cindy's world

It’s the weekend! Finally! This has been an exhausting week work-wise, health-wise and personal-life-wise. I kinda absorbed Mr. W’s stress earlier in the week so since he didn’t sleep more than a few hours the first few nights, I didn’t, either. The coughing keeps me up anyway. I was so mentally exhausted at work yesterday that I forgot to charge two trial attorneys trial fees, but luckily they were really good about it when I called them and told them they each owe me $450 big ones.

Aside from the Tuesday I worked through lunch and couldn’t hit the gym, I’ve been hitting it hard at the gym. The strength-training program I’ve put myself and my gym trainee on is working. She’s moving some major weights around, and on body parts like hamstrings, she’s stronger than me. The new thing in this routine that I’m not used to doing is bench pressing, cuz to me it’s a stupid guy competitive thing. I just do my other chest machines. But now that we are benching, I find myself trying to remember what an impressive barbell weight is. If a guy can bench his own body weight, that’s a big deal, is that it? I don’t think there’s any way I can bench MY body weight, but I do barbell reps of 10 with 60-70 lbs. When guys say they bench their own body weight, that doesn’t mean they do reps with it, right? They just have to push it up once?

4 more days until I’m not “allowed” to work out anymore for 6 weeks. You know something REALLY concerns you when you dream about it. Earlier in the week, I had a nightmare that some doctors looked at a chest x-ray/MRI of mine and saw a strange spot in my left shoulder area, and then told me that it was a problem that they’ll have to fix, but that doing so would add another 12 weeks of no-exercise recuperation time. I panicked in that dream. I wasn’t even concerned about what could be wrong with me or about the procedure, I was scared to get fat.

Just thinking about toting around excessive fat makes me sad and tired. I want to go home and sleep. But Mr. W’s parents drove down from Vegas today to see us so I need to go over tonite. They’re so nice — they’re visiting because we’re unable to join them for the big family Christmas this year. Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year, which means we’re working the day before and the rest of the week after. Same with New Year’s. Suck-olas, man.

Via email this morning:

Mom: “Are you still coughing? It’s been very cold at night lately, and Saturday night will be worse, you guys want to come over for Hot Pot Sat. night? We can also get crabs too.”
Me: “I’m coughing my lungs out. I think I figured out last nite that the nite coughs are because of cold air hitting my throat. Every time I cough, Dodo comes running in meowing to ask if I’m okay.
[Mr. W]’s parents called last nite and said they are going to drive down from Vegas either today or tomorrow to visit because we wouldn’t be seeing them for Christmas. [Mr. W] thought it’d be a good time to have the families meet, what do you think?”
Mom: “Dodo is so cute. Yeah, I think we should have American food at restaurant, right?”
Me: “Actually, when I cough, Dodo might be running in to tell me to shut up, I don’t know. I just like to think that he’s asking if I’m okay.
I think [Mr. W]’s parents aren’t very experimental with food, so it should probably be an American restaurant. Like [Mr. W]’s kids, they THINK they eat Chinese food, but I tell them what they’re eating is not really Chinese food. haha.”
Mom: “Wear scarf or something to keep your neck (throat)warm, that helps.”

I had a whole post typed up yesterday updating all sorts of things but as soon as I clicked “publish,” the internet connection farted and I lost everything. Drat. I hate when that happens. But since all things are supposed to happen for a reason, I was probably not supposed to write some of the stuff I wrote, so I’ll do a bland version of that post today.

Yesterday, I missed the noon workout because the judge worked us into lunch in an attempt to give the jurors maximum time to deliberate when they got back from lunch at 1:30p. It did work, as disgruntled as I was, because they came back with 4 guilty verdicts at 3:40: attempted murder (for stabbing his then-wife between 14 and 19 times); assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury; aggravated mayhem; unlawful taking of a vehicle. Yes, the first three counts all come out of the one occasion of stabbing, so for those of you thinking about violently marring someone with a sharp pointy object, consider all the years in state prison that would come out of the many connected charges.

I was unhappy to have only a 15- minute lunch yesterday, because I only have a few workout days left until the surgery next Wednesday. The medical professionals involved in my procedure advised me to refrain from strenuous exercise and lifting heavy weights for 4-6 weeks after the procedure, “heavy” defined as more than 20 pounds. Nothing I do at the gym is under 20 pounds. Since I gained 5 pounds after my 2 weeks of not working out due to my recent sickness, 6 weeks would be a 15-pound gain, which experience has taught me takes a year or more (or 1 month with severe emotional trauma) to lose. I don’t have a year before I have to look pretty in white. Let’s face it — white is not flattering on most people, and I’m betting I’m in the category of “most people.”

