Look! There is a thing!

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I've discussed dealing with a blocked salivary gland here in Feb 2011, and here in July 2011. So, about 5 months between the 1st two episodes, a third one that was mild enough I didn't record it and now, 4 years later, another bad blockage.

It started Sunday night. At least, recognizing what was happening, I massaged it, and expected it to be gone by morning. (Should have read my DW entries sooner than this morning.) It wasn't; in fact, it seemed a little larger, because it was pushing on my ear canal (maybe?) and giving me an earache. Not having read the July entry, I was a little concerned that it hadn't cleared up by morning, and would have gone to the doctor except that it was a holiday -- of course! Although, the swelling continuing till morning wasn't new, I'm pretty sure the earache was; at least I didn't mention it in the previous entries, and I probably would have -- it was a low-level nagging pain, but constantly aggravated when I moved my jaw to talk or eat. So if it hadn't been a holiday, I'd have called the doctor to try to get in, if only to prevent later complications.

(I don't know how it is in the rest of the civilized world but, here in the USA, even if you have insurance and a regular doctor, calling and getting a same-day appointment for any problem is difficult, because they're booked so tightly. You usually get responses like, "Well, we can maybe fit you in tomorrow," or "We don't have an opening for three days." Yes, there are emergency rooms and/or walk-in clinics, but [a] you don't get to see "your" doctor, and don't know if the information will get to them, and [b] you pay about three times as much for being seen, even if you have insurance.)

In the end, it was a bit scary (I think because of the time lapse since the last one; I'd forgotten how it would go), but no big deal. However, recording for next time I need the information:

1] Started Sunday night while eating. Started massaging the lump after each bite; it didn't get as large as the first incident.

2] Accompanied by a low-level but sharp, nagging earache.

3] Continued through Monday. Ate lunch and supper, still needing to massage the area after each bite.

4] Back to mostly normal by Tuesday morning -- lump gone, earache gone.

5] However, Wednesday morning there is residual soreness in that spot on the jaw and in my eardrum if I press/manipulate the area. Since I didn't make note last time, don't know if this is a new development.


You know, this "getting old" thing sucks. Granted, the alternative isn't much fun, either... but I'd sure like to turn back the clock to about 45 and hold there for about 45 more years till I kick off. No acid reflux, no carpal tunnel, no blocked salivary glands, more energy, more strength. Of course, 35 would be even better, but I always feel like I shouldn't dream too greedy.

Okay, wasted enough time. Gotta make those schedules.

ETA: 10/13/15 Another small one at lunch. Very small -- thought I was getting a toothache, ate lunch anyway, didn't realize it was the blocked gland until I reached up to see if I could massage the pain away. Very tender, and I realized -- oh yeah, this started after I ate a couple of chips while lunch was cooking.

So now this is barely a month after the last incident. *sigh* They're getting closer together. I don't like this progression!

Aaaand... another minor blockage at supper.

ETA: 10/16/15 and 10/17/15 -- minor flares at lunch and supper both days, needing some massage, but no major swelling. Odd that it didn't happen at breakfast either day. I eat a frozen fish plank which isn't very sweet, but the salivary glands ARE working. Swelling at lunch on 17th started with dry nacho chips, so sweets of themselves aren't a trigger, though the symptoms seem marginally worse if I'm eating sweet -- candy, apple, etc.

10/18 -- minor flares at lunch and supper AGAIN! Oddly enough, does not last the whole meal; the area is mostly back to normal about 2/3rds through, though some soreness remains.

1/13/16 -- minor to moderate flares at lunch and supper. Sore enough to make eating uncomfortable, but not causing the earache.

1/14/16 -- moderate flares breakfast, lunch, and summer. Eating slightly painful, with off-and-on mild earache. Needed quite a bit of massage to reduce the lump at lunch.

6/10/16 -- moderate flare at supper; mild massage took care of it.

6/11/16 -- no breakfast moderate flare at lunch, but somewhat worse, needing vigorous massage. Moderate flare at dinner, also needing vigorous massage.

6/12/16 -- moderate flare at breakfast. Massage eventually led to drainage, but mild flares at lunch and dinner.

6/13/16 -- mild flares all three meals.

6/14/16 -- very mild flares breakfast and lunch, mild to moderate at dinner.

6/15/16 -- very mild flares breakfast and lunch, mild to moderate at dinner.

7/3/16 -- very mild flares lunch and dinner (no breakfast).

7/4/16 -- mild flare at lunch, slightly more at dinner (no breakfast).

