Well I rode RazzMo and Lady this weekend

Not MY wonderful mare though. I'm trying to ride or mess with Lady weekly. She was a 20 minute chore to catch after Christmas when I hadn't touched her for 3 weeks. And IF the weather cooperates D and her friend will come out next weekend so K can try Lady out; D will ride RazzMo and we will have a group ride if they make it. So I wanted to make sure RazzMo is still a decent ride since he has not been touched since we got back from hunting in November. I guess I trust Shade wont be too wild, and I can handle it if she is frisky.

If that cat could talk ....

I love that song lyric "If that cat could talk, what tales he'd tell, about Della and the dealer and the dog as well, but the cat was cool and he never said a mumbling word".

Boots is BACK! YAY, mom and dad, who did not write him off right away as I had done. Dad thought he saw the dogs chase Boots when he fed hay last night so he locked Mia in the backyard and then he and mom went out before they went to bed and called, Mom said she was too hoarse to talk so she meowed and Boots answered back and they were able to catch him and bring him in. Mom hollers upstairs to let me know "We found Boots", I reply "Is he in the house?" wondering if I needed to go out and help catch him now he was found, mom replies "Yes in the house" so I reply "WooHoo". And if Boots could talk to me he probably could tell some tales of his 20+ hour adventure. Now I want to get an entryway door so I have another layer of cat security. Its already framed with a doorway, just never had a door in the frame since we bought the place. We could also probably save a bit of money on heating by having a door and keeping the entryway cooler than the rest of the house. If I am functioning this weekend I'll have to measure and then see if there are used doors in that size or how much an interior door would cost.

Missing cat

I am thinking the worst. Boots did not come back last night. I really thought he would come up to the house and meow and he was just playing can't catch me which I couldn't even keep track of where he was going in the dark and I didn't want to 'chase' him through a boundary fence. My new AB must be great because even being unable to avoid crying has not triggered a sinus bout.

Rotten Dog

JUST HAD to go out, coyotes were not even that close, then my cat boots snuck out when I went to call Ole. I think the sinus monster was going to let me sleep, but that piss ant dog had to interrupt my sleep. Its going on an hour and I'll probably be up another hour. #*#*##}#}

Allergy doc visit result --I have a new antibiotic

They did not test for any foods. Just for the local allergens that are most often related to sinus issues some grasses/weeds/dust/molds. Then the allergy doctor examined me, sees sinus inflammation and I think he said fluid/mucous. He feels the issue is still an infection. They gave me a a pneumonia shot, he said the bacteria that cause most sinus issues are similar so this should improve resistance to getting future sinus infections. Wants me to take vitamin D and vitamin C to boost my immune system. Gave me a antibiotic and wants me to stick with it for 3 weeks. I am willing to put up with some stomach upset issues to get rid of the sinus monster and the monster has been weakened lately. So with the prednisone he also gave me I don't think I will have a problem with 'aak this isn't working, we need something stronger' either. I am going to continue to avoid bread and limit my wheat intake for now also.

So I had to go to an allergist to get a new antibiotic and another course of prednisone that my GP doc was not ready to give. Since I have been feeling better this past week than I was the week before taking wheat out of my diet I will allow the GP may have been partially correct but my first instinct of this just being a stubborn infection was mostly right based on the allergy doc's treatment plan. He doesn't think there will be any reason for me to see the ENT specialist but I am not canceling that appointment yet.

Less stuffy --more sleepy

Would be a reasonable description of my status today. I hope the allergy testing tomorrow shows something. Today I learned that rice does not have gluten and its fairly rare to be allergic to it. Well *IF* I have some sensitivity to wheat or wheat and corn, or all gluten proteins life would be simpler if I can still eat rice freely. I felt like I had a regular headache this morning, it slacked off when I showered. Last night I got a bad headache around midnight, ice was not helpful, heat was. It felt like the pain center was my left eyebrow. Had some more pain a few hours later but not enough to drive me to get up and take pills or apply heat, I think I iced it some and then fell asleep with the dull pain. Well when I finally get this solved I should have extra appreciation for normal health for a few years. In the meantime, thank goodness I have no readers and can whine here w/o getting self conscious about it.

