My weekend of pain
Apr. 2nd, 2007 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynSo, yeah. I haven't been posting much lately, and I haven't done any of the things I said I was going to do -- more reviews, fannish meta, usage and writing posts. They told me that after the surgery, it's not uncommon for people to get very depressed, and I poo-pooed that, except that it happened to me and it seemed to last for months on end. Then, I got sick with something else.
It seemed like as soon as I was starting to come out of that really bad depression and the whole holiday thing and twinless twin thing, one night in late December I woke up and pinballed my way to the bathroom, so dizzy I could hardly move, and proceeded to vomit my guts up. I thought that was why I got the gallbladder taken out, but non, there I was with my face in the sink again. The dizziness was horrible. The room spun so wildly that I was squeezing my eyes shut and pushing my fists into my eyes, trying not to vomit. I'd had a cold that morphed into the flu, but I thought for sure it was food poisoning, because my friend and I had had fast food that night, and it was the first day after the power had been out for so many days in the storm, and so i figured, yeah, tainted food.
But it kept coming back, and I kept battling the dizziness and vertigo and nausea. This went on for months until I went in for my annual physical and my doc sent me to a specialist. He was a really strange guy. But they tested my hearing and I still have superhearing, which they are stunned by, and so since hearing loss usually goes hand in hand with many of the bad vertigo illnesses, they figure it's Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. Yeah, say that fast three times.
You're supposed to do all these exercises that seem sort of voodooish to me, and some of them make me even dizzier and nauseated. But essentially you have rocks in your head -- calcium crystals in the ear become dislodged and cause problems. It can be fixed, but it can also come back any time, and as you get older, you get it more often. Yay. I'm trying to do the exercises but it's hard to want to, and also some of them rely on you forcing yourself to break patterns of sides you sleep on, etc., which can be tougher than it sounds!
This weekend, because I am the biggest klutz you will ever meet, I hit my head on the bathroom sink so hard i almost knocked myself out. I've got a huge bruise on my forehead and it hurts like holy hell. Note: never wax your eyebrows when you have a head injury. Even if they're not in the same vicinity.
It wasn't enough to stop me from taking poor![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mlyn with me to the plumbing showroom to look at new toilets. My old one is acting up, and it's an easy fix, but I hate hate hate it since I got stuck with it (a cheap reject from a neighbor who was a plumber, and parts of it don't fit together). In trying to fix the overrunning it was doing, I smashed my fingers with the tank lid. But I found one I loved, very very stylish, and it will just fit in the postage stamp bathroom, I think, and of course it's heinously expensive but everything I love is always pricey, because I love designy things that work. (Form AND function, baby! That's why I'm a Macolyte)
And then... the really fun stuff (I can't imagine you're still reading). Last week I smelled this awful odor in my kitchen. I did everything I could think of to make it go away, but it didn't. And then I stuck my nose to the air vent and sure enough, the stench of a dead animal. Probably the rats that were visiting my office last year, nipping at the rat poison the useless exterminator left, and then crawling into the vent to die. Really, the smell is just... indescribably awful.
I screwed my courage to the sticking post and went to the crawlspace. I have never been in the crawlspace in the entire time I've lived here -- over 15 years. I've sort of half stuck my foot in the doorway, but that's it -- the most I'm willing to do is shine a flashlight inside, but even that makes me shudder in terror. I'm not afraid of a lot of things, but the two biggest fears I have are spiders and enclosed, underground spaces (it gets to my horror of suffocation and burial. Gah!). And both of them are the crawlspace. But I did it. I got under there and I couldn't see a rat. It's probably in the unsulation or in the vent pipe itself. And so I can't get it out without getting someone in.
Received wisdom seems to be (and this happens to an awful lot of folks, judging by the amount of info on the net there is) that the corpse will stop stinking in about 6 or 7 weeks. Joy. I'm burning a candle that is too strong and makes me sneeze, but it's better than the stench of a dead rat. The only room so far that seems mostly unaffected is the bedroom.
When I went to open the crawlspace door, I had to move the big huge cement block that keeps it (barely) closed. And I did -- right onto my left foot. From about six inches. My foot looks like overstuffed sausage casing.
I figured I would just leave the rat in there since I'm going to be getting new ductwork when I do the house addition/kitchen remodel. Right? But then i got my bid on Sunday from the people I most wanted to hire. They gave me the most detailed bid, with the most information, and they are the only people who aren't annoyed by my needing to live and work in my home while this happens. But it was so high I almost had a heart attack. Almost twice as much as I'd expected, and I expected a lot. I don't know what to do -- and the job wouldn't even start till mid summer, so I guess I'll need to rethink the rat thing. or something. I'm very down about the bid -- don't know where to cut costs, because the only thing that would significantly reduce it would be to not make the addition, and that means no utility room and water heater in the house instead of underneath, where the rats can get in and die and make me want to vomit. I just can't decide what to do, and it depresses me. It's not that I don't have the money from my sister's estate, but I worry that it would be outsized in terms of grandiosity compared to the rest of the piddly, stupid tiny crackerbox of a house. And I wanted to make over the bathroom to get a working tub, and fix up the outside since Curb Appeal will never come to Seattle. But I won't have anything left over if I do!
