Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Y'know, it's absolutely shocking how little you can do when your abdominal muscles are being held together by what's basically a glorified elastoplast.Can't walk more than 30 yards. Can't lift even so much as a cat. Can't sweep the kitchen floor without collapsing in exhaustion, never mind even thinking about hoovering.
Wanna know the worst thing though? Have it done yourself and then try taking a dump!
Yeash!
A special mention for Andrea is required at this point.
Not only has she had to put up with me stressing for weeks before my op, then sat around all day at the surgical clinic while I was being operated on and in recovery... and then been there for me as I whine and wince like a wuss through my recovery... all of which must be extremely annoying things to put up with... she's done it with such good grace, and more than this, she's done much of it while injured herself. Somehow she managed to do something nasty to her knee/leg while sitting in the hospital waiting room, and is now largely incapacitated herself.
What a wonderful woman. I could almost believe she injured herself so I wouldnt feel like the only cripple in the house, but... she's not stupid like me, and deserves much sympathy.
In other, non-medical related news, I got myself a new graphics card recently, coz my old one was getting a bit creaky. The new one's pretty much as powerful a card as it's possible to get on an agp based motherboard. It's a Gainward 7800GS+ 512Meg, which surprisingly doesn't use the nVidia 7800 chip at all, but the 7900 one.
This little monster of a card was purchased solely to play one game... Battlefield 2.
Hooked? You bet!
The funny thing is, the way I came to get into the game in the first place. It was THIS spoof video.
I saw it, recognised similar behaviour from playing SOCOM, laughed my head off all night (no doubt annoying Andrea), and promptly went out to buy it at the soonest oportunity.
Anyways... it's very very addictive.
Labels: games, graphics cards, hernia, medical
Steve 4:38 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, June 30, 2006
I'm home.The op was successful, but it would be the understatement of the century to say that I'm in pain.
By god, it hurts. When I breathe, when I stand up, when I sit down, when I laugh, when I cough.
Ouch!
Quite out of my face on pain killers right now, which is rather amusing.
Steve 11:01 PM [+] (0) comments
Been busy.
I go in for my hernia op tomorrow.
It's safe to say I'm pretty nervous.
I know it's just a routine and very minor thing, but the very idea of general anasthetic scares me.
Oh well.
Fingers crossed and stuff.
Steve 12:34 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Yeah yeah, I know... no new site yet.The distractions and sidelines keep on piling up.
So the trip to York was awesome, and I should probably put photos on flickr, but I havent even got round to that yet.
Then yesterday I went to the hospital for this hernia, though it was only a consultation, not surgery yet.
It seems there's around a 3 month waiting list for surgery, which while it's nice as far as being mentally prepared is concerned, means we've had to cancel our holiday to devon. The chances are, the surgery would be scheduled either slap bang in the middle of the holiday, or just before it, and I don't wanna be several hundred miles away in the event of post surgery complications.
So the final distraction, predictably, is a game.
Tourist Trophy is, quite literally, Gran Turismo on motorbikes. All the same circuits... same graphics and physics engines, same game structure, same everything... just on motorbikes.
Is it good?
Oh hell yeah!
Is it easy to get into?
Well... you could never really just load up Gran Turismo, play it and be good... the same is doubly true of Tourist Trophy. You really have to practice to be remotely competative, but once you've got the swing of it, the level of satisfaction when you win a race is way up there.
I get the feeling Gran Turismo on PS3 is gonna be something along the lines of Gran Turismo 4 with bettwe graphics, combined with this.... as from what I've read, it includes bikes.
Very clever use of resources, making an entire standalone game out of what is effectively just extra stuff added onto an earlier game, to make a next gen game... if you get my meaning.
Labels: games, hernia, medical
Steve 3:17 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
I've just come back from the doctors and the phrase "Oh fuck" comes to mind.Last thursday, I felt a painful twinge in my upper stomach area, and on feeling it with my hand, found a large swelling, or protrusion. Not good, I thought.
