The Boy's New Smile

While I was working on the "August EC Stuff" post my son was playing at his friend's house on the trampoline. I don't like the trampoline, and have a standing rule that the kids can't be on it if there isn't an adult outside watching them on it - not just outside doing stuff, but actually watching them.

Of course, just having supervision can't prevent accidents.

And he's the kind of kid that, through his tears of pain, apologized for breaking an adult tooth! I got him calmed with the assurance that the dentist will be able to cap it and no one will ever know unless he tells them (or loses the cap); and got him back to smiling by pointing out he has a fierce fang now and a wolfish grin, and had better not bite his sister Blossom no matter how bad she torments him since he'd cut her up bad for sure (not that he's ever bitten anyone, but silliness was called for).

I suppose it is the natural perversity of childhood that they can't have these minor accidents during normal office hours; it's always the middle of the night or on weekends. I almost hope he doesn't get his cap done before Halloween: he plans to be a pirate, and the broken tooth would enhance his costume nicely.

August EC Stuff

I joined Entrecard about August 17, so I don't have a full month's info ... but it seems to be "the thing" to make these posts, and I do appreciate those participants that have dropped and|or advertised on my blog. So here goes:

Top Droppers
Whatever Comes To My Mind
PipeB Web Hosting
Top Form Secrets
The Traveling Pants
Juliana's World
Red Pine Mountain
The Simple Witch
Journal of Journey
Modern Witchcraft
My gypsygoods

Advertisers
(this is a partial list, sorry: I didn't think to start keeping track sooner)
Just Renae
Infinite Possibility
Crete Delights
Comely's World
Young Urban Professionals nOOk
Atom Sounds
Barefooted Me
Hawk's Photos

And my personal favorites (in no particular order) I would not have found without EC:
Eco-friendly Life and Toys
Homebound
Clean Solutions
Thyme2dream
My Name's Not Mom
Asdquefty's Journal
Red Pine Mountain
Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff
Wahm Cafe
The Shopaholic Nightingale
Environmental Chaos
PlasticLess
BlueStem Winery
Tiggyblog
Learn tricks of blogging
Easy Homemade Fragrance and Essential Products
My Autism Insights
Connect with your Teens through Pop Culture and Technology
Squidom.com
The Peanut Butter Blog
Just Renae - A Digital Scrapbooking Addict
The Transparent Hypnotist
Coffee Tickle
Geek Riddles

On a Personal Note: Blargh

Today was one of those days at work that definitely call for a "TGIF." Maybe a "WTF" and a "DIAF" too.

(Acronyms)

TGIF: "Thank God It's Friday"
WTF: "What The F!ck"
DIAF: Die In A Fire

I have a simple job I like very much: coordinate enrollment of physicians in health plans. Mostly I create and track paper, a comfortable endeavor for someone like me who probably has OCD (but hesitates to cop to it because it would interfere with my dedication to being lazy). The problem with my lovely job is there are two faces of health plans: HMOs and PPOs. The HMO side is a breeze. The PPO side is nothing less than a nightmare.

PPO Nightmare

For starters, there is no director in charge of the PPO as there is for the HMO. That got dumped "temporarily" on a guy who is already overworked about 12 years ago. So the day-to-day stuff falls to me (which now, after five years, is fine, although at first it was scary as hell). Only that guy won't just let me handle it. He waits - lurks even - until the last possible minute, then second-guesses, pointlessly badgers, and nit-picks every little thing.

Four years ago, the president of the PPO Medical Advisory Board (the group of doctors that approves new physicians for membership in the PPO) died. He has yet to be replaced. He was the guy who signed the contracts, so I have four years of contracts, unsigned, waiting for either his replacement or the end of civilization, cluttering up my workspace.

The health plans keep buying each other, merging, splitting - and in all that, they lose our doctors. Just *poof* - gone. So I have to resubmit applications years later, and meanwhile their claims get rejected and they don't get paid for the work they've done, and their office managers call me - not the health plans - screaming or in tears or both to fix it.

And the doctors themselves do all sorts of cute footwork - going independent, then joining a different group, then going solo again, all without mentioning to us - and their claims get rejected and there is screaming and tears ... or they move their offices and don't mention it, and claims get rejected, and ... you get the idea.

