Not working anywhere today --Keep watching for bugs

Good morning folks,

I will not be working today, the same as last week and the days of this week.  Yep, still sick.

I do want to thank you all for the very many well wishes I received from you hoping for a speedy recovery.  I should however correct some of the misunderstandings as to what ills me.

I did not find myself awaking in a bath tub of ice and my own blood last Tuesday morning morning having been a victim of a theft of one of my kidneys.  On the contrary, I have no unexplained surgical scars, no need for dialysis, but will nonetheless strive to keep a good sodium / potassium equilibrium through good diet.  Thanks for the kidney offer anyway.

I also was not beat up on Monday late afternoon in the parking garage by a couple of impostors posing as Mexican Policemen visiting our fair city.   I will also point out that not only did they not beat me up, there was no animosity bread between them and I as a result of me doubting the veracity of their legal appointment claim, and when the little guy, Goldie, explained with some conviction, "Badges?  We ain't got no badges.  We don't need no badges! It don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!", we still had time to split some tacos.

It was also not an influenza vaccine that backfired and caused my illness.  However there was some bad timing on my part.  It really meant to get a flu shot back in October but was delayed by my own bad planning.  I did decide last Monday to head around over to my local Shoppers Drug Mart and have the lady Pharmacist, Poonam, give me the shot.  Now I did have a bit of a cough before the shot, but no fever, no congestion, figured I was ok.   Nope.  By Monday night I knew I was well under way to developing a good upper respiratory problem.

It got worse from there.

The timeline is pretty screwed up in my head as for one thing, I did not sleep at all from Tuesday AM though to and including Saturday evening.  I think.  Without those boundaries of night and day it gets very confusing.  The other reason is I also developed a fever and combining the fever and the lack of sleep and your head really starts to screw with you.

With the extreme fatigue and fever it was as if I were in a game of self defeating sleep interruption for many days.  Each time I would start to drift off, my brain would generate a nonsensical set of mathematical problems combined with images and sounds from the nine hell's of Dante's Inferno.  Back awake I would be.  My mistake was believing that I needed to solve the problems in order to gain sleep.  I eventually realized that the only way to win was to refuse to play.  Replacing all images of hell with that closing scene from Little House On The Prairie where the young Melissa Gilbert spins through the meadow.  I figured that was fairly incorruptible.   It worked and I was able to sleep --I think on Saturday, but I can't be certain.  It is important to remind your brain just who owns it every now and then :) 

On Thursday AM I figured that Sharlene needed to drag my sorry ass over to the Urgent Care clinic as I figured that there was a real likelihood that I had a lung infection settling in, but the good physician there disagreed with my diagnosis and explained that I had a cold.  I asked if adults usually get fevers with colds and moreover if I merely had a cold, then I must have also been in a severe traffic accident since no mere cold ever made every inch of my body ache.  This only caused her to snap at me, "you have a cold, go home and rest.  Sometimes a cold has a fever".

Friday.. blur.  Although the bags under my eyes had bags of their own.  I looked like Buster Keaton after a week of drinking.

Saturday.  Okay, felt like we had entered a no bullshit zone.  I had pneumonia once before, almost exactly 24 years ago and I knew that I had it again, that and my glands were swollen out inline with my jaw bone.  This time off to Emergency as I had no interest in entering debate with the gal doctor at Urgent Care.  Just as Sharlene and I left the house I recall thinking, "odd, my eyeballs feel stingy".  By the time we arrived at Emergency my eyes were a lovely crimson corner to corner and started emitting a curious yellow ooze.

Nothing gets fast Emergency attention like looking like you are suffering from a Hemorrhagic Fever strain. (Those fantastic illnesses that result in the bleeding from eyes, nose, mouth and any other available orifice, and make for great movie scenes where the victim's flesh dissolves off the bone).

The ER Intern was a good lad, listened to his patient well, and in consultation with the resident physician arrived at the diagnosis of some non specific influenza and pneumonia and yeh, some yellow ooze coming from conjunctivitis in both eyes.  A round of antibiotic for the secondary infection in my lungs, water and rest for the flu and Neosporin for the eyes.

Here we are at the second Thursday and while not ready to return to office, email, or phones (still have no voice), I am feeling much better then I had been.   Definitely on the mend.

Have a great day, watch out for bugs. 

Working in Montréal today --Christmas Miracles

Hi folks,

I will be working in Montréal today.  Today, December 19 and a mere 6 days till Christmas.  I think a good time to pass on some revelations of some true Christmas miracles, 8000 actually!

Recently uncovered by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health conducted by the University of North Carolina and published in the British Medical Journal (they like to keep up on what's happening in the colonies, even the ones that broke away) is that the U.S. reports that around .5% of their births to young women are.. absolute MIRACLES, virgin births.

Say what?  oh yes.  Now I remember from chats with my dad and from grade 7 sex-ed that in order to make a gal preggo one needs to have some spermatozoa fertilize an egg.  There is an extremely easy way to accomplish this and does not require extra equipment, special training, nor Devine intervention.. yep, teenagers having intercourse.  no not debate and discourse, but rather, the fun kind.

And yet the respondents to the aforementioned study seemed content to answer that they were virgins and also with some regularity, pregnant or had been pregnant.

Hmmm...  how about this, 30% of those virgin birth mothers reported also that they had taken chastity pledges.  Ever hear the axiom that there are three kinds of lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics?

How could it be that 8000 young women with an average age of 19 actually expect the survey takers that they had all become pregnant without the requisite activity?  I can understand the young gal getting all twisted in lies trying to explain to her parents that she didn't have sex and yet they notice that she's waddling around and eating pickles with her ice cream, but this was an anonymous survey.

Were they lying to themselves?  Could it be that these 8000 women have never been taught how their bodies work and that like the gal on Seinfeld actually think that one can get an STD and get knocked up from riding on a tractor in a bikini?

Damn.  I have nowhere to go with this and the flight is on its descent into Montréal..

Um.. the virgin birth respondents were more likely to have parents that were more likely that the non-virgin birth respondents to indicate that they did not themselves know enough about sex and birth control to speak to their daughters about the subject.

So, perhaps not a set of 8000 true Christmas miracles just 8000 examples of how ignorance is not bliss.

Have a great day.