Category Archives: Experiences

Today I chose to get a root canal (TIC00095i)

The PolyBlog
December 17 2020

I haven’t been doing my daily blogging, taking a break through to the new year probably, but today I have an entry. About a month ago, I had a tooth that was sensitive. Actually, two were hurting, one right above each other. It was hard to know which was sore and which was only radiating / referring. I thought at first, hoped at first, it was just a standard sensitivity problem and a day or two later it would be fine. Extra brushing, extra flossing, it would be all good.

Nope, it got painful over about 4 more days until it was almost impossible to eat some nights. I’m a giant baby when it comes to dental stuff, anyway, but this was extreme even for me. I felt like on the pain scale I went from simple 1-2, through 3-4, 5-6, and by the end, a few 7s and 8s. And the throbbing was incredible at times. I discovered the alternate-stimulus method i.e. interrupt the signal with a different sensation, so I took to rubbing my check or beard to send a different sensation through the same nerves so that the pain didn’t reach my brain. It was good for 5-10-minute reprieves, but wasn’t sustainable.

It started on a Thursday, ratcheted up by Monday, and I phoned my dentist first thing Tuesday morning (they’re closed Mondays). He couldn’t seem me for at least a week. Ruh roh. But he gave me an antibiotic to hold me over, and it took the pain away almost completely. I had my appointment, and I needed a root canal. No cavities, nothing else going on, just a routine root canal. My first, but still, routine.

Because of my own stress and past experiences, I need stuff like that to be done under sedation, and so his assistant set me up for the “first available surgery” day which was the 17th of December. Almost a month away. Sigh. There was some question of her competency, and maybe she was new, but she had very little ability to work the scheduler, the payment system, any of it. It was a crapfest. But she very clearly booked me for 10:00-12:00 for the 17th, i.e. today. I would have to arrive an hour early (9:00) to take my relaxant before the appointment. But I was booked. If anything came up in the meantime, I should call.

Nothing came up. My tooth was a bit sensitive here and there over the last month, but never above a 2/10 for pain and rarely even above a 1. But the scheduling was a bit more complicated with COVID.

Because I do sedation, I can’t drive myself to the appointment or take myself home afterwards. I need someone else to do that for me. Andrea can’t drive, so I was taking a taxi there, easy enough, and a neighbour drove Andrea over so they could pick me up and bring me home. Problem solved, and grateful for the help even if I have to impose on a neighbour.

Today started slow. I really wasn’t in a great mindset to go, worrying too much about the surgery, the unknown recovery, the potential complications, the taxi, the pickup, all of it. If the vaccines for COVID would change the world by February, I might have tried pushing through until then.

I took a taxi, and distracted myself with my frequent topic-of-conversation with taxi drivers about how business is going (generally terrible). Upon arrival, the new people working the desk (hint, hint about the previous person), came to let me in and said, “Oh, you’re really early”.

I thought they meant that I was an hour early but I reminded them they wanted me to come early to take the pill onsite. Yes, she knew that, but I wasn’t scheduled until 11:30 a.m. WTF? There was no mistake in my earlier booking. It was 10:00 a.m., AND she gave me a piece of paper with the info that matched what I put in my e-calendar. Plus it was the same schedule as last time. Arrive at 9, surgery at 10, cleaning around 11:00, done at noon.

The taxi had already left, so they let me stay and suggested I could just stream something on my phone. Uh-huh. Whatever. Waiting wasn’t the issue, I needed to see if Andrea could now come at 1:30/2:00 instead of noon. Yep, they adjusted, it was all good. Worst case scenario, Andrea would just come in a taxi and get me. Okay, set.

So I was supposed to start now at 11:30. Which would mean not taking the relaxer until 10:30/10:45.

At 9:45, the woman comes over with the glass of water and pill, and I’m like, “Wait, aren’t we a bit early?” Nope, they’ve *changed the time* around and haven’t told me. The 9:30 person didn’t show up. Why? Because they thought they were booked for the 22nd. When the clinic isn’t even open. Which I got to hear her tell the person about 25 times during the phone call.

