ozma914 | Entries tagged with medical

I planned to work on a new blog during my colonoscopy prep day, but the day went, shall we say, badly. Okay, it went very badly, although the procedure the next day was a breeze (they tell me). One small polyp removed, and I only made one bad joke. ("If you find any change in there, it's mine--not a tip.")

Anyway, it seemed the most appropriate thing to do would be to reprint a blog from a little over five years ago--which was about my last colonoscopy. I'm adding one new photo, which I took this morning: The IV for the anesthetic left a mark.

I don't mind the bruise one bit, because that needle allowed me to sleep through the whole procedure.

Routine medical tests often bring nasty surprises ... not always related to the test being done.

I had a colonoscopy last week. You know what that means: No need to go into details. Honestly, I don't feel bad for people getting them as much as I do for people who do them.

Lots of twelve year olds probably say they want to be a doctor when they grow up. I can't imagine any of them adding, "And I want to spend all day sticking tubes up butts to check for polyps!"

For patients, the fun stuff comes a day or two before, when they first go on a clear diet, then on meds that, um, clear that diet. But there's more to it, and therein lies this tale. It's about the only thing that stayed therein.

A week before I had to stop taking supplements, including vitamin D (a lack of which contributed to my wintertime depression). Also aspirin, or any kind of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, which I never knew is what NSAID is short for.

Soon after that I developed a sinus headache, which I didn't worry about because if I have a sinus headache, it must be Tuesday. By the end of the next day someone was driving a railroad spike through the top of my skull, from the inside. It was every bit as bad as a migraine.

But what caused it? Sinuses? Stress? Lack of vitamin D? Withdrawal from caffeine? The thought of highly trained specialists bringing in the same machine used to open up my sewer?

Then, just before the procedure, a strange thing happened.

One of the techs took my blood pressure, paused, then took it again. Then she called the doctor in. He took it, then he put the BP cuff on my other arm and took it again. Then they all looked at each other.

There's no typical blood pressure for everyone, but it's generally acknowledged that the bottom number--the diastolic--should be in the double digits, like around 70. My diastolic was in the triple digits. And not just barely, either. The first number, systolic, was also reaching for the stars.

There's your headache.

This is what the inside of my head felt like.

My blood pressure was so high, in fact, that they almost canceled the procedure. And I did not want to go through the prep again.

When I woke, the new problem hadn't changed. The next day Doctor Donna sat in the waiting room, waiting for me. "We were wondering how soon this would happen," she said (I'd been her patient for many years). She refused to tell me who won the betting pool, but she did confirm the diagnosis. She also gave me a good once over, and found it hurt whenever she tapped on the areas near my nose.

I had high blood pressure and another massive sinus infection.

Doctor Donna told me to reduce my stress levels. A lot. I thought about my job and laughed. Then I laughed again. Then I cried. It seems my idea to retire, and support myself by writing full time, had become a matter of life and death. But what the heck--I'm always looking for ways to guilt readers into buying books. Meanwhile I'm on two new meds, one of which makes me pee almost as much as I was doing the other thing, the day before the colonoscopy.

Oh, and the results of the actual procedure? Clean as a whistle (figuratively), with nary a polyp in sight. But if they hadn't done it, my head may have exploded a week later. It seems I'm entering a new phase of my mid-life.

I'll call it ... the Ailment Years.

You can find good books to read during prep here:

· Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

· Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

· Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

· Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

· Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

· Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

· Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

· Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter

· Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

· Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

· Audible: https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

Remember: Reading can help lower your blood pressure. No, it’s true.

Current Mood: groggy
Current Location: Parkview Noble Hospital
Current Music: Baby You Can Drive My Car

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The ortho doctor gave me a shot for Dupuytren's Contracture, which isn't nearly as bad a thing as it sounds. The shot was to inject cortisone through Arthrocentesis.

I could make that sound like I was on death's doorstep with those words, couldn't I? "Buy my books--they'll be worth more in a few weeks!" I'm totally capable of pulling heartstrings for sales.

But no, it's just an accumulation of thick tissue on the palm of my left hand, which can eventually get worse. He just gave me the shot for pain and to lesson the swelling. And where did he give me the shot?

In the PALM OF MY HAND.

I jumped so high my nose print is now in the ceiling. I used every curse word I knew, and invented a few more on my way down. You can ask Emily, she was there.

And now it feels fine. But it gave me a story to tell.

