beowabbit

Saw PMRP’s Spring Sci-Fi Spectacular, which was great. This included an encore performance of “Red Shift: Havoc over Holowood”, which

plumtreeblossom was in, and which was originally performed at an Arisia a couple years ago. That was a lot of fun. And the other show was a radio adaptation of The Day the Earth Stood Still, originally broadcast in 1954 by Lux Radio Theater. That was a truly spectacular performance. Kudos to Michael McAffee, who starred as Red Shift (the lead Interplanetary Do-Gooder in the Red Shift episodes) and directed “The Day the Earth Stood Still”¹.

I finished Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South (spoilers at link, of course) a couple weeks ago. I had a weird, mixed reaction to it. I love alternate history in general, and this is an important book in the history of that sub-genre. And I love actual history, and the actual history in the book was meticulously researched. But I had a hard time with the pervasive racism that has to be depicted in a book about 20th- or 21st-century Afrikaner white supremacists travelling back in time to ensure that the South wins the Civil War. I don’t have a similarly hard time with nonfiction history, and I think I might have less of a hard time with a historical novel that didn’t alter actual history so much. And of course, accurate fiction set in the early 21st century also has to depict racism, albeit without quite the same focus on it. So I’m not quite sure what it was about this book that made it so hard to read. (I liked it better after the end of the war, when it became about politics; not sure if that’s because the tone of the book changed or if it’s just that I’d gotten used to the book and its universe by then.)

The other thing I didn’t like about it, was that it mixed very plausible, believable characters with some really implausible behaviours and reactions. I mean, the whole premise is time travel and altering history, and I’m willing to suspend disbelief that far, but a lot of the things about how the time travellers behaved and how the 19th-century Southerners reacted to them and their technology seemed completely implausible.

I have started reading Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries, about the epidemic of sleeping sickness (epidemic encephalitis or encephalitis lethargica) following World War I. I’m only about halfway through it, but I’m really enjoying it. It’s largely taken from case histories, but it also creates an excellent sense of the era. Here’s an example:

For New Yorkers, for Americans, and for the world, the 1920s would prove to be the decade with the most rapid technological change in history. In one generation, travel by horse and carriage would make way for autos; people would travel underground, and soon, in the sky; wireless radio would change ship travel; kitchen appliances and indoor plumbing would become mainstream; light would come from a switch and heat through pipes; telephones would appear in the majority of homes; and the canned music and crackling voice of radio would provide home entertainment and news.

One minor quibble I have with it is that it’s a bit fictionalized and novelistic, including details that I can’t imagine are all actually attested in contemporary sources. But that certainly adds to the vividness, and it’s a very vivid book. Definitely recommended.

¹ So in this post I have two cases of the same or similar titles appearing in italics as the name of a standalone work or series, and also in quotation marks as the title of an episode of a series. There’s something wrong with that.

What a full and fine weekend! Saturday morning I had dim sum with

plumtreeblossom and a bunch of her friends and mine (and in the process discovered that we have some friends in common I didn’t know about!). Dim sum was yummy as always, and I was ravenous when I got there, so I stuffed myself.

(I’d been running just a little bit late, so decided to take the car to the Quincy Center T station rather than walking. What I didn’t realize was that Quincy’s Veteran’s Day parade was about to start — I had no fewer than three intersections close just as I was about to go through them, had similar trouble getting back home (since some of the streets I’d come through were now blocked off), and ended up dropping my car off in a parking lot I could get to and walking. So I was sadly more than half an hour late, but fortunately that just meant there was lots of yummy stuff already on the table when I got there.)

Then the lovely (x3)

minerva42,

underwatercolor,

plumtreeblossom, and I went to the Museum of Science, intending to see the Body Worlds 2 exhibit. Unfortunately when we got there we found out that the earliest entrance time that still had tickets available was 5:30 (6:00 by the time we’d finished talking about it), and

minerva42 and

underwatercolor had evening plans and hadn’t planned on spending that much time in the museum. So we all got exhibit hall tickets, and

plumtreeblossom and I got tickets to a movie and to Body Worlds 2 as well.

The regular exhibits were fun, but not particularly new to any of us. (The electricity show, with the huge Van de Graaff generator, suffered from a presenter who could give Mumbles a run for his money.) Definitely fun, though, and we got to see tamarins! Yay monkeys!

Then we said goodbye to

minerva42 and

underwatercolor, and

plumtreeblossom and I saw the ( 3D Mars movie ).