It was patently clear that the idiot I dealt with the first time screwed a LOT of stuff up. And apparently moved people’s appointments around in the system to make room for other things without ever telling the patients. Yet while I was sitting there this morning, the scheduling assistant was calling around to move other things, and they got me back to my original schedule. Great, right? Except I had already MOVED MY RIDE!

So I had to call Andrea and get her to confirm she was okay with the new time. She was, they were, it worked. Okay, time to focus. Relax. Meditate.

I go in the room, the chair that they use is in the same bit of disrepair as it was in a month ago. The left arm works fine, the right arm keeps collapsing. Guess which one my arm has to rest on to do the IV? Yep, the right. Anyway, the anesthesiologist tries to fix it, no luck; the dental surgery assistant tries, no luck. Then, while they’re PUTTING AN IV in my hand, the doctor is using wrenches and tools on the chair I’m sitting in to fix the arm. Meanwhile, I have to hold my hand out level for about 10-15 minutes (no exaggeration) while the woman tries to find a solid vein in the back of my hand. I hadn’t drank enough water, so find the vein was a challenge, but I also had no place to put my arm, and the doctor kept raising the arm on the chair to the point of bumping my arm. Each time, the anesthesiologist was like, “Hold it still, please”. The Marx Brothers would have a whole skit written before they left the room.

Meanwhile, the anesthesiologist is asking for my list of current meds, which I had already given to the woman at the desk earlier, so had to remind myself of their titles. 3 are easy, 1 I tend to forget. Got it out, marked, okay. Then the dental assistant says, “Wait, this is for a ROOT CANAL? I don’t have the right tools for THAT!”. No one told her I wasn’t the 9:30 patient, but the 11:30 patient. The fact that I was clearly not Diane didn’t trigger a thought process.

All in all, I wasn’t getting the warmest fuzzies for professionalism and organization. Oh well, I’m in the chair!

Eventually, the chair was fixed, my arm could rest, we got going, and I was OUT. I don’t remember anything after he got the arm rest fixed until I woke up mostly post surgery during a cleaning. There were x-rays happening in there too, I think, and the cleaning was much more aggressive than I expected. I think they turned the drip off early. The whole point of doing the cleaning was that I would still be out. But it was a much-needed cleaning…they might have sent out for extra tools from Home Depot, for all I know.

Andrea picked me up at noon-ish, I don’t remember much until she got there, and I vaguely remember paying but those details are slipping. The head nurse escorted Mr. Rubber Legs out to the car, I saw our neighbour, we got a ride home in her Tesla, but I wasn’t really tracking the conversation so I might have dozed off en route. At home, I went up to bed and crashed for four hours. Much of the details of the day are fading.

Andrea woke me up and brought me some food and drink. Apple sauce, I think, but those details are fading too. But I was awake now and went downstairs and had some toast. After 24h of fasting, basically, I was a bit hungry. For supper, I was able to easily eat chicken stew, milk, and I even managed ice cream. I haven’t had anything crunchy yet, will wait on that until tomorrow, but no sensitivities for warm/cold yet. I’ll hold off on “hot” too.

My mouth is probably at about a 2-3/10 on the pain scale at the moment. I was surprised, they gave me no follow up meds. I assumed anti-biotics and pain would be standard, but I guess not.

Overall, the logistics were a sh** show, but the work seems fine. It’s sorer now than it was a day ago, because of the trauma of the day, but I’m not “in pain” generally. I remember more of the day this time than last sedation — that time I remember being at the dentist and taking my pill, getting in the chair, paying, getting OUT of a cab at home, and waking up. About 15-20 minutes worth of memory in an eight-hour period. This time, I remember most things up until the chair was fixed until the cleaning was almost done. There was some serious gagging in there that had me freaking out with latex flashbacks to another dental appointment, but it’s done.

