Ahhhh, Monday
Dec. 9th, 2002 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bronwynrhNothing like starting out an important Monday morning by oversleeping an hour. Geez.
6:50, I sleepily roll over and look at the alarm clock. It's set, but hasn't gone off. Why? Because I didn't reset it to 6 like I should have. Dammit! Mooooom! I screwed up! Help!
After I help massage out a charlie horse I probably induced in her leg, I run to jump into the shower while my poor wonderful mother makes a lunch for me. She starts my car to warm it up while I get dressed and chug down a Carnation Instant Breakfast.
I do take the time to note down the numbers of IUPD and Parking OPs, just in case I have any sorostitutes to deal with this morning in the parking lot, an issue I'm almost looking forward to dealing with.
I drive to work, almost get hit by a blue-hair who runs a stop sign (it's not just the kiddies who don't know how to drive around here), and pull into a HALF-EMPTY parking lot. Yes, it seems there was a parking lot pogrom of sorts last night, as there was not a single non-permitted vehicle to be seen. A beautiful sight, let me tell you, but a little disappointing, as I was also geared up for a fight.
So I made it into the lab on-time, in spite of my oversleeping, and checked on my cultures, to find that I should have grown cultures of a larger size. So I spent about half an hour crunching numbers, trying to rescue my experiment. Hoping it will work. Praying it will still work. Please, bacterial gods, let this still work. An hour and a half and a case of carpal tunnel syndrome later, the experiment is begun and incubating (happily, I hope) on my bench.
Let's see, 16 plates times 12 wells each . . . that's 192 individual squeezes of my pipet bulb (out) and 64 long squeezes of the bulb for fill-ups. Yeah. My wrist hurts. And my cultures are about 10 times more dilute than I wanted them to be (my fault for not starting larger cultures), but oh well. This is a 3 day experiment, after all. I'm sure it'll all work out in the end.
Not that any of this makes sense to any of you. Sorry.
A while back I was griping and complaining about my headaches and migraines. I won't bother to link you guys back to the posts of gripes and complaints, just suffice it to say that it's been about a year-long trial of weight-gain and headaches and migraines as I tried several different migraine prophylaxis medications, none of which seemed to work.
I tried a beta-blocker, which essentially turned me into a slug with a resting pulse of about 50. I was tired all the time, I could barely motivate myself to get out of bed, much less work or move, and I still got migraines.
Then I tried elavil, an old antidepressant. Killed my night-life, as it knocked me flat in the evenings and I still got migraines.
Then I tried verapamil, a calcium channel blocker. I was on it for about 3 weeks and stopped because, although it lowered my blood pressure, I had a headache every single day and I had two very severe migraines, one of which drove me to the emergency room. Very not good.
That last one convinced my PCP to refer me to a neurologist, with whom I had an appointment last week. He gave me a prescription for Topamax (Topiramate) - the wildly popular anti-epileptic drug that's also prescribed for manic-depressive patients and migraine sufferers.
Its most common side effects?
Weight loss and increased libido.
Wow.
Its cost for me per month (working up to 200mg/day)?
$305
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
This better work.
Of course, for the first time in, oh, six months, I haven't had a migraine in about 2 weeks. So I felt badly about starting to take the medication two nights ago. What's up with that? I HAVEN'T had a migraine and I'm feeling GUILTY? *sigh*
I don't know what to think. These darned things are so sporadic. I can go two weeks without one, then go two weeks having one every other day. I just don't get it.
One word of advice though - stay away from over-the-counter meds for headaches. If you regularly take tylenol or ibuprofen or excedrin or some other analgesic-of-choice, beware. They can cause you to get into serious rebound loops where you actually become dependent on the medications. If you think you may be in such a loop, try to avoid taking all OTC analgesics for about a month. It may be rough at first, but I bet you'll find in the end that you'll have fewer headaches.
Well, that's about it for now. My Carnation Instant Breakfast has worn off. I think I'll give my poor wrist a rest and eat a Nutri-Grain bar.
6:50, I sleepily roll over and look at the alarm clock. It's set, but hasn't gone off. Why? Because I didn't reset it to 6 like I should have. Dammit! Mooooom! I screwed up! Help!
After I help massage out a charlie horse I probably induced in her leg, I run to jump into the shower while my poor wonderful mother makes a lunch for me. She starts my car to warm it up while I get dressed and chug down a Carnation Instant Breakfast.
I do take the time to note down the numbers of IUPD and Parking OPs, just in case I have any sorostitutes to deal with this morning in the parking lot, an issue I'm almost looking forward to dealing with.
I drive to work, almost get hit by a blue-hair who runs a stop sign (it's not just the kiddies who don't know how to drive around here), and pull into a HALF-EMPTY parking lot. Yes, it seems there was a parking lot pogrom of sorts last night, as there was not a single non-permitted vehicle to be seen. A beautiful sight, let me tell you, but a little disappointing, as I was also geared up for a fight.
So I made it into the lab on-time, in spite of my oversleeping, and checked on my cultures, to find that I should have grown cultures of a larger size. So I spent about half an hour crunching numbers, trying to rescue my experiment. Hoping it will work. Praying it will still work. Please, bacterial gods, let this still work. An hour and a half and a case of carpal tunnel syndrome later, the experiment is begun and incubating (happily, I hope) on my bench.
