Brandon and Daisy Return to Canada, Part I

(originally written in April/May, before the trip)

 So in the course of everything else that's been going on, and now that I can write here with some real clarity about something other than my medical misadventures, Daisy and her mother had begun planning for all of us to return to Canada this summer at some point.

At this point, I am a Canada veteran -- not so much as my in-laws or Daisy herself, but I've now been there for two extended trips over the past decade. I am loved by and have been accepted into the family for many years over. I have memorized driving routes to and from places that even Daisy can't remember how to get to and from, even though she's been there many more times than I have and for longer durations (this may no longer be true now as she spent a full month there last summer). I know where to get the best poutine and I know the exact locations of the three closest Tim Hortons in relation to the family homestead in Nova Scotia. I've seen seals in the bay jumping and eating fish. I've helped cousins catch sand crabs and hermit crabs in the ocean shallows. I've picked fresh blueberries off of bushes so loaded down with them that they looked like they'd collapse under their own weight. I have befriended family dogs and hairless cats. My Discover card has been customized to have the Canadian flag on it for over three years now, despite the fact that almost nowhere in Nova Scotia accepts Discover except for Walmart. I am, shall we say, a big fan of Canada. I love their culture, I love their food, I love their super-dreamy, liberal Prime Minister, and I just love the Canada Experience™ as a whole.

So, when Daisy and Mom began planning for another trip this summer, I was completely aboard. However, the planning itself wasn't exactly smooth for a long time.

Daisy's grandmother -- the widow of her grandfather who died last summer, and Mom's mother -- isn't doing too well. She is very old (I believe 90, 91, something like that, though I'm not exactly sure offhand) and she's been living alone by herself for almost a full year now after her husband's death. She has a cleaning lady/caregiver come by once or twice a week to make sure she's taken care of and is eating, and one of Daisy's uncles lives right next door (as in, in the house next door, like 30 yards from the family home; we stayed in his basement upon our first visit in 2015), and he comes by to check in and help out in the afternoons or early evenings, but for the most part she's fully alone, she just lost her husband less than a year ago, and I'm sure she's not exactly happy or feeling fulfilled in life at this point. She has some health problems of her own and her health is indeed rapidly deteriorating. It is very likely that this will be our last trip to Canada to see her while she's still alive.

Mind you, I can draw some parellels here as well -- when Daisy and I went to WV in 2017, it was to see family, yes, and have Daisy meet a lot of the family members and family friends she hadn't met before and/or hadn't seen since our wedding, but the overarching reason was because my own grandmother was slowly dying and we knew she didn't have much time left. We knew then that it would be the last time I saw her alive, my own grandmother knew that as well and gave me her blessing that she would rather see me there when she was alive than to have my fly or drive back out there again for her funeral, and she was happy to finally meet Daisy -- who at that juncture I'd been married to for over three years. Because of this, when she did pass three months after our visit, I was very sad but was also very happy that I'd gotten to spend the time with her that I did, and that Daisy had gotten to meet her and spend some time with her. 

Well, the same sort of situation is presenting itself this summer with Daisy's grandmother, so I completely understand it and understand the importance of returning to Canada for the second time in less than a year. Mom is worried that she may not even make it until all of us get to see her again, which was part of her worries with her father last summer before he passed too. She did get to see her father a month or so before he died, only to turn back around and go back for the funeral when we went. 

Daisy's grandfather had been a pillar of the community for his entire life. His name was well known around the little port town of a few hundred people at most (there are probably more people living in our neighborhood and the surrounding three or four streets here in Omaha than there are in that entire town in Nova Scotia). More than that, the entire family is well known around the area and most of them are related, tangentially or closely, to many people in the town or small surrounding towns between them and say, Halifax on one end of the province or the highlands and Prince Edward Island on the other. The town is such a small maritime town that you can quite easily tell what family someone is from just by looking at them and seeing who they resemble. I like to tell the story that on our first visit up there in 2015, Daisy and I went alone to the local liquor store to get beer to bring back to the house for the family cookout -- I'd never been there before and Daisy hadn't been there in years, and the clerk looked her up and down and said "You're a [family surname], aren't you?" Yeah, that happened. 

Because Daisy's grandfather was loved, respected, and was a community figure for his entire life, on July 7 the city (or the county or what have you) is dedicating a bench to him in a park somewhere. There's a ceremony for it, and most of the family will be there. It's very important to Mom, naturally, as one of his four surviving children, to be there for the dedication ceremony. She is also the oldest of his surviving children. Our original plan was to travel together again, as we did in 2015, and have all of us be there for it -- me, Daisy, Mom, and Dad.

That was not to be, due to airline timing and pricing and the fact that someone would need to take care of not only our own cats, but the parents' cats as well while we were all gone. So, we started coming up with alternate plans to where all of us wouldn't be there at once (and thus, whoever wasn't there could take care of the others' cats and watch the house, etc). Daisy originally plotted us going in August, just after Mom and Dad came back, in order for some family to have some near-seamless time with the grandmother (one group leaves, and a few days later the next group arrives, etc). Airfare prices were ludicrous in the few weeks leading up to Labor Day.

Daisy then looked at prices for July and different times in June. Prices were better but still outlandishly expensive. She looked at options for us flying into Bangor and driving across the border again (as we did last summer, which would have also left a window open to have a day or two in Maine together) versus flying directly into Halifax -- well, directly meaning a few stopovers of course, but flying across the border instead of driving. It was marginally cheaper or relatively the same cost, depending on days, to fly into Maine and drive up as we had before, but it would also add two days to the trip that were nothing but travel -- meaning, two less days we'd actually have with the family that we could actually spend having the Canadian Experience™. It would also add to the amount of PTO I'd have to save up and spend.

I have said here before, and it's completely true -- when it comes to big trips like this, I let Daisy take the wheel. I am go-with-the-flow on very few things in life, as I'm generally a huge control freak. But when it comes to travel and arrangements, Daisy is a whiz at it and can plot everything, plan everything, far better than I can. It would overwhelm me and I'd be very stressed out about it, but it is Daisy's element and I am always impressed with her ability to work things out. So, my role is always pretty much the same -- "tell me what you want to do, my love, and I'll make it work. I'm along for the ride." I have planned but one singular vacation for us over the entirety of our eleven-year relationship and almost-nine-year marriage, and that was our trip to Deadwood in 2019 for our fifth wedding anniversary. I paid for that on my credit card, I plotted the days, I booked the room at the lodge, and I made sure she had to worry about nothing except us getting there and home. 

Anyway.

The dates in June before the parents were planning to go weren't working, nor were the ones after they'd return. They were either too cost-prohibitive to plan and book tickets for, and/or we wouldn't be able to stay as long as we wanted because I have limited PTO. While I would earn a substantial amount between now and those dates, it wouldn't be enough to cover a full two weeks there without going into negative time for me, as we did the math -- and if I were to somehow get Covid again, or get another kidney stone or have to miss work for anything else in the interim, my job would be at risk.

"What if we go soon," Daisy finally asked. "Like, sometime in May?"

"Well, I'd have even less PTO saved up for a trip that fast," I said. 

"How much would you have?"

At the time I had something like 24 hours of PTO saved. That's three days. Even if we stretched a weekend on both ends, the maximum time I could be gone from work were three days total when I work five-day weeks. We did the math to plot what time I could/would accrue from that point to say, mid-to-late May, and by the time we returned to Omaha at the end of the trip, I would still only have something in the ballpark of 50 hours. Total. That's six eight-hour days and two hours left over.

But. But.

Memorial Day is Monday, May 29th. And I work shifts of 10pm to 7am. Memorial Day is a paid holiday, meaning I don't have to work it if I don't want to and I could use those two spare hours to put in from 10pm to midnight the night before. That gave me eight full days of time off if our trip fell over the holiday. 

And then my job gives me something called a "floating holiday." Basically, on January 1st every year, we get a free 8-hour day of "flex" time added to our PTO banks (well, us salaried people do anyhow). That's a ninth day. 

We did the math. If Daisy plotted the trip between May 20 and 30 -- me working the full week beforehand up to the 18th, resting on the 19th to turn around my sleep schedule, and then flying out on the 20th (two days I'd normally have off anyhow) -- we'd have nine days of family time, fly back on the 30th, and return to work on the 31st -- and it would be just enough PTO for me to cover it all. 

Of course, that also meant flying directly into and out of Halifax, with numerous transfers and layovers to get there and back. 

I've only ever been through two Canadian provinces before -- New Brunswick and, of course, Nova Scotia. New Brunswick is full of trees and French people, and having gone across the entire province and back a few times via car at this point, it just seems to be a lot of wilderness with a small town or small city dotted here and there. Maybe I'm vastly underrating the province (and I probably am) but...I can only really go off of what I know.

Our flights are set to fly into Toronto on the way there as a layover stop and into Montreal on the way home, as another layover stop (I think; Daisy set up the flights and I go along for the ride). That means by the time the trip is over, I will have been to at least four different Canadian provinces -- five, if we get to go to Prince Edward Island, which is technically a province of its own. 

I have never flown through a foreign airport. I've only ever been to one, technically, when we picked up Daisy's sister in the middle of the night from Halifax when she flew out for her grandfather's funeral and we were already there. It appears I'm going to be getting intimate with at least three different ones this time around. I'm okay with this. For the most part, I like airports. They're a little microcosm of the life and tourism that the city has to offer. I've flown through some airports I really liked (La Guardia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Bangor) and some that I have absolutely hated (Dallas/Fort Worth, Atlanta, Charlotte, and the most hated -- Chicago O'Hare). I've also been told that Toronto is terrible to fly through, that it's so busy and horrible to get from point A to point B in -- and it may be, I'll see when I get there. I'm not sure it could be much worse than O'Hare, which has been miserable every time I've flown through it, or Dallas, which is the size of a goddamned city and no, I am not exaggerating. Montreal...well, I don't speak French and I do not plan to learn it over the course of the next three weeks or so, so I'm just hoping it's laid out in a logical way and I can pick up a Habs shirt from the gift shop on my way to the next terminal:

Anyway.