***Oh and politically *** Mitch Daniels is pushing his R majority congress to drop their public union limiting bill :(
Darn I was hoping he was the stealth conservative that could get nominated and win the POTUS race in 2012. Now who do we have? I like Palin but was a bit turned off by the one episode of Sarah Palins AK that I watched. More importantly I believe that much of the country would have to admit that they were lied to by the MarxSpewMedia and change their opinion of her. I don't think people are good about admitting "oops I was wrong" It could only happen if people get the message that the MarxSpewMedia deliberately fooled them. I don't know if that can happen and then there are still some women who won't vote for the 'pretty woman, who didn't slog through as much education as me, therefore must not be as smart and got some of her success by being pretty and thats not fair'. I like Allen West, don't care that he is politically very much a rookie, he served with honor. Or Herman Cain --force the minorities to choose between the marxist 1/2 black vs the conservative black candidate. I'm a bit afraid that Cain may be another Ross Perot or at least might be painted as such by the media and stymied in the GOP primary, and I don't know him -- he may be another squish like Daniels. Could Romney get elected in general and is he a much better conservative than I think after the Mass mandatory insurance deal? I think Romney might be electable but if he turned out to be a Bush Sr (41) rather than a Reagan type figure I don't think he saves the country.

Is it even possible to save the country? Can we turn back into a REPUBLIC with a real rule of law, rather than a sort of democracy, where the marxists ignore majority votes when they don't like the results and the government and its protected buddies get to ignore the law?

Wormed horses today

Got them all (mini's and AJ as well as the groups that include my own horses. I did this instead of riding Lady. By the time I got myself outside I did not have time to do both. Vacuumed the upstairs hall and wiped down more dust laden surfaces in my bathroom today. Stupid sinus pain is back maybe? Hurts behind my eye. I could blame that on too much looking at my laptop, but it feels like its the sinus with less focus on the cheekbone area maybe. Lady was hard to worm. Well I came from the off-side to make sure her mouth was empty and then she relaxed a bit. I don't remember having much trouble when I first had her here from KS, one time she acted goofy but I was thinking it was the weight tape. Maybe I didn't worm her again. Oh well she settled down after I got the wormer tube in her mouth the first time. Goofy mare. I have to call my farrier, I thought I had the next appointment written on calendar but if I did, mom threw it away w/o transferring the info.

Chipping away at cleaning

Geez I had really let things go. I have plastic drawer units on my bathroom counter because there is no built in vanity or cupboards and it was like the crud one finds under a fridge behind the larger one. I vacuumed the stairs last night and picked up some of mom's clutter from the top of the hall. Well mom would say some of the clutter is mine, she wants me to sort through her outgrown clothes to select anything I want. Well I really don't need tops and have not been in the mood to mess with that. I wouldn't care if she had just given them away. Painting clutter is all hers though. I painted my bedroom and 'might' suck it up and paint the bathroom some time but I HATE to paint and she is the one who isn't working, she could do like dad and just spend 1 to 3 hours a day chipping away at the projects when she doesn't feel up to going full time but if she can't grind it out in a couple of long days she doesn't do projects it seems.

Sinusitis or whatever seems a bit better today. I have started taking just 2 ibuprofen and then if I need something sooner than 6 hours I take 2 more in 3 or 4 hours. I'm not sure if the gluten avoidance attempts are helping make this possible or just tincture of time but it feels better to me than taking the maximum ibuprofen and then taking tylenol between doses. Cannot wait to have the whole sinusitis episode behind me and just deal with usual minor neck back and leg issues from being in my 40's and having lived life for enjoyment rather than maximal preservation. I think I will ride Lady again today but might punt again on touching Sadie. I don't want to do something stupid with the young horse, plus I'm trying to get/keep Lady ready to be ridden by D's friend K.

Rats rats rats rats --headaches are back

So now I am scared to eat rice but wondering if it was the corn I put in the goulash I made that was the problem. Or maybe it was the dust from my cleaning. Or maybe there is still a bacterial infection. DARN IT -- I will make as big of a change in my eating habits as it takes if it will prevent these damn headaches but if I am going to get tease responses where I feel better and then the headaches come back and I cant isolate the triggers I'll never get anywhere --and I ate rice friday night before I had the good nights sleep --BUT the web reading I did suggested that this sinusitis swelling response can take up to a day after eating the trigger food. Oh I hope the allergy testing gives information. Some reading I have done suggest that the skin testing can miss things and a blood test is more reliable. So I hope they will give me a blood test for allergies if the skin test doesn't show anything, OR take a culture to look for bacteria or fungi in the sinuses, well that is jumping ahead - I should just hope the skin test shows response to some things that will explain this and I can eat gluten free, or wheat and soy free or whatever and be ok.