Anyway, I figured it might be a pulled muscle, from mowing the lawn, coz it's a pretty tough job, with the garden being on a slope and all.
So, several days later it was much the same, and a trip to the doctor seemed in order.
Well.... it's a hernia... probably a rupturing of the hernea I had repaired as a child, 35 years ago.
So, I'm booked into the local hospital for surgery on the 6th of june.
General anasthetic scares the crap out of me.
Steve 4:50 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, March 06, 2006
Ahhh... I'm feeling human again.The combination of being generally beaten up in the gums region, being unable to eat much more than goo, and being on a heavy duty dose of antibiotics, has had me feeling pretty crappy over the weekend.
Today though, I'm feeling half decent.
I'd go out now, but the dog pissed on my boots in the night.
Gotta love animals.
Oh yeah.
Penicillin makes my pee smell like a swamp.
Maybe I should return the favour and piss on the dog ;-)
Steve 7:53 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, March 03, 2006
Double ouchie!I felt her break the bone around the socket while she was wrenching the root around.
She told me a piece of the bone around the socket had broken off.
But yeash.
Okay, so it's not a massive hole, but it's jagged and ugly. Good job you cant see it really.
And bloody hell it hurts.
Steve 10:36 PM [+] (0) comments
Ouch!
Went to the dentist and had a surgical extraction of a canine tooth... or rather, the root.
It wasn't as terrible an experience as I'd imagined, merely involving having the bone surrounding it drilled away, and then having the base of it hammered away at with blunt instruments, before she levered it out with the dental equivalent of a crowbar.
Whats most surprising to me is how quickly the anasthetic has worn off. It's was barely half an hour later that it started hurting, and right now, it's fairly brutal.
Still... I'm very releived to have had it done, as I'd put off having it done for years.
Steve 12:22 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, February 10, 2006
Ouchie!Today saw a trip to the dentist. This dentist is rather less brutal with the drill than the one I saw back in Milton Keynes a couple of years back, but yeash, she fairly ripped my gums up with that needle.
So I'm sitting here, now that the numbness has worn off, feeling like I've been kicked in the face.
Ah well... I can't really complain. The next visit will be much worse. I've got a surgical extraction scheduled, where she's gonna have to cut my gum. That'll be fun!
Steve 7:32 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Well, after much toing and froing between hospitals for blood tests, x-rays and whatever, the usual treatment with drops, and all the inconvenience you might expect, my eyes are pretty much better, though I'm none the wiser as to the cause.All of this left me going back to college having missed a couple of lessons each from most of my important classes, and this being only the start of the course, the reaction to my renewed presence from some of the tutors was a little... hmm... less enthusiastic than I'd have liked.
They basically dismissed me as a time waster, without ever bothering to learn the facts.
Can't say I'm too happy about that.
That pretty much sums up my feelings regarding the whole of the past month really. Difficult.
Oh yeah, I haven't smoked a cigarette in over a month now.
Labels: annoyed, college, iritis, medical
Steve 6:25 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Things aren't quite as bad as I expected.Because the dose of eyedrops is lower, only my short range vision is affected, and only for around the first 6 hours out of every 12.
That's still going to make college difficult in some lessons, but at least not impossible.
I'm feeling a little less distressed about the whole thing now.
Labels: college, iritis, medical
Steve 7:10 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
More progess with my eye.Went back to the clinic and the doc says there are now no visible signs of inflamation inside my eye, despite some irritation on the outside So I'm off the ointment, and cutting down the steroid drops to almost nothing over the next 3 weeks.
What else can I tell you?
I've found an amusing use for a glitch I discovered some time back with my cam and tv card.
It seems that if I unplug my cam, my webcam software defaults to taking a video stream from my tv card. Now, while this doesnt actually work with the webcam software I usually use (coz the resolution is too high), I can then fire up msn and it'll also use the tv card as the video source, allowing whoever I'm chatting to to watch the same programs as me. If I fire up the tv software, I can change channels too.... and then use skype to provide audio to go with the video.
