Shingles - But Not for the Roof.

So have you heard about chirpes? It's a canarial disease. But it's tweetable.

Ah, STD humor, ar ar! Poor Ripped has had a rash on his shoulder blade and then chest for a few days. I first said shingles, which is Herpes Zoster, aka Herpes Type 1. If you've had chicken pox, you still carry the virus. It's lying in wait on a spinal nerve, watching for an opportunity to break out. It's pretty common in the elderly and immunosuppressed, which makes me wonder why Ripped has it. He's 18 and in excellent health, usually the healthiest one in the family. He lifts weights, eats healthier than the rest of us. Last time I saw an otherwise healthy young patient with shingles, it was caused by HIV. Ripped says, "My penis has been in its' pants!" Ah, the joys of raising Christian kids to be virginal til marriage! There is a lucky young woman somewhere who will snag him someday. But I digress. I thought all of this out and talked myself out of my diagnosis and twice told him to go to the walk-in clinic. He finally went after work today, and the diagnosis is...............*drumroll*.............Shingles!!! See, I can diagnose skin stuff! I still can't for the life of me figure out why he has it, except he was pretty stressed out last month. New job, changing classes around to suit new job hours, girl he loves saying the dreaded "LJBF." ("Let's Just Be Friends") So, yeah. Stressed, but how many other teens and adults are stressed moreso, and don't get shingles? Now this nurse practitioner-Mama wants him to go to the regular internist and get some blood work done. Make sure he doesn't have some odd reason for decreased immunity. Hope Ripped is not allergic to dogs! I'd really miss him.
Gotcha! Just joking. I seriously doubt he has HIV, but if he did, it would have to have been from the surgery he had at age 7. Abdominal surgery to repair the ureter, the tube connecting the kidney to the bladder. Otherwise, he has no risk for that. I'm definitely negative, and was when I had the twins, obviously. Hmmmm. Well, we'll have to figure this one out.

Meanwhile, Searcher took her first all-alone road trip to Tally to visit sister and brother-in-law during spring break. I think she just wanted to get away for a few days and jumped at the idea. I wasn't keen on her driving the interstate for six hours each way, but she survived, and even got lost on the way home! She was able to get herself back on track without calling for help. What a gal! I'm proud of her.

Dreamer got a 95 on a test this week, which is great news. She sets high standards for herself. Hubby and I have never been the type to expect straight A's from any of our kids, even when they're capable. We did expect them to work to the best of their ability, but never said "straight A's" Poor Dreamer has been on the Dean's list for forever, and was stressed out earlier when she got a C on a test. I should have done so well in college!!!! We are so proud of how well she's doing, but not until recently did I realize how stressed she was in thinking she may not be on the Dean's list for a semester, not graduate magna cum laude, and be rejected for a Master's program. My, how the mind does fly off when you're overtired, overworked, and overstressed! But that was last week. I think she'll sail through the rest of this semester.

I feel like I've typed my fingers off. The Girls (Molly and Honey) are fine.

See ya!

Hurry Up and Wait!

I work in a tax-supported clinic providing Women's Health Care and STD exams and treatments (Yes!! I do exams on males, too and see many penises in a month! (but not on the same patient) Big whoop!). We charge our patients according to their income. Many fall into a "no pay" category. But at the highest charge, you can't beat our prices in comparison to private care, and NP's generally spend more time with patients per visit. Plus, if you're on birth control pills, you leave with a year's supply in your hands, provided you're not having any problems. Can't beat the deal. Sometimes, I get overbooked or add in patients with emergent (for us) problems, and I can run behind with the schedule. Overall, my patients don't seem to mind too much since they know me, and that they'll receive excellent care. There is an occasional patient who has their panties in a wad (not my fault!) and gripes and complains vociferously about the wait. There's a part of me that thinks, Hey! You're getting all of this for free!!! Shush! But I usually just empathize and apologize for running behind. (A good part of waiting has to do with the gov't.-reuqired paperwork - ugh!!!)

Today, I had an appt. with my internist. Just the annual requisite visit to get my meds ordered for the year. Except for the CIDP and well-controlled asthma (at the moment), I am well. My appt. was at 3:15. I was seen by the doc at 5:10. Granted, I have excellent health insurance, though there is a co-pay and I will pay the remainder that insurance doesn't. But I didn't groan and whine about waiting. I could tell Dr. Mac was having a busy day. Do ya think HE wanted to be out late on a Friday??? Doubt it.

So, if you are cared for by public servants who are less-than-punctual, be kind. We need it.

Have a great weekend!

