Remember when Mike shaved his head?  I had to search for the post with the pic of his chrome-dome, and couldn’t believe that this took place way back in FEBRUARY!  Check it out here.

Anyhoo, he’s been letting it grow out since then, and we’d bought a barber clipper kit from Target so that I could cut his hair when it finally got long enough to cut.  Well, that day had finally arrived.

Although I read the directions that came with the kit, I still kinda screwed up a little.  I actually broke into a sweat when I saw how I screwed up, and thought I was gonna have another full-blown panic attack.  But it turned out to be reasonably okay.  Just shorter than originally planned.

I’ll do better next time.  I promise.  I just don’t understand how I can easily cut my own hair, but not someone else’s.  Maybe it’s the clippers I need to get used to, as I cut my hair with scissors.
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Oh, and while the haircutting was going on, Pumpkin kept running underfoot, and trying to play with the electrical cord for the clippers.  I was afraid I was gonna trip, land on something, knock my front teeth out, and then have to see if I could find any good dental discounts to get them fixed. I mean, I would not want to spend the rest of my life looking like a guest on Jerry Springer.

I finally got annoyed enough to take the clippers, buzz them a few inches from his face, and say in a menacing voice, “if you don’t get out of here, YOU’RE NEXT!”

I don’t think Pumpkin would be happy with a lion cut.  I’ve never known a cat who was.  In any case, the buzzing of the clippers so close scared him enough to vacate the room.
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We’re staying home for the most part for the 4th.  Since the Red Sox game is on in the afternoon (they are at home and having the Sox game and the Esplanade fireworks both let out at the same time would be more of a nightmare than just the fireworks letting out), our cable-free selves will go to the local TGI Friday’s to watch the Sox game.  I have an eight buck off coupon that expires soon, anyway, may as well use it.

And then, at home later, we’ll just watch the Boston Pops Esplanade stuph on TV.  I’m too old to be dealing with these mob scenes, and frankly, I can’t be anyplace where I can’t get to a toilet within five minutes.  Neither can Mike, especially since he has to take diuretics for his heart condition.  His euphemism for peeing is “the water pills are saying hello”. 
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We will get our live fireworks fix on Sunday.  We have tickets to a New Hampshire Fisher Cats game which will feature fireworks after the game.  Before that game, though, there will be a collegiate baseball game, which I’d like to get there early enough to see.  It’s Team USA vs. the NECBL All-Stars.

Since we’ll be sitting in the sun for much of the day, all the more excuse to make Mike wear one of his collection of Fisher Cats baseball caps.  For one thing, the hair is cut short enough, and is also thinning enough, where I see scalp, and we can’t have that get sunburned now, can we?  Also, wearing a hat will cover most of my goof-ups when I cut it…LOL!
———-
However you celebrate the 4th, keep it safe, sane, and if you set off fireworks under my car, I will come out with a French chef’s knife or a cast-iron skillet and kill you!

…make me appreciate my own life all the more.  Where do they GET these people?  Mike has gotten hooked on these shows since he’s been out on disability leave.  I got him to turn them off today because the Red Sox were playing an afternoon game.

Yesterday on Divorce Court, they had a case where the soon-to-be ex-wife was a truly evil bitch.  She was bitching about how her husband never paid attention to her, mostly because he was working something like 70 hours a week.  She seemed to like all the money he was making, though.

The husband had bought an old Camaro, and was slowly working to restore it.  His hope was to be able to give the car to his son one day, when he was old enough to be ready to own such a car.  The kid is something like 4 years old now, so it would have been a while.

But the evil witch wife got made at him one day, and SOLD the car for $500.  It was worth MUCH more than that…the husband had documentation of every part he bought, every penny he spent.  They brought in some kind of car expert, who determined that the car was worth at least $8,000 at the time the witch sold it.

Then, another time, he came home to smell something burning.  The witch decided it would be fun to burn all of his clothes…shirts, pants, socks, underwear, even his Naot footwear!  She was so smug in front of the judge, feeling that he deserved it for not paying enough attention to her.

To make matters even worse, she even gave away his cat!  Why?  Because she clamined he loved the cat more than her.

