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So, How's It Going?


Gonzo

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Rage over something specific, or just general rage?

Update on my mother - according to the specialist, the fact that her jaundice went away on its own is a strong indication that it's not cancer. She's going to get an MRI to (hopefully) rule it out completely.

On the other hand, she didn't imagine the jaundice, so there's clearly something wrong with her liver. The specialist's current hypothesis is autoimmune hepatitis, which according to a quick Google search is when your immune system turns on your own liver. So that's still not good, but not as bad as cancer.

 

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My mother went to the optometrist today to get a new prescription.  She was told they weren't going to give her one because she has too much pressure behind her eyes and needs to see a specialist.  She'll do that next month. She had to have cataract surgery almost three years ago on one eye, and she has health issues that impact vision.  She keeps her blood sugar under control and takes all the meds she's prescribed.  She mentioned seeing a few dark spots go across her eyes before, but we figured it's because the TV is in a dark corner and her eyes were trying to compensate for it.

She'll have to get cataract surgery on her other eye, which we anticipated, along with treatment/surgery for the elevated pressure.  I don't think she's going blind anytime soon, but it's certainly a concern.  We'll have to make more adjustments to her diet/exercise routine.  That's doable.  Everything else is up to medicine and Mother Nature.  Which do good work, but it sucks having to depend on outside forces so much.

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Thanks, @The Natural. Mom's A1C is around 5.6, which is very good.  She could stand to lose more weight, but she works hard to keep her blood sugar in healthy range.  She takes her meds (she's on oral meds, no insulin shots so far), takes short walks pretty regularly, and has cut a lot of bad food out of her diet.  But even with that, her eyes are going to be a big concern going forward. She got her eyes examined yearly even before her diabetes diagnosis.  I think she'll be OK, but it reinforces how delicate everyone's health is.

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46 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

Thanks, @The Natural. Mom's A1C is around 5.6, which is very good.  She could stand to lose more weight, but she works hard to keep her blood sugar in healthy range.  She takes her meds (she's on oral meds, no insulin shots so far), takes short walks pretty regularly, and has cut a lot of bad food out of her diet.  But even with that, her eyes are going to be a big concern going forward. She got her eyes examined yearly even before her diabetes diagnosis.  I think she'll be OK, but it reinforces how delicate everyone's health is.

You're welcome, @Burgundy LaRue xxx. My Mum had a number of health issues including diabetes which messed things up, sadly. Diabetes is a right fucker.

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4 hours ago, The Natural said:

You're welcome, @Burgundy LaRue xxx. My Mum had a number of health issues including diabetes which messed things up, sadly. Diabetes is a right fucker.

So true. :( Mom is clearly worried, but is trying to be brave about it.  I told her if it was an absolute emergency, they would have had her go to the specialist's central office a couple of towns over instead of waiting next month when he visits a facility closer to our home.  I'm cautiously optimistic. It seems the pressure is causing her eyes to produce weak vessels, and that looks like it can be alleviated with laser surgery.

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4 hours ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

So true. :( Mom is clearly worried, but is trying to be brave about it.  I told her if it was an absolute emergency, they would have had her go to the specialist's central office a couple of towns over instead of waiting next month when he visits a facility closer to our home.  I'm cautiously optimistic. It seems the pressure is causing her eyes to produce weak vessels, and that looks like it can be alleviated with laser surgery.

Best to the both of you, @Burgundy LaRue xxx

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Mike: Sorry for your loss, my condolences.

@tbarrie while finding out that there's something wrong with your liver is never good news, let me try and put this in perspective. It's always better to find out about a condition early rather than late. My youngest sister-in-law knew that there was something wrong with her liver a decade ago. She would have bouts of jaundice where you literally had difficulty seeing her tattoos. She's Native American, but not unusually dark per se, but she would get these periods where she her skin would get so dark that here blue and green tats would become almost invisible.  Well, doctors here are very quick to pigeonhole people based on what they think they should find, as opposed to what's actually there, so it was a three-year battle to get her a doctor who didn't immediately pronounce the condition as alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver (which would be a perfectly logical conclusion to jump to except for that annoying little factoid that she hasn't had a drink in over twenty years... Just as they take one look at my teeth and assume that I'm on meth, "No, Dr. Genius, I was without dental insurance for  ten years, shit happens.") 

Anyway, so Becky didn't get a proper diagnoses until she'd had this condition for AT LEAST 3 1/2 to 4  years, so it was pretty advanced when the proper diagnoses of non-alcoholic related auto-immune hepatitis (which sounds like it may be the same thing your Mum is dealing with, just different terminology). Bottom line, for the last five years they've tried different things, all with limited success, and she was put on the transplant list a bit over a year ago and told that there would be a number of people bumped ahead of her because she wasn't in urgent danger. She finally got scheduled for a transplant in October and the one thing that seems a recurring mantra is "if only we'd caught it sooner, you wouldn't be needing a transplant." So basically, we're looking at someone in what I would have considered to be pretty bad shape for nearly ten years before the docs thought it a big deal.  So based on that, I'd guess that your Mum is going to be just fine.