Tattoo and Cat only MOSTLY Dead

OK, so Twin A - I think I'll call her Searcher, whether she likes it or not, it just seems to suit her just now - has a tattoo. She asked me a few weeks ago about getting one. Thinking that a tattoo is a permanent sign of temporary stupidity, I tried to discourage her, at the same time realizing she's 18 and I really couldn't stop her. Here in this southern state, tattoo parlors are licensed and inspected. I asked my friend at work where she should go, and was given a recommendation. So Searcher lived through it, although she said it "hurt like a beast" and so did her parents. She chose a cross, and I actually went with her to the parlor. Seedy, just what you'd expect, with thousands of tattoos to sort through; they didn't have a "Christian" section; what a surprise! All of the crosses they had were so not what we were looking for, so Searcher took pen and paper and drew them one she used to draw in school. The guy scanned it and it is now on the lower left-hand side of Searcher's tummy. She said she will never regret having a cross.


Hubby went to a doc today, referred by his pain-mgmt. doc. Thought he had carpal tunnel. The word "carpal" has the letters c-r-a-p in it, which is what that diagnosis would be for Hubby. The new doc agreed that these problems are stemming from his neck. Poor guy has had two anterior and two posterior surgeries on his neck. He is losing actual muscle mass in the space between his index fingers and thumbs, as well as upper arms. And pain. So the new doc ordered an MRI of the neck and referred him to a neck surgeon. Again. But if they can fix the nerve compression that's leading to the muscle atrophy, then great. He'll be delighted. Stay tuned. By the way, he can still make knives, and he hugs real great, too! :o)

We have a black DSH cat named Baby. I found him in a socio-economically disadvantaged area of our town on my first home visit way back in 1993. He was a mess; tummy swollen from milk allergy, which was his only food, a piece of one ear chewed by dogs, and had been rolled by a car. He grew and was pretty healthy, save for allergies. How fair is that! A cat allergic to humans! Nah, we don't know what he's allergic to, but he sneezes a lot and gets runny eyes. A few years ago, he was accidentally injured while Dreamer and Twin B - hereafter known as Ripped, for that is what he aspires to be with his weightlifting and working out - were giving him a bath. Has had a bad knee since then, and Hubby would give him a baby (yes, I know, baby aspirin for Baby) aspirin every few days or so. Suddenly yesterday, he began to howl regularly in pain, and shake his head like a moron, or like his ear was bothering him. Off to the vet. He was seen by the husband of the wonderful lady vet I've written of earlier. We all thought he would need to be put down due to age, but there's a new arthritis med for kitties, and the ears were treatable, too!!! Yay! Long live the cat! Ripped is so happy. He cried so hard last night, thinking his Baby would be gone today. He really loves that cat; even slept on the kitchen floor with him all night last night. All's well that ends well.




Goodnight!

Judge Not!

When we bought our house in 1981, the house next-door to the east was occupied by a sweet widowed lady. She has long since gone on to her Reward, and she left the house to her church, and then it was owned by a nice older gentleman who rented it out. We've had a variety of renters over the years; one couple to whom I delivered a Christmas plate of cookies (they kept the plate and moved out soon thereafter) and several other whole/broken families of caucasian persuasion (one young couple didn't realize that in the spring, everyone has their windows open, not just them; I was in Twin B's room talking one night when we were privy to the climactic sounds of passion. We just looked at each other and cracked up. What else can you do with a teenage son?). The neighbors who lived there longest, and were the nicest, were two Mexican families who shared this small 2 br home. Twin A became friends with the three daughters. The families went on to buy their own homes, and the house went up for sale late last year. A young yuppie couple bought the place, fixed it up, and are renting. Their first renter lasted about a month. The owner told hubby he was going to raise the rent to bring in a more "high-end" renter. Three weeks ago, the new neighbors moved in. I had gone outside to get Molly's leash out of the car, carrying her, when they were in the front yard, so I carried Molly over to meet them. They have a basset hound named Molly! And a totally enormous pit-bull mix. And a five-month old adorable baby boy. The Mom and Dad were covered in tattoos. I thought, so what. (By the way, Twin A got a tattoo on her abdomen today, but that's another blog.)

I get up on workdays at 5 am and let "The Girls" out first thing. Guess what? My new neighbor is out that early smoking pot!!! The breakfast of champions!!! Gotta have a hot, nutritious breakfast! This is strange. Being a nurse practitioner, I don't like marijuana for the health risks. And besides, it's illegal. And I must say that I think it strange to smoke it so early in the day before you go off to your electrician's job. I smell it now as I type this at 9:15pm est. The poor baby! No wonder I never hear him cry. Second-hand marijuana smoke is also a danger, as are cigarettes. You never know what's gonna happen next around here! Stay tuned.

Tax Nightmare, Redux

OH NO!!!! I think I forgot to send the W-2's!!!!!!!!

Taxes and French Fries

Hello Again!

