Try This At Home

I saw something on the news last week or so about how bottled water is bad for the environment. Not because they're sucking up all the water out of the clear mountain springs, but because all the plastic bottles are cluttering up the landfills. Plus, how environmentally friendly is it to bottle water in France and ship it all the way to California? Like French water is somehow molecularly better than American water. It's all H2O people. The same stuff that comes out of your ordinary tap. Unless you live in some hovel with nasty rusty pipes that shoot out chunky brown water. I wouldn't want to drink that. But still, water is water.

So anyway, rant over. We have homemade bottled water. We just take empty soda bottles and fill them with water and stick them in the freezer. Then when we go somewhere we have ice cold water. You have to be careful when you fill them up that you don't fill them too far because water expands when it freezes. If you fill them too far they might explode. But there's something weird about freezing bottles of water. I don't know if it's something about the water here at Casa Del Cud, so I'd like to get somebody that doesn't live here to try freezing their water like that. I'm looking at you, Mom.

The weird thing is if you get impatient and take a drink when there's only about a tablespoon of ice thawed out it tastes salty. If you wait until there's a good few glugs thawed out it tastes fine, but if there's only a tiny bit of water it's salty. I thought I was just going senile, but The Girl backs me up on this. And it's just the first sip. If you drink all the water that's thawed out and then wait a second for more water to thaw the later sip is fine. What the heck?

Potted

Saturday was Harry Potter Day at Casa Del Cud. The Girl and I went to the mall (ugh!) and bought the last book and saw the 5th movie. The movie was good. Of course, they had to cut some things and combine scenes or the movie would have been 15 hours long and who would want to watch that? Some of the changes were improvements, which is different than most movie adaptations of books. Usually I wonder what the fuck were they thinking when they switch things all around.

Like the movie Blood and Chocolate. The book was great. The movie was nothing like the book. They were both about werewolves, and the characters were named the same, but everything else was different. Even the setting was changed from a generic high school in America to a city in Romania or some Godforsaken Slavic type country. The actual movie wasn't that bad, but if they're going to change the plot and the setting they should have the balls to change the character's names and the title of the movie. It was like filming a movie set it in China in 2154 but calling it Gone with the Wind.

I didn't want to write about the book too soon. Didn't want to spoil the ending for anybody. But then it came to me. Who reads this anyway? Does anybody here besides me and The Girl care about Harry Potter? Plus I didn't finish reading the book until yesterday. There is that. The Girl and I were swapping the book back and forth. I was going to let her read it first, but she didn't want to have to wait until I was done reading it to talk about it. So she would read a big chunk, then I would read a big chunk, then we would squeal and chatter like a couple of groupies at a Beetles concert. The Man would like to track down Harry Potter and strangle him with his bare hands.

I don't know if this qualifies as a spoiler, but it ends Happily Ever After. Of course. Like it could end with Voldemort killing Harry. Although The Girl likes watching some shows on BBC and commented on the British having a little more of a black sense of humor. The hero dies a tragic death and everybody has to soldier on. Stiff upper lip and all that rot. But still, if JK Rowling killed Harry she would have to go into the witness relocation program because she would be on intercontinental hit lists.

Pain In The Neck

I finally saw a back doctor. He said I have a slipped disk that's pinching a nerve. Tell me something I didn't know already. He said it would probably get better eventually on it's own, but it might take a year or two. Physical therapy might help, but who knows. Maybe shots in my back would help, but I don't know if they would actually make my back better or just mask the pain. It seems worth a shot. Get it, worth a shot? I'm such a comedian.

The thing he seemed most psyched about was doing a little cutting. He said spine surgery's a good thing. Most people that go through with it notice improvement as soon as they come to. But that's most. You still have to consider surgery in general has a certain degree of risk. Even taking out your wisdom teeth isn't as safe as you think.

What really surprised me was he said if I do go for surgery it would be from the front of my neck, not the back. Most of the muscles in your neck are in the back, so it's easier to just slice through the front and push all the squishy neck pieces out of the way. Then you suck out the gooey disk and pop in an extra piece of bone (He never explained where that's supposed to come from.) to hold the two pieces of vertebra together. Then what do you know, no more pinched nerve.

Kind of creepy if you ask me. I don't know what to think. I know I don't want anybody slicing up my neck like Freddy Kruger, but I'm sick to death of feeling like this. I'm sick of taking all these pills. I'm sick of not being able to work. I'm sick of having to sleep on my back because almost any other position makes me sick to my stomach. I'm going to the shot doctor tomorrow. Maybe that will cure me. Or maybe I'll have to bite the bullet and let the back doctor do his snipping.