The overall plan is to be there for ten days, eight of which will be spent with the family and doing Nova Scotia things and the other two being travel days to and from. We will both have to return to work the day after we get home, regardless of whether we want to or not.

Accommodations are taken care of for the trip; we'll be staying in the spare room of the Nova Scotia homestead -- which is where Daisy's parents sleep when they're there -- and have access to the washer and dryer in the house so that we can do our laundry. As such, we save about a grand in hotel costs and can pack far less clothing than we normally would, since we can wash what we have while we're there. Transportation, as it always is when we're there, will be via a rental car that we've already arranged in advance. Daisy specifically requested a "full size car," which per the rental website could be anything from a Camry or Impala to -- and this was mentioned -- a Dodge Charger.

Oh, can we please, please get a Charger, rental car company? I made the joke with a few friends that if we got the Charger, I would be hard pressed not to go Smokey and the Bandit, Canadian style, whenever I'm behind the wheel. And you bet your ass if we end up getting a Charger as our rental, I will be behind the wheel of it, at least sometimes. I just need a red shirt and a cowboy hat.

I can grow the mustache myself.

So we'll see, I guess.

Our rough itinerary is to get into Halifax, decide whether we want to crash at the airport hotel (a room has been booked in advance for that night, if we're exhausted and don't want to drive the two hours to the homestead, but we can also cancel it if we want) and once we gather our luggages and the rental car, to make our way to the homestead.

We're flying in over a holiday weekend in Canada -- Queen Victoria's birthday, or something like that -- which is sort of ironic since we'll also be spending Memorial Day up there too (it's our last full day before we start our travels back home). Because of that holiday weekend, a good chunk of the family will be able to come see us, spend some time with us, and generally just get some good family time on the clock -- whether it's for a day or two, or for longer. But, once they leave, it's just us and grandma for the rest of the week, and it's not like she's a spring chicken who wants to go on adventures or anything like that. She is social for a bit but tires out quickly and retreats to her bedroom or sewing room. This means that we'll have a fair amount of time to ourselves to actually have a vacation.

Daisy has a short list of things she'd like to do while we're there, including:

• Go back to her favorite beach, regardless of weather
• Possibly get her hair cut, short, for the summer
• Cook and clean for her grandmother as much as we're able
• Possibly spend a day or two in Prince Edward Island (she's been there before, and it's expensive, but I've never seen it and this will be my third trip to Canada)
• Spend a day in Halifax doing Halifax things -- seeing the harbor, going to eat at the local vegan places, etc.

I, meanwhile, have a much longer list consisting of many much smaller and less grandiose things, but things that are important to me to do while I'm there to get the entire Canada Experience™:

• Visit a Canadian Tire and purchase something there, doesn't really matter what
• Find a Tim Hortons that sells merch and obtain a Tim Hortons t-shirt
• Obtain as many of the Canada-exclusive candy bars as I can, diabetes be damned because I cannot get them here in the states
• Return to Giant Tiger and Dollarama for shopping purposes
• Obtain not only Habs stuff, but Toronto Blue Jays/Maple Leafs stuff too -- shirts, mugs, hats, etc.
• Find the elusive pair of sandals that I was looking for last summer but could not find in my size (I wear a 13, and the largest size the store had in stock was 11)
• Eat as many truck stop poutines as I can (you may laugh at this, but the local truck stop there in town has the best poutine I've ever had, and it's relatively cheap)
• Take Daisy's aunt and uncle out to dinner at said truck stop
• Visit surrounding small cities and towns I haven't been to before, in search of groceries and other souvenir items
• Get some real Diet Pepsi, since Canada still uses the original formula
• Get some Fruitopia, as it is still available/sold in Canada 
• Have at least one dinner at the fancy restaurant in the hotel we stayed in the last time we were there -- we were there for over a week and I didn't so much as walk down the hallway to the restaurant while I was there
• Catch a bunch of Nova Scotia Pokemon in Pokemon Go and see how many gyms I can rule for the time we're there
• Do some sort of wilderness activity with Daisy, whether that's going to a national park/hiking area up there or going to some sort of monument or historic place
• Go whale-watching or dolphin-watching at the Bay of Fundy
• Visit several tourist shops (yeah, there are some good ones in Nova Scotia)
• See a goddamn lighthouse in person
• See a goddamn moose that's not just on the side of the road in New Brunswick, but actually in the wild somewhere

Amongst other things, of course.

Over the course of the few weeks leading up to the trip, we got our collective affairs in order. Leaving the house for ten days is not exactly a long time, but I am always surprised about the amount of things that need to be done before a trip -- from the big things to the very small. Being gone for ten days means that the trash won't be taken out, some food in the fridge will go bad, bills have to be paid before we leave, the cats have to have food/water/litter readily available to them (they do and will, and the parents will help with this part while we're gone, thankfully). Those are just some of the bigger things. Some of the smaller things include a hold needing to be put on the mail, making sure we have all of the house security cameras set up and functional, making sure all of the necessary laundry is washed and making sure we have our medications packed and have enough for the entire trip. It seems like a nearly endless list of things to do, and because of the timeframes we have to focus on a lot of it during the actual work week when we're both working and stressed/tired. 

Work has not been a pleasure cruise for either of us over the course of the past few weeks, either. I have had a few soul-crushing weeks and have been getting figuratively killed every night I've been on shift, and Daisy's job hasn't really stopped either. We've both been exhausted both mentally and physically, to the point where some nights she'll come home and almost go straight to bed, and some mornings I'll log off my machine and be asleep in my chair upstairs before 8am. 

Our jobs know we're going to be in Canada, and believe me I took great glee in making sure all of our overnight staff and agents know that they're on their own until June, basically. It's not that I want my team to dread me being gone, but I do want all of them to know that I am gone, don't bother me as I won't even be in the same country and can't/won't be assisting in any problems or crises that arise while I'm gone. Deal with it yourself, etc.

We've also had a lot of stuff come up that have thrown wrenches into our daily routines, like the need to remove our other giant silver maple tree from the front yard -- it was full of carpenter ants and the next big storm we would get could have blown the rest of it (because half of it came down in 2021 in a storm just like that) down onto our house, one of the neighbors' houses, or one of the neighbors' cars. That was $1200 I didn't want to spend, but gave us peace of mind. 

I have been looking forward to the trip, greatly so, for several weeks. The amount of work that's gone into it though has left me weary, and the amount of work still to come makes me tired just thinking about it. The past few weeks have been going nonstop for me -- meaning I haven't really had any downtime because there's always something else to be done, so I always feel like I'm constantly running even if I'm not busy every single second of every day. Last week we had a bowling tournament, a play to go see, and Mother's Day all in a row, plus work, plus trying to get adequate sleep, plus trying to pack and prepare for the trip. So...it's a lot. Even the trip itself (while a vacation it may be) I don't really count as "downtime" because we'll be doing activities and the like every day we're there, whether they're family-based or adventures together to new places doing new things. 

"Downtime" for me, as I've mentioned before here on this site, is time with no responsibilities or pressing tasks. It's a weekend where we have nothing planned where I can veg in my lounge chair, take a nap or two, play on my Switch or my phone, read, watch TV, eat something I want to eat, etc. It's reset time. I don't get enough of it. Neither does Daisy. 

Anyway.

In my excitement for the trip and foreseeing that it's Canada in May, where it's not completely warm for the summer yet (that generally happens in June and July), I got a few light sweatshirts for me to wear while I'm there -- temperatures are generally in the 50s and low 60s during the daytime hours and in the 40s or high 30s at night, so it's not quite summer there yet. In contrast, as I type this, it is 84 degrees in Omaha. It is currently 43 degrees where we're going to be next week in Nova Scotia. Sooo...yeah, it's important to have a bit of warmer clothing packed. To those ends I've packed a hoodie, some sweatpants and actual pants, socks and actual shoes, etc. I told Daisy that Canada always gets some sort of heat wave when we're there, as if we're bringing the American temperatures north with us. When we were there in 2015, it was hitting 85 every day (which is almost unheard of for that area in late August/early September) and when we were there last year it did much the same, except for the days it was cold and rainy/stormy. Maritimes weather, I suppose -- from what I've seen when I'm there it's pretty unpredictable, so prepare for nearly anything. 

In that vein, I also purchased a boonie hat and multi-pocketed, lightweight vest (like a fishing vest, but more like a cargo vest) to wear while we're out adventuring. I have new sandals and a new pair of Hey Dude slip-on sneakers too. While I'm traveling pretty light compared to other trips, I've still made sure to cover the essentials I'll need every day, and stuffed my suitcase full of vegan jerky. I got a Fitbit, finally, so that I can track my activity levels. I left ample space in my big canvas backpack to carry back as many souvenirs and Canadian foodstuffs as I can, and packed everything in both the backpack and suitcase mindfully to be able to maximize that carry-stuff-back-home space. There's a science to all of it, and it's sort of a survivalist mentality -- take only what you need, what can be left there or discarded while you're there before you leave makes more space on the way home, and most consumables (toiletries, etc) can be purchased/used there and left there or discarded before the return trip.

