More of the Same

So, another Friday night and I'm drinking beer at the computer.
Pretty much as usual, but this is the first beer I had in over a week. Last week I had a back pain came out of nowhere. I'm not usually prone to back aches, and this didn't feel like a muscle, so when I got to work, I asked Es to phone the doctor for an appointment. Instead, she got the mad assistant on the line, who refused to make an appointment, but prescribed me some seriously heavy Ibrupofen 600, 2-3 times a day. Well, I know that's a muscle relaxant amongst other things, and worrying whether I had a vertebrae problem, I saw a physiotherapist the next morning. She told me that it would probably loosen up a bit, and the Ibrupofen would help with the pain, and stop the muscles cramping up to compensate too much.
So, that day I took two, and the day after I took three, as prescribed: the pain still seemed to get worse if anything. But then on the Thursday I got up and had a stomach ache, so I didn't take any painkillers. The stomach ache though just got worse, so I left work an hour early and came home. At home, the pain kept getting worse, until I asked Es to phone the doctors' out-of-hours service. They unusually sent a doctor round straight away, who came with some paramedic looking guy. Worried about a perforated stomach, they phoned the hospital, and then the ambulance. Off I went to hospital, got bled and X-rayed and CAT-scanned and spent the night on a drip.
That night, off to the toilet yet again at 5 in the morning, suddenly the pain had cleared up. However, that didn't stop the new doctor and his intern the next morning outside my room discussing all the tests they wanted to do on me, as all the other tests hadn't revealed anything. Why would it stop them - they hadn't spoken to me yet!
So instead of another day and night on the drip, being bled and having a camera poked down my gullet and god-knows-what-else, I discharged myself. Didn't stop him prescribing double the normal dose of anti-acid ulcer pills for me, whilst there was no evidence of an ulcer at all, let alone the death's door he seemed to feel was appropriate.
Anyway, I've had a week or so of healthy food and no alcohol to recover from teh damage those bloody tablets have done, and feel I'm due a beer tonight :-)

Meanwhile, on a more traditional note for me, I'm watching some storms across in the States. Now I've got a serious connection at 4MB/s I can really see live coverage. (Isn't the net wonderful - I can see a guy in the Deep South who had a broken window this afternoon!) In this case, from Tennesssee. Two dozen died there last weekend. At least two have died today, and they're only approaching the late afternoon there. In fact this is already building into an awful tornado season, and it's only just begun. More people have died this year than last already. And most of the casualties last year came in Evansville in the very unusual November storm. Admittedly, last year was very quiet for tornadoes, but no such luck this year.

And the forecast for the Atlantic hurricane season came out a couple of days ago. For some reason, this is made by the University of Colorado. As far as I'm aware, no hurricane ever came close to Colorado. Anyway, looks like another very busy season. The places to worry about being vulnerable to a high Cat hurricane would IMHO be Tampa and Galveston. I read somewhere that Tampa is one of the top 10 potential disasters in the US - that list had included New Orleans, along with quakes hitting San Fransisco and such like. And Galveston is the location of the worst natural disaster in American history, back in 1900.
Not that these are anything compared with the potentials, such as Yellowstone, or past events like the Badlands megafloods. We've grown up with the idea of the Earth as a friendly and stable place. Considering how we've treated her, I'm not going to be at all surprised if there's no more Mrs Nice Earth from now on...

LAst thing today: I signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Not only can't I talk about it, I don't hardly know about what it's about. As usual with these things though, I think alot of people are going to lose their jobs at my work. I don't think that includes me, but you never know. A bit of a bugger really, as we also did something unusual today, and went to talk with an advisor about a mortgage. Next week, we're off to look at houses to buy! The mind boggles - who'd lend me a couple of hundred grand!

Just heard - there's now 7 dead in Galleston(sp?) Tennessee. Bad weather days...