My Guy and I have become mired down in what could quite possibly be crowned as THE Definitive First World Problem.
Let me preface this by saying that I don't watch much TV... at all.
Really. I've convinced myself that Netflix doesn't count as TV...sshhhhhhhh...don't burst my bubble.
I watch The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones and that's pretty much it.
...and their seasons basically run back to back so I'm good for about an hour a week.
Tops.
I'm not sure why I felt the need for any sort of preface...but a preface is what you got.
So, a couple of weeks ago, we started watching Battlestar Galactica on Netflix.
..the re-imagined series... NOT to be confused with the most excellent original one from way back when that my little kid self was super obsessed with ...this is the one that I am obsessed with right now as a grown up adult person.
At first, all was going swimmingly.
We were really really enjoying the show in all its post-apocalyptic, space fantasy, campy glory.
It was awesome!!!
Spending nice time together, cuddling on the couch with the dogs and kitten.
Quality family bonding time is what it was!! Yes, indeedy.
We had deep conversations trying to figure out who was a Cylon and who wasn't. (I've actually got my suspicions that Shane is a Cylon, too, but we'll keep that just between you and me)
We even incorporated Battlestar Galactica lingo into our everyday conversations...
"Gods Damn it!! I forgot to buy milk!!"
"I wish the fraking dog would fraking quit barking."
"Oh my gods, that kitten is so fraking adorable."
"Where the frak did I leave my wallet??"
"Don't get all up in my grill...I'm the good Gaius."
You know, the usual stuff.
We had settled into a nice sensible Netflix viewing groove and were watching an episode or two...sometimes three... a night, if/when we had a chance.
No big deal...
Until we noticed a little tiny notation at the bottom of the Netflix Battlestar Galactica Episode Page (not entirely sure if that's really what the actual page is called but I'm going with it).
This little tiny seemingly harmless notation read "Available until October 1".
Available until October 1st???
As in a week and a half from the day that we noticed this godsforsaken life-altering notation???
....
....
WHAT THE FRAK!!!
OH MY GODS!!!
HOW THE FRAKING HELL ARE WE GOING TO WATCH THE LAST TWO SEASONS THAT HAVE LIKE 21 FRAKING EPISODES EACH BEFORE THE 1st OF GODSDAMN OCTOBER ???
Needless to say, our easy casual Battlestar Galactica viewing shifted into Extreme Battlestar Galactica Binge Watching Mode.
We were fraking committed!!
And we almost made it, too.
Almost.
We finished Season 4 Episode 10 last night/this morning at 12:20am....and we had to surrender.
We need our sleep.
We both have jobs.
We have to be at the top of our games. (One of us is responsible for ensuring that a city with the population of 160 000 has clean drinking water. One of us picks up dog poo for a living. Clear, sharp thinking is a MUST!! Sleep-deprived minds are NOT clear and sharp!!)
It was a sacrifice we had to make. If we've learned one thing from the survivors of the 2nd Cylon Revolution, it's that life's all about tough decisions. You can't take the easy way out or people DIE gods damn it!!! They DIE!!!
There are 21 episodes in the final season.
We made it through 10.
We have 11 left.
(See the math I just did there?? Impressive, no?)
It isn't on Netflix anymore.
I checked.
It was the first thing I did this morning when I woke up.
GodsDamn.
All is not lost though.
We can actually watch the rest online.
There are pirated links all over the place...
But...
It just won't be the same.
Our BluRay player was Netflix-equipped so we could watch it on our TV...sitting on our big comfy couch ... with our Bose surround sound system. It was awesome.
And now we have to sit hunched at our computer.
Our mission was not accomplished.
Sorry Admiral Adama.
We fraked up.
Big time.
So now you know where we'll be...
Sitting hunched at the computer...
For 11, 42-minute-long episodes.
************
P.S.
My Guy found this video today and it's hilarious and makes me feel like less of a fraking wackjob.
He and I are not alone.
Take a peek: (Don't worry about the fact that the video is 10 minutes long...Really, it's only the first few minutes that are funny to anyone who has gone off the edge binge-watching a series. The last half of the video is probably funny only to those who are BGCrazy...so you only have to commit to a few measly minutes...You can do it!! I know you can!! It's not like you have to watch 11 X 42 minutes in order for your life to have meaning again. A few measly minutes is nothing...NOTHING, I say!!)
So, as you may or may not know, I sometimes struggle with the fine art of making small talk...thinking on my feet isn't one of my strong suits. I'm really really bad at it. It's kinda why I write.
I also sometimes struggle with letting things go...including and especially my social blunders. I like to hold on tight to those bad boys and tuck them away somewhere nice and handy so they're real easy to grab if ever I get the urge to make fun of myself.
Sometimes I like to laugh WITH myself.
Other times I prefer to laugh AT myself.
