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Medical Forum / Diseases and Disorders / Hepatitis / May 2005The Test
I've been having a bit of an "up" week with more energy than I've had in 6 months, and I've been cashing it in - in a slow-motion kinda way - by deconstructing, cleaning, and reconstructing my workshop. This doesn't involve a lot of actual effort, much of it is repetitive and/or mindless, but it provides *some* sense of accomplishment after 6 months of just trying to survive another day. I needed some shelving brackets, some casters for a table saw, and a shopvac filter. This morning, 10 hours after shot 29 but feeling "ok", I decided to brave a trip to Sears. Loaded up the old truck with water bottles and herbage and off I went. Now, two things you must know: I'm on tx sans ADs. And I'm a recovering Type A. Yeah, kinda like working the high wire without a net, I reckon, and a year ago I might have done such a flaming core-dump on this nitwit he'd likely have dug a hole right there in the floor of the store and crawled in. But perspective can be everything: I'm battling what for me is a deadly disease, and I'm trying not to sweat the small stuff any more. And it's all small stuff. From following this group for over a year I was well aware going into tx that there was the potential for mood changes and heightened sense of anger. And I'm not known for patience. I didn't want to do ADs if I could avoid them, so I've been doing my best to stay on top of the quick-to-anger thing *every day*. This was one of the few "retail experiences" I've had in the last six months, being fortunate to have family to deal with obtaining the necessities for living, while I put off any trips for optional things. Today, admittedly, I got myself overly tired, and potentially explosive... So I was methodically wandering the Tools store aisles, checking things out, getting ideas for my shop, and as there were no shopping carts, I was collecting items for purchase which I walked to the checkout counter and left in a growing pile. The place is simply *huge* - you could play Arena Football in there - and I tired quickly. But I was in a *tool store* on a mission and determined to see it through, so I continued slogging around the aisles. After an hour of this I had a good dozen items collected, but I spent another 15 minutes checking out the rest of the tools store. Now nearly "gassed", I finally headed to the cashier's stand to pay for said items. Which....were....gone. Gone!? Really?!! Aw, you're effing kidding me - this cannot be! I circled the island with the cash registers, made one complete pass and was starting on the second when I made eye contact with a sales droid. I ask "Did you see a pile of stuff collected here?" pointing to the floor alongside the counter. The 'droid responds: "Maybe" "I was going to buy all that stuff! Where did it all go?!" I ask. "We put it all back" says the 'droid. (Aggro slowly rising) "You're kidding! This is a tool store! I'm the customer, I'm *supposed* to be able to wander around for as long as I need to - and it took me an hour to gather all those things! And meanwhile, you're putting things back?!" "Do you actually *want* to sell stuff here - or is it your job to make things difficult instead?!" Droid sheepishly looks at me and slowly says: "Well, I guess today I'm in charge of making things difficult" A two-count later, I burst out laughing, a big smile on my face. I hadn't been ready for *that* response at all - and I was chuckling to myself as I recollected the most important handful of the original pile, cashed out, and headed home. I think I'm going to be all right. Cheers to all /greyhackles That's a great story it gives me an idea of what treatment stuff I'm going to go through. Plus it was a pleasant read. Thanks. Doug . > I've been having a bit of an "up" week with more energy than I've had in 6 > months, and I've been cashing it in - in a slow-motion kinda way - by [quoted text clipped - 101 lines] > > /greyhackles > I've been having a bit of an "up" week with more energy than I've had in 6 > months, and I've been cashing it in - in a slow-motion kinda way - by [quoted text clipped - 79 lines] > > /greyhackles OMG, Sounds like you handled that pretty well. I don't think I would have been quite so good at it. I've made a couple trips to the fabric store lately, using up all my energy choosing fabric, only to stand at the cutting table, legs buckling and nausea close to the surface, watching the woman behind the counter f*ck around with something totally useless. I tend to get quite pissy. And I have AD's. You did a fabulous