Category Archives: Health

Back To The Gym

The good thing about having a trainer, especially one that you’ve paid in advance, is that you have motivation and some pressure to return to training if something (i.e., “LIFE”) has derailed your training program.

The bad thing is having pressure to return to training.

Between the holidays, me getting a bad cold, me having kidney stones and then getting a bad infection, and then me taking some industrial strength antibiotics that have serious restrictions on exercise, it had been about six weeks.

Being a responsible, intelligent adult (which, for the record, often SUCKS!) my head was actually looking forward to getting back to the gym. Having slacked off for a month and a half, my body wanted to scream and run the other way.

My trainer is excellent and knew just how far to back off due to the six week layoff, and how far to push to see how much I had slipped. (It’s not that bad.) But by the time the hours was done, I did feel a lot like I had been beaten from head to toe by a squad of goons with baseball bats.

Yeah??!! Whoopie??!!

The part I’m still curious about but probably never going to figure out (I am not a doctor nor do I have a “medical” or “biological” brain – physics I can soak up like a sponge, biology and physiology and the like just bounce harmlessly off of my ears and never reach my brain) is how antibiotics can require such stringent restrictions on exercise due to the fact that they can cause tendon damage, particularly to the Achilles tendon.

Say what?

A drug I’m taking to kill an infection in my urinary tract (caused by kidney stone damage) can cause my Achilles or hamstring to rupture if I exercise while taking it? HOW? What’s the mechanism? How are the two connected?

Some things are just mysteries, I guess.

Meanwhile, how many Extra Strength Excedrin can I take before something “bad” happens? Not asking for a friend…

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Getting Sick Sucks

The title says it all!

I had concerns because today started out as Day Four of a high fever, chills, body aches, and a wicked bad headache, after having the exact same symptoms about ten days ago for three days. I didn’t want to be the guy who has to come into the Emergency Room in a week and have some ER doctor asking me, “Why didn’t you come in a week ago? Are you some kind of an idiot?!”

Those are actually two separate questions, but I can answer the first one. Thus I spent four-plus hours in Urgent Care today.

After various tests and probes, they ruled out COVID (which I told them from the beginning since I wasn’t having any respiratory problems) and the flu (as I told them, since I had no GI or nausea issues). After pretty much ruling out a couple of other likely issues, they determined (as was my non-doctor, medically uneducated guess) that it was an infection. Probably a UTI, which would fit with my medical history of kidney stones, although at least I haven’t had that screaming agony to deal with this time.

So, industrial grade antibiotskis it is for the next ten days and dealing with all of the potential side effects of that.

What I would really, REALLY like is this fever to finally break and vanish and let me get about twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep. But that’s probably not going to happen either.

I’ll take eight hours, and after the last week’s schedule and fevers and chills, be grateful for six.

Any port in a storm.

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Yet Another Chiefs Celebration?

I’m going to assume that it’s bright red like that in celebration of the Chiefs win yesterday and their upcoming Superb Owl appearance with a chance to become the first team to win a “three-peat” in that event.

Right?

No?

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Filed under Critters, Health, KC Chiefs, Photography

Surprise!

Trying to cram about two weeks of work into two days, it’s been a long weekend. And then this starts happening again, pretty much just like last weekend.

Not as high as last weekend, and the worst of the chills have stayed away, but I still would have preferred to te a 24 or 48 hour nap instead of a 24 or 48 hour cram session for our Budget meeting tomorrow.

Lessons learned while training and running marathons in the past have come in handy – sometimes when you really, really want to just sit down and rest and drop out, you need instead to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, regardless of the circumstances.

Or “Set SCE to AUX!” Same.

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Better

It’s been a rough 36 hours with the fever, headache, and body aches that I had yesterday. My thanks to everyone who passed on their well wishes! Tonight I’m feeling better.

It’s nice to get the friendly, green signal from the digital thermometer. Before yesterday I didn’t even know that it would glow yellow when you got up a degree or two, and last night I actually got it into the red a couple of times. But it started coming down before a trip to Urgent Care was needed, and today’s been a journey of recovery.

I didn’t have any respiratory problems at all, so I don’t think it was COVID. There wasn’t any nausea or other GI problems, so I don’t think it was the flu. No sneezing or coughing (had that last week), so probably not a cold. Even though I’m not having any of the agonizing pain that goes along with a kidney stone, I do wonder if it might have been a urinary tract infection or something of that nature.

Whatever! As long as it goes away!

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Fever

If we get to 103º, sell! Or get to Urgent Care.

I think tomorrow will be a work from home day.

Man, even this tiny post is hard. Brain is not braining.

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Merry Christmas 2024

Our Christmas was fine, filled with family and football.

I like this lower POV, wide angle shot a lot, especially with the clouds up above. I may have to play with that before the lights come down in a couple of weeks, making it look even more haunted and ominous.

My beloved Chiefs are now 15-1 with one game left and have locked up the #1 seed in the AFC playoffs starting in January. While nothing is guaranteed, they’re in a strong position to be the first NFL team to win a three-peat, three Super Bowl titles in a row.

Two of our three kids were able to be here along with spouses and in-laws, and we had BBQ shipped in from Joe’s BBQ in Kansas City, as is our wont. A good time was had by all, far too much food was eaten, at least by me. Tomorrow I start working on getting back down to my “fighting weight.” We may have some fights ahead of us in 2025 I’m thinking.

 

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Same, Watch, Same

I know the feeling. Getting older is not for the weak.

I’m fighting the good fight, I hope. The doctor has me on a CPAP machine night due to severe sleep apnea and while it’s telling me that I’m sleeping so much better, I’m not feeling it and sort of hate the CPAP with the white hot fire of a thousand brillian suns. I also got myself an Oura ring to be monitoring my vitals 24/7/365 – so far all it does is scold me for not going to bed earlier and congratulate me on using the CPAP.

Between the Apple Watch, the Oura ring, and the CPAP I’m turning Borg right before our eyes. It’s not nearly as much fun as Picard made it seem.

I would like to meet Seven of Nine or the Borg Queen. You know, just for kicks.

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Random Old Photos – November 16th

I am chock o’ block full of flu and COVID vaccines – come at me, virii! (Viruses? Virususses?) I’m loaded for bear!

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with this nice old picture from 2013 of one of the only two flying B-25 bombers. It’s the CAF’s “Fifi”, coming into Camarillo to spend a couple of days with the CAF SoCal Wing. (At the time it was the only flying B-25, but since then “Doc” has started flying as well.)

That’s a LOT of flaps!

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Norms & Traditions

It’s no secret that I put up a LOT of Christmas lights and enjoy it. But they NEVER start going up before the day after Thanksgiving. Which would be two weeks from today.

But the Universe has decided that we’re shredding all norms and traditions – see “US 2024 elections,” “Constitutional rule of law,” and “fascism” for examples.

So we’re going to need all of the good cheer and happiness we can find, and if the bad guys can sell out the US government to the Nazis and Putin, how bad can it be if I put up a couple of strings of Christmas lights a few days early?

Tomorrow I’m going to get my flu and updated COVID vaccines, while they’re still legal. After that? Who knows, if I don’t feel like shit from the shots (and I rarely do) then maybe it’s time to pull out the laddars and string a few extension cords, C5s, C7s, LEDs, and icicle lights.

Maybe.

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