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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.
Gotta go, lasagna's ready.
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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.
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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.
Love,
Radioactive Man
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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.
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So, after the great news of being engaged, I saw a doctor yesterday. The first time I've seen a doctor outside of an emergency room for as long as I have cognitive memories. And the survey says ... I have Hyperthyroidism. What does this mean inside my body? Well, my immune system, being the badass immune system it has always been is now, well, attacking my thyroid. What's my thyroid's response? Release more hormones. Those hormones are the problem. What does this mean for the rest of my body? Well, those hormones make my body work more. My body is working even when I'm not doing anything. My heart beats more, I lose a lot of weight, I have tremors, I feel hot and don't tolerate heat well, I get dizzy and nauseous standing for a short while, I get winded with doing minimal exertion, I'm tired because my body is tired. It's awesome. Now that I know what's wrong, and eating more isn't going to put more weight on me, I can get treatment. Get my thyroid back under control, and then everything else should be good. I should regain my weight easily and be a normal member of society again. Though, if I didn't get it treated, I could get THYROID STORM. I don't know what that is, but it sounds cool. I could also get heart or bone problems, and I'd rather not have those. Now I just need to get my medication to get my heart rate and tremors in check, and then make an appointment with endocrinology and I'll be on the way to being Healthy Alan again. Hyperthyroidism on WebMD
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I get to work this morning, and there's an award sitting on my desk from the Colorado American Marketing Association. Evidently, last night we won the Gold award for Best Website for a Flash website we did for a client. It was a site I did all the Flash development for, and really put a lot of work into and got a lot of stress out of, and my supervisor said that I won the award ... but I don't feel comfortable taking all that credit, it was a group effort. We also won an award for Best Logo for that client, so I'm thinking creative and tech are going to split the awards, and since my supervisor never touched this project, I'm getting the accolaids for it. But, right now, the award is sitting on my desk, and it definitely brought a sharp increase in my mood and outlook on the day. Yay. Also, at our last quarterly company meeting, I got an in-company award ... the Teamplayer Award, because everyone likes working with me, and I work hard. It felt good getting recognition in-house from my coworkers for how hard I work ... and now I'm getting outside recognition for the quality of the work. I'm definitely very satisfied with my job, and I feel my bosses are satisfied with my performance. And tonight, Mercedes & I are heading into the mountains for Apogaea, which is Colorado's regional burn. A weekend of camping and hanging out with friends. I'm a hummingbird in a children's play. :) I'm so looking forward to this weekend ... this week at work has been pretty stressful. But atleast it's ending on a high note. Tags: awards
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New BikeSo, last friday I went and bought a new bike. The weather is getting beautiful and I didn't want to miss out on the joys of having a bike in Denver on a nice summer day. I went to Sports Authority and ended up getting Diamondback Edgewood '07 Hybrid bike. It has the tire width of a street bike with a little more grip, and a light frame with front shocks and a seat shock. It has contoured hand grips instead of straight round ones. It rides so beautifully. The nicest bike I've ever owned. Also the most expensive ... though it was on sale for only $280. There are bike paths everywhere in Denver, and I was getting tired of losing so much speed to tire traction. This bike flies compared to my old mountain bikes.  My old bike is now permanently a playa bike. It will forever only be ridden in Black Rock City during the Burning Man festival. I need to get new rims and a derailer for it, and then I'm going to deck it out like a giant monkey. I wanna cover it in brown fur, and then put monkey arms and legs down the front and rear forks, have a big tail off the back, and put a giant monkey head on the handle bars. One of the old rims is going to be converted into a pot & pan rack for the kitchen.
Burning FlipsideTomorrow after work, Mercedes & I are heading down to Burning Flipside. It's the Texas regional burn outside Austin. It's a 12 hour drive in an RV, a 5 day festival, and I'm camping with Wacky Shack/Wacky Ship right across from the effigy they're going to burn on Sunday night. We're the psychadelic pirate ship. I'm reusing my Freelance Proctologist costume and I'll be an "ass pirate". I'll be helping set-up camp, but I was also put in charge of creating the renderings of our camp look and layout. Evidently, the people at Flipside were impressed and we got more space than we requested, and got prime camp placement across from the effigy. I would like to think that my renderings helped, but I'm sure it was mostly due to how liked Cap'n Schmid-E is.  This will be my first year at Flipside, and Texas even. Mercedes went last year. It's like Burning Man, except it's not in a desert and there's a river with natural pools to swim and relax in. Oh yeah, and there's scorpions & bugs. I'll also be taking the fur coat I made, as well as one of the kilts from Burning Man last year. Oh, and I made a t-shirt that says "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" on it, reference to the Supreme Court case over student freedom of speech. I'm also hopin' people will offer me bong hits, 'cause I love Jesus! The HummingbirdTwo weeks after Flipside is Apogaea, which is Colorado's regional burn at the Happy Ass Ranch. Moon is organizing a children's play based on the Richard Bach book, There's No Such Place As Far Away. I'm playing the Hummingbird, and we're doing a performance Friday night for adults and Saturday afternoon for kids. It's an existential story for children. Most of the adults in the play couldn't wrap their heads around the message ... though I'm sure little kids will grasp it easier. That goes the same for the adults on drugs, as well. I have about half my lines memorized. Tags: acting, bike, burning man, flipside
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