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my left foot. oops. i mean my left hand.
2001-05-19
8:21 pm
i had a weird dream, or dreams more likely, last night. when i wake up and can remember stuff, it's so rare that it makes any sense. i'm sure that this is mostly because i can only recall bits & pieces, and those don't make a lot of sense when i try to put them together in some logical way. it's like someone trying to tell you about a movie and describing only a few scenes. from what i can recall, there were several emotions going on in the dream(s). fear, anger, elation, insecurity, vindication and i believe there was even a bit of lust. i didn't go out last night. david said he was going to a bar, and i just wasn't in the mood to do that, plus i didn't really want to go out and spend money i don't have. i didn't even talk to ralph yesterday, so i don't know what he did, if anything. bbc america has been running ads for 'the league of gentlemen' for a while now. i completely missed it last weekend as i was out. there was more last night, so i decided to stay in & watch. it was going to be 5 episodes stacked, almost the entirety of series one. i originally thought it started at 8pm, but i'm an idiot and looked at the schedule for the wrong time zone. so at 8pm it had already been on for an hour. i checked the schedule again, and saw that it was going to repeat around 12:30am, so i just decided i'd catch that run. the last episode began around 3:10am, and i didn't make it through that one. yes, i actually got sleepy. i figured that i shouldn't push it, so i just turned the tv off and fell asleep. apparently they showed most of series two last friday, then they aired most of series one last night. it would have been nice if i had taped the stuff from last week and could watch it now, having seen most of the first series, but oh well. it's just a tv show and i'll live without. series one is available on dvd. i could always buy that and then hope they put the rest out on dvd later. i don't have any money to be buying dvds right now, though. i really don't have money to be buying anything that is not vital to my survival. since i have this thing in my personality that makes me pick up bits here & there and incorporate them into my vocabulary, i have this feeling i'm going to go around telling people "this is a local shop, for local people!" and they'll have no idea what i'm talking about. when david & ralph are around, they start doing it, too, and then at least two people don't think i'm completely mental. this whole thing with my left hand is driving me batty. i think i've mentioned it before, but not in much detail. last summer, i think it was at the beginning of august, the pinky & ring finger in my left hand went numb. it's hard to describe it and have it make sense, but they were numb - i couldn't feel pressure against them or anything - but they were also tingling constantly, which was the really annoying part. just having dead fingers would make me worry, for sure, but the fact that they were tingling 24/7 was driving me up the wall. i went to my regular doctor, and after a couple of visits without improvement he referred me off to a neurologist. after being shocked and poked, he tells me that i have damage to my ulnar nerve. when you hit your 'funny bone', this is the nerve that provides that odd sensation. however, my nerve damage is showing in the wrist area. so now i'm basically going to the neurologist once a month to get shocked & poked. the shocking is nerve conduction tests and the poking is an EMG. the shocking is probably more annoying, but when he does the EMG, he sticks a needle in the fleshy part of my palm right under my thumb and not only does it hurt intensely, but it stays sore for several days after. he's got me on some weird nerve drug that is most often used to treat epilepsy. that alone is kind of frightening. the bottle warns me to "wear identification stating that i am taking this medication." also i'm given some anti-imflammatory to help with the tingling so i can try to get some sleep at night. it got really bad. i wasn't getting any sleep and therefore was missing a lot of work. ok, not really missing work, as i was doing anything that needed to be done from home, but missing work in the sense that i wasn't going in to the office and sitting at my desk for 8 hours. my direct boss had no problem with this. he was pretty much of the view that as long as i stayed on top of my projects and got done what needed to be done, he didn't care if i came in or not. he knew what was going on. his boss, on the other hand, was being a real asshole. but then again, this guy is an asshole, so this wasn't really surprising. the medication was doing weird things to me. well, more likely the medication + lack of sleep. i started doing really stupid things. just minor things, but it's like my brain wasn't functioning correctly. i'd forget where i put stuff, or i'd put something in a place it shouldn't be in, that kind of stuff. sure, most everyone does these kinds of things now & then, but i was doing them nearly every day. my boss told me i should just take medical leave until i got this whole thing sorted out, but i didn't want to do that. i'm all stupid like "no, i can handle this!" i just really didn't want to take time off work because it had already been several months of this and the only 'progress' i'd made was negative - the nerve damage had progressed and was showing not only in the wrist area but the elbow area as well. so i was afraid that i'd take leave and this would just keep on and on and i'd be without income, so i thought i'd rather deal with it and keep working. somewhere along the way