And finally, we got to go to the Body Worlds exhibit, which was amazing and somewhat awe-inspiring. ( Body Worlds 2 exhibit )

I could go on and on for ages about this exhibit (feel free to ask questions, or browse through the exhibit catalogue if you’re over at my house), but I’m running out of LJ-posting steam, so I’ll stop babbling now. (I definitely want to go back while it’s still in Boston, more than once if possible.)

plumtreeblossom and I then took the T to Quincy, where we both slept very well. I dropped her off at home, since she had a busy Sunday planned. [EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention introducing

plumtreeblossom to Sarsfield’s, an Irish pub in Quincy. We had a couple of yummy pints, but I like going there on weeknights better — it was extremely crowded.]

I had a busy Sunday planned, too, but so far I don’t seem to have actually gotten to any of it. :-)

First of all, let me just say that Peking Kitchen’s Peking ravioli are so good! And the weather is gorgeous today.

So, I’ve been using the CPAP machine for a couple weeks now, and I wanted to let you, O loyal reader, know how it was going.

Basically, awesome.

I’m still getting used to the mask(s), and I still have problems (of varying degrees) with dryness, but the change in my energy level and my ability to get things done is quite significant. A few days back over dinner

cathijosephine and

docorion were commenting on my energy level and my improved (i.e., extant) short-term memory. What strikes me is the little things I’m starting to get done — simple, trivial things like calling to find out how to get a replacement recycling bin, or throwing out some of the unimportant bulk mail out of the stacks that have been piling up on my desk, that never managed to become urgent enough to actually get done before.

Most of you probably don’t realize how impaired I’ve been over the last few years, since my friends and family have always been my highest priority and I’m generally at my most energetic around other people, but I have been, and it’s really, really good to start to feel like myself again.

The difference was made even more apparent on Friday. Thursday night I wore the nose-only mask (which so far seems probably to be the most effective one most of the time), but I got really stuffy in the middle of the night, so at about 5:00am I took it off and slept without it for the rest of the night. (Yes, Don, I know that’s the hour when a civilized person wakes up anyway; just humour me here. :-) And on Friday, while I still felt pretty energetic and alert, I was physically clumsy in the way I’ve been for the last n years — tripping on a curb on my way to the T station, not quite managing a straight line down the corridor at work — and I didn’t have as much of the new crispness of thought that I’ve been delighting in since starting on the CPAP. Fascinating.

(Last night I had no trouble using the CPAP, and today everything is crisp and bright and energetic and I know where the ends of my limbs are again.)

So all in all, I’m really excited and pleased.

Good news — I get my CPAP machine on Monday. And I don’t even have to miss much work for it.

I’m getting this one, and paying a bit extra out-of-pocket for a battery attachment so I can take it camping. I’m glad I did some homework, because I told the supplier about a mask I want to try (in addition to the more standard ones) and he didn’t know about it but is going to order it for me.

In less pleasant news, I scheduled a couple of EEGs (more elaborate than the ones during the sleep study), and they’re both going to be extremely icky. One requires me to stay up all night the night before. The other one requires me to have my head entirely wrapped in gauze and go home (that’ll be fun on the T; I just hope Homeland Security doesn’t decide I’m a terrus and take me out) and stay plugged into an electrical outlet for 24 hours while a monitoring device collects data. That’s because my sleep specialist noticed something odd in my EEG during the sleep study ("flowing", she called it) and wants to check it out and make sure it’s nothing to worry about.

Two good pieces of news:

(1) I just spoke to my mother in the hospital and she’s doing a lot better. I could tell the improvement the instant she said “hello”. She finishes her course of IV antibiotics on Wednesday, and expects to be able to go home then.

(2) I got a call this afternoon from my sleep specialist. She’s ordering the CPAP machine for me; evidently the company will bring it to my house. Dunno when that’s happening, but a lot sooner than December. (And she described my sleep apnea as “moderate to severe”; eventually I stop breathing almost twice a minute, but my blood-oxygen levels don’t dip all that much (although they do dip). So! Treatment soon!

(I’ve stopped in at work on my way home from the sleep center, and I don’t have an easy way to get pictures off my phone here, so the pictures of me with electrodes all over my head will have to wait, alas.)

So it was a split sleep study, which means the first part of the night they get baseline data (actually somewhat worse than baseline, because they ask you to sleep on your back if possible, which makes apnea worse, but at home I sleep on my side), and then they put the CPAP machine on you and you sleep with it for the rest of the night.