I’m personally wondering if this guy takes on extra hours on purpose, to get away from this horrible woman.  Apparently she was like this from almost Day One…she made him sleep on the couch on their wedding night!  Why’d he even stay with her all of these years?  I know that they had kids, but maybe they had some of them before the wedding, and he felt an obligation to stick around and try to make it work for their sake.  I dunno.

Judge Lynn was NOT sympathetic towards this foul woman, and ordered her to pay the full amount of recovery that the guy was suing her for.

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Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged here, huh?  If you have been following me on Twitter and Facebook, you know the general gist of the story…on Thursday, I had to go to the ER.  I honestly thought I was having a heart attack, and I wasn’t sure if I’d make it to the hospital in time.

I’ve talked about the anxiety attacks coming back and all here on this blog.  I also mentioned that I’d been in the process of setting up appointments with docs at the Lahey Clinic to help me with this problem.  Anyhoo, an appointment nurse called me back on Thursday and set me up with a new primary care doc, an appointment with her for July 9, and an appointment with her physician’s assistant sooner (it was Monday, June 29, as in yesterday) to deal with the anxiety issues.  A PA is not an actual doctor, but they can prescribe meds, which was the primary purpose of this particular appointment.

The wierd thing was that almost as soon as I got off the phone with the appointment nurse, I started having the Panic Attack From Hell.  I popped an Ativan and did my breathing exercises, hoping it would go away.

It did not.  It kept getting worse.  I was getting super light-headed, having chest pains, headaches, tummy aches, the whole nine yards.  This was FAR worse than anything that had ever happened to me before, and I was truly frightened.

I told Mike to call 911.  He said that if he did, the ambulance would probably refuse to take me to Lahey, where I’d said that I’d want to be taken should something happen to me.  They would probably opt to take me to one of the closer hospitals, as in the hellhole, and the sister of the hellhole, the latter being the place where I went last year for this crap.  I had sworn, after Mike’s most unpleasant experiences with Hallmark Health, that I’d rather just die now, than be taken to one of their hospitals.  If I really were having a heart attack, yeah, the ambulance EMTs would save me, but then the hellhole hospital people would find some way to kill me later on, like they could have killed Mike if I hadn’t gotten him out of that toilet.  If my only choice is death, I want it sooner than later, yanno?

So the only guaranteed way to get to Lahey was in the car, and Mike took me there.  Several times, I thought I was gonna expire right there in the car, as I came thisclose to blacking out several times.

Obviously, I made it there alive.  The worst of the anxiety attacks had passed, but I was still so shaky that I needed the security guard lady who is stationed outside the ER to help me get into the building, into a wheelchair.  Mike needed to go and park the car so it would not be blocking ambulance traffic to and from th ER.  Unlike the hellhole, Lahey has a dedicated parking lot for ER patients, so he was able to park quickly and come in to be with me.

Very shortly after checking in, a nurse whisked me into a room where they did an EKG on me.  The test showed that I did not have a heart attack.  But they wanted to do a boatload more tests to make sure, so we were in for a long night.

It did not help that the TV in the ER waiting area was tuned to a channel that had nothing but Michael Jackson death news on it.  MJ was about a year older than I am, and he expired from a heart attack.  Does someone who comes to the ER with heart attack symptoms really need to see this?  However, people wanted to watch this stuff.  Luckily, I’d had the presence of mind to grab a tote bag that contained a few magazines that I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet, so I read them to distract myself from all of the talk of death on the TV (yeah, they talked about Farrah, too, but that death was expected).  I wished that I’d gotten myself some new Amazon books to read, because I went through my mags pretty quickly.

The ER at Lahey was wicked busy that evening, more so than I’d seen before, in the two times when Mike was the patient.  In fact, the whole hospital was up to full capacity, no beds in regular rooms upstairs.  I ended up spending the night in a little private cubicle in the ER, which, thankfully, had its own TV, so I could watch something besides news stories about death.  By this time, Mike was getting wicked tired, so I sent him home to get some sleep.

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And I came thisclose to having Mike take me to the ER, that is how scary these panic attacks can be.

