Life in the ER or: How I spent last Thursday

Since I jumped off the cliff in the Bahamas I’ve been in varying amounts of pain. It’s usually centered in the muscles in my back and occasionally in my lower ribs. Sometime last week, maybe Tuesday, the pain started moving up my body. Strange? Yes. By Wednesday evening the pain was centered in the upper-center of my chest, pretty much right where my heart is. Even more strange? Yes. Thursday morning I called my doctor.

The nurse at the doctors office, after hearing the full story, took a minute to confer with the doc, and then came back in a fairly excited state and told me to go to the Emergency Room to get a chest x-ray and any other forms of treatment they might suggest. Not exactly how I had planed on spending my Thursday, but pain in my upper chest didn’t seem normal so I went.

After twenty minutes in triage I was in the radiology room getting the chest x-ray taken care of. While I was waiting for the ER doc to look at the films (yeah, I’ve seen an episode of ER or two) I turned on Wimbledon in my room. At this point a doctor, who wasn’t mine, came in to catch a few points. We talked for a few minutes, not about my predicament, but about tennis: the playing of tennis, the Wimbledon series, you know, really important stuff.

After a little while the doctor came in. I explained the whole story to her and she told me that pain moving around is common in skeletal injuries. Who knew? She shifted her focus to my back and told me the story, hitting the water feet first, pain in the back muscles, etc was indicative of a “compression injury,” possibly even a fracture in the vertebrate. So it was back to radiology for shots of the T-spine and L-spine.

While I was in radiology the x-ray tech was curious as to why I was there, so I told him the story I had now repeated about a million times. He told me that was a good reason to be in the ER and that he’s seen some really bad ones. He then went on to tell me he and his friends used to jump off the intercostal bridges in Fort Lauderdale. For those not familiar with the intercostal bridges in Florida, they are somewhere around 60 feet high. He said it was a lot of fun till he got really hurt one day and decided to stop doing it. I thought what I did was stupid.

About twenty minutes after the x-rays the doctor came back and told me there were no obvious breaks, fractures, or really anything else to worry about. Since it had been around a month since the “incident” there was no risk of any organ injury or anything serious and most likely the pain was from muscle swelling, deep-tissue bruising, or a “slipped disk,” which she said is for lack of a better term. She said the pain will eventually go away and if I do something that hurts my back, not to do it again for awhile. She then prescribed a “muscle relaxant” to take in case it flares up really bad and Motrin doesn’t help. I was then on my way.

When I filled the prescription later that afternoon the pharmacist was concerned at the dosage. Evidently the prescribed 1500 mg at six to eight hour intervals is the highest dosage of that particular medicine the pharmacist had ever seen. After checking her database, she decided to only give me two days worth, or 24 pills. After that whole interchange I’m a little leerily to take them at all — luckily I haven’t had too.

All in all it was probably a good thing I went to the ER to find out there wasn’t anything seriously wrong — after all, the pain had moved to my chest and got me concerned. I might have to get an MRI down the road if the pain doesn’t clear up, but I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.

Moral of the story: don’t jump off cliffs. Yes, I know you are taught that in kindergarden but I guess I didn’t get the memo. At least it wasn’t a bridge over the intercostal.

I’m a slow reader

One thing I love about the local library system is that I can check stuff out online and then they send it to me for free. It usually takes a week or two to send the book out, but it’s free so I wait.

A while back I had the library send me Jimmy Buffett’s Where is Joe Merchant?. For reasons I can’t seem to remember I didn’t start reading it until it was due. So I went onto the handy website and renewed it. Perfect. I took the book to the Bahamas and, shortly after horrendously injuring myself, decided to start reading it.

It’s a good book; silly story, even sillier characters, but a good read. The problem is I read slowly. I mean s.l.o.w.l.y. That and I don’t really make time to read, but that can be the topic for another day.

I used to read fast, well faster. Back in college I remember reading The DaVinci Code over the course of a week and Angels and Deamons even quicker. I even read The Client in a 24 hour period because it was due for a law class (which was taught by the teacher mentioned in the article that caused so much controversy).

Anyway, I somehow lost the ability to read quickly. Maybe the internet has destroyed the part of my brain required to do intellectual things like watching the news, reading, and knowing better than jumping off cliffs. Whatever it is, the library is starting to take notice. They’ve told me I cannot renew it again. Evidently three times is too many (yeah, I’ve had it that long, so what?). So I guess I have to read the remaining two hundred pages before the 11th or they send out the Library Police. You’d think that since I’m basically paying for the book anyway through my taxes they’d let me keep it till I’m done. Maybe I can get a discrimination lawsuit out of this. Oh, who am I kidding. It’d take me four years to read the lawyers paperwork.

