Function Words

Now I can picture little MV.
Aren't ultrasounds wonderful?

After many months of unwanted sales calls, I've finally given in and put my phone information on the national "do not call" list. I have always been skeptical about the effectiveness of being on this list. I don't think it excludes the kinds of calls I hate most: solicitations for money and political ads.
I wonder if I will even notice a difference?

A geeky romp.
The people who were finalists in the contest are astounding.
I guess practice makes perfect but it is very hard to imagine being able to do the NY Times crossword in 3 minutes.
This kind of expertise is just as hard won as any sport.
I especially liked seeing Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton, The Indigo Girls doing crossword puzzles.
It's a pleasure to see prominent people associate themselves with "smart" activities.

I've been pondering the use of a- as a prefix in English words like: akin, alight, aloud, abloom, alone, ablaze

a- can be an adjective-making prefix. But it also makes adverbs and verbs. At first I thought it was mainly a relic from the inflection system of Old English. Now I can see that the story if far more complicated than the simple hypothesis I started with.

In other word news: "floccinaucinihilipilification" is a pointless word.

I've just reviewed my 2007 posts. I started off the year with the best of intentions about daily blogging.
It's obvious that like other new year's resolutions, daily blogging is very hard to maintain.
I will try to do better!

This clever artist arranges books artistically and then photographs the results. Her name is Nina Katchadourian. Here is her URL: www.ninakatchadourian.com/languagetranslation/sortedbooks.php
I think this one is brilliant.

The most recent documentary in the -Up series is fascinating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Up!
The children we first met when they were 7 years old in 1964 are now 49. (It was actually filmed in 2005 so they are really 51 at this moment.)
One thing that I liked was the astonishing difference in production values that can be seen when they run the original opening and credits and also when they show fragments of the 1964 film to introduce the people.
In 1964 the editing and music were designed to add false drama. There was something ominous about the theme song.
The voice over comments which appeared to be crafted to be neutral were very loaded with value judgments about class, divorce, neighborhoods. Now it comes across as a phoney kind of objectivity that was not objective in the least.

Just a few observations about the "kids".
I was surprised at the number of divorces. I guess I shouldn't have been considering my own life experience.

I recognized the houses in the "Tony" segment as 'looking like Spain' even before he said that they had built a holiday home there. What is most interesting to me is how it fits with the stereotype about the English vacationing in southern Europe to escape the English weather and then eventually recreating exactly the same English community rather than blending into the local community. It is easy to imagine that this was how colonization occurred in the 18th-19th centuries (although it would have been with severe hardship rather than as a vacation home.)

I wonder how the every-seven-year-filming schedule has influenced the lives of the people who were filmed. Did they strive to succeed in different ways because they knew they would have to explain themselves on camera?

It is also great to see the physical transformations of everyone. You can't see the child in all of the adults. Although sometimes you can see the 'child" in some of their offspring.

I was surprised at how few of them and/or their children had gone on to higher education.
I was also surprised at how many of them already had grandchildren when they were 49.

By and large I was especially struck by how happy everyone seemed to be at 49 even if they had be obviously very unhappy in previous segments.

I think this is a great series.

The member services person seemed to get things moving but I think it is still a ruse.
The gate-keeping at Kaiser is exhausting to deal with. Somehow I start thinking that I don't have a right to prompt service.
This is especially pernicious because it is a manipulation of my mental health at a time when my physical health is compromised meaning I have less will to fight.
Natually, the wost symptoms always come during the middle of the night. On Monday night at 12:23 I woke with intense burning pain in my back. No change in position made it better. I finally got up and took some Tylenol 3. Eventually I went back to sleep, probably when the drug kicked in. In the morning, oddly enough, I was pain free!

The member services person talked with sechduling. She learned that I am on the "cancellation" list. If someone cancels their surgery I will be called. This is VERY UNLIKELY. She was unable to tell me if I was on the August list.
She said another option for me is to go to a different Kaiser facility that doesn't have such an impacted schedule.
I was so grateful for her help. I thanked her profusely. As it turned out she didn't do much. I called the other facility. They said that I couldn't go there without a referral from my other doctor. I still have a bunch of legwork to do. Kaiser makes it so difficult!

I saw the surgeon on June 7. He said that it did look like I need the surgery. He said to get in touch with the surgery scheduling person. This is where my misunderstanding began. I thought he was telling me that he would be able to fit me in quickly. What he was really saying was that the scheduling person is responsible for OR availability and that since my surgery is elective the best I can hope for is to move farther up the priority list if an operating room happens to come available at the last minute. Otherwise the earliest elective date he has is August.
Meanwhile today I saw my primary care doctor. She agreed that a cholecystectomy is probably warranted too but that she can only make notes to that effect in my record. I asked her about how I might be able to move higher on the priority list. She said short of an ER visit the best thing to do is to get in touch with the scheduling person again and ask for "next available" rather that a specific surgeon. She also gave me a prescription for tylenol + codeine for the pain.

I called the scheduling woman. She is a very kind person but obviously she has different priorities that I have. She transferred me back to the surgeon's nurse to discuss the "next available" scenario. Later today the surgeon called me back and explained what I described above. I asked him directly what I can do to get a higher priority.
He said: 1. call scheduling again and ask for it. He said it would be a request for a second opinion to get an alternate surgeon.
2. call "member services" and complain about the delay (he said this does not reflect badly on him--he recommended that I do it)
3. go to the ER if I have an elevated temperature and vomiting.

