Proctologically Speaking, Not My Best Day

My MRI results were read to me over the phone yesterday, and the doc said that they show I have a bulge at L5-S1, and some degenerative disk damage. It also said the sun was going to rise tomorrow in the east and broccoli smells bad when you stick it in your shoe and leave it there for a year and a half.

Ah, well. Poor kid didn't know it wasn't my first MRI, maybe. But at least the results show the pain isn't all in my head. The funny thing is that my back has been feeling pretty okay the last three weeks or so, ever since I stopped going to decompression therapy. I even managed a short stint on the stationary bike and a mile and a half walk on the treadmill this week. Though my back was a little sore for the attempts last night.

But today was my scheduled epidurogram and steroid injection. I'd had the latter at Bethesda Naval Hospital a couple times around a year ago, where I drove to work after the procedure (though they made me stay in the hospital for 30 minutes to ensure there were no negative affects). The hospital here, however, said I was supposed to bring someone to drive me. I asked if I could just walk instead (it's twenty minutes on foot), and they said that was fine.

They put an IV in my hand (which didn't happen at Bethesda), and then asked me to roll on to my front, where they pulled up my shirt and down my sweatpants. I hoped they closed the door. Dr. Bhimavarapu Reddy then put something in the IV. Which I thought was rather rude. "What was that?" I asked politely. "Just a relaxant." ...mkay. Perhaps I should have read the following before coming in:

Intravenous sedation is required either because the treatment is too uncomfortable or sedation is required to control high anxiety levels.
Sedation is not an anesthetic, and verbal contact can be maintained at all times. It is also known as conscious sedation and feels as though you're moderately drunk.
If your treatment involves receiving an injection, then local anesthetic will always be used to reduce your discomfort. However, it is not possible to achieve 100% pain free treatment.
You must be accompanied by a responsible adult who can drive you home and care for you after the treatment. You must also not have anything to eat or drink for
3 hours prior to the treatment. Sedation requires an intravenous cannula (plastic tube) to be inserted into a vein on the back of your hand using local anesthetic. (Guess they forgot this part. I have a bruise the size of a silver dollar.) Through this tube incremental doses of Midazolam (short acting vallium) will be injected until the desired effect is produced.
It is important that you do not operate dangerous machinery (driving a car, kettles (!)) for 24 hours afterwards as Midazolam can impair your judgment and motor skills for longer than you think. You must also not sign any important legal documents for 24 hours as Midazolam can adversely affect short term memory.

So next post I'll tell you about the Lexus I bought five hours after the procedure.

At any rate, none of the above was told to me ahead of time, except that "I would feel funny," hence the need for a driver. Not the 3-hour prior rule, not the 24-hour post rule. And the doctor didn't say a damn thing about what he was doing to my back, just hushed instructions to the nurse. So I kept asking questions. So he kept adding more sedative. Sorry: "relaxant." A second syringe, then a third, then a half. I finally asked him, "Am I supposed to be asleep for this?" "YES." "Ah." I never did go under, though, and I felt it was my right to be aware of any "oopsies" he might say in broken hindu. At Bethesda, they actually injected the steroid slightly above my surgery/injury, but this doctor wanted to go right through and underneath the scar tissue, so he was SERiously low in the back. WAY down there, I'm talking. Like it seemed he was way UP another area, if you get my drift. Subconsciously, I clenched. The cathoder hurt like hell, but when he said he was putting in the "medicine" (I assume the steroid) and that it would burn, I didn't feel a thing. He said I did very well, that "some people scream during that part." Nice. It might have been the four gallons of horse tranquilizers you've pumped into me in the last ten minutes, there, Doctor Fusilli.

They wheeled me on a guirney into a separate room, with saline flushing my IV and an arm band variably checking my blood pressure, which alarmingly went down to 96 over 49, though they said that was due to the "relaxant." After twenty minutes, they let me go, "drunk" being a pretty good description of how I felt, though not a fun, at-the-ballpark drunk but more a took-eight-straight-double-shots-of-vodka-and-should-be-hugging-a-cement-wall drunk. A breeze outside felt good, but I still felt like dogmeat once I got in my apartment. I tried to eat some crackers and some plain skinless chicken and lay motionless on the couch.