Let's see, 16 plates times 12 wells each . . . that's 192 individual squeezes of my pipet bulb (out) and 64 long squeezes of the bulb for fill-ups. Yeah. My wrist hurts. And my cultures are about 10 times more dilute than I wanted them to be (my fault for not starting larger cultures), but oh well. This is a 3 day experiment, after all. I'm sure it'll all work out in the end.
Not that any of this makes sense to any of you. Sorry.
A while back I was griping and complaining about my headaches and migraines. I won't bother to link you guys back to the posts of gripes and complaints, just suffice it to say that it's been about a year-long trial of weight-gain and headaches and migraines as I tried several different migraine prophylaxis medications, none of which seemed to work.
I tried a beta-blocker, which essentially turned me into a slug with a resting pulse of about 50. I was tired all the time, I could barely motivate myself to get out of bed, much less work or move, and I still got migraines.
Then I tried elavil, an old antidepressant. Killed my night-life, as it knocked me flat in the evenings and I still got migraines.
Then I tried verapamil, a calcium channel blocker. I was on it for about 3 weeks and stopped because, although it lowered my blood pressure, I had a headache every single day and I had two very severe migraines, one of which drove me to the emergency room. Very not good.
That last one convinced my PCP to refer me to a neurologist, with whom I had an appointment last week. He gave me a prescription for Topamax (Topiramate) - the wildly popular anti-epileptic drug that's also prescribed for manic-depressive patients and migraine sufferers.
Its most common side effects?
Weight loss and increased libido.
Wow.
Its cost for me per month (working up to 200mg/day)?
$305
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
This better work.
Of course, for the first time in, oh, six months, I haven't had a migraine in about 2 weeks. So I felt badly about starting to take the medication two nights ago. What's up with that? I HAVEN'T had a migraine and I'm feeling GUILTY? *sigh*
I don't know what to think. These darned things are so sporadic. I can go two weeks without one, then go two weeks having one every other day. I just don't get it.
One word of advice though - stay away from over-the-counter meds for headaches. If you regularly take tylenol or ibuprofen or excedrin or some other analgesic-of-choice, beware. They can cause you to get into serious rebound loops where you actually become dependent on the medications. If you think you may be in such a loop, try to avoid taking all OTC analgesics for about a month. It may be rough at first, but I bet you'll find in the end that you'll have fewer headaches.
Well, that's about it for now. My Carnation Instant Breakfast has worn off. I think I'll give my poor wrist a rest and eat a Nutri-Grain bar.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
!
Date: December 9th, 2002 07:41 am (UTC)i hope your culture works out sugar...
(no subject)
Date: December 9th, 2002 11:08 am (UTC)Well, I guess I won't be taking that any time, soon.
I've been lucky enough to not have had a migraine since Thursday. It started right when kendo practice began, with the explosion of sparklies and the odd balance-going-whacko thing, but I figured that if I was going to get whacked on the head anyway, what the hell... (;
Glad to hear about the improvement in the parking situation! (:
THE GOOD DRUGS
Date: December 11th, 2002 05:50 pm (UTC)Re: THE GOOD DRUGS
Date: December 12th, 2002 04:56 am (UTC)I decided that I'm just not cut out for medical or pharmaceutical practice. (A shame, really, because medical doctors and pharmacists make INSANE amounts of money for the hours they work - I know a pharmacist who makes 80k for 35h/wk for chrissakes!) Every time I see a physician and they work me up, they look up a drug in a book and say, "We're gonna try this". And I, being the kind of gal I am, ask them, "how does it work?". They never, ever, know. I didn't want to be that person. And I didn't want to be the person counting out the pills either. Don't get me wrong, I love my pharmacist. I love that I can talk to her and ask her questions, and she usually can come up with reasonably good and useful answers for me.
But I'm the kind of person who really REALLY wants to know how things work. I mean REALLY how they work.
That pretty much leaves me with research.
And a much smaller paycheck.
On the bright side, though, I'll never have to pay malpractice insurance!
Re: THE GOOD DRUGS
Date: December 16th, 2002 11:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: December 13th, 2002 09:30 am (UTC)"sorostitutes" Hee.
When I was an undergrad we had this huge block wall festooned with the shredded remains of every greek poster/advertisement to make it near our suite.
Can't say I had any sorostitute experience, though, for what it's worth. :7
-Rich
(no subject)
Date: January 28th, 2003 01:12 pm (UTC)caveat :-)
Date: January 29th, 2003 04:57 am (UTC)the increased libido goes conveniently along with another little side effect - it negates the effect of the birth control pill. So be sure that you can and do use other, reliable methods of birth control. Also, increased libido does little good if there's no one to practice the libido with (hahaha - *sigh*)
The weight loss part hasn't really done anything for me yet, but I've not been on the topamax for very long, either (less than two months) so we can't say much on that yet. I haven't noticed any major changes in my appetite, but then again, I'm not a big eater, and I'm not overweight - I'm 5'2" and weight about 125-130 - I'm basically a little bottom-heavy because I don't exercise and I spend a lot of time working with my hands :-)
Anywho. . . It's worked for the migraines so far *knocks on available woodlike product* and I hear it works well for manic depression as well as the epileptic disorders.
Keep in touch if you try it out, and we can compare notes!