A few years ago, I went to the Health Plus clinic when I was sick.  After I remained sick and went to my family doctor, he proceeded to jump me about going somewhere where they will not give me the proper meds or the high enough strengths to overcome the bronchitis that I had.  I only went there because my family doc couldn't see me within a week.

The last month or longer I've had a sinus infection and coughing that is keeping my bronchial tubes inflamed.  I've been to my family doc twice and taken 20 days of an antibiotic.  Well, I'm not getting better.  In fact, I'm getting worse in that now I can cough up blood and I'm getting weak.  So, I called the doc today to see what I should do.  When I explained who I was and what was going on, his office worker suggested I go to the place where he reprimanded me for going.  What's up with that?!  I asked her to repeat that and she did.  I just hung up and told my Hunni.

My Hunni got really ticked at this and she called the doctor's office back.  They told her to take me there, and she said no to that.  Then they suggested the emergency room of the hospital, and she said no to that.  They had the nerve to ask her what she wanted.  She told them to either see me, refer me to a specialist, or call something in to the pharmacy.  "Way to go, Hun!"  How do I like it that my wife does the fighting for me?  I love it!  Even though, if you mess with my wife, you mess with me; don't do it!  She still takes care of me.

Again, what's up with that?  What's wrong with those people?  What's wrong with the ones that take an oath to help people and then turn them away, even after seeing them for a month about the same problem?  I don't get it.  Anyway, they called something into the pharmacy; don't know what yet.

I think if I keep coughing, I'm going to cough out a lung, or two.  My chest hurts like I've been beat up.  The coughing also hurts my head since I have continual migraines.  I'm ready to go postal.  Or maybe I'll just explode scanner style and shoot off in all directions.  Just don't know.

What a heck of a blog.  Maybe someone in the medical community will read it and try to make some advancements in the .... wait, I must be dreaming again.

The FogWalker goes to seek oblivion.... there's no pain in oblivion.... no rest....

But in answer to the question, NO!  I didn't raise my sons like I have been raised.  It's not that I'm smarter or wiser than my parents, it's just that I had a different life than them.  I wanted to give my sons opportunities that I didn't have to excell, but I didn't want to give them the opportunities that I had to get into trouble.  Over-protective?  Maybe.  So what?  I loved my sons and would do everything in my power to protect them.  One of those protections was to be able to have a Hunni that did not work away from home or the children.  Both my parents had to work in order to raise 3 sons, and when I was home alone, I wasn't the best of the sons.  You see, my brothers had graduated HS and were gone from home when I was only graduating from the 6th grade.  That left alot of years for me to be by myself from early morning to early evening, the time when mischief was my middle name.  Or was my middle name "try it"? 

On the other hand, we raised our sons with our same principles and moral beliefs.  They had choices, but there were some choices that were not theirs to make.  My house, my rules.  I guess I got that from my parents.  So when you figure that into the question, the answer to the question is YES!

This day started out like yesterday; all aches and pains.  At least I could call yesterday Moanday.  But, I had things that I had to do today, so I got out bright and early at 11:00am.  That was sarcasm, just in case you didn't realize it.  An sarcasm is another free service!

However, while I was out today, our temps went soaring up.  So it was take off the jacket, and walk around in a t-shirt (with my usual vest) in the 76°F weather.  What was the date?  December?  Oh yeah...

When it rains, it pours

I thought that I would fix a single bulb on my trailer today.  I shouldn't have touched it; broke it.  Somehow I managed to blow a fuse, or something, in the van, and then none of the lights on the trailer would work.  For those that know about trailers, it's really not rocket science to work on the lighting system.  However, it wasn't the trailer lighting that had the problem, it something in the wires of the van.  All the lights work on the van, and there's juice to the wiring harness, just nothing coming through the wiring harness.  Interesting.  I stopped by an auto mechanic's shop and he made sure the trailer was okay and I got it inspected.  Now it's time to hook up my truck to the trailer.

