Bloodletting and other auctorial pastimes
Friday, September 17th, 2010 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniThe day-job lives in a pleasant, if intermittently too-damn-hot, office on what you, being unInitiated, would call the third floor of an old brick building. In order to get to the door of the office, one needs to climb a rather steep set of stairs, turn a corner on the landing at the library level (the “first floor”), and climb another set of stairs, equally as steep.
Students like to arrive at the library early, which is commendable of them, and loiter on the landing, often in packs, sometimes in little drifts of one, wilting against the rail.
There’s usually at least one student sitting on, or sprawled over, the first set of four stairs of the second staircase.
Often, they kinda skooch over an inch, to “give (me) room to pass”. Just as often, they stick their finger in their off ear and continue talking on the cell, pretending they’re on Mars — or I am. Some actually do get up and smile and say, “Sorry,” but those are rare.
This morning brought me three boys on the landing, talking and cutting jokes as they waited for it to Be Time — and a fourth boy sitting all over the first four stairs, his cellphone laid handily by, his calculator ditto, a pack on the stair under his lap — really, he was awfully comfy.
And there wasn’t an inch for me to skooch by in.
I stopped, planted the point of my umbrella on the rug and contemplated him.
His buddies stopped talking.
The boy on the stairs kind of blinked at me, and tried a smile. “Am I in the way?”
“Indeed you are,” I assured him.
To his credit, he got up, shifted his stuff and moved down to the landing to let me by.
. . .and had completely re-established his stairway office by the time I’d reached the top of the flight.
This evening, as I was leaving work, three young lads were walking toward me, taking up all available sidewalk room, none of them giving the least indication that they’d seen me. I stopped where I was, blocking one young man, who stopped, blinked, and said, “UmAh?”
“The words you are looking for,” I said, “are excuse me.”
He blinked again. “Excuse me,” he said, and dropped back to let me by.
. . .So that was my day before I got to the vampires, to find out that my records suddenly showed me living at a house in a location I’d never heard of. The clerk fixed that, amid much wonderment and confusion from her and her supervisor (“It shouldn’t do that” may be the most comical phrase in English), and set me loose in the waiting area.
I was eventually called by the vampire, whose job it was to draw blood for another thyroid test. The endocrinologist in Augusta “doesn’t see people with thyroid problems” (um, what?), and the next nearest, in Lewiston, called my primary care doctor to ask why I was being referred since my readings were — wait for it — “normal.” Which is fairly discouraging. Hence, the new blood test.
Steve, in the meantime, has written and posted the synopsis for Ghost Ship, by request of the good folk at Baen. You can read it here, if you’re curious. Warning! May contain spoilers.
Ghost Ship is scheduled to be published in August 2011, roughly in time for the Reno WorldCon.
And now, having had Adventures, if not precisely Alarums and Excursions, I’m going to try to do some work.
Hope everybody has a splendid weekend!
Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.
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Handling the Younger Generation
Date: 2010-09-17 09:20 pm (UTC)Manners...
Date: 2010-09-17 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 10:02 pm (UTC)Barbara in Texas
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 10:18 pm (UTC)Instill manners in those young pups, esp. the male ones.
:D
Oz
no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 02:13 pm (UTC)I'm afraid it's so.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 10:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 11:56 pm (UTC)I'm so glad I have your blog to read, to get me by until your next book is available....
Really, you are just wonderful!
no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 05:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 01:10 pm (UTC)There are, in the Street below, numerous tables, couches, comfy chairs, hassocks and various study rooms. They're just not very convenient for library-door-watching.
Synopsis, etc.
Date: 2010-09-18 06:00 am (UTC)I just went over to Steve's Live Journal for the first time to read the synopsis of Ghost Ship. Suspense! Wish it didn't take so long to publish a book even after it's finished. Synopsis looks great.
C.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 07:05 am (UTC)An endo who *doesn't* handle the most common endocrine issue this side of diabetes? Who let that one practice?
I was first put on Synthroid in 1990, when my TSH was 4.5--just a little low, it should help. The women in my mother's family all have low thyroid issues, except my sister and my one female cousin. I got more agressive once I was dealing with depression after depression, and insisted that "high end normal" for the general populace was still too high for me. I had a PCP who agreed that I needed to have a higher dosage, and I think I got to 75 mcg.
When we moved from Santa Cruz to San Jose in 2004, I went to an internist who raised my dosage 88 mcg. We kept increasing it, agreeing that I was better off the closer I was to a TSH of 1.0. Actually, these days, if it's over 2, I ask to raise the dosage (125 these days). I also see an endo for my diabetes/high cholesterol/high blood pressure = Metabolic Syndrome X needs. I have friends, online and RL, who have the same issues with low thyroid.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 02:22 pm (UTC)Well, it's Maine. We have a doctor shortage, here in the Center Part, and it's even worse, up-country. I may wind up going to Portland for an endocrinologist yet. When I was very ill with the Mystery Infection, years ago now, the nearest doctor deemed capable of dealing with it was in Boston.
I got more agressive once I was dealing with depression after depression, and insisted that "high end normal" for the general populace was still too high for me.
My GP goes at it from the direction of "thyroid malfunction doesn't cause depression; depression causes depression." In other words, she's not seeing a cluster; she's seeing isolated symptoms, each of which has an answer which is not necessarily, "we need to look at your thyroid again."
Which is, yanno, why I asked for the referral...
no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 07:46 pm (UTC)Regarding the therapists: After I fired the last one, I asked my son's therapist if she'd take me on, and she did. Very helpful on many levels.
Regarding the shrinks: first two were too set in their ways to listen to what I had to say (and one let me go cold-turkey of Wellbutrin when I was going to be on the East Coast for 5 weeks, with no out-of-area coverage for what I needed). When I participated in a new therapy for treatment-resistant depression (unipolar & bipolar), I was astounded at how nice, kind & approachable these guys were. Made me realize that I *could* get a decent shrink, and what to look for. I have to drive over an hour to get to the one I have now, but she's a wonder when I need that. Doesn't tell me stupid things, or act as if *I* am. We both do our research and compare notes.
I hope Portland is as far as you have to go for real treatment for your thyroid.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 02:23 pm (UTC)Ghost Ship
Date: 2010-09-18 04:19 pm (UTC)How am I going to last until next August? Wonder if we can lobby Baen for an early E-Arc release - goes away muttering.
Melvyn Barker
You go! Embrace that Inner Curmudgeon!
Date: 2010-09-18 09:07 pm (UTC)Lauretta@ConstellationBooks
My memory fails me...
Date: 2010-09-18 09:51 pm (UTC)I could swear that you've used that phrase in one of your books. I just can't remember where.
Then again maybe I'm imagining it. It sounds like something some one might say about one of Val Con's efforts.
Thyroid issues
Date: 2010-09-20 02:17 am (UTC)What worked for me:
1. Seeing an osteopath (O.D) who actually examined me instead of just looking at my bloodwork.
2. Taking "thyroid" NOT "synthroid". Thyroid is made from the thyroid gland of pigs (sorry you veggies out there). This works much better for me.
Good luck, when my thyroid is supplemented I feel great. When it is low, I am depressed and have "fog-brain."
Thyroid
Date: 2010-09-24 11:58 pm (UTC)By the way, I thought the Ghostship write-up was cute! Although, I think your scene with the umbrella puts me in mind of Jen Sar with his cane and his dry commentary. :)