geekent’s stuff’n things

Landing late in the evening yesterday didn’t make it very convenient for heading to the clinic to get my friend Pustulio checked out, and whilst arriving before closing I was informed that no further patients were being seen (sonuva…)
I did pick up another little nuisance on the flight home, but still not as bad as the throat infection or the boil. That boil is a bother, brother.
Aden let me sleep in this morning (bless her) and I headed for work by way of the clinic first. A short wait and the doctor asked what the problem was. “What, you don’t read my blog?” A truncated version of the above story was given and he proceeded to dismiss the various infections and the many months of continued illness and targetted the boil, which was fine by me since that the most pesky and prominent of my problems presently.
Unfortunately he dealt with it with all the tenderness of a four-year-old at a Fisher Price playset, poking and jabbing and squeezing… ow, bloody, ow. He also said my lymph nodes were swollen, likely as a result of the boil, and that I’d need to take anti-biotics. Flip.
He didn’t really say what the anti-biotics would do, except that it should help clear it out. Whether that means it assists the boil in coming to a head (where a little white node works its way to the surface of the skin to eventually act as transport for rupturing, which I think will wind up looking very “Alien”-esque if/when it happens… I would not want to be around me at that time ) or if they kill the infection so that the boil dissipates, who know. The anti-biotics are for general skin condition treatments so it might actually help out one or two other areas by proxy, which is a bonus. Unfortunately, last time I was on anti-biotics it knocked the hell out of me an I don’t think I’ve ever recovered.
Also, in telling a friend about my vacation/sick time away from work, he mentioned that he’s heard athletes use a misting nasal spray to lubricate their nasal passages when flying so that they don’t get dried out and infected, which is similar to what happens to me in air conditioned rooms and on buses and airplanes. I asked the pharmacist about this and he directed me to Rhinaris which is a glycerin mister which should help keep my nasal ways nice an moist.
Meanwhile, Ibuprofen is the only thing that helps ease my neck and boil discomfort, and it does a pretty damn good job… when I remember to take it. Grr.
I’m a basket of fun…
Actual positive vacation bits to come :)
P.S.: Oh, and mom, remember that thing on my lip in high school that you like to remind me about from time to time? Turns out that was a boil too.

You know that place that exists between heaven and hell… some call it purgatory, I call it the past 5 days in San Diego.
Oh, it’s been heaven, quite blessedly, having a handful of (much desired, much earned, and much needed) days off from work, taking a vacation with the beautious and sexiful Aden (whose patience with me has known no limits) and the city of San Diego, including the fabulous Balboa Park Inn where we stayed, has been incredibly hospitable… welcoming even. And even though the 2007 Comic Con wasn’t anything above expectations, but it was still great to finally get the gumption up to go, and I made plenty of contacts for the Rack Raids pipe to explore in the near future.
So what could possibly put a damper on what, by all means, should be a top notch vacation (which also included day trips to Sea World and Coronado Island for some sun and sand)? Well, it’s only as complex as I wan to tell it but here goes:
Longtime readers will be quite familiar with my somewhat decayed immune system in the past 10 months or so. I don’t think there’s been a month since last November that I haven’t been sick. I think the longest stretch between colds I’ve had was the nasty one around my birthday (June 1st) extending through to just before going to the cottage 2 weekends ago. 6 weeks max, without some sort of cough or flu.
By the end of the first cottage weekend, 3 weekends ago, I was feelin’ ok again, and said so, but I didn’t knock on wood, and 2 weekends ago, after a fun-fest of canoeing and windsurfing I was less than my normal yet again. I wasn’t sure what it was at first. I had been bitten by a good 30 horseflies while attempting to windsurf, and afterwards I was pretty itchy… not as bad as mosquito bites, but quite noticeable. One was on the back of my head, and it started out as a nusanced itch on Sunday last week and then a small bump on the back of my head on Monday.
After running around town with Aden on Monday (okay, not running, but a LOT of walking) I was pretty worn down anyway, so Tuesday, I chalked up my soreness and fatigue to that. Plust that bump on the back of my head was growing, and was getting pretty annoying, still slightly itchy. I left work early to get some packing done, and walking home, I noticed my fatigue had grown as had my soreness. Sitting down at home, pondering the lump on the back of my head, I realized that in addition to the minor annoyance, I had the flu… the tell-tale signs were there. One day before my vacation. Shit.