My sleep was interrupted, of course. For the first part (without the CPAP machine) I remember waking up once from snoring, and once from feeling unable to breathe, which probably means I was exhibiting worse symptoms than I do at home — usually I remember waking up due to snoring or breathing problems maybe once a week (although I’m sure I do it more often than that). I did sleep quite a bit, though.

For the second part, with the CPAP machine, it took me quite a while to fall asleep, but when I did I slept quite well. I did wake up a few times for adjustments to the mask, and a couple times to get unhooked so I could use the bathroom. I noticed an odd sensation in my ears at the beginning — kind of an itchy-ticklish sensation deep in the ears — but it went away after a while. I had mild but sharp-feeling pain under one eye, which might have been something about how the mask was adjusted or might have been something about pressure differentials, but that also went away after a while. After the last time the mask was adjusted, it was too tight (because the technologist adjusted it for one position and I promptly rolled over into a different one, I think) so when I woke up my face hurt. And the mattress was much firmer than I am used to.

Despite all that, and despite waking up at 5:30 when I’ve been barely managing to get out of bed by 8:30 lately, I woke up feeling rested and refreshed and full of energy. I feel better than I do when I sleep till noon on a lazy weekend after getting to bed early the night before. I feel at least as good as and perhaps better than I do when I go on vacation and get ten hours’ sleep a night for four or five days in a row.

I don’t know, maybe some of this is placebo effect. But I’m pretty sure not all of it is. I feel great!

The sad thing is that I may well have to wait a few months before I can feel this way again, although I will certainly be harrassing the sleep center to see if they can get me in for a followup sooner than December 8 — maybe there’ll be a cancellation. Or maybe I’ll just hold up a 24-hour CPAP-machine store somewhere. :-)

Wow.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Boston, MA

First of all, my mother does not have a blood clot. She does have pneumonia, and might have something else on top of that, but the scariest thing has been ruled out. Still in the hospital, but doing generally OK, for someone who’s in the hospital with pneumonia.

Secondly, my sleep-specialist appointment today went very well. Both the resident (?) who spent most of the time with me and the attending were very, very friendly, helpful, and informative. And the resident said that what sent me to the ER a couple weeks ago was almost certainly hyperventilation, which is a word I wish I’d heard from the staff who saw me (not

docorion, in case anybody was wondering). I was aware of having trouble breathing that morning, so I was making a conscious effort to get enough air, so that makes perfect sense.

Anyway, they say that it’s pretty much guaranteed that I have obstructive sleep apnea.

The sleep center had an appointment available tonight for a sleep study, so I get to sleep with the ~~fishes~~ electrodes tonight. Given how bad my apnea is, the specialist I saw today said they’d probably be able to determine I had it quickly, and fit me for a CPAP machine tonight as well. Then my appointment for a follow-up isn’t until December (unless there’s a cancellation earlier), and I’m guessing that would be when I’d actually get one.

They told me that my energy level should come back right away with treatment, but the memory, learing [EDIT: and speling and typeing], cognition, and attention problems will probably take something like six months to go away, because that’s basically brain damage that has to heal once I start getting enough oxygen at night. Six months or so to get better from something that’s been getting worse over at least the better part of a decade doesn’t sound so bad, but it can’t start soon enough for me.

Had a lovely date with

plumtreeblossom tonight; she fed me yummy chicken and pasta with pesto and garlic bread and there was much snuggly goodness.

On my way to the T from her place, I discovered I had voicemail from my stepfather. Turns out my mother went into the hospital today. She’d been ill for quite a while and (like me) trying to deal with getting a new PCP. Today she finally got to see somebody and he promptly admitted her with “dyspnea and tachycardia. After a chest X-ray, they decided that she might have pneumonia or pleurisy. She’s doing much better since she’s been in the hospital. I’m going to try calling her tomorrow during the day.

(Speaking of doctors, I might have a consultation with a sleep specialist as early as Friday, depending whether the insurance referral paperwork can get processed in time. I hope so, because the next appointment available after that is mid-October.)

Well, my appointment with my new doctor went almost exactly as I expected to; he said “Yup, sure sounds like obstructive sleep apnea could explain all of this; here’s a referral”, and tomorrow I get to call and schedule that. (I forgot to ask if he knew what the wait was likely to be like, but I’ll know tomorrow in any case.) He is entertaining and has a sense of humour and comes off as a Real Person rather than a Doctor Declaiming from On High, and he typed notes into his laptop as he talked with me. I like him.