Just thought I'd share in the grief of taxtime. We're having a terrible time with taxes! Oh, not this year's. We already sent those in. We're having trouble with 2004's return! That was the first year we decided to do them online. We did, it was easy, no problem. We owed money; the twins outgrew the child tax credit. (We hate owing. We know that you should try and balance, but we would always rather get money back. Forced savings, so to speak, albeit interest-free). We paid over the phone, we have the receipt, so we think all's ok. Earlier this year we received a letter saying we owed another $5.??, so we sent that in. So here we skid into 2006, filed 2005's taxes and sleep well, for this year, we get money back! (Pays to give big-time to God!!) BUT NOOOOOOOO! 2004 still plagued us. Saturday, we received another letter telling us that we owed another $1642.34. Seems when we sent in a hard copy, Hubby forgot to place the twins' SSN's, so instead of someone merely looking them up in their mega computer where they've been known by a number, not a name since birth, they take away two deductions and bill us. I called them after work tonight and spoke with a nice man (see? IRS folks can be nice!) but he gave me misinformation by saying that since the twins were 17 throughout 2004, they would qualify for the child tax credit after all. So I start downloading forms and instructions - 12 pages worth. Then I read that the child should be under 17, not 18. Rats. All that work and time. So I call again and get a tax expert who goes through the numbers with me and ultimately says, yeah, you read right, UNDER 17. So we hang up and I start to domore paperwork to add the SSN's when it occurs to me: why not just fix this over the phone? So I call a third time. This time was Miss Pringle, the most awesome IRS worker ever. Enthusiastic and had it fixed in less than three minutes. And she has twins, too! I hope we're finally done with 2004.

Now, about those french fries. The last time I took Molly to the vet, I decided to placate her on the ride home with a small fry from BK. The BK near my vet's really has the lousiest food ever, but it's a beagle, so who cares, right? We received a bag of greasy, white, cold mush. Even Molly wouldn't eat them! Now I happen to know the Hardee's has crispy golden fries, so I decided to by and Molly and I would share. I showed the Hardee's staff the BK fries, told them Molly didn't want them, and they actually fried her a piece of bacon! Well, you can believe she ate that! And no fries. I guess she just doesn't like fries. Weird dog. Knowing that there would be no formal dinner tonight, I decided to stop by said Hardee's for some good fries. There was this tall, totally pale kid running the window. He moved ethereally slowly. Really, like he was undead. Kinda creepy. He also was cooking, so he lanked his way back to the window to tell me he was making fresh fries because the other batch was old. I told him how much I appreciated that, and I meant it! I love hot, crispy fries. Must've waited 5 minutes, the whole time watching him s-l-o-w-l-y move about the store. Pasty, lanky slowness. NOT one to date your daughter! He looked like the kind of guy who stands at the Haunted Mansion to greet you. Yeah, that's the perfect job for him! And he makes great fries.

A Lotta Stuff Happened! Or so it seems to me.....

Hallllooooo!

Well, I finished the 5-days of heavy-dose prednisone. My last dose was yesterday. Did I tell you the nurse from the agency stuck me FIVE times and couldn't get a vein???? Geeze. My friend at work got me first stick. Now I'm having the water-weight gain thing. I wish I knew how to put pics on here.... I haven't looked this "full" since right after I had the twins! At least the fluid takes the wrinkles out of your face! I could pass for.......a few years younger!

But here's the really good part: my legs are feeling better!!!!! Yay!!! We just don't know how long this will last and how to handle future meds. I need to do more research.

My favorite aunt, from MD, just left today. She has been given 3 months to live. She is 58 years old and has cancer. Started about a year and a half ago with breast. She had surgery and chemo, then it showed up in tongue and neck lymph. Turns out she has an extremely aggressive type of squamous-cell neck cancer. She's going out on her own terms, though. I admire that. It sucks, though. She is the youngest of 7 children and unless some unforeseen even happenes, will be the first to go. Life is weird. Buckle up and pray. I am happy that my aunt is in Christ and I'll get to see her again someday. It's still hard to know she won't be around anymore. I'll miss her so much. She's wonderful.

Be warned: The following should not be read by people who are bored by computers, or who wince and moan at the thought of poeple using them who have pretty much no idea what they're doing.

