August 1 through 3
Aug. 3rd, 2022 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chochiyo_samaMonday, August 1
I slept late a
s I could this morning, then got up and took a shower so I would not be offensive at my doctor’s appointment. Unfortunately, my appointment was a bit stressful. Once again, my blood pressure was really high. Now, I am convinced that my blood pressure is high mainly because I despise going to the clinic. I have lost all faith in the medical profession and go there geared up for battle, grumpy, and certain that I am neither respected nor cared about there. My doctor is personable and likeable, but even so, she is not the best listener to my concerns and I don’t think she really believes what I tell her.
My “best” blood pressure out of several tries was 199/121 with a pulse of 133. My doctor advised me that I was in “stroke territory” and that I had to get my own personal blood pressure monitor and take my blood pressure daily. Again—I think a lot of the issue is that I hate every second that I am in the clutches of the medical professionals. I refused to answer their depression questionnaire and have done so for over a year now due to having my status as “depressed” weaponized against me too fucking often. Now, it is FUCK THEM. If I had razor blades in my back pocket for slitting my wrists, I would tell them NOTHING.
I don’t, by the way. Have razor blades and a plan to slit my wrists, that is.
Anyhow, she decided to prescribe lisinopril which I had taken many years ago. I am pretty sure that they took me off that med because it caused a build up of potassium in my blood—which they told me at that time that it was so excessive that I could have had a heart attack at any moment. So I am not thrilled about having that prescribed to me again. The only comfort is that it is the tiniest pill I have ever seen. She didn’t take my comments about potassium seriously because “they did not put anything about that in your medical records, so that must not have been the cause.” Yes. Because there is NEVER any incompetence in the medical field. Sigh. She also put in an order for me to have an EKG due to my pulse being so high.
I suspect it was high because I find having my blood pressure taken very painful. I feel my whole body tensing up while squelching the urge to scream. Not to mention the constant pain in my knees and shoulders. Usually once they take off the blood pressure cuff, my pulse is normal. It was high like that for the endocrinologist too—when she took it by hand, it was 70 something. Dr. Vita tried to take it by hand, but she couldn’t find my pulse. I may already be dead, I guess.
The good news is that my frequent, urgent, explosive diarrhea has been lessened by the removal of metformin from my medication list. It is great to be able to go through day after day without shitting my pants. However, the bad news is that my blood sugar is significantly higher without the metformin. The endocrinologist had eliminated ALL metformin and added 5mg more Glipizide to make up for it. It didn’t help much. My blood sugars are running mostly between 175 to 200+ (Never past 250 but still too high.) So she added another 5mg of glipizide. We’ll see how that goes.
The nurse took me to the appointment desk to schedule more appointments then to the on-site pharmacy so I could get a blood pressure machine. They had to order one, and they also told me that insurance would not pay for it. Since it would only cost about $50, I was not concerned.
From there, we went to the lab where I waited forever to be taken back to get the EKG. My first appointment was at 2:10. At 4:30, they told me that the order for my EKG was accidentally placed for the clinic in FARIBAULT rather than Owatonna. Because the EKG goes to the computer via the order—my order was for Faribault. They contacted my doctor to have her put a new order in, but of course they do that electronically, and my doctor is always super busy and doesn’t always check her electronic messages.
By this time, Lily had been waiting in the hot car for over an hour already. I was extremely cranky as (a) I hate being in the fucking clinic anyway, and (b) I had not had anything to eat or drink other than the mouthful or two of water I drank to wash my pills down. The technician told me it could “take a while” for the order to go through. I sat up and said, “Then I am leaving. My 82 year old aunt has been sitting in a hot car for over an hour already.” The technician was just a young squirt and kept apologizing and hitting the refresh on the computer. I assured her that it was NOT her fault, but that I was worried about my aunt. At 4:50, the order came through. The fucking clinic closes at 5 pm. The EKG took very little time—I doubt it was even 5 minutes.
I got dressed, and the technician wheeled me out to the entrance, and I called Lily to tell her I was ready to be picked up. I told her all about what the doctor had said and done and how high my blood pressure was. In jest, I said, “So, in case I stroke out and die in the immediate future, I love you. Please make sure my cats get a good home.”
