Tag: medical

Normal?

As of tonight, I am back down to the level of allergy medication I was on a year ago!

Short version: a reaction to *something* (lots of tests, nothing identified) last November gave me systemic hives for months. By January I was up to three 24-hour antihistamines…each twice a day. Plus Benadryl. All on doctor’s orders. (Slightly longer version here, from last Dec.) After a couple of attempts to lower the dosage resulted in the hives returning, I stayed at that level for several more months. Since the beginning of summer, my allergist has had me slowly been tapering the medication down.

Last night, I took the last dose of Allegra.

I really like not having to take zillions of pills a day!

Naturally, this coincides with the arrival of dry, windy weather, which is wreaking havoc on my usual allergies. I’m thinking of adding something back so I won’t spend all day sneezing. *facepalm*

Fogging Things Up

  1. When I got out of bed, alenxa said, “Hey, there’s fog out there!” A half an hour earlier, when she’d gotten up, it had been clear. By the time we left for work, all that was left was just enough haze to maximize glare and make the broken sun visor and lack of sunglasses a problem. We did get a great view of one of the ex-marine base blimp hangars where the near end was perfectly visible, but it faded into the fog so that the far end was completely hidden. (Naturally, by the time I dug the camera out, the light turned green and we didn’t get a picture.)
  2. There’s something fascinating about the high-tech/low-tech contrast in surgery where the instruments consist of a styrofoam cup and a long Q-tip. OK, the cup has to be full of liquid nitrogen, but it just seems so simple.
  3. Last week I got into work and said to a co-worker, “Is it just me, or do people not know how to drive in the rain?” “I think they just don’t know how to drive.” I spent nearly 10 minutes at a turn signal this morning because some idiot didn’t notice it turned green, and the next car was a big two-piece truck with no acceleration capability whatsoever. And then there was the freeway…
  4. Amazon’s shipping decisions just don’t make any sense. Last week I placed an order for three items (so I could hit that magic $25 and get free shipping). I checked the box to lump everything into as few shipments as possible. So of course they decided to just ship two of them. Then they shipped the third the next day. Yesterday, the second shipment arrived, but I’m still waiting for the first. Edit: The first package arrived today. It seems holiday shipping is already in full swing, because the UPS guy showed up around 7:30.
  5. Server room is freezing. This is good. When it isn’t, my boss says things like “You can smell the electronics trying to die!” And things crash. And we have to spend half the day fixing things that crash.
  6. Speaking of things that crash, I’m getting very annoyed at Microsoft’s decision in MFC 7.0 to stop hiding menus and toolbars in Print Preview mode.

Back to UCI (sort of)

I went to see my allergist this morning for a re-eval. I was actually supposed to go in during the summer, but I forgot about it and misplaced the “you’re due for an appointment!” postcard until earlier this week. As it turned out, she had a medical student from UCI shadowing her today, so I got to be both patient and teacher’s aid. (They asked me up front whether it was okay.) It was an odd experience, partly because there was an extra person, partly because she looked like she was close to my age or maybe younger, and partly because my allergist was narrating everything.

While I was there, I got this year’s flu shot. I don’t remember having to sign a waiver last year. Actually it wasn’t so much a waiver as a “Yes, I’ve been informed of the possible side effects, and I know it’s produced using eggs, so if I’m allergic to eggs, I’ll just stop and not get the vaccine, thank you very much.” It may be explained by the fact that the flu vaccine has been added to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. I didn’t know this program existed. (Ain’t the intarweb grand?)

Lactic Acid: A Good Thing?

Heard a story on KCRW this morning. Apparently lactic acid might not be responsible for muscle fatigue after all (as my high school biology class taught). The connection was made because lactic acid was found in fatigued muscles, but recent research suggests that it may prevent muscle fatigue. It turns out that if lactic acid is removed from overworked muscle fibers, they actually stop working.

Of course, it is probably responsible for the burn you get while exerting.

(It’s kind of like when I learned that a fever was actually an immune system technique to fight infection, and not something the infection did itself.)

Current Mood: 😕curious

The things you see on LJ…

A couple of interesting items:

First, from metaquotes: Posted on the fridge at Xavier’s School for the Gifted (metaquote thread)

Next, sclerotic_rings on prosthetics that don’t just mimic the body, specifically artificial heart pumps designed with the fact the important part isn’t the method by which the heart pumps blood, but the fact that it keeps it circulating. We have plenty of experience with simpler ways to pump fluids than by imitating heart movements, such as, in this case, a constantly rotating impeller. What’s interesting is that people with this pump have no pulse!.