...depends on my mood.
For instance, the other day, I saw a friend who is experiencing some pretty major health issues and as I walked by I quipped, "Hey ----!! How're you doing?"
...and quickly carried on my way, internally smashing myself on the forehead for asking such a dumbass question of this wonderful person who was very obviously NOT "doing" o.k.
There's actually no laugh "at" OR "with" for that one and I've managed to beat myself up rather handily and have since sworn to change my "go to" social greeting/pleasantry to:
"Hi ----!! Nice to see you!!"
...or something like that.
If you have any other suggestions, please leave them in the comments below.
I would be most appreciative.
I need all the help I can get :D
That social "oops" came right on the heels of another that happened last Friday, although the Friday one is one that I can very definitely laugh AT myself about. I've had more than several chuckles and head shakes since it happened.
Immediately after the fact, I thought to myself:
"Self, that's the kind of thing you used to write blog posts about when you used to write blog posts. You should maybe start writing again."
"Yeah, maybe...but who really gives a shit about reading about my social ineptness ...or would it be ineptitude??? hmmm dunno"
...and I left it at that.
But now since I'm apparently writing again and I am STILL shaking my head and chuckling about it, I thought I'd write a fascinating post about it.
Although instead of actually writing about it, I'm going to create a sort of photo essay using the screen shots of a text chat I had with my fravourite friend. She and I appreciate and understand each other's "quirks" and quite often share them as a form of entertainment and/or as a means to elicit support and compassion.
We've been doing this for nearly 30 years. It's a good system.
So here it is:
"Social Wizardry: A Photo Essay"
(I'm blue)
...and we then went on to have a rather intelligent discussion about the results of last week's provincial election. We aren't total self-absorbed wankers.
The End.
**oh, and as a note of explanation...the "I like your house" bit was a crack aimed at a line I used 25 years ago in an ill-fated effort to pick up a very handsome young man at a party he was throwing at his house.
Now, I know you all are thinking "What a cool looking salamander!!"....alas, Beloved Readers, you are incorrect.
You see, I, too, leapt to the conclusion that it was a salamander but when I got home, I immediately Google Image-searched "red salamander" only to find that I was mistaken. A red salamander is something entirely different.
Curious, I decided to broaden my scope...by limiting it somewhat...weird... and Google Image-searched "Ontario Salamander" and I learned that....
It is NOT a cool looking salamander.
It is a cool looking NEWT!!
No... not a N.E.W.T.... a NEWT....a N.E.W.T. is, again, something entirely different.
And it's not just any run of the mill kind of newt, it's so cool it actually has two names. It answers either to the ho-hum name, "Eastern Newt" OR to the fancier but rather obvious name, "Red-Spotted Newt".
And did you know that it is the only newt that lives in Central/South Ontario??
Well, to clarify, there's probably more than just this guy living in Central/South Ontario but the Eastern Newt/ RSN is the only species of newt that lives around here.
I thought that was pretty neat.
I've seen loads of salamander but he's my one and only newt and I was moved to share my big news with you guys.
p.s. I realize I haven't been around much over the past few months...
Holy Crap!! I just checked and I can't believe I haven't written anything since November! wow. My bad.
My world has been a bit hectic and strange over the past year and the hectic strange stuff really ramped up from October onward, so in accordance with my own special brand of self-preservation, any of my downtime was spent being passively entertained.
I kinda slipped outta "Writer Mode" and found myself very solidly in "Reader Mode".
I've been reading voraciously. Some good stuff. Some crap stuff. But I read my brains out for six-ish months and it was fun :D
Oh...and I also discovered Netflix and got sucked down into THAT rabbit-hole. It's sooooo awesome...and wildly time-consuming.
Here we are now. Entertain us.
I won't go into some of the stuff that weighed me down but I will touch briefly on one thing because it's pretty important and most people don't know a whole lot about it and if even ONE person reads this and learns something new, then that is great.
Ok...
My Guy has Lyme Disease.
And it sucks.
In a big bad way...and his story is nowhere near the worst I've seen.... but this thing has really kicked the crap out of him.
hmmmm....I've been sitting here for the past half hour trying to figure out how to explain it all and I'm just not sure where to go with it. I could try to tell his whole story but that would take a looooong time to write and it's confusing and convoluted and I don't think I'm up to the challenge.
I guess I'll take a stab at writing up my own explanation which will probably be confusing as hell so if you're interested in reading actual experts describe this just skip down to the blue link and it'll tell you all you need to know...
Now...
Most people know very little about this disease ...I know I didn't. I knew you got Lyme from a tick bite and dogs could get it too. I didn't know that it's an inflammatory disease. If not caught and treated early, Lyme Disease can wreak havoc on almost every system in your body. It imitates many autoimmune diseases which makes diagnosis... to those not familiar with Lyme... pretty tricky. It can be mistaken for Rheumatoid Arthritis, MS, ALS, Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Crohn's, HIV, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's...quite a list.