I hooked up the truck to the trailer and all the lights worked flawlessly.  I was so pleased that I left the lights on while I was transfering "stuff" from the van to the truck for my hunting escapades.  After I was done, I went to start up the truck and the battery had had enough work.  Geemyknee!  It doesn't start.  Now what?  

I've got a convertor/charger/starter/battery that I carry in the truck.  I hooked it up to the truck to start it.  If I used profanity, now would have been the time because the low life piece of crap didn't work.  Maybe that thing is rocket science, I don't know.  I am a firm believer that there's no problem too large that a small piece of C4 can't handle.  But I didn't have the time for that.

I hook up the charger/starter for about 10 minutes and then try to start it.  Vroom vroom vroom, feels like a commercial, but the truck starts!

I decided not to touch anything else today since my "Midas touch" wasn't turning everything to gold, it was turning it to crap.

Tomorrow will be another day, and we're going hunting, I hope.

The FogWalker goes off to get some sleep....long drive in the morning...

Well, I had it and didn't do anything with it, so I finally made a blog at BlogSpot.  Hate it, or love it, or whatever, I just did it.  It will never replace Xanga, especially since I'm a lifer here.  Anyway, I was inspired (?) to make a blog title "A day in the life of..." and you can view it here if you want.  I started to put it here and still might repeat between the two.  But for now, that one will be inspired by the life and times of the FogWalker.  I'll take a day as [insert noun] and then write about it.  It seems that I've done a lot in this lifetime; maybe someone will benefit from the memories.

Should Have Stayed Home

I went out Saturday to go deer hunting.  We had snow Wednesday and Thursday with Friday being clearer, but with rain.  We drive a little over 2 hours north to our club to deer hunt.  Sometimes we hunt locally, but we don't have the deer here like the deer at the club, nor do we have the acreage.  So, we loaded up Saturday morning at 3:30am and started our trek.  It rained until we unloaded at the club.  The bad thing is that there was a whole lot more snow where we went than where we left.  Add the rain and freezing temps, and it wasn't the best roads that we were traveling, especially the last hour and the last few miles.

I survived the day, but about 2/3 of the way through, I got sick.  It made for the rest of the day to be kinda' miserable, even though it was a successful day of hunting (successful in that I enjoyed it and survived, no harvesting included).

I haven't been out of the house since Saturday evening.  I couldn't hardly walk yesterday and today, like the "cold" really set into the ol' bones and the new joints.  I don't know what happened, but it might have been best to stay indoors this past weekend when I didn't.  Gee.

Everything Hurts

I didn't think that metal parts would hurt, but they do!  Okay, technically, it's probably the surrounding tissue and nerve endings that don't know what they're doing, but they still hurt.  Touch me, I hurt.  Squeeze me, I pass out.  Eat something, I, for lack of better terms, hurl... maybe just plain puke.  And the other end is a tad "touched with distress", too.

Things have to look up.... sometime, don't they?

The FogWalker goes back to the recliner.... the ol' body is hurting again... maybe some sweet oblivion will come...

I got up yesterday morning at 3:30am to set off for the great outdoors and a day of hunting.  The early rising was for hooking up the trailer with the 4 wheeler in it, picking up my brother, and the 2 hour drive to get to the club.  We knew the forecast was for snow starting at midnight, so we had a prearranged telephone call if either of us got up and saw snow, "Go back to bed!"  I got up, no snow, and finished packing my stuff in the van.

About a quarter of a mile away from my brother's house, at 4:10am, I saw the first flakes.  For about 30 seconds, there were on a few flakes.  Then, the whole truck load came.  A few minutes later, my brother called asking where I was.  "I'm about a block from your house.  Looked out the window?"