Poor Lily has such a tender heart. She burst into tears and said, “You cannot die. What would I do without you? I wouldn’t even want to live in Ellendale if you were not here!” Aww. Well, that was very sweet. It touched my cold, hard, cranky old heart.
Then Lily and I had to go to Walmart to pick up my prescription. We parked in the space where the pharmacy will run your prescription out to your car. I didn’t know that had that service before. When the pharmacy person came out, she said my debit card would not go through, but it worked fine in the portable thing she brought out to me. Very annoying.
Lily and I were both starving, so we went through the drive through of McDonalds where we each got a Big Mac—I haven’t had one in years and just felt the need for something comforting from my youth. I got a caramel frappe and she got a strawberry watermelon slushy. I also bought a fish burger which I planned to save for another meal. They warm up pretty well in a microwave.
We ate in the Walmart parking lot. The Big Mac was not the culinary delight I remember from my childhood, so I will probably never buy another one. Sigh. But, it filled my stomach, so it did the bare minimum of its job.
I paid since Lily had driven and had been stuck waiting around forever.
When we got back to Ellendale, I gave Lily my overripe bananas which she needed to make a banana bread pudding to take to her granddaughter’s house tomorrow. She was going to go get bananas at Lerbergs, but I had some that were just right for baking and too ripe for plain eating. She had gone to the grocery store while I was in the clinic, and had picked up 3 six packs of Diet Coke for me.
While I was gone, my brother had come over and fixed my TV. It had gone wonky last night and I could not get it to work. It flipped itself out of cable TV mode and put itself into the mode to watch Netflix or a DVD. It just WOULD NOT go back to where it should have been. He fixed it and was gone before I got home. I wish I had been here so I could see what he did to get it back to normal. One thing was that the remote had dead AAA batteries. That was probably the crux of the matter.
I watched some stuff on TV—I cannot even remember what I watched except for Rachel Maddow. Going to the clinic always exhausts me, especially when I’m stuck in there for HOURS. So I went to bed as early as I could.
Tuesday, August 6
I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamed that I was at some sort of school or institution of some type. I don’t know whether I was part of the staff or the student body. But I was given the task of cleaning out a really dirty washing machine or dryer. It was full of dead bugs, clotted dirt, and what looked like cotton batting or insulation. I was picking all this stuff out of all the crevices of the machine and being totally grossed out by all the dead insects imbedded in that stuffing stuff. No matter how much I pulled out, there was always more.
I ate my fish burger for lunch. In the afternoon, Lily brought me a piece of her bread pudding which she was devastated by as she had forgotten about it and left it in the oven for about an hour longer than it should have been in there. It upset her so much that she didn’t even go to Haylie’s house. She decided to go tomorrow instead. She wanted me to taste it and see if it was fit to eat. It had a very nice flavor—I would have never known it was over cooked. The only negative thing (which was not THAT negative) was that it was a little denser than the average bread pudding.
I had a pretty quiet day. I worked in the laundry/craft/sewing room for a while, sorting through stuff and organizing it. I cleaned the litter box in there while I was in there. Tammy called and I told her about my doctor’s visit and she informed me that she was allergic to lisinopril. So maybe our DNA doesn’t tolerate that shit. In two weeks I will have a blood test to see if my body is stockpiling potassium.
In the evening, I watched the Stephen King movie Firestarter. I think it was made in 1984 and starred Drew Barrymore. George C. Scott and Martin Sheen were also in it. The guy who played Drew’s dad looked very familiar but I did not recognize him. He looks a lot like the guy who plays Sheldon Cooper’s big brother in Young Sheldon. Definitely NOT the same actor—but maybe he is the dad of the younger guy.