Hoping and praying for a 24 hour bug, I hopped into a warm bath, got some sleep, had a good sweat out, ate a hearty bowl of soup, had another nap and sucked up enough energy to pack and head up to Aden’s house. Downing some fruit and energy bars, Gatorade and other energy and vitamin suppliments, I actually felt quite fine. Sleep was rough (another hot sweat) as the napping earlier in the day left me not so sleepy once a few hours were had. We were up at 5am to catch our 8:30 flight and, though kind of groggy, I did feel okay, if a little logi.
As the morning wore on, waiting for the plane, and boarding (for the first time) I felt all right. I’d catch some sleep on the plane, eat a hearty meal in San Diego, catch some sleep at the Inn, then head on over to Preview Night at the Con… or so I planned. Well, as I’ve known for some time my plans alway go awry somehow, an this time it was as a result of a not so confident pilot.
We took off about 20 minutes late, standing off the runway for 10 minutes as the plane shut down and “breakers” were “reset” (or something) and the captain felt “confident” with the situation. In the air, my rest coming quickly, the lump on the back of my head only slightly bothering me pressed against the headrest of the seat. And then at the 45 minute point the captain comes on the comm again and states that the “situation” has reemerged and that he was “not so confident” anymore and that we were turnin’ on back ’round, with information on what was to happen next when we got back on the ground.
It was this extra two hours of travel, not to mention an additional hour on the ground that did me in. The snacks we had weren’t enough, and I generally started feeling less confident myself about my health. By the time we were announced 40 minutes out of San Diego, my throat had turned raw, my glands tangibly swollen inside. Shit. Not only was I still sick, but this was something quite different from what I was dealing with 24 hours before.
Sunofa.
Over the next day and a half my throat would get so raw, so sore, so incredibly painful and uncomfortable that I couldn’t even swallow my own saliva without noticably wincing. I discovered smoothies were my friend, but even then, the citrus that was inevitably in most of them would burn. I was on a steady diet of flu pills, Tylenol, and chewing asparin to hopefully coat my throat with a pain number. All the while thick, dark mucous was finding its way out through a tremendously uncomfortable, unsexy, and uncivilised process of snorting, grunting and hacking. A necessary evil, even in public.
The pain would spread into my ears, usally in the evening, and recede mid-day, probalby as I cleared the mucous out of my head. I was sleeping, well, awfully. Hot sweats were the least of my problems the first three nights, and the lump on the back of my head, having grown, and becoming quite painful, was still nothing compared to the soreness of my throat. As I would occasionally intuitively swallow at some point in the night, the sharp pain would strike me awake immediately and I would attemp some method of releif and soothing, usually from drugs… and then, when the throat was tempered that damn bump would make itself known.
Yeah, I know, good life huh.
My throat seemingly cleared up nearing the end of day three, the previous days all being difficult on the eating front (my throat being so raw, and the pain of eating so difficult, I’d actually developed a Pavlovian aversion to eating, but suffering through it knowing my body needed it regardless). Yesterday I woke up with the ability to swallow, but there was a definite acidic, raw feeling in my throat, kind of like after you’ve just thrown up. That sort of sensation made eating unappealing, but I suffered through and managed to have a lovely day (full of smoothies, thank you) at Sea World. Every time I would swallow with any regularity, however, it would jostle loose some of the nasties living in my head, and I would repeat the snort/hack procedure to clear it loose (invariably tearing stuff out of my throat and sinuses, perpetuating the raw sensation but not nearly as sharply as when it was inflammed) That lump was, well not throbbing, but making much of my neck sore, and persisted in making for another uncomfortable night’s sleep.
Today, well, I could eat fine, with a hint of that acidicness in the back of my throat but still clearing things out though. The bump on the back of my neck is actually causing soreness on my neck muscles and tendons, which means it’s now a serious problem. Looking it up on line and, yup, it’s a boil. I’m getting that puppy lanced with furious swiftness when I get back home to the land of the free (health care) I assure you, even though websites say if you give it two weeks it will resolve itself (eventually rupturing on its own… ew).
Oh, yeah, and I’m also going to get some blood tests done and figure out why my immune system is so messed up like it never was before (I didn’t have a day off from school for three years straight during high school, so what happened?)
Bleh.
Coming home tomorrow. Boo and yay at the same time.