Long winded... but fun when you let non-brits watch brit tv with you.
Labels: iritis, medical, webcams
Steve 6:19 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Hmm. Okay.I rang the clinic and the doc was there... seems he's not away till next week.
Anyays, he said not to worry about the redness, as the drops themselves can cause that, especially over an extended period.
That makes sense to me, though I do feel I'm getting mixed messages from him. He says I should be able to tell myself whether there's an internal improvement, but he also says I worry too much about what's happening with the eye when I see changes.
So what am I supposed to do... diagnose my own condition, or interrupt him and seek advice? Obviously he'd love it if I'd just do what he says and then forget about it... but that landed me with an injection in the eye last time I did that.
Ho-hum.
Steve 11:53 AM [+] (0) comments
I'm at a complete loss.
The doc said my eye was much improved, and to reduce the drops and stop taking the dilator.
Today the redness around the eye is increased, and the steroid drops which have never stinged before sting.
Now one of the effects of taking these drops for a while is that they can cause conjunctivitis, or general irritation.
The other eye isn't looking too clever either, though not as bad as it was initially.
So... is this the iritis flaring up again coz of a recuced dosage, in which case I should increase the dose... or is it an irritation, meaning I should reduce the dosage, or be taking/doing something different?
The obvious course of action would be to ask the doctor... but guess what? He's gone on holiday.
Bollox!!!
I'm SO wishing I had sonething other than the state of my eyes to be blogging about. This is getting really old.
Steve 10:50 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Well that was a surprise.Turns out there indeed was something wrong with my other eye, but it wasn't iritis. I had a foreign body in there and it was causing irritation. Funny, coz apart from a general soreness, I couldn't feel a thing.
Something I've found over the past few weeks... I've become a lot more tollerant of having my eyes prodded at. The doctor put a drop in to numb my eye, and then poked at, and wiped directly across my pupil. A few weeks ago, that would've had me screwing my eye up and jumping out of my seat, but as it is, I didn't flinch in the slightest.
As for my 'bad' eye... it's vastly improved, and I can stop taking the dilator drops. This is a good thing, as those drops blur my vision terribly, and since the antibiotic ointment I've been given for my other eye blurs my vision too... the timing couldn't be better.
Steve 10:32 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, May 09, 2005
I just phoned the eye clinic, coz it's still not looking right.They said it should be okay for me to wait untill my appointment tomorrow.
This is ok by me, as it doesn't look as bad as it did last night, and compared with how my other eye looked, even if this is iritis, I'd say it's pretty mild.
There's no clouding, no internal pain since yesterday, no sensetivity to light, and the pupil appears to be functioning normally. At the moment, it's just a bit bloodshot and slightly sore.
If I hadn't gone through all the crap with my other eye already, I wouldn't even have given it a second thought, but as it is, I'm ultra wary.
Steve 9:39 AM [+] (0) comments
The phrase "oh crap" comes to mind.
I pray that I'm mistaken, but I do believe the iritis has moved to my good eye. It was aching earlier today, whih I put down to eye strain, but when I looked at it before going to bed earlier, it was all bloodshot. Needless to say, I haven't managed to sleep.
So I'll phone the eye clinic first thing in the morning and see whether the doc can look at it, or if I need to wait till my appointment on tuesday, and if I should use the drops I already have for the other eye on it... or again, if I should wait till he's had a look.
If it turns out as I fear, then this may be my last post for a while coz the drops blur my vision to hell, and while it's hard enough to type with one blurred eye, there's no way I'll be able to see well enough if both are blurred.
This sucks.
Steve 3:19 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Update:I saw the doc, and he says my eye's made a marked improvement. I canr reduce the dosage of the steroid drops to one every 3 hours as of tomorrow.
So, I may not be cured by any means, but this is a real step in the right direction at last. I'm very releived.
Steve 4:35 PM [+] (0) comments
Back to the eye clinic this afternoon.