7/6/16 -- mild flare at lunch, slightly more at dinner (no breakfast).

7/7/16 -- mild flare at lunch, slightly more at dinner (no breakfast).

Through 7/18/16 -- mild flares every damn time I eat. Not enough to necessitate massage, but slight pain in my ear / eardrum (right side) every time. This is two solid weeks; it's getting annoying, to say the least.
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And all I had to do was... buy a new computer.

Well, I was heading that way, anyhow, but still...

But it's 500 gig HD, with 6 gig RAM; lots of room for pictures and fanfic.

Now I get the fun of figuring out Windows 7, and making it look like what I want (crossing fingers), and dealing with Office 2010. I haven't upgraded since 2000 -- because I didn't like the new looks of Word 2003 and 2007; this should be an exercise in extreme frustration.

I may or may not make a post about my aggravation with the AT&T switchover -- three sessions of waiting in line, several hours of telephone tech support, plus the need for a new computer. It was badly handled, and I haven't met one person in either town that is happy with it. But that's for later; now I need to move files, and catch up on a week of missed posts.
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Fairly normal Sunday. Spent the morning reconfiguring my laptop after getting it back from my computer guy. Lunch at Big Cheese Pizza -- my usual cheesy bread, lettuce with dressing (not enough variety to be called a 'salad'), and stromboli. Then shopping at Albertson's, and a side trip to the Alltel store; my brand new phone seems to be defective. Can they give me a new one? Of course not! I have to submit a request online.

Home about 4:00, cruising around LJ and DW. About 4:15, I want something a little sweet, so eat a York peppermint patty. As I finish it, I notice -- huh! My right jaw is hurting, high up under my ear. Within ten minutes, I have a big lump there, and it's painful, of itself and to the touch.

Okay, doctor tomorrow, obviously. But how should I treat it tonight? Hot or cold compress? I call Dad to see if he has an idea (he worked as a medical technician for 25 years). He didn't, but was quite worried, so I agreed to go to the emergency room to get it checked out. He worries about his little girl and, truthfully, I didn't want to take the chance of waking in unbearable agony in the middle of the night.

So I feed the horses, and measure out food for tomorrow morning (my usual pattern) and tomorrow night (in case I'm thrown into the hospital and K has to feed for me.) Then I throw pillow, toothbrush, clean undies and nighttime meds into a bag -- in case I have to stay -- and head back to town.

Two and a half hours later, I finally see the nurse practitioner; fortunately, I also took my laptop. By now the lump is smaller and the pain is less. But an area larger than the lump is quite tender, and I feel a pressure in my ear and throat. Regardless, I'm feeling a little alarmist now, kind of foolish for fussing about it. She assures me no, says it's always better to find out, and diagnoses a probable blocked salivary gland -- possibly, but not necessarily, a stone. Drink lots of water (I'll be waking several times tonight!), massage the area (if it is a stone, may be able to work it out manually), and see my regular doctor in a couple of days.

Gallstones, I've heard of. Kidney stones, ditto. Salivary duct stones? Who knew!

So, I've had quite a bit of water since I got home. Bedtime; as I said, I'll be up a few times tonight. <g> Goodnight.
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My dad was Air Force; from August 1963 to June 1967 we were stationed in Bermuda. For me, it was the perfect age to live there - from the middle of my 11th year, to just after I turned 16. I was old enough to enjoy and appreciate the new territory and a different culture, but young enough to ignore such downsides as humidity, high cost of living (that was my parents' problem), narrow roads with a limit of one car per family (Dad used a motor-scooter), and a multitude of bugs. (Although I developed a lifelong hatred of cockroaches; I'd rather a scorpion in the house than a roach. Ugh!)

I have fond memories of a clean blue ocean (although it was too cold to swim as early as Spring Break; that was for the crazy American college students) and white sand beaches with pink coral flecks (although if you dug deeper than six inches into wet sand, there was a faint but distinct odor of rotten eggs). Houses were painted in pastel blues, yellows and pinks with functional white window shutters and every roof painted yearly with white limestone. (Bermuda has no natural fresh water in springs or rivers; every house catches the rainwater from the roof and runs it into a "tank" - ours was basically a house-sized empty room, like a basement - under the house. There are giant public catch-basins in a couple of areas so, if you use too much water or your tank springs a leak, you can buy a resupply, but it's expensive.)