6 hours straight sleep last night - allergy looking likely

So its looking like an allergy to wheat or cinnamon probably has been complicating things. I woke up at 6:xx to pee and flushed my nose out while I was up. Got a pretty big wad of yellow/green gunk. I did not have any pain though so I just went back to bed instead of taking more NSAIDs or another percocet. So I am completely symptom free and full of energy today --NOT. I do feel up to riding shortly and I did sweep my room and finish dusting before going back to surfing the web while sitting on the couch. Maybe removing the dust bunnies will keep the recovery going LOL. I do feel somewhat stuffy and my nose is irritated (I think too much saline rinsing irritates it but the rinsing has been the lesser evil)

I have GOT to buckle down and really clean upstairs so that its not nasty in 2 weeks if D and her friend K drive out to test ride Lady. The plan is they would stay overnight and drive back on sunday. So I also have to get in gear and call the brand inspector to find out what I need to get Lady brand inspected.

crikey maybe I am allergic

I had some headache last night but they felt different, more localized and I was not so generally stuffed up. I did take a percocet twice, I would say they zone me out, don't do diddly squat on the actual pressure that I can tell. I tried taking naproxin in hopes I could sleep through but I think I'll stick with ibuprofen for a bit even though its a colossal pain finding something wheat free to eat to keep tummy happy.

Ole HAD to go out and run off some coyotes. Darned lazy old man dad was just bellering at him instead of letting him out. Running off the coyotes is the ONE useful thing dad's stupid dog does so I was crabby that *I* had to let him out to do this and wait around and wait around for him to come back but I did use the time to apply heat to my sinuses and back which was feeling tight and sore. I finally put on a coat and went outside and hollered until he came back. Stupid dog took the long way around too. I would have opened the driveway gate for him and I'm sure he could have cut through the bottom pasture but he went clear around the entire pasture. I was worried he was asking to get shot since that took him near neighborhood houses. But he did finally show up. Someday I am going to get a solid 7-8 hours of sleep, and probably wake up with a complaining back when I do LOL.

Thank god, I was able to sleep last night

Not to say that I didn't wake up with some pain, but it resolved with reasonable icing/heat applications and then I slept till 6 am when my 6 hr point for ibuprofen was 4:30. My alarm went off and I turned it off instead of hitting snooze. I probably dozed some, but iced and got up in about 1/2 hour. Still felt tired, well I didn't make up much sleep from the 3 hours tuesday night and it was not uninterrupted sleep. So happens that I didn't eat any bread yesterday. So today I am actually committing to avoid bread and as much as possible flour. I wonder if I might be allergic to cinnamon? That is something that I have not been eating regularly for years but had gotten on a bit of cinnamon sugar toast kick and the cst was my preferred snack for taking with the ibuprofen. How ironic would it be if my snack that I took with the NSAIDS was causing the swelling? I refilled a cinnamon container tuesday morning and it was a mess so I did get some extra exposure. Avoiding cinnamon would be a very easy fix to implement and avoiding wheat or possibly just bread (yeast) would not be too bad. I hope I don't come up as allergic to chocolate though.

However *I* still think I most likely have an infection. But my doc doesn't think so unless she changes her mind after the allergy testing. So unless the eliminating wheat works or the allergy testing pinpoints something to eliminate and that makes me feel better my options seem to be: A )get basic antibiotics from my vet under guise of having on hand for the horse and take them --and B) maybe ask sis if the the vet she used to work for would write scripts to order online to get other stuff that my vet would not just hand out to me to have on hand, or C) hope the ENT doc feels there is infection and takes a culture/treats it. I can not just limp along until mid April though so I am going to request the antibiotics from my vet, and I don't think I will wait for the allergy testing to get them although I will probably try to wait until they do the test to start taking them -- it will be good to have them on hand even if food elimination or the allergy testing solves things.