I SO hope that doctor says it's showing signs of improvement, coz after all the crap I've had to stick in my eye, I'm gonna be waaaaaaaaay pissed off if he doesn't.
It's not just the taking of the drops that gets old, but how they rule your life completely. You have to fit your entire life around them, sleep pattern, etc, and going out is very tricky, coz some of them have to be kept in the fridge, others kept below 25C, but not refridgerated.
Anyways.
Turns out there's a retro gaming shop in Andrea's home town, so she went for a look in there yesterday, and picked me up an Atari Lynx handheld console. This is another largely overlooked piece of impressive hardware that died a quick death due to the dominance of the gameboy.
The collection grows and grows.
I can't tell you what a buzz it gives me, being a total gaming geek, to have a girlfriend who's into gaming too.
But damn, she slaughters me on Mario Kart.
Labels: consoles, iritis, medical
Steve 9:32 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, May 02, 2005
It's been a pretty good weekend.On the 'eye front', the doctor gave me pretty much a free hand in deciding my own dosage of drops (which seems pretty irregular to me), so I kept it at 1 per hour till last night, and I'm dropping it to one every two hours from this morning.
That's a high dosage for such an extended period of time, but all the info I read says severe or persistant iritis should be treated aggresively, and that's exactly how I've treated it. Seems to be working so far.
So... fun stuff.
Andrea and I have been doing the retro gaming thing quite a bit lately. Lots of head to head games like Mario Kart on snes, Mario Kart 64 on N64, and more recently, head to head Tetris on 2 Gameboys.
It's kinda funny. Andrea manages to effectively slaughter me on Nintendo games, but then when we play on PS2, the tables are turned.
Labels: games, iritis, medical
Steve 8:21 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
And so it goes on... and on, and on and on and....I'm not a happy chappy. Positively depressed, even.
I went back to see the MK specialist today and he told me the internal inflamation is not reduced at all. I'm back on a higher dosage of steroids again, to be gradually reduced over 2 weeks. I go back to see him after those 2 weeks, and if there's no improvement, I'll need more injections.
I could cry.
Steve 3:26 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
I'm very relieved to report that the injection worked, and I didnt't go through all of that for nothing. My iris is no longer fused to the lens.Tell you what though, it's not a pretty sight. The lower part of my eye is smeared in blood. I'll ring the eye clinic later and ask if I should bathe that, or just leave it to clean itself up. Don't wanna be getting any infections in there.
When I see the specialist tomorrow, I'm gonna tell him I think it was the ointment I used at night that caused the reinflamation, as it was all flared up each morning, with a very red and sore inner eyelid, and tended to clear up over the day.
I'll tell you something... Stoke Mandeville is a vastly better hospital than Milton Keynes hospital, in every respect.
24 hour eye casualty facilities, more space, cleaner, more staff, more competent staff, freindlier staff.
I've come to the conclusion that Milton Keynes hospital is a disgrace. All of this should never have happened, and wouldn't have, if I hadn't had to wait for 5 hours in A and E on sunday, with no treatement, and then been seen by a casualty doctor who didn't even bother to look at my eye, and simply phoned another doctor at another hospital.
Even I know what needed to be done (an atropine drop and increase the steroid dosage for a day or so)
Anyway... I mentioned this in not such strong terms to the doctor at Stoke Mandeville, and he told me if I have any more problems, I should phone them directly, and they'd see me as an emergency case. This is expensive, as a round trip there and back by taxi cost £60, but it's well worth it, considering what's at stake.
I plan to write to my MP when all this is over, and after the general election, and complain about the service at MK hospital.
As a final note, I guess I just wanna say, if you plan to get sick, don't do it in Milton Keynes.... and if you have the misfortune to do just that, get yourself taken to Stoke Mandeville 20 miles away, and not MK General.