Then I watched one called Another Country. I think that one was also filmed in 1984 and starred a VERY young Collin Firth as an upperclassman in an English boys’ boarding school in the 1930s who has been enraptured by the writings of Karl Marx. He constantly complains that all the sporting events and the weird “culture” of the all boys’ boarding school interferes with his education. His best friend was an actor that I did not recognize at all—he was a very handsome young man who was openly gay among the boys where apparently part of the culture was a lot of boy-on-boy sex but only because no females were available to them. He had no respect for the school rules nor any of the ruling class amongst the faculty and upper classmen. Eventually, he fell in love with a VERY YOUNG Cary Elewes (of Princess Bride fame). OMG, young Cary was drop dead gorgeous with his head full of blond curls and that adorable crooked smile.
That movie was a bit depressing but was very involving. It really stresses the level of cruelty people are capable of inflicting on each other. I recommend it. It also shows how much courage and dedication it takes to BE WHO YOU ARE despite that terrible pressure of the culture that surrounds you.
That’s about it for me for today.
Wednesday, August 3
When I got out of bed this morning, I had such big plans to accomplish a lot. I didn’t get a lot done—though I did rally in the late afternoon and did the dishes and cleaned out the fridge and did a couple loads of laundry.
Hope is coming to clean tomorrow, and I also have an appointment with the dietician at the clinic tomorrow. Another trip to the clinic. Fuck.
I got a call from the pharmacy there that my blood pressure monitor is in. So while I am there, I can pick that up. I also got a call from Walmart pharmacy telling me that my debit card did not go through again for the prescription that I had called in on the weekend. Sigh. I gave them my card information again and told them I could stop tomorrow as I was going to the clinic and would be in town. Ugh.
At least it will give me a chance to pick up a couple of things that I need—mainly storage things to aid in organizing my laundry/craft/sewing room.
There was a rollicking thunder/rain storm in the middle of the night last night. There was some really brilliant lightning and some loud cracking thunder. I like a good thunderstorm and we need the rain. I had weird dreams again—I kept dreaming about a really ugly, scraggly looking mouse that was in my bathroom sniffing around on my sink near my toothbrush. It never actually touched my tooth brush, but it was right next to it. I was reminding myself that I needed to throw it away. And of course there were no cats in sight. I considered attempting to kill it myself with a plastic 12” ruler that was laying on top of my towels for no apparent reason.
That mouse returned several times to lurk around the sink. He was an ugly, skinny, mangy looking mouse with a really long snout.
This afternoon, I watched the movie Band of Angels which had Clark Gable, Sidney Poitier, and (I think) Yvonne de Carlo and a very young Efrem Zimbalist Jr. It was set in the Civil War era and had a lot of really elegant scenes and sets.
I got three loads of laundry washed. I hope to fold the last load before I go to bed, but it is already nearly 11:30 and I have to get up early as I leave for my appointment by 10:30 tomorrow morning. Ugh.
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Date: 2022-08-04 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-04 09:45 am (UTC)If they're ordering you a machine it will have an arm cuff, not a wrist cuff. Check the brand when you get and and I'll bet you amazon has it and for less. Pharmacies are a rip-off. Unless insurance is paying for it or it's free, cheaper to check amazon or your local drug store than the pharmacy at the clinic.
Somewhere I found recipes for the original McDonald's menu of like 50 years ago or more. With the secrets as to how to get that remembered taste of your youth. All I remember is that the fries were fried twice and it was a combination of something and beef tallow to get that flavor. I seem to recall there were methods to the Big Macs too. Both the mixture of the ground meat used, plus how to make the patties and how to cook them. It's got the Filet o Fish recipe too. Recipes from the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Aha! I'll bet that was the issue with the Lisinopril. Not exactly an allergic reaction but one that likely runs in your family. My Dad is allergic to Erythromycin and so am I. It makes us nauseous and then shuts down the liver and we can get jaundiced.
"David Lemuel Keith (born May 8, 1954) is an American actor and director. His breakthrough role was that of aspiring Navy pilot Sid Worley in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. The positive reception for this role led to leading parts in the films The Lords of Discipline (1983), Firestarter (1984) and White of the Eye (1987). Keith had notable supporting roles in features including Major League II (1994), The Indian in the Cupboard (1995), U-571 (2000), Men of Honor (2000) and Daredevil (2003)."
Montana Jordan plays Georgie in Young Sheldon. No relation.