In response to EmpirezTeam
That's why I drive the shitbus.
Why isn't Lummox posting about his even worse week?
because the details of his thug life adventures are too graphic for your virgin ears.
In response to NNAAAAHH
In response to Rocknet
Rocknet wrote:
Why isn't Lummox posting about his even worse week?

I didn't want to play any one-upsmanship without a go-ahead.
In response to Lummox JR
You don't know me very well, Lummy. Better stories are always welcome. (;
In response to Kumorii
All right, consider yourself one-upped.

My story begins about two weeks ago. My wife had had a headache for a few days, which she thought was based on the stress of leaving one job and starting another. That weekend, she developed a fever out of nowhere, and it was high enough we decided to go to urgent care. They ran a few scans to rule out anything with her gallbladder, etc., but never found the source of the fever and figured it was probably a virus. So they sent her home.

The next weekend (the weekend before this) she had a follow-up appointment with a doctor and before the appointment, she noticed her ankles were badly swollen. This is a common sign of many nasty things, including congestive heart failure--which she's had before. When she had cancer years ago (Hodgkin's lymphoma) that was the symptom that finally got her diagnosed after a year of mystery itching and increasing breathing problems, and at the time she had about 24 hours to live and had fluid around her heart. So this time around, her doctor sent her to the ER to get a few tests including an ultrasound, but the ER only did an EKG and some blood work, found nothing life-threatening, and sent her home. The ER doctor was kind of useless.

Now the real story begins. Tuesday night, she came home from her second day on her new job and her ankles were so swollen she had trouble walking because they were so painful. We went to urgent care and they did more tests: another EKG, which that doctor said was abnormal but pretty well in line with the last one (so it could indicate old damage from before), and a D-dimer test to rule out blood clots, which he said could be in her lungs--a low probability but important to check. The D-dimer test is great for ruling clots out, but a positive can mean anything; and it was positive, so we went back to the ER.

If you've never had the thought "Holy crap, my wife could die" followed by your brain going through scenarios of what would happen after that, don't. I really don't recommend it.

Syracuse had a nasty, epic wet June, and it went out with a bang. A massive rainstorm followed us to the hospital, so that at one point I had to drive through a mini-lake that formed on 81. (One guy died in the flooding that night, trying to push a car when he got swept into a manhole whose cover was dislodged by the rain.) We got to the ER around 10:30. They had her prioritized so they got her a bed fairly quickly, and by 11:30 we were in a room in the ER, waiting for her to see a doctor and get a CT scan. The doctor who was on that night was so busy she couldn't see us at all until 3 AM.

(Did you know a bag of Doritos and a couple of cold cherry Pop-Tarts at 2 AM makes a lousy dinner? Or that Cheers is on at 4 AM, and the Nanny at 5? And a knit winter cap makes a crappy pillow?)

Around 6:00 they told us that there were definitely no clots, and there was no fluid around her heart. That was a huge relief, but it still left us no closer to a real answer. We got out of there at 7:00; it was still raining. At 7:30 we got home. My wife had to call in on her 3rd day of her new job because not only were her ankles still a mess--and that job is up a couple flights of stairs--but she had barely slept.

But wait, there's more!

Into Wednesday proper, I came downstairs to get a drink and happened to look out the kitchen window into the backyard. There was a depression in the lawn about a foot wide and about as deep, roughly 12 feet from our house. Immediately I realized that was likely a sinkhole, and had visions of our house being at risk for sliding into a hole to the center of the earth. I had a metal rod handy and tried to plumb the ground beneath, and found that it went down at least 6 feet: longer than the rod.

After playing a lot of phone tag with the DPW which lasted into the following day, I finally got someone to come out and take a look. The good news is it's not a sinkhole; it's an abandoned septic tank. Turns out the top of the tank had rusted out and gave way thanks to the epic wet June, and that last day of massive rain is what did it in. My dad helped me dig out the hole properly, which is now about 4 feet wide and 7 feet deep. The DPW is bringing by some gravel soon--probably tomorrow--so I can fill it in.

We still have no idea what my wife's condition is, but the leading candidate right now is rheumatoid arthritis or a variation thereof. We're awaiting more tests and more follow-ups, but hopefully there won't be any more ER visits in our future for a good long time.

All in all I'm counting my blessings because so many things could have been so much worse, but good gads.
In response to Lummox JR
I would've panicked about the sinkhole thing because I've had nightmares about falling into sinkholes. They're just unnatural and surreal to me. Like centipedes.

Really though, I'm glad things turned out for the better with your wife and the false-alarm sinkhole!
Is your wife overweight? If so, get her to diet. If she gains weight it's just going to worsen the pressure she's putting on her joints when she moves around, which will make her move around even less than she does already, which will add on even more pounds and... yeah.