*Well called the vet office and am picking up SMZs to have on hand. My Doc gave me a prescription for percocet and I picked it up just now. Hopefully I will not need to take it much. its only 30 pills, and -'take 1 or 2 every 4 to 6 hours as needed.' Well that is not going to be much help for sleeping through the night if I don't see continued symptom improvement rather than today just being the good day of the 2-day sinus symptom sine wave I seem to have fairly often. I hope I am just allergic and can keep away the monster by not eating wheat or even better by just avoiding cinnamon. Of course all the TV dinners and my backup shelf stable meals contain pasta so if I want to avoid wheat altogether I'll be just snacking on apple, yogurt and having vegatable mix for the entree tonight. Avoiding all wheat or all gluten could be pretty tough, I'll have to stop my lazy TV dinner ways and cook from scratch or I'll only have a handful of selections and I'll be tired of them in no time flat.

GRRRRRRR-ENT/primary doc shuffle

I called the ENT office again this morning. The receptionist told me that my primary doc needs to treat my sinus infection. She could call the on-call ENT doc for antibiotic advise or refer me for urgent surgery but the referral I got gets me an appointment on April 12th. 8 weeks. I could not just stumble along for 8 weeks even if my symptoms had not escalated last night. But they did escalate to the point that I got maybe 3 hrs total of sleep because I could not get to a point where pressure had been relieved and I remained comfortable except for maybe one hour after taking my last very old tramidol pill and icing in bed for a good long time (not even my pill, it was from an old pet prescription for one of the dogs) and then after taking 4 ibuprofen gelcaps after I had applied hot compresses for 20-30 minutes to get to a point where the pain was not nauseating me and I could eat something to buffer the ibuprofen and then icing in bed again for quite some time before everything eased off and I was able to stop icing and doze off. I was so tired when I woke to more pain that I was icing, which was making things ok while I was doing it and I kept nodding off --the jerk of the ice bottle on my arm would then wake me. My doc is out today, the nurses say they passed my phone request for 'antibiotics and something for symptom relief' to doc covering her patients. I got to feeling a bit better after noon and drove on into Boulder rather than trying to communicate "well place prescription with Brighton Walgreen and I'll pay full price" I don't think I'll get a whole lot of work done though.

**I did however find a new weapon, sniffing steam with peppermint oil in it seems to loosen some of the crud in my stuffed sinus. So I brought my peppermint oil to work. I'll use the eucalyptus or spearmint at home.

**I now have an allergy appointment for skin testing on Feb 23. One week. I can keep taking sudafed, supposed to halt mucinex for 3 days. But I'm not getting a prescription for pain/swelling/congestion today because I was not coherent enough this morning, and my doc is at home today and just checking messages periodically. Oh great, just got a message from doc passed on from the nurse that I should make allergy appointment --but NO pain or steroid prescription. I am going to have to beg for that I guess. Sigh, I hate to beg but I can't handle many repeats of last night/this morning.

yay, I am being referred to an ENT

I suppose I should be pleased that my Dr is referring me since the sinus monster has not yielded to the basic treatments but it just feels like more delay and hassle. Hmm, I may have to stop blogging or at least stop the online whinging part. I teared up on sunday and brought on a headache. DOH, never never never let yourself give in to even a brief bout of crying when you have a sinus issue which presents like a durned hoof abcess with insufficient drainage that causes painful pressure. Well I better call the ENT office sooner rather than later, today was a bugger morning starting shortly after 4 am. Got that headache gone and went back to bed but got another one at 6:30, and I knew I needed to attack it but I felt so tired and stubborn I let it build up before crawling out of bed to deal with it with hot compress when the ice bottle I keep next to my pillow was failing to quell it. I had so hoped that switching to ibuprofen was going to keep the nighttime headaches more mild as they had been for the previous few days and keep daytime headaches from developing at all unless I was stupid enough to get teary.

Oh joy, the ENT office is "don't call us, we'll call you after the PA reviews" How lovely that I could possibly get kicked back to my primary care Dr if the PA doesn't think my scan/history warrants ENT attention.