job at keeping it under wraps and seeing some humour. What are you making with the tools? Peace, Mary Ann > OMG, >Sounds like you handled that pretty well. I don't think I would have [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] >Peace, >Mary Ann I can easily appreciate that folks go on the ADs. Before this adventure is over I could be, as well. I have that awareness as an allie that I try to keep front and center at all times, but the unexpected is just that. There's clearly no lack of sullen 'bots in Retail, and tx certainly sharpens all those nasty emotional edges, while the anemia robs what little strength we might be blessed with to maintain control when confronted with random acts of stupidity. And I don't suffer fools well to begin with. Right about then I had a clear choice of going totally thermonuclear, or rolling with it. Frankly, I think I got lucky this time - if the 'droid had *anything* else to say it would have been "Go Time". As for the tools and such, I am s l o w l y gutting my workshop right to the floor, walls and rafters, cleaning it within an inch of its life as a cure for 30 years of severe pack-rat-itis, and then reassembling it with numerous functionality improvements as well as better use of space. Pre-tx I was building a custom corner desk for my home office, and had enough of it put together to put in place and use. It's massive, the desk of my dreams, the desktop alone weighs over 400 pounds. I've been ready to fabricate all of the sliding drawer sets since the fall, but the shop was so packed with trappings - all the "I might be able to use this for something some day" syndrome - that I finally could no longer actually *use* it without constantly rearranging the bigger chunks. So over the last 6 weeks I've been simply ruthless, and as a result I've hauled out at least six hundred cubic feet of junk, none of it worth anything more than material recycle value. Yesterday's project was to put up some shelves and set my tablesaw on a rollable rig. Today's project is to relocate my AV/cable/broadband distribution system from near floor level where it's been a dust catcher and prone to being clanged by pipe clamps and a step ladder, to high up on the adjacent wall, and I need to drill a bunch of holes through some huge beams and posts to reroute the two dozen cables. This is all more mental than physical. Trying to stay focused on any single task has become a challenge lately, presumably due to the tx and "brain fog" (it's real, folks). My engineering job requires juggling a ridiculous number of varied tasks in real time, so that doesn't help. Having a well-bounded task in front of me with no real deadline is a blessing these days, and as long as it's not physically challenging I can make a little forward progress, when the chemo isn't hammering me that day ;-) Cheers /greyhackles Gee Gray you sound pretty busy and getting rid of all the junk is great. I think I would have gone madd at the hardware store after they put away all your stuff that took a hour to collect. I didn't use any AD's when I did tx. But there were moments I just wanted to kill. My son remembers one, I was going to buy some piece of clothing and looking at it closely I found a broken stitch. All my son can say is "Mom went nuts and wanted to have the store arrested for selling stuff that had a broken thread, she was totally madd and I had to get her out of that place". LOLOLOL Naturally I don't remember much of this, but he sure does. Poor Charles. I was lucky I didn't get arrested for speeding or worse. I drove 95mph on many occasions well all the time I could. Riba road rage!!!!!! Keep Cool its tricky stuff this tx. Good luck and the best outcome on your projects. That hardware store had nerve and glad you rolled with the punches, good job Grey. Juanita Re: The Test Group: alt.support.hepatitis-c Date: Sun, May 15, 2005, 2:11pm (CDT+1) From: greyhackles@NOSPAMyahoo.com (greyhackles) On 15 May 2005 05:40:38 -0700, "pajaritaflora" <birdspeak@gmail.com> wrote: OMG, Sounds like you handled that pretty well. I don't think I would have been quite so good at it. I've made a couple trips to the fabric store lately, using up all my energy choosing fabric, only to stand at the cutting table, legs buckling and nausea close to the surface, watching the woman behind the counter f*ck around with something totally useless. I tend to get quite pissy. And I have AD's. You did a fabulous job at keeping it under wraps and seeing some humour. What are you making with the tools? Peace, Mary Ann I can easily appreciate that folks go on the ADs. Before this adventure is over