Scheduling Pains
Thursday, December 22, 2005
I am currently hooked up to a 24-hour heart monitor.
Party!
I have found the secret word to get anything you want at a doctor's office. If you let the words "chest pains" slip from your lips, people will come out of the wood work and trip over themselves to aid you. Your chest pains will be treated with the utmost seriouscity. Its a lot like how every time you say Blathering Blatherskite, you know that GizmoDuck is being suited up for to save Dewey from the Beagle Boys.
Anyway, I called a doctor's office and told them I hadn't been feeling well for a few weeks and that I'm dizzy sometimes and my chest is congested. I didn't even say the other half of the secret phrase - well- you would have thought that I called the president with plausible terrorist news. I think the scheduling lady even switched me over to the super secret emergency red phone and cleared the entire day's schedule so they could get me in before the doctor's vacation. I even heard her click her solitaire window closed.
Where are these chest pains? How often do you feel them? How old are you? On a scale of 1 to 10 how bad are the chest pains? When do you feel the chest pains? Chest pain chest pain chest pain!
I had to calm her down and say that I'm more concerned about being dizzy than having a chest cold... but it's too late and the damage had been done. CHEST PAIN has been stamped on every form, sticker, and any equipment used on me. I don't even have any chest discomfort anymore, but in the past three days I have been treated like a Make-A-Wish child.
They even stamped CHEST PAIN in red on my forehead so when I walk in to whatever clinic, the receptionist knows to press the freak out button to call out an army of attendants to make sure my brisk walk wasn't going to cause a whole body shut-down. While the fuss is quite annoying, this has proven quite beneficial in other areas.
"Chest pain here. Move aside. Chest pain buying Christmas presents. Moving to the front of the line. Chest pain. Going home from work 2 hours early. Outta my way. Can't take the garbage out, chest pain. Somebody change the channel for me. Chest pain hungry!"
The best part of the 24-hour holter is that they give you a diary to write down the time so they can sync up events with your heart conditions. I'm supposed to write down every time anything hurts or if I eat or drink anything but the more information I provide, the better model they can create. They get to know every time I throw something in the trash or when I fart.
I can't wait to see the results of the diary entry where I wrote down that I was helping my dad with the computer over the phone. Helping your parent's with the computer? That's what we call the WIDOWMAKER in the heart industry!
I'm fine. There is no discomfort today at all and this is a big deal about nothing. We are just doing this to be 'for sure'. However, I'm convinced I may have mild sleep apnea.
I'm going skiing next week either way.
Merry Christmas everyone!
posted by Ghengis @ 10:12 PM,
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EyeBrush
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
The eye salesman always wants me to try a new contact every time I go to his office. I am now trying the latest and greatest in FDA approved contact lens technology. They are supposed to stay in the eye for a whole month. That technology isn't anything new, but something about these contacts are supposed to make me happy. They cost a little more than my old contacts but as a guinea pig they are free for now. Most guinea pigs work for pellets anyway so I'm doing a little better than a majority of the guinea pig community.
I remember the last time I tried these 30-day constant wear lenses, it didn't work out because it felt like Satan was stabbing a pitch fork through my eye (even when I dipped my head in the fountain of holy water at church). Of course, the eye salesman still tried to sell me on using the new technology. Every time he does this his major selling point is that I will save oodles on contact lens solution. Only a Sith deals in absolutes, eye salesman.
Even if you have never worn contacts, you still probably know quite well that some contacts need to be soaked in saline solution. If you leave them in your eyes, you don't need solution. A bottle of solution costs around $5 or $6. I probably go through 3 bottles a year. Somehow in eye salesman math, 6x3=$50 to $100. That is pure, wild, in-your-pocket savings! Obviously if you're going to go to school to learn how to sell glasses to people, you probably failed out of math to start with.
The only place that I really trust new technology is in the dental care industry. Dentists are scholars at math and economics. Every time I go out to buy a new toothbrush, I zero in on the most expensive and obtuse teeth cleaner on the rack.
