Almost the right address?

A mate of mine snail mailed something to me, and thought it would be funny to address the letter in this manner.

Click for larger pic.


Obviously it found its way to me. :P

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My Mind at Two

It's two in the morning. I am wide awake, and sleep seems so far away. I feel fatigued and want to sleep, but I just don't feel tired. I think it is stress. Each time I try to relax, something comes to mind that keeps me thinking, keeps my mind active.

I miss loved ones. I worry for loved ones. I stress about work. I dwell on countless other things. But they all have one thing in common. They are not about me!

Why am I so fixated upon the well being and happiness of others? Why does it have to matter so much to me that those I care about are happy and well? Why can I not be happy unless loved ones are?

It makes me so terribly dependant upon others for my own happiness. It causes me lots of stress. I am fully aware of how much it takes from me, but I am completely unwilling to change it. I would happily give double what I do now just to make their lives better.

What am I looking for? What am I missing?

I don't know. But I bet it has something to do with feeling so lonely.

Stupid brain!

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Broken Bones

:( I hate that I had to leave her. She is so very helpless, and completely dependant upon others. Nursing staff are very competent, but so overworked, and they just can not give her the level of care she really needs.

I spoke to her today, and the nursing staff asked her where I was, and suggested that they wait until I come in to help her with things. It was good that the nursing staff considered me to be helpful because they would let me stay there all the time, regardless of the visiting hours.

I know she understands that work is very important and can not be avoided, but I feel so very bad for abandoning her. :( I will fly down again this weekend and see her.

OK, enough ranting. Here are the clinical facts. Lower left leg broken, both tibia and fibula. Very nasty indeed. Had to have rod put down the middle of the tibia, two screws in top and two in bottom to hold it in place. That will stay there for the rest of her life. Right foot is all banged up. Big toe very badly dislocated back at the tarsal-metatarsal joint. Next two toes have broken metatarsals, the smallest two have bad dislocations at the metatarsal-phalangeal joints. They fixed all this by putting wires thru the two smallest toes, going up through the bones from the tip of the toes back to the cuboid bone. The big toe had two wires come over the tarsal-metatarsal joint to the cuneiform bones.

All that work was done in a 6 hour long theater session with a pair of EXCELLENT surgeons operating on her. They did a FANTASTIC job, and what was thought to be a multi surgery hit and miss rebuild ended up being a once in once out job. The leg needs no more work, maybe some adjustments to the screws if needed in the future. The foot will need the wires pulled out in 3 months time, but that will be something done under general requiring an overnight stay. Not too traumatic.

What is traumatic is the fact that she will need the leg cast on for 6 weeks, that means no walking AT ALL in that time, and the foot cast on for 3 moths, no weight bearing on it during that time. After the wires are out, another 4-6 weeks in a cast on crutches. She is looking at 6 months before she can even think of walking normally again. :(

The morphine is hitting her hard. Side effects are nasty. Hopefully she will end it soon. Some blood loss problems, but they seem to be working themselves out. All in all, she'll pull through with a whole lot of pain and suffering. That really sucks, but it could be worse.

Here are some of her X-ray's. I took these pics with my cellphone, so the quality is not too crash hot, but you'll get the idea. Click for larger pics.



Thanks everyone for her get well wishes. I've been passing them all on, and she appreciates every one of them. :)

Back to work now. CRAP LOADS of work to do. And on top of that, I've come down with a bloody nasty chest cold, and sound like a mafia boss. :(

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Poor Thing

They have moved her major surgery through to late this afternoon. Thats good on one hand because it means I will be there for her before she goes in, but bad on the other because it means she will remain heavily sedated for the day, but still feel pain. :(

I feel quite helpless being so far away. I am finding it hard to concerntrate on my work and get it finished before I have to go to the airport and get my flight.

Breakfast break is over. I best get back to it then. :\

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Bad Very Bad

She is not so good. :( She has very bad breaks on both the bones in her lower left leg, and lots of damage to her right ankle and foot. They have stabilised her and have her in a drug induced sleep for the night, and she is scheduled for surgery first thing in the morning.

She will require pins in both bones in that left leg, and god knows what in her right ankle and foot. Does not appear to be nerve or muscle damage, so lucky so far there.

She is very upset of course, and wants me there. I promised I would be there when she woke up from surgery tomorrow. I've booked a flight down tomorrow morning.