Buy my books, anyway.

It's the surface of Mars--with a new meteor crater in the middle!

All the books written in my own hand can be found here:

· Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

· Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

· Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

· Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

· Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

· Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

· Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

· Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter

· Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

· Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

· Audible: https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

Okay, all the books typed ... but you get the idea.

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Some of you are already aware that my Dad was stuck in the hospital over Christmas after suffering a heart attack. He'd actually gone in for a severe sinus infection, something I also had at the same time, but they found the more serious problem there. Later he also tested positive for the flu, so we'll see how well Emily's and my flu shots hold up.

Today (Thursday) Dad had angioplasty, and they put two stints in. Blood had found a way to flow around a second blocked artery, so they left that alone. A third artery was also partially blocked, but there were complications with the procedure, and the doctors decided not to proceed due to his age and health problems. At 86, sometimes the best thing to do is not to do the thing.

By the time you read this hopefully he'll be home, where my sister Traci should get extra credit for taking care of him.

By good luck Uncle Ishmael was up visiting from Alabama, and stopped in to see him. That's Ishmael in the middle, and of course me on the right. The other guy would have to be Dad, or else we really confused some other patient.

Meanwhile, on Monday night, at another hospital in Fort Wayne, my youngest daughter Jill gave birth to her third child and first son, Zander Repine.

I think he looks kind of grouchy--he had a rough day.

He was a little jaundiced so they kept him an extra day, but he and Mom are home now. Including the step-kids, I now have eight grandchildren! I think. That's awfully high to count.

So this is how our December calendar goes: Zander's sister Willa has her birthday toward the beginning of the month. Then Emily's birthday is on the 21st, Zander's is on the 23rd, pretty much everyone knows what happens on the 25th, and Jill's is on the 27th. I believe I'm missing something.

Close enough to a Christmas baby!

Then comes the 31st, and we start the whole darned thing over again.

Personally, I think we should have spread things out a bit more, but a lot of this stuff tends to schedule itself.

Oddly enough I'm exhausted, despite having very little direct involvement in everything.

Please order some books--I have presents to buy!

· Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

· Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

· Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

· Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

· Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

· Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

· Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

· Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter

· Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

· Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

Remember: Every new life is a potential new reader.

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Just for fun, I looked up the blog about my original allergy testing, to see how it compared to this time. I'm reprinting part of it here, partially because I needed to be working on the Haunted Noble County, Indiana manuscript instead of writing blogs.

But also because I went through that first testing in early 2013, well over ten years ago. What has changed since then? Basically nothing:

The allergy tester looked away (after injecting numerous allergens under my skin), and when she looked back my forearm had swelled so much I resembled Popeye right after taking the spinach.

To her credit, her eyes bulged out only for a moment. Then she calmly opened the door and called to the medical staff:

“Red alert! I need 50 cc’s of all our antihistamines, a gallon of decongestant, hydrocodone, ice, oxygen, codeine, epi-pens, and an extra copy of that release form he signed, in triplicate. Also, cancel lunch.”

From the next room I heard a puzzled voice: “Just how many patients do you have in there?”

If there's a flower, there's a good chance it makes me sneeze. But if you look really closely you can see a bee--and since the allergist doesn't test for that, bees worry me more.

Then the tester lady put twice as many pokes into my other forearm.

A little card, with round holes in it of different sizes, measured my reaction. After a few tries she tilted her head and said, “I think we’re going to need a bigger card.”

Then she started poking single needles into my shoulder, one by one. Those reactions, by the way, held on for over a week.

“What’s the verdict?” my wife asked, while I huddled, slobbering and shaking, in a fetal position on the floor.

The tester shook her head. “Do you have any plastic bubbles?”

“Um, we have bubble wrap.”

“I’m not sure you can sterilize bubble wrap.”

It turns out I’m what they call severely allergic, which is a medical term meaning … well, I guess it’s pretty straightforward. I’m seriously allergic to … let me take a breath:

Dogs, cats, indoor mold, outdoor mold, dust, grasses, ragweed, pollen, politicians, insects, dust mites, urushiol, fungus, feathers, and cottonwood.

Here’s a fun irony: Standing by the entrance to the allergy doctor’s office are two big cottonwood trees.

I LIKE trees. But I also like birds, and I'm allergic to feathers, too. This one was making fun of me right by the front porch.

Oh, Urushiol? Poison ivy. I already knew about, through sad experience.