I backed up to the trailer to hook up.  The snow was really coming down, so we talked about whether to go or not.  My brother made a command decision: "We're not going.  Go home and go back to bed."  I stayed and talked about 40 minutes and we got about 1" of snow.  The roads were starting to disappear in a solid white sheet.  We decided that it wasn't the smartest thing to drive for 2 hours, in the dark and snow, to go hunting.  And I was headed home.

About a quarter of a mile and I was back on the interstate.  The snow was falling so that even the interstate had disappeared.  The vehicles that weren't pulled over were going about 45 mph.  The road was getting slick.  I got off my exit and the roads were even more treacherous.  My street was the worst, and it was gone!  I got home in time to take my son to work and watch another 2 or 3 inches of new fall.

Southerners Can't Drive

I'm really beginning to believe this.  Even though WV is not that southern, people still don't see that much snow and they sure don't know how to drive it safely.  I know that's a generalization, but it seems to fit.  With this state having only 1.8 million residents and being considered small, we had 70 auto accidents between 4:30am and 6:00pm.  There were 3 fatalities.

I'm really glad that we stayed home.  We decided we would go today.

Thursday's Plans

Toasty

I've got the wood-burning stove going and it's nice, cozy, and toasty in the house.  It's been a great place to have spent the day so far.  I think I'll stay right in here until tomorrow when I leave for the hunting trip.  It's now time for some meat, so antlers won't have much to do with the shoot or not to shoot decisions.

I think there's several parts to this question.  Is Christmas' central focus on materialism?  And what is the ambiance of the season?

First, I think that Christmas has had such a central focus on materialism that most people today don't even know what it's really about.  If that's true for today, the the ambiance of the season is materialism.  Hence, the materialism adds to the ambiance that Christmas is all about because it is all about materialism.  Make sense? 

Secondly, I think the question is inferring that Christmas has a different ambiance than materialism.  So what is this ambiance?  Is it the gentle snow with a lover giving his mate a fine piece of jewelry?  Remember that every Kiss begins with Kays.  Sorry about that.  Is it the warmth of a home-cooked meal at Bob Evans with the light snow and chlly air outside?  Is it the family all getting together and exchanging gifts?  All those scenarios seem to be commercialized, and thus materialized.  Ambiance according to dictionary.com is the mood, character, quality, tone, atmosphere, etc., particulary of an environment or milieu.  So what is the ambiance set by the Christmas season? 

Thirdly, the season will depend upon YOU!  If you make it a materialistic season, that's what it will be along with all its commercialized settings.  If you make it something else, then it is something else.  I just don't think that people can get away from it being steeped in the boiling water of materialism today. 

I think this is a worth endeavor, regardless of "why" they may do it.  Visit here.  It's really nice to support the troops no matter what you feel is the reason they are overseas.  The troops don't have a choice in the matter, so supporting them for doing their duty is good.  That's my estimation of it.  You can hate the government leaders, okay.  But that doesn't mean that you should hate the ones that are obeying their orders.  Does it?

Bar Code Tattoos

DSC left me a site to visit since I had mentioned that.  Check out this site.  I think that's pretty cool and will probably buy a set that says "ThruTheFog" and have DMo224 bar coded on it.  LoL!

Still Sick

The meds don't seem to be making me better.  It just seems that I'm getting weaker, and I can't talk.  Now that might be a blessing for someone around here.  LoL!  Of course, the party that she could throw when I pass on, wow!

Did that sound like a movie?  Anyway... I got the results back from all those tests that I took about 3 weeks ago at the hospital.  My doc went over them with me at my Tuesday appointment.  It seems like I'm doing really well.  Woot!  My A1C was fantastic, as are my daily blood sugar tests, and it would appear that I'm not a diabetic if they didn't already know that I was diabetic.  Cool!  My liver and kidney functions are good.  The blood gases were on the low end of the scale, but acceptable.  This is where the doc thought I might have a real problem since I worked in a chemical plant for years and I was also the Captain on a Rescue and Confined Space team (usually wore a SCBA).  So my lungs are NOT shutting down due to some chemically induced problem.  I also smoked for about 2 years after the accident because the menthol cigs would ease up a migraine (only did about a 2 packs a month).  So other than the migraines, and the metal stuff in me, I'm doing pretty well.  I had also lost another 10 pounds.  Woot!