**5:02 pm - no call from the ENT office, do I think someone is on staff till 6pm there -- why no no I don't.

I THINK I am going to have to call tomorrow and tell them that if they can't treat me reasonably soon then I need to get my Doc's office to refer me to Franklin clinic instead. Darn it I hate chasing things via phone at the best of times, only desperation the the sinus monster may be growing again will drive me to get it done in spite of just wanting to coast along avoid anything that might raise BP or otherwise awaken sinus pressure. BLAH. I am so effing tired of this. One step closer to stocking up on horse medicines and really only the fact that the sulfa drug has had mixed results on stamping out previous sinus infection is making me stick with using the services that I did choose to buy insurance for this year instead of going with a HSA plan.

regional endurance convention yesterday

A mixed bag for me. I wondered if I would feel up to going at all with the stupid sinus crap. Well I made it just as the last speaker was finishing up. I was not having any pain but the drugs and foggy head feeling from the pressure or lack of deep sleep or something made it extra hard for me to cope with milling crowds. I had thought I wanted to go ahead and get there at that time rather than waiting for the banquet so I could shop but I was so out of it I only bought a set of cards made from ride photos that Karl creations were selling. WOW, they have always been awesome ride photographers but they had some wonderful portraits and artsy pictures displayed too. I should have bought a cool medic vest and sweat scraper from another vendor but I was wavering on it, then decided to do my on call check to get away from crowd noise and they were packed up when I finished with that. Well I can email them and ask them to set those things aside for me or something.

The hotel had wifi as I was sure they would so I was able to do an 'on call' check after UTC midnight before the banquet. I have not cared to drink at all with all the NSAIDS, and sudafed I've been taking, too bad I think I could have used some social lubricant. Shade was the 6th "FW" horse. They gave me a size small, sigh. I can get into it and perhaps vests should be snug but next year I must contact them to let them know I need a medium in most unisex sizing and a large in most ladies. I think this is the first year this happened, perhaps new person ordered things or the bargain hunting gal had more stuff on her mind. They know I just declare as a FW because I think 4 weight divisions is too many.

Neither B nor Q was there. I was not really surprised, they didn't make it last year and I didn't seem them at any rides I made it to this year but I missed their fun company even though I'm not super close with either of them.

On the positive pendulum swing

I seem to be having good sinus day/bad sinus day cycle going on. Wednesday and today are good sinus days. Good meaning no more than 2 night time headaches and they receded with just heat on wednesday and just ice today as well as remaining on hefty doses of NSAIDS and the NSAIDS + sudafed and mucinex and saline keep headaches gone during the day. If I have a set of good days in a row and the night-time headaches decrease I'll figure I am heading towards recovery. My perspective has changed to where waking up nightly with *A* headache will feel like success unless that headache is a bugger to get rid of.

Just a couple months ago I was taking a good nights sleep for granted; the dog or cat waking me up and or tossing and turning with some worry was an annoyance and I would shut the pets out of my room if sleep had been interrupted too much and I wanted to have an uninterrupted night and I was thinking I needed to figure out what to do for mattress so I could stop taking naproxen almost nightly after having gotten to a point of using it only for a bit of weekend warrior over exertion type stuff with my back or neck. Now I am taking so much NSAIDS for my sinus that my back and neck aren't evening complaining about sleeping on a wedge of pillows and I have been skipping MSM most days.

and HURRAY I got new division orders today. The oil royalty company got the stipulation and drew up the new papers. I stopped at the post office to mail them back because the envelope I found was oversized and I didn't want to guess wrong on the postage. I am so glad that this should be the final step I need to take with that. Trying to be fair to the sibs was an annoying tar baby to get handled to the end but at least it should be completely done now and mom and dad didn't just buy the rights 2 years ago, I don't think mom would have felt any obligation to share with us kids, she just would have increased her shopping and dr habits.

Geez that sounds so uncharitable but its the perception I have. I am even resenting dad for dragging her to a pain management shrink, I am feeling like that is just throwing money down a different hole. If mom wants to believe she needs to be on antibiotics for months not days I don't care --IF she would just get a horse size bottle of sulfa from Dr Mike, have sis get the vet she used to work for to write a script for amoxicillin and maybe the tuberculosis drug Dr. Mike said he uses on horses with chronic sinus infections and order the stuff from veterinary supply place. But oh no, she cant be happy unless she is getting a human dr to hand her the pills with their stamp of approval even though she has no problem shopping around until she finds one that will give her what she wants if the first 2 or 3 drs say there is no bacterial infection. Waste of money IMO.