The tester explained that, while medications might mask some symptoms, my body was still fighting the allergens every moment, every day. Imagine, she said, being in a boxing match in which you’re hitting at an opponent constantly, without a break, for years. How would that make you feel?

That explained a lot. Not just the typical allergy symptoms, but sleep problems, depression, headaches, irritability, itchiness. I'd been sick my entire life, constantly, and because I had no period of wellness to compare it to I thought it was normal.

When we met with the ENT doc again, I asked what treatment we could try. Anything, I said – anything to give me a chance to feel awake and alive for the first time in my life.

“Since you have so many allergies, we can’t fit all the treatment into one dose. So, you’ll have to have two allergy shots, one in each arm every week, for the rest of your life … or at least, it will seem like the rest of your life.”

I nodded, and pretended to consider it. Then I said, “On the other hand, I don’t know what I’m missing, so it’s not really that bad, is it?”

But my wife encouraged me to try the shots, anyway.

By encourage, I mean “made me”.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter
Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

Remember: Every several dozen books we sell pays for an allergy shot. Save the Kleenex.

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When I complained to my surgeon that I was still having symptoms of sinus problems, he stuck a big metal tube up my nostril and worked it around for half an hour. Then he stuck it up my other nostril.

And now I no longer complain to my sinus surgeon--about anything.

Then he asked me how long it's been since I was allergy tested. It turns out people with allergies should be tested every few years or so, because in some cases allergies come and go, such as when you get older and your body starts to break down. Not that I'm describing me. Nope.

It had been ten years, so the next week they used up their entire supply of needles on me. If something swelled up and turned red, it wasn't a rebellious pimple: It was Mother Nature thumbing her nose.

Mother Nature has a big nose.

My entire arm, upper and lower, looked like a Braille dictionary. I was allergic to everything on Earth, half of everything on the Moon, and dust from Mars.

Okay, so that wasn't really true. For instance, I'm not allergic to Timothy Grass, who I'm fairly sure is the lead singer for Three Dog Night. Much to my shock, I'm not allergic to ragweed. Also, although I once had an allergic reaction after fighting a fire in a pine woods, I'm not allergic to pine. There must have been some cottonwood, birch, ash, red cedar, walnut, oak or hickory among those burning pines.

My cat allergy was confirmed, but--surprise!--I'm no longer allergic to dogs. We still aren't getting another one, though: We had the perfect dog for a decade, and he's not so easily replaceable.

Beowulf was very cuddly, and it turns out he never got his dander up.

Otherwise it was all the usual: molds, grasses, dust, politicians, and those dirty, nasty bed mites, which are much like politicians but with higher morals. Plants? Russian Thistle, English Plantain, Bermuda Grass--none a problem as long as I stay here in the good old USA.

Now, all but two of these tested at a "moderate" level. Only two read as severe and one of those was, naturally, Aspergillus, which can cause infections all over the place--including the sinuses.

It's a mold, which is a type of fungus, and (I learned) it can be really, really nasty. Being allergic to Aspergillus is like being especially susceptible to the Black Death.

Then came the real shock, and the second allergy testing at the "severe" level:

Horses.

If you know my wife, you get why hearing that was like being ... well, kicked by a horse.

An entire horse-sized battlefield, loaded with Mark-seeking guided dander.

Emily is what's known as a "horse person".

Wait--she's wearing my hat!

And what are we going to do about this? Well ... nothing. I mean, sure, Emily will clean up as soon as she gets home, but it's not like I'm going to demand she gives up horses. It would be like telling me to give up chocolate, something I'm NOT allergic to. You gotta do what you love.

As for me, I have to choose between allergy shots and trying to get rid of mold like Penicillium, Eicoccum, and that wonderful Asperigillus, all of which can be found on ...

Books.

Guess I'll take the shots.

Hey ... are those books on my dusty carpet?

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter
Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

Remember: Every time you don’t buy a book, I start sneezing. Save my sinuses.

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I'm not even sure how to start when it comes to Covid. As a writer I'm a professional smart-ass, but with this I got my ass kicked, and didn't feel too smart about it.

Illness or injury traditionally accompany our vacations: Last December Emily and I came down with the flu when we were supposed to visit her family and friends in Missouri. This year we decided to head down on a Thursday.

