cleolinda | Red right hand

So, like I said, I did go to the MedHelp clinic early Friday morning. Since a discussion of health care broke out a couple of entries ago, here's how my visit went: I waited in a deep, squishy couch in a bright, cozy waiting room for about ten minutes. Just as I was settling into a nice nap, the nurse came for me. No one asked what was wrong with me at this point, although this was discovered when the nurse put the blood pressure cuff on me and I squawked that my hand was turning purple. In the examination room, we got into an actual discussion of the cat bite, and she shook her head over it and commiserated and agreed that cat bites should always be looked at immediately. Then I waited for a while. A good long while. A med student came in--he may have been younger than me, I'm not sure--and we had a fine long chat about my hand, and whether Bad Cat was up on his/her shots, and how long ago was it bitten, and where was it swollen, and could I flex my fingers, and how had I treated it myself initially, and what medications do I already take, and do I drink or smoke, and am I allergic to anything ("PENICILLIN!"), and if so, how does it affect me ("I don't know, death?"), and are my lymph nodes swollen, and hold your hands out and let me compare the good one with the bad one, and if I poke at your fingers do you still have the strength to hold them still anyway, and really, I have no idea why we had, like, a thirty-minute confab about a cat bite. Surely I'm not that unique in the annals of medical science (although "You waited FOUR DAYS?" got bandied about a lot). So then I wait another good long while. In comes Dr. Swanson with the med student, whose last name I didn't catch, but whose name tag said DR. ROY M[umblesomething], so here's Dr. Swanson and Dr. Roy. Dr. Swanson holds out my hand and recaps everything that Dr. Roy has apparently told him, but in doctorspeak: "There's swelling on the [Latin Latin], running up towards the [Latin Latin blah], however there's no infection yet in the [Latin Latin blee]. That's how you'll write it in your notes." Yes, that's right: he's not even talking to me. He was a really nice guy; I'm just saying, it cracked me up that he swept in there, threw all these giant words at the kid, added one more "FOUR DAYS?" to the chorus, and swept back out into the night. Or the office. Or whatever. Well, actually, he stayed a few minutes longer for the fun part, which was deciding what drugs to give me. "Let's give her The Clinda." "The Clinda!" says Dr. Roy, in a tone of utter YAY! And he doesn't even know about the Cleolinda thing! They're also going to give me a shot of something--"She'll have to wait fifteen minutes." "Yeah!"--and they'll throw some Doxycycline in on top of The Clinda. So out they rush again, and I wait at least fifteen minutes. I'm not sure why I'm waiting, except that maybe the shot takes fifteen minutes to... cook? Look, I was a Spanish major, don't ask me. So I amuse myself with a Chick tract until the nurse comes back and shoots me in the hip, and it hurts, but really, after the initial ow, you hardly feel the liquid pushing in at all, which is what usually weirds me out about shots so much. I mean, besides the fact that I used to be terrified of needles. And then I wait another fifteen minutes, at least, and then they set me free. After some discussion with Brett the Vet, I have come to think that they shot me with a steroid, and I had to wait fifteen minutes afterward to see if I was allergic to it. Not that, you know, they told me this, or that those fifteen minutes were different in any way from the frequent waits I had throughout the visit. But really, the waiting wasn't any different from any doctor's office I've ever been to, and the MedHelp doctors were at least a lot less cranky than my family doctor, who is locally famous for his curmudgeonry. Also, MedHelp's couches are squishier.

Total cost: $25 copay; $10 for Doxycycline and $10 for The Clinda at the pharmacy. And apparently they gave me some bitch-ass aggressive antibiotics at that. Also, Dr. Swanson told me that if my hand wasn't "significantly better" by Monday, I'm to come back in, although I don't think that'll be necessary; my hand's still a little puffy, and it's got some very mild splotches, but the scary red-verging-on-purple is completely gone, most of the soreness is gone, and all the feverishness is gone. However, he (or was it Dr. Roy?) did tell me that the antibiotics might cause Great Upset of the Stomach, perhaps Explosively So, and if the latter came to pass, I'm also supposed to come back. So I stocked up on Imodium AD and yogurt at the drugstore, because as people started telling me, the thing about really strong courses of antibiotics is that they kill all the good bacteria as well, including the nice helpful ones in your stomach that you need for digestion. And yogurt will help replenish those. So peach-on-the-bottom it is. I've felt kind of wiped out, probably because of the antibiotic war going on in my body, but mostly a lot better.

The featured article on Wikipedia, Friday: bacteria.

Email spam of the day:
From: Gay Alex - Subject: Why so small meat man?

Hillary Clinton enters 2008 presidential race; Obama reaches out to Clinton supporters; Sen. Brownback joins presidential field; 2008 White House Derby: The Field So Far.