Daisy hasn't even started packing yet, but she has made a list of what she needs to take. I reminded her again that it's a bare essentials sort of thing clothing-wise since we will have access to a washer/dryer and most of what toiletries and essentials we'd otherwise pack, we can get there and use there with relative ease. We don't need four or five outfits of our Sunday best, we need comfortable clothing we can move around in and be okay with wearing a couple of times. My goal for my stuff is to have a lighter suitcase coming back home than when we left, even with everything I'd be bringing back.

So, once all of our stuff was prepared and everything was set, we set off for Canada.

How did that go? Well....

A Series of Shitty Adventures, Part III

I will preface this post by saying that there's going to be some semi-graphic depictions of what I went through here, and for sensitive folks, it's not going to be pleasant. So, be warned, and if you are squeamish about this sort of thing, it may be best that you just skip this one and move on to the next.

We cool? Okay, good.

 As most of you were probably able to discern by this point, the localized back pain and blood-tinged urine were caused by -- you guessed it -- a kidney stone.

I have never had kidney stones before; I've only known people who have. My Dad had them when he was younger, a work colleague got them frequently, and my ex developed some so big and painful that she had to have not one, but two surgeries while we were together to get them removed. From everything that I knew and had seen, absolutely nothing about them were pleasurable or an experience that anyone needed to live through or repeat. Kidney stones were one of my biggest health fears, a nightmare scenario that I never, ever wanted to happen to me. Daisy knew this too as I was sure to vocalize it more than once over the course of the past eleven years we've been together. 

By the next evening, the back pain had gotten worse and had begun to migrate. I knew at that point it had to be a kidney stone. There was no other real explanation, and this wouldn't have been something else like appendicitis (opposite side of the body) or a simple UTI. Following the pain was intense nausea. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't sit upright for more than five or ten minutes at a time before I needed to lay down because the room was spinning and I was sweating uncontrollably. It wasn't a feeling or sickness I'd ever had before. I attempted to work my normal shift (starting at 10pm) but only lasted an hour or so before the nausea was so horrific that I began vomiting -- mostly water, as I'd been drinking a lot of water. I could not get comfortable no matter how I sat, stood, laid down, etc. I paced the room in pain before I finally told my boss that I needed to throw in the towel for the night, that I couldn't handle the pain enough to continue working. 

As an aside, even writing about all of this now is starting to make me slightly ill and have phantom pain that I know is all in my head.

Anyway. 

Daisy figured that it was a kidney stone too and told me that she'd call at 7am to see if I could get in to the doctor for the first available morning appointment, if it was still bothering me at that point when she got up for the day. This was smart thinking, actually; a lot of kidney stones aren't really treatable, per se, if they're small enough to pass through your system sometimes you just have to pass them and deal with it. I could tell mine was moving, and that was a good thing, because if it wasn't moving, that meant that it was stuck and too large to move, and immediate surgery would need to take place. So, if it was the same or worse, we'd go to the doctor, and if it had lessened or otherwise subsided, there wasn't much else to do.

I don't remember a lot of the overnight hours. I remember I talked to a few people from work via text, apologizing for the situation, and I remember trying to sleep in different places in different positions -- first on the couch for a bit, then in the bed with Daisy, then in my chair. I threw up again -- more water, mostly -- and eventually I was able to sleep a bit. For those of you who have never had a kidney stone, it's hard to describe other than the nausea and pain comes in waves. You'll feel relatively normal for an hour or two and then it will slowly build back up again until you're incapacitated for 3-4 hours at a time, and then it'll slowly subside. 

When morning rolled around and I was still pretty bad off, Daisy called the doctor and got me set for an appointment for an hour or two later. I can't remember the time, but it mid-morning. She let her job know that she'd be working from home that day so that she could care for me and get me to the doctors when necessary.

In my moments of clarity without nausea or pain (which could last anywhere from 1-3 hours at a time), I reached out to my leadership at work to let them know the situation, and I reached out to HR to get FMLA time set up. I even talked with our HR lady via phone to give as many details as possible because, at that moment, I did not know if I would need surgery or would be out for a day or two or a week or two. Everything was up in the air, and I was frightened, sleep-deprived, and not in a good place mentally or physically. She worked to get the FMLA stuff set up in the background as a safety net, primarily because I only had two days' worth of PTO left after Covid that I needed to save (for reasons I'll get to in a post here further down the road) and as I'm salaried, not hourly, I get paid regardless of whether I'm there or not. FMLA basically saves me from being punished for being sick and keeps me on the payroll, and if I'd need to be out for any real length of time it would absolutely be necessary, as would the short-term disability benefits I pay for out of every single paycheck. 

But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'd been drinking as much water as possible, but it likely still wasn't enough. My nausea was really hindering that, by a lot -- meaning, I didn't know how much water or other liquids (or food, even) I'd be able to keep down longer than an hour or two in the event that my stomach decided "nope, it's time for you to throw up again." This will be important to the story later. My urine had been alternating between a tinge of blood here and there to shockingly, amazingly clear or very pale yellow at best. I figured that as long as I was still peeing a normal amount and at normal intervals, the less blood the better because it meant that water, and following logic, the kidney stone, was still moving through my system and wasn't "hung up" anywhere. Lube the pipes, etc.

By the time I went to the doctor I was in one of my "few hours of clarity" times, thankfully. We still took the puke bucket (really, a big popcorn bowl) in the car with us, as I predicted -- and was correct in that prediction -- that even the movement of the car would make me pretty nauseous.

I had not peed in some time before we went to the doctor -- maybe an hour or two -- and when I was asked for a urine sample, I told the doctor and attending nurse "well, I hope it shows something for you, because I've been peeing pretty normally with no discoloration for awhile now."

Oh. Oh no. Oh no no no.

When I let loose into the toilet I already knew something was wrong. I began to fill the urine specimen cup. It was red. And I'm not talking normal red, or a tinge of red or pink, I'm talking Hawaiian Punch red. 

Few things will horrify a person more than watching yourself pee what could have been literal straight blood. I mean, it wasn't straight blood, but good lord did it really look close. There was no pain. There was no discomfort. It felt like a normal pee -- but it sure did not look like it. It looked like a murder scene. 

If I, or the doctors, had any doubt in my mind before that it was indeed a kidney stone, that doubt had been erased by the time that sample was given.

I talked with the doctor for a bit; he was an older guy who had been practicing rural medicine for about 30 years before moving to Omaha; he was not my normal physician. He asked me the standard run of questions ("Are you in pain now? Does it hurt when I push down here? Do you want an injection to stop the pain?" etc) and honestly, at the time, I felt pretty normal. I was tired, I was scared that it would be a stone so large they'd have to operate, and I knew that no matter how I felt now, it would be fleeting as the next wave of pain and nausea would be coming sooner rather than later. I described my symptoms and how it came in waves, and he offered to prescribe me some dissolve-in-your-mouth nausea pills, which I gladly accepted. They were $4 and I picked them up at the in-house pharmacy on the way out.

"So in these situations," the doctor said, "we want to get you a CT scan done to see how big the stone is, if it's just the one or if there's more, and where it is. It's obviously moving, and that's good. It'll feel like hell, but that's good, it means that it's not too big to get hung up in your urinary tract, hopefully."

I was sort of numb by a lot of this talk at this point. "How big is too big?" I asked.

"Over/under for size is 6mm," the doctor said. "Anything over 6mm they'll likely want to do surgery on, whether they do it sonically or manually. Anything under that will generally pass throughout your system without medical intervention."

6mm, for the record -- and the doctor did not tell me this, I found it out later -- is the size of a pencil eraser. When I read that, I screamed internally.

I was also asked if I drank a lot of diet soda.

Now, as a diabetic, that's the only soda I can really drink. I have a normal, full-sugar soda maybe once or twice a year. And, for the past six months or so, I've been trying to wean myself off sodas and caffeine almost completely. I switched to a much lower-caffeine sparkling water version of an energy drink to get me off Monsters and Rockstars (and I always drank the sugar-free ones there anyway) and most of the time, I have 1-2 cups of coffee per night while I'm working -- that I sometimes don't even finish. The rest of my fluid intake is water or sparkling water, either lightly flavored or plain, but still with no sugar. 

But I do drink 1-3 cans of diet soda per week, usually Diet Coke or Diet Mtn Dew. I used to drink far more than that before I began my conscious effort to start weaning myself off caffeine as much as possible.

"I do drink some diet soda," I said, "but nowhere near the amount I used to."

"Well," the doctor said, "for some reason -- and we don't really know why -- people who drink a lot of diet sodas tend to get more kidney stones. It's not necessarily the case for regular soda, though it can be. We just see it a lot more in diet soda drinkers."

Is it -- perhaps -- because diabetics tend to be prone to kidney stones, and diet sodas are the only sodas they can drink? Who knows. I didn't really ask questions as I wasn't honestly in the right frame of mind to do so. 

They gave me a referral to urology (which I would need if I'd had to go under the actual or sonic knife to get the stone taken care of) and the number for the extension office -- for lack of a better term -- that I'd need to go to in order to get the CT scan done. They'd already sent the referral information over, but we still had to call and make the appointment for the actual scan.

Daisy called while we were in the car, and the soonest time we could get in for the CT was for the afternoon hours -- 1, 2, something like that. I was pretty out of it and don't remember the exact timeframe (again, I'm writing about this well over a month later). This was several hours in the future and we had to come home first, mainly because Daisy needed to do some actual work from home and I needed to prep for my next wave of nausea and pain. As soon as we arrived home, I popped one of the dissolve-in-your-mouth nausea pills and drank a good bit of water...which I promptly vomited up an hour or so later because that train's never late, and I had the aforementioned conversations above with my leadership and HR. 