On Wednesday we started to feel a little ... off. By Thursday morning we had to call it--we couldn't risk giving her father whatever bug was now traveling with us. It wasn't until Friday night that we began to suspect the modern medical boogieman, Covid. We missed the trip, we missed Saturday's Holiday Pops concert, and I felt so bad I couldn't even write. By the time it was done I had to contact my editor at History Press to push back our deadline for the Haunted Noble County book, because I'd planned to use half of my vacation to work on it.

The only question left: Could I turn it into a funny blog?

It doesn't LOOK like 102 degrees.

No. No, I could not.

The only thing we did was marathon the TV show The Expanse, and unsuccessfully try to listen to Good Omens on audiobook. (We kept having to go back when one or another of us fell asleep.)

You know, watching TV and reading books wouldn't be such a bad vacation. The problem is that for the first couple of days we were unable to enjoy anything, and in fact we were too sick to sleep. You heard that right. Over that first weekend I, who can't function on less than eight hours of sleep, stayed awake for twenty-fours straight. Even Nyquil wouldn't put me out.

Then, for a week after that, we were too sick to stay awake. That was the period during which we kept having to go back and decide what we remembered last from the audiobook.

"It was Agnes Nutter and the book, wasn't it?"

"No, it was Adam and the Them meeting the dog."

(We were both wrong: It was Crowley terrifying his house plants.)

I took this photo of Emily at the same time the one above of me was taken. She's in there, I swear.

Part of it--let's face it--is that I'm no spring chicken pox. When I was in my early 20's I once rode the back step of a fire engine to a mobile home fire on the edge of town--while running a fever.

This truck, specifically. What an awesome truck.

A couple of years later I rode a different engine to Kendallville, to a tire fire so big it could have been seen from the International Space Station, if there'd been one at the time. I was coughing up junk that looked like it belonged in an alien invasion horror movie, despite never getting into the smoke. Yet there I went, for twelve hours. Our Chief later ordered me to go home and go the hell to bed.

No more.

It's not just that Covid is bad. My normal temperature runs around 97.6, and by the time it hit 100 not only could I not go to a fire, I couldn't pick up the TV remote. (Thus the marathon of one show.) It reached 102 at one point. My skin kept trying to crawl away to somewhere cooler, or so it felt.

Emily was running about a day behind me, so I had the pain of knowing what she was about to go through. She's still got a terrible cough weeks later, while mine is just awful. We were like the grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, just laying there in a lump. Christmas preparations? Hah! We'd bought a new, pre-lit tree, but we never even got a chance to fluff out the branches, let alone decorate it.

I kinda like it like this, though. Yes, it's black.

I was so sick--brace yourself for this--I lost my appetite.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've completely lost my appetite, and I was in the hospital for most of those. I dropped six pounds. This is not a recommended diet.

The moral of this story is, of course, don't get Covid. We didn't mind at all being quarantined, at least not until the chocolate ran out. (Everything tasted salty or metallic, except chocolate.) Other people in this area passed away from it, so we count ourselves lucky now that we're feeling 50% better.

Yeah, I'm exhausted all the time, but I work nights--I was already halfway there, anyway.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter
Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

Remember, books aren't effective as masks, but they're great for quarantine.

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Good riddance, 2023. To paraphrase "True Grit", "the love of decency does not abide in you".

The problem is, I said the same thing at the end of 2022.

That being the case, I no longer make noises about the next year being better than the last one. 2023 started out with losing a nephew, paused in the middle for the death of our dog, and ended with my wife and I both down with Covid. Those are just the highlights. We also had to replace our car, and oh, yeah--our microwave caught fire. Again. (It was just smoke.)

Then there was the sinus surgery which, it turns out, doesn't prevent Covid. Emily had to face the death of one of the horses she worked with. We didn't get a new book out in 2023, and had to push back the deadline on the one we're working on. Oh, and I had a biopsy on my TONGUE.

Surgery or virus? You decide.

Could 2024 be worse than that?

Yes. Yes, it could. I mean, it's an election year, so there's that all by itself.

This year a third of the people are going to pick a candidate to fight a different third of the people who the first third hate, and the second third is going to pick someone who they hope will be horrible to the first third, while the middle third do their best to ignore all of this, even though they're the ones who'll suffer the most.

It's politics as written by Joseph Heller. We'll call it "Catch 24".

(Hey, I just had an idea for a new novel!)