I could be, as well. I have that awareness as an allie that I try to keep front and center at all times, but the unexpected is just that. There's clearly no lack of sullen 'bots in Retail, and tx certainly sharpens all those nasty emotional edges, while the anemia robs what little strength we might be blessed with to maintain control when confronted with random acts of stupidity. And I don't suffer fools well to begin with. Right about then I had a clear choice of going totally thermonuclear, or rolling with it. Frankly, I think I got lucky this time - if the 'droid had *anything* else to say it would have been "Go Time". As for the tools and such, I am s l o w l y gutting my workshop right to the floor, walls and rafters, cleaning it within an inch of its life as a cure for 30 years of severe pack-rat-itis, and then reassembling it with numerous functionality improvements as well as better use of space. Pre-tx I was building a custom corner desk for my home office, and had enough of it put together to put in place and use. It's massive, the desk of my dreams, the desktop alone weighs over 400 pounds. I've been ready to fabricate all of the sliding drawer sets since the fall, but the shop was so packed with trappings - all the "I might be able to use this for something some day" syndrome - that I finally could no longer actually *use* it without constantly rearranging the bigger chunks. So over the last 6 weeks I've been simply ruthless, and as a result I've hauled out at least six hundred cubic feet of junk, none of it worth anything more than material recycle value. Yesterday's project was to put up some shelves and set my tablesaw on a rollable rig. Today's project is to relocate my AV/cable/broadband distribution system from near floor level where it's been a dust catcher and prone to being clanged by pipe clamps and a step ladder, to high up on the adjacent wall, and I need to drill a bunch of holes through some huge beams and posts to reroute the two dozen cables. This is all more mental than physical. Trying to stay focused on any single task has become a challenge lately, presumably due to the tx and "brain fog" (it's real, folks). My engineering job requires juggling a ridiculous number of varied tasks in real time, so that doesn't help. Having a well-bounded task in front of me with no real deadline is a blessing these days, and as long as it's not physically challenging I can make a little forward progress, when the chemo isn't hammering me that day ;-) Cheers /greyhackles ///////////// Your story leads me to believe that you probably have a pre-menopausal wife at home that wants you to clean up your act. For one thing, your ability to handle a stressful situation, like the tool store, indicates you've been subjected to worse tx, probably at home. Secondly, no man in his right mind would clean and organize his work shop without some form of coercion. And your enthusicastic willingness to cooperate masks your joy at finding a hiding place while on tx. Good luck, man, I've been there before. :-) Elmo http://community.webtv.net/elmoemerson/DocElmosHepFile http://community.webtv.net/elmoemerson/TheFamilyAlbum >Your story leads me to believe that you probably have a pre-menopausal >wife at home that wants you to clean up your act. For one thing, your [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >been there before. :-) >Elmo LOL! Well, no, Elmo. This time you pretty much struck out. o The spousal unit is 54 years of age - and soundly post-menopausal, thank goodness for both of us! o She's an "old school" Irish wife, devoted to her husband and kids and deferential to a fault - but you don't want to rile her, that's for sure ;-) o Without her I'd likely not have seen my 30th birthday, never mind my 53rd. o I already have the hiding place - my office, which I completely redid last summer, as part of my pre-therapy preparation. It doesn't involve stairs or huge cleaning projects ;-) and it has a *really* nice office chair (gift from my wife) to curl up in while I tap away on various computers and such, with the tv acting as background noise. Through the depths of last winter when pretty much everything seemed intent to try to knock me off therapy, my office was my refuge, where I could feel and be sick, take herbal refreshment as needed, and not have to interact with *anyone*. And bless her, the wife realizes I need that - and she's never busted my chops about it. o As for the shop, a couple of months ago I was moving a bench grinder off my saw table and I tripped over an obstruction. As I was going down I tried to just drop the damned thing but I