Speaking of the wedding, I had a 5pm teleconference call with my bridesmaids yesterday. We are so advanced. We all called into college roommie Diana’s northern California office with our little codes and had our first meeting of minds and voices. I am delighted that everyone seemed to get along so well and we got some important decisions out of the way. I love my girls, they are smart, professional, efficient, and beautiful. I should do a post on them soon.

My mom has been really down recently because of the liver cirrhosis diagnosis (which I still insist is preliminary but which she still insists is a death sentence), and she and my dad appear to have the exact same sickness I have. We all got sick at the same time with similar symptoms, and like me, they kept getting re-sick instead of feeling better. I’m re-coughing, too. My mom took the long recovery as a sign that her immune system is shot, something else she added to her growing list of signs that she’s headed to an early grave, but I pointed out that I’m still sick, too, and I’m darn healthy otherwise. She wouldn’t let us visit for the past 2-3 weekends in a row as she and my dad are “hiding out” from any and all visitors in fear that they’d infect others with their apparent plague. Every time I’ve called her and asked if she was feeling better, the response was a very moody, “No.” She started talking last week about how she was going to die before she saw me off on my wedding since we hadn’t set a date yet. So I pulled out the big guns.
“You can’t die yet. [Mr. W] said he wants you and dad to teach the baby Chinese and that way he could learn some Chinese on the side, too.”
“What baby?”
“Oh, he wants to have a baby.”
“YOUR baby? OH!” After that it was all sunshine and rainbows and she sounded exponentially better.

Some days after that conversation, my mom lapsed into depression again over her health. In an email conversation in which she offered to help out financially with the wedding, I told her it was unnecessary as she’d paid for so much for me already in raising me and beyond. She wrote back that she wants to help pay for the wedding because it’d likely be the last thing she could help me with, what with her early grave thing and all. I wrote back, “The wedding would NOT be the last thing you’d have the opportunity to help me out with, because I’m not going to be paying you for babysitting.” She wrote back something changing the subject, so I took that as a good sign. Yesterday, walking on the Japanese Garden grounds, she made a comment about the wedding date and said something about how if she’s going to babysit, I need to get married sooner rather than later so she’d have the strength to pick up and tug around a kid. It was great to see her and my dad in such high spirits yesterday when we finally dropped them off at home at night.

I hope I’m not just in denial about her health concerns. Ideally, it’d be just an early diagnosis of liver problems that modern medicine can halt and she’d live out the rest of her natural life just fine. But I understand that to her, having watched her father waste away and die from the same disease, it’s one of the scariest things she could be diagnosed with, especially as a non-smoker and non-drinker who has no lifestyle vices to change to help her situation. She’s also concerned about my dad’s little health issues here and there (not little to her, of course), deteriorations and ailments that come with age.

Which is why I did not tell her about my surgical procedure on the 19th this month, next Wednesday. I found out that my judge is taking vacation that Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so since our courtroom will be “dark” those days, my supervisor offered me all those days off to recover from surgery. I hope to be “recovering” at Disneyland. Hey, when life gives you hot water, make tea and heal yourself, right?

Email convo between me and Moms this morning:

Mom: “Maybe was the tea, I couldn’t sleep all night!”
Me: “I couldn’t sleep last night either, but that was because I was coughing.
If I don’t get better by August, I’ll sound like this:
Judge: Do you, Cindy, take [Mr. W] to be your lawful wedded –
Cindy: *COUGH COUGH!!*
Judge: Uh, to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold –
Cindy: *COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH HACK HAAAACK!!*
Judge: Is that a no?”

Returning from lunch gymming, waiting for the elevator to pick me up earlier, I ran into my head supervisor.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked me.
“Okay. Just some residual coughing, but that’s normal –”
He looked at me meaningfully. “No. I mean the OTHER thing.”
“Oh,” I said, somewhat embarrassed, because he’d been on me to schedule my LEEP procedure last month and I’d kinda brushed him off saying that my doctor said as long as it’s done within 6 months, I’m fine. And I still hadn’t scheduled it. The elevator doors opened behind me and I backed into the elevator gratefully, shrugging at my supervisor sheepishly and saying I’ll get on it.
He firmly placed his forearm against the side of the elevator door, keeping it from closing, eyeing me very deliberately. “Cindy. This is serious. Get on it.”