There's not much we can do about a lot of this, including the elections, once the graveyard votes are counted. So what are we to do about the world's current state of affairs?

Laugh.

That's right, you heard me. Laugh, even if it scares people.

Now, that's scary.

I'm going to make an extra effort in 2024 to make people laugh. I'm not going to guarantee health, or that my appliances will keep working, or that Congress will start acting responsibly. (See, that last made me giggle right there.) I'm fairly certain at this point that the Presidential election will be a farce regardless of who wins, so why not poke fun at it, too? Maybe, with luck, in the coming year I'll have another exploding lawn mower to talk about.

Okay, I don't want to go that far. Again.

But laughter often is the best medicine, at least for your brain, and I'm going to work on turning it into an epidemic. The laughter, I mean. Because we can't change a lot of bad things with the exception of politics, so we might as well feel better about them.

Maybe we'll even sell more copies of our humor books.

Okay, let's not expect too much. After all, it's still the 2020s.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter
Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

Remember, it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown, and we're all tired.

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I have this ongoing fantasy that whenever I have to recover from an illness or injury it will give me plenty of time to write, or at least read. I'm always behind on both, so it seems like the perfect opportunity.

Then there's reality.

I applied for three sick days for after my sinus surgery, which I thought was overkill. Added to my normal days off, that gave me five days after a minimally invasive, outpatient procedure that would straighten a thing up here and unclog another thing there. The result, hopefully, would be fewer sinus infections and headaches.

Truth is, I was very close to being in a good mood, going in. Sure, we were at the hospital from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., but I slept through half of it. Emily had two books, a cell phone, and a charger cord.

I woke up feeling no pain, which is really not a good sign one way or another. But the surgeon told Emily that, while the passages to my upper sinuses would always be unusually narrow, they were now clear and I was a model patient. Sadly, he found neither the loose change nor the Matchbox car I thought may have been lost up there in childhood.

It would have looked like this, only ickier.

It all went downhill from there.

For pain they put me on Norco, which made me think the Feds would burst in any moment, and I'd end up bleeding in a jail cell whether they hit me or not. Turns out the stuff's also called Vicodin, which isn't better, but gives you an idea of how much pain they expected. I have something of an addictive personality, so I decided to get off it as soon as humanly possible. Two days should do it.

Two days didn't do it. I was able to cut the dose in half from the maximum, then in half again, but my head and sinuses still throb as of when I'm pecking away at this, the next Thursday morning.

(I've been working on this column for three days. I keep falling asleep or just losing focus. London's got nothin' on my brain fog.)

So I looked up the exact term for my surgery, which no way am I well enough to type here, and researched the recovery time. How soon a patient could be expected to return to work was not a few days, but a week. It also said symptoms could continue for a month or two before all the aftereffects stop effecting. Until then: Dizziness, nausea, pain, minor bleeding, brain fog, confusion, dizziness--did I say confusion? But enough about my typical mornings.

Then we have the three times a day nasal saline irrigation.

There's no way to make this procedure more fun, but there is a way to make it less fun: Have it produce a large amount of blood and clotting. You know, my stomach isn't quite ready for me to discuss that.

So ... I'm not sure where I was going with this. Basically I just wanted to check in and let everyone know that I really am feeling better, it's just that "better" can be relative. I'm a little frustrated that I'm a week behind in my Haunted Noble County writing, but we spent some time listening to audio books (Wayward Pines), which I can do reclined with my eyes closed. I predict that when we talk to the surgeon he'll say I'm well on my way to recovery. I'm going to check him for my spare change.

Also, I'll take a nap. Or two.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter
Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

Remember, when you don't buy one of our books ... I don't know, something happens.

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I'd planned reruns and pre-written blogs until the Haunted History project was finished, but I popped in to tell everyone the source of my constant head pain and sinus infections has finally been isolated.

It was in my sinuses.

Maybe I should be more specific. Various allergy/sinus/head doctors have poked and prodded me for years. A sleep study revealed I do, in fact, sleep. My allergy tests showed I was, indeed, allergic. To everything. I even had surgery to unclog a lower part of my sinuses that seemed to be causing the trouble. Still, in recent months the pain became sometimes debilitating, although I think I did a pretty good job of hiding it. Witnesses may disagree.

While typing this I realized I should have taken a medical leave from the fire department, for all the good I've done the last couple of years. What a headache.