Anyway. School has started and I am teaching again, which is also a downer for me. I still don't think I'm the right person for this, and I'm not really a good teacher. It's a lot of work, and I have 14 students now that the "I don't know anyone and don't have any place to go and don't know anything that could make a class project" whiners have dropped out. So my mind is elsewhere. But I promise that someday I will do some of the things I said I would. Really.
When the swelling goes down.
In the meantime, enjoy some Emma pics. They are blurry because she moves around entirely too much when the macro is on. She was distressed that I was taking pics of some things to sell on ebay, and thus not paying proper attention to her, even though I bought her a new scratchy post this weekend.
It seemed like as soon as I was starting to come out of that really bad depression and the whole holiday thing and twinless twin thing, one night in late December I woke up and pinballed my way to the bathroom, so dizzy I could hardly move, and proceeded to vomit my guts up. I thought that was why I got the gallbladder taken out, but non, there I was with my face in the sink again. The dizziness was horrible. The room spun so wildly that I was squeezing my eyes shut and pushing my fists into my eyes, trying not to vomit. I'd had a cold that morphed into the flu, but I thought for sure it was food poisoning, because my friend and I had had fast food that night, and it was the first day after the power had been out for so many days in the storm, and so i figured, yeah, tainted food.
But it kept coming back, and I kept battling the dizziness and vertigo and nausea. This went on for months until I went in for my annual physical and my doc sent me to a specialist. He was a really strange guy. But they tested my hearing and I still have superhearing, which they are stunned by, and so since hearing loss usually goes hand in hand with many of the bad vertigo illnesses, they figure it's Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. Yeah, say that fast three times.
You're supposed to do all these exercises that seem sort of voodooish to me, and some of them make me even dizzier and nauseated. But essentially you have rocks in your head -- calcium crystals in the ear become dislodged and cause problems. It can be fixed, but it can also come back any time, and as you get older, you get it more often. Yay. I'm trying to do the exercises but it's hard to want to, and also some of them rely on you forcing yourself to break patterns of sides you sleep on, etc., which can be tougher than it sounds!
This weekend, because I am the biggest klutz you will ever meet, I hit my head on the bathroom sink so hard i almost knocked myself out. I've got a huge bruise on my forehead and it hurts like holy hell. Note: never wax your eyebrows when you have a head injury. Even if they're not in the same vicinity.
It wasn't enough to stop me from taking poor
mlyn with me to the plumbing showroom to look at new toilets. My old one is acting up, and it's an easy fix, but I hate hate hate it since I got stuck with it (a cheap reject from a neighbor who was a plumber, and parts of it don't fit together). In trying to fix the overrunning it was doing, I smashed my fingers with the tank lid. But I found one I loved, very very stylish, and it will just fit in the postage stamp bathroom, I think, and of course it's heinously expensive but everything I love is always pricey, because I love designy things that work. (Form AND function, baby! That's why I'm a Macolyte)And then... the really fun stuff (I can't imagine you're still reading). Last week I smelled this awful odor in my kitchen. I did everything I could think of to make it go away, but it didn't. And then I stuck my nose to the air vent and sure enough, the stench of a dead animal. Probably the rats that were visiting my office last year, nipping at the rat poison the useless exterminator left, and then crawling into the vent to die. Really, the smell is just... indescribably awful.
I screwed my courage to the sticking post and went to the crawlspace. I have never been in the crawlspace in the entire time I've lived here -- over 15 years. I've sort of half stuck my foot in the doorway, but that's it -- the most I'm willing to do is shine a flashlight inside, but even that makes me shudder in terror. I'm not afraid of a lot of things, but the two biggest fears I have are spiders and enclosed, underground spaces (it gets to my horror of suffocation and burial. Gah!). And both of them are the crawlspace. But I did it. I got under there and I couldn't see a rat. It's probably in the unsulation or in the vent pipe itself. And so I can't get it out without getting someone in.
Received wisdom seems to be (and this happens to an awful lot of folks, judging by the amount of info on the net there is) that the corpse will stop stinking in about 6 or 7 weeks. Joy. I'm burning a candle that is too strong and makes me sneeze, but it's better than the stench of a dead rat. The only room so far that seems mostly unaffected is the bedroom.
When I went to open the crawlspace door, I had to move the big huge cement block that keeps it (barely) closed. And I did -- right onto my left foot. From about six inches. My foot looks like overstuffed sausage casing.
