So, I'm trying to get back into Twittering, and with the Twitterrific iPhone App, it's amazingly fun to follow. Particularly when I discovered the individual tweet view that really isolates each tweet for clarity from the rest of the timeline.
So, I'm going to be tweeting along our East Coast Road Trip, and very probably making use of its location feature with my iPhone's GPS so you can see where I'm tweeting, from within 15-90'.
If you want to keep up with our trip via 140 character message updates, then here's my Twitter account URL: http://twitter.com/alangerow
As an update to my hyperthyroidism and radioiodine treatment: I'm back to my normal weight range!
Last night I weighed in at 169.2 lbs! At my lowest 3 years ago, I was closer to 130 lbs @ being 6'4". I've managed to gain ~30 in the last 2 months since my treatment.
I've been meaning to post this for a couple weeks, but Mercedes & I are doing an East Coast Road Trip that's going to end in Richmond for my cousin Kelly's wedding on April 25th. She'll be the first from my generation of the family to be wed. About a month later, Christie gets married, which I will unfortunately not be able to attend, and that really sucks. About a year later is our wedding. We're trying to work trade to bring down our costs. Mercedes will do cleaning & other tasks, and I may be building the wedding place a website or two.
So, here's our trip itinerary:
Friday April 17: Fly to Detroit & rent car. Drive to Toronto. Saturday April 18: Toronto Sunday April 19: Niagara Falls & drive to Boston Monday April 20 & Tuesday April 21: Boston Wednesday April 22: New York Thursday April 23: Washington DC Friday April 24 & Saturday April 25: Richmond Sunday April 26: Return car to DC & fly home.
In Niagara Falls we're going to do the Maiden of the Mist cruise; in Boston we're doing a Duck Tour, because I never got around to actually going on one in the 7 years I lived there; and in New York we're doing a 3 hour tour of the harbor with good picture opportunities of the Statue of Liberty. I consciously did not say "a 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour", it popped in my head a split second before good sense did. In DC I want to see the Holocaust Museum, because I haven't gotten to see that yet, either, because there's always a line. I'm also uber excited to use my new digital Rebel a bunch, and then totting around my netbook for unloading pictures and general travel awesomeness. I need to figure out how to use my iPhone as a cell modem.
I'm so excited for this trip. For all my bitching about not having enough vacation time at work to do anything, I'm being rewarded. For one, in honor of me working my fucking ass off, I got director level benefits at my position giving me a third week of vacation. This year, they offered me a raise or a fourth week of vacation. I took the fourth week of vacation after careful thought. I essentially got paid half for this vacation, as the raise would have been worth twice as much as the vacation time had I taken that week as unpaid vacation; but I would not take that week off it weren't vacation, because I've become a workaholic.
So, now I have enough vacation time, that I'm going to be taking a lot more trips. And it's going to be sweet. Like, we're planning two weeks in Japan for our honeymoon, and I've recently suggest we tack on a third week in Australia while we're over there. I mean, seriously, it's a short jump to Australia from Japan, and how often do we plan on going to other side of the planet?
I'll end this post with this loud announcement for people who may be skimming:
I'M GOING TO BE IN BOSTON APRIL 20 & 21, AND RICHMOND 24 & 25. WHO WANTS TO DO SOMETHING?
I'm occupied in Richmond on the 25 for my cousin's wedding. Outside of that, I want people to meet Mercedes and get caught up on what's been going on in everyone's lives. Drop me a line, I'll send my phone number upon request, let me know if you want to meet up.
My birthday present to myself this year was my very own netbook. I got Mercedes one for her birthday when her laptop finally failed for good and her most demanding program is Picasa. I got myself one for road trips and sitting on the couch. it's smaller, more portable, and runs much cooler. It's a great little guy to use for web browsing and carrying around when I don't need the power to run the entire Adobe Creative Suite at the same time.
I got myself an MSI Wind Netbook U100. It has a 10" widescreen with a maximum resolution of 1024x600 and weighs 2.7lbs. It has the Intel Atom processor with 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB HD. I upgraded up to 2GB of RAM, its maximum. It came with XP Home, which I trashed and installed Vista Home Premium. I'm even able to run Aero in its full glory, thanks to the Intel 945 integrated graphics chip.
I hate Microsoft more than the next guy, but damn Vista has become one slick bitch. They've really gotten its performance under control with SP1. My Gateway laptop which has a sticker saying "Windows Vista Capable", which means it can't run the Aero interface because the graphics chip isn't new enough, is running Vista with all Aero effects turned on. And it runs well. Vista had a rocky launch, which ruined customer trust, but they've ironed out the wrinkles in Vista and really put its good face on.
So, I think I'm finally done processing this fully. Last Friday I had a dental appointment and an endocrinology appointment. The dental appointment went fine; I got two root canals with no anesthetic.
