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Weapon-salve Wednesday

The Forgotten English on my desk calendar for today is “weaponsalve,” meaning “a salve which was supposed to cure the wound, being applied to the weapon that made it.”

So I just need to find the boxes of books I carried two years ago in New Orleans, which I think was the injury that hurt my spine, and apply a healing salve.

I was actually fine for most of the day, staying a good quarter or half step away from the pain a lot of the time, but the discomfort really kicked up in earnest this evening. I fear I’m fit for little else but watching an episode of House and going to bed.

I’m not in real pain, and I actually had a pretty decent day, trying to track down reviewers for projects and digging through stock photo websites. Nothing exciting…and sure, this morning the train was ridiculously crowded, so much so that I couldn’t even put down my bag, much less find a seat, for most of the trip. I didn’t even have enough room to read my book — Ubik; and let me tell you, sometimes it’s all too easy to believe Philip K. Dick was a self-medicating schizophrenic. Still, the train tonight was much less crowded. And at lunch this afternoon, as I walked around midtown, I actually saw someone with spray-on hair in the wild. I never knew such things actually existed! This gentleman really wasn’t fooling anybody.

So that’s it. Turning in early to rest the back, hopefully relieve some of the pressure. I fear it’s going to be a whole lot more of the same between now and next Friday — assuming it doesn’t get worse — and it may not get better without some serious treatment options. It seems like every time I get used to living with this thing, working around the pain, the pain changes, and the coping methods I’ve been using don’t work as well anymore.

Oh well, I’m sure House will make it all better. That, or distract me by being really bad. I’ve really been on the edge of love-hate with this show since the end of last season. I watched the season premiere last night and didn’t hate it, actually found some things that really worked about it, but I don’t know. These are probably thoughts for another time.

Zouching towards Bethlehem

So I went to the doctor today, and I guess the good news is, it seems like the back is the most likely culprit for the renewed and varied discomforts I’ve felt this week. Because of the placement of the disc, and the surrounding nerves that can be pinched by the bulge, there’s all sorts of radiating pain and mixed signals. I’m not particularly enjoying this, and I think I even preferred when it was just sciatic pain or feet that fell totally asleep, but it’s easy to mistake this for something other than a problem with the spine, even when there’s some accompanying discomfort in the lower back.

I want to reiterate that this could be much, much worse, and I’m not strictly speaking in pain. I’m not bedridden or incontinent or paralyzed, and I’m not even all that terribly inconvenienced by this. I’ve just had more (and different) discomfort since about Tuesday.

So today I called my doctor and scheduled an appointment. Of course, it meant that I had to leave work early, since they wanted to fit me in today, which was a little awkward, since I’d already planned on taking Monday off. (It’s a three-day weekend, just to use up some remaining vacation days.) And despite being a rainy day when lots of people were out of the office, I’d probably could have found plenty of work to do.

Then again, yesterday’s Forgotten English desk calendar page was “zouch,” meaning “an ungenteel man; a bookseller.” And lord knows, I don’t want people thinking my momma raised no zouch.

But still, it’s good to know that I don’t appear to have a bladder infection. Don’t worry, this post won’t get more graphic than that, beyond acknowledging the existence of my bladder, and that it was one of the things we tested for today. Too much information? Well, let’s pretend like this paragraph never happened, then, okay?

Anyway, after that, I scheduled an appointment with my spine doctor…which, unfortunately, isn’t for another two weeks. My main concern, beyond what I do between now and then, is that he’ll just want me to have another MRI before we discuss anything, which means it could be the end of this month or even next before we get down to actual treatment. And, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m concerned that there won’t be much, if any, treatment to discuss beyond referring me to a surgeon.

