Yeah! < cough, sneeze, cough >

YEAH! There was no storm. 

I got home to a huge pile of mail from Nortel. I put it off for a couple days because I have a cold that makes me feel bad enough, I didn't need anything more.  When I finally started opening mail, the very first letter I opened from Nortel stated that they were NOT going to stop any benefits August 31st in fact to ignore all the other letters because they were no longer valid.   Why?  There was too much push back. 


< cough, sneeze, cough >
I came home with a terrible, horrible cold. It's all Ronnie's fault, he gave it to me. I finally sucked it up and went to the Doctor yesterday. I figured I had a sinus infection or bronchitis or something bad.  He told me I had a horrible cold and gave me some cough syrup with Hydrocodone in it. Forget that codeine stuff cause I got me some Hydrocodone.  Seriously, it gave me a buzz the first time I took it. 

Today I think he's an idiot! I'm worse today than I was yesterday. Still coughing up stuff that is way the wrong color, bloody stuff every time I blow my nose, shitty headache, very congested head & chest, now my chest is hurting and my throat is sore again.  Of course my throat is probably sore from the 2, yes 2, strep test I had yesterday.  Why 2? Because the first one wasn't painful enough.

So do I go to another Doctor, the ER or what?  Why the ER you ask?  It seems when you have a bad headache and a history of brain cancer that Dr's freak and just send you to the ER to be on the safe side.

Anyway, YEAH - cough, cough - I still got benefits that I can use to hopefully get rid of this cold.  (I don't think it's a cold but that's just my opinion, heck I didn't think I had a brain tumor)

Calm before the storm

I've taken the last week off to just relax and not think.  I've spent a lot of time by the pool reading*, chatting with friends, sleeping in and eating whatever I wanted. It has helped and I'm not as stressed as I was.  No more panic attacks. 

I will be going back to reality on Monday.  Hopefully it will all go well.



*I need to better explain reading.  I don't read books like I did before.  I cannot read any books with lots of  people or much of a plot.  I read "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and it took me forever.  I was about to start taking notes on who was who and what they did because I could not remember it or follow. At that point I decided to just read it and try to remember the people and try to enjoy it.  This is a very popular book and everybody is reading it.  It's classified as "summer reading." Yeah, that's right I even have problems with the easy summer reading books.

Screwed!

Yeah I know it's been a while.  Lots of stuff happening, most of it not too good.  Mainly I've been freaking out over this: 

Nortel seeks to cut retiree benefits to 4,000
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2215538920100622

That includes me.  Yes, in a few weeks not only will I stop getting paid but I'll have to start paying for my insurance and meds.  I'll have NO life insurance.  < insert screaming here >

First I got a notification that they were petitioning the court for approval to stop all the benefits.  So I started freaking out.  The court date isn't until July 16th so I thought I had a little time to get everything together.  Nope wrong.  Two days after the notification I got my termination papers. I totally freaked.

Here's all the information.  Nortel is currently in bankruptcy not going for reorganization but going for total liquidation.  They are self insured. All the rules go out the window once you go into bankruptcy.  Being self insured means they are paying my LTD not someone like Aflac.

After consulting with a very good attorney he confirmed that I am in fact screwed.

I knew this day would come but I was under the impression that as long as the "doors" were open that I couldn't get fired.  Well, I was wrong.  Very wrong.

Good News!

Good News! I saw the neurologist yesterday and she confirmed I'm doing great. In fact she commented on the change from when she first meet me to now. How I'd originally showed up hairless with loads of issues and now I had gotten the seizures under control and looked beautiful with hair. She doesn't mind if I take Adderall and I don't have to see her for another 6 months.


Thought I'd give you a little more information on fatigue.  I had 2 doctors appointments yesterday and I was taking pictures at Vacation Bible School (VBS) last night. I got so tired at VBS I had to come home and go to bed. Not like I was doing anything physical, just taking pictures. I slept about 14 hours.

That's how tired I get and how much it takes me to recoup.

FUNNY!

I have not posted anything funny in a while.  I don't think anything funny has really happened lately... until today.

Ronnie and I went out for lunch.  I've turned mostly into a vegetarian.  I will NOT eat anything with bones and am very, very picky about what meat I do eat.  So lots of times I get a salad or something light. 

Today I'm looking over the menu, not very hungry as usual, and having a hard time deciding on what to get.  There were no appetizers or salads catching my attention so I was looking at everything else.  They had a special of portobello mushrooms in an Alfredo sauce over pasta but that sounded too heavy.  The had a mushroom burger and I asked if it was a portobello and how it was cooked.  The waitress told me it was just regular mushrooms but it was good, so I ordered it.

It took forever to get our food.  We started talking about what was taking so long when I food finally arrived.

That's when it hit me!  I had been wondering how they were going to keep all those sautéed mushrooms on the bun and there it was.  A Mushroom Swiss Hamburger! 

I'm looking at it very confused.  I had ordered mushrooms and here is a cheeseburger on my plate.  Ronnie's explaining to me that I had ordered a mushroom BURGER and the waitress is asking if it's OK or did I want something else.  I was just laughing.  I had never occurred to me that the burger part was actually hamburger. DUH!

The waitress came back and said now she understood why I asking about the portobello and from now on she'd explain that it was a mushroom hamburger.  We were all laughing.

At least I can laugh at myself!

Memory...

I've been wanting to post about my memory for a while but just have never gotten around to it.  Well, I figure now is as good as time as ever.

My memory is different now.  I know I touched on short term memory like forgetting what I was going to do but I mean just normal memory.  I generally work on 3 days:  yesterday, today and tomorrow.

I know what I did yesterday, what I have to do today and what's on the calendar for tomorrow.

 Anything past tomorrow is just sometime in the future.  I have very little concept of time passing like an upcoming event getting closer.  I freaked out at Thanksgiving because it was suddenly Thanksgiving and I had stuff to do!  Seriously, I know that Thanksgiving is coming up sometime but then suddenly it's here. It's kind of hard to explain.  Kinda like when you're working and suddenly it's 5 and time to go home.  You have no idea where the time went but it did.  Well, it's like that with days, weeks and months for me.

With the past anything that happened past yesterday, was sometime past yesterday.  It could have happened 2 weeks ago or 2 months ago, I have no clue.  It just wasn't recently.  If it's past the last few weeks, well I have no idea and generally don't think about it anymore. Like high-school, you don't think about it unless something triggers a memory.  OK, everything is like that for me. 

So if you want me to do something, you have to remind me.  A LOT!

Side Effects?

One friend suggested I check the side effects of my medications to find out if any caused kidney stones.  I had not even thought about that.  Cause if they did, this would just be the start! 

So I get on the net and start looking stuff up.  Guess what I found ?  Everything causes WEIGHT GAIN!  Seriously, weight gain. 

And here I was wondering why I wasn't losing weight.  UGH!!!!!


Oh yeah, didn't find anything on kidney stones.