When I walked into my courtroom, the phone was ringing. As I still had a few minutes until lunch was over, I didn’t pick it up. Then my cell phone rang and caller ID showed an unfamiliar number. I picked that up.
“Hello, this is Cathy from Dr. [K]’s office. We did a biopsy on you a couple of months ago with instructions for you to schedule a LEEP procedure, and don’t see on here that you have an appointment set up yet. Can we schedule that right now?”
*sigh*

So the LEEP procedure, based on doctor availability and my current menstrual cycle, will take place December 19. I filled out the time-off request form and walked it downstairs to my supervisor. After I told him about the call, he said, “You know what my nickname was as a kid, right? I’m not kidding — my friends and my dad called me this until I was a teenager.”
“No, what is it?”
“God.”
*sigh*

The last few posts of my blog have sounded like pages from a big grievance log you’d find in the property of some bitter geriatric patient in a hospice, so I figured I wouldn’t post an update on my eye issue. I was surprised to see comments on the last post with actual concern for my health, so now I decided to talk about my condition again. If you don’t want to read about that, you don’t have to; it’s a free blog.

Yesterday, I went into my primary care physician’s office again (can’t see an opthalmologist unless he writes me a referral), and they checked my vision (fine) and my cornea (fine). By the way, they check the cornea by dropping in a flourescent dye and then looking for differently-colored areas in the eye with a special blacklight. If I ever had doubt that my eyes were connected to my sinuses, I don’t anymore, as my right nostril was leaking bright yellow highlighter fluid for the next half hour. The doctor prescribed an eyedrop called “Sulfacetamide Sodium” to instill 4 times a day in the affected eye. He said it was either a bacterial or a viral infection in the eye, more likely bacterial, and probably secondary to the sinus/upper respiratory infection I have going on which was secondary to the original flu bug.

I put the drops in the right eye, and then by yesterday evening, the same beginning stages of the infection started occurring in my left eye. Great. I have no immune system. I totally thought the crazy fever I endured last Thursday night would’ve made me completely sterile, but apparently, it just somehow attracted more bacteria do to the monster mash in my body. I asked myself in passing, “Why am I so immuno-compromised?” and it briefly occurred to me that maybe I have HIV or something. But no way, I had a full physical with all standard STD testing when I had my pap smear a few months ago and they would’ve told me something like THAT.

So I was looking forward to feeling better for Thanksgiving, taking my oral antibiotics, dropping the stinging eye crap in both eyes, listening to my doctor’s advice to not wear contacts or eye makeup for week or so. I look and sound and feel like shit, but it’s temporary, right?

And then my ex, the optometrist, called. Basically, he said, the eye drops are some weak antiquated antibiotic that isn’t going to work. The bacterial resistence to it is very high and if I don’t nip this eye thing, it’ll spread to my other eye (which it has) and then the bacteria, which has already claimed my lungs and sinuses and eyes, will next claim my inner ears in an inner ear infection. My inner ears HAVE been itching and sometimes a hard cough makes it feel like I’m scratching them. I wanted to cry right there which, as the ex explained, is all that the eyedrops I have in hand do anyway — sting you and make you cry so that your tears flush out the bad stuff. So now he’s going to fax over a prescription for an eyedrop called Zymar and instructed me to take it to my regular health care’s walk-in hours and ask them to rewrite the prescription on their end so that my insurance would cover it.

*hacking coughing fit*

I haven’t made it back to work yet. Watching TV and doing laundry last nite, my right eye kept getting blurry. I finally went to examine it in the bathroom mirror, and I had sticky little clumps floating around my contacts. After removing the whitish clumps, they kept returning and increasing. Great, if I’m getting an eye infection, maybe the Amoxicillin would take care of it. So I popped two and went to bed. This morning, the right eye was sealed shut by the clumps. When I finally managed to open the eye, my eyelids remained red and swollen, and still is. So of course I freaked and called my doctor for another appointment later today at 2pm. I can just see his face. “You’re back already? What now?” Dude, look at my EYE!

Is this gonna ruin Thanksgiving?

Right upon waking this morning, I had a hacking coughing fit. My mouth tasted really funny in a gross way as soon as I hacked, so on the next coughing fit I spat into the sink and blew my nose and examined the tissue. I was coughing up semi-coagulated greenish mucus globules. I hadn’t decided whether to take the day off work yet, so I figured I’d call my supervisors and see what the chances are of getting a relief clerk to babysit my jury today, and if they told me there was no coverage and that I couldn’t take the day off, then I’d just go in. My tonsils are still swollen and painful and now I was coughing and my lungs were covulsing, but my body isn’t in pain anymore like it used to be. Having spent 45 minutes unsuccessful in reaching any of my 3 supervisors, I called my court reporter to tell her I may not be coming in, and she said I sounded horrible and asked about my symptoms. Upon hearing about the green phlegm, she said that it’s likely to be an infection and that I need to see a doctor. Eventually I reached a supervisor who freaked out when I told him I had a fever for a week and an extreme fever on Thursday and he told me I had, HAD to stay home and see the doctor. The earliest same-day appointment I could get was 5pm, so I went in.