Throughout the entire ordeal, as mentioned, I'd been trying to stay hydrated and had been continually been taking ibuprofen for the pain, which -- when it hit -- had been pretty nasty. In addition to the nausea, which was considerable, the pain when the stone was moving was a radiating, excruciating ache that felt like a million tiny knives being twisted through my abdomen and back. It wasn't a sharp, stabbing pain but a persistent, moving one that there was really no relief from. There was no position I could move my body into to lessen it; sitting, standing, walking, laying down -- it all hurt the same. It was the type of pain and discomfort that could drive a person mad even without it being excruciating.

I don't remember a lot of the time between the doctor's appointment and the CT scan. As mentioned, I knew I threw up again, I know I spoke to my people at work, but I don't remember if I ate anything, watched TV, took a nap, or what. I just remember being in a bad place. Daisy would later tell me that I had apparently been incessantly annoying (which, really, is her right to say, she was my caretaker during this time, and I'm sure I was a bear to deal with -- not really through any fault of my own).

The CT scan was to be done at a private-practice sort of office with an imaging suite about ten minutes from the house. I've not had a CT scan done for any reason since I was a very young child; even x-rays for anything for me were rare and I've only had a handful of them done over the years, primarily at the dentist. I'm not claustrophobic or anything, so the MRI tube machine thing doesn't fill me with dread like it does some other people. I was feeling okay, not great, but okay by the time we went to get the scan done.

The scan itself took less than five minutes. I had to empty my pockets, take off my shoes/ring/watch, and I laid on a flat table that slid me into the machine. I was relaxed, they took their pictures, and then I got back up and went back out to the waiting area for whatever results would come in. 

Apparently, the way the process works is that the scans are taken, they're sent to the doctor's office, the doctor reviews them and sends back the diagnosis to the office staff there (so they have something to do, I guess? The office was dead quiet, in the basement of a larger complex, and aside from me and Daisy there was one other person there to get scanned). 

We sat there for what was easily a half hour. We couldn't really talk without everyone in that part of the building hearing us, and we were also underground in a basement-office-like area, so we had zero cell signal. Do you know how terrifying it is to have to sit in a quiet underground room awaiting results that will tell you whether or not you have to get a major surgery, without any outlet to express that terror and anxiety?

Finally I was called up to the desk.

"Your results are in," the lady said. "It is a two-millimeter stone, and it is just the one. It is moving through your ureter now and doesn't appear to be hung up, but you should be able to pass it normally once it moves into the bladder."

I sighed a giant sigh of relief. Remember that 6mm was the pencil-eraser-sized stone and it was the kind that they'd have to remove with surgery or break up with lithotripsy. A 2mm stone was a third the size of that...which apparently still sucks but wasn't gonna get stuck in there anywhere. The results were sent to my doctor and I was sent on my way home to rest.

There are two things that they don't tell you about kidney stones, and maybe they should:

1. Maybe some folks won't, but I got very constipated during the process, despite how much water I was drinking. I don't know why, honestly. I know that this constipation contributed at least somewhat to my back pain during the entire ordeal.

2. It can take a week or two to actually pass the stone; even once it's in the bladder it can rattle around in there for a while. 

I'm not going to elaborate on the former, as I would like to keep some of my dignity intact, but I will expand a bit upon the latter. 

Over the course of the next day or three, I slowly began to feel normal again. Like, I wasn't feeling great, I wasn't feeling fantastic, but I was slowly getting back to normal. I was told that since this was a small stone, it would likely pass without any significant pain or discomfort and when it did, I may not even feel it. I took that as a good sign and very slowly returned to my normal life and activities. I went back to work, where I was told I didn't need to provide a doctor's note or anything for my leave (I had gotten one, of course, just in case) and I mostly felt okay by the end of the week. I peed out what I would only assume were small blood clots from my urinary tract; some were red and looked like little clots and some were thin and black and looked like singular coffee grounds. Some of them were big enough to where I assumed they were the stone (or pieces of it) and, as I was feeling pretty normal and finally sleeping (and pooping) again on a regular basis, I figured that was the end of it. I kept up my water intake and Daisy got me "royal chanca piedra" botanical supplement vitamins that were supposed to help break up stones and loosen up your urinary tract so that you not only peed more, but you could pee more easily -- I guess. I took one or two of them every day with my normal medications and didn't really notice much of a difference in much of anything, but okay, sure, we'll try it, whatever at this point, right?

I can sense some of you starting to pull away. Stick with me here, it's about to get worse.

So, over the course of the next few days -- and I'm talking now a full week, week-and-a-half after I started actually feeling better, had stopped puking, had continued work and life as per the usual -- I noticed a painful, burning sensation when I peed. It wasn't every time, but it was most times, and generally I didn't feel it in, ahem, full stream, but as it wound down and finished it would just ache me in the, well, interior of my penis. I'm not trying to be edgy or graphic in saying that or anything, just stating a general fact. It would go away after about 5-10 minutes after I peed and I didn't think much of it -- obviously the clots had to be coming from somewhere, and I was sure that the stone had probably irritated the fuck out of my entire urinary tract. 

But this was different, this wasn't in the actual urinary tract -- the pain and discomfort was from within my dork. It didn't feel like anything was, ahem, stuck in there as nothing felt blocked or otherwise hurt at any other time, just when I peed. I chalked it up to maybe some sort of mild UTI caused by the stone ripping me up here and there, and went about my life.

About three days later, as I was peeing before work one night (still somewhat uncomfortably), I felt something move and an object came out of me and ricocheted against the toilet bowl before sinking to the bottom. It did not hurt, but I absolutely felt it shoot out like a bullet. 

It was the stone. 

And before you ask, yes, you bet your ass I fished it out.

Feel free to enlarge that if you want. That is my index finger next to it, for scale purposes. That tiny little jagged calcium rock is what put me through multiple days of discomfort, general agony, vomiting, nausea and dizziness, and cost me three days of work and $300 for a CT scan. 

In case anyone ever argues how humans are strong and resilient and have a high tolerance for pain or some shit.

I left that stone on that folded piece of toilet paper on the bathroom sink. When Daisy asked why, I told her that it was there so every time I went into the bathroom I could give it the middle finger. 

Eventually, of course, I did get rid of it.

Almost immediately after the stone passed, the burning/painful urination went away and I was 100% back to health. The doctors called me a few days later and asked if I'd used the referral to urology or if they could cancel it for the time being, and I told them it was fine, they could cancel it, I passed the stone and was fully back to normal. 

Since then, well over a month (almost two, now) later, I have been drinking at least 64oz of water a day in addition to any other liquids I consume, and I have changed around my diet quite a bit to help lessen any further occurrences of stones -- as well as to help my general well-being and health when it comes to my diabetes and cholesterol levels. It is working -- I had my follow-up appointment for bloodwork on this past Friday, and my cholesterol is back to completely normal ranges, my triglycerides are down almost 200 points, my A1C has dropped from 8.2 back to 7.5 (the lowest it's been in a year), and I would expect it all will continue to lower as long as I remain on a fairly restrictive diet and continue to be physically active as much as I can. 

Based on what's coming up for me in the next two months or so, I don't really expect any of this to be a major issue, honestly...unless another kidney stone pops up.

More to come. 

A Series of Shitty Adventures, Part II

 when we last left our intrepid heroes....

Ahem. Anyway.

The last Friday of February I was scheduled to go in for my follow-up appointment to get my A1C checked, to see if any adjustments needed to be made to my meds, etc. It was a pretty standard follow up, with nothing out of the ordinary expected -- but it had been delayed by about two months due to various reasons, primarily that there were no appointments available on Friday mornings right when I'd get off work. 

When negotiating my schedule with my superiors waaaaay back when we first went work from home, I made sure to keep my Fridays off, as those were the days that we saved for doctor/dentist appointments and the like, and Friday nights are the nights that Daisy and I generally schedule events and/or have things to do (though more often than not, we just stay home). Saturdays are our "day together," and generally we don't/can't do doctor appointments on Saturdays -- though we do almost always do our eye appointments on Saturday afternoons. Were I to try to schedule doctor appointments any other day/time of the week, I'd either lose sleep or I'd have to take time off work because, well, I wouldn't be able to sleep during the day and thus would not be able to stay up and work all night (remember this, it'll come back later in this story). 

So, it had been eight months since I'd last visited my doctor for any kind of bloodwork. In between the last visit, I had:

• Gone to and from Canada and Maine for an extended trip, and had eaten very poorly/whatever I could get there that was quasi-or-actually-vegetarian and would fill my stomach (read: lots of energy drinks, Tim Horton's coffee, poutine, sandwiches, and ketchup/all-dressed chips)
  
  
• Gone to and from Chicago and had eaten extremely unhealthily while I was there
  
  
• Had two major holidays where food was a big focus -- three if you count New Year's, and four if you count the Super Bowl

I was not expecting my numbers to be good, but I had also been slowly, continually losing weight throughout this entire time. Part of that was that I was making conscious changes to my diet -- over the past few months, for example, I have tried to greatly lessen my caffeine intake and up my water intake to replace it and keep myself hydrated more. Most of the time, outside of special occasions and travel, I don't eat a whole lot, and I am relatively conscious as to what I'm putting into my body.

However, I wasn't eating salads every day like I had been at the time of my last doctor's visit, I hadn't been eating a ton of steamed vegetables like I had before the last doctor's visit, and we had been ordering in a lot and making/eating a ton of convenience foods, getting pizza or Indian food delivered, etc. I'd gone to the gym once since the last visit to my doctor and I had not been doing any home exercise at all. I was, and had been, sleeping more and sleeping better, though.