There I went to a British-type school, where I learned to appreciate school uniforms (never need to wonder what to wear today) and to spell all my -or words as -our. "Boot", "bonnet" and "chemist" acquired new meanings, and I learned how to count and do math with pence, shillings, and pounds. I knew that, when I returned to the States, I would switch the pronunciation of "al-oo-MIN-ee-um" back to "a-LOO-mih-num", and "la-BOR-uh-tree" back to "LAB-rah-tor-ee". But, to this day, I'm not quite sure whether to say "Ca-RIB-ee-un" or "Ca-rih-BEE-un". And I know I should say "CAP-ih-lair-ee" but, if I'm not careful, what comes out first is "ca-PILL-a-ree".

( Cut for length and, eventually, pictures. )

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Short report - she's slowly improving. (Much too slowly, but there are gains.) She was incredibly moved at the idea that so many people were holding her in their thoughts and prayers; thank you all so much.

( Long report here. )

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Got your note. But I had a no-good, horrible, very bad day yesterday. (Too long to post now.) Short version -- school IT worked on my laptop because it's no longer allowed to access the school server. When I got home last night, I couldn't access MY server! No internet last night; weep for me. (And that was only the final indignity.)

I'm on school desktop now, but can't stay; therapy in ten minutes.

ANYway, I'll send an answer tonight, but I think you might post it to TS Talk; it would make a good discussion. Story is at 9,000+ words, and needs 4 or 5 more scenes. I'll send it tonight.

Let's see... it's almost midnight for you. Have a good day when you see this.
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My last name is Italian, and once in a while, my friend N and I find a joke in the ethnicity. Case in point -- when we go to Lubbock, we drive through the small town of Seagraves. On the side of the Seagraves locker plant (now closed) is the promise of
Custom Killing

in fancy script. On one trip, we realized that it sounds rather like a Mob operation -- "Custom killing, 'natural causes' a specialty." <g> Ever since, we've called the place, "Uncle Guido's."


Yesterday, N called me, demanding my middle name and year of birth -- she's making me the beneficiary of her Certificate of Deposit if she and her husband die together. But, she assures me that, "It's not that much, so don't call Uncle Guido; it's not worth it."

I just called her about lunch, and she said, "Did you talk to Uncle Guido yet?" When I assured her I hadn't, she told me that the people in the Credit Union were falling-down laughing at her end of the conversation -- and even more so when she spelled my multi-syllabic last name for them.

<g> Good thing I love her. Otherwise, she'd be a real pain in the butt!

Lunch. See ya' later.
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Think of the ordinary store clerk; she sees hundreds of people a day. Can she possibly remember more than a few 'regulars'? I would think that, at best, someone stands out because of one distinctive feature -- he has a nose like Jimmy Durante, or she always wears squash-blossom necklaces, whatever. I expect that most who meet me casually remember my white hair. Even among women who allow their hair to gray naturally, mine is unusually colorless.

A couple of times within the past year, a clerk has spoken as if they saw me just yesterday. One said, "You know, the car-place right next to where you work." At my no-doubt quizzical expression, she looked more closely and apologized for her error. She said, "But there's another lady in town who has hair exactly like yours."

So today I'm having lunch at Big Cheese Pizza. Normally, I'm buried in my laptop monitor while I eat, and don't notice anything else that goes on around me. But I happened to look up for some reason and there, just a couple of tables past me and approaching the other end of the room, was a lady wearing MY HAIR!

It was uncanny -- the same bright white, shoulder-length (a couple of inches shorter than mine), frizzy-curly-waves. She even wore it similar to the way I do, with the sides pulled up and back from the face, with the back hanging free. And below that -- she was wearing the match to a shirt I have in my closet!

Next to each other, no one would confuse us -- she's several inches taller, somewhat more slender, with fairer skin and a less-round face than mine. But, man-oh-man, our hair was separated at birth!

Cue the theme to 'The Twilight Zone'...
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Warning - gratuitous crowing follows.

Spinning and hopping -- I'm so chuffed with myself! My story looks nicer in LJ than e-mail, but the font is a bit small for my taste. So-o-o... I know a smidgen of HTML code. I edited my story with a +1 font size. Eh, too big, and I really don't like the look of Arial. Edited again, adding the Times New Roman font code. Yes! It looks go-o-o-od!

Of course I realize that this is only on MY computer, and may not suit everyone's eyes, but it's the best I can do with the information I have.

But you know what's scary? I've just realized that I can type the open and close codes for italics and bold without even thinking about it! (Well, almost.) That's downright spooky; I must be spending too much time in cyberspace.
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