But fear not, I felt much better after throwing up at 2:30. :-) The wooziness was gone, and I had a cup of tea (kettle-handling be damned!) and a piece of bread, and, since I had an appointment, trudged out to the car (driving restrictions be equally frowned upon!), and went really expensive car shopping.

Park or speed

There is something morally incongruous, I feel, about an SUV with a handicap license plate sitting in the emergency room parking lot with a radar detector stuck to the windshield.

You already get to park wherever. You make us feel a little sorry for you, even if you don't want us to. And now you want to cheat on the highways, too?

Lazy.

Driving is a skill. Driving on the highways of this fair land requires constant attention and quick reflexes, looking ahead, judging curves, hills, and other cars' actions. (Or you could just be a woman and get away with anything.*) It's more difficult at night, granted. Which is when I've been pulled over the most, and, to my recollection, not since 1997. For going 14 over in North Dakota, for a fine of ... $14.

*not that I'm bitter

It was great driving around when Ainsley was pregnant, because I thought that would be a pretty good excuse for pretending to be in a hurry, though I never had to use it (not that I would fib to the boys in blue, no sir!). Still, the best defense is to not be in a hurry, which kind of goes with my personality, which bugs the hell out of my wife when we're walking along in a mall, which she equates to an elephant lumbering along in a scene from "The Jungle Book." Though I don't think any of them were called "Pokey."

Speaking of driving, we're in the market for a new car, as my wonderful T-bird has passed the 140,000-mile marker and continues to defy longevity expectations. We want something bigger, with four doors of course, easier to get a child in and out of, and something I can haul bigger "stuff" in, while at the same time not being a wallet-guzzling gas sucker. Looking at the compact SUV hybrids on the market, which are few, so it helps narrow down the choices. My dad offered to babysit my last Saturday home so we could go out as a couple, but since neither of us could think of a restaurant we HAD to go to, we decided to go test-drive a Toyota Highlander Hybrid instead. Krum /cddroom/ Ivanov, a Macedonian transplant, was a nice enough sales rep but relatively new and couldn't answer a lot of our questions (or, indeed, find us a Hybrid to drive for thirty-five minutes). The "third row seat" was a joke, barely passable as a ledge on which to cool a pie*, let alone get a human to sit comfortably in. I also couldn't get comfortable in the driver's seat, as the console wrapped too closely around my legs. And then, Mr. Slick William Cliche Shiny Purple Tie, the 'manager' (not his real name) just HAD to come out and ask if we were ready to make an offer, and he just epitomized annoying salesmen (he called me "Kevin") and put me off the whole shopping experience, and, to tell the truth, purple things in general.

*not recommended on the highway

I've made some appointments to drive some other models this weekend, but we're in no rush, which hopefully works in our favor. ("Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease buy our car!" is the message I hope to get on my cell phone by mid-month.)

Hitch in my log sawer

Have not slept well the last two nights. This follows not sleeping well the previous seven nights, which followed sleeping pretty okay what with the NyQuil numbing my ability to adequately encognicize myself to hear the baby. But the guilt was too much to bear, so I tried staying up late with the boy, letting him sleep on my lap watching "Rush Hour" until 2 a.m., to give Ainsley a solid four or five hours of sleep (which of course, she used worrying about us).

We finally gave up on both the cradle and the crib, and let him sleep a'twixt us, which was great for Ryan and Ainsley (10 good hours of sleep with the occasional feeding break), though I was both balanced on the rim of the mattress trying not to squoosh him (because although he is only 24 inches tall, when he sleeps on his back, he has a wingspan of five-and-a-half feet) and half-awake on Asha patrol, who tends to walk haphazardly onto faces for fun.