I'm saying all this because, again, I did not expect my numbers to be great, or even good. 

The doctor's visit was pretty good, standard procedure, etc. Our doctor knew we'd had Covid (because, of course, he'd called in the Paxlovid for us) and we were delighted to tell him we were now over it and testing negative. I got a few vials of blood taken from me without fainting, and we had a good chat about what I should and shouldn't be eating, and how much/little of those things I could allow myself. He gave me some exercise goals, some competitive things we could do together as a couple to keep it interesting (exercise-wise anyway) and then he sent me on my way. I didn't think much of it; I came home and went to sleep for the day, Daisy went to work, etc.

And then by the end of the weekend, the results came.

My A1C had gone from a well-managed 6.7 to 8.2. All of my other numbers were elevated, some of them through the roof -- like my cholesterol and triglycerides. About the only good numbers I had were my blood pressure, which was 116/76.

Still, when your doctor tells you that your blood is basically gravy, that's never a good thing.

I was not happy with the results, obviously. My doctor, who had requested I go on statins before for my cholesterol, was pretty much like "yeah, you need to be on these now" and also called in a prescription for some weekly injectable diabetes drug -- like, I'd jab myself with it at home once a week. I was not a fan of that idea, and countered by asking why we weren't just upping my Metformin dosage, which I am on the lowest dose of currently. He relented and doubled the dose of my Metformin instead, but also reiterated that he wanted me on the statins and that he wanted me in for another nurse visit blood draw in six weeks. That appointment was set, later, for late April. 

In the time since, I have procured the statins and have indeed doubled the dose of my Metformin, per doctor's orders, and have had zero side effects or any perceived "issues" with the medication. But I'll get to that more below.

Anyway, at the time I was pretty distraught and vocalized that to Daisy. It's like over the past 2-3 years, my health has absolutely gone to shit. If my A1C is going to go up that much with medication, what's the point of even taking it? It's apparently not working that well. How could I have such high cholesterol, especially when I'm a vegetarian and eat so very little of anything with cholesterol in it? I never had any sort of cholesterol problem before, and -- I will add -- I am still losing weight, slowly. How can all of these things affect me this badly, yet my blood pressure is nearly perfect? None of it makes any sense to me. It's like my body is staging a revolt to make me hate myself. 

When we were in the doctor's office, he asked me what my weight was and what my weight loss goal was overall. I told him I hover around 325 to 335 depending on the week, but that's down from 376 five years ago. My goal is to get below 300 for the first time in over a decade. Just two weeks ago, I hit my lowest weight in a very long time, and that was 324.

"Yeah, how about we shoot for 200?" he said.

I think my bones alone weigh 200, was the first thing that came to mind.

Bless my poor middle aged doctor's heart, but there is no way I'll ever be 200 pounds. I haven't weighed 200 since I was in middle school. I would be a goddamn skeleton. I'd look like a cancer victim. I was 300-320 in high school and college. 200 is not feasible. Even 250 would be pushing it. 265-270 is the lowest weight I've ever had in my adult life, around 2008-09. I've lost over 50 pounds in the past five years and that seems to be a trend that's continuing.

In 2008-09, when I was my lightest weight, I was also working a manual labor job, walking or biking to and from work every day I could (a six-mile round trip), and my weight loss was helped by drinking at least one full pot of coffee a day and smoking a pack a day. I was also poor, and couldn't afford the kind of food that I can now afford easily. So, I mean, having some money now, a wife who is an amazing cook, and being able to live in a big city with a lot of food choices and varieties is really what's keeping me down -- as is the rise of food delivery services like GrubHub and UberEats, and just plain old grocery store deliveries. I can have anything I want to eat dropped off on my doorstep in less than an hour at almost any time of day or night (well, usually not the overnight, but you get the idea). 

I vowed to get a "back to basics" attitude when it came to my health and to seriously attempt to move and exercise more, get back to the salads and steamed vegetables and occasional soups, cut most bread back out of my diet in favor of low-carb wraps (or just nothing bread-based at all), and to continue drinking as much water as possible while still lowering my caffeine intake. High protein, low carb, lots of vegetables, lots of fiber, watch for the non-vegan foods (like cheeses and stuff of that nature) that would contain cholesterol, and more than anything else, try to remain pretty consistent across the board with all of it.

To those ends, it was still pretty cold outside at the time, so I pulled up some exercise videos on YouTube on the big TV in the living room, and followed along with them. The first night of doing this sucked, but the second night was better, even though I noticed at the end of it that I was developing back pain. 

Back pain is nothing new for me. I'm old and I've been fat all my life, and I was attempting to get up and be active after a long period of not being active and not exercising (read: the pandemic). I didn't think much of it and took some ibuprofen, and it eventually went away.

Later that night, I went to the bathroom to pee, and it was...darker than normal? Tinged with a little red, maybe orange. I felt fine, but that was a bit concerning to me. I drank a lot more water, thinking I was likely dehydrated, and it went back to the normal mostly-clear, lightly yellow that I'm used to. 

The next day, the back pain was back, except it was higher in the back than it normally was, and isolated to one side. The darker pee was back too and looked, well, more red. Like blood. I told Daisy that morning that I thought I had a UTI or something along those lines, maybe a kidney infection, and if it got worse, yeah, we'd need to go to the doctor because I was becoming really concerned.

This was March 1. Only four or five days after I'd been to the doctor previously for my A1C and normal checkup.

What followed over the course of the next few days was nothing short of a legitimate nightmare, and deserves to be chronicled in its entirety in its own entry. Stay tuned for Part III. 

More

 More is coming soon, I promise. I've just been exhausted as of late. 

A Series of Shitty Adventures, Part I

Hi all, it's been a while, so let's catch up.

After three full years of avoiding it and weaving around some close exposures, our luck finally caught up with us...and during the first week of February, we got Covid.

Daisy was exposed to a coworker who had it and began developing symptoms a few days later. After close to a week of feeling weird/bad, after three tests, she finally tested positive. I remained pretty normal until the evening/overnight hours that same night, when I started to feel a little strange and began running a very light (99.0) fever. I didn't feel sick per se, but I wasn't feeling good, either.

I let my bosses know that Daisy had tested positive, which likely meant that I would too and I'd also get it. Daisy was a mess. At that juncture I told work I still planned to work normally but I'd keep them in the loop if that changed. I took a test. I tested negative. 

By around 2am on one of the weekend nights before I'd return to work -- by which time I'd developed a cough that was hard, dry, and painful -- I went to sleep. I slept for ten hours straight, only getting up to use the bathroom and move to the bedroom from my overstuffed lounge chair around the middle of that time. By the time I'd awakened for the day, Daisy had gone to and returned from Walgreens (fully masked and basically in a hazmat suit) to pick up the Paxlovid she'd called our doctor to send over for her. I took a test. I was negative at that time.

She'd also made sure to update my own insurance information with the pharmacists at Walgreens so that inevitably, when said Paxlovid would be called in for me, everything would be good and ready to roll. 

Most of the following Sunday, while Daisy was still dying, I was mostly okay. I had the cough. It was getting worse and more frequent. But I didn't have a fever, and physically I actually felt sort of light and energetic. I didn't want to take another test yet, as we only had three left and I didn't want to burn through them -- especially as I don't think they're incredibly accurate. So I decided I was fine enough to attempt to work all night, as per the usual.

I was. Mostly.

By the middle of the night, the 3am, 4am hours, I was coughing so hard and so frequently I saw spots and was getting very dizzy. I made sure the crew knew, again, that if I could power through it for Monday night I'd do the same, this thing wasn't gonna take me alive, etc. -- but it really, really was not looking good.

It was around this time that I for sure knew I had Covid. There was no denying it, no way in hell that's not what it was. I was loopy, I had major brain fog. It took me twenty minutes to remember my password to login to my work computer, and even then it was mostly muscle memory. 

I was coughing so hard by 6am (I get off work at 7) that I'd awakened the wife upstairs multiple times. She offered to come downstairs and help me take another test, because I was, well...almost unable to move, and I was keeping her awake. She tested me with a different kind of test this time (apparently there are a lot of different ones) and we waited the prerequisite amount of time before it told Daisy what we both already knew -- yeah, positive. I couldn't see the line on it (my eyes are bad) but Daisy could. I did see the line eventually; it got darker a bit later.

I took my temperature. 101. Daisy called in the Paxlovid for me. It would be a while before it was available. I took a double-dose of liquid NyQuil and went upstairs, where a short while later I passed out in my chair for four hours and then moved to the bedroom for another three.

When I awakened...it was bad. I knew I was really sick. I haven't felt a sick like this in decades. I had Flu B in 2015 and Flu C in 2018. Flu B sucked to be sure, and Flu C slightly less, but it was nothing like this. The closest thing I could describe it as was when I had mono for like two weeks in the 3rd grade. I remember being low-grade miserable, sleeping a lot (a lot), and not having an appetite. Well, this was like that, except it was high-grade miserable, not low-grade. It's the closest thing I can describe it as, honestly.

Daisy had gone out while I was asleep (again) to pick up my Paxlovid. She also picked up eight more tests -- did you know that your insurance, well maybe not all insurances, but ours -- will pay for eight more tests per person, per month? For free. Because I sure as hell didn't. 

Our doctor had called in these little gelcaps for me too; I can't remember the name of the actual drug, but they refer to them as "pearls" and they're supposed to stop you from coughing so much. They're basically prescription Robitussin in a pill, from what I read about them online. I'm supposed to take 2-3 of them a day as needed, and they interact with some of my other meds (they make them less effective, but not much else). I took one, and I did notice a vast difference in my coughs within 2-3 hours.