@Burgundy LaRue: Diabetes is no fun, Kathy's been dealing with it for almost twenty years now. For the most part she controls it with diet, but once in awhile she'll "forget to eat" (just how exactly does one "forget to eat"?) and the result is the shakes and immediate need for a shot of orange juice and one of my omnipresent cinnamon disks. ;-)

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19 hours ago, Cristobal said:

Specific. Board-verboeten stuff, so not getting into it, (though folks can probably guess.) It hasn't really ameliorated in the ensuing 40-odd hours.

All i know is, if I learned anything from Captain America and Indiana Jones, the guy punching a Nazi is always in the right.  Like when ol' Cap punched out Hitler, there was nobody there disingenuously wringing their hands about violence coming "from all sides"  or Hitler's right to assemble being infringed.  Now I'm not talking about any specific incident.  Just ruminating on right and wrong when it comes specifically to punching Nazis.

Not that this is your particular issue, just venting about something that's been bothering me this week for some reason.  Carry on, all. 

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18 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

All i know is, if I learned anything from Captain America and Indiana Jones, the guy punching a Nazi is always in the right.  Like when ol' Cap punched out Hitler, there was nobody there disingenuously wringing their hands about violence coming "from all sides"  or Hitler's right to assemble being infringed.  Now I'm not talking about any specific incident.  Just ruminating on right and wrong when it comes specifically to punching Nazis.

Not that this is your particular issue, just venting about something that's been bothering me this week for some reason.  Carry on, all. 

Actually, a lot of the onus behind the creation of Cap (ten months before Pearl Harbor) was because the US was still trying to remain isolationist, even that late in the game. There was worry that he'd offend isolationists (at the least).

Simon is quoted as saying "The opponents to the war were all quite well organized. We wanted to have our say too."

It was a thing. You can give 1941 America some credit but don't give it too much.

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On 8/16/2017 at 1:43 PM, Cristobal said:

Specific. Board-verboeten stuff, so not getting into it, (though folks can probably guess.) It hasn't really ameliorated in the ensuing 40-odd hours.

This will help calm all the RAGE

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/164297628606/how-to-know-youre-in-a-mass-hysteria-bubble

How To Know You’re In a Mass Hysteria Bubble

 

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Been seeing a psychiatrist and working on diagnosis and treatment. He said I have definitely been ADHD since young, then proceeded to describe in detail most of my college experience and post college work experience. I felt vaguely called out. ;-)

He added wellbutrin at first, which did help a lot with focusing, but raised some anxiety issues. So now a little (tiny dosage) klonipin added to see how it goes. I'm hopeful, which is a nice change.

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On ‎8‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 5:46 PM, Super Ape said:

I hate my job so much that I instantly become suspicious of people who say they don't hate theirs.

I like my job.  I'd like to punch a couple of my co-workers, though.

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Here is something a physical therapist said about the prospect of fixing my knee.

"Well, there are basketball players that played their whole careers without their ACL, so like, you'll live."

Basically: the injury in my teenage years was probably a torn ACL, but doctors refused to diagnose it then, just sending me in for an x-ray and then telling me I'm just fat. the tissue healed but no attention was paid to strengthening it back up, so it's just flopping around in there, occasionally getting pinched in my comically deep knee socket. When he went through the test, he said that it feels like I basically don't have an ACL. So the best we're gonna be able to do is strengthen everything around it. It's too late for repair.

I'd be sad about it if I didn't spend my entire ride home thinking about how I was gonna taunt the friend that injured me.

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19 hours ago, JLSigman said:

Been seeing a psychiatrist and working on diagnosis and treatment. He said I have definitely been ADHD since young, then proceeded to describe in detail most of my college experience and post college work experience. I felt vaguely called out. ;-)

He added wellbutrin at first, which did help a lot with focusing, but raised some anxiety issues. So now a little (tiny dosage) klonipin added to see how it goes. I'm hopeful, which is a nice change.

I was on klonipin for like a week. I took it at night and it knocked me out for a loop so bad I was unable to function at work the next morning.

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On the medication front I was recently prescribed Lexapro to help with anxiety.  The first night or two taking it my brain was in a fog bug since then it's worked quite nicely.  For years I've been hesitant on taking anything even though my wife's been on it for years.  But two weeks into it I now wonder why I didn't take it sooner.  This was prescribed by my doctor when going for a physical, so I can only imagine what I'd need when seeing a psychiatrist.

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On 8/22/2017 at 3:46 PM, Super Ape said:

I hate my job so much that I instantly become suspicious of people who say they don't hate theirs.

I love my job. Here's an example of why: Let's see, it's nearly 1:00PM... I've been working for a couple or three hours so I guess it's high time for a sandwich, followed by a short nap. What's not to like?

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