Icky Medical Stuff

So I had Yet Another Checkup yesterday morning, and the fact I don’t return until April 4th, same time as Sadie’s next checkup, the day after my birthday, gives some idea how it went.

My blood pressure hovered consistently about 120/78, apparently not bothered by my being in pain, though it was the kind of pain I am accustomed to ignoring so well I can forget it’s there.  The nurse was amusing, confessing that she not only takes BP pills too, but also stops them sometimes to see what happens.  She says I am like her and can never get away with that.  Of course, in my case it tends to be the prescriptions running out and there being a gap in when I get a new one, or a gap in when I have the cash to get a refill.

I was going to propose weaning myself off of Effexor and forgot to mention it.  I am down to a handful of half-dose pills.  For the price, I don’t think it’s effective enough to be worth taking, and I can’t see them giving me samples in perpetuity.  Since I forgot to mention it, I’ll just go with my plan.

I also forgot to ask about the cigarette smoke and whether there is any formal recourse about it he knows of, if it comes down to that.  It’s easy to relax and forget how absurdly bad it gets when we have a day like today when there’s none at all.  The plan was to go do server work, but I may sneak in some poking around up in the ceilings and stuff first, to see if I see anything that might help.  I also figure it’s worth mentioning to the plumber (the landlord’s brother) that I’d love to look behind the dishwasher while he’s there.  Who better to know about sealing around pipes?

Anyway, I could have gotten my checkup Tuesday, as the doctor noted, when we were there for Deb and Sadie, had he known.  I thought of it after, but this turned out to be the best.

See, I got this ingrown hair type of cyst a little below the belt, to my left, near my leg.  Not that unusual, but worse than I have ever seen that kind of thing get before.  Deb noticed it earlier in the week, before it even started to hurt.

On Friday the center, about half an inch across, was black.

I showed it to the doctor, who grimaced and didn’t have to look twice.  I walked out of there with a prescription for antibiotics, instructed to hit it with hot compresses and to just show up for emergency care over the weekend or in his office next week so they could drain it if that didn’t help.

The prescription set off a cascade of looking online to get an idea how much it would cost, and figuring out where the cash would come from.  I thought the prescription would be around $100.

It turned out that not only did I wrangle getting paid on one large and two tiny invoices sooner rather than later, but also I found out the balance in the account was over $1000 more than I counted on it being.  I suspect there is a check that burrowed its way under my desk detritus rather than getting to the payee.

To cut to the chase, the $100 prescription would up costing $14 and change.  Yay for generics, or something.

Now for the icky part.  Last night the cyst thing spontaneously popped itself.  There was blood and puss everywhere!  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Major gore.  Mostly it was blood; enough to soak a couple of tissues pretty well.  When I first touched the area I came up with some clear fluid too.  Yuck.  Deb just saw me typing this and asked “you’re going to tell the internets about that?” I replied “yeah, I feel like I’m being Dax or something!" She thought that was extremely funny.

That would certainly explain the crescendo of pain shortly before the gruesome discovery.

Anyway, Deb got me a fresh face wash cloth.  I cleaned it up and did the hot compress thing for a few minutes.  At that point it was a big red area, shrunken slightly, with the central black circle, with a large round hole in the middle of the black part.  This morning it was scabbed, and as the day has progressed, it’s gotten more painful again.  Silly body.

So there’s the update.  The antibiotics ought to kill the infection, and it’s self-draining so I shouldn’t need that.  We’ll actually be in there again Monday for Deb’s NST, which I don’t need to be at, followed by Sadie’s orthopedic visit, which I do need to be at, so it’ll all be a family thing again.  And I forgot about this when I reported the water problem, so it looks like we’ll need to have the plumber come Tuesday instead.  Oh well.

1. It’s Ok to be a little like ole Dax from time to time. Just don’t make it a habit or anything. That’s when the trouble starts. Just Damn!

   Posted by Dax Montana  on  01/07  at  11:34 PM

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