[EDIT: the drug is called Benzonotate.]

The Paxlovid, if you are not aware or don't have experience with it, is basically Tamiflu for Covid-19. It's an antiviral that stops the virus from being able to reproduce in your body and attempts to flush it out. Okay, sure, whatever. It is free and covered by insurance so yeah, might as well give it a go.

Look, I have diabetes. I'm overweight. I smoked for over fifteen years. I don't feel like I'm taking the drug away from someone who could give it better use. Those are the three biggest risk factors for severe Covid as well as long-haul Covid. 

It comes in a box with five blister packs, six pills per pack. Take the three "morning" pills in the morning, and take the other three "evening" pills at night before bed. For five days. Oh, and if it doesn't kick the virus out of you completely, you could have a resurgence and get sick again the day after it ends, testing positive again and becoming sick again until it all works its way out of your system.

But, I mean, I guess that doesn't happen to everyone. It did happen to my mother, who had a bout of Covid around the turn of the year and still hasn't completely recovered, so I was willing to take the chance.

I was miserable, and my fever began creeping up again. The early part of that week was likely my own "worst days" of the sick. I told Daisy I wasn't going to work, there was no way I could sit upright for many hours and end and think critically and be stressed out when I was this sick -- or talk on the phone with clients for that matter. 

My company has a policy where, even though all of us work at home and have done so since March 2020, we still need to report positive Covid cases (for ourselves, or for our agents). It's more important with the groups who still work onsite in the last remaining physical office we have in Omaha, as they have to follow distancing protocol and the like. But, we don't work onsite and the Covid reporting is also ammo they use every time our parent company gets some sort of idea about "Covid's over now, let's move everyone back to an office" -- so that our leadership can point to the numbers and be like "no, look at X cases reported this week by people who are working at home and would be bringing that back to the office" etc. It's ammunition that has seemed to work really well overall, even after most infection numbers began to die down in most cities. Secretly, I also think it's because when the symptoms aren't killing you, most people can work through them when they're working from home instead of just quarantining themselves and hurting production by not being onsite to work even if they're mostly okay, because they'd still be spreading the virus.

Anyway, I let the team know, including my executive director and head of HR, that yeah, I had it, was on Paxlovid and self-isolating, wouldn't need to go onsite for anything, etc etc, and that I would definitely be out of office for a bit, time unknown, but 1-2 days at the very least.

Mind you, I'm salaried; the correct thing to do is to put in the PTO for that, and I did so, but even if I hadn't...I'd still get paid regardless. 

At that juncture, I left it open that I did not know when I'd be able to return to work. Given how I felt at the time, I wasn't going to commit to anything yet. I also left my out of office messages both on my phone and on my email intentionally vague, just saying that I was out of office due to illness and would respond to inquiries upon my return. This would serve me pretty well as a saved message for future use as well (keep reading, I'll get to it). 

I asked Daisy, who was feeling a bit better by this point on her second full day of Paxlovid, but still sick, if she'd make her famous vegan chicken noodle soup for me for dinner. Meanwhile, I had on my fur/sherpa lined hooded bathrobe and I was still freezing, yet sweating. She made the soup and I ate it, because she is an amazing wife, but I also felt my fever creeping upward with little I could do about it -- there are a lot of things you can't take with Paxlovid because of potentially serious drug interactions, and one of them per the research I found was acetaminophen -- which is in the NyQuil I was planning to do another double-shot of before going upstairs.

[EDIT: while there are some potentially serious drug interactions with Paxlovid, apparently the reason you can't take some of the aforementioned OTC medications with it -- including decongestants, allergy pills, acetaminophen, etc -- is because it somehow interacts with the Paxlovid to either neutralize it or make it FAR less effective. So there's that.]

My fever hit 102, then 102.2, then 102.5, then capped out at 102.7. I couldn't take anything to reduce the fever.

My blood oxygen was anywhere between 91 when I first checked it (which is bad-ish news) to generally, consistently hanging around 97, 98, which is much more ideal. 

Daisy was very worried about how my fever had kept creeping up. Aside from knowing I had a fever, I felt mostly okay by the time she showered and went to bed. Good enough to where I should've been at work? Hell no, but good enough to where I felt I wasn't going to die. I took the "night" dose of the Paxlovid, and she did another search and found that ibuprofen, another fever reducer, did not have any known drug interactions with Paxlovid, and I took two of them to ease her mind. 

Over the span of about forty minutes, my fever began to slowly drop -- first to 102.4, then to 102.0, and then it moved back up to 102.2. It was clearly fighting the ibuprofen. By the time I was tired enough to go to sleep, it was back down to 101.8 and my blood oxygen was well-stabilized at 97. I wrapped myself in a queen-sized fleece blanket like a burrito and went to sleep in my chair -- if I burst into coughing fits in the night, I didn't want to wake Daisy up. And if I were in the bed with her, I absolutely would. 

I did not sleep well. It's like my body didn't want me to sleep. I was full of aches/pains and felt extremely stiff. I was cold and hot at the same time. My blanket was at times too hot and other times not hot enough, and I was constantly, constantly sweating -- I would soak the back and chest of any shirt I was wearing, repeatedly.

Eventually I got up when Daisy was beginning to start her work day -- still sick, but working from home in any capacity she could -- and was up for an hour or two checking my email and trying to figure out how I felt. The major fever had broken, and I felt relatively lucid (or so I thought at the time). The biggest problem was a debilitating, almost blinding at times, stiff and painful neck, to the point where I couldn't even turn my head or really, easily lift by body out of chairs, out of bed, etc. 

By mid-morning, after taking my next dose of Paxlovid and taking more ibuprofen for not only fever control, but for my screaming neck, I laid down in the bed with the cats and slept for another six hours. 

I returned to work the following night. My boss was surprised I was back so fast. I started the night by apologizing for being this sick, and told my crew that I was feeling at about 60-70% and was trying to fight it off, but hey all, no sudden moves or anything. 

Translation: I'm here because I have to be, not because I want to be, so don't pile a bunch of bullshit on me and expect me to be as quick or as talented in handling it as I normally am, because I am very much not that person this week.

The next overnight was mostly fine. I was still running a low fever around 100, and I still had the cough, but the biggest pain of it all was the incessant sneezing and the need to blow my nose probably fifty times in the course of the night. Oh, and my neck was still killing me, and I was still sweating through my clothing, but again, I thought I was mostly lucid -- lucid enough to do the job, anyway. By the time I went to bed the next morning, aside from the congestion and other symptoms I could do nothing about (because, again, couldn't take DayQuil/NyQuil), I was beginning to feel like I was on the mend.

Oh, I was wrong. I was so wrong.

By the next afternoon -- with Daisy now having been sick for a full week and with me entering my fourth full day of sickness myself -- it's like we had a rebound. I was really sick again, coughing and really out of it, feverish, aches/pains and my screaming neck (which had not gotten better and was worrying me that maybe I'd contracted meningitis or something). Daisy, who had begun feeling better, also crashed again and began feeling horrific once more. My sickness slowly began to subside once I took my evening dose of Paxlovid, but make no mistake about it, we were both still quite ill.

When I went downstairs at like, 7:30 PM, I found my work computer to be on -- screens on and everything -- and showing me an error message. This is odd because it had been working just fine that morning when I'd rebooted it after I'd logged off for the day, and I turn my monitors off.

Daisy said there had been a brief 30-second power outage in the day while I was asleep, but that would not have caused the error that my computer was giving me -- which said my hard drive had been encrypted for security reasons by a program called BitLocker and that I would need a 47-character security key to get back into it. 

I...don't have that key. I don't know anyone who does have that key. Even if I were able to get into my computer, that key is locked away from me at the admin level, because even though I'm an Operations Manager™ and have been one for almost seven years now, I don't have admin access to my machine. Nobody does for any of their machines -- that's the job of the IT folks. 

So, frustrated and sick, I call up our IT guy, who tells me...he's never seen this message before on a PC. He does some research on the back end to find where we can get that info, and he logs into my account from his side (I gave him my password and full authorization to do so) to see if he can get this key with the security clearances he has. He cannot. He involves the Identity and Access Management team to see if they can, involves our Executive Director, and they begin escalating up the chain to see if there was anyone available in the overnight who could get it.

I made a little something to eat, and went back upstairs to my normal, actual computer (this one) and actual office.

I am lucky -- or maybe I'm just talented and skilled enough to know how things work -- that I can access and do about 90% of my job on any given night, if necessary, from my normal computer. The only things I cannot access on my normal machine are our client tools, which our teams must access via VPN. Everything else, however, I can get into on my normal machine with no special tools or skills necessary. I can pull up both my personal email as well as our shared box, I can pull up our admin system via MyApps, I can pull up our spreadsheets (all of them are online shared sheets), I can pull up our organization's CRM system, and I can sign into and use our company Teams as normal. I'm sure if I wanted to, I could even access my desk phone and have it route to my cell, but that's wholly unnecessary anyway as my email signature lists my cell as well as my desk phone. It is remarkable that I can do 90% of my job at any/all times without needing to touch my work PC. My normal home PC is faster, it's much more reliable, and it doesn't run off the company network -- so in my other browser tabs I can play a game, or watch YouTube, or do anything else I wanted to do. 

Plus, my normal PC has a working CD player. 

I am tempted to just be like "oh, my client tools aren't working correctly tonight" once in a while and just do all my work from up here just to get a break and some more calming headspace.