I hope my boss understands. There is SOOOO much work to do. I will not sleep tonight obviously, so will cram as much outstanding work as possible in now, go into the office and hand off as much as I can to others before my flight, and will have to do the rest of it when I can manage while I am down there. No idea how long I will be there though. Thank god for mobile broadband and laptops is all I can say.

Anyhow, have heaps to get done, and now NO time to do it in, so I best get to it then.

:( Poor girlie. Life really sucks sometimes! :(

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Worried Worried

Oh no! A loved one has been involved in an accident. She was hit by another car while riding her bike. She has been rushed off to hospital for surgery on a very badly damaged ankle and foot. No other serious injuries according to the constable at the scene. Buying all that saftey gear for her really paid off it seems.

Bike did not make it. :( She is not going to be happy to learn that when she awakens from the surgery. I have had it taken to a holding yard for the insurance company to attend to.

Sometimes life is just not nice at all. :(

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Sleep sleep!

So sleepy! Have slept not more than 12 hours in the last 72! I just can't sleep for long without a nightmare waking me. :(

A friend told me about magnesium levels causing nightmares. I take my Centrum multivitamins each day, but not sure if they meet my daily magnesium requirements. I have not had time to look into it.

The general medical consensus seems to be that everyone has occasional nightmares, but sometimes nightmares can be a sign of an underlying medical or psychological problem that needs treatment. There are a few very common causes for most cases where nightmares cause sleeping disorders. These can be emotional stress, medications (for example, some antibiotics and heart medications), withdrawal from central nervous system (CNS) depressants (for example, alcohol and some anti-anxiety medications), and uncontrolled pain. Frequent nightmares can lead to a fear of going to sleep, restless sleep, and daytime sleepiness.

OK. It's not the medication, because I don't take any on a regular basis. Not CNS depressant withdrawal. Emotional stress... a definite candidate. Uncontrolled pain... an absolute suspect!

The facial neuralgia I have is chronic. It is always present. At all times the whole right side of my face and forehead and part of the right side of my scalp hurts so bad it causes me terrible pain. Left alone, it stings painfully like your face would immediately after it has been slapped hard. Gentle touches like a breeze or clothing feel like that cold burning you get when your freezing feet are put into warm water. But rubbing and touching, that feels like fire!

Sometimes I'll rub my face or scalp to feel the change in the pain, relief from the ever present sting with a quick touch of burning. Like poking at a loose tooth. But for the greater part, left alone I can just put it out of mind. I ignore it like you do any chronic pain you get. Sometimes the referred pains are terrible, making me think I have an unbearable toothache or severe earache, but most of the time it is easily enough ignored.

Sure I have medication for it. But it is TERRIBLY expensive. Not subsidised by the government, and it has very uncomfortable side effects. For the most part I've learnt to live with the pain.

But when I sleep... oh no that is a different story all together. I sleep on my tummy with my face turned on my pillow. When I sleep alone I fall asleep with my left cheek on the pillow, but sometimes I am awoken just as I am falling asleep from the burning pain I feel when I unconsciously turn my right cheek to the pillow. It makes actually falling asleep a very difficult task. Then when finally asleep I can not seem to stay asleep for more than 3-4 hours at a time. I wake up frightened and upset. Most of the time I cannot actually recall what I am upset about no matter how hard I try to remember the nightmare. Sometimes I do remember, and that is not fun. Such silly things that take so long for me to calm down again.

Here is the thing though. Each time I wake up from a nightmare, I know my right cheek was on the pillow, and my face is burning with pain, with referred pain often causing even more agony. Painkillers help. Getting up to take them, having a drink, calming myself down, it all helps. But it all keeps me awake, and sometimes I just do not have time to try to sleep again. But those very rare times I awaken calmly I always notice my left cheek is on the pillow.

Something else too. When I am not sleeping alone, the nightmares almost never come. Each time I fall asleep, I face towards the person sharing my bed putting my left cheek on the pillow, and I seem to almost always awaken that way too. Do I sleep the whole night without turning my head? My neck is not sore, so I doubt it. But how else can I explain the lack of nightmares otherwise?

Well, emotional stress maybe? Sharing my bed with someone could impact that. I am almost always less stressed when I have company, so that could be it too.