Segue to adventures in computerland. I noticed that my 4 year-old comp was acting weird. First, it all seemed Windows related. I couldn't use Outlook Express. Then Word would only open in safe mode. The comp wouldn't shut down the way it was supposed to. Add to this, the hardware was making noise and I was getting ready to replace the fan, power or both. Yeah, I'll try anything with the directions. I figure if I can't fix it, someone else can! Not like I'm hurting a human, or anything. I actually installed a DVD burner in my first comp, and it worked! Thursday night, I booted up the comp. Windows 98 popped up. Where in the world did that come from?????? My comp was preloaded with XP!!! What a mess. I felt sure doom. I don't backup my comp routinely since we don't really do any business on it, but I went ahead and put stuff important to me and hubby on cd's. A wise move. So then I decided to actually erase XP and reinstall it from my handy CD from the company. First, the computer said XP was already gone. So, ok, I go to reinstall. I place the disc and it begins to work, then says it can't load a file. To retry, click enter. I did, nothing happened. To go on without installing this file, click esc. I did. Went to another file and the same thing. I began to write these files down for fun. I had columns of them when hubby walked up and asked what I was doing. I tried hitting the esc key as fast as Commander Data, and that many filed kept coming up unloadable. Dang! Decided to sleep on it.

Got up next day and decided to just go look at comps. Bought one. It's a Compaq Presario with an AMD AThlon 64 processor, 1.0 gig memory, and a 200 gig hard drive. I don't know what that all means really, except for me, this sucker flies!!! How fun. It has WIN XP media in it, was a good buy and I get $250 in rebates. That brought the price to about $500.00 Was I robbed? I was going to just buy the cpu since I had the periphs, but it was cheaper to take the junk, too. And now you'll why............

The very next morning I was enjoying my new comp on the nice 19" flat-screen LCD Viewsonic monitor (which I got in Oct.) when the monitor died. I called the company (in the USA!!! American tech support!!!) and I have to send it back, so now I'm using the crappy monitor that came with the comp. But at least I can see!!!! Dreamer told me her monitor is starting to go, so I'll give her this one when I get the other back.

Sorry about the changing font thing. Still learning blog stuff. I'm kinda tired of typing. Let's all get a good night's sleep!

Bye.

A Week in the Life

Well, not too much has happened since last post. Girl-twin, formerly known as "Whiner," has been sick; a low-grade fever and fatigue for a month. So far, no diagnosis; not mono, anyway; definitely not pregnant. On top of being sick, she really got sick with bronchitis/sinusitis and is on a Z-Pak. She had blood and urine testing done last week, so we'll get those results tomorrow, I hope.

Boy-twin is leaving the middle management of fast food - excuse me, Quick Serve, for a receptionist position in a local orthopedists' office. Yes, after three long years at Chick-Fil-A, he will start making $1/hr more at the new position. He'll continue school toward a degree in Physical Therapy, so this new place fits right in. He should do fine after all that customer servicing. People at fast-food counters can be really nasty! My pleasure! He wanted to go midnight bowling last night, but I said no as he's been getting sick again this week, too. Coughing, nosebleeds, ugh. He was mad, and showed his maturity by coming home and A) not speaking to me, and B) working out since I wanted him home to get rest. My hubby says that teenagers' brains turn off when they turn 13, and if you're lucky, they might turn back on when they're 21. Guess we're still waiting!

My oldest daughter, Dreamer, is doing well, I think. She's way stressed out with this particular semester at college. Her hubby called all concerned (he's such a sweetie!) and we talked to her about quitting her part-time job, but she likes it, wants to contribute to the income, and gets to study while not busy. Ok. She's a big girl. The very next day, she called and said she may have the opportunity to take some master's level classes this summer; then after she graduates May '07, she'll have just one more year to complete her master's degree. Talk about stress! But as she said, and I quote, "You know I do school well." And yes, she does. She is a self-admitted nerd. She reads textbooks for fun. When she was young, I could never ground her to her room; it was too fine for her to curl up with a book. The twins, on the other hand, hate to read, Girl-twin more than Boy-twin. At least I can get him interested in a good Frank Peretti.

And now.......for Molly news! Molly went to the vet a week ago Friday for her "graduation" shots. She had a final ?distemper and a rabies vaccine. After the very-painful experience of the identi-chip placement, she had no problem remembering the vet (the most awesome ever) and literally wrapped her paws around my neck during the shots. Poor Pup. But she's done for a year! Yay, Molly! She and Honey are becoming better at the house-training thing. They're really good at ringing the bells at the door to be let out. Sometimes I think they do this when they're just bored. "Wow! She let us out again. We've really got her trained! She's doing so well!", they pant. And Molly smiles. I noticed that today. She was sleeping with me on the sofa, and her mouthline was straight. Girl-twin came up and pet her, she woke up, and the corners of her mouth went up into a definite curved smile! Let's see a fish do that!

As for me, I have a pretty annoying condition called CIDP (quick! Google it!) and will start a 5-day course of IV prednisone this Tuesday. I hope that's not long enought to make me blow up like a balloon. I don't think it will. But if it helps my stinking legs, it will be worth it! I'll write more about them another time. Right now, I think I want a shower and an early bedtime. Five o'clock comes early! Gotta get up early and drink much coffee before doing all those PAP smears!

Bye~~