Today I chose to have a root canal. And despite being worried, despite lots of stressful quirks during the day, the surgery part seems to have gone fine, and now I can just milk my injury for some TLC at home. I’m hoping for a morning omelette. 🙂

NAC Pops show – 80s Mix Tape

The PolyBlog
January 12 2020

This was outing #6 of the year (following 1 OLT, 2 NAC, 1 hockey game, and 1 Gladstone) to see the NAC Pops show called “80s Mix Tape” with conductor Stuart Chafetz and singers Julie Reiber and Bryce Ryness. The show was a collection of 21 songs from the 1980s performed by the NAC Orchestra, with 8 instrumental versions and 13 with lyrics. The full playlist (with two extra songs) is at the bottom.

The show kicked off with the instrumental version of The Final Countdown (Europe), and it was good, but not amazing. A nice light opening. They then went directly into a song with the female singer, Call Me (Blondie). I felt like she was doing a pop lite version of the song, no real grit, and the version I’m used to from Blondie has more deeper tones behind it. Or so I thought. However, you’ll see in the playlist version below, my memory might be off because it isn’t much darker/deeper in tone than the version I heard last night. It didn’t amaze me.

They then segued to the male singer doing Wake Me Up Before You Go Go (Wham). And I thought we were in trouble. I really like the song, and the energy of the original is enough to keep my toes bouncing if it is on the car stereo or headphones. I remember actually having it on a cassette tape, yes I’m that old, and listening to it on my no-name walkman while doing my paper route. It kept me moving and avoided my mind going numb while doing it. Yet the male artist seemed completely flat. Plus, I’m used to a radio version that is slightly sped up I think, as I consistently hear the CD version and think it is about 10% too slow.

We’ve experienced this before though. The orchestra is always great, but despite hiring Broadway singers to front the songs, the versions often come off somewhere between a theme park summer revue offering, a low-rated Glee episode, or high-end karaoke. One last year with “women of rock” had that problem in places.

Then the guy headed into Careless Whisper (George Michael) as a duet with the woman, and it was decent. At least I thought so, Andrea wasn’t sold.

Back to the female singer, the show moved into True Colors (Cindi Lauper). And suddenly that “deeper” sound that I was looking for in the Blondie song was there. Deep, rich, not poppy, and she was awesome. Andrea thought she was a bit off-tempo, but I loved it. Ironically, this is the second time this week I’ve seen that song performed, although the other time was just on TV. I watched the premiere of the show Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist and it was sung by her father played by Peter Gallagher. The full episode is available on YouTube, not a bad show. Nothing “extraordinary”, more like a Glee replacement. I’ve cued up the Peter Gallagher intro scene although you can jump ahead two minutes to the actual singing (for context, he’s in a catatonic state but she “hears” what’s going on in his head).

Back to the NAC…the next song was Broken Wings (Mr. Mister), and again, another decent version. Maybe we’re back on track? The NAC did three instrumentals following this:

  • Theme from Chariots of Fire — I have no idea why so many people think this song is amazing, I want to fall asleep for the film, the soundtrack, and well, even the name;
  • Theme from Ghostbusters — hard to describe, but I felt like the balance was off in the orchestra, maybe needs more strings than brass, I don’t know enough to define, while Andrea thought it was okay but would have been better if sang; and,
  • Theme from Back to the Future — it was an awesome rendition, with the combo of “old Western” pomp with a bit of Huey Lewis’ infused pop mixed with suspense music from Indiana Jones-style adventure themes.

Continuing the same theme, the last song of the first half was Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love” — aaaaand we were back to sucking canal water again.

Intermission was great, which I wouldn’t normally mention, but we wandered down by one of the other theatres which is showing Unikkaaqtuat right now from the Indigenous Theatre series. While we were there, we got to see some amazing posters they have put up about the Innu stories featured in the play. Really spectacular imagery provided by Taqqut Productions. Anyway, I digress.

When the second half started, they followed the tradition of the first song of each set being an instrumental, and they went with Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears). Really well done.