BTW, my pretty purple Sesame Street digital thermometer won’t work, and I’ve only used it once, when I bought it for my ailment in February. I think it’s out of battery, but I can’t tell how to open up the little thing and replace the battery. What a waste of money.

So it turns out I STILL have a low-grade fever (100 deg) but it’s so low compared to what it had been that I can’t even feel it. The doctor said what I had started off as a viral infection, like a cold, but that it’s now likely to have evolved into a secondary bacterial sinus infection, but it’s a bit too early for him to tell for sure whether it’s a sinus infection or whether it’s me overcoming the initial viral attack. To be on the safe side, he prescribed me a 10-day dose of antibiotics, Amoxicillin, anyway. I asked if it would be okay if I waited a few days to take the pills cuz if I just get better, then it’s just the virus, but if I get worse, then I guess I have a sinus infection. He said that’d be okay, but he didn’t see the harm in taking the antibiotics anyway.

The harm, which I didn’t tell him, is that the last time I took Amoxicillin, it didn’t cure what it was supposed to, but killed all the “good” bacteria in my body and I ended up with a yeast infection. EW. So I had to use over-the-counter yeast infection medication on top of another drug to take care of the initial infection. And then to rebalance my body, I took a bunch of probiotic supplements to put the necessary symbiotic bacterias back in my intestines and other areas. I’d just like to avoid all that.

After some won ton soup and moo shoo gai pan and rice I got at a local Chinese food restaurant on my way home from the doctor, I sat and stared at the Amoxicillin bottle, poured out all the pills, looked at them, put them back in, read the enclosed information sheet, opened the bottle, closed it again, and decided to hold off. Once I start, I’d have to take 40 pills, 4 a day. I don’t want to be popping pills all during Thanksgiving break. Hopefully it’s just a virus, even tho the secondary infection thing happened to me February, too.

P.S. My 1st fortune cookie said: “A romantic interlude is in your future.” Pssh, doubtful.
P.P.S. My 2nd fortune cookie said: “Judge one not by his charms, but by his qualities.” I’ll keep that in mind if I come across a charming man I find myself judging.

I’ve been up since like 3am watching “A Shot at Love” on MTV. I woke up to the show on the living room couch and the station kept playing back-to-back episodes of the reality series, and its current drama at the Tila Tequila mansion. For those of you who’ve never heard of the show, Tila Tequila is a Vietnamese model/actress (?) who just came out of the closet as bisexual and is doing a “The Bachelorette”-style elimination dating series but with equal numbers of male and female suitors. Yeah, it surprised me, too, that I’m watching it. Since I’d first found the show some weeks ago, I have become of aware of some friends’ serious dislike for Tila Tequila and/or the show, and now that I’m seeing it again, I find myself thinking, “They’re right, her face isn’t all that attractive.” But if I had her figure, minus the fake boobs, I’d be showing it off, too. Plus she has a good hair stylist. And I’m in awe at her mansion. The show presents it as HER house, and if she really does own it, whoa…

I think the reason I kept watching the series this morning, though, is because 1) there are suitors who so get on my nerves that I’m rooting AGAINST them and I keep waiting to watch them get voted off; and 2) my sleeping pattern is so jacked up right now that I wake up every morning between 2am and 4am and remain wide awake thereafter, hacking and coughing and trying to swallow past the painful swollen tonsils in my throat.

This catfight is the end of the last episode on this morning. BTW, I rooted against Vanessa (the curly-haired brunette in the polka dots).

Last nite, I put on a thick bathrobe, covered myself with a blanket, and watched “2 and a Half Men” on TV while eating some of my mom’s homemade wontons that I boiled in chicken broth. My face and body were hot, but my limbs were freezing. Shortly thereafter I fell asleep on the couch. The sleep was fitful and for some hours I was very aware and uncomfortable at just how high my body was burning. I don’t think I’ve ever felt my temperature go up that high before, and I briefly thought about going upstairs to get my thermometer but couldn’t regain full consciousness/control to do so. It seemed I could feel every joint and organ, and they were not happy. It also felt like my tonsils had swollen into golfballs and were hanging down pulling my throat closed. It was almost impossible to swallow. For some hours, I seemed to be vaguely aware of a man with me, and he had some kind of problem, some source of stress, I THINK it was finance or real-estate related, something about his kids, too, but I couldn’t get it together enough to help him even though I wanted to and could feel his stress. Then around 2am, my body temperature dropped closer to normal and I went upstairs to bed.

After dreams of being unable to make it to work, I awoke with just a low-grade fever (which I still have right now). I’m warm, but it wasn’t like hellfire-bbq-warm like last nite. I may take a half-day today after my jurors start deliberating.