"Look at it this way," I told Daisy, "if my computer's fucked and they can't get this code or can't fix it, I can't take it to the office to have them look at it because, well, Covid. If they ship me another machine to replace it, that'll take a week and it's basically a free vacation for me, because, Covid -- can't work in the office even if there was a machine there to use. So, they either fix it and everything goes back to business as usual or I get a few extra days to rest and recover -- I don't give a shit either way."

So, about...ehhhh, 90 minutes early, give or take, because I was already working with our IT guy, I just logged into everything from upstairs and dove in. I let the team know what was going on, let them know that unfortunately it would likely not get fixed in the overnight, but I was here and going to do everything I could to help out as per the usual, but I was a bit hobbled and for stuff requiring client tools, I'd need to utilize my coworkers' hands and eyes and sometimes screenshots when necessary.

I do want to state here for the record that I could have very easily told the crew "oh well, guess I get a free night off, catch y'all later." My computer was busted, I was feeling like shit still, and I knew with absolute certainty that nobody in corporate IT would be able to get the code to "fix" my machine until the morning/daytime hours. I could've peaced out and just gone back to bed for the night. But, honestly, that's not who I am. If I have the ability to do something and help out, I will. So I logged in upstairs and pulled everything up, and didn't give it a second thought, really. When my Executive Director asked me what I could do without the work PC, I told him 90% of the job (as mentioned above), and would get assistance as necessary for the last 10%. He seemed impressed, if not outright surprised. 

What followed was a night of calm, zen-like work, where I felt freed from the constraints of the work PC downstairs. I sat in my comfortably lit office, listening to classic metal records and taking care of business. On my lunch hour, I took a long, hot shower to soothe my neck (since the bathroom is about fifteen feet behind me). I took and made calls. I handled all of the email and spreadsheet updates I normally would. I did two loads of laundry. I compiled and filed the nightly reports as I normally would. I closely monitored my temperature and blood oxygen levels (both remained normal and good). I watched an entire episode of American Gladiators on YouTube. I told one of my underlings on the side how I didn't care if they ever fixed my work PC, because I was having a blast working this way. It really was a good work experience, is what I'm saying, for the first time in a while -- all while still fighting Covid.

By around 7:30 Thursday morning I was still working -- 12 hours at that point, even though I'm supposed to get off at 7 -- when an email came in that said they'd found my computer's passcode thing. It was sent to me and, yes, it did let me back into my machine. However, two more hours of troubleshooting followed that to make sure everything was going to work correctly. I made sure our IT guy knew and made sure my Executive Director was aware that yes, I was in, and that I had basically reached my limit and was going to bed after working 14 hours straight when my shift is 8. I told him I now knew how the director-and-above folks felt when they had to pull long hours.

"I appreciate you sticking with it," he said. Said Executive Director is fully aware I have Covid and was fighting through that anyway to continue to work and help out, and was also fully and very aware I could've just said fuck it for the night when I couldn't get into my computer -- it would've been understandable and justified, and moreover, nobody would've been able to give me shit over it.

"That's what I'm here for," I said. "Just remember this if I ever get a shot at a Director gig in the future, lol."

Yes, I included the "lol," because I have a good relationship with my big boss and don't want him to think I was put out by the whole scenario. I was, but I mean, I didn't care. I'd rather help than not when I have the ability -- I have a sense of duty and a strong work ethic. There's also no better person to show that off to in any corporate scenario than the man at the top of the power structure over your entire program.

"I will," he said. 

Over the course of the next few days, I finished up my Paxlovid. I felt mostly okay. Each day I felt a little better than the last. I still had a cough, I still had head congestion and the incessant neck pain, but I wasn't feeling as horrible anymore. Daisy, who finished her Paxlovid a day before me, was feeling somewhat better, but wasn't completely 100% either. I'll also note that most of this time, she spent working from home so that she wouldn't infect anyone in the office -- and while she was at home with Covid, no less than three other people in her office had been stricken down with it as well.

The following weekend was the Super Bowl, and...I felt fine. I'd taken Super Bowl Sunday off work anyway (I always do, regardless of who's playing). I felt almost normal and was thankful that I was finally shaking off the sickness.

Oh, how wrong I was.

The week that followed -- and I'm being brief because I don't remember most of it -- was hell. Once the Paxlovid was out of my system, I found that I was in that (apparently small) percentage of people who got a second wave of Covid after the fact. And, unfortunately, Daisy was too. I got incredibly sick again for close to another week, so sick that I honestly do not remember much at all. I struggled hard through that week of work. I couldn't stop sneezing. I went through an entire box of tissues in two days, and filled multiple handkerchiefs with snot because of the incessant nose-blowing. I had multiple nosebleeds. My lungs felt like they'd been replaced with gummy bears. I had a fever that would go between about 100.5 to 102 at almost all times, with no real reprieve. I completely lost my senses of taste and smell, when I hadn't on the first go-around with the virus. When it did slowly begin to return, everything tasted off, or tasted rotten, and things I had previously loved I no longer had any desire to eat or drink. I lost any desire whatsoever to drink coffee, for example. I didn't really have any built up time I could take off work, and my goal during that week was to get through it and to just fucking sleep through most of the following weekend. Luckily, as I was done with the Paxlovid, I could drink DayQuil and NyQuil with impunity, and they helped. I think. I say I think because one of the symptoms that took the longest to go away was intense "brain fog."

Daisy, meanwhile, had a delayed onset of the second wave -- she was mostly okay for a few days, and then slowly went back down, like a balloon with a pinhole in it. There was a lot of ebb and flow to it for both of us, but more so for Daisy, who would go from feeling relatively normal to feeling sick again in the evenings, to getting up the next morning and feeling like she was going to die -- and then would feel better in the afternoon for a while only for it to take her down again a few hours later. She also lost her sense of taste and smell, and for her that particular symptom lasted a good while. It took me another full week to start feeling better for good, but it took Daisy close to ten days -- and even after she felt fine, she was still testing positive every time she checked (I didn't bother to continue testing; I work from home and I knew I still had it -- I don't have to leave the house for anything, so fuck it). If she had a bad day but was lucid enough to actually work, she would work from home, and as she didn't have a fever any longer, she transitioned back to her normal in-office schedule by the end of the following week.

Eventually, we both got better. Little by little, more every day, until it was all completely gone. 

Having lived through the Covid experience, I need to tell those of you who have been lucky enough to not get it over the past three years some pointers:

• It is not the flu and it is real. This isn't some bullshit that the media is blowing out of proportion. It is real and it sucks. If you have not had it, you do not want it. I will stress again that I have never felt a sickness quite like Covid. It doesn't feel like a cold or a flu. 
  
  
• I mentioned briefly above that I have diabetes and I smoked for fifteen years (I still vape, but we'll cover that later, and I'm quitting that too). I am overweight and have been for most of my life. The above story is how bad I got it after four vaccines (two normal shots and two boosters) and with Paxlovid. I am alive; I survived, but Covid kicked my ass badly. I'm not sure, without the vaccines and Paxlovid, that I would be alive today. So, get vaccinated. Get the boosters.
  
  
• Daisy does not have diabetes, is not a smoker or a vaper, is six years younger than me, and also had the same four shots and Paxlovid that I did. She's vegan, eats pretty cleanly and organically, and despite her weight, is very healthy and exercises/is far more active than me in general...and it still kicked her ass too.
  
  
• If someone says they've been exposed to Covid, or is already sick with it, stay the fuck away from that person.
  
  
• If you do get it, get on the Paxlovid immediately. Call your doctor, have them call it in for you, do whatever you can to get it in your system as soon as you can. I can't imagine how much worse off I/we would've been without it. 
  
  
• Paxlovid's major side effect is that while you're on it, and even for a few days after you get off it, you will develop a sour, bitter, metallic taste in your mouth. The taste? Very similar to grapefruit. And it's incessant, especially for the first two hours or so after you take your dose of it. Plus side, it does fade and disappear once you finish your run of Paxlovid. Almost everyone gets this, and yes, you will still taste it even when/if you lose your sense of taste and smell. It powers through.
  
  
• Bonus tip: if you get the grapefruit mouth, drink a Fresca. It counteracts it. Fight fire with fire.

Finally, after some of the worst two and a half weeks of my life, I was feeling much better and finally tested negative again -- on the same day Daisy tested negative as well. This was good, because the morning after testing negative, I would have my scheduled A1C and other bloodwork follow-up appointment with my doctor.

What do you think happened there? Well, there's a reason this is a "part I" and a reason this post is called "A Series of Shitty Adventures" ...

The Aftermath, and 2023

In the days after Christmas, and after the New Year, I've been living life much in a blur. 

Christmas came and went. It was mostly very uneventful. On Christmas Eve we had finger foods with the parents, and then drove around a bit to look at lights. We were instructed to be at the family home again by 8:30 the next morning for breakfast, which we were (well, we got there at 8:39). 

Daisy's parents, as is customary, gave us a giant quilt.

Daisy generally handles most gifts for her parents and I get them a few little things just from me; this year, for example, I got Dad some socks. This was my gift to him last year too (different socks, though, because I'm not weird). I used to get Dad knives or some other sort of weapon every year until Daisy told me to stop that. We actually got each other knives for a few years running; Daisy and I have been together a decade, so there have been a lot of Christmases. 

It was all quiet, very subdued, and very peaceful. When we returned home that evening we opened our own gifts for one another; Daisy got me several books I'd been wanting to read, some CDs, a pack of socks I'd wanted, and a robe (that needed to be returned because it was too small, but I replaced it with one in the correct size). Her big gift for me was the Sega Genesis 2 Mini, which was delayed in shipping from Japan until well after the new year. 