"You expect me to sleep with this thing on?"

I found out after we got Beowulf that I was allergic to dogs, but refused to give him up. Now that he's passed you'd think maybe it would get a little better, but instead my sinus infections kept on coming and the headaches got worse and worse. The truth is, many days in recent months the headaches were so bad I was incapable of doing much of anything ... but I could still write, so I told myself it was all good.

It wasn't.

So the allergy doctor suggested a CAT scan. I patiently (because I'm the patient) explained to him that would be bad, as one of my worst allergies was to cats. I hugged Beowulf every day, but if I came within a block of a cat I ended up looking like patient zero in a zombie outbreak.

A brave photographer caught this assassination attempt.

Turns out I got my dander up for nothing: CAT is an acronym, which stands for ... um ... something medical. Not only that, but it took all of five minutes, and the doctor would be waiting to show me the results right after.

Only the doctor was called away to unplanned surgery, and I had to wait a week and a half. Just to let the imagination simmer a bit.

When I finally saw him, Doctor Herr, who's a he, didn't even bother poking and prodding much. "Your two uppermost sinuses," he explained, "are completely blocked. Nothing can get out, and that's where your sinus infections have been hiding."

My sinuses were constipated.

Dr. Herr (who's a he) didn't explain to me how the infection itself got out, but maybe it has a special pass. In any case, we could try another course of the same antibiotics that didn't work last time, or he could go down to Doc's Hardware, rent a roto-rooter, and dig that sucker out.

That's not exactly the way he described it.

"Dude, I may be a doggie angel now, but I can't protect you from a mad doctor with a post hole digger."

So at the end of September I'm going under the knife, and also under the needle and the drill, and possibly the hammer and chisel. It's more major than my other sinus surgery, but Dr. Herr (who may be a her, I didn't ask) told me if he drills through to my brain, he'll just switch to reverse. Maybe I'll come out of surgery able to speak Latin, or play the violin. Or play Latin violin music.

Hope to see you at my first concert.

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I'm not okay.

Sometimes we have to admit that. Not to others, although that's fine--but to ourselves. Pretending you're okay is not okay. Being not okay is okay, which doesn't mean you should want to stay that way.

On April Fourth my teenage nephew killed himself. My post about it is here:

https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/2023/04/rest-in-peace-christian.html

There, now I don't have to go through writing that again. (Meanwhile, about a week later an apartment complex in a neighboring town was shot up by a man who used to be married to my ex-wife. I never particularly cared for him, but my daughters are good friends of his kids, and they're wonderful people. This helped no one's stress level.)

Christian's. A 16 year old with a lot going for him.

I didn't see Christian as often as I would have liked, which is no one's fault but my own. Still, it hit me as hard as my brother's death two years ago. Has it been two years? I'm not over that, either, although I told myself I was.

The reason I'm writing this is because my next blog--unless something else happens--will likely be another humor attempt to cheer up everyone's lives a little, as I'm wont to do. Yes, I did use that word correctly, look it up. I do this because so many of us are going through difficult times, and could use the cheering up. Making people laugh, or at least smile, lightens my own day. Since I suffer from depression and anxiety myself, what helps others helps me.

But that doesn't mean I'm all right.

Remember Robin Williams? Funniest guy alive, everything to live for. Killed himself.

Please try to remember that even if someone seems fine--even if they insist they're fine--you don't know what's going on underneath. You don't know what the person next to you is going through. Maybe they don't know. My wife always figures out I'm having a bad day before I do.

So support mental health awareness, fight the stigma, and ... laugh a lot. Keep your spirits up. Get help if needed. The world may seem a hard and depressing place, but it does you no good to dwell on it. Worst case scenario, I'll be there to make you smile ... or at least try to.

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This has been the hardest blog I've tried to write since my brother passed away two years ago. So I didn't write it. This is my sister's original post about my nephew's death:

It is with broken hearts that our family is announcing that early this morning we found our son and brother Christian had committed suicide last night/early this morning, by swallowing a massive amount of prescription pills. We had a call from one of his teachers at approximately 9am, who had been alerted by some of his classmates that he had left some posts on Instagram at around 4am. We went to check on him, and unfortunately he was already gone. The only good thing is we were told by the coroner he went peacefully in his sleep. We aren't saying suicide is the way. Just that he went peacefully. We love him with all our hearts and will always miss him. Please pray for him to be at peace in heaven with Christ. One of the last things he posted was that only Christ could save him now. You are with Christ now. Be at peace. We love you! Fly high Squirt!!!