They followed it up with the male singer doing In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins) and while I thought it was “okay”, Andrea thought it was really good. Perhaps my reticence is more that I’m not a big fan of the song — I’ll listen to it occasionally, but if I have a skip function, it won’t stay on my playlist long. I am not a big fan of slow ballads, no matter how well done. Doesn’t stop me from singing along if it’s on, but I wouldn’t willingly choose it more than about once a year.

And then we come to the price of admission. Holy snicker doodles. The orchestra did an instrumental version of Smooth Criminal (Michael Jackson), and sure, the overall orchestra part was solid, as always. But the OMG part was that they had the concert master / first chair violin Jessica Linnebach do a showcase for the song. All of the individual artists are good, let’s face it, they are in the NAC’s orchestra. No small feat. And she is the associate concert master for NAC and concert master for most of the Pops series. Sure, we’ve seen the overall concertmaster, Yosuke Kawasaki, perform, usually something to do with more classical pieces specifically for a violin solo. But Jessica? Almost never on her own.

She was absolutely awesome. And was likely exhausted at the end of it. I pulled some videos from YouTube. Here she is after winning a competition in NYC:

And a more classical piece (34 minutes long, so maybe she wasn’t tired after Smooth Criminal!).

Alas, no separate recordings on iTunes to enjoy. Sigh. Hope to see more of her solos in the future. The playlist has a version of the instrumental, but it doesn’t do justice to her violin contributions.

Moving on, we had Alone (Heart) and the female singer did a great job again, leaving me to wonder what happened in the Blondie song at the start…was it just a stylistic choice? Sound levels were off?

Next up was The Spirit of Radio (Rush), performed as an instrumental in memoriam for Neil Peart, the drummer of Rush who passed away on Friday. I’ve included an instrumental as well as the original in the playlist, partly as the song isn’t that familiar to some. But there are some snippets that are frequently sampled by radio stations for their jingles and internal promotions, so you’ll recognize the segments when you hear them.

The orchestra followed up with another instrumental And So It Goes (Billy Joel). Every time I hear this song, either in the original or in instrumental, it makes me think of Newfoundland. There is an almost Irish lilt to the music that goes past the up-tempo beat of Cape Breton, and more of a sweeping landscape song. Really good version. The playlist has both a cheap instrumental version as well as the original by Billy Joel.

They then went on to the wrap-up phase of the concert with five songs with the singers. I didn’t much care for any of the versions:

  • 867-5309 / Jenny (Tommy Tutone) was flat, and the only interesting part was that the orchestra members were singing backup, which I’ve never noticed them do before;
  • If I Could Turn Back Time (Cher) was okay, certainly clear articulation, and Andrea thought it was good;
  • Addicted to Love (Robert Palmer) was awful, I have NO IDEA what he was going for in sound, some sort of weird accent thrown in too;
  • The Heart of Rock and Roll (Huey Lewis) was another bad theme park revue version, or a bad cover band at a fireworks display; and,
  • Celebration (Kool and the Gang), which while not much better performed, at least had two things going for it — energy and audience participation.

And it is an interesting side-note to the performance. Normally, the average age of the Pops audience hits in the high-50s / low 60s probably. Definitely an older crowd. I’m 51 and I’m younger than most attendees by at least 10 years. Which is common for most orchestras, since the tickets aren’t cheap, we went for dinner, and we had a babysitter for six hours, plus parking. So most goers are either older or have more disposable income, or both.

But last night’s crowd was decidely skewed younger. 30s and 40s, I would say. And the result was LOUD. The NAC got cheers, people singing with the last song, and standing up and dancing. Normally, Ottawa is a sitting crowd. Often a complaint for Bluesfest, folk concerts, and hockey games. But the audience could actually be heard last night. Which was a special feat since the weather kept a lot of people home, with a less-than-capacity crowd.

In the end, my review is probably the same one I will always have for Pops outings — the orchestra is awesome, the singers are hit and miss.

OLT play – The Ladies Foursome

The PolyBlog
October 8 2019

My wife and I have invested heavily in shows for the coming 2019-20 show across multiple venues. For Ottawa Little Theatre, they have nine shows planned for the season, and if we hadn’t went with lots of shows elsewhere, I’d probably have signed up for 5 or 6 of them. Instead, we held ourselves to just two. The first was from Norm Foster, a sequel to a previous golf one called The Foursome which we saw back in ’07. 