Oral-B could come out with the most ridiculous toothbrush design known to date and I would buy it. If I found a toothbrush that had Magic Crystal Bristles
, fold out razor blades, a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, an unlocked cellphone with pre-loaded eminem ringtones, an emergency button in case you fall down or accidentally cut yourself, a tongue stimulator, and an eyebrow curler for the retail price of $70 (on sale with your Kroger Plus card for $63.99) - I would be remiss to not purchase it.Well I might think twice before putting that in the shopping cart. I would, however, rather take a dentist's advice on medical things rather than the eye salesman. If the dentist said that brushing my eyes with a Magic Crystal Bristles
toothbrush, I'd go to bed with an eyeful of toothpaste every night.It's probably only a matter of time before it's common to go to the discount doctor-of-all-trades at the local Wal*Mart for all of your healthcare/child beating needs. (Did you know that the asterisk in Wal*Mart means there's a mystery variable hidden inside?)
posted by Ghengis @ 11:01 PM,
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'The Second Coming is in 272 days and counting'
Friday, December 09, 2005
Today I caught the UPS man delivering a package.
Me: Thanks!
UPS: Man, you get a lot of stuff!
Me: There's more coming!
UPS: Great...
I have done almost all of my Christmas shopping on the Internet. Black Monday is everyday at the Mongolians' house.
Those of you who know me know how much I love to use all of the latest Internet buzz words. Black Monday is my new favorite Internet buzz word pushing BLOG and WTF out of circulation.
I bought my wireless router online. I had never used wireless before. When I fired up my wireless card I was surprised to see how many other wireless networks there are in my neighborhood. I can pick up between 7 and 14 network from my house making me wonder why I ever decided to buy the internet from the cable company in the first place, when all of my neighbors are just handing it out for free.
My neighbors' network SSIDs are the best. They use names like 'computer', 'linksys', and 'The Smith's Computer Network at 1342 Dan's street without data encryption'.
I named my network 'homeless man'. I am passively promoting neighborhood safety by keeping the neighbors on their toes so they have to randomly peer out of their windows at night to find that tech-savvy vagrant camping in the utility easement.
If you ever need to anonymously pass a note to your neighbors you can simply change your network name. When it starts getting warm outside again I'm going to change the name to 'keep your fucking kids on a leash this year'.
posted by Ghengis @ 11:01 PM,
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Free Daily Song
Thursday, December 01, 2005
When people ask me what kind of music I like I usually tell them that I like new music. That usually leads to someone offering me a sharp slug to the shoulder and telling me that that doesn't mean anything! I get tired of stuff pretty quickly and am a crack addict for looking for things I haven't heard or seen yet. I have even had the neighbors fire their shotgun in the air to scare me away while I was looking through their garbage to see if they had thrown any CDs away.
They won't be able to do that anymore when our neighborhood gets annexed by the city next year. They won't be able to dump motor oil into the utility easement anymore either, but who's watching anyway?
Now there is a site that actually writes a new song every day. (Well they've been around for a while, but they haven't had songs until the last few months.) Every night the band at Woot.com works feverishly under heated lamps and a haze of nervous cigarette smoke to make their deadline to post the new song of the day at exactly 12AM Central time.
They always find something new to sing about and usually post a picture of what they are signing about so you can follow along.
Their major hit by far is this one
which is about a television set. Sometimes at the gym, when I'm watching girls run on the treadmill, I wonder if they may be listening to it. When I think they are listening to something like this , I give a short nod and a wink to let her know that I know that she knows that I know.
Oh yeah. I almost forgot that when they get done dancing and singing around the item of the day, they put it up for sale. I wish more bands sold the things that they sang about... but there is a very low finite number of country singer's dogs and Celine Dion's Titanics that can be sold, so maybe it wouldn't be that great of a business model.
posted by Ghengis @ 10:04 AM,
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