September 19, 2015

Flowers







Working hours

9 to 5. Normal, routine working hours. Report to work on time, leave on time. Be a proactive self-motivated, good team worker, sensible, smart employee, meet your goals and always strive to do your best for the Company.
Company is happy, but your boss isn't, as it's usually the case. One day you report to work at 8.30am and expect to catch-up with emails and such, knowing there shouldn't be anything urgent to deal with until 9am. But as luck would have it, The Boss walks in and says there is something urgent and if it's not dealt with, it will lead into a chaos and disaster. Something unpleasant that is. Ok, you do what is asked of you, even though it's not time to start work yet. A smart employee as we all are, we then (wrongly) assume it would be awesome to get out of work earlier than 5pm.
Ask the boss: can I go home earlier, since I started earlier? 15 minutes earlier please?
The boss' facial expression is of total disbelief (how could you even ask..!???). He says no.
You swear this is the very last time you come early.

It should really be "give and take". The Company (i.e. your Boss) robs you of your precious time, and that in my opinion is not right.

It works for some people, but for some it does not. My time is mine and it is important to me.

If The Boss carries on stealing my time (and if I, in my stupidity, continue donating my time), I will go on strike and stop doing any extra stuff for him. I can report to duty at 9am as mandated. Leave at 5pm sharp. Lunch hour is an hour, I won't leave a minute too early, neither will I return too early. 

Period.
.

September 05, 2015

A bizarre event at night

Bladder prolapse and cough, not a good combination. So when I decided enough is enough, a visit to my GP resulted in chest x-ray (which was normal), a referral for pulmonary function tests and a prescription of Panacod and Atenolol for relatively high BP. Codeine apparently relieves the cough symptoms and yes, when I took one last night, I think it worked. I woke up once. Not coughing, but with a terrifying feeling of blunt constricting chest pain. I got up at once thinking I need to use the restroom, ran in there, but nothing happened. Well, I was expecting something like diarrhea that would have explained the "cramps", but now almost 12 hours later I can't be sure if they were abdominal cramps or chest pain..caused by what? Panacod? Atenolol?
Whatever the cause was, it was scary. I was about to call the ambulance, but the pain subsided and I slept. 
I don't often have the time to think about what happened at night, if I am going to work or there is something else, but it's weekend and I had plenty of time to think. 
I thought about it again after breakfast.
Then I watched the "12 Monkeys" movie and thought about the nightly horrors again.
Then my friend came for a visit and I had to be 100% fully present so I could not think. I didn't share the narrative of the nightly events with my friend. We had a chat and had to share the sofa with the neighbor's cat. 

That heading up there may lead some people to think I had had a stranger in my bed or something. No, not quite, even though I wish it had been a stranger rather than excruciating pain.



September 04, 2015

Dealing with complications

September 24, 2014. I underwent hysterectomy almost a year ago and I have not regretted even for a day. Not until mid-July. I have been noticing some symptoms of a prolapsed bladder; feeling of fullness, inability to empty my bladder, but I was not sure if it is all in my head. I went to see my gyn in May 2015 and he diagnosed grade I-II bladder prolapse.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but it explained the symptoms and in a way I was relieved to know there was nothing more than that going on. Then I caught a cold and a horrible tickly cough few weeks ago. One of those coughs, that irritate your throat and you have to cough no matter where you are. Since I started coughing, I have noticed the prolapse getting worse. 

My gyn warned me last time that bladder prolapse surgeries may also fail and one of the complications is urinary incontinence! That's not what any of us wants for sure, but I am not sure how long I can live with the "bulge". I am also scared of possibility of another surgery and  even before the actual surgery may or may not happen, I fear that the bladder can just fall out one day. 
Before the hysterectomy I thought I could still improve the uterine prolapse by pelvic floor exercise. There was some improvement, but it was minimal really. I just can't face another operation so I am willing to try anything, more pelvic floor exercises, yes bring it on. Then I read about treating the prolapse with Brufen and estrogen cream and more exercises. Self-help books are full of ideas, web pages offer more, when I run out of my own. Hospitals, operations, urodynamic studies etc freak me out... but wait a minute, who said anything about urodynamic studies...?? Isn't it one of those age old hospital routines that ALL patients with bladder prolapse are referred for these types of studies? No. Absolutely not. 
The prolapse will no doubt get worse, gravity will take care of it. 
I admit that it is not certain that the prolapse is a complication of the surgery, but it may well be. I signed the consent form and have to deal with the consequences.

Life.