Generally, we love Norm Foster comedies. Some funny, some farcical, almost always enjoyable, and most of the castings and shows have worked. He’s probably my second favorite playwright after Dan Needles who created The Letter from Wingfield Farm and six sequels, and my favorite general playwright. I was just looking at his website and he has 52 plays listed. Holy doodle, I had no idea there were that many.

We saw the original show, The Foursome, about four college buddies coming home for a reunion and a round of golf. It was an interesting setup, as the show takes place in front of a backdrop of 18 holes on a golf course as they talk while getting ready to tee off. In effect, it means 18+ scenes. It was funny, I quite enjoyed it, and when it was over, I promptly forgot most of the details. I remember generally that there were old grudges and jealousies about current levels of success, or apparent success, but not the details. But it was positive overall, and when the Ladies Foursome came up as a sequel, it seemed like a no-brainer to get it. We have also liked The Long Weekend (two couples together, 2011), Maggie’s Getting Married (older sister meets groom, only to realize she knows him biblically, 2005), Ned Durango Comes to Big Oak (aging cowboy star in small town, 2004), and Here on the Flight Path (a man gets to know 3 consecutive neighbours on an adjoining balcony, 2003). 

So we like OLT. We like Norm Foster. We like the original Foursome. Should be a no-brainer that we’ll like The Ladies Foursome so it made my list immediately to see. And it crashed.

The quick summary of the show is that every week for 15ish years, four women have played a round of golf together. Except one has died, and the play takes place the day after the funeral. The three surviving members have invited a woman they met at the funeral to join them in her place. And like the Foursome, the Ladies Foursome talks about anything and everything except golf, which is the draw for people who don’t play golf. Golf is just the plot device to get them together. 

The opening bit is two of the women showing up, and starting to talk. Tate is feeling her mortality, and wondering what she’s accomplished in her life. Her friend reassures her that her life isn’t a failure, including mentioning that she has two beautiful children. To which she replies, “I have three children”. She did say “beautiful” children though. The other surviving member shows up, joins the conversation and tells her that she has two beautiful children. Repetition for the laugh. And while it doesn’t ring funny as I’ve explained it here, it is a standard playwright technique that Foster uses well, with callbacks to earlier lines, and it works. For now.

But afterwards, when we didn’t really enjoy the show, I started to wonder what went wrong? What was different?

Well, first of all, there are 20 scenes — 18 holes, plus the 19th hole, plus a little goodbye in the parking lot. That makes for a LOT of transitions and interruptions to the flow. It worked fine for The Foursome, but it was dragging for The Ladies Foursome.

The callbacks also started to grate. There was constant refs to her 2 beautiful children plus her son with the lazy eye as being not beautiful. Separate from just being non-PC or mean, the joke started to wear thin about the fourth call back. It was funny for two lines at the start, and then they flogged it to death. Similarly, there is a revelation that the guest who joins the trio is a gambling addict, and while her trying to make bets with them added some tension, it ultimately went nowhere, it ended up not being much of anything. In or out of the story, it made no difference to the outcome. Which then grated when they referred to it repeatedly long after the realization it wasn’t going to be relevant.

So these were technical, story problems, as the writing wasn’t up to normal standards. But I have to say, I think the cast failed the play too. We saw the second last performance, and by that point, most casts have the show down cold. While lots of people love the excitement of opening night, seeing it near the end of a short run means that timings are better, the cast will rarely miss a line, and if anything wasn’t working, it’s been tweaked. Even though it’s amateur theatre, they are usually nailing it near the end. In a long run, they might get tired, but on three weeks, they’re usually able to pull it off.

In this case, three of the characters flubbed multiple lines. I suspect some of that was technical — there is no real scene change for them from scene to scene, plus they’re really short, with no flow between them (i.e. some could be told out of order with no change in outcome). In other cases, they talked over each other’s lines. 