caught a finger between one of the grinding wheels and its shroud so it took about a square inch of skin with it when it finally dropped. That was a bloody, painful mess when it happened - and it stressed the hell out of my body, it was almost three weeks before my blood counts recovered. So that's my motivation - that, and as I said, the total inability to actually use the shop as a shop, in its packed-to-the-seams state, even while I have a major project languishing. This simply won't do! ;-) Cheers! /greyhackles > >Your story leads me to believe that you probably have a pre-menopausal > >wife at home that wants you to clean up your act. For one thing, your [quoted text clipped - 46 lines] > > /greyhackles Good for you Grey, you are making your life what you need it to be.! :) Mary Ann >Good for you Grey, you are making your life what you need it to be.! >:) >Mary Ann Well, I'm giving it a gamer's go, anyway :-) though I suppose I could chalk it all up to impatience with this whole tx thing and denial as to the scope and depth of the sides... I got today's task completed just before dinner, but I definitely over did it and could barely bring my old arse to the dinner table. It's hard to tell when I'm actually tired - I mean I'm *always* "tired", but these days I can all too easily go straight on to exhaustion before I admit to it. <sigh> $850 worth of weekly Epogen is barely holding the ol' Hemoglobin at 10, which is no place for a healthy person to be (ahahahahah! I kill me! ;-) And I have this 3 weeks up and two weeks down thing going on with my blood counts and I can feel I'm starting the down weeks again. I'll be Super Slow-Motion Man for a couple of weeks, again. So I have that going for me ;-) Today's excitement was rousting a bat from above my deck so she'd go to her other spot above a concrete walkway which is easier to deal with, and then packing the first spot with oakum. What a chattering little critter! I had to poke her out of her nook so she fluttered to the decking and just lay there with her entire face consisting of one tiny toothy mouth hissing and clicking away! After I filled in her first spot I was going to scoop her up in a clean shop rag but after I draped her with it she scooted to the edge of the deck, took wing, and flew to her spot on the other side of the house. It was all very cool, but all the ladder lugging and climbing put a major hit in the day's energy level. Ah well....There are so many folks having a far tougher go of it, I'll not let this get the best of me - for their sake and mine... /greyhackles (with bats in the belfry!) Re: The Test Group: alt.support.hepatitis-c Date: Sun, May 15, 2005, 9:09pm (CDT+1) From: greyhackles@NOSPAMyahoo.com (greyhackles) Your story leads me to believe that you probably have a pre-menopausal wife at home that wants you to clean up your act. For one thing, your ability to handle a stressful situation, like the tool store, indicates you've been subjected to worse tx, probably at home. Secondly, no man in his right mind would clean and organize his work shop without some form of coercion. And your enthusicastic willingness to cooperate masks your joy at finding a hiding place while on tx. Good luck, man, I've been there before. :-) Elmo LOL! Well, no, Elmo. This time you pretty much struck out. o The spousal unit is 54 years of age - and soundly post-menopausal, thank goodness for both of us! o She's an "old school" Irish wife, devoted to her husband and kids and deferential to a fault - but you don't want to rile her, that's for sure ;-) o Without her I'd likely not have seen my 30th birthday, never mind my 53rd. o I already have the hiding place - my office, which I completely redid last summer, as part of my pre-therapy preparation. It doesn't involve stairs or huge cleaning projects ;-) and it has a *really* nice office chair (gift from my wife) to curl up in while I tap away on various computers and such, with the tv acting as background noise. Through the depths of last winter when pretty much everything seemed intent to try to knock me off therapy, my office was my refuge, where I could feel and be sick, take herbal refreshment as needed, and not have to interact with *anyone*. And bless her, the wife realizes I need that - and she's never busted my chops about it. o As for the shop, a couple of months ago I was moving a bench grinder off my saw table and I tripped over an obstruction. As I was going down I tried to just drop the damned thing but I caught a finger between one of the grinding wheels and its shroud so it took about a square inch of skin with it when it finally dropped. That