Good memories

tonight after the kids tennis lessons we grilled out and ate outside. the kids wanted to build a fire in the chiminia. after the fire was blazing really well we all sat around a fire and just chilled. Adrienne crawled up in my lap into my phone and started playing with it. I showed her how to use google sky and a flashlight function and she played with my phone 20 minutes. it feels so good to me when she sits in my lap and talks to me. of course all atticus wanted to do was burn things in the fire. in london brought me a poem that she wrote that the head vertically spelled daddy and for each letter and daddy she made a poem that reads dream always loving daughter darling your daughter who love you a lot, london. it is times like this I would like to remember forever because I know when children never stay the way they are now. everything changes for better or for worse but I just want to lock this day away in my memory and preserve it there forever.

I am sitting outside enjoying the nice fire in the chiminia in trying to listen to nature but being a saturday night and Catawba county all I can hear is the fucking roar of stock car engines from the hickory motor speedway.

I am dictating this post using the speech recognition function on my phone so it will probably be less than grammatically correct but after a bottle of fine winesit really doesn't make a hill of shit to me.

Pain in the Odessa

I am in Odessa Texas for a business trip to see a specific customer. I flew all the way out here and that customer stood me up. Fortunately we were able to see other customers but none as important as the one who I was supposed to see. Things are so busy out here no one seems to know what is going on.

It is difficult for people to find good help because of the economic activity- waitresses in diners are making $15 / hour. So the guy I was supposed to see had been transferred to another job and he had no clue who was going to be replacing the position he left. It would have been nice if he had told us this before we got here.

Odessa Texas is an interesting place. It is extremely busy right now with all the oil drilling. The city seems to be abuzz with activity. This is essentially a desert- it seems that there are virtually no trees- only oak scrub brush and millions upon millions of plastic bags stuck in the scrub. It is flat so the winds always howl and blow everything away and around.

Enough about that- the pain in my back has moved to my upper arms and to my spine. It has not subsided and has been affecting my sleep and work. If I were going to self diagnose I would say that it is Cervical spondylosis because I seem to be exhibiting the symptoms. This really sucks! I am tired of the constant dull pain in my arm, back and neck. It is annoying and interfering with my life. I pop Naproxen but I don't really think it works.

I go to see the doctor on Friday. I hope she gets me an MRI to find out what the hell is causing this.

Still hurts

My right back and shoulder still hurt. The pain has moved more into my right shoulder and into my neck. It still hurts all the time but the pain has subsided just a little bit. I am hoping tomorrow it will be gone.

Adrienne's first lost tooth

I was at a meeting tonight and I missed Adrienne losing her first tooth. She has been so excited about losing the tooth. Mommy wrapped dental floss around the tooth and yanked it out. Adrienne didn't cry but was thrilled.

Moving pain

Now the pain has moved from my back into my upper shoulder. It hurts constantly. The pain is interfering with my work. I am finding it difficult to concentrate on work. The muscles in my shoulder are spasming.

I took 2 hydrocodone to help with the pain and now I feel pretty drowsy but the pain is still noticeable. It isn't a sharp pain but a dull constant pain.

Physical Wreck

Four days ago I went to see my Financial Advisor who was having an open house. I chatted with him and drank a very small glass of red wine. He had a massage therapist set up so I got one of those chair massages. This was last Thursday.

Friday I woke up with some pretty substantial pain deep in the right side of my upper trapezoids or possibly in the muscle underneath that the serratus posterior superior. I rode my bike 50 miles on Saturday without it hurting to much. At this stage it just hurt when moved certain ways.

Yesterday it really fucking hurt- even when I was sitting completely still it still hurts. It is noticeable all the time. Now the pain seemed to have moved to the right some into my shoulder (deltoid) and I am finding it difficult to concentrate at work and I have to prepare for a board meeting tomorrow.

Sucks!!!!

Nothing wrong with me

I went to Duke for an appointment at the Bone Marrow Transplant Center. When you arrive at the front you go into a room before you enter the building. In this room my must wash your hands thoroughly and then put on a mask. The people in the waiting room have either compromised or no immune systems.

The first thing that you do when you check in is to see the Financial Counselor. He sat us down and told me that he had already talked to my case worker at United Healthcare (my health insurance company) and that I was pre-approved for a bone marrow transplant.

What?

I was just there to get checked out and they already had me pegged for a bone marrow transplant. I kind of shook it off.

We then met with the doctor, Mitchell Horowitz, who told me that he thought that I was just taking longer than "textbook" to get over some sort of unknown viral infection. My CT scan showed nothing really abnormal (slight scoliosis and a 5mm cyst on my right kidney) and all my other bloodwork besides my WBC was normal. So he told me to get checked in another 3 months and not to worry about it.

So hopefully all this shit was much to do about nothing. Better to know than not.