I did take an Ativan, but it took awhile to work.  I managed to get up and take a shower and get dressed, so if I went to the ER, I at least would not stink.  But by the time we were about to head out, I told Mike I’d likely be okay, and we could go out and collect mail and do other errands.  If something happened, we’d not be far from the Lahey Clinic, where I would want to go.

And I was okay, except for little twinges of dull pains here and there.  We went to the Good Post Office to get the mail, and then we headed towards home and went and ate at Turner’s in Melrose.  The only thing I didn’t like about that is if I were to actually have a heart attack there (which is what panic attacks simulate), I’d be taken straight to my favorite place, The Hospital From Hell.  It’s almost spitting distance away from Turner’s.  I would have preferred to have lunch closer to the Good Post Office, which is spitting distance from Lahey, perhaps the Naked Fish, Legal Sea Foods, or the 99.

It’s gotten so I hate being at home, because, once again, if I really were suddenly to begin to die, the hellhole is the closest place.  I am sure this fact is adding to my stress and anxiety.

Anyhoo, since I don’t have a primary care doc any longer (the one I had before works for Hallmark Health, the outfit that owns the hellhole), I don’t want to go back to her, even though she was nice enough.  So I have to go through the routine to become a Lahey Clinic patient, which means going through their centralized appointment system and waiting to be called back.  I have already put in for an appointment with whatever doc will see me first there, let them know what’s wrong, and that I would really rather do it this way than via the ER.  Hopefully the call me back soon.

Where else am I gonna go?  This is a bit too much for the Minute Clinic at CVS to handle.  But it it’s just panic attacks and not anything else, it is a HUGE waste of the Lahey ER, too.  That’s why I’ve contacted Lahey about seeing a doctor there via appointment.  As good as that hospital is, the waiting time in their ER is often forever.

This is why I like the idea of the Minute Clinics, more and more of them are opening in CVS stores here in Massachusetts.  If people would just go there, for then their kids get the sniffles, or ear infections, and such, that would take a HUGE load off of all ERs.

I just hope I will be okay until my appointment, whenever that will be.

Lahey is set up so that all of their doctors work out of the hospital, as in, all outpatient appointments are arranged through their centralized appointment system, and you see a doctor at the hospital, not a private office somewhere.

Mike’s next appointment is on Thursday, with the diabetes doctor.  I might go with him, so at least if I do start to die, I’ll at least be in the hospital.  It’s a lot scarier than being at home alone.

Yeah, this has to be fixed before Mike goes back to work.

…because they paid double!***

Mike’s employer, that is.  As you know, he’s been on short term disability from work, due to all of the hospital/health issues.  The way it’s set up is that he gets 100% of his regular salary, minus all the usual deductions for taxes, insurance, etc., direct-deposited just as if he were actually working.  This has definitely saved our asses during what’s been a difficult enough time as it was.

Anyway, there was a slight hiccup, because the benefits manager at Mike’s work needed another piece of paper from the hospital saying that he’d been admitted again, or else she’d have to stop the disability payments.  Lahey took their time getting that to us, for some reason, they didn’t have it ready when Mike was discharged a little over two weeks ago.  They said they’d be mailing it, and they did.  It just took several days.  I faxed it to the benefits manager the day it arrived, and we hoped that it wasn’t too late to reinstate the disability money.

Still, the fact that this is our biggest gripe about this hospital is good.  There was a lot worse to complain about over The Hospital From Hell, as you well know.  Now Mike just needs to get the doc to sign off on the back-to-work paper, as the insurance says that he can’t return to work without it.  And he feels ready to go back any time now.  Hopefully, we can get that taken care of this week, and he can return to work next week.

So I checked our bank account online on Thursday, which was the appointed payday.  When I saw the blanace in our checking account, I was all HOLY SHIT!  How did we get that much money?  It turned out that the amount of the direct deposit from Mike’s employer was DOUBLE the usual amount.

There was an incident a few years ago where there was an error, and most of the company got paid double.  What they did was do a direct withdrawal, took all of the money back, and then re-deposited the correct amounts.

But now it’s Monday evening, and that money is still sitting there.  Makes me wonder if the only one this happened to was Mike, perhaps due to an error in processing the disability insurance payment.  If it happened to half the company, they would have noticed and the error would have been immediately reversed.