they took me off the first anti-inflammatory. it was really messing with my stomach. nearly everything i ate either made me sick, or at the least - made me feel sick. i'd been on it for like two months when the neurologist told me to quit taking it because if i didn't, i would actually mess up my stomach permanently. hooray! so i quit taking it. the tingling didn't stop, though. come to think of it, it didn't stop when i was on the drug, either, but it did at least seem to subside a bit. they gave me some sort of sleeping pill that would supposedly 'knock me out' so that i could ignore the tingling & sleep at night. i only took it once, though, and it didn't knock me out at all. in fact, i stayed awake that entire night. this stupid pill that's supposed to make me comatose! all kinds of warnings with that one. it says stuff like "only take this drug just before you go to bed, or after you have gone to bed and are having trouble falling asleep. it will make you drowsy, and you could fall and hurt yourself if you take your dose too long before you are ready for sleep." maybe the dosage they gave me was very small or something, but sheesh. surely didn't knock me out. i don't like taking all these drugs to begin with, and since it didn't do what it was supposed to do, i just never took it again. finally at the end of october/beginning of november i changed my mind about taking medical leave. here's what changed my mind. i went out one morning to go to work, and i knew i needed to put some power steering fluid in my car. i could feel it when i drove the car. well somewhere in my stupor of drugs and no sleep, i put brake fluid in the power steering fluid pump. yes, i am brilliant. i didn't realize i'd done this until the next day. i have a cousin who is a mechanic, so i called him up and he told me how i could flush it out. i did inflict damage on my car, though it could have been much worse. i just knew that eventually i would screw up something like this at work, and the whole situation was really starting to get to me anyway. i wasn't getting any sleep. the medication was bothering me pretty much all the time. the boss of my boss has always been an asshole, but he was really outdoing himself. i just gave up and told my boss i'd take the leave. so in january, my company started laying off people. since i wasn't even working, i was sure to end up on the list sooner or later. there certainly wasn't incentive to stick around until i got the ax, as they weren't really offering anything in the way of severance - other than like two weeks pay. bollocks to that. all i really wanted anyway was a check for my unused vacation time. also, at that time, rob was still living here and his income was more than enough to pay our bills, buy our food, supply our entertainment, etc., so he also said "just quit." so i did. february was the last time i went to the neurologist. it's all my fault and i know i'm bad. i just got very irritated with the fact that my stupid fingers had been dead for so long and nothing was changing. i just went to see him once a month, got shocked & poked, and took this stupid nerve medicine 3 times a day. he'd given me some vioxx (another anti-inflammatory) back in december because i started actually having pains in my forearm. so i was to only take them 'as needed' for pain. my stupid health plan has 'preferred' and 'non-preferred' drugs, and vioxx is on the 'non-preferred' list, so i had to pay some ridiculous amount of money to even get the damn things. his reasoning for giving me this drug, though, was supposedly because it wouldn't be so harsh on my stomach. i don't know very much at all about drugs, but it appears that quite a few drugs used for pain relief in one form or another do all sorts of horrible things to your tummy. anyway, i still have lots of vioxx because i quit taking them in january. the pain had stopped. actually, everything stopped. i don't even have the tingling anymore. while it's nice to not be bothered by it, i can't imagine that it's a good sign. it's like the nerve just gave up or something and is completely dead now. i don't know. i had great intentions of going to another neurologist that's in my health plan to at least get a second opinion, but i never got that far. somewhere in february rob decided that he needed to move out again. i say 'again' because he's done this before. this was the first time he'd decided this since he's been back this time, though. oh what's the point. i'm not making any sense. rob is flaky and always moves in and everything is great and then at some point he freaks out and 'needs space'. i'm talking about my hand here, so i don't want to get too bogged down in the story of rob. here's a much abbreviated version: rob had moved to portland. last july, he decided he wanted to move back here. he got a job, drove back here, and moved in. so august - february, then he freaked out. ok. so back to how this affects the story. i'm frustrated because it had just been less than a month previous he'd said "oh, just quit your job, i make plenty of money for the both of us blah blah blah." so i did just that and now he's all about moving out. now i have to go find a frigging new job. i was just like "you big flake! i could have just not quit and stayed on leave instead, but no, i'm stupid and i let myself get dependent on you so now i'm in a big mess." ok so it's not entirely rob's fault, because i should have known better, but i guess when it comes to love or whatever i get optimistic and i think he'll eventually quit being such a flake. it's not like he moved out that day or anything. he of course had to actually find a place to live. so he was here until 2nd week of march or