I figured I would just leave the rat in there since I'm going to be getting new ductwork when I do the house addition/kitchen remodel. Right? But then i got my bid on Sunday from the people I most wanted to hire. They gave me the most detailed bid, with the most information, and they are the only people who aren't annoyed by my needing to live and work in my home while this happens. But it was so high I almost had a heart attack. Almost twice as much as I'd expected, and I expected a lot. I don't know what to do -- and the job wouldn't even start till mid summer, so I guess I'll need to rethink the rat thing. or something. I'm very down about the bid -- don't know where to cut costs, because the only thing that would significantly reduce it would be to not make the addition, and that means no utility room and water heater in the house instead of underneath, where the rats can get in and die and make me want to vomit. I just can't decide what to do, and it depresses me. It's not that I don't have the money from my sister's estate, but I worry that it would be outsized in terms of grandiosity compared to the rest of the piddly, stupid tiny crackerbox of a house. And I wanted to make over the bathroom to get a working tub, and fix up the outside since Curb Appeal will never come to Seattle. But I won't have anything left over if I do!
Anyway. School has started and I am teaching again, which is also a downer for me. I still don't think I'm the right person for this, and I'm not really a good teacher. It's a lot of work, and I have 14 students now that the "I don't know anyone and don't have any place to go and don't know anything that could make a class project" whiners have dropped out. So my mind is elsewhere. But I promise that someday I will do some of the things I said I would. Really.
When the swelling goes down.
In the meantime, enjoy some Emma pics. They are blurry because she moves around entirely too much when the macro is on. She was distressed that I was taking pics of some things to sell on ebay, and thus not paying proper attention to her, even though I bought her a new scratchy post this weekend.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:22 am (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:33 am (UTC)My mom has that ear calcium thingy and she goes for months and months without it happening, then suddenly whoosh! it's weird. Sorry.
I remember how horrified I was to discover a dessicated mouse under a carpet in the entry hall of a house I lived in. It's true the smell does go away. How do I know? Because for weeks we were smelling this smell of dead thing and could not locate it anywhere. Oddly, it occured to no one to wonder about the small lump under the carpet:-) But we checked vents and crawlspaces by god!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:34 am (UTC)Emma looks blurry but lovely. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:35 am (UTC)But yeah, never seen anything like it. I actually felt dizzier when I lay down.
I hope things get MUCH MUCH better.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:48 am (UTC)Emma is, as always, lovely.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:52 am (UTC)Gah! I'm sorry about that. I'm sure things aren't improved by a concussion.
And yet, you have a cute, cute kitty. That has to count for something.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 05:15 am (UTC)Your ear thingy is something that one of my workers has. It lays her low every couple of months for a day or two. That completely sucks.
I feel for your house problems. The problems you're describing are many of the reasons I no longer own a house. Living in an apartment has it's drawbacks, sure, but so far, they don't outweigh the problems I went throught as a home owner. Of course the house I inherited was older and in pretty poor shape to begin with.
Take it easy and try not to hurt yourself anymore.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 09:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 11:41 am (UTC)Gorgeous big-eyed pictures!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 12:37 pm (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 12:44 pm (UTC)I had a much milder form of vertigo once, so I can definitely empathize that it's queasy-making and annoying and miserable. I so hope you it passes soon!
As far as everything else goes, I don't know what to say, other than I hope it passes faster than the vertigo! There is definitely something to be said for making things the way you want them, whatever it takes, but sometimes we do have to revise our plans . . . maybe you can just think about it for a bit and decide when you're feeling better? *hugs*
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Date: 2007-04-03 03:39 pm (UTC)Emma is very sweet. Thanks for sharing the pictures.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 07:30 pm (UTC)There was absolutely no way to remove him, and after a few days, there was the decided aroma of eau de defunct squirrel. The acute phase lasted about a week, then it gradually faded over a period of a month or so.
I, um, didn't think to mention this particular incident when I sold the house.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 07:48 pm (UTC)I've had that problem for nearly 7 years. My doctor taught me an excercise called the epily (not sure of spelling) that gets rid of it some of the time. Basically, you put yourself in a series of positions and hold each one of them for 30 seconds to a minute each. typically, one or two of the positions will make you really really dizzy. By the time you go through all of them a couple of time, your dizzies go away and you are left feeling a little light-headed. I usually get a pretty bad headache the next day but after that I am usually fine for a few months. I think it works like those little puzzles where you tip the plastic box from side to side to get the little metal balls to fall into the right holes.
I started getting them after a really bad ear infection. Since then, the attacks have slowly become less frequent and less debilitating but, still pop up from time to time.
Once I had a dead bunny in my garage that smelled very bad indeed. I could not bring myself to touch it. Eventually, I found the caretaker of the building across the street and asked him if he wanted to make a quick $20.
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Date: 2007-04-04 12:39 am (UTC)In terms of house renovations, I think it depends on what you're looking to gain long-term. If you're the small house in a great neighborhood, you'll have a good shot at actually making money on your renovations should you ever decide to sell-- and you'll be happier living there in the meantime. If you're in a less good neighborhood, the renovations would primarily be to improve your quality of life-- which is good enough reason, dammit.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 02:50 am (UTC)::gentle hugs::
no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 04:22 pm (UTC)*hugs*