So all week I worked on getting an update ready to send out to the health plans. A few new applications, a couple of resubmissions, a change of address, and some terminations. It took longer to do than it should because (1) I am having a hell of a time adjusting to the medication I'm on and (2) all of the applications had expired licenses and I had to wait until I got updated copies from the office managers.

The "temporary" director signs the cover letters for these updates. I had printed them out Thursday afternoon and left them for him to sign. He signed them all, then when I went in this morning to get them, he asks why a particular doctor isn't listed in the summary of changes. Because of the medication I couldn't remember off-hand and had to go back to my desk to check the database; meanwhile he's talking at me about "he's on staff, he was approved by the Board, why aren't we sending out his application?"

Finally I get words in edgewise: "Because his license is expired and I haven't gotten the new one."

AND THEN he has the GALL to ask me, "Well, did you call them?"

The only reason I didn't quit right then was because two things tangled on my tongue: "No, dumbass, I figured I'd just throw his application away and pretend I knew nothing about it forevermore," and "You know what? YOU call them, I quit."

The PPO doesn't pay me a cent for the work I do, and easily 85% of my workday is filled with PPO crap. I'm done. Monday I'm talking to the HMO director (the HMO is the side that actually pays the temp agency to have me there) and let her know that either the PPO has to (1) get a director, (2) demand accountability from the health plans if not the doctors and (3) start paying me, or I have to no longer do PPO work there. Otherwise I have to quit. I can't handle that level of stress at work with everything else I am trying to manage; I'll be damned if I do it for another week for free.

---

Tune in tomorrow when I should be less cranky and getting to some overdue posts on August's Top Droppers, great blogs I found through EC, and my paranormal adventure.

Back from Reality

I took a couple days off from cyberspace ... it was one of those rare weekends that I felt "IRL" calling and couldn't ignore it.

We'll return to our irregularly scheduled ramblings tomorrow. :)

Meanwhile, feel free to check out my new "other" blog at Today.com (where you can get paid to post without renting out your opinion!).

Wow

Did the EC card drops (and yes, I comment when a post "speaks" to me) and hit my day's 300 just by going through the cards that have been dropped on me since I signed up.

So now I wonder ... how do other EC participants pick and choose at this point? I suppose I can stop hitting the stock trading, sports and car blogs, since those things don't really interest me. Others, like crafting, diets, and pinoy, I like to browse, but I always feel something like guilt since I have nothing to add and can't much relate to. Same goes for the faith blogs - I'm spiritual but not religious.

How do the rest of you do it? (Those of you who, like me, feel compelled to be told "300 a day" otherwise you've let some blog down by not clicking.)

Hydrodynamics and Psychopomps

This morning on my way in to work the hydrants were having problems, spewing water all over the streets (possibly a planned flush, but I didn't see any Water Dept. trucks or workers around). The one on the next hill up from the office was attracting a lot of sparrows to the flow, which had just started to work its way past the corner as I got off the bus.

I slowed to watch the birds playing, and noticed one of them hadn't been quick enough and had been flattened by a vehicle not long before. Poor thing ... and then I wondered, Will a human spirit guide it to some avian afterlife?

In some cultures, birds (most notably the crow in North America, the raven in Europe, and the sparrow on both sides of the Atlantic) are thought to conduct the spirits of the deceased from one plane of existence to the other (brought to popular media by "The Crow" comic books and movies, and perhaps a lesser extent by Stephen King's The Dark Half). Generally speaking, the dark birds take spirits from the land of the dead to the land of the living; sparrows take them the other way.

And then I saw ... The. Coolest. Thing. EVAH. I was still walking slow, watching the water coursing along the opposite curb. It reached the bottom of the dip between the hilltops, shot past the storm drain, and started flowing uphill.

I had to stop to watch, then cross the street to observe more closely. This determined rill just kept going, getting thinner and shallower but still making its way uphill. Finally it reached another drain and that was that.

So now I have to revise my typical point-of-lecture on water and electricity: they usually take the path of least resistance, and flow in very similar manners, but as with most other things in this Universe, once you think you've got it figured out, it will show you how little you knew.