I asked the doc if the extreme pain from the migraine (and/or seizure) that I had that day could short-circuit my pea brain windings and cause it to send out all kinds of mixed signals to the rest of my body.  He is of the opinion that it wouldn't happen that way, but he's not sure.  IMHO, the human brain is much more complex than most want to admit.  If I can lower my body temperature by using biofeedback techniques, then why can't my brain do other amazing things that are not caused by problems in the body?  You know, the brain gets overwhelmed by the sheer pain of a horrendous migraine and sends out some signals that are not necessarily good for the body, but cause some things (like the blood tests) to come up with strange numbers.  It's like a seizure: the docs know pretty much how the seizure works, but they still don't know "why".

[insert spiel for Tai Chi Chuan]

UPC

It's funny, or may not be funny but kinda' weird, but ElevenStones mentioned that he wondered about being bar coded to save time at the hospital.  I had just mentioned that to the Registration Nurse at the local hospital the other day when I was there.  Hey, they have the bar code on the nice bracelet that they attach to the hairs on your arm, why not just get it tattooed on and save the hairs?  I would mention something about our minds, but I don't want to insult ES!  LoL!

Oh, and when I mentioned to someone else about getting the bar code tattooed on me, they mumbled something about the mark of the Beast.  Hmm...

I was also wondering, since I swipe all the bar codes on everything that we purchase for Shopper's Hotline, if every single bar code is unique for every single item.  Could a door knob at Home Depot have the same code as a can of tomato soup at Kroger's?  Or are they all unique?  I guess I'll have to do some more reading.

Shopper's Hotline

Sinus Infection

The drugs to make me all better and the cough medicine to chill out my bronchial tubes is chilling me out.  Wow, I think oblivion will come whether I want it or not. 

Why is it that I think short blog and it end up always being long?  Maybe it's the only time that I can feel like I can say what I want to say!

The barometer is beating me up again.  I can't take its rollercoaster ride.  But when it bottoms out, then I'll be okay.  That's when everyone else say, "oh, dreary day" and they act like it's lousey.  Then I'm all feeling great and ready to go.  So what do people do when it's raining?  I mean, besides singing.  LoL!

And the temps today got up in the mid 50sF.  Wow!  I thought it was winter. 

[whine]

Explain a Migraine

Someone asked me how it really felt to have a migraine.  She said she had a migraine this past month, and wondered if hers was like mine.  I think she were really trying to understand (for a change 'cause most people really don't want to know).  To understand fully, one would need to either have them like me, or spend alot of time with me, or take the time and try to understand by asking.  I just can't explain it in 5 minutes and that's it.  And she really didn't want a 5 minute answer, which really surprised me since most people don't want a 5 minute answer, they want a less than 30 second answer.

I told her that I wouldn't belittle her pain, because I bet it was pretty bad, and I can't feel hers like she felt it.  But then again, one day of pain is nothing like everyday of pain.  See, it already doesn't make sense, does it?  Let's say that you have a really bad migraine....you can't see straight, every beat of your heart hurts your head, the light hurts, talking hurts, any noise hurts, motion hurts, eating hurts, coughing really hurts and throwing up makes you want to end your life....and let's say that it lasts from the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed at night....then the next day it's gone.  That sounds pretty bad.  It's a horrible experience that you never want to happen again.

But what if everyday is like that?  Okay, say that 10 days out of the month are exactly like that, and the other days are only half that bad.  You can't imagine that, huh?  I don't have to imagine that; I know what it's like.  It may seem unbelievable, but I've had 29 days with a zero migraine since the Fog starter (car accident and TBI), and that was 28 January 1998.  If you want to know what's even more unbelievable, then I have a great Hunni that has stayed with me for all that time.  She's the best.