Wanted: A Review

Last night I saw Wanted. Going in, I only knew what was shown in the trailer; basically that the movie was going have high action and a moderate disregard for the rules of physics. Moments before the movie started I learned that the whole thing was originally created as a graphic novel. Based on these things I figured I was in for a good time.

Wanted follows a group of high-end, specialized assassins known as The Fraternity. Each assassin has a particular specialty: knives, fists, guns, and the ability to “curve” bullets. Wesley Gibson, an “account manager” with an anxiety disorder, quickly finds out that he is the son of a member of The Fraternity who is killed in the opening scene. Wesley’s tasked with killing his fathers murderer, a rogue member of The Fraternity. From here the film kicks into high gear with wild chase scenes which include Angelina Jolie driving a car with her feet while lying across the hood and shooting at a van. Did I mention the moderate disregard for physics?

Despite twists that can been seen a mile away, the movie is actually very good and written incredibly well. The films writing, especially the Wesley Gibson narration, felt like something Chuck Palahniuk would put together. This is actually pretty surprising considering the writing team’s previous credits feature the likes of 2 Fast 2 Furious. Even more impressive is that the film is directed by a Timur Bekmambetov, a Russian director who prior to Wanted had not made a single American film. Somehow these rag-tag elements came together and manufactured a quality action flick that stands out from the typical summer-time popcorn movie. Needless to say I enjoyed it and recommend it to any interested.

Manned Space Flight Fascinates Me

Ever since I was a little kid I have been fascinated with manned space flight. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown up in Central Florida, the home of NASA and where the history of the space program is ingrained upon every elementary school student, I don’t know. But there is just something amazing about being able to visit space.

One thing that I love about the history of the space program, and something that both From the Earth to the Moon and Discovery’s When We Left Earth focus upon, is that when the whole thing started no one really had a clue what they were doing. In ‘61 President Kennedy declared that we’d send a man to the moon and return him safely again. At that point the only thing NASA knew how to do was send a man into space for a few minutes and bring him back. But in eight years engineers, scientists, mathematicians and test pilots figured out what it took and made it all possible.

Since the amazing journey that put twelve people on the Moon, NASA has launched dozens of satellites, learned how to take up permanent residence in space, and overcome tragedy twice. The Space Shuttle era is coming to a close in just two short years and soon the next chapter of the Space Agency will open. A return to the Moon is in the cards and eventually a manned flight to Mars. Whatever the next chapter holds, it will guarantee to amaze and to continue pushing advancement in science and engineering beyond our current imaginations.

Anyone Remember Instant Messaging?

Earlier this evening I realized that I haven’t run Adium X in a very long time. In fact, the only time I can remember opening an instant messaging client was a few weeks ago when I was trying to help a coworker use iChat to video conference her friend. I don’t imagine I’m alone in this. What was seemingly something that was impossible to live without just a few short years back, instant messaging seems to be all but dead.

Back in college AIM (and later Trillian) was an everyday staple, constantly running providing a never-ceasing connection to just about everyone I knew. Around the end of my college years, maybe 2005ish, the slow, quiet death of IM began, when a mobile version of AIM came out. It functioned using text messages… which basically defeated the purpose of AIM and only pointed out that text messaging was a far more effective means of communication. Widespread text messaging use provided a constant, always-there connection. Around the same time AIM away messages were slowly being replaced with Facebook status updates. These, along with a few other variables (perhaps a full-time job?) lead to the eventual neglect of instant messaging.

Then came Twitter. I have talked about Twitter before and not exactly in the highest of lights, but since my last rant on their service it’s gotten much, much better in both usability and uptime. When using the @reply system, Twitter is basically instant messaging 2.0. It’s a constant, always-on connection to not just friends but the entire world through pretty much ever medium imaginable: web, text messaging, mobile clients, desktop clients, and yes, even desktop instant messaging clients. It basically takes the original AIM concept to the next level.

So I guess instant messaging isn’t dead per se, but rather it’s evolved away from a simple desktop client to multiple methods of communication that isn’t limited in any way. It’ll be interesting to see what the next iteration of instant messaging will be.