The eyes have had it

Last night, Mrs. Fetched asked me to see if she had anything in her eye. I didn’t see anything, but it did look a little red. It was still hurting her this morning, so she went to an eye doctor to have it looked at. Not good news: her eye got dry, stuck to some skin in the socket, and the membrane got torn. The eye doc told her to get some goggles to wear outside; if she gets it infected she could well lose the entire eye. So she has to put cream in it and will start on eyedrops next week.

She doesn’t deserve this.

[Almost forgot:] This isn’t really related to her blurry vision. Once the cream does its work, the doc can figure out what her prescription should be.

The Eyes (Don’t) Have It

Wife is slowly getting over herself, although it’s taking a little longer than usual. I picked up The Boy from his job (very late) last night; he asked me “What was she mad about today?” Nothing really, just the hangover from the night before. M.A.E. grabbed an order of jalapeño bites for him on her way out of Arby’s (I ate one of them though!) so he had a little snacky before bed.

So this morning, the wife was looking at M.A.E’s schedule. They make a printout of her hours for the week & we stuck it to one of the refrigerators in the kitchen (yes, we have two fridges, and we use ’em both). The printout is pretty small — like 4-point type — and the wife couldn’t read it. She had to ask me to look at it.

So far, the most sucky part of hitting the mid-40s is the vision change (only because menopause hasn’t started, I’m sure). Over the last year or so, I’ve had to peer over my glasses to read, or just take them off. In the morning, it takes a while for my eyes to want to do their job, so I try not using the computer for the first hour of the day. A minor inconvenience. But in the last couple of months, I’ve noticed that she’s had a seriously hard time reading small print of any kind. This morning, she finally admitted what I’ve known for a while. I hope she doesn’t have to get bifocals; from everything I’ve heard, they sound like more trouble than just having two pairs of glasses.

I wonder if the R-K surgery she had done back when is a factor. I’ve always been leery of elective eye surgery myself.

Fingers crossed tightly!

The Boy had a trip to the endocrinologist yesterday. Being diabetic, he gets stuck for blood every few months to see how well he’s controlling his glucose levels¹. His A1C is a little higher this time, not horribly so given what he did between tests. The nurse-practitioner² was going through his records, and said he was Type II diabetic. We said no, he’s Type I.

This prompted the NP to look a little more closely. “Oh,” she said finally. “The doctor did decide he’s Type I. But some of these tests say one thing, and the others say something else.” So we got to talking about his Summer of Discontent, during which he admitted he took very little insulin (but said he didn’t eat much either). “In that case,” she said, “you could be Type II. The C-Peptide [I think that’s what she called it —FF] test went that way, and you’re still taking a relatively low amount of insulin. You could still be in the honeymoon period, but we can run the test again and maybe you could replace the Novolog with pills.”

Needless to say, we’re overjoyed. I’m really trying not to get my hopes up, but this would definitely be a plus for The Boy — instead of four needles a day, he would only have to use one (for his Lantus overnight) unless his glucose started getting high. He didn’t show much emotion, but maybe he’s trying to manage his expectations as well. He did agree to use his meter more often (that’s one of the things we’ve been nagging him about) so he & the medics can get a better picture of what’s going on.

If you’re the praying type, please pray for him. This could be a huge boost.

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¹Be careful what you ask for... if you want more control over your life, you could end up doing what your pancreas does for you. :-P

²NPs, it seems, get all the responsibility of a doctor in general, just without the recognition or prestige.

(Nearly) cured

The cramp is still there this morning, but at a much lower intensity. It still pings when I take a deep breath, but it’s where I can mostly ignore it.

Too bad Blogger doesn’t polls. I'd have a “which did the most good” poll: the ibroprofen horse pill the wife gave me last night after supper, the heat pad, the chiro-cracker, or all of the above. I’m leaning toward the heating pad myself.

Warm buzzy feeling

The electric heating pad we have also has a "massage" switch. I just shut off the buzzer after letting it run for about 10 or 20 minutes.

I sort of weiner'ed out of attending a party with Daughter Dearest. A friend’s dad “hired” the school chorus for his b-day party, so I took her over there. My back started twinging so I handed DD my cell phone & begged off. I didn’t tell her what was going on because I didn’t want her worrying (and potentially hosing her part).

I don’t know if this heating pad is going to do any good. I suppose it will take a couple of hours.

Back spasms?

It’s closer to the side than the spine, around the back, but this pain keeps cramping up & it won’t let me sleep. I think it started Thursday night, although it wasn’t bad then. It’s in the muscle, not appendicitis.

I wonder if this is a back spasm. I have a friend at church who gets them from time to time & they incapacitate him (or maybe it’s the pain medication he takes for it). I’m able to function now, but if I don’t get any more sleep I might have to revise that.

Well, at the least the wrong-number phone call that just came in (wrong area code) didn't wake me up...

UPDATE: Chiro-cracker thinks it's a cramped muscle. He said there’s an outside chance it’s a kidney stone, but it’s not in the right location for typical stones. Wife-o-licious had a huge one a few years back (as in, bigger than the kidney it destroyed). She said the pain is too high & she should know. So I guess it’s time to find the hot pads.

Are they trying to drum up business?

Daughter Dearest broke her ankle about a year ago, badly enough that it required surgery to put back together (two pins & a plate, won’t she have fun at the airports). We made the mistake of taking her to the nearest hospital to get the deed done. It’s not that they do a bad job on the medical end, except that there have been times in its history where you about had to be spurting blood on the ceiling to get quick help, but their billing department seems to be staffed by retarded howler monkeys (and that’s defaming retarded howler monkeys everywhere).

• We’ve caught them trying to double-bill us on a couple of occasions for this and other work (The Boy spent was diagnosed with Type I diabetes there last April, and DD got appendicitis about two weeks after that — last year would have been bankruptcy time if we didn’t have decent insurance).


• On another occasion, they sent a paid bill to a collection agency. Like I said, retarded howler monkeys.

But today tops even those. Wife calls me at work, wanting to know the number of someone at the insurance company. Turns out that the hospital can’t figure out their own code for the pins they put in DD’s foot, and the insurance company rejected the claim. So they’re threatening to screw over our credit record because they can’t figure out how to write their own bills! So she’s totally overreacting, which stresses me out...

Makes me wonder if they’re trying to make people sick to stay in business or something.

Let me say it one more time: retarded howler monkeys.