So it was assumed that being back in Dayton, I would man-embrace the Sandman, but instead I've been disoriented and restless. Last night, I laid there for ten minutes before realizing I hadn't even turned off the light. Sunday, I heard loud muffled pops outside, thought they were fireworks, and woke up to see if Dover was okay. And both nights, I'm still half-wondering where Asha is, and still absent-mindedly hugging the edge of the bed.

Perhaps I will take some NyQuil tonight.


*kaff kaff*

Squirt Impressions

What a grand week, getting to know my son more and interact with him in a hop-on-pop kind of way. He's just too cute words. And he's a huge flirt, smiling at any woman silly enough to make eye contact. It's enough to forgive him for ripping out my bellybutton hair when I change his diaper.

I'm still amazed at all his uberawake mother has been able to accomplish, and felt good those few times I could get Ryan to fall asleep in my arms....rock a bit...transition from the bicep to the palm of the hand...rock a bit...and down gently to the crib, hovering over him, breathing in his ear, letting him know I was still close. And Sunday, for the first time, I actually got to wake him up. Usually he wakes himself up and we respond to his coos or cries or stuffed animals being thrown up against the door. But Sunday he and Ainsley had an appointment, so I got to see how he wakes up. I turned on his mobile, and he started somewhat at the music, then fell back asleep. I rubbed his chest, and he sighed and stretched and the eyes blinked open, and as I slid my hands underneath him, he instinctively curled his legs up into a ball (perhaps he's part armadillo) -- he felt like he weighed two pounds. Very awwww-inspiring moment.

Also glad he got to meet his paternal grandmother, and that we picked out a name for her. "Grandmother" is too formal of course, and we already have a "Granny" (plus the dogs were confused when we said "granny" because they thought we were saying "granddad" and ran to the front door). She had suggested "gran", but that sounds like a breakfast fiber. She didn't want to be Nana, and we didn't want her to be Lola. And "Okeyfanokey from Cascogie" is just too much of a mouthful. So, in the spirit of wanting to be both unique and polysyllabic, she will be heretofore known as CeCe. Yes yes.

Ryan just needs to hurry up and push his teeth through so he and his mere can get some shuteye. And so I can teach him about the finer things in life you can find on an Outback(tm) Menu.

I tried to keep my packing away from the dogs' eyes but Bailey seemed to sense that yesterday was Black Sunday: the return to Dayton. I got all play misty for me when Ainsley told me that she (Bailey) was curled up in the dark foyer, by herself, waiting for me to come back.

snrf.

This Tooth Shall Pass

I'm not up on my Baby magazine reading -- I let those studies slide once Ryan depoppedicized himself, knowing he was in the capable hands of SuperMom. So I never know what to expect coming home.
So to learn that Ryan already has a couple lumps protruding out of his lower gums was rather a (har!) jaw-dropper. I don't know when babies are supposed to teethe, but I just thought it was older than five months.
So just add one more log to the Bonfire of Things Ainsley Has Had to Put Up With On Her Own. An already sleep-deprived year has been exacerbated by Ryan's discomfort, and I've been little help. We were thrilled when he went to sleep early last night (after an afternoon workout on the bouncy seat), but that lasted thirty-eight minutes. He was then up for another four hours, as Ainsley and I tag-teamed trying to get him comfortable and asleep and back in his crib (I suggested moving him from his cradle to his crib this weekend). But once he hits the mattress, it consistently wakes him back up, and the tears flow, and there is nothing on this earth worse than baby tears.
Plus I feel bad because I don't have those front-mounted dairy-intensive soothing pillows that work best once the cries turn to screams, and they've been overworked and underappreciated for weeks. Sure, I can give him a bottle, but that still means pumping had to have occurred at some point. Mommy-centric. Again. I'm sure all dads feel useless, and I'll try to make up lost time by being the one to teach Ryan how to make toast and parallel park, but for now, I hate that I can't be the one, during the worst times, to make Ryan stop crying. I went to bed at 1:30 a couple nights ago, and Ainsley asked me to get up at 4 last night to try to put Ryan to sleep, and it took three attempts, three trips up and down the stairs, rocking him back and forth in my arms. I went back to bed around 5:45, as it was getting light out.