I guess the crux of the matter is that I have to find some way to stop these nightmares. Until they stop, I am quite sure I will go on with this sleeping disorder. I find myself unwilling to go to bed, even when I am so very tired. When I do go to bed, it takes so long to fall asleep, even when doing my mental relaxation routine. When I do manage to start falling asleep I am often awoken accidental when I unconsciously turn my head. And when I do finally manage to get to sleep, I just can't seem to stay asleep for anywhere near long enough.

For now, it's some sleeping medication induced 6 hours of sleep for me! I hate taking these things because they always leave me feeling groggy for 6 hours after I wake up! Oh well, got to take the good with the bad I suppose.

I miss her. :(

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Pokemon Bitches

Have been meaning to blog this FOREVER. (laugh)

Years ago someone showed me a hilarious music video that just cracked me up. It was made by a guy named Eric from the site Otaku Vengeance. He makes heaps of music video's of various music (not his music) put to various Anime compilations. Well, this one is put to some Pokemon clips, and the music is a song titled "Bitches" by a group called "Mindless Self Indulgence". :P

Eric's website is down, but you can see most of his work over at SteveMV.com. Some of it is pretty good. :)

Now the music video has harmless visuals, but some bad language in the audio, so if you are at work or in a public place you might want to use headphones. :P



Anyhow... It is after 3am now, and I have to get up for work at 7am, so I am going to see if I can get a few hours of nightmare free sleep.

My love to those who deserve it.

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Aye Aye Captian!

We consulted to a client to perform wireless surveys of a cruise ship last week. While I was off doing REAL work, a couple of my workmates took these snaps while on the bridge.

I love the thumbs up while he was in the captain's chair. Nice touch. :P Don't worry folks, the ship was docked at the time. ;) Click for larger pics.



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Reuters are Retards!

You'd expect a news service to have someone proof read their journalist's articles before they post them.

This news article talks about a Russian cosmonaut who is going to hit a golf ball from the International Space Station for an advertising job.

Well the funny thing is, if you look at the last paragraph on page two of the article, you see this:

During the Apollo 14 moon mission in 1971, U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard hit a golf ball with a six-iron from the lunar surface and boasted that it traveled "miles and miles" in the low-gravity atmosphere.

Now even a primary school student knows there is no "atmosphere" on the moon. In fact, this is probably why the ball went so far, not because of the one sixth gravity.

The question begs, did Alan Shepard really say that, or is he just being misquoted by a retarded journalist? :P

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Another late night.

Work kept me up till 3am last night, then up at 7am. Same again tonight. It's 3am. Just finished work that I had to do. Very tired.

At least the nightmares don't wake me when I sleep so little.

I miss loved ones. :(

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Labels

So I have moved over to the new blogger system, and it lets you label your posts. With labels, you can assign a post to one of more categories. That way you can click on the label at the bottom of the post, or under the topics menu on the right, and see all posts that are relevant to that topic.

Problem is, it takes BLOODY AGES to assign labels to the hundreds and hundreds of existing posts I have.

So far I have gone through and put three labels on. I hope I have not missed posts, or miss labeled them. I think it is all good. Very time consuming. I will add more as I go.

So, there you have it. :)

Nothing to see here... Move along people!

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Crazy Katz

I have been meaning to post these pics for a while, but it was just too much effort to upload them to my server and then write all the code for them in a blog entry.

So I have given posting them via Picasa a go to see how it turns out. :)

Don't recall now where I got the pics from, but I am they were not the copyright owners, so I dont feel bad forgetting to credit them. :P

Click on the pic below to see the album. They are hillarious. :D

CrazyKatz

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A glitch in the matirx?

Ever get the feeling that you are cursed to live through the same bullshit over and over again?

In the immortal words of Jack Nicholson, what if this is as good as it gets?

:|

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Work work work MEH

Have had a ball this last month hanging with a friend. She has gone now, and I am amazed at how quickly I have fallen back into the old routine of working all day, then going home and working for most of the night.

I feel tired, but I KNOW that if I try to go to sleep I will be awake within a few hours and won't be able to go back to sleep.

I have PLENTY of work to do. There does not seem to be enough hours in the day. And if I stay up till about 2 or 3 in the morning, then I can sleep thru till 6 or 7 without being woken by bad dreams.

Well, back to work then! Heaps of work still to be done, and hours to go before sleep will come.

I miss her. :(

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