so. he left me some money, and since i'd not been doing much of anything other than going to hockey games, i still had quite a bit of my vacation money left + i got a huge income tax refund this year. so financially i was ok for a while. i'm still ok right now, but that's mostly 'cause i'm scraping by. i pay the rent, bills, buy my food, feed my pets, etc. i've been going out occasionally, besides going to hockey i mean. for a while there that was the only thing i did that could be used to refute any claims of my being a hermit. at the end of the hockey season, though, david kept buying the tickets and refusing to let me pay him back. he knew i wasn't working and therefore had no money coming in, and since the tables have been turned there before (he's been broke, i've been in the money, i've taken care of his social allowance rather than not have him around, etc.) he told me to cease it. even now if i go out with him and/or ralph, they usually end up paying for the majority of whatever we do. they let me take care of some of it, so that i don't feel completely worthless, but i still feel like an ass if i only spend $10 and they're both spending like $30. i try not to let that get to me too much, because as i alluded to already, i would and have done it for them if they've been in a rough spot financially. it's not a big deal. we're friends & all that stuff. i've lost all this weight since i quit working. pretty much everything i buy, i buy it a little large because i don't like tight-fitting clothes. problem is that now that i've lost weight, most of my clothes are simply too big. my blue jeans were like falling off if i didn't wear a belt, and i don't even own a belt so pretty much they were always close to falling off. i didn't even have to unbutton them to take them off. just pull and there they go. it's getting ridiculous. so i have broke down and bought one new pair of blue jeans that actually fit, but i fear that i've now lost more weight and they're even starting to feel large. i'd like to have enough disposable income to actually go buy some clothing that doesn't swallow me. considering that i don't really go out & about all that often, though, i don't think i should worry about that too much. at least not until i have a job, and am going somewhere where they expect me to be dressed in clothes that fit. if i'm just gonna go hang out with my friends, they don't care anyway. so i try not to, as well. i kept my health coverage after i quit. my old company has now decided to switch plans, so from what i've gathered this plan will last 'til the end of may. the person who takes care of this crap at my old company said i would be getting a packet in the mail explaining all i need to know about the new plan, but i haven't received anything yet. so if nothing shows up this week, i'll have to call her again. we have a clinic here in town that treats only hand problems. i've seen their ads on tv and in magazines or newspapers. part of me would like to go there simply because i think if all they do is treat hand problems, then maybe they'd have more knowledge about what's going on in my arm. you know, like you can find more obscure video titles at a store that sells only video than you would at say, an electronics store that also happens to sell videos. i'm also scared to go there, though, because they seem to be all about surgery and i'm scared of that. granted, if they can go in there and fix it, then great. surgery is normally pretty serious, though. my regular doctor and this neurologist he sent me off to both mentioned that surgery could be an option, but seemed more like it should be the last option. also, cost is a big issue. i don't even know if this place accepts any insurance, much less whatever it is that i'll have come june. my oldest brother, the one who lives in japan, was out somewhere when he was in town last month, and ripped out a full-page ad for this place out of a magazine to show me. he wondered if i was aware of this place. i told him i was, but that my biggest concern was the money thing. so now he's emailed and offered me financial help to get this taken care of. as much as i appreciate it, there's just something that makes me absolutely not want to take his money. well, not that i'd be keeping it. i'd just be taking it and giving it to someone else. but still. i don't know why i'd feel bad about it, and all things considered, i shouldn't. he's just someone who cares, has money available, and is offering help. i just feel like a complete bum, though, and i don't know why i can't just get over that. my life is sort of on hold because of this stupid problem. i've become pretty skilled at typing using only the 3 good fingers on my left hand, but i still type considerably slower than i used to. this has prompted much of the 'what am i going to do with my life?' thoughts i've been having lately. the neurologist has still never given me an answer to why this happened. so i can't really sit here and blame using the computer, and even if i did that would be partially my fault for doing it for half my life not having the correct posture, or hand/arm placement, or for not griping at all the fools i've worked for not supplying me with an ergonomic environment. all i know for sure is that i do need to quit procrastinating and being stubborn and go back to the doctor. go to some doctor at least. sitting around is not going to make it get better, at least it hasn't up to this point. so that's the story of my left hand situation in more detail than anyone ever wanted to know. random movie quote: "i'm not laughing at you, i'm laughing with you."
"but i'm not laughing."
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