He did confirm my sense that my oral pharynx looks unusually crowded.

Oh, I also took the opportunity to get my every-so-oftenly STD screening; go me!

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: Quincy, MA

[No, this is not filtered. This is the sort of thing I think it’s useful to be open about.]

So as I alluded to earlier, but haven’t talked about in a lot of detail, I’ve been concerned for a while about constant exhaustion, memory and attention problems, and various other concerns. Lately I can add breathing problems (both at night and, more recently, sometimes during the day). A lot of it looks very much like sleep apnea although there are some things that seem inconsistent with that. I talked to my (then-) doctor about that a couple years ago and at the time she was pretty sure I didn’t have sleep apnea, but since then the symptoms have gotten a lot worse. My daily exhaustion is greater and more consistent. It feels a lot like being jet-lagged: I’m outside and it’s a bright and sunny afternoon, but I feel like it’s 3:00am and I should be asleep and in bed and it should be dark. When I came home from work this afternoon (early, since I wasn’t really functional), I opened the door carefully so the cat wouldn’t get out. It’s been a long time since I lived in a house with a cat. Yesterday I got off the T a couple stops early on my way to work. It wasn’t that I thought I was at my stop yet, it was just that the train stopped at the station and that bit of my autopilot that controls what you do when the train stops kicked in before I bothered to think whether this was where I wanted to get off. I’m only 40 (well, 39 for another couple days). I’m not due for this yet.

So I’m really glad that I finally found a doctor who was seeing patients, got things straightened out with the insurance company so I can go see him, and made an appointment for September 12. I really hope this is easily treatable, whatever it is. (If not,

cathijosephine, you may get your chance to feed me my strained peaches during visiting hours at the nursing home sooner than planned. :-)

All of this is on my mind because I just finished writing up my medical history and an overview of my current complaints to send to my new doctor. (I haven’t sent it yet because I want to run the family-medical-history stuff by my mother first.) I don’t angst about this all the time. :-)

All of that said, my life is pretty wonderful. I have lots and lots of good friends, a new lover, some other people who don’t seem to mind smooching me now and then, a good relationship with my fabulous ex, a good albeit long-distance relationship with my other fabulous ex, and a house I love in a town I love and whose mortgage I can even (albeit just barely) afford. And it was a sunny day today.

I have some stuff I’m frightened about, but in many ways I am blessed.

PS — Lest any of you worry that I’m going to keel over tomorrow, these issues have been going on (and slowly getting worse) for years. I’m sure looking forward to my appointment, but this isn’t an acute, sudden thing.

Everyone should go read docorion’s first-aid tips. I bet there’s something important there that will surprise you. (I love living with a doctor.)

Hi! So the current two leading contenders for Wabbit veterinarian are Alex Gonzalez and Janice MacGillivray, both at Fenway. Anybody besides the people who recommended them have opinions about them? (Also, Tom Barber is at Quincy Medical Center and has a strong recommendation; I’d love further opinions about him as well.)

I’ve screened comments by default so you can give me positive, negative, or neutral feedback about them with impunity, but I will unscreen anything that’s not actually about a doctor unless you ask me not to.

In unrelated medical news, I’ve definitely got what I presume is

eisa’s bacterial infection. I’m home from work today and planning on doing lots of sleeping. I don’t have it nearly as bad as she did, but neither am I good for much besides sleeping today.

Reading: Finished The Light Fantastic yesterday on the train. Might start Equal Rites today if I feel like I have enough focus to read.

Aargh. I recently tried to get in touch with my doctor about getting a referral for a sleep study, to discover she is no longer practicing (or if she is, not through Fenway, and I don’t have a way of getting in touch with her).

cathijosephine had previously given me a glowing recommendation for her doctor, Kevin Kapila, who also works with Fenway. He sounded perfect for me in a number of ways. Tragically, I just discovered from his office that he’s no longer seeing new patients. (cathijosephine, if you want to ask about that next time you see him, in case his receptionist is more certain he’s not taking new patients than he is, I’d be delighted.)

So, looks like I’m in the market for a new doctor. Any recommendations? Here are my preference, in approximate order of importance. Note that only the top few are absolutely essential.