Make sure it's a low-sodium diet as well, or if she refuses, make sure she drinks a ton of water. When a lot of people diet, they seem to only take things like fat and carbs into consideration, when really sugar and sodium content are what you should be looking out for because the health issues that arise from consumption of too much of either of those is so long it's not even funny.
My wife has diabetes which she manages with a fairly strict low-carb diet. (The value of a low-sodium diet is a complete myth. Likewise low-fat, which is stupid unless you have gallbladder problems.) She has been drinking plenty of fluids for quite some time.
In response to Lummox JR
You... win? I'm glad it wasn't as bad as you feared, but I hope she gets it figured out. Not knowing what is wrong can be stressful as hell, which of course just makes everything worse. Good luck to both of you.
Actually, I forgot low sodium diets are mainly for blacks. We're more susceptible to hypertension and heart issues moreso than whites. My Dad eats a ridiculous amount of sodium and experiences the negative effects associated with it, but if you both are white theres probably nothing to worry about as far as sodium goes.

Definitely not a myth though, it's just usually only a threat if you're susceptible to it.
In response to EmpirezTeam
EmpirezTeam wrote:
Actually, I forgot low sodium diets are mainly for blacks. We're more susceptible to hypertension and heart issues moreso than whites. My Dad eats a ridiculous amount of sodium and experiences the negative effects associated with it, but if you both are white theres probably nothing to worry about as far as sodium goes.

Definitely not a myth though, it's just usually only a threat if you're susceptible to it.

The link between high blood pressure and salt initially came about because of a specific researcher who was overzealous in his conclusions, and it's stayed with us a long time because it passes the sniff test: It's reasonable to assume that, based on simple chemistry, a higher salt concentration in blood would lead to increased vascular pressure. However newer science has found that this isn't the case at all.

What they've been finding is actually that while table salt can be bad for you, other forms like sea salt: not so much. Table salt contains additives such as silicon dioxide (sand, or basically micro-glass) to prevent caking, and that can damage blood vessels. That kind of thing could also conceivably lead to higher cholesterol, which is a symptom--not a cause--of problems. Your body ramps up cholesterol production when it needs to repair blood vessels and it doesn't have the ideal molecular tools on hand.

The moral: swap out your table salt for a sea salt grinder.
Well when I say sodium, I'm not just talking about sprinkling salt over your food. I'm referring to when you do what my Dad does, which is:

1. He'll open a can of soup ( which usually already contains the daily recommended sodium content ) and will add a Ramen noodle seasoning packet to it. Why? I don't know.

2. He'll make steak and rice. When preparing the steak, he rubs salt, seasoning salt, and MSG all over it, then slow boils it in water that he's poured like 3 ramen noodle packets into, then he pours a can of gravy over it ( which is essentially more sodium ) and then tops it off with soy sauce ( ridiculously high in sodium ).

3. Any time we go to fast-food restaraunts ( food already high in sodium ), he'll douse his fried chicken or whatever the case may be in table salt, and then his own "special blend" as he likes to call it, which is just literally a shaker full of like 6 different seasonings, 3 of which are a type of salt. And that's not counting the salt he pours onto fries that the employees have already poured an ample amount of salt onto.

And he can't figure out why he's on blood pressure medication. If you guys were wondering why I'm retarded, you now know where I inherited my mental problems from.
Does sea salt actually taste okay / the same as normal table salt?
I never noticed a difference, doohl. We cook with sea salt... though i also cook with msg... so...
Sea salt tastes great. I use a sea salt grinder regularly that's just a basic white salt, but there are many kinds. Mostly they have differences in texture and mineral content.

I've never felt compelled to put MSG on a steak unless reheating it, but I don't fear it. (IMO most fears about it are way overblown, and most people who believe they're sensitive to it aren't. Some legitimately are.) I like to sprinkle it on when I nuke leftovers because it makes the leftovers a little tastier. Then again, I've never boiled a steak; that sounds really gross. If it's not on the grill, it's done sous vide with a pan sear afterward.
I cook for people regularly. I've had a large number of people tell me they are allergic to MSG, or completely refuse to eat any food that I've cooked with MSG (I always let people know first), meanwhile they are 100% okay with the dish I'm cooking having tomatoes, potatoes, or mushrooms as a major component... (For those unaware, MSG is naturally occurring in most vegetables.)

I've got an actual no-shit food allergy. It's not a dietary preference. It's not a "sensitivity". It's not a health fad like the entire gluten bandwagon. If I have peanut products, my throat will swell shut in the span of fifteen minutes and I'll be dead by twenty-five minutes without epinephrine and a stay in the hospital. If I touch peanuts, I break out in hives. If I am within ten feet of someone eating peanut products, or in the same house as someone who cooks with peanut oil, I will have a full-blown reaction.

I never bought the MSG fear that is prevalent exclusively amongst my white friends. I got hooked on the stuff when I lived in Asia. It's amazing. It makes food taste better, which is part of the reason tomatoes, mushrooms, and potatoes are superfoods.

It's in a metric crapton of vegetables and fruits naturally. Anybody who claims they have an allergy to the stuff in the quantities that you use to cook should be long dead if they've ever eaten a vegetable, fruit, starch, etc.
I'm "intolerant" to high doses of MSG, I almost get the same effects of a peanut allergy.. Which is actually scary as shit.

I feel for you Ter.
Have you gone to an allergist? Because there's no substantive scientific evidence that MSG allergies are a thing.
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