personal

Second verse, same as the first

I feel better today, although it’s questionable how much of the week I would have spent at home had I not been told to by my doctor’s office. I’m starting to feel a little squirrely, like I’m under house arrest, thanks in no small part to Very Big (and Not So Great) Things happening at the office, and my only being aware of them through the occasional e-mail. (There’s a meeting tomorrow to discuss it all, and what it means for us going forward, and I will be calling in even if I don’t make it to Manhattan in person.) For now, I’m taking the antibiotics, getting some rest — I slept ten or eleven hours last night — burning up vacation days, and trying to get myself in shape to go back in next week. But I’m really feeling disconnected from it all…at a time when disconnection is not what the doctor ordered.

Oh, by the way, it’s possible that there’s some redirect malware operating on my site. I’ve been noticing the occasional weirdness when accessing it (mostly on the iPad), and a scan suggested there are some scripts running on some posts. I haven’t yet been able to figure out how to find and clean them myself, so just be forewarned.

Just a super Tuesday

You may find this difficult to believe, but lying in bed all day, watching episodes of 30 Rock and taking antibiotics has seriously lost its allure. With some pretty big (and not particularly welcome) news drifting in from the office via e-mail, I’m starting to feel weirdly disconnected from my life. There’s never a good time to be unexpectedly out of the office for more than a week at a time, but now, at the beginning of the year and with so many changes underway, it’s particularly troublesome.

And though I’ve yet to shake this cough, and going back in right now would maybe just make me worse (if not also make other people sick), I can’t say I’m much enjoying this potentially costly (if only in vacation days) time off.

Brand pneumonia

So I stayed home from work again this morning. My doctor’s office called to confirm the pneumonia diagnosis and to schedule a follow-up appointment for this Friday. I’ve also been prescribed an additional antibiotic and told I should probably stay home this week and rest. Now is maybe not the best time for me to be taking a whole bunch of sick days all at once — which I’ll actually have to supplement with vacation days — but next week would probably be worse, as would not letting my body recuperate from the pneumonia at all. So, while this really isn’t the sort of “week away from the office” I like, I may just have to accept that it’s necessary.

Of course, I think I’d rather be at work than at home watching movies like Tiny Furniture on Netflix. (Everything Noel Murray says here is accurate, although I might have leaned more towards a C grade.

Sunday’s my fun day

It was a day of more 30 Rock episodes — I think I’m nearly through the third season — Being Elmo, and The Trip. Oh, and a pretty decent nap. Exciting times. I probably will go back to work tomorrow, although if, when I call her office, my doctor tells me it is pneumonia and I should be at home, that’s what I’ll do.

At least Tucker’s limp seems to have gone away, for the most part. He’s maybe not 100% on it, but he’s again willing to walk on the front left paw, so that’s good. I suppose it’s possible he just sprained an ankle or something. We’ll keep an eye on him, but he seems to be recovering.

Hopefully I am too.

The weak ender

Being sick on a Friday afternoon can be a hassle. Even if you go to all the trouble of going to the doctor’s office, and then going for the chest x-ray that your doctor prescribes for you, you’re bumping up against the fact that both offices are likely going to be closed over the weekend, taking with it any chance that you might have, for instance, of finding out if you actually have pneumonia like the tech who performed your x-ray said you did. You might find that, even if you can reach a nurse at your doctor’s office — because they’re open on Saturday mornings, mostly for blood work — she won’t have been faxed the x-rays the day before, won’t be able to reach the radiology office because they’re not open Saturday mornings, and won’t be able to tell you anything different until Monday.

So, yeah, I’m pretty much committed to the antibiotics I’m on now, and it will have to wait until Monday to find out if I need to do anything different or more to combat the small infection that might or might not be in my one lung. On the plus side, though, the throat culture came back negative, so it would appear I don’t have strep.

I don’t know if it’s the power of suggestion, but it’s like my body has taken the idea that I might have pneumonia and run with it…by which I mean, decided to be more run-down. I knew I’d been a little more tired more often recently, but I really just thought that was a side effect of the cold I knew I’d had. But I spent most of today lying down, doing nothing much more interesting than watching episodes of South Park and 30 Rock.

This evening, I watched The Innkeepers, which is quite slow but also very effectively scary. It’s well paced and looks great, and I really liked the lead performances. The ending is something of a mixed bag, but with this and House of the Devil, director Ti West remains somebody to watch.

Beyond that? Well, I’m unfortunately not the only sick one in the house. Our dog, Tucker, very suddenly started having trouble walking, clearly unwilling or unable to put pressure on his left front paw. There’s nothing clearly wrong with the paw — no cuts, no bleeding, no sharp dog teeth trying to keep you away when you poke at it — so we’ll likely have to take him to the vet at the start of next week. He seems otherwise fine, so we didn’t take him to the emergency vet, and it’s possible it’s more old age than injury. (He’ll be nine at the end of the month; he and I actually share a birthday.) But if it doesn’t get better, there’s not much we can do beyond petting him and giving him the occasional aspirin.

And that’s really the awful thing: forcing him to go outside, because…well, because he’s a dog, and dogs don’t have litter boxes, and watching him suffer and struggle along. And not being able to do anything about it.

My maybe-pneumonia doesn’t seem so bad for all that.