Is taking new patients. :-(
Takes Blue Cross (is there anybody who doesn’t?)
In reasonable walking distance either from my house near Quincy Center or from Northeastern University (or T-accessible on a lunch hour from the latter).
Can get me a sleep-study referral quickly.
Will share information with me, take things I say seriously, and generally not talk down to me.
Is comfortable with queer, poly, kinky patients.
Will want to take his/her time with me when we have appointments.
Is email-accessible, and willing to do quick simple followup things via email or the phone.
Can make appointments for relatively urgent stuff in a timely fashion.
Takes a relatively holistic approach to his/her patients’ health. (For instance, my previous PCP wanted to know about emotional stresses in my life in case they were affecting my health.)
Is affiliated with Fenway Community Health. (I’m assuming this would make the transition go more smoothly.)
Is willing to give me advice and not write me off if I don’t take it. (For instance, I’m not going to give up salt or red meat, or stop going out in the sun without sunscreen, even though I know those things might be better for me. I’m happy to hear that they would be better for me, but then I don’t want to fight about it.

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Location: at work

Oh, also: I haven’t read much of King George’s State of the Union speech, but Google News told me that he spoke out against medical research “creating human-animal hybrids”. This entry at the excellent and feisty Pharyngula blog has a nice clear explanation of what that bit of political theater means in the real world.

From “Vaccine lowers risk of cervical cancer: Shot blocks virus that causes disease, study finds“:

The vaccine targets HPV 16, one of more than 100 strains of the human papilloma virus. [...] HPV 16 can trigger abnormal cell growth and is responsible for more than half of all cases of cervical cancer. The virus is spread through intercourse, oral or anal sex. [...] For those who completed the study and didn't start off with HPV, there were 12 precancerous lesions and 111 cases of infection among the 750 placebo recipients. No lesions were found in the group of 755 who received the vaccine, while seven women developed infections.

The study followed a total of about 2400 women. None of the women who received the trial vaccine developed precancerous lesions, while 12 of the women who received placebos did.

(Now, go vote, if you’re a US citizen and you haven’t already!)

Does anybody know where in the Boston area I could purchase a neti pot? I have this feeling it would have made this cold go away more quickly.

Current Mood: stuffy

So, recent events. Doctor’s appointment on Wednesday — just a checkup, but in the process I managed to finally get the last in my series of Hep B vaccinations done (had already completed Hep A), and had blood drawn and a swab taken for an STD screening. Go me! And my doctor is supremely excellent, respectful and open and relaxed and easy to talk to. I think she’d make a great therapist if she ever wanted to switch professions, come to think of it.

Then Wednesday night I attended a most excellent birthday dinner for Cory at the Cheesecake Factory and got to hang out with some other good people I hadn’t seen in a while. Yay!

Thursday night I met burnthappiness at Desi Dhaba, a newish Indian restaurant in Central Square. Thanks for introducing me to it! The food was good, and I found the variety of menu choices particularly good. I really loved the Peshawary naan.¹. It was nice to catch up, and let him know how the room was managing without him. :-)

¹ Peshawary should be capitalized, right?

Current Mood: sleepy-time!

Happy birthday to

ghoti72! (Thanks to LJ’s new friends’ birthdays feature, I’m going to be much better about remembering birthdays from now on.)

And on another topic, the wonderful and deeply good

docorion posted to his journal a letter he wrote to a mailing list for emergency physicians in response to a thread about “overuse” of emergency departments for routine care by people on Medicaid. If you know

docorion, you pretty much know what his perspective is, and if you don’t, you should read it and find out. He totally rocks.

Profile

beowabbit

Home page

August 2016

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Book (and arts) log
Full weekend
CPAP update
Good news!
Two good pieces of news
My sleep-study experience
Health update
Lovely date / my mother
Doctor’s appointment
Medical worry (and general happiness)
Go read docorion’s first-aid tips
More on choosing a doctor (and other medical news)
Need doctor recommendation
Random political link
HPV 16 vaccine
Very slightly gross where-to-purchase question
Wednesday and Thursday
Happy birthday, and link to post about emergency medicine

Page generated 2026-01-04 05:37

Style Credit

Style: Coffee and Ink for Paletteable by branchandroot
Resources: one time to cry...

Another former LJer, now mostly on Facebook

Entries tagged with medicine

Book (and arts) log

Full weekend

CPAP update

Good news!

Two good pieces of news

My sleep-study experience

Health update

Lovely date / my mother

Doctor’s appointment

Medical worry (and general happiness)

Go read docorion’s first-aid tips

More on choosing a doctor (and other medical news)

Need doctor recommendation

Random political link

HPV 16 vaccine

Very slightly gross where-to-purchase question

Wednesday and Thursday

Happy birthday, and link to post about emergency medicine

Profile

August 2016

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit