The Isolation Diaries: The First Few Weeks

In news that should be surprising to approximately no one, I recently started working from home.

When I say "started" it really translates to "does your VPN work? because if it doesn't, we're gonna make sure it does really quickly; get off site and get all of your people off site too."

...because that's really how it happened. Within 48 hours, I once more had full remote access (something the IT teams onsite hadn't been able to fix properly in two years -- and it still took my technical know-how to actually fix it on a workaround and get it working) and the first members of my team were working from home. More followed, and by around the end of March, all who could do so were doing so.

As some others have done via more, ahem, live sites like Twitter or Facebook, I've decided to keep a diary of sorts here documenting not only my time working at home, but my overall isolation (or, as the media likes to call it, "social distancing").


Monday, March 23:
My last day at work onsite at my job. I gathered my things and brought them home as I was able to confirm that afternoon that my VPN worked, and worked well enough to do my job. After I arrived home after my shift Monday night, I have not left the house since.

Tuesday, March 24:
First night working from home. I read fifteen comic books over the course of about six hours, do two loads of laundry, replace a light bulb in the spare bedroom, drain my phone battery twice from playing app games, drain six vape batteries, and eat half a 30oz carton of Goldfish crackers. I find out that replacement light bulbs, ordered from Amazon, will take a full month to arrive due to shipment delays because of this virus bullshit.

Wednesday, March 25:
Second night working from home. I eat half of what's left of the Goldfish, along with about 2/3 of a bag of salt and vinegar almonds. I read ten more unread comics. I find out that comic publishers/shipments are basically on hold for the foreseeable future, so I control myself and save the rest of the books I have for upcoming shifts. I do another load of laundry out of sheer boredom and spend a good chunk of the night pacing the room. I hear a loud bang downstairs, so I unsheath my katana and walk the entire house to check it (all while the wife is asleep). I finally break out the mp3 player and listen to music just to crack the silence. I tell my coworkers that I'm not sure whether this work from home thing will make me fat, a hermit, or a fat hermit.

Thursday, March 26:
Day off. I have not changed my clothing or showered since Monday, so, uh, I do that. I decide not to shave my beard, as coming out of this quarantine with a full-on madman look may be hilarious. I may change my mind on this in the coming days and weeks. I dutifully put away all the laundry I've washed and folded over the course of the past two days, and spend my downtime sleeping and playing the new Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game on my switch.

Friday, March 27:
Day off. Payday. This is good, because the electric bill and mortgage are due in a few days. I do some household chores, bake a homemade pizza, and take an afternoon nap. I take the online test tryout for Jeopardy! and am pretty sure I fail it miserably. I order a Judas Priest t-shirt on Amazon so that I can have something to look forward to. The coronavirus stimulus bill is signed into law.


[EDIT] I should also mention that the wife is still working in her office five days a week, as her job is not one that can easily be made into a remote work position in a secure fashion. Yet. We are waiting to see if it can be.


Saturday, March 28:
Day off. I shave the beard and leave the goatee. The wife and I discuss isolation planning for the next few weeks -- when we will absolutely need to leave the house and why. Orders from Amazon are delayed for anywhere between 1 and 4 weeks, yet the light bulbs I ordered less than a week prior arrive this afternoon. This gives me a little hope. The wife makes vegan BBQ pork and coleslaw sandwiches for us for dinner and we watch no less than three hours of Jeopardy! on Netflix. To give myself something else to look forward to, I (almost shamefully) order two 100-count "random grab bags" of used music CDs from eBay, as the thrill of random chance, and/or possibly reclaiming some records I once had but "lost" excites me. I find out that there was a power outage at my office that turned off some of the team's computers -- computers they'll need to have online in order to work from home. I let leadership know and ask anyone who's onsite in the morning, if anyone, to make sure all computers are on and working. My own computer works fine as I was able to log into the VPN as per the usual.

Sunday, March 29:
Working from home, day three. In preparation of the CDs' arrival, I also order a second 500GB backup hard drive, as the one I have is seven years old and filling up quickly, and I will need to have space to digitally back up the music on (whatever I want to keep, anyway; the rest will go into the recycle bin). The night is quiet as hell and I have to pace the room several times to stay awake and/or not go stir crazy as I'm locked to my VPN for 11 hours straight.

Monday, March 30:
Working from home, day four. It's announced that the general "stay at home" orders are extended to April 30. This is fine with me, the guy who has showered twice over the past week and is saving a lot of money from not being able to go anywhere or do anything. The night of work itself is a shitshow, as it is a massive struggle to get the remaining work-at-home folks up and online, and three big outages made everything frantic, with nearly double the number of issues my team would normally work. At the end of the night, I wanted to drink.

Tuesday, March 31:
Working from home, day five. This marks one week straight that I have not left the house. I have barely even gone outdoors. The world has now become a frightening place. I am out of Mountain Dew, though a new case of Goldfish crackers arrived from Amazon today, along with the new backup hard drive. The night of work is awful, with multiple outages causing multiple issues nationwide. I work for almost 40 minutes after the time my shift is supposed to end (7am).

Wednesday, April 1:
Working from home, day six. I ask the wife if she knows whether they're going to allow her to eventually work from home (translation: have they figured it out yet? How long are they going to make you do this crap?). She has no real answer but it probably won't happen. I receive my new issue of X-Force in the mail, which tells me that perhaps comic shipments haven't stopped but are instead greatly delayed, as that book came out over three weeks ago. I drink my last Mountain Dew I have in the house and make a big batch of instant coffee in one of my Nalgene water bottles so that I can keep caffeine flowing through my system. I am almost out of allopurinol and a lot of basic necessities here and there, and the wife mentions that she wants to go to the grocery store this weekend. The night of work goes slowly, and I do laundry during it...until one of my agents working from home disappears, and I spend the next two and a half hours working her issues for her to get them into a good place. I work a full hour after the time my shift is supposed to end.

Thursday, April 2:
Day off. I wake up with what feels like another gout attack starting, so I immediately take the meds to make that stop. The wife confirms with me that she wants to go to the store after she gets home from work. It is the first time I've left the house in eleven days. We put on masks her mother made for us and vinyl gloves, go to two stores, and spend nearly $400 on groceries -- trying to ensure that we do not have to do this again for another month. While out, I notice that most people are not wearing masks or gloves, nor are they doing anything whatsoever to protect themselves, and more than that, are looking at us strangely because we are. A new pair of glasses I've ordered arrives in the mail, as does my new issue of Marauders and the first batch of random CDs from the previous week's order -- said batch of CDs contains a lot of stuff I've never heard of, two or three artists I have, a bunch of jazz and blues (nice) along with some classical and a ton of Christmas music. It is, mostly, a bust. I slice open my index finger really deeply while opening the box, and it bleeds a lot until I can get it properly cleaned and bandaged. We begin watching Tiger King on Netflix. I later pass out in my chair and sleep for about four hours during the night, and when I awaken, it is snowing and icing like crazy.

Friday, April 3:
Day off. Now that there is food in the house (at great cost) I can actually plan some real meals again and do some light cooking.  I begin the process of archiving the new CDs, taking great care to name and file them appropriately. There are some hidden gems in this first collection, so I'm not too dissatisfied with it -- and there's another collection coming shortly too, so there's that. More than that, I obtain a weird sense of peace when I archive things digitally, almost like the process and the order of it all soothes me, comforts me in knowing that the talent that went into making this music won't be forgotten, nor will it be unappreciated. It also makes me feel like I'm doing something constructive instead of menial chores or, well, sitting in my chair playing Pokemon. 

Saturday, April 4:
Day off. The gout is back full-on, in my ankle this time -- it migrated there from the normal spot (on the top of my foot) over the course of about 18 hours. Treatment and further preventative measures are in place, but unfortunately, it sidelines me for most, eh, excessive movement until it goes away again. I internally ponder whether they'd re-prescribe me the steroid again if I need it without needing to go back to the clinic, if the swelling balloons up again [EDIT: they won't]. I end up having a full-on gout attack that basically ruins my entire day and evening, before vanishing completely in the overnight hours. Archiving the CDs proves fruitful as I find a lot of really good music within the random mix of stuff in the first collection.

Sunday, April 5:
Working from home, day 7. The night is slow as hell and nothing really happens. The first batch of CDs has been fully archived at this point, and the tracks/albums I like are moved to my mp3 player and put on shuffle so that I have something new to listen to in the overnight hours. The discs, aside from a few I pull aside for the wife to keep and listen to in the car, are recycled.

Monday, April 6:
Working from home, day 8. I emerge from my cave to shower and spend a little time with the wife, who now barely sees me as when I wake up in the evenings, she is just getting home, and for me it's generally a mad rush to take care of everything I need to take care of before I am chained to my VPN all night (once I'm logged into the VPN, I cannot access the rest of my computer or it freezes/crashes, and I cannot let the VPN go idle or lock my screen or it kicks me off the connection). Finally, after two weeks, our network at work begins experiencing capacity issues and goes hard down for an hour or so in the evening before I log in. The problems persist for many of my agents for most of the night, and I end up working half an hour late to make sure everyone's issues are taken care of because of this. The second batch of CDs arrive in the mail.

Tuesday, April 7:
Working from home, day 9. Payday for the wife. We pay our bills and I order some more household supplies and cat food(s) from Amazon, which is still experiencing shipping delays on some items up to three weeks or so. My foot is aching like it's going to try to give me another gout attack, so I take a colchicine and some ibuprofen. We experience our first spring heat wave, and the temperature hits 80 in Nebraska for the first time since the end of last summer. Daisy and I discuss her plans for getting the backyard fixed up and a garden planted (the yard has been wrecked all winter after the contractors put up the new retaining wall and fence, and now that it's warm she wants to start a garden and get it all cleaned up/squared away). The amount of money and time this will take deeply frustrates me as we have bills to pay and have not seen any of that promised coronavirus stimulus money yet. It is a full moon, a fact that is also not lost on me or my coworkers as the night is in-fucking-sane.

Wednesday, April 8:
Working from home, day 10. My foot still aches, so I take another colchicine and some more ibuprofen. Daisy comes home after stopping at Lowe's to get tools and the like to begin prepping our garden, because who knows how long this virus bullshit is going to last and we eat a lot of vegetables. In the process of showing me her new stuff in the garage, we get locked out of the house for half an hour (in the garage, not outside) and it takes Daisy's rage and two butter knives to pop the lock. I begin archiving the second batch of CDs, which has a lot of actual good music in it from people I've heard of. I get an email that says my student loans are now officially in forbearance because of the stimulus bill (which I confirm when I log into my account), but my payment info and due-date still has the normal amount on it. The night at work is relatively slow and seems to drag on forever, though there are still a few things I have to help my team on, either directly or from a distance.

Thursday, April 9:
Day off. I am so incredibly tired. The ache in my foot is gone for now, though Daisy says it still looks a bit swollen (I don't think so, but whatever, right?) She works in the yard some more when she gets home from work and then we have vegan tacos for dinner. I archive about 30 more CDs and pass out in my chair in the overnight for 5-6 hours. Today marks another week straight that I have not left the house.

Friday, April 10:
Day off. Payday for me, this time. This is good because I have many other bills coming due that must be paid with this check. I spend the day doing many household chores, including dishes, laundry, changing the sheets, unclogging the bathroom sink, cleaning and refilling the cats' water fountain (because, oh yes, they have a fountain), and some other odds-and-ends around the house. I archive another 30ish CDs from the second collection, and find that I'll probably be able to finish the archiving in the overnight hours. Knowing this, I go back to eBay (the thrill of finding new and underrated music has now gotten me addicted) and order two more random 100-CD sets from different sellers. I now wonder how many times I'll do this before I get bored of it.

Saturday, April 11:
Day off. I sleep off and on most of the day, as does the wife. This also extends to the overnight hours, as I have trouble staying awake and because my sleep schedule is completely fucked now that I no longer leave the house. All goutlike symptoms are gone, though I do think I may have sprained my toe somehow (go figure). Daisy and I finish Tiger King. Before I go to bed for good in the late overnight/early morning hours, we get a decently strong thunderstorm that rattles the house.

Sunday, April 12:
Working from home, day 11. Easter Sunday. In the morning while I sleep, Daisy goes to Walmart and stocks up on fresh produce and some other essentials that she couldn't wait on -- for the first time in a month, she is able to get toilet paper. It is very cold and rainy/snowy most of the day. Still somewhat out of it, I get up, shower, and eat around noon, then take another nap in the afternoon hours, awakening an hour before I'm supposed to start work. This is good, because while the night starts slowly, I get engaged on a super-hot issue around 3AM that dominates my time for the next five and a half hours, including 90 minutes after I would normally be off shift. While I get sincere thank-yous from other leadership in the program (including my Executive Director) for my help, I end up working a twelve and a half hour shift.

Monday, April 13:
Working from home, day 12. By this point, even though it's only been twelve days of working from home (with days off thrown in there too; I work four-day weeks, so this is the start of my third week in a row of doing this), it seems like I've been doing it forever. I've noticed that I'm going through much less laundry and consuming far less consumables (both food and around-the-house stuff) than I would be if I were going to and from work every day. Gas prices are less than $1.50 a gallon and flights are practically free since nobody can go anywhere. While I'd like to book the wife and I a getaway for our anniversary, who knows where society will be at that juncture -- if it even really exists at all. Regardless, I request our anniversary off from work (it's a Sunday night) and my request is granted. Tornadoes rip through my parents' neighborhood in NC, though they (and their house) are thankfully unscathed. My finger that I sliced open while opening a box almost two weeks prior has now completely healed, but in its place is a deep scar that will probably remain for the rest of my life. I order two books of stamps, not because I need them (I will eventually, but not at this moment), but because I want to help keep the USPS funded. Bernie Sanders endorses Joe Biden, which makes me so depressed that I feel queasy. The night at work is steady, but not crushing. For the first time in almost a full week, I am able to finish my shift at the correct time.

Tuesday, April 14:
Working from home, day 13. Days seem to merge together at this point, and everything seems to be one long day interrupted by a few hours of sleep here and there. I have been outside the house twice in the past full month. In that time I've also only needed to do like, three loads of my own laundry (meaning, nothing but my own clothes). I'm not stir-crazy or anything, but I'm starting to fray a bit at the edges. I can easily and comfortably survive on the household supplies and food I have, though I put together a Prime Pantry order of crackers and Rice Krispies treats to have some comfort food around the house I can eat in the overnight while I'm working (since fresh produce has been really hard to come by during the pandemic). I cannot tell you how much I just want to go see a movie, or go get a pizza or order some Chinese food, or wander around a store/mall aimlessly just to enjoy doing something different. The night at work is horrific, compounded by a very slow network that gave me extreme lag on my applications and made me want to scream and punch things. Despite this, I am still able to finish the shift by around 7:15 or so, with the last bit of that primarily being conversing with our morning leadership team about updates on issues in the overnight hours. One of the KMFDM shirts I ordered almost a month prior finally arrives in the mail.

Wednesday, April 15:
Working from home, day 14. Our Coronavirus stimulus check finally hits our bank account, meaning that money is no longer a concern, at least for the short term (the $2400 is more than I personally get paid in a month, by a substantial amount). I'm fighting off some mild depression, so this helps it go away. You know what else would help it go away? Being able to get new comics in the mail, as I have 20+ active subscriptions that are all on hold because of the virus. I'm not sleeping well; when I sleep, I either wake up over and over, or I have nightmares, or I sleep too long and end up wasting or losing time I need to do other things. The weather forecast predicts 2-5 inches of wet, heavy snow between tonight and Friday afternoon -- which, on April 15, is solidly in "this weather forecast is total horseshit" territory. The night of work is mostly quiet, though I do have a steady stream of things to keep me busy -- including a hot one I was heavily engaged on for the last two hours before I left (which resolved itself within 30 minutes of me transitioning it to a morning colleague). As both first batches of random CDs are fully archived now, the boxes of them are recycled when the garbage/recycling trucks come today.

Thursday, April 16:
Day off. I fall asleep in my chair for a few hours in the morning after "breakfast," and when I awaken, glance out the window -- no snow yet, just another gray spring afternoon in Omaha. I go to sleep for another two hours in the bedroom and awaken to 2-3 inches of heavy, wet snow on the ground and on vehicles/structures, but not really sticking to the roads. By the time night falls and Daisy arrives home from work, this has increased to 5-6 inches, and it is still coming down when she goes to bed for the night. Two shipments from Amazon arrive, including nuts for me and tuna for the cats (both of which had been out of stock for weeks on Amazon until I was lucky enough to catch them available). Batch 3 of the random CDs arrive, and it is by far the best batch, with many well-known albums, most of which I've never owned before. I archive about 30 of them before passing out in my chair in the overnight hours, and awakening in the morning around the time Daisy was getting up to go to work.

Friday, April 17:
Day off. As the sun comes out and temperatures begin to rapidly warm back up to what April fucking should be, the snow begins melting and falling off trees and structures in big clumps. I begin developing, what I personally believe, is an internal hemorrhoid -- probably from being chained to my computer for close to twelve hours a night, four nights a week, for work. It is so uncomfortable and painful that it makes my stomach queasy and makes me afraid to eat -- which is good in some sense because maybe that'll prevent me from becoming a fatter hermit than I already am. A full half of batch 3 of the CDs are now archived, and it looks like batch 4 will arrive on Monday (based on the tracking estimate I have been given). We have not yet spent a single cent of the Coronavirus stimulus money -- we're good on groceries and supplies, and bills are paid up at the moment. I consider us lucky, because not many people can say that. Our (shameful) president releases some guidelines to the states about how to "reopen America" that I sincerely hope fall on deaf ears as we're nowhere near close to being done with this virus bullshit yet, and to think so is lunacy. I spend the day doing some light laundry and chores and finally eat, watch a movie, and take a nap in the afternoon hours.


And the story continues...

Energy, Part IV: Big Dick Energy

(written mid-March, 2020)

Buckle in, folks, this one might be a little triggering for some of you.

On the Friday I finished my prednisone, I had a follow-up appointment with my primary care physician as an interim, stopgap step between the gout lady and my urologist appointment (which was still on the books for the Friday after that). The goal here was to check in and see how I was doing, and to probably get a prescription for some sort of anti-uric-acid drug I'd have to take every day.

"Your foot looks fine now," she said. "How do you feel?"

"Pretty much normal," I replied. "Slight muscle aches in the calf, like when you get a knot in the muscle, but that's about it."

"Well, your uric acid levels were high," she said, "so it was probably a gout attack. You said this has happened before?"

"Yes, but this was the worst one he's ever had," my wife chimed in.

"Yes," I said. "I agree. About once or twice a year I'll have it happen in one leg/foot or the other, or occasionally my arm, and it goes away within a few days. I thought it was tendonitis or repetitive stress injury, etc. before, but apparently it's not."

"The thing about gout is that it recurs, and that it's always damaging to the joints," said my doctor. "Which is why it's worse this time than before -- those joints are getting a little more damaged every time it happens."

This makes sense. My weight is also slowly creeping back up (though I don't know why) and that generally puts a little more stress on my body.

"So," the doctor continued, "I'm going to put you on allopurinol for the uric acid, and colchicine for flareups."

"My dad is on allopurinol," I said, "so I know the basics about it."

"It is the go-to gout medication," said my doctor. "Works pretty well, minimal side effects if any; it helps. But you'll have to drink a lot of water while you're on it."

"I've been doing that since this shit started anyway," I replied. "I have a 48oz Nalgene bottle that I try to drain at least once a day, twice if I can."

Note: even if I drink two of them a day, that's only 96oz of water. A gallon is 128oz. I don't know if you've ever tried to drink that much water (or liquid in general) in any given day, but it is hard. As I've told Daisy, I just don't think I can put that much fluid into my body on a daily basis. It feels like a job, it feels like I'm forcing it. It does not make me feel good. It makes me feel, well, bloated. With how I'm slowly gaining some weight back, I want to feel and look less fat, not more. 

"Well, keep that up," my doctor said. "It will only be beneficial in helping to flush excess uric acid out of your body."

"What's the colci....coldic...--"

"Colchicine," she replied. "It's a plant-based natural anti-inflammatory."

"Take it when you're having an attack and it will help," she said. "It's not an every day thing. If you take it every day it may trigger an attack and make it worse."

Note: I've not been able to find info on that, per se, but I did find this:

So, I mean, whatever.

Apparently if I start to have a gout attack, that stuff will kill it in 12-24 hours, so there's that. 

Anyway.

"So let's talk about my urologist appointment next week," I said. "Do you know how that will go, what I'm supposed to do beforehand -- fasting, drinking more water, etc?"

"I do know," she replied. "You don't have to do any special preparation for it or anything, but I'm pretty sure he'll want to scope ya."

Scope...me?

"The doctor takes a thin tube with a camera and goes up inside your urethra, all the way up into the bladder, and looks around inside to make sure there aren't any cuts or lesions, burst blood vessels, anything like that which may be causing the blood in your urine. If they see anything actively bleeding or anything like that, they'll cauterize it while they're in there."

As she said this, the look of horror I gave her must've been amusing, as a slow, evil smile spread across her face. The wife found the contrast between my face as well as the doctor's hysterical. 

"And, uh, there's not any other way they can do this? Like an X-ray or CT or something?"

"Nope," my doctor said, very much trying to hold back a laugh. 

As an aside, that IS incorrect, which I will get to later. 

What I wanted to say: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Oh my gods, I'm going to die, because fuck it, I'd 100% rather have the bladder cancer than deal with that. Bladder cancer at least gets me out of work on FMLA on whatever percent of my salary that would give me. Fuck it, no, no. No. My dick isn't falling off, so I'm not dying, thank you, check please, we're done here.

What I actually said:
"So, ahem, any special things I should do beforehand? Should I like, shave everything into a heart for the doctor, or something?"

What I said when we got out to the car, much to my wife's again, hysterical laughter:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Oh my gods, I'm going to die, because fuck it, I'd 100% rather have the bladder cancer than deal with that. Bladder cancer at least gets me out of work on FMLA on whatever percent of my salary that would give me. Fuck it, no, no. No. My dick isn't falling off, so I'm not dying, thank you, check please, we're done here.

I'm sure the phrase "they're going up my peehole" was uttered a few times as well, while I did my best to hold back tears.

The wife, infinitely amused by this, was pulling up videos of the procedure on YouTube later that night. "Oh, I found video of it, it doesn't look that bad, do you want to see?"

"FUCK NO I DON'T WANT TO SEE IT!"

[EDIT: I later did watch a video of the procedure and it is pretty much the most horrifying thing I could have imagined, with little exaggeration.]

For a full week I dealt with the fear of the scope, knowing that the next Friday, I would have a camera -- and not a small one, either -- shoved up my peehole. UP MY PEEHOLE. It is supposed to be an out hole, not an in hole. 

I felt the need to tell my coworkers -- management especially -- that depending on the results of said scoping and any subsequent, ahem, work that would need to be done. Getting scoped is one thing -- finding something that needs to be repaired, or cauterized, is something completely different and would make for a rough few days afterwards, which would mean I would not be going to work after such a procedure for at least one day, maybe more.

"They, uh, can't go up the butt instead?" asked my Director.

"Sadly no, though I fucking wish they could," was my reply.

The appointment came, and externally I was cool as a cucumber -- internally, I was at possibly the most anxious I've ever been for any doctor's appointment, ever. This was evident in my blood pressure, which was forty points higher than usual when they took it in the office that day.

Daisy, the wonderful wife that she is, did everything she could to keep from giggling at the situation. She failed.

Now, I'd like to rewind here for a minute to set the scene: at this point I had been on allopurinol for a week, all gout symptoms were gone, I'd been drinking close to a gallon (again, not an entire gallon most days, but close) of water every day, and I hadn't seen blood in my pee for over two weeks -- probably three at that point. Physically, I felt great. I felt better than I'd felt in some time both mentally and physically. At this point I was sort of wondering why I was actually even there, so far removed from the original situation and cause for concern. 

The urologist I saw was probably in his early seventies, if not older, and had zero sense of humor about his job or his patients whatsoever.

After the nurse got a urine sample from me to run through the labs there that day (!), the doctor came in and asked me a long list of questions, including asking if I had diabetes twice.

I don't -- every blood test I've ever had confirms that I don't, I'm just fat. It's okay, I'm that rare type of healthy fat person that people can't believe when they see.

"Okay," the doctor said, "I'm going to go get the results of your urine sample, and I'd like you to undress from the waist down, put on this gown, and jump up on the table for me. I'll be back shortly."

This is it, I thought. This is when they put the scope up my peehole.

I am not generally scared of a lot. I used to be anxious about everything possible, but at this point, even for most medical stuff, it's meh. I used to hate having my blood drawn and would nearly pass out (or actually pass out) every time it happened. In comparison, I've been stuck with so many needles over the past two months, either to put something in me or to take blood out of me, that it's become completely routine and doesn't really bother me anymore. The last two blood draws I had were nearly painless and didn't bother me in the slightest, and between those, my tattoo, and the other things I've been injected with over the past few months (vaccinations and the like), I've been fine.

But this, this was different. For quite obvious reasons.

The doctor came back in, told me to lay down on the bed, and let me know in his old, slow and metered voice that he was going to perform an exam of my midsection and genitalia, which he did. It was fast and minimally invasive, and didn't bother me in the least. It rather tickled as he was pressing against some different places on my abdomen and pelvic region, which made me laugh slightly, because it felt like when my cat walks on me with all of his weight. He even apologized when he had to examine my actual genitalia, which I found amusing until I was in the car later, thinking to myself perhaps he was apologizing because it's so small and was frightened when I was there. 

"Okay, well, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary so far," he said. "Hop off there, turn around and put your elbows on the bed, and spread your legs as far as you can go -- I'm going to check your prostate."

...okay.

Now, several thoughts ran very quickly through my mind at this point -- the first was oh, I'd so much rather have this done to me than get the scope, followed by I guess I should have expected this, since, well, all guys get this done to them at some point, followed by but they don't usually have their wives in the room to witness it, followed by this is going to be an interesting story to tell the guys at work.

And by the time these thoughts ran through my head, he was inside me.

Look, over the years, especially in my younger years, I had my share of questionable sexual experiences, and only a few of them have involved a man inside me. So by those standards, and approaching it from that point of view, it was fine. During the 20 seconds or so that the exam was actually taking place, I thought about this particular meme I'd seen a few weeks before:

This did not happen to me, but as soon as I felt him press on and feel around my prostate, I started laughing.

The wife, who did not know or understand why I was laughing, also found this hysterical as well, and did her best to stifle her own laughs.

And then his fingers were out of me and he was done.

"Everything feels pretty good and normal to me," the doctor said, with a quizzical look on his face. I tried not to look him in the eye.

"You can get dressed now," he added. "Here's some tissues to wipe the jelly out of your rectum. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Wipe the jelly out of your rectum!

I thanked him, I think; I was trying too hard not to burst into insane peals of laughter like a twelve year old, despite the fact that I'd just been violated.

"Wipe the jelly out of your rectum!" I whisper-yelled to the wife once he was out of the room -- my wife whose face was red with laughter -- as I was, ahem, attempting to do so. "Oh hell, there's so much of it, it's all up in there. Don't look at me. Don't you look at meeee!"

Once I, ahem, wiped the jelly out of my rectum, I regained my composure and re-dressed myself.

"The look of horror on your face..." Daisy started.

"It was fine," I said. "It didn't hurt or anything. Just felt odd."

This is true. I now no longer understand why all of the guy-dude-bros get all nervous or worked up about the procedure. It didn't hurt, it was only slightly uncomfortable for less then twenty seconds total, and there are far worse things to get shoved up one's ass than an old dude's rubber-gloved fingers.

"Did you like it?" Daisy asked, with a smirk.

"It's not something I'd like, choose to do just willy nilly," I said, "but I didn't dislike it; it is what it is."

It was at about this point when the doctor came back to the room.

"So," he said, "your urinalysis is clean, and looking great. No blood at all, nothing."

"That's very good to hear," I said.

"Your prostate feels normal, and I didn't detect any abnormalities in my exam, so that's good too. What I'd like to do next is to schedule you for a CT scan of the pelvic region, both with and without dye, to get some imaging done -- sort of like an X-ray -- to make sure there's no stones or anything else in there that would be a cause for concern, and then come back here to discuss the results a few days later. Does that sound good?"

"Sure," I said. Because, at this point, why the fuck not, right?

"I don't expect to see much of anything as you're asymptomatic for any problems right now, but if they do see something on this scan, I'll want to perform what they call a cystoscopy."

AHHHHHHHHHH!!!

"A cystoscopy is when we insert a flexible tube with a camera and a light on it up through your urethra into the bladder so that we can, well, look around and check for any problems visually."

I could begin to feel my hair standing on end.

"Now, I know that sounds scary, but it's not that bad," he added. "we coat the scope in novocaine jelly so that you don't feel it as much and to minimize any after-pain -- it's also so we don't have to perform an injection of novocaine into the penis, so you don't have to worry about that."

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

"Oh, that's neat," I said.

"Now, we'd only need to do that if we see an issue in those CT scans," he said. At least that's what I think he said; I was terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought at this point.

"I get that," I replied. "Better to be safe than sorry, and eliminate all doubt."

I thanked him, and he left -- and the nurse returned.

"I scheduled your follow up for a week from today," she said. "So I need you to call the hospital to get the CT set up good to go for sometime between now and Wednesday, otherwise the next open slot is in another three weeks."

"Uh, okay," I said.

I would later realize that this nurse lady, brusque as she was, was doing everything she could to pull some strings and do us a favor to get this done as quickly as possible. Daisy and I agreed, as with the coronavirus ramping up and everything getting put on lockdown more and more every day, the thought of getting all of this shit taken care of ASAP was first and foremost in our thoughts.

I got the CT scan scheduled for 4PM on Tuesday, and the follow-up with the urologist the following Friday at 3PM, same time as the previous appointment.

"No food for four hours before the scan," the nurse said. "Clear liquids are fine. Call them to reschedule if you get sick between now and then, as they won't do it if you're sick. It should be fast -- they'll want to do one scan without the dye and one scan with the dye to see the contrast in reflectivity. You won't drink the dye, they'll give it to you in an IV drip. It's an iodine-based dye."

Greeeeeeat. I hate IV drips. Those are the most painful needles they can possibly stick into you. And you have to wait for the stuff to empty inside you.

And all this for a little blood in my pee weeks ago.

So that brings us up to the present. On Tuesday I'll go in and have that done, and I'll be taking off work for the night for rest purposes afterwards, as I will have to get up early to do it and it's a good excuse to not have to go in and deal with the normal horseshit of my job, especially when I expect that job to only get harder over the next few weeks while this coronavirus stuff ramps up.

I will, of course, make sure everyone here is updated with the latest once we see what happens.

Energy, Part III: Big Foot Energy

(written early to mid March, 2020)

Picking back up from where we left off...

My testosterone, upon being checked at that doctor's appointment, is 470.

This is now statistically average/slightly below average for someone of my age. The ideal is 500-520 or so, roughly, but 470 is in the normal range.

I feel no differently whatsoever. And, for the record, my blood results for my thyroid were normal -- which will, as planned, make me personally request a full thyroid-specific work-up over the spring/summer, especially if nothing else changes. I respectfully disagree that there's nothing going on there.

However, there were trace amounts of blood in my urine, as I told the doctor there might be. She didn't see it as a huge cause of concern at the moment and said to come back in over the summer to do another pee-in-a-cup test.

A few nights later at work, I noticed a lot more of a pink tinge to my urine than before, and upon a phone call back to the office in the morning, I was set up with an appointment for a urologist three weeks in advance -- it was the soonest I could be seen. Could be something, could be nothing, but they were going to see one way or another.

"I'm scared," I told the wife.

And I am, but I'm also sort of...excited? I don't know if that's the right word to use. I'd like to have an excuse, more than anything else. That's probably the best way to put it.

"Brandon missed work tonight?"
"Yeah, he's got bladder cancer, I guess it was a rough day for him."

Etc.

I don't want pity, but I do want something that can be pointed to as a scapegoat so that people will leave me alone, so to speak. If that makes any sense. A crutch. Something I can point to that other people will say isn't my fault so that I can get a free pass on shit I would otherwise be forced to expend physical and emotional energy on because it would be expected of me.

"Can't work today, I have cancer. I'm salaried anyway, so I'm still getting the same paycheck. Will be back tomorrow or the day after once this particular flare-up dies down some."

Some of you are probably appalled by this. Did you just say you'd rather have some form of cancer than be a fully functional human being who contributes to society?

Yes, yes I did. I'm so beaten down and weary that I kind of just want to retire and not have to deal with it anymore. I did what I wanted to do with my life -- I worked some interesting jobs, met some interesting people, got married, and bought a house. Check, please. Stop the ride, I want to get off. I envy those born into privilege, people who can just up and decide exactly what they want to do with the rest of their lives and when, and if that decision is "I want to watch Netflix and play video games and read comic books all day," then that's what they do.

I've contributed enough to society. I'm burnt out now. This world sucks and I'd like to withdraw from it as much as possible.

In saying this, I would later come to find out I spoke too soon, for multiple reasons -- Coronavirus being one of them, of course, but surprisingly not the most pressing.

Last week, I woke up on Thursday to my foot hurting.

Meh, I thought, must've pulled a muscle in my sleep.

It ached somewhat, and felt a little stiff, but I didn't think much of it. I'm old, my body aches, and I have been known to pull muscles in my sleep. This isn't incredibly out of the ordinary.

I lived with it, woke up on Friday for an interview (I'll discuss this later) to said foot hurting even more, took some ibuprofen for it, which helped somewhat, and went on with my day. By the time the interview was over and I was back home, my foot was hurting so bad that it felt like it was screaming at me.

"What does it feel like?" Daisy asked.

"Sort of like a stress fracture, almost, but I didn't do anything to it."

The pain was primarily the top of my foot, radiating down the inner side, under the arch, and looping around the toe (but not affecting the toe, oddly enough).

"Sounds like gout," Daisy said, showing me an article on her phone.

"I don't think it's gout," I said. "It's the same sprain I get in my foot from time to time that just really hurts for a few days and then goes away after I take enough ibuprofen for a while."

It's shocking that I think like this, but it's true. It has happened before, and usually lasts three or four days at the most before it just, well, vanishes -- and then I go back to normal. It happens in my arms once in a while too, which I have always classified as tendonitis and then treat it the same way. 

"Besides," I added, "how the fuck would a vegetarian get gout? It's caused by eating a lot of red meat, organ meats and stuff like that, seafood, and drinking a lot of beer. I do precisely none of those things."

I have had maybe two beers in the past six months and have been vegetarian for a year and a half, going on two this summer. I'm not gonna say I'm the healthiest person on the planet, but I have taken great strides in cleaning up my diet. Indeed, aside from the occasional real cheese or food containing milk or eggs, I am almost 100% plant-based and vegan. I am careful about this. I am meticulous about this. Anyone who knew how I used to eat before versus how I eat now would be shocked and amazed.

But I mean, still, this shit happens.

Anyway.

By Saturday my foot was really swollen and I could barely stand or walk. It was hard to sleep. I couldn't put my foot in a position where it didn't hurt -- elevated, angled, resting, etc. It was maddening. The pain was so uncomfortable it made me sweat. I forced myself to walk on it to to go the grocery store, where I used the cart as a walker, and I'm not sure I've had physical pain so strong in some time. When I went to bed I took 800mg of ibuprofen (which, again, seemed to take off the edge a bit and make it functional to walk around, even with pain).

When I woke up six hours later on Sunday morning, out of a dead sleep because the pills had worn off, I finally agreed that I should probably go to the doctor, because this shit wasn't getting any better at all, and was actually slowly getting worse. 

"What's your schedule like tomorrow?" I asked the wife. 

"Why?"

"Because I probably should go to the doctor to get this looked at," I said. "It's not getting better. It's awful. My foot is really swollen, red, and hot to the touch, and nothing really seems to be helping."

"Why don't we just go now?" she asked.

It was Sunday afternoon, around 3PM. I was planning to work that night, though the chances of me being able to successfully do so were rapidly dwindling. 

"Dr. [Name] isn't in on Sundays."

"Then we'll go to the primary care clinic place, it's open until 8."

I hemmed and hawwed for a few minutes, during which I reached out to my team onsite at work to let them know what was going on. Regardless I'd have to miss work as I didn't think I could even sit at my desk for the entire night. 

"Fine," I said. "Let's go."

So I hobbled my ass downstairs to the car, carefully, while my wife gave me the new nickname of "Hobbles," and we went to the clinic.

Going to a primary care clinic on a Sunday night is bizarre. For one, there's nobody there -- I was the only patient in the building, and there was one on-call nurse there and a blood-draw nurse along with the receptionist. The rest of the building was spookily empty.

I filled out the paperwork, did our copay thing, and then waited in the patient sitting room for about 20 minutes for the on-call nurse/doctor/lady to come in and look at me.

"Take off your shoes and socks so I can compare," she said. 

I did, and she stared at my foot for a good twenty seconds, then looked at my other foot, then back up at me, then back to the painful foot.

"...what? What is it?" I asked.

"I, well, I don't think this is gout," she finally mused. "I'm leaning more towards a diagnosis of cellulitis based on the redness and swelling. Look at how your foot is swollen and red up past the ankle, and spreading, and compare it to your other foot."

I did.

"Do you appreciate the difference?" she asked.

Note: I don't really remember her asking this, but the wife's reaction to that question, when she told me later, was priceless and I wish I would've seen her face. 

"Yes," I said. "It's swollen and red." No shit, doc. That's why I'm here.

"It could be gout and I may be wrong, but I'd like to treat you for cellulitis, prescribe you some Bactrim to quell it, and draw blood to test for both. Worst case is that if it's gout, the blood test will tell me from the uric acid levels. If it's cellulitis, the Bactrim will knock it out."

"Sure," I said.

I mean, sound enough logic, right? I just wanted the shit to be gone so I could go back to feeling normal again. 

She had the blood draw lady take two vials of blood, almost completely painlessly for once, and sent me off to the pharmacy for the Bactrim, which we picked up on the way home. As soon as I was inside I popped off the cap and took the first dose.

And...nothing happened.

I had taken the night off, and I tried to just...rest. It had been a really long, bad weekend of pain and I just wanted to not hurt for a while. I slept off and on in the overnight hours, and when I went to bed for good I made sure to take the next dose of Bactrim first. When I awoke, late-morning on Monday, I was still in pain and nothing had really changed. I took the next dose of Bactrim.

The doctor lady called me shortly thereafter. 

"How are you feeling?" she asked. 

"Well, it hurts," I said. "It's basically exactly the same as it was last night."

"No progress at all?" 

"Nope." 

"Okay," she said, "then stop the Bactrim. I have your blood test results here and they do show elevated uric acid levels in your blood, so it is probably gout then. I'm going to prescribe you a steroid anti-inflammatory, prednisone, and I want you to make a follow-up appointment with your normal doctor within the next three days, even sooner if you don't start feeling better once you're taking that, okay?"

"Completely stop the antibiotic?"

"Yes," she replied. "I don't see any infections in your blood so it's probably just the uric acid and gout."

Allllllrighty then, doc. 

I have always been told that you do not just stop an antibiotic once you start taking it, you have to take the entire dosage over the metered, allotted time. But, she's more qualified than I am, so whatever.

Daisy picked up the prednisone from the pharmacy on the way home from work, and I took the first dose of it as soon as she walked in the door. I decided I could work, that the pain wasn't so severe that I couldn't sit at my desk (and I didn't want to burn another night of PTO). 

Here's what they don't tell you about prednisone -- while it will rapidly drain any swelling and get you feeling almost immediately better, that fluid it drains off you all has to go...somewhere.

In my case, once I got to work, I could feel my swelling in my foot go down by at least half within a few hours...and I had to pee seventeen times that night.

Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but not by much.

The other place the fluid felt like it went was to my lungs, which was a little strange.

I don't know if you've ever been drunk, but you know that feeling when you're drunk where your lips feel a bit numb and your lungs feel gummy and, well, liquidy, and it's a little harder than usual to breathe? Yeah, it was that. 

By the end of the night at work, "Hobbles" was walking almost normally and the vast majority of my foot pain was gone.

By the next night, the swelling was completely gone, with maybe 5% of the pain left, and I was walking normally again.

By Wednesday and Thursday that week I was back to normal, with no changes but a little aching in my leg similar to when you get a knotted calf muscle in your sleep.

Here's the other thing they don't tell you about prednisone -- some of the side effects are weird.

For the days I was on it, I was constantly hot and sweaty. That is a known side effect -- I mean, it's an anti-inflammatory that is pulling fluid out of you, and sweat is another way for it to come out of you to be sure. The larger part of it is that you're told to drink a lot of fluids as it helps break down any further uric acid buildup. 

While I try to stay adequately hydrated, this isn't always completely possible. I work overnights, and that pretty much requires coffee and energy drinks in order to stay awake. Both of those, apparently, are not great for you if it's all you're drinking most of the time, which for me was sort of the case -- I would drink two to five cups of coffee and two or three tallboys of Monster or what-have-you every day, and not much else, just to keep going. 

Well, when you go from drinking that to cutting energy drinks out almost entirely (which I have done) and drinking close to a gallon of water every day instead...things happen to your body. I now sweat a lot more, for example. I almost never sweat before, except in the summer when it was super-hot. Now, if I fall asleep in my chair in my bathrobe, and the room is too hot, I'll wake up drenched. This is new.

The prednisone was given to me on a five-day cycle. In addition to it making me sweat more, it sometimes made me a bit foggy or slow as well. Not tired, not like, drunk or anything...but slower. Enough to where I noticed it. Enough to where some people at work noticed it, and I had to tell my fellow leadership peers that it was making me a little spacey but fine, just give me a little more leeway on some things until it wore off, etc. 

There IS more, of course, but I'll be covering that in subsequent posts...

Energy, Part II: Pocket Full of Feelings

(written February 11-17, 2020)

Something that I didn't mention much in my first installment of this series is how deeply I actually feel emotions most of the time now. I don't know if I can explain it more than that, and it's only some emotions, but it's very much more pronounced than it ever was before.

For example, as a compare and contrast -- when I found out about my former coworker's death last week, I wasn't incredibly upset. I wasn't anything more than mildly surprised, really. The void comes for us all, and all of that...and sometimes it comes for us in grisly, nasty ways. That's life, that's death, it happens.

Yet, upon watching Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, which I preordered the Blu-ray of, I cried at least three times. Ugly crying, too, with snot and blurred vision and the need to pause the movie. And I was crying at scenes that weren't supposed to be tug-at-your-heartstrings sad or depressing, yet there I was.

I cried at those scenes too, mind you, but you get my point.

I cried twice when Daisy and I went to see Little Women in the theater last weekend, and was so moved by it that I immediately bought the book off Amazon and began reading it.

Sometimes I cry in frustration. I used to cry in anger, a lot, but for some reason that switch turned off and now I just get very quiet (or, at times, very loud).

I am full of wishes. I am full of things I would like to do, successes I'd like to achieve, places I'd like to go, material things I'd like to own.

I want a Tesla. Have any of you ever been to a Tesla dealership to look at the showroom cars? They look magical. They look like the future. Hell, the Model X (the SUV) has gullwing back doors like a DeLorean. 

I want a DeLorean too, but I'll never have one of those either. Plus, I hate driving stick shift, and most of the surviving ones are stick.

I mean, I can do it, but I haven't done it in literally twenty years and was never a fan of it when I did do it -- Driver's Ed in high school, by the way. The car was a 1986 baby-shit-brown Cavalier. Not sure I'd even really remember how now, as it was so long ago.

As the weather is slowly getting better in the slow march towards Spring, I've been itching to get behind the wheel of a vehicle again, something I can call mine. Daisy's car is fine, and it's reliable, but I really don't like driving it that much and I am somewhat paranoid when I do -- if I get into an accident, we would then have zero vehicles. When I had the Monte Carlo I would drive it anywhere, anytime, in any weather. Not only did I have to, but I was incredibly comfortable doing so as I knew that car was like an extension of myself. I like Daisy's car, but it's not the same -- and it's not mine.

But, we don't have the money. Our jobs pay the bills and the mortgage and get us food and necessities, and there's not a lot left afterward for a lot of extras. Occasionally the wife or I will get some new clothing, or I'll use some of my (little) disposable income to replace an old or dying vape mod or subscribe to a few more comic books to add to my reading list -- but there's not enough extra, so to speak, to afford a car payment every month.

I have been following the Democratic primaries closely, because I believe that the only way that a lot of things in our lives will get better is if we get our current president the fuck out of office (and possibly into a prison cell, whatever works). Anyone who knows me well knows already that I am and have been a Bernie Sanders supporter for many years, and it looks like this time around he might actually have a shot at the nomination. Nebraska's primary happens late in the season, on May 12 (just two months before the DNC picks the nominee in July).

The wife and I have had serious discussions about relocating to Canada if Trump is re-elected.

This is not a joke; Daisy has dual citizenship, which means it is much easier for us to emigrate to Canada (and for me to be able to get in there as a permanent resident, as her husband) if we have to. I-29 straight up into Manitoba, folks. Eight hours, 570 miles.

I have serious doubts my psyche could withstand another four years of Trump. What I've seen already sickens and depresses me (along with my job as the first cause, I'd say the Trump presidency is the secondary-and-almost-as-major cause of my depression). I never thought I'd live in a country run this badly, where the rule of law no longer really exists, where it feels more and more every day like we're sinking into a dictatorship.

And to think, I used to think George W. Bush was the worst president we could've ever had. Boy, was I wrong. I almost feel as if I should write the man a letter of apology for all the nasty shit I said about him in the early 2000s. I was young and naive, and didn't think things would ever get this bad.

But that's just it -- I feel deeply, and when I am saddened or disgusted or ashamed, I feel those things deeply as well, and begin to spiral downward into those feelings.

I talked about a little of this at my doctor's visit this week.

No, not a therapist, though that may still eventually be in the cards -- my actual doctor. Daisy and I had our routine checkups/physicals this week (another reason why I took Wednesday off -- I needed a bit of time to prepare emotionally for that as well).

Let me expand on this a bit -- the wife and I do yearly physical checkups once a year with our doctor. We book them together and we go through them together, the doc sees both of us in the same room at the same time, and we just, well, knock 'em out, so to speak. Both of us have several relatively minor health issues that require these visits, but we do them to make sure nothing major is going wrong -- if that makes any sense.

"Are you still doing your testosterone therapy?" our doctor asked me.

"I am," I replied.

"And how are you feeling?"

"I mean, mostly okay, I guess."

"Mood swings, depression, shifts in demeanor?"

"Yes," I answered truthfully. "A lot, actually. I've been depressed quite a bit as of late, anxious, lack of any real energy or motivation, etc."

"But," I quickly added, "nothing debilitating or life threatening. Just very stressed and struggling. I think part of it is my job, and I think part of it is the actual hormones."

"It's probably all of that," she replied. "Do you ever feel hopeless, like each day is worse than the last, like it will never get better and you won't be able to face the next day?"

"No," I said. Which is, mostly, true. "It's not terrible, but it's not fun."

"Do you have sleep loss or insomnia -- or do you feel that you sleep too much? Lack of appetite, any sleep apnea symptoms/snoring? Any family history of sleep apnea?"

"No," I said. Again, mostly true. "Not that I know of, anyway. I do snore sometimes, [Daisy] has said that I do, but that's about it."

"He does not snore constantly," Daisy said. "Most of the time he sleeps very quietly."

"And it doesn't sound like he's stopping breathing or anything when he does snore?"

"No," Daisy replied.

"Yeah, then my guess is that most of it is caused by your job, buddy," the doctor said, with a slight smirk.

As an aside, as part of the exam, as soon as I mentioned the word "depression" I had to fill out a questionnaire -- consisting mostly of the questions my doctor asked me anyway. I did answer it truthfully. I'm not a threat of harm to myself or others, nor does it feel crushing (at least not on an emotional level, anyway) to get up out of bed every day and face the world. I do have sleeping and energy problems, and it feels like I can never get enough quality rest or have enough energy to do what I want or need to do (that's literally the point of this series of posts), but, I mean, I work overnights, I'm on testosterone replacement therapy, and I'm in my late thirties now. So it's a toss up.

"So, since we're talking about it anyway," the doctor continued, "let's discuss the testosterone treatment. I believe that your base levels when you started were something like 140?"

"That sounds accurate," I said.

As a visual aid, I'm going to provide this helpful chart that I found on Google:

So, as you can see, if this is accurate, when I began treatment I had the testosterone levels of an 80-year-old man. Or older. This explains a lot.

I was 34 when I began the treatment in 2017.

In the almost three years of treatment I have still never breached 200. After my first year they doubled my dose, which is what I'm currently on now and have been since early 2019 -- my blood work results will tell me (soon) where I'm at currently. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"And you said you're noticing some mood and emotional effects of the treatment? Yeah, that's fairly normal. We actually have you on a very low dose of the gels, considerably lower than what you'd be on if you were to go to one of those NuMale clinic places -- they shoot their patients up to like 900, 1000."

"What's the point of that?" I asked. 

She shrugged. "Well, let me tell you...it changes who you are, changes everything about you."

"So I'm just going to come out and say this," I said, "because it's a concern I've had for the past few months and I want to know if it's possible that it's happening or if I'm just imagining it, but...it feels and looks as if my penis and testicles are shrinking."

"Penis, no," the doctor said, unfazed. "Testicles, maybe. That can happen on testosterone therapy."

I briefly fought the urge to be like you haven't seen my dick, look at it, LOOK AT ITTTTT.

Obviously I decided against this course of action, but even in serious situations I still have a sense of humor, of course.

Some of you are probably wondering why I'm talking about this stuff so candidly here in my blog. Truthfully, I'm not ashamed of any of it -- it is what it is, and it's something I'll talk openly about with anyone who asks about it or asks for advice on whether they should seek said therapy. Life throws us curveballs sometimes, ahem, pardon the pun.

"Stay on the therapy," the doctor continued. "What it is doing is supplementing your body's natural testosterone, and supplanting it as necessary. Your body won't produce as much of it when you're on the therapy. If it comes to a time where you need to get off of it, we'd wean you off over a two month cycle -- just don't stop using the gel all at once or anything, because that will seriously mess up your hormones and mental state."

Great.

"So my other question is that if I did want to get off it, eventually, what would that entail?"

She repeated her statement about being weaned off of it slowly. I don't think she understood what was implied by that question, which was: if I want to get off of it, what will get my testosterone back to normal levels without me needing to be on it for the rest of my fucking life?

"That gel is a pain in the ass," I stated bluntly. "I guess I'd like to know what my options are if my blood results aren't that different this time around either."

"We'll see when it comes to that," the doctor replied.

As another short aside, in the car later I told the wife "and her answer had better not be something like 'rub in four packets of the gel every day instead of two' or I legit might scream. It is 2020, you can't legit tell me there's not a fucking pill I could take every day instead."

"I wouldn't want to take a pill every day," she replied.

Anyway. Back to the story.

"There is something else I wanted to pick your brain on," I said. "Every once in a while -- not all the time, not even most of the time, but once every, oh, 4-5 months or so...I will see blood in my urine or in my feces. Medically speaking, um, how 'normal' is this?"

This is true. There are times where I shit a not-insignificant amount of blood. It's not from coloring in food, and if it's from a hemorrhoid, it's not one I can feel -- but the toilet will be full of red. It'll happen for 2-4 bowel movements and then go away.  Same goes for my pee as well -- every once in a while my urine will be tinged with blood, making it look an orangey-red and that is goddamn troubling. That actually happened last week or the week before, making me paranoid that I had a UTI or something along those lines.

"It's fairly common," the doctor responded. "If it's a lot of blood, or it's dark red or brown looking then that could be a problem, but if it's bright red in your stool it's generally a hemorrhoid or something like that, and isn't a huge cause for concern. As for your urine it's probably not coming from the bladder or from the kidneys but from the sperm, blood in that isn't incredibly uncommon either."

None of this really eased my anxiety.

"If you think you could pee for me, though, we can do a urinalysis today just to check for any irregularities. You wanna do that?"

"Sure," I said.

So I went into the bathroom and peed in a cup, as if I were doing a drug screening. Thankfully I don't have anything to hide there.

The rest of the doctor's visit was relatively routine. I asked for an MMR booster, as I haven't had one since I was like, 12 -- and was told that they don't generally give them out unless the patient was in imminent danger of becoming infected....so I didn't get one of those. My request for a tetanus booster was granted, though, as I haven't had one of those since the mid-to-late 2000s. I got my flu shot back in December, so I didn't have to worry about that, and they (mostly) painlessly took a big vial of my blood for normal standard blood work.

I have perfect 120/80 blood pressure (lower than the wife's, actually). I believe last year I was 118/78 or something like that -- I haven't had higher blood pressures since I became vegetarian/mostly plant-based in my diet.

As for the rest of my blood test results, well, those remain to be seen. I believe (before seeing those results, of course) that I will be healthier than I was last year, as I have made a very strong effort to eat more cleanly and have still kept the weight off I kept off before, but we shall see.

On the way home, I mentioned to Daisy that I completely forgot to ask the doc about hypothyroidism.

"They check for that in the bloodwork anyhow," Daisy replied.

"I know, but I'd like them to do an in-depth screen for it and I completely forgot to ask."

I match up with the symptoms above:

- Poor memory and concentration/difficulty thinking/focusing/depression
- Low energy (of course)
- (occasional) muscle weakness
- Muscle and joint pain (nearly constantly)
- (occasional) swollen legs, ankles, or feet
- Poor hearing
- Slow pulse rate
- Coldness in extremities
- Fatigue
- Generally feeling cold
- (occasional) weight gain with poor appetite
- Definite hair loss
- (occasional) constipation
- very dry skin
- ...and, of course, the reproductive problems.

My hearing has always been bad -- it was tested and I had something like 20% hearing loss in my teens, attributed at the time to all of the ear infections I had as a child giving me some permanent loss, but maybe it's more than that.

My legs, ankles, and feet swell a lot.

I have a very low pulse rate a lot of the time -- I average around 75bpm but I've watched the monitor on my Apple Watch tell me I've had rates in the high 40s through low 60s pretty sustained for long chunks of time.

My fingers and toes are almost always cold. And if my body is cold it's really hard sometimes to warm up.

I am indeed losing my hair, almost by the handful, in the shower every day.

I have low energy, muscle fatigue/pain/joint pain almost constantly.

My skin is really dry, worse in winter, but still dry in the other seasons too -- no matter how much I hydrate myself.

Some of this can be attributed to getting old, some of it can be attributed to the testosterone therapy, and some of it can be attributed to stress and depression and the like...but not all of it. Not when I match up with so many of these symptoms.

I've been tested for hypothyroidism before, about ten years ago. At that time I was fine. But I don't know how in-depth any of the testing that's been done on me for it has been. And if anything in my blood work points toward any sort of abnormal thyroid reading, I will be going back for a super-in-depth test for it at my own request.

It also turns out that almost everything I eat is horrible for me if I have hypothyroidism:

- Coffee
- Broccoli and cauliflower
- Fried foods
- Bread and gluten
- Fiber from beans and other legumes
- Anything with soy
- Anything frozen/processed meals
- Butter, meat (well, I don't have to worry about that one) and alcohol (no worries here either)

Fuck me, man. The above is like 80% of my diet. What the fuck could I actually eat? Bananas, apples, and water? I already eat a ton of that and while it helps, it ain't satisfying.

Anyway, so that's what's going on right now. More to come eventually...when I have the energy.

Energy, Part I

(written late January through mid-February 2020)


Welcome to 2020, my friends, relatives, family, colleagues, and dear readers.

Still no flying cars. But then again, I covered that previously.

So far, 2020 is what it is. I'm mostly unfazed by it.

In the past several weeks, we've come to the brink of war a few times, there's a new pandemic (the coronavirus, if you haven't been paying attention), our impeached president had his impeachment overturned because apparently rule of law doesn't matter anymore, I'm still working in my soul-sucking job on the same overnight schedule, and I still only have one tattoo.

I've been in the creative spirit the past few weeks, but...I just haven't had the energy for much of it, sadly. My weekends fly by and disappear -- they seem like they take forever to arrive, and then once they're here they just vanish. This weekend in particular was gone in the blink of an eye with nothing to show for it; oh sure, a few bills got paid and we got some groceries and watched some Netflix, but everything else...just gone. I want to be able to have time and energy to write, to get out of the house here and there, to go to the gym and to be a little social at least without feeling sick and exhausted. And for the most part, that's exactly how I feel all the time -- sick and exhausted.

"What are your New Year's Resolutions?" Daisy asked me shortly after the new year.

"I don't really have any," I said.

A day or two later I would revise this to "I finally want to sit down and watch all the stuff I added to my list on Netflix."

Because, really, that's all I want -- downtime.

No, I have not gotten the flu or whatever it was Daisy and most of the family had over the holidays -- but I don't feel great because I can never get enough rest and always have something else to do to where I can't get any real peace. Since the beginning of the year, this has been wearing on me more and more, to the point where I am now almost constantly burnt out and tired and have low-level anxiety about everything. 

I told Daisy last week that for the time being, I'm giving up on the gym; it was not giving me any of the results I wanted, and it would just end up making me sore more than anything else, despite how frequently or infrequently I went. Our gym also replaced all of their machines with "new and improved" machines shortly before the Christmas season, and, well, I hate most of the new machines. They are not comfortable to use (some of them are downright uncomfortable or painful) and the machine I loved the most, one of their ab machines, they redesigned to where I cannot fit into it anymore with my wide shoulders/back.

When I went, I was not building any muscle or burning off any body fat -- I was just making myself more exhausted and pain-filled. After a while, I began to dread it, and began to dread the routine. After a few weeks of that, I started wanting to go less and less, because I knew the pain it would cause me for several days after. After that, I lost all will and energy to actually do it. I tried so hard for so many months and it just didn't do anything for me, and I made the decision that I couldn't keep sinking my valuable time and energy into something that left me in pain and unfulfilled -- I do that enough at my job; I refuse to do it in my off hours too.

Daisy, of course, was discouraged by this and still goes to the gym 3-4 times a week, generally after work before coming home. This means that she and I have less time together in the evenings before I have to go in to work myself.

I've started to withdraw into myself more and more over the winter months -- I don't adapt well to the cold, and the more time I spend around people, the less I like said people. My home office is my sanctuary, as I spend most of my waking (and a good chunk of my sleeping) hours there; I have my computer, access to my money, my phone, vape materials, TV/Roku, and my Switch there. I am depressed. I am frequently angry. And more than anything else, I am so, so tired.

Sunday nights I dread the most, as I know I have to return to work. I hate my job so much that using the word "hate" doesn't seem like strong enough of a term. I loathe it; I loathe what it has become and the person it has turned me into. I hate that I am constantly on edge and filled with anxiety because of it, I hate that I constantly have to keep my email open somewhere in the event that someone wants to yell at me, and I hate that for the first hour or two I'm home every morning I have to leave my phone's ringer on and within earshot for the same reason -- and if it happens it's generally over something that's not my fault anyway.

Make no mistake, I have received several well-deserved chewings-out in my almost six years working that job...and probably 20-30 over shit that was not my fault or I had nothing at all to do with. I'm averaging two or three a month at this point over simply stupid shit.

In all of the time I've worked there I've gotten maybe ten genuine "thank you" calls, emails, or verbalizations -- most of the time from people not even on my team, for doing the job someone on someone else's team should have done right in the first place but didn't give a shit about. The overnight team, myself included, is sorely overworked and underappreciated most of the time and tends to be the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong in our program. As the manager of that team, that burden/stress falls on me more often than not, and I become the whipping boy for everything our program does wrong -- and again, get very little (or zero) thanks for everything that, because of me, goes right.

And all I want to do is go to work, do my job, and go home peacefully at the scheduled end of my shift.

So yes, I'm depressed. But it's not just work doing it. It's the cold, it's a lack of truly restful sleep, it's the constant boredom and monotony of my life, the gray of winter, my hormones being all out of whack, and the inability for, it seems, much to actually change or get better.

I don't know if any picture has better summed up how I've felt for literal years now.

It would be different if that "gradual change through daily habits" was something that, y'know, happened. I've tried that where I can. It doesn't work. I've been told "if you can't change your situation, change your perspective" so many times that I might punch the next person who says it. Why? Because you can change your perspective all you want, but it doesn't change or fix the problem.

Against my better judgments, as I have a very hard time trusting anyone anymore, I let one of my friends at work know that I'm going through some depression and some other (purposely vague) personal issues right now. This friend has fought mental health issues his entire life, and is someone I reasonably feel that I can trust when it comes to this sort of thing. He gave me a referral to a therapist (his own therapist, actually) as well as to a nurse practitioner who works with said therapist for prescriptions for mental health medications.

Both are in the health insurance network I share with the wife, but going down this road is not cheap -- it's a $60 copay for each therapy visit.

Add to this that I do not want to be on any medications.

I am not anti-med or anything like that, in case you're wondering -- I am simply anti-med for me. I know what those pills do to me. I was on them for a brief time in college. I refuse to be turned into a zombie again, or to lose what small part of my original self that I feel I have left.

I told Daisy we'd table the discussion on therapy unless it gets really bad, as I am not going to quickly deplete our medical coverage FSA over the course of a few months without a damn good reason.

Throughout all of this I'm seeing another coworker go through the same thing, needing to take a leave of absence through FMLA to get treated for her own issues, and I silently wonder how long it will be before my demons overtake me, and/or what I will lose along the way if everything keeps spiraling downward. It's a horrific thought. I'm not suicidal -- far from it, in fact -- I want to see everything actually get better. You could say that means I have hope, I guess. But that doesn't mean I'm not in a dark place, because I am. I just have to fight it every day in order to stay alive and stay prepared. That "fight" is sometimes more exhausting than others.

To those ends, I have done what I can to stave it off; I have, for example, continued to apply for more jobs. While I've been rejected for many of these jobs outright with a terse email, this past week alone I had three different phone interviews and had a follow-up, in-person interview on Thursday morning for one of said jobs. I took Wednesday night in order to be able to rest up and be at my best and brightest for it, instead of just getting off work and being forced to run headlong into an interview when I'm tired and burnt out. This worked out well, even if it meant I sacrificed a night of PTO.

I'm also trying to see the positive things in daily life -- I mean, the Chiefs did win the Super Bowl, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are doing really well in the primaries, and the new Picard series is very interesting so far. Not everything is bad, and I have to teach myself to see silver linings in stuff like that.

But, I mean, there's a lot of bad going on too -- including some deaths.

One of my former bosses, back at WVU, had his wife die suddenly about three weeks ago; we didn't find out about it until the memorial service and the like was announced. My parents went; I did not get details. He has now outlived two wives, with his first having died of cancer close to twenty years ago now. I can't imagine how he feels -- Daisy is my world, and if I were to lose her I would be completely lost in life. It's an unbearable thought.

The second death happened at work the other night.

Well, okay, it didn't happen at work, but we found out about it at work.

One of our evening shift employees took a bunch of time off before the holidays -- and by that I mean "before the holidays began," meaning before Thanksgiving. He was out of office a lot and called in on our voicemail line several times to let us know he wouldn't be in, etc. I didn't think much of it; he didn't report up to me, and his own manager (one of my colleagues) was taking care of the PTO and the like for it. On one of his calls, he'd let us know that he'd been in the hospital but would return to work the following Monday...and he never showed up.

This was early-to-mid December; again, I didn't think much of it as he wasn't one of my own employees, but I did see the dude and work with him every day, so it was at the very least an ancillary cause for concern. Calls from management asking where he was went unreturned, as did (apparently) calls from HR. The holidays came and went, and around the New Year, when nobody had heard from him and he hadn't come back, the company processed his termination in absentia.

Note: this is not out of the ordinary -- I did the same with one of my employees about three months ago when she stopped showing up and did not turn in her requested FMLA paperwork (she was pregnant and had missed a lot of time due to complications), and she'd stopped responding to calls/emails/texts from any and all of us. The company simply processes the term, wipes the records, and moves on -- you'd be surprised how many employees just stop showing up, effectively ghosting the workplace, for one reason or another. It is extremely common, and we (as management) generally have to give them a few weeks of leeway before the company drops the hammer.

Yet, if I didn't show up for a few days without telling anyone, you bet your ass I'd be fired by the end of the week...

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic.

So, said employee was finally termed out around the beginning of the year, and everyone moved on with their lives. I asked his manager, my colleague, if he'd ever heard anything back from him either before or after the term, and the answer was no -- dude had just up and disappeared.

Our response to that was, sort of, "Oh well, can't really understand some people, I guess" and we let it go.

Until one night last week when my colleague got a very disturbing phone call...from said employee's sister...who let him know that our missing-in-action, now-former-employee had been found dead in his apartment that night -- only after they'd forced the landlord to break in to see if he was holed up in there. He was, all right -- and apparently had been in there for, ahem, some time.

"Like, the entire time since we last heard from him?" I asked my colleague, after he got off the phone.

"They don't know yet," he replied. "But by the way it sounded from her, that's possible."

He was termed at least six weeks ago.

I searched my records in my inbox and the last email from him that I'd been personally tagged on was on November 27. That was the night before Thanksgiving. The last we'd personally heard from him via phone, to my knowledge, was about a week and a half or so after that.

He was nine years older than me, and to my knowledge was not married and had no children. And while I write this, his body is about 200 yards from where I'm sitting, at the mortuary/crematorium literally across the street from my house.

Or what's left of his body, anyway. I shudder to think. They've probably processed him by now anyway.

After the call, we let a few coworkers and other management know, mainly because they were all sitting around us in our section of the office when my colleague got the phone call -- but apparently nobody bothered to tell our executive director, who called me at 9am the next morning to ask for any details about it that I had. Over the next few days several more people would reach out to me asking what I knew, as if I was the oracle on the subject -- I, of course, only knew what I'd been told after the call took place, I wasn't actually on the phone of course.

Arrangements are apparently pending, if anything will be done at all. The date of death listed in the obituary in the newspaper was the day he was found. Word spread throughout our program (especially us After Hours folks) over the next few days, but no official announcements were made at the management level, or anything like that. I mean, after all, the guy wasn't a current employee anymore. I wouldn't expect people to make grandiose announcements about my own passing if I kicked the bucket after I no longer worked there.

"Is it possible that he didn't return to work because he was dead?" A friend and former coworker who knew him had asked me.

"I mean, I guess," I replied via text. "I only know what you know at this point."

Apparently the team got some more details on Thursday or Friday about what had happened, but as I don't work those days I haven't yet gotten that information. It is what it is and doesn't change anything; dude is still dead. While some part of me is curious, a larger part of me so doesn't need to know any grisly details about it.

So I continually plod along, waiting for things to change or get better, sleeping when I can and feeling that I'm constantly under stress or pressure during my waking hours. It's a continual cycle.

I probably should talk some about the interview I had on Thursday morning, because it bears discussion. As all of you know, and I've not made it a secret here, I've been trying to move on from my current job for the better part of three years or so at this point. I don't have anything against most of the people I work with -- in fact, it could be said that those people are the primary reason I've stayed in my position as long as I have. Most of them are helpful, thoughtful people who are suffering through the same thing I am for the same reasons I am -- primarily because we get paid decent (not great, but decent) wages for what we do, despite the bullshit and stress involved. No, it's the company I want to leave. It's the overnight shift I want to leave. It's the job itself.

The secondary reason I've stayed at that job for as long as I have should be rather obvious at this point -- it's because no matter how many interviews I give via phone or in person, and no matter how well I believe those interviews go, everyone rejects me. Over the past year I've probably had over twenty phone interviews and at least ten, maybe more, in-person interviews for various positions at various companies. A few of them, at times, admittedly felt touch and go, but most of them went exceedingly well...and I still was not selected.

So I sat down on Thursday morning with the HR representative at a company I interviewed at before about six months ago (for a higher-level position at that time), for an entry-level position that pays as much as my current management position does at my current company, and we had a nice little chat.

While I try to remain optimistic in scenarios like this, I'm not sure I'll get the job this time around either. I've learned not to hold my breath in these situations at this point.

"I've never interviewed for a job I didn't get," I remember one of Daisy's coworkers telling me at the company holiday dinner a few months ago.

That's great, lady, I thought. Check your privilege please. Because for most real people in the real world, this does not happen.

The interview went fine -- at this point I've been through enough of them to where I believe I am good at them, and believe that I can tell employers what they want to hear while still being honest and forthright with them about my thoughts and expectations as well as my experience. However, this means almost nothing when it comes to actually getting hired, I've found.

The interview took about an hour, and when I was done I shook hands with the HR lady and she said she'd be in touch soon -- the next training class starts on March 2, which means in order for everyone they're hiring to be able to give a customary two-weeks' notice to their current jobs (read: something I'd need to do), they have to give the yesses or nos by, well, within the next 48 hours. I brought this up with her, and she was well aware of this fact.

It also means that if I'm offered this position and I accept it, there's none of that customary "downtime" between one job and the next -- I give my notice, I work up until my last day, and then the following Monday I'm in training at the new place. I was hoping that with any position I moved to, I'd be able to pad it out a little and get at least a week or so off in order to somewhat reset my sleeping schedule and to get a little breathing space, but this job won't allow that if I get it.

Best case scenario is that I get a yes within the next 48 hours, I accept, I announce to my leadership that day, and then I announce to my team in a meeting that night. Second-best-case: I do the same but only have enough time to give one week's notice. Worst case is that I don't get an offer and life continues as it has been with nobody having been the wiser.

I have another in-person interview on the books for another job sometime this next week; I'm currently waiting on the HR staff for that job to get back with me to schedule a time and day, after providing them with my available days/hours. I also applied for a third job this morning that I am sure to get an interview for (at least via phone) sometime soon. So I mean, there are options.

Any of these jobs will have to give me a bit of leeway on some time off as a condition of hire; I will be visiting my family back home in West Virginia this fall for about a week or so, and there's also an entire family trip to South Dakota tentatively scheduled for July or August, depending on everyone being able to get their schedules aligned. Both of those trips will require time and money. Plus, I mean, I'd like to get out to Colorado again soon as well. Some companies give more time off than others.

And so life goes on...