The thing is...while the symptoms of Lyme may mimic those diseases, most of which are incurable, if those symptoms don't respond to to the usual treatment or don't quite fit into what is "normal" for those diseases or nothing seems to help...and if Lyme is considered a possibility and it turns out it IS Lyme...it IS, in most cases, treatable with a long term course of antibiotics.
That's where the trouble starts.
Actually the trouble starts with the fact that most doctors don't know anything about Lyme other than a quick text book explanation and so, Lyme is rarely considered a possibility.
If you can actually convince your doc that you think you have Lyme and they send you for a blood test to "confirm" it, the testing in Ontario (and all of Canada) is horrifically unreliable, yielding many many false negatives and if that one test comes back negative...Lyme is ruled out. It doesn't matter if you present with all the symptoms of Lyme, diagnosis in Ontario is based strictly on one blood test. It will not be treated with only a clinical diagnosis.
It is next to impossible to get the treatment that is needed to cure Lyme. Doctors refuse to prescribe a long term course (3 months?? 6 months?? 1 year?? 2 years?? etc etc...until symptoms clear up) of antibiotics to Lyme patients.
The crazy thing is that they will prescribe them for HIV, TB, ocular rosacea (as will be explained later on) but for whatever reason, they will not for Lyme and if they DO...they will get their medical licence suspended.
This forces people to seek diagnosis and treatment in the US...and it is expensive and inconvenient and just plain old crappy.
It is the strangest, weirdest most frustrating thing.
This weirdo thing has turned me into a sort of half-assed conspiracy theorist and if I talk about for too long, I start sounding like a ranting zealot. And that's not cool.
The reason why I am desperate for people to learn about Lyme and how to prevent it and, failing that, how to recognize it and how to treat it, is the fact that the changing climate is allowing the tick population to move further north...up into our neck of the woods. I just want people to have a wee bit of knowledge.
Awareness is everything!!!
So, if you're still with me, please explore at least the first link and read what people who actually know what they're talking about explain why it's important to learn about Lyme:
So...pretty please with sugar on top, do me a great big monster favour... learn about Lyme Disease and how to prevent it. It'd mean a whole lot to me.
Thanks!!
********************************************************
p.p.s If you have any interest at all in reading about My Guy's particular story, I've written about it and I tried to be clear and concise in my story telling...I even used bullet points to make it look like I'm not rambling but really, it's just an excuse for me to not use proper sentence structure. I wrote this before I wrote anything else Lyme-related so there are a few redundancies...huh...weird.
If you're NOT interested in reading my horrible rambling writing....this is your final warning.
I hardly even proof-read it since I'm pretty sure most everyone has bailed by now. I'm just going to hit "Publish"
Head back!!
Before it's too late!!
Rough Timeline for My Guy's Lyme Journey
His jaw got sore. Really sore. Eating was painful chore. Was treated by a physiotherapist for TMJ for a few months but saw little to no improvement.
His fingers started to swell and his joints started to ache. He had a hard time getting dressed, brushing his teeth, climbing stairs, sitting down...pretty much everything.
Diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis...even though his symptoms didn't really fit the disease. One blood test indicated that it might be RA and the docs latched onto that and ran with it.Treated with the "entry level" meds but they didn't seem to work so they upped the ante and put him on a stronger drug and 2 days after the first full dose his world turned upside down...at least that's how his brain saw it. He fell down in the bathroom and got a ambulance ride to hospital and was told he was suffering from an episode of "Profound Vertigo" and tinnitus and given a bunch of meds to help him "stabilize". The emerg doc thought it may have been a reaction to the injection he had for his arthritis and recommended that he try a different treatment. He was told it would take anywhere from days to weeks to months before it would go away.
Rheumatologist flatly disagreed that it was a reaction to the arthritis injection and directed him to stick to his weekly injection. He did it one more time. Ended up feeling worse than he did when he was in the hospital with any progress made was wiped out. He couldn't walk across a room by himself. I had to help him stand. The buzzing in his ears was relentless and he couldn't concentrate on anything. He was off work for a month.
During this time he had an appointment with his ophthalmologist for pre-existing and "unrelated" condition...(or at least we thought it was unrelated) and when the doctor heard about what had been going on, he asked two questions: "Have you spent much time in the woods lately?" (Yes...yes he had. We live in the woods and had been doing a ton of clearing up of dead wood) "Have you spent any time in southwest Ontario? " (Yes ...yes, he had...Each summer we spend a week camping in Long Point). The doc then implored him to get tested for Lyme Disease and when the standard Ontario test came back negative (which it did) he was to send blood samples to California to be tested for Lyme there. Also, he strongly suggested that he NOT take any more drugs that compromise the immune system...which is exactly what the methotrexate injection did. He guesses that once the immune system was turned down a few notches by the injections, the Lyme bacteria was given free reign over his body and went in to hyper-drive and the symptoms multiplied and worsened.
