Friday, November 27, 2009

eh, meh, feh

We had a lovely, quiet Thanksgiving. Yesterday I was happy and relaxed and busy. Today I'm feeling overwhelmed by stress.

This fall I had meningitis, and Lola is having a rough year at school. The Sober Husband created a custom nagging program, which sends me an email every day detailing my credit card and checking spending (upside: reduced spending and heightened ability to live within our means; downside: daily nagging, and also the Sober Husband often reclaims the best laptop to keep rewriting this little piece of software). After months of abdominal pain and a variety of other unappetizing symptoms, I have a diagnosis of a tumor bigger than my fist. On the bright side, it's 99.99% believed to be benign, but on the other hand, I need to have it surgically removed. I really dislike the doctor I've seen for this, but on the other hand, do I want to wait until I can find a doctor I like before dealing with this? The Sober Husband has also been highly stressed this past fall at work.

Iris has been the best off of all of us, but she's been suffering from chronic headaches. An initial attempt at treating her headaches through medication was an odd failure. Her doctor suggested a prescription antihistamine, and Iris and I were eager to try it, but the Sober Husband balked. He insisted upon setting up an experiment where Iris would be randomly medicated or given a placebo. He purchased empty capsules and decanted the contents of Iris's medicine into some of these capsules and filled the others with sugar. Iris was enthused at first at this experiment but soon tired of it. "I wish I could just take my medicine," she confided when her father was safely away at work. However, even with the intermittent taking of her medication, Iris was able to figure out that she was having the downsides (dry mouth, dry throat, sleepiness) without enough improvement in her headaches, and she gave up the meds. Iris has also been troubled by her teeth: several times when an adult tooth has grown in, her baby tooth refused to fall out, and the two teeth became somehow stuck together for several months. We refer to this as "a snaggle", and these snaggleteeth plague poor Iris (but again, Iris has otherwise been on the ascendant. "I have my teachers wrapped around my finger," she confided one day).

Today-- the day after Thanksgiving -- is the one day of the year when a person most needs a microwave for warming up leftovers. This is the day my elderly microwave chose to die, shorting out part of the kitchen in its death throes. "It had to take the toaster with it," I said darkly, but the Sober Husband assured me the toaster could be resuscitated. He opened up the microwave, which had some interesting radioactivity warnings inside, but several hours of surgery determined that the microwave was warming up leftovers in heaven or hell and not to be lured back to our earthly kitchen.

14 comments:

hughman said...

he actually made a software program to nag you? wow. that's some serious geek passion/aggression there! maybe he can write one to listen to his lectures when he gets all serious and heavy.

the Drunken Housewife said...

Yes, he did. It gathers data from my credit card record and sends me a daily email reminder to log in to a site, where I get a constantly updated report on our spending and budget.

He also wrote an iPhone app which controls the children's allowances.

hughman said...

he should sell the app. on apple (or however they do that) and you could bring in more money. you could come up with other app. ideas too and he could make them.

2amsomewhere said...

As a fellow geek, I just to have to ask a few questions about the nagging app...

1) Does he plan to open source it sometime in the future? If so, can I be notified when it is live?

2) Does he use any NoSQL technology for data storage?

3) He gets bad@$$ cred if he wrote it in something exotic like Erlang or Scala. ;-)

--
2amsomewhere

the Drunken Housewife said...

My God, I just announced to you people that I have a TUMOR BIGGER THAN MY FIST, WHICH I HAVE TO HAVE SURGICALLY REMOVED, and you're all agog about the nagging software. I will ask the Sober Husband to fill in the details about the software.

Anton Kast said...

I am proud of the wife-money-nagging app. It has brought peace to our household.

It's a stripped-down personal finance app, like Mint.com but without the polish. It combines credit card history, checking activity, and cash balances in a daily report. It takes a monthly budget limit, and it shows you if you're on track.

It's primitive compared to commercial products. Its virtue is only that it is tailored to my wife's psychological quirks regarding money. It gives her the financial picture she needs without overburdening her with details, and it delivers the bad news so I don't have to.

It's built on Google AppEngine, so it's implemented in python and uses that platform's non-relational backing store. (People call it "MegaStore".) I'd open-source it instantly if I weren't ashamed of the jank code.

Silliyak said...

You could fill us in on the details of your tumor (have you named it yet?). Or why you don't like the doctor etc. We don't have much to go on. I hope you'll feel tons better after the surgery.

hughman said...

oh my. well you did kind of bury the lead there.

my dearest DH,

i am so sorry about your impending medical difficulties. of course you will always be in my thoughts and "prayers" (whatever that may be). your well-being is our utmost concern.

love, me

also, maybe the SH can make an app to keep us informed as to how you are. this would address our "psychological quirks".

Drunken Housewife said...

Well, I am trying to downplay the medical issues actually for the children's sake, so as not to be a major drama queen, but I'm feeling fretful and self-pitying over it.

I don't like this doctor because he's a condescending son of a bitch. Also after my ultrasound, he didn't call me for a couple of weeks (I got the bill promptly on the other hand), so I thought the news was there was no news, but it turns out the long-delayed news was that I need surgery. Thanks, Dr. Condescension! I don't plan on being a patient very long... just long enough to be referred to a surgeon.

pie_ho said...

oh honey, you're getting it coming and going, aren't you. And the tumor was the point that sent me to the comment page, so there. I know that any promise of help from down here is pretty empty, but please know that you are in my thoughts. And call on me to gripe about condescending and/or heartless docs, anytime!

Missy said...

I'm sorry your doctor is a jerk; it only adds to the anxiety. Hopefully he's a competent jerk--with the thought that you'd rather have a competent jerk than a sympathetic incompetent. However, the two week wait for results--I'm leaning towards jerk overall.

Still, I'm anxious to hear updates. I hope you aren't feeling any discomfort. I hope you are sleeping well; how's that insomnia going?

Mr. Texzmissy is interested in the software also from the engineering side, but he's not known for being sensitive to medical or health issues.

Dread Pirate Davi said...

I demand an iPhone app that keeps us updated on the status of your massive life-of-its-own tumor. Wait...then I'd have to buy the damn phone.

And I'm sorry you're forced to deal with an ass for the sake of your health. Life's not fair sometimes. :(

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