So Mike needs to call them tomorrow and tell them about this, so they can adjust it correctly.  We can’t spend any of the money, even the amount that Mike was supposed to have been paid, because they’ll likely take the whole thing back and re-deposit the correct amount, as I said.  Luckily we have enough of a cushion there at the moment to pay bills and live on for now.  All of our June bills have been paid, and there’s still enough cash to buy food, put gas in the car, and go to ball games and stuff.

As long as they fix this before the rent comes due, we’re good.

***The title of this post comes from a sign behind the bar at the Wild Rover Pub in Manchester, NH.  It says WILD ROVER PUB – YANKEE FANS PAY DOUBLE.  It cracks me up every time I see it, and I saw it again last night…we went there for dinner after the Fisher Cats game.

They have all sorts of Y***** hating signs and stuff displayed.  There’s a fake New Hampshire license plate that says YNKEH8TR, and where it’s supposed to say “Live Free Or Die”, it says “Hate Yanks Or Die”.  And, of course, the infamous Photoshopped picture of Saddam Hussein wearing a Y***** hat!  They forgot the Darth Vader version, though!

I love this place!

Well, at least the beginning of the day was.  It was panic attack hell, and it started before I even opened my eyes.  I was awake, eyes closed, and still felt dizzy.

I had to go to the bathroom, so I got up and did so.  Oh, yeah, this was a bad one.  I went back to bed, and begged Mike not to leave me, not even to go out and pick up the mail, if I couldn’t get showered and dressed in order to go with him.

I took one of the dreaded pills, which are getting to be in short supply.  I really have to make an appointment with a Lahey doctor soon if I hope to get more.

The Ativan pill eventually took effect, and the symptoms finally calmed down.  ut I was so so exhausted from it all, that I just wanted to go to sleep.  But once again, I was afraid that if I did, I would never wake up.  The fear of dying during these attacks is VERY real.

But I did lay down, and something in my body kicked me awake when I nodded off.  I did sleep a bit, though, and obviously I did wake up.  By then, it was 1PM.  Mike had already showered and dressed, and I finally felt well enough to do so myself.

So we did go out and collect mail, get something to eat, and go grocery shopping.  I was pretty much okay for the rest of the day and night.

Now I think I’m ready to get some REAL sleep.

But what I want to know is, after a long time of no problems, WHY is this kicking in again, about a year after it first started?  Is there something about hormones, body chemistry, that makes this happen to me only in the summer?

I don’t know, but it HAS to stop.  NOW.

…if there is a difference between making it a requirement to provide a private room, at the workplace, for a new mother to pump breast milk, and providing a similar private room in which a diabetic and inject his or her insulin?

Today’s Dear Abby column is devoted completely to the breastfeeding thing.

I knew about the existence of these “lactation rooms” at some workplaces, and I asked Mike if he knew if such a thing existed at his work.  He said he didn’t know.  He’s never lactated.  I told him that if they did have such a room, then why can’t he ask that such a room be available for diabetics to have a private, clean place in which to inject their insulin?

Nursing mothers have bristled over the suggestion that they pump the milk in the restroom, and rightfully so.  In my honest opinion, ladies’ rooms are often more filthy and gross than men’s rooms are (don’t ask me how I know this, I just do).

So this is why Mike is not too keen on sticking needles into himself in the men’s room at work, even if it is cleaner than the ladies’ room.  Also, there is the fact that in a toilet stall, there is no clean place to put all of his stuff, he has the meter, test strips, needles, the insulin pen, and such.

In my last post, I said that he could opt to stick the needle in his arm or belly, but he really does not feel comfortable doing that…sticking it in his leg is easiest for him.  And for that, he obviously has to pull his pants down.  He works in a cube with no privacy, and even the higher-ups have no privacy.  Even the office of the head honcho has GLASS WALLS.  Sheesh!

Anyhoo…if I researched Massachusetts law about the breast-pumping rooms, and found out that they were required by law here…would that be a case for requiring Mike’s work to provide him with a private, clean, and otherwise suitable place to inject his insulin shortly before he eats his lunch?  Wouldn’t that be a “reasonable accommodation” under the Americans With Disabilities Act?

I mean, pregnancy and breastfeeding is a CHOICE, but diabetes is not.  It’s not like Mike woke up one day and decided that it would be fun to have diabetes, and have to stick himself with needles several times a day, checking blood sugar (which can actually be done in his cube, as it’s in the fingers) and injecting his insulin (which is where he needs some privacy).   So if the breastfeeding mother has a right to privacy when pumping, then Mike deserves the same rights when injecting.

It’s not like he is asking for a whole bunch more ddr memory for his work computer, so he can goof off and play video games…he just would like to be able to inject lunchtime insulin in a clean and private place.

Thoughts?

Today, we learned what happens if a diabetic doesn’t eat soon enough after taking a very fast-acting insulin, in this case, Humalog.

Mike has eaten as much as 30 minutes after injecting himself with this, with no problems.  That’s why he thought it would be okay to shoot it before we left the house today, to go collect mail and do other errands, because we were planning to eat out and we’d probably be in a restaurant in half an hour.

Anyhoo, he first wanted to stop at CVS to drop off a couple of scripts to be picked up later, on the way home.  There was a line at the drop-off area, because some woman was being difficult with the pharmacy tech.  Then, he stopped at Staples because I’d said something earlier about needing a new printer ink cartridge.  I didn’t say I needed it TODAY, but he stopped anyway.

So I ran in and got it, was back to the car in five minutes.  Then we started heading for the Good Post Office, which is only a few miles away from Staples.  That’s when he said he felt really hungry, and could we stop and eat before picking up the mail?

I said, sure, it had been kind of long by this point since he did the insulin, and eating sooner than later would be better.  There’s a 99 restaurant on the way, so we went in there.

Everything was fine, we ordered food, we ate it, and I was finishing my beer, when Mike suddenly broke out into a sweat, and felt like he was going to faint.  At first I thought he was having a heart attack, but if he were, that defribrillator inside him would kick in.  He felt like he might want to vomit, and he went to the men’s room.

He was in there for a while, and I was scared that he’d never come out.  I was about to ask our female serer to find a male employee and send him in there to make sure Mike was okay, when he came out.

The whole thing passed, and Mike said he knew what it probably was, waiting too long to eat after taking the Humalog.  I looked this up online later, and sure enough, this is likely what it was.  I found this site, that has a chart with the various types of insulin on it, how long they take to work, when they *peak* and such.

The *peak* is when it makes the blood sugar the lowest.  The timing that it says there sounds about right for what happened today.  Even though he’d just finished a meal when he felt faint, it still takes a while for a meal to have any effect.  But the whole thing passed in 15-20 minutes.

So he won’t be doing that again, injecting the Humalog and then not eating right away.  The one thing that annoys me is that he has it in pen form, easy to carry around, but he refuses to inject it anywhere but at home or in a hotel room, when we travel.  And he insists on injecting it into his leg, which requires de-pantsing.  Not something he can do in public, and he doesn’t want to do it in a public restroom.

I suggested sticking it into his belly, in the car, before we go into a restaurant.  I used to work with a guy who used to stick it into his belly at work (where there was almost NO privacy), he’d just go into a corner somewhere, do it, and get it over with.

But Mike will not have any of this.  However, he’s going to have to figure out something, because he should be going back to work soon, how is he going to do insulin before lunch when he’s eating it away from home?  He says he’ll have to skip it before that meal, just do it before breakfast and dinner at home.

Maybe it will be okay, because he is also on Lantus, a time-release insulin that he takes before going to bed.  That is supposed to last over a period of 24 hours.  But I’m not sure.  I know he’s skipped the lunchtime Humalog when we’ve gone to ball games, and it hasn’t caused any problems with the sugar measurements.  So who knows?

Now I have to nag him to call the diabetes doctor and talk about this.  And to get him to see that it’s okay to sit in the car and jab himself in the belly, if he has to.

It never ends!