We were going to meet up with a friend of Ainsley's for her bi-weekly stroll through Potomac Mills Mall, but we late getting Ryan up from a nap, so she asked me to call her friend to let her know we were running behind. She obviously has caller ID.
"Hi Ainsley."
"no..."
"Oh, hi."
"I'M HERE SOMETIMES."
"Okay, okay. What's up?"
"Well, we have a child."
"I know! We have two."
"....why?"

I'd mentioned during the birth that I was surprised that anyone would ever go through this more than once. I'm still on that. Sure, teething is a phase, but then he's walking and then there's potty training and then there's the terrible thirteens and then...
I understand how wonderful it is to have a child. Every day is absolutely fantastic, watching him learn, interact, grow, smile, be. It is the best feeling in the world to have brought this person to life, to know he is part of the my wife and me, a creation, a responsibility. But I enjoy having a home. It doesn't mean I want another one. People have more than one child to ensure singletons aren't bored. or something.
Give 'em a hobby. Get 'em a dog. There are dozens always available in Dayton. But phoo. lardy. chiminy. Until I win the lottery and can quit my job and be home 24/7 and take estrogen hormone lactation tablets and invent legal infant oral narcotics until all baby teeth are in... I just can't see us doing this again.

But that's just me. I also never thought I'd be rude enough to ask someone to marry me, until I stopped to consider that maybe someone else wanted me to. So I'll go wake up Ainsley and see what she wants to do.

Unskilled Professional

Okay, so as a Father From Faraway, I'm given leeway to not know what all's in the diaper bag, and it'll take me some time to learn where everything is in this house, and how to fold a "onesie." But it's still frustrating to be a trained military strategic leader who knows the seventeen subsystems of the Milstar communications satellite, knows how to eat dandelions and ants to survive in the wild, knows more Top Secret alien shit than you can shake a STIC at, and still, at age 35, if given the manual, a year of guidance, a video, a room full of monkeys to show me how, and a life-threatening ultimatum, I could still not set up a baby gate across a corridor.

I have lost more flesh in my hand, made more noise, and invented more curse words, trying to stretch a simple wooden sliding rail-and-fence combination to fit a standard hallway gap, that my wife now knows that after about the eleven-minute mark of trying, it's best that I be given another responsibility, before the property starts to lose value.

Cross Into the Blue

I am now officially qualified to drive a Department of Defense 1.5-ton 45-passenger bus.

And my father-in-law, the retired Army Colonel who killed people in Vietnam with a number 2 pencil, finds it hilarious that I was sent to the Air Force Institute of Technology and will leave with both a Master's Degree and a USAF Motor Vehicle Operator Identification Card.

This was all my choice, of course, as I needed to get it done in order to take fellow students down to the Perryville Battlefield next term. (The Transportation Squadron would give me a bus, but not a driver.) So I got up at 7 on Saturday to hang out with a Staff Sergeant for an hour while he showed me how to open the hood, work the lights, and spin a reverse 180 on ice.

No, no.

The only odd thing is that the bus doesn't have a "Park"; you put it in "Neutral" and then push in the emergency brake. The sergeant said most people's first mistake is to think it's in "Park" when it's actually in "Reverse." Which would be "Bad."
I drove around the outskirts of the base for a few minutes while I got the hang of it, then back onto the more populated areas, and then, feeling confident, even drove off-base around town. The trainer said I was a "natural" and I was glad I didn't hit any curbs or cars. He asked if I was using my mirrors much, and I told him I honestly wasn't. I felt like I was the biggest thing on the road, and if people couldn't see me, that was their problem.

We'll see how it goes April 7th, when I get out of a familiar neighborhood, and I'm responsible for 30 souls snoozing behind me.

