It should be easier than this

I suppose as we all get older, medications become a more important part of life. I really take very few - thyroid and celebrex for arthritis. This is good because I am super not good at taking pills and swallowing those morning tablets and capsules is a task that sends me gagging to the bathroom a couple times a month.

This issue with swallowing pills is probably the core reason behind my battle with thyroid medication over the last year. I have a doctor who is both good and cautious. She has been slowly and carefully increasing my dosage and waiting two months to again test my blood and monitor my symptoms (mostly aphasia). The thyroid I take comes in a variety of sizes. I spent a good amount of time moving the dosage up by swallowing a combination of 1 grain to 1/4 tablets. Then last summer we seem to have finally hit on the right dosage at two grains of thyroid (real, made-from-animals thyroid, not a synthetic).

Then began the battle to get that two grains in one, just one, pill so I could take it more easily. Although officially the pharmaceutical company does make a 2 grain pill, my pharmacy did not have it. They didn't have one grain either, but could supply me with half grain (four pills!) but would need a new prescription for it since they could not substitute dosage. Thus - just as Denvention was beginning at the start of August - I began a search through local pharmacies to find 2 grain tablets. No one had many, and I ended up getting 17 here and 11 there - all with separate prescriptions. Finally back to my regular pharmacy where they gave me a bottle which said take four tabs a day.

So I took 4 tabs a day (each one separtately, a few minutes a part, trying not to throw up) and when the pills ran out called for a refill. But now there were larger pills available (1 grain) but by this time everything was so confused with the prescriptions that I ended up with a bottle of pills saying "take one a day". Figuring they finally got things right, I did. But it wasn't right. And it was the middle of December before my doctor and I sat down and reviewed ALL the subscriptions from various pharmacies (luckily I keep the records for insurance refunds) and figured out that the dose she actually wanted me taking was really the two grains I was taking before Worldcon in August and that the reason my last bloodtest was low and she had "upped" my dosage ( more tiny 1/4 grain pills!) was because I was really taking 1 grain pills for three months when she thought I was taking 2 grains. And I knew something was wrong because the aphasia returned in force.

Back on the "right" dosage now and waiting to do blood tests again at the end of the month. But still taking two pills rather than one. At least my doctor doesn't more than hint that I ought to be able to swallow those little tablets easily if I would just do it right. Many people come out and tell me, often loudly and (for some reason) angrily, that THEY could easily teach me to take pills and I shouldn't make such a fuss about it. Usually they stop looking smug when I start vomiting. We all have our little quirks. I've been trying to take pills for 50 years. I have a method. Mostly it works. You don't want to watch. No, really. You don't.

2008 books - and computers too

Posting my reading list for 2008 should be easy. Want to know why it isn't? I thought you'd never ask! First, my CD drive went down over Thanksgiving weekend. So I ordered a new one and two weeks later it arrived. Then while the tech at work was installing the new CD drive, the main disk drive started making noises. He told me to baby it and ordered a new one. It was a close thing. It was getting to the place where it took me an average of three times each time I needed to reboot the computer. But the new disk drive arrived and the tech took my machine away for the day to put it in and put on the required software. It was a busy day and the transfer went over until the next day - which is when, on 23 December, the tech realized that my motherboard had died. So I ordered a new machine from procurement. And IM'd my senior vice president (yes, he does report to Larry) and asked him to approve because everyone else in my management chain had already left for the holidays. He's a sweetie, and he approved within 20 minutes of my IM. Luckily the dying disk drive had disgorged it's contents onto a backup drive, do the data was safe and awaiting the new computer.

But where IS the new computer? It was supposed to be delivered to my tech by the Monday after Christmas. No computer. No way to check on the purchase order. Everyone out for the holidays. So sorry. We'll be glad to discuss it with you in the new year. Luckily, I went into the office last Friday to water my plants and there was my new computer (for which there was not shipping record...) sitting under my desk. Since procurement has no record of shipping it, so do you think I can get them to send a new one on Monday?

In any case, I took a few minutes Friday to pull my booklist from the backup disk onto a thumb drive, so here, for those of you who are interested, which is probably damn few, is the list of what I read in 2008.

( Book List )