Steve 6:51 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, April 25, 2005
Jesus Christ, that was horrible.The iris had indeed fused to the lense, and after trying various different things they resorted to an injection of steroids and atropine, direct into the eyyball. I wont know if that's freed up the iris till I take this eye patch off tonight. If it hasn't, then chances are it's permenantly fused. I dont know what the consequences of that will be, but I'm seeing the MK specialist again on wednesay, so I guess I'll find out then.
Take it from me though, if you ever have a painful and/or inflamed eye, dont mess around with A and E or Casualty... get yourself admitted as an emergency case to the eye clinic of whatever hosputal will see you soonest. You really *don't* wanna go through what I went through today.
Steve 6:16 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Things are going badly.The inflamation in my eye has returned, and the iris is no longer dilating correctly, suggesting it may be partly fused.
I've been to A and E already, and now have to go to Stoke Mandeville Hospital tomorrow.
To say I'm worried is an understatement.
Steve 3:44 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Progress report.Inflamation is reduced. Soreness is reduced. Internal pain is reduced and infrequent, vision is still cloudy and blurred.
I'm keeping a very close watch on my good eye.
Still full of 'what ifs' and such, and I doubt I'll stop worrying till everything's back to normal, but I'm no longer in a panic.
Steve 10:11 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
The steroid drops seem to be reducing the inflamation, and the other drops are keeping my pupil suitably dilated, which is reassuring.The cloudyness remains, though it's hard to say if it's better or worse.
Last night I got myself into quite a state, having a pounding headache, and possibly a temperature. I was pretty sure this was merely brought on by stress and tension, but I wasn't sure how safe it was to take paracetamol with these drops, so phoned the NHS Direct helpline.
I was rather puzzled at some of the questions the woman was asking me, before telling me it was safe to take paracetamol. On talking to Andrea about it later, turns out all of those questions were to check that I didn't have meningitus.
Needless to say, I don't, or I wouldn't be sitting here typing this now.
So as I sit here now, after all the people I've talked to, and all the things I've read, I'm feeling somewhere between reassured that it's going to work out okay, and scared that it isn't... that the infection might spread to my other eye, that I might go blind, that there's some serious underlying cause.
All those "what ifs".
Steve 9:35 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, April 18, 2005
This morning my vision was even more cloudy, so with only a little hesitation, I got myself down to the A and E department at the local hospital.After they'd taken a look at it I was referred as an emergency case to the specialist eye clinic.
Turns out I have iritis and my iris was very close to fusing to the lense. If this had happened, it would have been irreversible. As it is, putting drops in to dilate the pupil freed it up, which was a huge relief to me, as the next step would have been an injection directly into the eye. To say I was a little freaked is a serious understatement.
So now I'm having to put steroid drops in once an hour, some other drops 3 times a day to keep the pupil dilated, and ointment for when I go to bed.
All of this *should* fix it, but reading that page I linked to leaves me feeling more than a little uneasy... not just because it can be a recurring problem, but also because I'm already suffering from some loss of vision.
One of the doctors I saw said the cloudyness was caused by puss or similar discharge within the eye, and would clear up over time... but I can't help worrying.
Steve 1:28 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Two noteworthy things for this post.First the bad stuff.
I'm having serious problems with my right eye.
I dunno if there's something in it, or if it has an infection, but it's been rather painful for about a week, and then friday eveing it flared up and became extremely bloodshot and sore. There's a very gritty feeling, so it could be that there's something in it.
This morning it watered like an absolute bitch, and I found some grit in the fluid, so that may be it, but I can't be sure. Right now it still feels gritty and the vision in it is extremely cloudy, though it's not hurting so bad.
I'll give it a couple more hours to see how it goes, and if there's no improvement, I'll have to go to A and E at the hospital, to get it looked at.
Truth is, I almost certainly should have done that 2 days ago, but I have an incredible fear of having my eyes poked at, or anything going near them, stemming back from an experience I've blanked all memory of, when I was a child.
Now the good stuff.
