I’ll never be your beast of burden

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): You may soon have a dream of beating up the person you were five years ago. This would be a good omen. It means you’re ready to wean yourself completely from a stale old self-image. If you dream of feeding caviar and champagne to a donkey, it’s also a positive sign. It means you’re beginning to recognize that the hard-working beast in you needs to be treated more luxuriously. And if you dream of yelling at a bunch of kids to go clean up their messy bedrooms, Leo, that’s an auspicious portent as well. It signifies your readiness to discipline the irresponsible habits and organize the unruly impulses of your inner child.

I try not to post my horoscopes too often, but this one amused me enough, and I wanted to analyze it a little. Beating myself up, eh? Well, okay. As long as it means I’m not just changing my self-image, but I’m also actually changing, too. I am still trying to better myself, strengthen myself, learn to trust again, and (more importantly) learn to trust properly. That would be better than who I was about 5 years ago, if I can keep changing in those areas. But sorry inner beast of burden, you’ll have to deal without caviar. You know you’re allergic to anything fish/seafood related. But how about I dream of feeding you Godiva chocolates instead? Or even better – how about delicious New York Strip steaks and salads? Mmmm. Poor inner child. She’s been through a rough time lately. We’ve been doing a lot of cleaning. But organization? I’m not sure if we’re ready for that one yet. We’ll see.

For some reason, it seems that the LJ feed of my journal hasn’t updated in over a week. I poked around some yesterday, and found a thread from a girl who had a similar problem a few months back. I tried the things that she did to fix it – we’ll see if that does anything for me. At least I know that the feed validates as RSS now. It did before, but there were 2 warnings that shouldn’t have affected anything, but knowing LJ they probably did. 😉 haha. Hopefully this fixes it, though. If not, I know what post was the last one it read. I’ll temp mark the next post as a draft until LJ takes the rest of the feed, see if maybe that doesn’t work – if maybe there’s something wrong with that individual post. Which wouldn’t surprise me either.

I need to call my doctor’s office and see if they’ve heard anything on my MRI, since they’ve suddenly become incapable of calling me since my last visit. I need to schedule my follow up appointment, anyway, since that wasn’t done when I was in there before. When I go in again, I can check to see if I’ve lost any weight, and I can also coordinate my home scale with the one at the doctor’s office so I know the results are accurate. I feel like I’ve lost weight, and the scale has moved backwards some so this is good. Finally. Whee! I also need to find and get an appt with another doctor – but I won’t go into the details of that one here since it’s a little too personal. (Appt made.)

I want to completely reconstruct another site I maintain. A few weeks ago, I spent a few hours while I was teaching myself some CSS, writing an index page all in one file. After I had it looking exactly how I wanted, then I went back and split it up into the appropriate CSS, header, and footer files. I learn better that way, seeing it all in one file at first, working how it should, being able to tweak things in one place before breaking it down into the proper components so it can run the entire site. The only problem… the site that I want to rebuild now is a blog. I am just barely learning CSS, and know minimal amounts of PHP. Trying to throw in all the right stuff I need to make a blog work? Yeah. I don’t think I’m ready for that. But if anyone wants to take pity on me and help… haha. Just be warned it probably won’t be an easy ordeal. And I should still probably make a generic layout of the site first, to show how I want it to end up, even though it won’t work at all in WordPress. Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. This stuff confuses me. :-$

I’m spending most of the work day today writing procedural manuals. Oh joy! But seriously, if they help out and make it easier for someone else to do my job while I’m on vacation, I guess I can do it. It just would have been nice if the manuals were already written. I had to be trained one-on-one and take notes, the old fashioned way. So did most of the people in this position before me. I will still train my co-worker one-on-one, but at least she’ll have a manual to refer to when she gets confused, instead of sitting there trying to figure out what she meant in the notes she took?

There was more that I was going to ramble about today, I think. But it seems that my tongue is swollen in one small part, but that is starting to spread. So I think I need to go google that to see what on earth could be going on. O.o I don’t think it’s an allergic reaction, because I haven’t eaten or drank anything different. In fact, since I’m bringing Slim Fast to work, it’s exactly the same thing I’ve had for lunch for the last 3 weeks.