was a bloody, painful mess when it happened - and it stressed the hell out of my body, it was almost three weeks before my blood counts recovered. So that's my motivation - that, and as I said, the total inability to actually use the shop as a shop, in its packed-to-the-seams state, even while I have a major project languishing. This simply won't do! ;-) Cheers! /greyhackles ///////////// Good for you, you're a lucky guy... :-) Elmo http://community.webtv.net/elmoemerson/DocElmosHepFile http://community.webtv.net/elmoemerson/TheFamilyAlbum The Test Group: alt.support.hepatitis-c Date: Sat, May 14, 2005, 11:43pm (CDT+1) From: greyhackles@NOSPAMyahoo.com (greyhackles) I've been having a bit of an "up" week with more energy than I've had in 6 months, and I've been cashing it in - in a slow-motion kinda way - by deconstructing, cleaning, and reconstructing my workshop. This doesn't involve a lot of actual effort, much of it is repetitive and/or mindless, but it provides *some* sense of accomplishment after 6 months of just trying to survive another day. I needed some shelving brackets, some casters for a table saw, and a shopvac filter. This morning, 10 hours after shot 29 but feeling "ok", I decided to brave a trip to Sears. Loaded up the old truck with water bottles and herbage and off I went. Now, two things you must know: I'm on tx sans ADs. And I'm a recovering Type A. Yeah, kinda like working the high wire without a net, I reckon, and a year ago I might have done such a flaming core-dump on this nitwit he'd likely have dug a hole right there in the floor of the store and crawled in. But perspective can be everything: I'm battling what for me is a deadly disease, and I'm trying not to sweat the small stuff any more. And it's all small stuff. From following this group for over a year I was well aware going into tx that there was the potential for mood changes and heightened sense of anger. And I'm not known for patience. I didn't want to do ADs if I could avoid them, so I've been doing my best to stay on top of the quick-to-anger thing *every day*. This was one of the few "retail experiences" I've had in the last six months, being fortunate to have family to deal with obtaining the necessities for living, while I put off any trips for optional things. Today, admittedly, I got myself overly tired, and potentially explosive... So I was methodically wandering the Tools store aisles, checking things out, getting ideas for my shop, and as there were no shopping carts, I was collecting items for purchase which I walked to the checkout counter and left in a growing pile. The place is simply *huge* - you could play Arena Football in there - and I tired quickly. But I was in a *tool store* on a mission and determined to see it through, so I continued slogging around the aisles. After an hour of this I had a good dozen items collected, but I spent another 15 minutes checking out the rest of the tools store. Now nearly "gassed", I finally headed to the cashier's stand to pay for said items. Which....were....gone. Gone!? Really?!! Aw, you're effing kidding me - this cannot be! I circled the island with the cash registers, made one complete pass and was starting on the second when I made eye contact with a sales droid. I ask "Did you see a pile of stuff collected here?" pointing to the floor alongside the counter. The 'droid responds: "Maybe" "I was going to buy all that stuff! Where did it all go?!" I ask. "We put it all back" says the 'droid. (Aggro slowly rising) "You're kidding! This is a tool store! I'm the customer, I'm *supposed* to be able to wander around for as long as I need to - and it took me an hour to gather all those things! And meanwhile, you're putting things back?!" "Do you actually *want* to sell stuff here - or is it your job to make things difficult instead?!" Droid sheepishly looks at me and slowly says: "Well, I guess today I'm in charge of making things difficult" A two-count later, I burst out laughing, a big smile on my face. I hadn't been ready for *that* response at all - and I was chuckling to myself as I recollected the most important handful of the original pile, cashed out, and headed home. I think I'm going to be all right. Cheers to all /greyhackles //////////////// ahahahahahaha!!!!! Good job controlling the beast within. When I was on tx without AD's, that sort of experience might have resulted in me being arrested again. Let's hear it for Procrit (not an AD) and Celexa!! Elmo http://community.webtv.net/elmoemerson/DocElmosHepFile http://community.webtv.net/elmoemerson/TheFamilyAlbum |
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