sinus scan today --Doc gets results in 2 days

I felt absolutely crappy on tuesday and took a sick day from work. I finally went back to using heat on my face and it was like a miracle cure. Slept 1/2 way well, pain was mildish when it woke me and took less time to chase away then I remember. So I hope the sinus monster, I'm thinking of naming it Barry LOL, was not hidden during the cat scan. Or if it is leaving and will STAY GONE I could live with that. Like getting the vet out and the horse is better. I just really don't want to have continued pain waking me up and there is nothing for the docs to go on. I may have to see if I can find the sinus survival book I gave mom a couple years ago if the scan doesn't give the doc a treatment plan. That or just buy a horse sized bottle of sulfa AB from my vet and pretend Obamacare has taken root, I don't want to ruin my immune system taking AB's for a huge length of time but I can't help wondering if I might be better off now if I had just tried sulfa AB for a few weeks and not even used the HMO back when this started. Oh well second guessing is a negative activity. The horses had snowballs in their feet this morning and it made me feel better that I probably made the right call with Cindy this fall. Its just a minor nuisance for the ones that have working tendons but its the kind of thing that could tear a tendon that was brittle. Poor Cindy, I probably could have managed an arthritic joint to keep her comfortable but I don't know of anything one can do for tendons that start breaking down. She loved to GO so I don't think she would have been OK with a bunch of stall confinement.

"my" soldier is done with his tour

So I don't need to feel bad about not getting anything mailed last week nor force myself to write something. I just have to decide whether to "adopt" another one. I was not very good about getting stuff sent to this one. I am not fond of writing to strangers with no idea of their interests but had been fairly good at the packages but when I was given a sailor on a carrier as opposed to someone stuck on a FOB I didn't think chips and jerky would have too much appeal and I wasn't great at coming up with other stuff. I think I will wait until I think the sinus crud is resolved, I'm using it as an excuse as much or more than actually being clobbered but still I am way behind on things and need to get into a better groove. I couldn't be whinging about a sinus infection to someone serving in Afghanistan with some real possibility of losing limbs to an IED and probably at minimum knows someone who has been through that.

Diamond gave me a small scare sunday

He was NQR or ADR (not quite right /aint doing right) when I gave all horses some feed around 2:30 pm. I had to ask Diamond to get up and then he sort of lipped at his feed but didn't really eat it. I tied Frosty up so Diamond could eat in peace if he started. Went back and got some sand clear to dump in both mini's feed. Diamond did not finish his feed and would not eat at all when I took it away and offered him just sand clear. He was not in any active distress so I just informed mom of his status and went back to my couch. One thing about being sick, I didn't pester the horse with lots of activity just to make myself feel better that I was doing something for him LOL.

When I fed hay around 5:30 pm Diamond came over and investigated the hay pile but left to lay down across the driveway from Lady, Sadie and CJ's pen after a few minutes. I dug around until I found the old bottle of banamine and some probiotic, found a 20 gauge needle and pulled up a half dose of the banimine, deciding I would give it IM since Diamond was not in serious pain and I didn't fancy trying to get an IV shot into a wooly mini without even having good daylight. Mom was ready to go out and hold flashlight --1/2 time of the superbowl and when I walked out Diamond was eating at the hay pile with Frosty. So I grabbed just the probiotic. I don't know if any of that made it into Diamond but he was "get out of here and let me eat" attitude so I wasn't too worried. He had good appetite when I went out at 9:30 pm and again this morning so I will treat both mini's with sand clear for a week. It is most likely either a sand issue or a bit of tummy upset from the weedy hay I had given them -- I was throwing extra flakes so they could get some grass and just leave the weeds for mulch but Diamond may not have been selective enough.

Icing things today

I have been just icing when sinus pain flares the last 2 times and its worked. Supposed to snow after noon today. At least I am not missing good riding weather. I have to heave myself off the couch and go hay the horses. I am going to try avoiding bread today. I don't think its related to the specific foods but I have been having a headache after eating breakfast and drinking my tea in the morning. Then I get to try to minimize tipping my head down while I pick up hay to feed.

The post office in Boulder no longer has a stamp vending machine that takes cash. I left my wallet, with sheet of stamps, at home yesterday, I forgot to replace it after fetching it to schedule scan. Stopping at the post office with intent to buy 2 stamps from the vending machine and drop cards off and then finding it was a wasted trip was a mini synopsis of my week.