When the fear sets in

MRI is done. Thank god. I almost couldn’t do it. That machine is just too damned small. Thankfully I didn’t have to go all the way inside of it, but even to about my waist was bad enough. I’m not claustrophobic, per se, but something like that can trigger off the little bit of me that is. It doesn’t help any at all that I’m overweight, I know that. That’s a big part of why the machine was closing in on me like that.

As soon as I was first put in the MRI machine, I thought to myself “there’s no way in hell.” But I convinced myself to try. Try to hold out for as long as possible. Even if they were only able to get a few pictures, that would be better than none at all, right? So I closed my eyes tight, balled my hands into fists, and try hard to stay calm and still. I had headphones on, and I did my best to focus on the music, but it was difficult to hear it over the noise of the MRI. I kept making bargains with myself while I was in there: “Get through this song, and then I’ll let you press the button and ask to get out.” “Okay, you made it through one song. Just one more. You can do it. You can hold out, I know it.

Since the sounds of the MRI itself were louder than the music, I was also trying to pay attention to the placement of the machine. On the set of tests during the 2nd song and commercial break, I knew it had started on my right side, so the bargains I was making were to get me to try to hold out until it got back to about where it started. After what I had guestimated as 10 minutes (but I found out later had actually been 12 minutes – Go me!!), I just couldn’t take it any longer — I was starting to have a panic attack and I had to get out of there. I squeezed the button, and when she buzzed I asked to be let out.

Once I was out of the machine and sitting up again, she gave me the info on how far along we were and everything. When I had buzzed to be let out, there had only been 2 seconds more for that set of tests to complete, so she went ahead and left me in there that additional few seconds to finish it before pulling me out. Her reasoning – it was a 3 minute test, and if it wasn’t completed, we would have had to start that one over again from the beginning. I didn’t notice the delay in getting me out, so I was grateful that she went ahead and finished it; and I was also proud of myself for managing to be almost accurate in guessing when the machine was back to where it started. Haha.

Like I said, I had already been in the machine for 12 minutes. What I had left was 1 test that was 2 minutes long; then I would come out, have contrast injected and go back in for a 5 minute test. I knew if I was able to sit there for a few minutes and could calm down I could probably handle going back in for another 2 minutes, but there was no way I would be able to handle the 5 minute one. The tech was very nice and patient with me, she explained all the tests, and even let me know that the for headaches they don’t usually need the tests with the contrast, and if they saw something that made them want the contrast tests, that I could always come back another day and have those done. (And I can have Valium next time, if I have to go back for the contrast tests. haha.) So I struck a deal with her, if I could sit and calm down for a few more minutes, I’d go back in for the 2 minute test, and we’d skip the contrast ones. She got me a glass of iced water and sat and chatted with me for roughly about 5 minutes while I got my heart rate back down and was able to get my courage back up to go back inside the machine.

Once I got inside the machine the second time, a new song was starting on the radio. So I was able to tell myself I’d be out of there before the song was over, and I did everything I could to focus on the music. Thankfully the two minutes went by very quickly, and I was out of there before I started to have another panic attack. I’m still having residual mini-attacks, even 2+ hours later. Nothing bad, just my pulse racing, breathing speeding up, and feeling shaky/jittery. I’ll settle down for a while, and then one will start back up again. (And of course, writing about it isn’t helping with the mini-attacks any. Hah.) After I left the MRI center, I decided to break my diet. I deserved a reward for making it through that, especially since I went back in the machine for a second round after the panic attack. I got a burger on the way in to work. :$ But I got a Jr burger, with almost nothing on it, so I tried to be good, while I was allowing myself that reward? Haha. And I’ll just adjust the rest of my calories for the day so I don’t go over or anything; but I really needed some kind of “comfort food” after that.

Now it’s time to pray they find what they need to find on the MRI’s, and that I don’t have to go back for the contrast ones. Even with 2 Valium for only a 5 minute test – I don’t wanna do it! Haha.

I want the doctor to take your picture

So I can look at you from inside as well

Finally!! I got a date for my MRI. Wednesday morning, 8:15 am. I had to call the dr office yet again today – and it only took them about 2 hours to get an appt when they finally called around this afternoon. *grumbles* They were supposed to do that Thursday/Friday… but they didn’t for whatever reason. Usually the folks at my doc’s office are so much better than this. I don’t know what happened! But, at least now I have the appointment!