Note on political coverage: I have very definite political ideals of my own, most of which are socially liberal and financially conservative. However, I really don't like to discuss politics here. I am not an argumentative person; I'd rather discuss than argue, in a gentle and civil fashion, and that's generally incompatible with politics. More than anything, I consider this journal to be about my life (as a journal should be. I mean, be about the journal writer, not about me. "Every journal should be about Cleolinda!" Uh, no), my writing, and the things I'm interested in, which primarily fall under the heading of "pop culture and entertainment." Politics mostly depress me, although Barack Obama cheers me up a little. My point, and I had one, is that if I post political linkspam, it's going to be in the most objective and sans-commentary fashion possible. Notice the clutch of links up there: together, the four of them give you an idea of what's going on in general. I also don't mind posting what I think of as objective outrages--voter fraud is bad no matter who does it, or who it "benefits." That bizarro "macaca" incident from last year? Bad no matter how you slice it. That's the kind of thing I feel comfortable posting. Anything obviously biased towards a certain party or belief will not be posted, whether I come across it myself or you send it to me. Moreover, if people happen to start discussing politics in the comments and manage to keep it civil, live and let live. If ANYONE so much as ~~looks~~ posts at someone else cross-eyed, I will break out the GALADRIEL SMASH! icon. I'm just saying.

Venezuela's Chavez says "gringos go to hell." This is not a statement, mind you ("Gringos go to hell," as opposed to heaven), but rather a command:

Chavez, a Cuba ally re-elected by a landslide in December, this month launched a broad campaign to consolidate power by nationalizing key industries, seeking expanded executive powers and pushing for unlimited presidential re-election. A State Department spokesman on Friday said Chavez's reform plans have caused "some concern," describing the proposal allowing presidents to rule by decree as "a bit odd" in a democracy. "That is a sacrosanct legal authority of Venezuela, go to hell gringos! Go home! Go home!" Chavez said during his weekly Sunday broadcast. "We're free here, and every day we'll be more free."

Which reminds me, tangentially, of a comic strip I once saw--Sinfest? "We're here! We're queer! And we want some free beer!"

Iowa woman fired for journaling at work. "An administrative judge has denied unemployment benefits to a woman who was fired from her job for keeping a journal detailing her efforts to avoid work." Here's the kicker: it wasn't an online journal. (Because God knows my first thought was, "I gotta read this article and see who got busted.") It was simply a "journal, all 300 single-spaced pages, on her work computer." I actually think she might have avoided discovery if she'd kept it online instead, making sure to keep a few key details (her identity, her location, her place of employment) secret.

ailaes: "Something I thought you'd find interesting - US government wants bloggers to register. The link for the petition is here."

Silent majority must become known
By Nick Farrell: Thursday 18 January 2007, 07:38

THE US GOVERNMENT is planning to force bloggers who criticise Congress and organise grassroot causes to register themselves or face jail time.

According to GrassrootsFreedom.com, under Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, bloggers who have more than 500 readers will have to register and report quarterly to Congress just like lobbiests or go to jail.

GrassrootsFreedom.com chairman Richard Viguerie said the new law would create the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever.

The amendment [amendment? They may mean "bill"] was introduced by Senator David Vitter and is currently on hold as it seems to have got bogged down in the legislative process. It would be interesting to find a bog [blog?] that is read by more than 500 people.

Uh oh. So, uh, technically, I would qualify there. I don't know how many people read on a daily basis, but 3300 people have friended this journal, and the

m15m community has 13,700 member-readers. So. Uh. I should probably start fomenting rebellion before the bill gets passed...?

narniabound: "Also, perhaps this will contribute to your healing. After all, laughter is the best medicine, right? O'Reilly appears on the Colbert Report. And Colbert appeared on the O'Reilly Factor."

Winfrey cried over relative's 'betrayal.'

Smoke bans become business opportunities.

Marketers makeover Miss America Pageant.

Buckets of blood readied for Amazon swim.

Downloads drive Detroit to update audio systems: "Struggling U.S. auto manufacturers are hoping music will do for them what it did for Apple after the introduction of the iPod -- make them cool."

Bundchen blames families for anorexia.

Amsterdam to get statue to honor prostitutes.

Did rejection from James Franco drive Lindsay Lohan to rehab? If so, my respect for James Franco just tripled. I mean, and that's before we even get to the rehab part.

youngcurmudgeon: "The Real World, Congress-style: Or, Chuck Schumer Is Messy And Steals Everyone's Cereal."

Little Miss Sunshine takes the Producers Guild award! A huge upset. I'd say LMS is almost certain to get a Best Picture nomination at this point, barring an overzealous campaign of some kind pissing people off.

Tiny, tiny Prince Caspian conceptual art.

From

skyblade: AFI revamping 100 Years: 100 Films master list?

Again: Put it back in the jar, Beyoncé.

Trailer: Becoming Jane. Austen, of course. Appears to be almost completely fictional, however. Upside: Stars Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy.

From fandom_lounge: "Cory Doctorow is offering free downloads of his new short story collection, Overclocked. All stories are available in full in a variety of formats, and they're all licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license, so you can do derivative works based on the stories, share the stories, or whatever as long as you mention who wrote the original work and don't try to sell what you produce.... You can also buy the book if you want to. As he quotes Tim O'Reilly, 'Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.'"

Highland cow: Mmm, snow.

The Blessing of the Pets in Madrid:

Please, Father, bless my retriever.

And my cat!

Can't I be blessed someplace warmer?

WHAT ABOUT US?

But I'm an atheist!