bell tolls.) Ring the Bell with My Sweetheart Jeanne. Jeanne drove me to all but two of the appointments. Pam Frautchi took me to the other two. Today, after being zapped thirty-two times, I rang the bell. This begins a roughly one-month recovery period where the effects of the radiation abate and, I'm assured, a return to normalcy occurs. In my case, I anticipate more energy and greater awareness. Books, Books, & More Books I am simultaneously celebrating the end of the third year of volunteering for the All Saints Hunger Book Sale. Next week, we will wrap up the preparation for the sale and open our doors on August 3 for the public. I ran into this humourous but quite accurate cartoon on a T-Shirt that shows most of the volunteer's sentiments at this point. If you think the printed and bound p...
One of my latest efforts. Sketch: The Lady Is Blue Gouache 9 X 12 Reporting: I enjoyed a pleasant evening with my friend Michelle Mooney. I took her out for dinner to celebrate her birthday and to thank her for the many first-rate haircuts she's given me. We were surprised at the number of people who dined alfresco in the balmy night air. Whatever we've done to please Mother Nature, she had deemed acceptable by giving us a shot of summer just when late fall weather was wrapping her fingers around our throat. If I have one complaint about the friendly confines of The County Claire, it's the noise level that makes it difficult to converse. The rumble is an acoustical problem with the customers speaking in normal conversational tones. This is without audible TV showing some game or background music selected by a dance DJ.  I know! We should have eaten outside, where the only noise is the occasional 14 bus snorting by.   Maybe It's Me Since my two soccer teams are not doing...

It's time again.

It started in 2004 when we moved to our condo off Downer in Milwaukee. Then we mover to the Westside of Milwaukee when we rented from Ken Karr, the former landlord, now a current friend on Highland and 29th St. Then we moved to Mandeville Louisiana for a little less than a year. Returning to The Fox River Valley, we rented a home in Fox Crossing, formerly The Town of Menasha. When the tree fell on the roof, and the landlord felt no urgency to fix it, we moved to W. Commercial in Appleton. Here is a shocker. Are you sitting down? We are moving. No, I don't mean off the couch and out to the patio. There are too many damn mosquitoes for that to happen. No, we are packing our stuff, or at least the stuff we unpacked from the last move and moving to a home Maria purchased on Mason and Glendale in Appleton. Let me unpack that last sentence (pun planned for). We are moving at approximately the end of September to a house. The house has been in t...