I have a sinus scan scheduled for wednesday

I think I need to call my dr and beg for an anti-inflammatory to get me through. I hate doing it and will mean swinging to a pharmacy yet again if she gives me a prescription but I am sitting on couch trying to distract myself from headache which is not intense. So tired of hot packs and icing that I resist doing them until I'm hurting and tylenol + ibuprofen or alleve is not making much dent. The prednisone was helping. Wasn't getting me through nights on the 1 pill dose but I had good afternoons. I was headache free till 5am this morning and thought oh thank god; the Zpack AB is working again but now am having headaches once I'm up. Took last prednisone I had yesterday and the bute bottle is starting to seem appealing but my vet has told me its very hard on human kidney or liver or both. I know jockeys who used it too freely ruined their organs but vet made it sound like just a few times would be trouble. I have some trouble believing that when its prescribed SO freely for horses, I rather think herbivores are less likely to need really great kidney or livers.

*** Well its 4pm. Reluctance to phone has carried the day. Hopefully I don't regret it this weekend. I am in such a fog that I realized about 11:30 that I had not taken sudafed yet which I take around 10-10:30. I don't know how much it helps but I did start feeling less stuffy after I took it. Maybe I need to take extra of that for a few days. Wonder if we have some prednisone at home from Ludwig. I don't recall seeing any. But I might have to dig a bit if I feel crappy over the weekend. I got a holiday letter written, should prep cards for the sibs and mail tonight. I am not hurting --took tylenol on dot of 6 hours from last dose and 3 hours after ibuprofen dose -- but I feel tired and foggy headed.

Uncle? Help? Whingefest?

Sinus pressure/pain is back. Called HMO, they set up appt. but Doc called me and said "dont bother" I will write you a script for the 1st AB that worked and set you up to get a scan. She wants me to give what I'm on until friday and then call for scan on monday if the Zpack AB isn't working. I don't know if I'll make it that long but I'll wait till tomorrow for the Zpack I guess.

Called the oil royalty company and the fax I sent thursday didn't go through. Must send again. NOW. really I am going to stop typing and do this. I think I'll go home early if I don't start feeling better. I'm not in sharp pain but the pressure is bugging me and I'm counting hours until I can take the next rotation of alleve or tylenol again. What a drag.

***UPDATE*** I did not get a ph call after faxing again so I schlepped to the post office and sent a hard copy with certified mail so I will know when the oil management company gets it. I should probably send sibs checks. Really would like to wait and see what happens with the royalty checks first. If they make adjustment based on the date of the stipulation I will not get anything back from the brother. I suppose I could send something anyway as show of good faith but am feeling mulish since I have gone to so much trouble already trying to straighten things out.

I should type up a holiday letter and send out since I whiffed on christmas letters. and I really should tackle the CO data project, I don't feel like concentrating but it isn't going to increase any sinus headache and it might distract me.

tax forms and headaches -yuck

I wanted to file my federal taxes by Jan 31 because I didn't do quarterly payments and I think I read somewhere that if you file by Jan 31 you don't have to worry about not getting the estimated payment for last quarter in by jan 15. Well I didn't get my ducks lined out until late last week and I was unsure of how to handle the oil royalties with deduction for depletion so I thought "oh I'll file on-line today and they'll have insta-pay so I wont have to worry about whether its a "postmarked by" deadline or $ in the IRS hands deadline.

I can now say that HR-block online and some outfit called internet-taxprep are WORTHLESS. If I had only needed to do the very basic form why would I bother paying for an on-line service? Neither one could handle oil royalties and rather than verify whether Timmy's turbo tax was just as useless I just filled out the forms myself. I did find something on the web which makes me think I probably did that correct and the cool thing was the oil depletion allowance is taken on schedule E and I could still use the standard deduction on the 1040 form.

So hopefully the infernal revenue service will be content with their hefty check received in a few days and postmarked Jan 31 and I wont have a penalty and they will also concur that I did the royalties correctly. Some days I really wish that old quote of "IF you want it done right you have to do it yourself" was not SO true all the time.

The HR-block website even said they had access to people to help if one got stuck. Yeah right, I would have paid extra to get a ph# or on-line chat with someone who could tell me how to fill out the schedule E etc but they didn't give me that option.

Then to top everything off I woke with head pain this morning. It was not the typical sinus pressure I have had, but was all on the left side so I don't know if its mainly a tension thing or deeper sinus pressure --more in my temple and behind my eye than in the cheek under my eye where I had been feeling sinus pain before. At least it eased off with just one hot compress round and alleve. In fact the actual headache wasn't even whine worthy but I am getting/remaining so spooked at the thought of not being able to get rid of whatever the source is and having the 2 hour headaches come back that I have to struggle to maintain some rationality.