If Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries, What Am I Doing In The Pits?

(Sorry Erma Bombeck.)

Hey all.
I know it’s been a LONG time since I’ve been around. (Several months anyway.)
My life has been stupid.

Still working 12 hour night shifts, 48 hours a week. That sucks.

Migraines continue to be an ongoing problem. I have now filed for FMLA from work because I have 2 or 3 a month that just put me down like Old Yeller.

My blood platelets have now dropped to dangerously low levels. If I loose another 10,000 PPM, I could be in danger of bleeding out internally. I am now seeing a specialist at the University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City to try and determine the cause. They have been low for almost 15 years but now they are dropping fast. I am scheduled for a spleen and liver ultrasound along with a bone marrow biopsy tomorrow morning. TBH… I’m getting a little nervous about what all this could be leading up to both financially and healthwise.

The kid is still living at home for now. She still plans to move to Arizona after the significant other gets settled into a place. I still don’t want her to go. She has been half-assed looking for a job here to get her through the summer but nothing so far. She has had a couple of interviews though and that’s been a good learning experience.

A couple of good things have happened.

I got to shoot my first USPSA match with the Ruger PC carbine last weekend. It didn’t go as well as I had hoped but better than I expected. I had one miss and one no shoot on a stage and that really hurt my overall score. Otherwise, the Ruger performed flawlessly. No jams or misfires. Any errors were because of the guy holding it and not the gun.

I got a new puppy! We adopted her from a family who’s Golden Doodle got bred by the neighbor’s dog. Daddy was half Pointer and half Labrador. So we have a Golden Pointer Lab. She looks mostly Labrador but she won’t get quite as big as a lab because mom was a smaller dog. This one was also the runt of the littler. Meet “Dharma.” :slightly_smiling_face:

Anyway, that has pretty much been life in a nutshell for me.
How’s life for the rest of you?

12 Likes

Super cute puppy :hugs:

What with all this health scare business?

That don’t sound like any fun at all, not knowing your daily habits at all I’d urge you to watch some of these documentaries

As I recall some of the people interviewed had crazy odd problems caused by either lack of nutrition, food allergies or outright poison in food that affects some people more severly than others.

Good going on the shooting, thats always a great stress relief :+1:

That and puppies :grin:

Good to hear from you, despite the cherry pits

9 Likes

My entire life seems to be one health scare after another. Started in infancy when I almost died from a reaction to penicillin. I was in the hospital over a week severely dehydrated. There is a possibility I had German Measles which does not react well with penicillin and the doc missed the diagnosis. Will never know now as he passed many years ago. I think a lot of my issues likely stem from that incident though.

I’m sure it won’t be.

I can’t watch the docs because we don’t have Netflix. We dropped them because they kept jacking up the monthly membership fee.

Yes she is. And full of piss n’ vinegar. Smart as can be but very stubborn. Just finished playing with her. Trying to burn some of that puppy energy but I think she wore me out.

9 Likes

Hello Darhma !! Cute pupper.
Well, troubles with my youngest brother and my mothers refusal to quit enabling him.
Other wise not going to bad. Can’t complain I suppose.
Hope they get your situation figured out.

10 Likes

Dharma is cute!
Puppies are great. Hospitals and Docs are a PITA.
Glad you’re back. Hope yer daughter can get on track. Robert is right nutrition, vitamins, minerals and puppy love.
Praying for ya.

Life is crazy for us. Good Mojo, Bad Mojo. Ying/Yang thing. every day.

10 Likes

I will also add you to my prayers @WillieB and also the our churches prayer list .

10 Likes

Glad to see you’re back. Hope you get things straightened out. Health issues are the pits. Prayer helps, I’ll contact YHVH for you.

Pups are fantastic. Dharma is a cutie. Enjoy her puppyhood.

Life’s good here. The people around me are going nuts, stress I think. I’m doing good. My liver has regenerated and my GI Dr was as happy as a clam; I am too. I was told to just keep on doing what I’ve been doing. I can do that.

I missed one USPSA match and will miss another this W’E’. I’m switching to home cast bullets of a different weight and need to work up a load then produce lotsa ammo. Not difficult but the weather sux and I melt in the rain*. Time is also stolen by Dr’in’ and therapy. But I’ll get it straightened out. Last year was the pits for competition due to health issues. Those are straightened out and I attended a Steel Challenge match last month. Didn’t do as good as I would have liked but not terrible. I’ll get the speed back. I was working on being an A shooter, now I’m lucky if I rate a C ranking. If it was easy it wouldn’t be a fun game.

Life goes on. A coworker told me 50 years ago, “Life sux. then you die.”. I think it’s better than that. He also said, “Life is a big shit sandwich and every day you are forced to take another bite.”. Cheery, huh? Don’t be that guy. Positivity also helps.

  • In the past 2 weeks maybe we had 2 days of nice weather, otherwise rain. A few days ago 4" overnight and that’s VERY unusual for Maine. We’re well watered but generally not that well watered. Last year this time we were in a drought.
8 Likes

Thanks to all for the well wishes and prayers for the health issues. I would be happy if this all turned into a big pile of nothing but I still want to find out what has been causing this issue. Especially now since it seems to have escalated. I just don’t want to hear that “C” word. Just about anything else I could deal with. I don’t know about that one.

@BrianK it sounds like you’re getting things under control. Good to hear you’re getting back into competition somewhat. I need to settle down and do some more reloads myself.

@WV460Hunter I appreciate you adding me to the prayer list. I need all of them I can get for lots of reasons. (Especially after looking at the “Girls With Guns” thread. :grin: )

8 Likes

@WillieB honest to goodness I cant for the life of me figure out where @Quick_Draw_Mcgraw finds all those pics. :rofl:

8 Likes

I take Imatrex (Sumatriptan) shots for my migraines (the nasal spray and pills did nothing for me), it helps about 80% of the time. It does kick my butt for 1 to 2 hours but that is better than a migraine for 1 to 3 days.
As a daily migraine preventative I take 50MG of Amitriptylin. It took several years to help.

10 Likes

Sorry to hear about the health issues. I’ve had a few health scares mysrlf. Hope yours are just minor ones you can easily recover from.

10 Likes

I have a prescription for Sumatriptan tablets but they rarely work. If I get one that lasts more than a day, it usually involves a trip to the ER for a migraine cocktail in two shots. (And not the good kind of shots in a glass either!)

10 Likes

A picture of the bone marrow sample they took out of my hip today.

10 Likes

Ouch

9 Likes

yaah, creepy

9 Likes

Yes, ouch. I ranked that up there with the last kidney stone I passed.

Creepy but kinda cool. I’m always fascinated by the inner workings of the human body.

10 Likes

That pup looks to be a great new addition to the family. Do not envy you with the medical side, don’t have migraines myself but can’t be any fun especially with tests as you mention.

9 Likes

Gotta hate those kidney stones. They’ll leave ya crying holding yer bloody wanker…

9 Likes

And if you’re standing up while pissing, things go south in a hurry.

I’ve had surgery for 2 stones. One in each kidney. One was the size of a shooter marble. I’ve passed several others on my own.

Pulling that bone marrow sample today felt very similar to passing a stone.

10 Likes

2 for me in 15 years. Brutal. Just brutal.

8 Likes