Boogers....

This is my latest painting. The view is a little complicated, but this is the view from my bedroom window... looking at the outside of my house, into my kitchen windows, and seeing the neighbor's house.
Prismacolor pencils on stonehenge paper.
I'm working on a floral painting right now. I find it rather funny that I can work with my pencils but video games are still beyond where I can operate.

I haven't posted or updated my blog in so long! Stupid sinus infection, and stupid AI! That said, this is what happened yesterday, when I finally got into see the ENT for the sinus infection....

ok, the ENT appointment lasted for something like... 2.5 hours. But that include the extra 1/2 hour she kept me waiting. She's got a new practice and her assistant was out sick.

So, what did we do during that 2 hours? A little more waiting.... and ... other things.

Ok, first things, Shelly, the Prismacolor of *my* sinus infection is Cream mixed with Lime Peel and Brunt Ochre... A whole lot of Burnt Ocher and some Raw Umber just for kicks.

She said I’ve got a staph infection, but after she was done with me, I swear by all the gods I've got a STAFF infection... She looked up my nose with her special light, was quite impressed by the pain and facial swelling I have. I look like I've got a case of mutant mumps, or a mutant with the mumps, one of the two. Or maybe both, I don't know. Many days lately I'm having trouble working a sweat shirt.

So, she looks up my nose, and decides that she can't culture the thing 'cause "stuff is in the way." Stuff? STUFF??? So she shoots some numbing spray up my nose and has me wait. While we are waiting, she attempts to look at my various CT scans and discovers that she’s forgotten her password, and no one in the office has any way for her to get her password, since she’s managed to lock herself out of the system.

(This is why we need a really good integrated biometric verification system, but I’m too sick to really go into the why and obvious wherefores of this, and besides, you all know the obvious whys and wherefores of a good integrated biometric system. )

She takes me back to the dun-dun-dun “procedure room” and starts to pull crap outta my nose. And then it HURTS. So she sprays more spray, and pulls giant boogers out of my nose. And then it HURTS EVEN MORE. So, she stops, and packs my nose with gauze and string and more numbing stuff. So there we wait for the numbing stuff to take effect. The clock in the room was off by an hour, so we thought we waited even longer than we did.

Eventually she comes back and proceeds to remove the gauze and string and more boogers. And sucks goo out, and then pulls out MORE boogers! AND GOO! And even with the extra numbing stuff, it hurts! Finally, she gets to the point where she got to “the” booger she was after, and had to break it up before she could remove it!

Turns out it wasn't just a damn booger, it was a booger dam! Mike was quite impressed with the amount and size of boogers she pulled out of my head. And you know it’s bad when the doctor is impressed… She said she’d seen worse, but that she was quite impressed with the amount of matter.

After all that, she was finally able to culture my nose to find out what exactly is causing the infection. Besides the staph infection.

She gave me one of those rinse bottles, which I used tonight, but it didn’t have much effect. Still too much swelling from the afternoon’s nasal spelunking session. The swelling has gone down quite a bit from this afternoon, and the pain level is different. Not sure if it’s better, but it… different.

Oh, and the pharmacy didn't have any record of the antibiotic being phoned in, so I'm guessing that they called the wrong pharmacy. I'll have to call the other local place tomorrow to see if it just went to the wrong place.

I spent most of the evening really cranky. Not sure why. Probably the pain, probably partly just wanting to be done with this whole thing. Dr. L says I sound really good on the phone. Sure, maybe I do, but I explained that it’s really an hour-by-hour thing with me lately. Thursday cannot come soon enough.

But I can tell a difference already in the infection. Just tilting my head a few degrees doesn’t hurt, and doesn’t threaten to eat my face….

So, I spent Friday and Saturday in AI. 10 hours on Friday, and again most of Saturday too. I have no idea which day, but one day I spent at least 5 minutes dry heaving and bile barfing. They always want to know how many times I throw up. I don’t ever count, it’s always measured in time. One after another, barf after barf and then barfing some more. After that I just lie there, with my face in the bucket, sharp pain from the edge cutting into my forehead. The zofran doesn’t help any more, at least not for very long. They gave me generic the last time it was refilled, but it doesn’t work as well for me. I need to talk to the soon to be fired PCP about it.

Speaking of her, she called me yesterday, wanting to know why I wanted to get a refill of the antibiotic. You mean, the reason besides still feeling like crap and still having a sinus infection for MONTHS???? I would have thought that was a good enough reason….

The refill I’d asked for a full week previously. The day she told me that she wasn’t going to treat me for the infection any more. I really need to fire that doctor. Really, really need to fire her. She kept trying to say that I’d been on it for two weeks already, the avelox, but I’d kept having to remind her that I’d been on it for THREE weeks, not two weeks. She said, “oh, it’s a really strong antibiotic, it should have cleared it up after one week.” Doh!