I stole this from Kristyn, who stole it from some other blog…

Most Hated…

1. Food:  Spam.  Nastiest stuff ever created.
2. Person:  It’s a toss-up between A-Rod, Rush Limbaugh, and the jerk outside who’s making all sorts of racket.
3. Job:  Retail.  Hell on earth.
4. City:  Trenton, NJ.  Trenton makes, the world takes.  The world refuses, Trenton uses!  I swear, I’d wake up every morning when I lived there, and it always smelled like raw sewage in the AM.
5. Band:  The Jonas Brothers, because I’m just sick of hearing about them all the time.
6. Website:  MySpace.  So much skeeve there, I closed my account.
7. TV program:  TMZ.  I think it’s skeevy.
8. British Politician:  Tony Blair, ass-kisser of Duhbya
9. Artist:  None that I can think of at the moment.
10. Book:  Any of those *tell-alls* about baseball players on steroids, especially if they are written by Jose Canseco.
11. Shop:  Home Depot.  Mike loves it, I hate it.  So if he wants to go there when we’re out, we go to this shopping center that has Home Depot and Michaels (craft store).  Then we both get to be happy!
12. Organization:  Operation Rescue, as well as anything else that is anti-woman, anti-choice.
13. Historical Event:   9/11.  Nothing to like about that at all!
14. Sport:  I guess I’ll say NASCAR, because of how Fox Sports cut off a Sox game that was in extra innings to show it.
15. Technology:  Cell phones, even though I have one.  This is due to assholes who use them irresponsibly and cause harm to others (such as texting while driving).
16. Annual event:  The damned holiday parade that goes past my house the weekend after Thanksgiving.  It’s horrible.  We always try to get our asses out of here before they close off the street, to avoid this crap.
17. Daily task:  Cleaning up hairballs.
18. Comedian:  Anyone remember Andrew Dice Clay?

Most loved…

1. Food:  Seafood.  Especially lobstah.  And chowdah.  New England variety only, please!
2. Person:  Mike, even though he’s put me through the wringer with health shit over the past few months.
3. Job:  Blogging
4. City:  Portland, Maine.  I want to move there one day.
7. TV program:  Just about all PBS cooking shows.
8. Movie:  The Wizard of Oz
9. Artist:  Claude Monet and Vincent VanGogh
10. Book:  Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child
11. Shop:  the Borders bookstore near the State T stop.
12. Organization:  Grey2KUSA, North Shore Animal League
13. Historical event:  The Red Sox FINALLY winning the World Series in 2004.
14. Sport:  Do I need to tell you this one?  If I do, I will have to beat you upside the head with a BASEBALL bat…LOL!
15. Technology:  Cell phones.  Yeah, I have a love/hate relationship with them.  I love to Tweet away from home.
16. Annual event:  Baseball Opening Day
17. Daily task:  Petting cats.
18. Comedian:  Craig Ferguson; I’m a sucker for that Scottish accent!

Yeah, with all of the shit that has been going on, I forget things.  Important things.  Such as how we have Portland Sea Dogs tickets for July 10-11-12, and still no hotel room for said trip.

Well, I remedied that today.  I booked a room at the Inn at St. John, which is THE place to stay if you are going to Sea Dogs games.  We’ve only stayed there a thousand times before.

I promised Mike that I would do my best to get a room on the ground floor, since he has a hard time with stairs and all, and the Inn at St. John came through.  The place has no elevators, and doing all of the stairs could be difficult for him at this time.  I can do the stairs, I did when I stayed there on my own last month.  But Mike said that it would be okay to pay more for a ground floor room. if necessary, so I did so.

The only thing is that he will not be able to take off work on Friday, July 10.  He has taken so much time off due to disability, and then there is jury duty the week before our trip, starting on July 6.  Hopefully, it’ll be  some lame trial about some schmuck in Lowell holding up a liquor store or something, it’ll go one day, that that’ll be it.

So it has been decided that he will NOT ask for the time off.  I will go up on the Downeaster on Friday, and he will drive up later to join me at the ball game.  Yeah, I’ll leave him his tickets.

It’s the best I can do.  He still wants to take the trip, but he will not be able to take Friday off as planned back in November 2008, when we first bought the tickets.  But thank goodness for the train, so that we can work around this!