I asked exactly what constitutes an emergency condition. He said fever, vomiting and elevated white count.

After that conversation I left a longish message with the scheduler. I also asked her to put me on the August list but please, please, please can I have something done sooner? It hurts a LOT. It's hard to imagine having this pain for 2 more months. She hasn't gotten back to me yet. I will try to talk to her tomorrow morning and then call member services.

I also thought of another question--just how risky would it be to go on a trip to Alaska in this condition? What if I have an attack? Can I go to an Alaska hospital and have the surgery. Will Kaiser pay for it?

This whole thing is pretty aggravating! I am not used to chronic pain. Even if it is not constantly horrible it is still hard to live with.

Well Wednesday I had a recurrence of abdominal pain that was pretty much the same as I experienced about a month ago.
It was a fairly sharp, localized pain in the vicinity of my stomach at the edge of my right ribcage. After a few hours of the sharp pain the discomfort seemed to spread throughout my belly, working its way downward. Although this second time the localized pain did tend to stay in one place longer. I also had chills and a brief vomiting session. I was still feeling pretty bad on Thursday morning but I recovered mostly by the afternoon. On Friday, my whole abdomen felt like it was bruised.
On both occasions it happened after I had consumed a large quantity of milk so I figured that it was probably a developing lactose intolerance. Both my daughter and my brother have L-I which became more significant for them over time, so it wouldn't be unexpected.

Friday and Saturday things were pretty much back to normal although my tummy still didn't feel "right". I figured I would see the doctor next week if it was still bothering me. Then Saturday afternoon I noticed that I had the rash that I get when my immune system is active. This scared me. I started to wonder if there was a connection between the abdominal pain and the immune response. I decided to call the Kaiser advice nurse just to be sure.

I was surprised when the nurse said that I should go to the ER to be checked out within the next 2 hours. He even said that if I didn't have someone to drive me I should consider an ambulance! Talk about overreacting! I kept saying that I was feeling so much better today than I had on Wednesday, my main concern was the rash.

We drove to the ER, arriving about 4:00pm. They are very slow there. I waited over an hour before the triage nurse interviewed me. Then it was another hour before they called me to be examined. It was a good thing we brought thick books to read! When I was finally put in the exam room I waited yet another hour before the doctor came. I guess I must have been low on the triage priority list.

When the doctor did see me he took my symptoms very seriously but it was clear that he did not think it was lactose intolerance. He did suggest that I try Lactase but he wanted to do all the blood tests to rule out gallstones. They drew 5 vials of blood and inserted the valve in my arm. He said it was "just in case they needed more blood after they got the results from the first 5."
Then I had to wait for the results to come back from the lab. Obviously the doctor thought it was possible that I might need to be admitted! It was 10:00 pm before the lab results came back. When he saw them he said that he wanted to have me get an ultrasound of my gallbladder. By now it was pretty clear that that was his primary diagnosis.
The ER nurse scheduled me for the ultrasound at 8:00 am on Sunday morning. The nurse also said that the results of the ultrasound would be sent to my primary doctor and that I should make an appointment with her to have them read ASAP.

We finally got home at midnight. I woke up early this morning to go back for the ultrasound. Unfortunately in the ER they hadn't told me that I had to fast. I ate breakfast before I left so when I got there they sent me home again to wait for 8 hours.

I finally had the ultrasound at 2:00 today. The procedure was quite interesting. Not only did he look at my gallbladder. He also looked at my pancreas, kidneys, liver, and aorta. He said they can see quite a lot including cholesterol buildup in the aorta if it is present. He must have seen something because he asked if this was the second time I had been there. I suspect that it looked bad enough that he would have expected it to bother me before now. Because he is a technician he would not tell me much about what he saw and he was careful not to give me a diagnosis. He said that I had to get the official diagnosis from my doctor. He did say that I had one big gallstone though. Now I have to get my mind around the idea of having gallbladder surgery!

All of that waiting around in the ER was rather interesting. Although I couldn't see what was going on I did overhear some very interesting stories. There was an 11 year old girl who had been sexually assaulted--they had to call the police to interview her and her mom; someone collapsed in the parking lot and had to be retrieved on a stretcher; one patient came in not breathing--this one got everyone's attention. Suddenly the hallways were empty because most of the staff were working on him. There was one person who had multiple lacerations from a knife fight; the were several wailing babies, one with a broken arm--I felt so sorry for them. Their cries were so heart-rending. All in all a fascinating peek into real ER operations while I was a patient. At the time I didn't think that I was very sick so I almost felt out of place but now that I have had the ultrasound I am taking it all much more seriously too. I'm definitely glad that I went in.

The good news is that most gallbladder surgery these days is laproscopic rather than major surgery. From what I have read it usually involves an overnight hospital stay and the recovery is in as few as 2-3 days. That would certainly be nice. For once I seem to have lucked out as far as my schedule is concerned. I do not have any immediate obligations. I am finished with my teaching for the semester and our vacation is not until July. I was just thinking about how much worse it would be if I had a gall bladder attack while we hiking somewhere. It is certainly much better than when I dislocated my should in the Galapagos Islands. I guess if I must have surgery now is a good a time as ever.
I just have to keep telling myself that!