Rheumatologist, upon reflection, decided that what My Guy was suffering from was probably not RA because it was not responding to treatment the way RA typically does. Suggests that it could be MS and sets up an MRI to explore further....MRI shows that it isn't MS either. Rheumatologist emphatically refuses to consider Lyme as a possibility "This is NOT Lyme Disease. Chronic Lyme Disease does NOT exist!"
Found a local Lyme Literate Naturopathic doc who after taking note of all of the symptoms My Guy was presenting, told us that he had approximately 80% of the listed symptoms of Lyme and that it was his opinion that it WAS Lyme Disease and wanted to start a course of treatment right away...which meant either flying to BC for treatment or travelling to New York state (both options would be prohibitively expensive) to be treated because Ontario refuses to treat Lyme with an extended course of antibiotics. We did send blood to the lab in California and it came back positive for Lyme.
Yup...Positive for Lyme Disease
SO....in a remarkable lucky twist of fate, the "drug of choice" in the treatment of Lyme is a very strong antibiotic called, Doxycycline, is also the drug that he had been prescribed one year previously to treat his ocular rosacea. After the initial two week course(in the fall of 2012) cleared up the ulcers on his corneas, he was told to take pill or two a week just to keep the ulcers at bay. He was probably going to have to do this for the rest of his life...So he had a prescription for Doxy (with many many repeats) to treat one condition but no one in Canada (except one Naturopathic Doctor in BC) would prescribe long term for Lyme...because long term antibiotic use is "bad"
Taking matters into our own hands, we did a big BIG no-no and, along with the protocol that the NatPath doc set up for him, My Guy started taking the Doxy at the recommended dosage to treat Lyme Disease...and slowly but surely, day by day, month by month, he started feeling better.
The full body inflammation and painful joints subsided "Your arthritis seems to have gone into remission." -says Rheumatologist. How strange...
The buzzing in his ears gradually stopped...mostly
He is able to stand up and walk without feeling dizzy
He is able to stand for extended periods of time without need to hold onto something to prevent himself from falling
He is able to DO stuff
It's amazing!!!!
So, an extended course of antibiotics has cleared up most of his symptoms... and this is after being told by two Family Physicians, one Rheumatologist, one Infectious Disease Doc and one Neurologist that because that one (highly unreliable) blood test came back negative, he couldn't possibly have Lyme Disease and that there was no such thing as Chronic Lyme Disease.
These are the explanations we have received from the neurologist: a) He just must have a predisposition to inflammation(that has "mysteriously" gone into remission) b) the vertigo and tinnitus were most likely caused by an ear infection (which the Ear, Nose Throat specialist determined that it was not) and that 3) any of the cognitive difficulty he was having (which was LOTS...losing words, trouble concentrating, unable to complete sentences, memory loss, difficulty processing information and acting on it, difficulty with comprehensive reading) was because he was in pain because of the inflammation, and pain makes you tired and when you're tired you feel a little off....yeah...that's it...he's just been tired...???... We even told the neurologist our top secret secret that he was taking the Doxy and he replied that it is thought that Doxy may have some anti-inflammatory properties and it really was just a coincidence that he was feeling better. Case Closed .... OR ... And this is my explanation: he could've been bitten by a bug that transmitted a bacteria that causes all the symptoms he was presenting and once proper long term antibiotic treatment was administered these symptoms started to subside.
So, as it stands now, after 6 months of Doxy, he is feeling almost back to himself. He has been such a trooper and has stubbornly and stoically made his way through these challenging and frustrating and painful months and has done his best to not let Lyme run/ruin his life. He still has crappy days but on the whole he is feeling waaaaaaayyyy better.
YAY!!!!!
The kicker is that we can't even tell the other doctors that he's been taking the Doxy for Lyme or, more importantly, that it actually WORKED because ever since it was established that the medical community was refusing to consider Lyme as a possibility, we let the matter drop and haven't spoken of it again.
"Lyme Disease?? What Lyme Disease??"
We've wanted to stay under the radar because we are afraid that our "golden ticket"...the Doxy he is being prescribed for his eyes ...will be taken away if they find out he's using it to treat Lyme.
It can come back...if one little bacteria spirochete bastard is still floating around in his body...once treatment stops...it can come back. And we need that prescription.
Well that's it.
Fingers crossed that the nasty little bastards are on their way out...permanently.
I love you, Sweetie!! You've been a Rock Star!!
I'm gonna go curl up in bed and switch from "Writer Mode" back into "Reader Mode"....
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!
Jamie and Claire!! I'm coming back!! See, I told you I wouldn't be gone too long.