In town yesterday we happened to look in the retro gaming shop, and I had half a mind to pick up a Sega Game Gear. That being a rather unremarkable piece of gaming history, I wasn't really too fussed about it, but since they have one going very cheap, I figured what the heck.
However, in the window they also happened to have one of these...
That's a PC Engine GT handheld... and I absolute*had* to have it.
Why so excited about something that looks like an oversized black gameboy?
The PC Engine GT is the handheld version of the NEC PC Engine... a very successful console in Japan, later released into the US as the GT Express, where it had only very limited success, and never officially imported into the UK or Europe.
To say they're rare in the UK is a major understatement.
The retro gaming magazine I have prices them between £100 and £200, and the only one I found when looking on ebay (uk) yesterday was in spain, selling for the equiv of £160. I picked this one up for £105, with 2 games... one of which is R-Type, *the* game to play on PC Engine.
Very chuffed.
Labels: consoles, iritis, medical, photos
Steve 9:02 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, February 26, 2005
What a week.Monday started out with a trip to the hospital which left me feeling really angry.
You may recall some months ago I mentioned having a lump ...er... putting it bluntly... on my bollox. Well, the treatment I was given didn't seem to do a whole lot, so a month or so ago I went back to see a different doctor, who decided it was probably an epididimal cyst, and made an appointment for me to go and have an ultrasound scan at the hospital.
So when I got there, talk about being treated like a piece of meat.
There were two guys, one a (greek?) doctor who's only interest appeared to be football, and a techician running the machine, who had all the communication skills of a house brick. To make matters worse, just on the other side of a partly drawn curtain where a bunch of other people who seemed to be using the room as an office, and they kept walking through while I was laying on the bed with my bits out, being poked and prodded at.
So... after being made to feel generally very degraded, the doctor announces that yes, it is a cyst, and I ask if it's anything I should be worried about. his reply was "Yes................. in around 2098." Now excuse me, but when I'm looking for information and reassurance about something that I find quite worrying, especially having been made to feel like a worthless piece of meat that barely warrants a "hello" when they walk into the room, I find having a joke about it not only inapropriate, but downright disgusting.
Anyway, moving on.
On the way home, it snowed, which I rather liked, but I somehow managed to lose my bearings and got lost along the maze of cycle paths on the wrong side of town. Heh.
On the plus side, it snowed all day, and that night I went out and took some photos.
Here's an example....
Certainly one of my better night shoots.
What else have I been doing?
Ahhh.... Babylon 5.
Yup, I've had my eyes glued to the tv, working my way through the box sets for the past couple of weeks... every spare minute I've had. It really is that good.
Saying that... I'm a bit concerned with season 5.
They obviously knew they were gonna be cancelled at the end of season 4, and so basically completed all of the really important aspects of the story, leaving only a few loose ends. They could very easilly have left it right there, and you wouldn't have been left feeling short changed and left hanging.
Then they got picked up by another network, and continued with season 5. Trouble is, having already completed the main story, I was concerned that 5 would feel tacked on... and to be honest, the 4 episodes I've seen so far feel very much like that.
I just hope it improves. I'm not writing it off yet.... but so far, it doesn't look promising.
I've mentioned before that Andrea lives some distance from me. Around 105 miles away, up north, to be a bit more specific, meaning we only get to see each other at weekends.
So, up till now, we've been running up huge phone bills, speaking to each other every night in the week.
Well, we've found a solution to that.
During the week, I tried to initiate an audio chat with Andrea using msn messenger, but it wouldn't let her accept the call as she didnt have a cam or mic. So... next day she goes out and buys a cam and mic, and we duly tried again.
The results were... variable. Cam to cam with no audio was excellent, brilliant frame rate. However, as soon as we fired up the audio, the cam frame rate dropped down to a crawl, and the audio was very choppy, and broke up enough to make holding a decent conversation almost impossible.
I figured turning off the cams would improve the audio, but no... still very choppy and broken. Pity.
However....
For the past year or so, I've been hearing about a program called Skype, which a number of people have been using for audio chat, and have said is *very* good.