On a happier note, though, I’m preparing the latest issue of Kaleidotrope for mailing to contributors and subscribers over the weekend. And SFRevu had a lot of nice words to say about the issue already. And you still have an hour — provided you read this before midnight EST on October 1 — to use the promo code “KAL102010” to get a free e-book copy of the issue at the Kaleidotrope website. Just scroll down to the bottom of the front page, add the e-book option to your cart, and then enter the code when checking out via PayPal. One-day offer only!

Humid Thursday

It’s almost October, so of course the temperatures today were in the 80s and the humidity in the 90s. I slept in and got a slightly later train, something I haven’t done since before summer hours began in July, so I missed all of the actual rain. But oh, the humidity.

The reason I slept in was because I was meeting my parents tonight for dinner, downtown in Greenwich Village, where my mother had a meeting for work. And even with what turned out to be about an hour’s walk — I could have taken the subway, but then how would I have experienced all that humidity? — I was going to get there well in advance of our 6:45 p.m. reservation. So working 8:30 to 4:30 seemed a little silly. Why not sleep in an hour and work until 5?

The restaurant we ate at was quite nice, albeit a little expensive. I was pleased to discover I actually do sort of like duck, which I don’t think I’ve had in years. (Despite being pretty easy to come by on Long Island.)

It was a tasty meal, and we luckily didn’t have to wait around too long for either a subway to Penn Station or a train home.

Meanwhile, my back and related symptoms are no better, and I think tomorrow I’m going to call my GP to schedule an appointment. I’d like to rule out a few other possibilities, make sure it is the bulging disc in my back that’s causing some of the radiating pain and discomfort, before going through a process that will likely involve another MRI, maybe additional steroids, and, if worse comes to worst, talk of surgery.

It could be much worse, I know. This evening, I learned that a friend of my sister and her husband, one of his groomsman, who I sat with at the wedding and who seemed like a really nice guy, was killed a few days ago in a mountain-climbing accident in Colorado. And he and his wife — who I think has no immediate family in the United States — were either just expected, or just had, a baby.

A twinge, here and there, from my back doesn’t really seem so terrible in comparison.

Wet Monday

A rainy day, with much scouring through stock photo websites at work. Which is how I can stumble across images like this and this in fairly quick succession. Seriously, that first image…it’s not NSFW, necessarily, but…sheesh. It’s not going in the book, sad to say.

Otherwise, just more rain. It was raining when I got off the train this evening, but had stopped before I crossed over the platform to the other side. Then, when I came home and took the dog outside for a walk, it started to bucket down on us. He, of course, hates the rain…but seemed convinced it wasn’t raining in the backyard. And it turns out, he was right. By the time I’d walked from one of the garage to the other, and unlocked the back door, the rain had stopped. It’s poured off and on all night, but if I’d timed this evening just a little better, I’d have stayed relatively dry.

Working for the weekend

Well, today the only exciting thing to happen was my lunch: a turkey burger with chipotle hominy, pancetta, and smoked mozzarella on a multigrain bun, again from that new place next door. And I got to use the last of the points I earned when I set up my order-ahead account the other day, so the burger (which was both tasty and filling) was only a couple of bucks. I still think this place is trying to do way too much to turn a profit in a busy midtown area, but if you order ahead and go in at the arranged time, it’s actually a lot better than a lot of the other nearby choices.

It has the McDonald’s across the street beat, but then again, I haven’t been inside McDonald’s in two or three years now.

And that’s about it, as far as today goes. Some good news at work, as far as the photo research goes, since our production department has an account with a stock photo site, and any images I can find there won’t cost us anything. And I started sending copies of the actual manuscript out for review, so I think the project is now well in hand.

Looking forward to the weekend. Nothing planned, not even my regular Sunday writing group, which is kind of hiatus for awhile. I’m again going to try to get caught up on Kaleidotrope slush — issue #10 is available for pre-order, by the way, and can ship in about a week — and do some writing of my own. Maybe watch a movie, get caught up on some TV. What’s that new show? !@#$% My Outsourced Dad’s Generation Says to Hawaii 5-Lonestar? Whatever.

How about you?