Pain Scale

So, do you think you can understand?  I think you can understand the numbers, but I don't think most people, like 99.9999% of the people, can understand or really empathize with the migraine.  I'm always told that I'm a harsh person when people say they understand.  Come on, you can't understand that.  Okay, I take that back.  Maybe you can understand, but most people can NOT understand.

A Little Cheese with that Whine?

Seems like I've whined again.  Gee!  I'm a wimp, what can I say?  If you've read all this, sorry for the whine.  I like sympathy in a way, but then again I don't like it.  Make sense?  I love empathy, but most can't give it.  Make sense again?  So what would I like to have out of life?  I don't know anymore.  I've actually got the bestest Hunni that can deal with me when I'm not the most like-able guy.  And truthfully, I've got the most caring cat (named Smokey) that deals with me on a daily basis and is always my friend, even if I don't want to do something for him.  He hangs with me in the most unpleasant days, and I mean he really stays right by my side.  He's even bit me when I was having a spell to help me come back out of it; what are friends for?  Yeah!

You know, I'm pretty fortunate.  I got to spend 5 days last week out camping and hunting.  Yeah, there's 1 evening that I don't remember well and a day or 2 were really a test of endurance.  But all in all, I did get to do what I liked to do, and I enjoyed most of it.

Today has just sucked, you can probably tell from the whine, but I still survive.  And if you happen to actually meet me someday and rhetorically ask, "How are you?" , you'll get that answer, "I still survive!"  I do just that, survive.  Don't know how or why, just do.  I've named to caregivers that I have, my Hunni and Smokey.  They're the best!  I sometimes think that the will for survival is based upon something that you really want.  With me, it's not that I really want to survive, it's that I want to be with my Hunni, something (sorry for calling her a thing) that is a someone that I really want and want to be with.  Now don't ask me if I always show her that I want to be with her.  Remember a couple of things: one is that pain will make you do things that you don't want to do, and two is that I'm still a guy (that can be bad enough in itself).

Just for the record, there is a debate that pain will make you do things that you don't want to do.  And maybe that would be a good "thinking" blog someday.  What do you say?  Can pain make you do something you don't want to do?  It's like the question, "why does it always seem easier to hurt the one you love?".   Good topics for someone, someday.

Now I've gone and started thinking, and my head's hurting worse.  :p

[/whine]

The FogWalker goes back to seeking oblivion....where he's been most this day....

We all love it, huh?  [/sarcasm]  I'm talking about the junk you get in email, the junk that's posted at forums, the junk that's posted in chat boxes or tag boxes, and all those other places.  I think it's only happened to me twice now, but I received a comment from another Xangan that I would consider spam.  It wasn't a comment about my site, or about my comments, it was just a "hi, look at me, I got another site, and I want props and comments and I'm spamming you to get it, blah blah" kinda' post.  If that ain't spam, then I don't know what it was.  And that wasn't a question of doubt, it was one of assurance that it was SPAM.  I started to make a comment at the mentioned site, but that would give her one of her criteria for "starting" her great site.  Geemyknee!

I was going to leave it and let other people see how stupid some people can be, but I decided to delete it and not give the person an external link to her site.  And maybe she just needs to grow up some and realize that what she did was SPAM!  Hey, I know I'm not the most exciting person to read after... you don't see a zillion comments after my blogs... but cut me a break and don't spam my uselessness with your worse than useless junk.

I remember the ol' "hey I proppred you, prop me back" comments, too!  Don't you?  Gee, prop this!  sorry...

Now that I've said all that, I've really forgotten what I was gonna' post about today.  Man, what an exciting life!  LoL!

The FogWalker goes back to.... well, back to just surfing around... maybe reading some other blogs...yeah, yeah, that...