I got Daisy an assortment of the usual items -- treats like Cocomels and Clif Bars, and Jolly Ranchers -- as well as some useful things for around the house, like scarf hangers for her side of the closet and her big gift, a bright purple crock pot. 

I sent my parents some big canvases with photos of us and their pets on them, and (as that's more of a mom thing), I sent my dad a few comics subscriptions too. I later used the same canvas print site to print a 24"x36" wall canvas of me as Space Jesus for about $30 that is now hanging in our living room. No regrets.

The new year came and went just fine, too, with the exception of one little thing: FSA expiration.

Let me explain.

I don't know how many of you reading this have the option of FSA/HSA for the insurance for your jobs; I know I do, but I've never utilized it because all of my health coverage is through Daisy's job because it's much better, more comprehensive insurance and overall easier/cheaper for her to just cover me than vice versa, or to get separate coverage. 

Short aside: I do get accidental death/dismemberment/disability insurance through my job, and I also have an amazing life insurance policy through my workplace that will pay Daisy very well were I to drop dead tomorrow, but that's it. 

Anyway, part of Daisy's optional coverage is a FSA plan. We've always done it and dropped a fair amount of money into it because, I mean, why not? We use it to pay for prescriptions, doctor's visits, glasses, etc. 

Well, this year we didn't use most of it. And we were reminded a few weeks prior that it expired 12/31, and we wouldn't get that money back afterwards if we didn't use it beforehand.

How much did we actually have left? Just shy of $900.

Do you know how many pairs of glasses, bottles of both pills and liquid cold and allergy medicine, thermometers, heating pads, nasal rinses, glasses wipes, face washes, pain relievers, bandages, TENS machines, balms and creams, antacids, cough drops, vitamins, and various other little odds and ends $900 will buy?

The answer is a lot. Like, likely enough to be put on some sort of watchlist somewhere.

So, in the evening of New Year's Eve, Daisy and I went on a mini shopping spree. It was like a second, more medical Christmas. Today is January 8. There are still things arriving. I'm pretty sure the delivery drivers in our area have us on their shitlist right now. My new glasses, for example, don't arrive until Monday. There are a handful of things that have been delayed, too, so it is what it is.

We used all but $8 of the FSA, by the way.

The one thing the FSA couldn't cover before the end of the year? Ironically, my actual medication.

I wish I were making that up.

On December 27, I called the pharmacy and requested a refill of my Metformin. At the time I had maybe three or four days left, at most. I never heard back from them, nor did the wife (who gets texts saying when our prescriptions have been filled. I called them on New Year's Eve, and spoke to a pharmacist who was like "yeah, we haven't heard back from your doctor yet, but you can try back after the holiday."

This did not fill me with a lot of hope. I ran out of my Metformin -- completely -- and started taking some of Daisy's old ones (which are very likely expired, but will at least keep it in my system). 

On Friday, after still nothing, I reached out to my doctor's office directly, asking what the hold up was, because I was out of my pills and yes, they do need to refill them. 

We'd be happy to send over new refills for you as soon as you schedule your next follow up appointment with us, they told me.

What the fuck?

These doctors have been super overreactive with me ever since I was diagnosed with diabetes a few years back. My A1Cs are not high -- in fact, I'm very much on the very low end of the diabetic scale, especially now that I'm on Metformin and have continually kept losing weight every year now for five years running. I'm not sitting here eating a loaf of bread and drinking two gallons of full sugar Mountain Dew every day, and despite how much I might like it to be, my blood is not maple syrup or gravy. I'm actually eating far less than ever before and I've been a bit more active than I used to be (more on this later, maybe). 

"They can't withhold my medication just because they want me to come in so they can get money," I told Daisy. "It's not like I'm taking these pills recreationally -- they are medically necessary."

I called them and said fine, whatever, let's set up an appointment. I should get my A1C checked again anyhow, and maybe this time it'll tell me I'm nearing the range to where I can reduce my Metformin dose in the hopes of eventually eliminating it completely. So, yeah, whatever.

"What's the soonest first AM -- like 7AM -- appointment?"

"Let me check," the nurse told me as she thumbed through whatever schedules she had in front of her, before finally answering "February 24th."

"That's the soonest one?" I asked. 

"Yes," she said. "There are only two appointments available before then, and they're 1pm and 1:30pm on [some random, middle-of-the-week day at the end of the month]."

"Okay, lock me in for the 7AM appointment on February 24, then," I said.

"Will you have enough medication to get you through to that time?" 

....no, I won't, that's the entire fucking reason I'm doing this, because you're holding my pills hostage.

"No," I said, "I absolutely won't. I'm completely out of Metformin now and I have maybe two or three weeks left of Allopurinol, nowhere near enough to get me through a month and a half before I'm in there. So I need those refilled, sent over to [pharmacy] please. Like, ASAP."

She finally agreed with me that yes, this was important, and sent the refills. And I thanked her and hung up. 

Two days later, still no notification from the pharmacy that the refills have been received or filled. I'm still taking the wife's old Metformin to keep it in my system, and if we haven't heard anything from the pharmacy by Monday I'll absolutely be calling either them or the doctor's office again and raising hell. The entire ordeal is ridiculous. 

Adding to this, aside from the A1C check, the primary reason I'm going in for this appointment is to get the doctor's office to send my prescriptions over to Amazon Pharmacy, which they told me they'd be able to do more smoothly once they were all updated and done. Okay, whatever.

So I guess I have a doctor's appointment a month and a half from now and I'll take whatever meds I can get until then.

The first week of the new year has been productive in a few ways. We've both returned to work though, much to our chagrin. I won't have another non-PTO day off now until...I think Memorial Day? Christ, that sounds so depressing. I did take off Super Bowl Sunday, because no matter who plays, that extra day off is always a much-needed break. Daisy at least has MLK Jr. Day off. I do not, because the action never stops in telecommunications, apparently.

What I have done in the first week of the new year is a lot of laundry, some mild cleaning, and...well, I guess you can call it prepping for the rest of the year. For example, I already have the photos for next year's Christmas card design already plotted out. Stuff like that. 

The wife and I have been reorganizing the house, with more (much, much more) work on that to be done in the coming weeks and months. We're plotting vacation time on a very loose basis. We've been spending a lot of quality time together, something I see continuing a lot more this year than in a long time.

None of these things are really "resolutions" of any sort, they're just things we've fallen into naturally. 

I don't really want to make any real resolutions this year -- but I do have things I've been working on, and things I would like to continue to work on. I've gone through my (apparently, continually growing) record collection -- stuff I bought in 2022, either physically or digitally -- and have been listening to all of it, thoroughly enjoying the process. Oftentimes I'll buy an album and it'll just sit on a shelf for months before I stick it into the CD player. Well, from around...September onward, I purchased probably thirty albums total, almost all of them by bands I saw live last year. 

Yeah, I do occasionally leave the house. Shocking, I know, right?

I'm having a great deal of enjoyment listening through all of this stuff, especially while I write or do light chores around the house. It's a trend I'd like to continue in 2023 throughout the rest of the year.

Speaking of writing, I have been doing a little of that here and there. I've revised the treatment for the screenplay I've been wanting to write for some time. I've mentioned it here before in the sense that it's a "love letter to the '90s," and it remains such. It's going to take some time to put together (and a refresher read on how to format a screenplay, since I haven't written one in twenty years), but I do think I have a decent shot at finishing it before the end of the year.

Of course, I also said that about my short story collection, and that is...well, it's not really progressed past two stories (out of six total that I'd like to include). I plan to work on that more this year too, if not finish it. It's just going to take time. Everything takes time, and as I'm not independently wealthy, I do still have to work, eat, and sleep. 

Let's see, what else is going on?

I have not yet gotten my 40th birthday tattoo. I probably won't end up getting one for some time. There's just not really any good day/time for it unless it's a day both Daisy and I would have off work together at the same time. We only get a handful of days like that together every year, and they're mostly major holidays. I suppose it would be possible to try to do it during Memorial Day week, which I'll likely take off of work because our wedding anniversary falls in the middle of it, but at this point I don't even know. 

Our scarfaced cat (as I call her now) is fine; she had the stitches removed the day after Christmas, and while she still has a little scar across her lip, her fur is slowly growing back to re-cover it. She's the same old girl she always was again.

I have not watched any new movies or any of the new, hot TV/streaming series that everyone's talking about. Daisy watched Wednesday and loved it, but I watched roughly two episodes and was in the room with her when she watched most of the rest and I could not really get into it, no matter how I tried. It just wasn't really my thing at all. I appreciate the work that went into it, but yeah...it's just not made for me or my demographic. 

We still need to set up the new T-Mobile internet. We got the router in the mail last week, and it's going to take some work and be enough of an undertaking that I need to be able to devote a few hours to setting it up, connecting some devices to it (most important -- my work computer, this computer, and our phones) to see how well it works and/or if it will actually end up working better for us than our current ISP. It's probably going to be much easier to use than I think, but I'm also one of those people who used to be really technologically saavy but isn't anymore, so new electronic things end up being frustrations more often than not. We'll see how it goes.

I will say one thing that's more of a resolution than it isn't -- I'm likely not going to be writing here a lot this year. Surprise there, right? It's not you, it's me. There's a lot I have to do during any given week and there is only so much time for this stuff. If something major happens I'll update everyone here of course, but otherwise...I got burnt out on chronicling every little detail of my life during the pandemic, and I really can't do that anymore.

So that's really about it, all. I'll check in periodically, but happy 2023. I hope you're all as blessed as I am.