Here's the obituary:

https://memorials.fairhavenfortwayne.com/christian-rog-ers/5170272/index.php?fbclid=IwAR2974qglEKWpPEwQzfFnBMd0LLZnZxeRRPKK0tiTwWdZU_EFgc_HdL_E7k

I think I'm having more trouble dealing with this than I did with Jeff's passing because my brother had a six decade life, while Christian's life was just beginning. Also because I DO understand, to an extent: My teenage years were more horrible than not, for a variety of reasons. That time of our life is difficult for many of us. And that's why it's all the more important that we do our best to keep this tragedy from happening to others.

There are many resources available for suicide prevention. Here are just a few of them:

www.in.gov/issp/

https://youth.gov/youth-topics/youth-suicide-prevention

https://www.healthychildren.org/English/health-issues/conditions/emotional-problems/Pages/Ten-Things-Parents-Can-Do-to-Prevent-Suicide.aspx

Rest in peace, Christian.

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One thing about getting older is that you tend to know about all the medications out there. For one thing, they get advertised on what many people would consider "old person" TV channels: Science, History, National Geographic ... the channels I watch to learn things I didn't want to learn as a teenager.

"Have you been diagnosed with S.A.D.--Sad Acronym Disease? Ask your doctor if Incheeria might be right for you!"

The other thing, of course, is that we're now taking all those pills. I frequently have to ask my wife, "What's this med for, again?"

"It's for your memory, dear. Again."

The other day (or today, as I write this), I was introduced to one I'd never heard of. I stopped for my yearly visit to the allergy doctor, to confirm I still had allergies. When asked if I'd had any symptoms related to the whole respiratory system thing, I mentioned in passing that my sinus headaches had been increasing lately.

Ignoring symptoms? That's how a zombie apocalypse starts.

I hadn't given it much thought. I suffer from the Butterfly Effect: If a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, it will cause changes in weather patterns that will, sooner or later, hit my sinuses. Just another day in the Midwest, which has more spores and dander than the Great Lakes have sand.

I was being seen by a nurse practitioner--who was wonderful, by the way--named Ambush. Seriously. And she had an Army pin on her shirt, so even though she was nice and friendly, I had the strangest feeling Nurse Ambush could kill me with her pinkie. In a way she almost did, when she started pushing her finger into various places on my face.

Beats going to the urologist, anyway.

After I stopped screaming and begging for her to stop, she reminded me that people with strong allergies tend to get sinus infections easily, and guess what? As if I didn't already know.

She wrote me a prescription for, yes, an antibiotic ... but I'd never heard of this one. My regular doctor's office had heard of it, but they didn't have it. Why? "Well, we don't have a sealed, explosion proof vault."

That's when I started to get nervous.

Then I got the bottle.

First, the lid was actually bulging. I was worried it was over pressurized, but it turns out they were dead set--maybe I should rephrase that--on making sure I had enough to kick it this time.

Second, isn't that the color they give to pills that might kill people? I mean, I've seen blue and purple on the side of hazmat train cars.

Well, one of the possible side-effects is explosive diarrhea, so there's that.

I remained concerned, so I called my doctor for more information. When I told him the name and that it was 300 milligrams, he said, "You don't have children in the house, do you?"

Not unless you count me.

"Okay. I know this is going to seem counterintuitive, but these might make you very sick. Then they'll make you well, of course."

Should I avoid doing anything?

"Yes, you should."

Huh. Any other advise?

"Whatever you do, don't accidentally take two at once."

Why? What would happen?

"Have you ever heard the word Chernobyl?"

After that, I stopped asking questions.

Is it ... smoking?

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Slightly Off the Mark

Colon Check Brought Blood Pressure Surprise

I've Got It In the Palm Of My Hand (pain, that is)

The Good, the Bad, and the Baby

A Look Back, Or: I was always Allergic To Everything

Being Allergic To Allergies

Covid Keeps Quarantines Coming

Looking To 2024 With Fear and Trepidation

A Look Into My Nose, or: Probing a Patient's Proboscis Procedure

A CAT Scan Is Nothing To Sneeze At

I'm Not Okay, and That's Okay

Rest In Peace, Christian

Pills Are Great, If They Don't Kill You

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