So, I figured why not give it a try. It's free, so what is there to lose?
Andrea and I duly downloaded, installed, and signed up to it, and oooh boy, is it ever good.
I've used a number of audio chat programs in the past, all with fairly decent results, but this absolutely stomps all over them. It's way better than phone quality audio. In fact, without exagerating, it's like being in the same room. Better yet, if you buy credits (which I haven't done yet) you can call people's home phone using it, for a fraction of the cost of dialing them on your own phone.
Anyway, to top all of this off, we discovered it's possible to run skype for audio chat at the same time as using msn messenger to run webcams, and the cam framerate is almost exactly the same as running msn webcams with no audio at all... ie, very fast.
The end result was that we can now chat for hours, face to face, with near realtime (and excellent quality) cam images, and audio like we were in the same room.... and all of this costing absolutely nothing.
Good stuff :-)
Labels: annoyed, medical, photos, webcams
Steve 5:21 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, September 24, 2004
I finally got to see my (well, a) doctor again today for a checkup after taking a course of antibiotics for epididimytus. I was a little concerned as I still get the odd niggling twinge, but he says it's nothing to worry about and that I'm absolutely fine.Good news indeed. I'll keep an eye on it though as lumps, bumps and unexpected things going on down there can't be ignored.
In other news... heh... game game game. I sat up till 10:30 this morning since around 5pm yesterday playing Farcry... almost non-stop. Addictive doesn't even begin to describe it.
It's one of those games where you keep telling youself "just one more go... 10 more mins... just so I can see what's round this corner, or over that hill." Then you get killed before you get round that corner or reach the other side of the hill, and so start again.
A word of advice. If you have to be up in the morning, have somewhere to go, or something important to do, do *not* start playing Farcry, coz there's absolutely no such thing as 'just a quick go' on this game.
Steve 6:37 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, September 13, 2004
I ordered my new pc today.After a bit of umming and ahhing I settled on an Advent T9101. This has a 3.2ghz Pentium 4, 512meg ram, 200gig hard drive, DVD writer and 15" TFT monitor. I suspect the motherboard, onboard sound and gfx aren't gonna be anything great, but as a base machine, it's a very good starting point, and I can add other bits as and when I need more oomph.
Anyway... I pick it up on thursday.
Transferring stuff across from this laptop's gonna be a pain, coz the cd writer on here's died. Guess I'm gonna have to mess around with that 64 meg usb storage thingie. That'll be fun.
In other news... the antibiotics don't seem to have done a whole lot yet. I'd hoped for some improvement by now, but we'll see. I'm trying not to think too much about what the problem might be if it's not epididimytis, but can't help being a little worried.
Steve 9:18 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, September 11, 2004
I got the antibiotics, at last. The chemist had to order them, coz they weren't in stock (which is kinda crap). Hopefully they'll do the trick.The downside of them is, I can't take antacid pills, and for me, that's a problem, coz my digestive system's really rather crap. Lets see if I can get through a week without heaving.
Also I can't drink alcohol. This isn't really an issue, coz it's very rare that I drink, but dontcha just know that as soon as I'm not allowed one, I could murder a beer.
Other news? Hmm. Not much. Probably gonna go and see about picking up a new pc on monday. I've been planning to do that for ages, but have finally built up enough funds to buy one and not have to worry about leaving myself short.
It should be fun to get a decent machine, coz though this laptop isn't too bad and can do all the simple stuff most people would want, I have a tendancy to do stuff that's very processor intensive, and it'll let me do a lot more.
Emulation, music production and video editing take a lot of oomph dontcha know.
Labels: medical
Steve 6:11 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, September 09, 2004
So, I'm back from the doctors and rather less worried.Only *rather* less, coz it's 'probably' only epididymitis. Google it if you wanna know what that is. It's the 'probably' that leaves me uneasy. I've got a prescription for some antibiotics and have to go back and get it re-checked in a week.