The endocrinology appointment, on the other hand, went not so as expected. My appointment Thursday with a general practitioner and the one on Friday with the endocrinologist are due to me being in the hospital at the beginning of last week. The general practitioner didn't have much of anything to add; $30 copay for nothing. The endocrinologist had plenty to say; got much more for my $40 specialist copay.
I was taking a medication to lower my thyroid hormone levels. I was to be on the medicine for 18 months, taking 3 pills a day. Now, I need to be off the pills for a week to start a different treatment. I thought I was going to walk out with a prescription for potassium supplements.
The new plan for treatment involves skipping the first round and going straight to radioactivity, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. My potassium levels could drop again at any time, so the solution to nearly all my health problems is correcting my thyroid. I go in this Friday to take radioiodine, my thyroid is just going to slurp it up. My throat is going to be radioactive. Mercedes is going to get so tired of me saying "Up and atom!"
The things I will not be able to do for a couple days afterwords include, but are not limited to: sleeping next to somebody, kissing, being around very little children or pregnant women, traveling without a doctor's note explaining why I'm radioactive, and not glowing.
The end result is damaging my thyroid a little bit, so that it produces less thyroid hormone. My endocrinologist does not think they will get mine in one go, and the procedure can be done up to three times. The pills I was on had a 50% chance of at least 2 years of remission. The radioiodine has an 80-90% chance, each time. After the third time with that, they will remove my thyroid and I will be on hormone pills the rest of my life.
My main concern at the moment is the treatment leaving me with hypothyroidism, where they damage it too much and it doesn't produce enough thyroid hormone anymore. In which case, I will be on supplemental hormone pills the rest of my life. Secondary concerns involves side effects of the radioiodine, primarily reduced sperm count; though fortunately Mercedes found that that particular side effect tends to wear off in two years.
At this point, I'm taking it one visit at a time. I'm down to only taking my beta-blockers, and am mostly feeling in decent health. I can't have any alcohol, do any strenuous activities, or get eat a bunch of carbs, because they tend to cause the potassium problem I had with Graves' Disease. I did DDR the night before and drank a Bud Light (my only in about a month) the day that the problems started.
Lastly, before I pass out, hyperthyroidism causes bones to become less dense, and I was told that treatment would thicken my bones. My teeth really started to fall apart around the same time I started to lose weight. I've never had the best of dental hygiene, but I'm now wondering if my hyperthyroidism has had a large part to do with my teeth falling apart so quickly since I left Boston.
I've never read the original story. But this is the perfect way to make the classics even better ... with zombies. Here's what the publisher's website has to say about the improved version of Pride and Prejudice ...
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen's classic novel to new legions of fans.
Here's the latest update in an otherwise boring narrative. My hyperthyroidism is caused by Graves' Disease. Now, this disease has some other things it likes to do, apparently. One is: starve the muscular system of potassium. And here's what I've learned about potassium and the human body...
Your body needs it.
Sunday night, my legs started feeling sore and then a little weak. I went to bed. At about 3:30am on Monday morning, I woke up, completely unable to use my thigh muscles, and my arms were so weak that they couldn't lift up my upper body into a sitting posture from laying down. I could cling on to one of the canopy poles and lift my upper body up, but then I couldn't lift my body into a standing position by my arms or legs. If Mercedes took the entirety of my weight, and I could align my legs straight and lock my knees, I could stand and sort of shimmy around.
In the morning we went to the hospital Emergency Department. I was brought in on a wheelchair, completely unable to transport myself in any meaningful way. While laying in bed, I couldn't even turn over onto my side. I had to get help. They thought it could have been neurological, and said I was an interesting case in a situation where I didn't want to be interesting. It came out that I had a sever deficiency in potassium. I had a level of 1.6 when I should have been in the 4-5 range.
I got admitted to the hospital and was in the cardiology area because at such low levels of potassium, my heart could just stop, like the rest of my muscles. I had to be moved from one bed to another, and be positioned on the bed confortably by nurses. Within a couple hours on a potassium IV, I was able to walk again. I was in the hospital for 24 hours after 4 hours in the ED. I was on an IV for most of the time.
I welcomed my 29th birthday on this world in a hospital, being told "Happy Birthday" by a room full of a nurses. My potassium level has returned and I can walk and move normally. I will need to see my general practitioner and then my endocrinologist on Friday to see what to do. The nurses & doctors with Kaiser were really awesome, and I had a day of firsts .... first time I needed to be in a wheelchair ... first time being admitted into a hospital ... first time being hooked up to an IV ... first time getting my temperature taken rectally.
When it rains, it pours. I'm still on penicillin from my tooth infection that spread to the rest of my body. I turned 29 in a hospital. I'm so glad I have health insurance. At least I was discharged this afternoon.
