Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Pain

As I have said before, I worked on a pain project at work. There are two types of pain: nociceptive pain that alerts the self that something is amiss in hopes that it gets fixed (put your hand on something hot OW! you remove the hand) and neuropathic pain, which serves no good purpose. Neuropathic pain is damage to the nerve itself and very difficult to treat. Those undergoing cancer treatment are introduced to nasty neuropathic pain; Taxol is notorious for inducing it. On the third day after treatment, every muscle fiber would ache. There would be no position that I could get comfortable in. Fortunately for me, after a day or so, it was gone. Some people have this pain years after. I do have some neuropathic pain due to damage from either surgery or radiation (I vote for the latter) Occasionally I get shooting pains in my bad breast. But then it disappears  Sometimes it feels like I have broken a rib which set me off on Oh No, it's come back as bones mets! but then it goes away.

But yesterday I was plagued with nociceptive pain. I believe I have noro virus aka winter vomiting bug. But its presentation is much different than what  I had last year (twice!) which was severe vomiting for 12 hours and then, I am OK. Noro virus is very hard to avoid with little kids. Due to the virus lacking a sheath, alcohol does not kill it so sanitizers are useless. Also it is highly infectious, just one or two viruses are enough to infect. And the suckers live a long time without their host. It is amazing that we all don't have it. I was vaguely nauseous for 3 days then suddenly I had severe stomach cramps..I was really afraid of becoming dehydrated as there was no break in the 'action'. But the cramps were the worst...so so painful. Also I could not get warm even though I was fully dressed under 2 thick comforters, I still shivered. Me, who runs outside with just a t-shirt when it is 30. I am much better today with just the nausea but this is no fun. Since eating is out of the question, maybe I'll lose weight but I can't exercise (too weak).

Another subject: sneaky airlines. I went to purchase some tickets on-line and the website froze me out. I called to complain (entered the wrong password and it would not give a second chance). They asked if I just wanted to buy my tickets from them..sure but now I noticed they added a $50 service fee (with no warning!!!) Quite the scam, make the website impossible to use so you are forced to call them and then get charged $50 for a minute's work on their part. I would tell you their name but since they were good enough to remove the charge when I noticed it today, I will give them a pass but caveat emptor!!! Also all these miles I have with this airline only count towards getting free tickets not anything else. Even though I have more than 100K miles, since I didn't actually fly all that, no upgrades, no buying tickets for free on the phone, no nothing. That was not made clear to me before either.

No comments:

Followers

Blog Archive