Labels: medical
Steve 4:01 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
The past few days have been spend trying not to move around too much.I guess I'll be a little more specific about this pain I mentioned recently. I've found a lump, in about the last place a guy wants to find a lump, so yeah... I'm rather worried. I have an appointment to see the doctor tomorrow, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that its something minor. There's a dozen things it could be... and hopefully it'll be something they don't have to open me up to cut out *shudders*.
So I've been spending my time messing with a whole bundle of emulators, just for something to do.
I installed a Spectrum emulator just to play Jetpack, 3D Ant Attack and 3D Death Chase, coz apart from 3D monster Maze on the ZX81 (Timex 1000) those are the 3 games that really got me into home computers back in the early 80s. Curiously, I never actually had a Spectrum back in the day, my family was poor, so I had to make do with an Atari 2600, but all of my friends had them, so I got to play a lot of the games. I have 2 in the loft now though... the infamous rubber keyboard 48k version, and a later 128 +2.
Also newly installed is a Gameboy/Gameboy Colour/Gameboy Advance emulator. Now I've never really rated gameboys... like okay, they have good battery life and let you play stuff wherever, but to me, the technology has always been so far behind current consoles that the portability never really made up for the dated feel of the games. Anyway... I just wanted to see how good (or otherwise) Gameboy Advance games are, and nope... I wouldn't buy one.
The final Emulator I installed is a bit of a curiosity called VibaNono. It emulates the Namco System 22 board, though is only compatible with Ridge Racer, Ridge Racer 2, and Rage Racer. Still, it's quite impressive, and even on my lowly 1 ghz laptop with weedy onboard 16 meg gfx, Ridge Racer 2 far surpasses the PS1 version of the game. That'll deffinitely be one to load onto my new pc when I finally get round to buying the thing.
Steve 8:47 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Argh!I have an infurriating ringing in my ears.
Actually, I'm not sure if it's in my ears on in my head... it's like a very low frequency hum that sometimes feels like it's coming from the back of the base of my neck. All I can think is it may be some inner or middle ear infection, coz loud or low frequency sounds seem to be extra loud and distorted.
Whatever it is, It's driving me nuts, and sleep isn't getting rid of it.
Steve 12:29 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, March 02, 2003
There's a down side to being a super fit always healthy person. On the rare occasions that I'm not fit and healty, I not only get a major case of the whines, but there's also the tendancy for me to panic and make a complete twat of myself.So there we were yesterday, in Brigitte's car on the way to Aylesbury for a shopping trip, when my already somewhat congested lungs (from a lingering minor chest infection that's been hanging around for a couple of months) decided they were gonna have a barny at me for all the cigs I'd smoked the night before. All of a sudden I couldn't breathe. "Wheeze wheeze" I went. This, coupled with a periodic chest pain I suffer due to misaligned shoulders from bad posture, and an oddly inflamed vein in my leg, all at the same time, led to the most scary ideas going through my head.
"Oh shit, I've got a deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot's gone to my lungs, blocking the blood flow to my heart, and now I'm gonna die!!"
Obviously I didn't die, but it freaked me out so I was all in a sweat, which rather worried Brigitte too. So she's sat there looking concerned and asking if I'm okay, and the best I could say was "I don't know." Anyway, the panic subsided when I realised I wasn't gonna keel over straight away, and we carried on to Aylesbury.
We didn't stay that long though, 'cause even though I obviously wasn't gonna fall down dead, I really did feel lousy, just kinda following Brigitte like some lost puppy. On getting home, we just slumped down in a chair, downloading music on kazaa lite while I quietly whimpered. I'm such a wuss.
So... I need to quit the cigs bigtime if they're gonna make me feel like that, and in truth, should probably see the doctor about this vein thing too.
Anyway, I need to say a belated happy birthday to arry, as in all my whining and feeling lousy, I entirely failed in my duties as a friend, and didn't go wish her a happy birthday yesterday.
Labels: medical, quitting smoking
Steve 1:04 PM [+] (0) comments
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