Still Waiting

Well, my flipper is still busted. I've been to a couple of physical therapy sessions. The first one was nice, they just had me do a little stretching and put my head in a traction machine. Maybe by the time this is over I'll be taller. The next time I went to therapy they hurt me. I started doing actual exercises, not just stretching. I have a long pink piece of rubber that I was supposed to pull back and forth. Oh, God, that hurt. It made my entire arm ache. My middle finger started hurting again, not just my index finger. I had been down to hardly taking any pain medicine and feeling pretty good, but that set me back.

That was Friday, and the physical therapy place was closed on the weekend so I couldn't ask them anything. I didn't know if I was doing it wrong. Maybe I shouldn't pull as hard on the rubber band, or maybe not as often as they said, or maybe I just shouldn't do any of the pulling exercises. I decided to just forget all about the rubber band for the weekend and talk to the therapist when I went back Monday. My hand still hurt on Monday, so they said to lay off the rubber band and just do the stretching exercises.

They also said it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and make an appointment with a back doctor. So we made an appointment with one, but can't go to him until Monday, so we still don't really know anything. Today my arm feels okay. My hand doesn't hurt, it's just my index finger and middle finger are still numb. Oh, and I can't lean on my left arm, or grip anything with my left hand. I always sucked at chin-ups and push-ups anyway, but now there are everyday little things that are difficult. Like opening a bag of potato chips, or holding a can of soda while I pop the top. Yesterday I went to Burger King and had to struggle to rip open a catchup packet.

And speaking of eating, the Busted Flipper Diet is one of the best I've ever been on. I don't know if there's something connecting my stomach and my left arm, but I've had a hard time eating since this whole mysterious malady erupted into my life. Every now and then I suddenly get hot and nauseous, my mouth waters and my stomach heaves. I feel like I'm just about to vomit, then it just fades away. Plus, my appetite is temperamental. I love chocolate, but yesterday I was going to have a Hostess cupcake for breakfast, but I had to force myself to eat it. And I love chocolate. With a passion. Chocolate cupcakes don't usually have any difficulty joining the acid and enzymes in my belly, but this time I could barely eat any of it. A single cupcake, and I threw about 1/4 away. I had to force myself to take each bite. For lunch yesterday I got a Whopper JR. at Burger King, and couldn't even finish that. A Whopper JR. One of my favorite fast food treats, and I just didn't want it. I've lost about 5 pounds since I got hurt, and I wasn't even trying.

But I'm also starting to freak out a little. The other day I started wondering, even if I get better this time, what about next time. The doctor said the space inside my vertebrate is skinnier than usual, so any deviation from straight can start this whole thing over again. But next time, which part of my spine is going to get all twisty? Maybe I'll wake up and not be able to move my legs some day, or maybe the nerves going to my liver will get pinched and suddenly poof, no liver. Or maybe my lungs will feel the pinch. I get the feeling if I ever get osteoporoses I'll be fucked.

And Now...We Wait

Well, I survived the MRI. It was weird. I heard they were loud, but good lord. The woman who ran it gave me earplugs so I didn't get the full effect, but still. It wasn't just loud, it made weird noises. For a few minutes it sounded like a jackhammer, then it would stop. Then it would start making noises like the emergency broadcasting test on the radio. Over and over. Then quiet. Then back to jackhammers. Then just random synthesizer noises, like that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Then quiet again. Have you ever seen Tron? There was this little floating thing called a Bit that followed Tron around that could only say Yes and No. The MRI did an imitation of Bit saying NONONONONONONONONONO. There were a couple of times I was really afraid I was going to bust out in an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. The poor technician would probably sedate me thinking I was having some kind of acid flashback.

But now we wait. A couple of days ago I told The Man I thought I should just go back to work. I mean, the pain isn't that bad anymore. And is it really that important to feel all 10 fingers? Isn't 8 enough? At least I can sleep at night now. As long as I fluff my pillow just right, and don't lay (or lie? whatever) on my left side very long.

But I'll wait. Next Tuesday we go back to the doctor and get the results. The Man is guessing I'm going to be getting some kind of physical therapy for a couple of weeks. I might be able to go back to work while I'm going to therapy, or maybe I'll have to take another couple of weeks off work. I'll go to all the physical therapy they want. I just don't want anything that involves scalpels or lasers or stitches or anything with anesthesia. Maybe hit the chiropractor, or better yet an acupuncturist.

On the other hand, I didn't get to have a booby test. When I went to the doctor last week the secretary found out I've never had a mamogram. Yes, that's right. Never. Even though I'm 42 and not just my mother but my grandmother and even my freaking mother-in-law has had breast cancer. I like the don't ask don't tell policy, but apparently that only works if you're gay, not avoiding a potentially life-threatening illness. So we scheduled a test for right after the MRI, but while I was trapped in a scary metal tube the booby doctor called The Man on his cell phone and said the booby mashing machine was broken. So woo-whoo, no tender titty tonight.