Late Summer Miscellany

It's been an interesting few weeks. Mostly health-wise, which I'll spell out in greater detail this Tuesday. However, a couple things have occurred otherwise recently.

My car started making a rattly sound in the front right. Took it to the mechanic and turns out I have the beginnings of a rod knock. Yuck. This means the engine will need to be replaced (!) sooner or later (hopefully later). They put some thickening junk in there and thicker motor oil to hopefully prolong things, but it's starting to get symptomatic just a couple weeks later. I have to get it smogged before September is out so I'll see what happens there. It's going to be expensive to fix but cheaper than buying something else.

I got a new phone - an HTC Touch Pro. Thanks to my Verizon New Every Two promotion, I only had to pay tax. I like it a lot so far - I had gotten used to a QWERTY with my enV and had missed it on the XV6900 but definitely find a smartphone to be exceedingly useful. Now I have the best of both worlds.

I took a motorcycle ride yesterday down to Polly's Gourmet Coffee in Long Beach with my buddy Michael. It was really hot so we got iced coffee drinks, which were incredible. Michael and his wife have a miniature dachshund that had puppies a couple months ago so I went over to check them out this afternoon. Unfortunately, my parents aren't animal people so no puppy for me.

It's Been a Rough Week...

In stark contrast to the cheery, wine-and-roses nonsense from last week, this week hasn't been so great. Since I last posted, I have had two rather profound reactions to my nebulized antibiotic. The first occurred last Wednesday night. I did the dose as usual, went down and ate dinner and was rather shaky - an expected side effect of the albuterol. I woke Thursday morning after a night of badly interrupted sleep - short of breath and coughing all night long and knew it would be a bad idea to take the oxygen off, so I left it on and stayed home from work - meanwhile refraining from nebulizing anything. Friday morning I felt marginally better (I didn't need oxygen) and I got in touch with the doctor and explained my situation. I was advised to use the albuterol just in the morning before taking the antibiotic and the antibiotic alone at night. Friday night I took another dose, just antibiotic. Saturday I ran a couple errands and was kinda more tired than usual but functional. Saturday night I took another full dose of the antibiotic sans albuterol. A couple hours later the fun started...

They're called bronchospasms, but it feels like a baboon sitting on your chest. I have been unable to breathe freely since Saturday night. Fortunately, I did discover that I wasn't reacting to the albuterol other than the jitteryness and that it did relieve the situation to a degree. I use it every few hours when the tightness and discomfort starts to return. I haven't removed the oxygen for more than about five minutes, and that with some degree of discomfort. I've obviously been unable to go to work. For the first couple days, it was difficult to eat because I'd get badly winded chewing and swallowing. Things have been improving, but very slowly. Realistically, it would be pleasantly surprising if I can function without the oxygen by sometime this weekend.

In the meantime, I am back on Cipro (oral antibiotic) and Singulair until the culture comes back to see what else any lingering infection will respond to.

On another note, the Vita-Mix came today, but I haven't used it for anything yet.