Adopt Me, I'm Irish

So the slogan outside the Humane Society goes.
At least they're not painting all the kitties green.
And it beats last month's indoor decoration theme, "Mardi Growl."
I hadn't been in a while thanks to my back and bad weather, but there was a full house today, unfortunately. The good news is that Samuel was adopted, and so, FINALLY, was Asia (I'm guessing it was the heat of the moment.)
Chudo is still there, though I heard a couple talking about him today. And Syllus is still around, still slapping his door from the outside, the dolt, and he's not my favorite anyway, what with biting me on the face and all.

Pick an eye color and stick with it.
He didn't break the skin, but it stung. It was more of a get-me-off-the-leash-I-wanna-play 'nip' than a bite, but I let the staff know anyway; he had already been returned for being too rough with a toddler.
But I had a grand time with Cookie, a beagle with a Civil War-era moustache, Amber, another beagle-esque cutie who couldn't work her door once she got outside, Truman a snausage of a basset/beagle mix, Wendy, a much calmer and girler version of Syllus, Billie, who's getting featured on T.V. tomorrow so should get snatched up, and Louie, a great fuzzy white husky-mixed-with-a-Hostess-SnoBall(TM) that doesn't have a picture up, but he kind of reminded me of

R.I.P.ley

When Bailey lived in North Dakota, and I had to live underneath it for 24-hour ICBM-minding satellite-TV-watching shifts, she would stay with her good boxer friends Patton & Ripley. It was a strange relationship, that threesome. Apparently, they hated most other dogs, but got along swimmingly with Bailey. And it was great not having to worry about her while I was on alert -- I could just drop her off on my way in in the morning, and she would let herself upstairs and curl up next to the sleeping dogs -- sometimes the owners would wake up and see her there, without having heard me open the door.
Their owner happened to be assigned to AFIT, too, so I got to petsit them a couple times. Unfortunately, Patton passed away late last year, and Ripley had to be put down yesterday.

You would think the Air Force would have come up with some kind of technology by now to make dogs live as long as elephants.

I'll look into it.

As it is, I'm completely done with one class -- turned in an 18-page paper on satellite communications and crosslink technology, and after a LONG deliberation (.8 sec) decided not to take the optional Final Exam (since I got a 96 on the mid-term). One class tomorrow, then I'm done with that one (no Final); then a Final exam next Wednesday in MacroEconomics, which will be a bear, but I have four days to study for it...

Then I get to see my family and break the news to Bailey.

Egg in Asia

It's bad enough that I have throb-osis of the dorsal fin, but now I'm coming down with a sore throat and cough. Felt like dog meat last night. Headache. Chills. Bored.
That last one is probably not health related.
But I did get some photos in the mail that I'd ordered off my Kodak gallery website, which were 96% Ryan-related, so that cheered me up a skosh of a tad. I just need to go buy some more refrigerator magnets so I can display them.
I thought I had chicken noodle soup at home, but I only had chicken soup with rice which every one knows is remedy for when you have the green apple splatters, not a cold, so I had ravioli instead. Hence, I feel better, not.
I will heavily medicate myself so I am healthy for Spring Break, countdown T minus 8 days, 4 hours.

Missim

There are way too many babies on television these days.

Aren't there child labor laws or something?



*sniff*

The Best Medicine

I brought nothing with me to read during today's traction session, since I figured I'd need both fists to stifle my screams.
As it turns out, the therapy was just very uncomfortable, not painful. Though just as bad as always. But lying there, knees bent, staring up at the ceiling, robot yanking my lower hips away from my spine, my mind wandered, and for no particular reason I began to reflect on the Pittsburgh Steelers' slogan for their recent playoff run, and the players' hope to garner that elusive fifth Super Bowl ring:

It occurred to me that it would not surprise me if the Cincinnati Bengals' vainglorious Wide Receiver came up with his own slogan for the upcoming football season as the Bengals begin another campaign for their first victory in a Super Bowl:


"ONE FOR THE JOHNSON!"

ofer+twa

I have been a Major in the U.S. Air Force for three years today.

In that time I have been in three states, held three jobs, and supervised exactly three people, and not all at once.

And completed thirty-six credit hours in two different master's degree programs, plus a correspondence course.

June 1st will be 14 years since commissioning.

wow.