Headaches and Migraines

Doctors have yet to definitively decide the whys and wherefores of headaches. There are no nerve endings within the brain to create "pain," so why we can have headaches is a mystery. So, too, is a riddle that some people can have headaches and others - blessed that they are - never experience a single one.

Doctors do know some causes for headaches. Trauma - a bump to the head - can cause a headache; also hunger, dehydration, lack of sleep, too much sleep, hangovers (from alcohol, actually a combination of low blood sugar and dehydration), noise, eye strain, and muscle tension in the neck and shoulders (often caused by stress).

Aspirin - in its pure form a preparation of bark from the unassuming willow tree - is a known blood-thinner, and quite effective on most common headaches, which leads some to believe that headaches might be caused in part by increased blood pressure within the skull. (Of course, if your headache is caused by lack of food, water, or sleep, aspirin will not help you.)

More, on migraines:

Migraines are another matter. A migraine is a headache on steroids - bigger, stronger, with a nasty temper. Most come with extra concerns: sensitivity to light, noise, scents, even motion; nausea, dizziness, or light-headedness can occur as well. There are different kinds of migraines, and like their tamer cousins, not much is known about their causes. But unlike regular headaches, some migraines can actually cause tiny bits of damage to the brain as they occur.

I'm so special, I get to have three different kinds of migraines, and possibly a fourth (I'm still debating that with the doctors).

The "classic" or tension migraines are the most common type; they are usually caused by stress and can be treated with many over-the-counter (OTC) or prescription (Rx) painkillers, although there are also a multitude of homeopathic remedies and prevention techniques that involve ingesting nothing at all (like warm compresses on the forehead and|or back of neck, a nap, meditation, etc.). I started getting classic migraines when I was fifteen (about 18 years ago - egad, I've lived more of my life with them than without!). The likelihood of falling prey to them seems to run in families; when I got the first one, my mom knew right away what was going on. (Also, for some reason, if as a child you often got "brain freeze" from icy treats, you're more likely to suffer these kinds of migraines as an adult.)

Then there are "band" migraines (that's what I call them, I don't know if neurologists have a special name for them). A "classic" migraine usually hurts in a vaguely bandlike area of pressure across the forehead and around, like where a hat brim would be. But these others are more like a ladies' headband in placement of the pain, further toward the top of the head and just about following the hairline along the ears and toward the back of the neck. Where a classic migraine tends to be "stabbing" or "throbbing" in nature, a band migraine is, for me, more like a grinding sensation, and always comes with extreme intolerance of bright light (fluorescents are brutal) and sharp noises, and urgent nausea that never resolves into anything.

Then there are the "cluster" migraines. I've had these for a long time too, intermittently; for a long time I called them "Random Sharp Pains" because that's what they were: a sudden sensation similar to what I imagine being stabbed through the skull with an ice pick might feel like, lasting a few seconds, then passing without further effect. But about 12 years ago I learned that they are actually migraines, and when they do their stabbing act, they are actually causing tiny tears in the brain tissue. Contrary to what medical science thought for a long time, brain cells do grow back, so the damage can usually repair itself given time. And as I paid more attention to them, I realized they weren't so random: they only occur (for me) in four places, the parietal and temporal lobes.

I am fortunate to have found a medicine that prevents the cluster migraines, and another that prevents most of the classic and band migraines (and when I can't prevent those, I have another prescription to help, which doesn't get rid of the pain but does make it so I don't care that my head hurts).

But the last one, the one in contention, is the one worrying me the most right now ... it doesn't much feel like a headache, it's more like the feeling after a concussion, a ground-glass-in-the-head sort of sensation, and while I've had concussions in the past, I haven't had one in years ... and a couple of years ago, the first time I was getting these non-aches, I went for a CT-scan and I had a "hypodensate mass in the left posterior temporal lobe" - which is doctorese for "a hole in the language center" of my brain. It was unusual in that such things generally only occur in the elderly; it was downright bizarre that, at the follow-up scan two weeks later, it was gone without any sign of having been there, not even the light scarring that is usually found after such things heal.

On the plus side, with all the migraines, I don't much notice normal headaches anymore - usually one of my unfortunate family members points out (from a safe distance) that I seem a bit grumpy, then I think about it and realize my head hurts a little.