Yet they also seemed to put emphases in areas where they shouldn’t have been. When they note that Dory, the guest, didn’t know that the deceased had won the lottery a few years before and thus didn’t know EVERYTHING about the dearly departed, the others had a sinister hook to it wondering what she’s up to, and when the gambling is introduced, BADLY as a throw-away line with no meat to it, you’re made to think THAT’s the link. Nope. There isn’t one. But more importantly, two of the characters delay leaving the scene so they can talk privately, and one asks the other, “What does she know? Do you think our friend told her everything? Does she know what we DID?”. Dun dun dun. There’s a hidden secret, a plot development to come that adds some tension. Except it isn’t. The hook is supposed to be what she knows and how deeply about them. But because the cast member emphasized “DID” over “everything”, we all were waiting for the big secret. Did they kill somebody? Rig a lottery? What did they DO? Nothing. They did nothing. And I heard other audience members asking the same head-scratcher as they left, “Wait, what about…”.

I may be a bit biased, as the fourth member of the cast is someone we know, but I felt she did the best job with what she had. I felt a couple of the scenes could have been better, but more better written than better delivered. And as Dory, she has the role of Fifth Business — important information to reveal at the end. Which she does.

Leaving most people in the audience scratching their heads. It is 2019, and spoiler alert, a character being gay isn’t enough to get fired from her teaching job. If they had added a wrinkle of it being the ’80s or if it was a Catholic School Board, SOMETHING, or that Dory herself had been a distant Brokeback Mountain-style lover undercover, there would have been SOMETHING. Or add an estranged husband that was basically a beard. Instead, the revelation just fell flat. And honestly, considering everything else that was shared between the four, it’s hard to believe that the big supportive emotionally available departed friend never shared ANYTHING with any of the other three. She even had a partner she was seeing. Really? Everything you learn about the woman who died does NOT equate to her keeping her sexuality a secret. It just doesn’t seem to fit.

So we were disappointed overall. I think there’s a good story buried in there somewhere, but it drastically needs an editor and a better cast to deliver.

Sometimes the universe shouts, I just don’t know what it’s saying

The PolyBlog
May 9 2019

Today is a shitty day for me, and I’m going to blog anyway. Because sometimes I hide the darkness and I just don’t care enough today to do that. The trigger that you’ll see for this is annoying. Maybe semi-significant, maybe not. But it has started a cascade and a spiral, one that I will not survive unscathed.

Ostensibly, this is only about my astronomy hobby, but it’s really not. I have struggled mightily with my hobby and the universe keeps kicking me in the teeth. I keep fighting my way through, hoping to break through to the other side of the veil that has been holding me back. But the universe keeps responding, telling me no.

When I was a kid, I was interested in the stars, and my parents got me a telescope. That was the mid-70s, and like most parents who don’t know about these things, they got me a simple one, handheld, from Sears or Canadian Tire. I’m sure they thought it was a good one. But anyone in astronomy knows that these things killed more interest than they sparked. They were telescopes designed for basic land use, almost impossible to steady for kids, and even if you did steady it, you wouldn’t see much other than the moon. If you were lucky. Tons of people got these things and tons of people lost interest. I did.

Fast-forward a number of years. Still interested, but not doing much about it. A friend took me out for a night to see a conjunction, but he has a complicated setup, and I just about gave up again. Too hard, too slow, too complicated.

Then when my mother died, and I got some inheritance money, I decided I would look into it a bit more, see if there were “easier” scopes. There were. A computerized GOTO scope that would allow me to set up, point at any three stars, and the computer would handle the rest. Great idea. I invested in the scope, the right scope for me, and thought I was making progress.

The universe pushed back. While 90% of the scopes in this model work great out of the box, I struggled with mine. One night, doing a sky tour, it went to zenith position (straight up) and the back of the scope hit the mount and ground the gears. I’d had it working for less than 3 months, and it was then gone for 2 months for repair.

Even after that, it took me five years of struggles, giving up here and there, trying again, giving up, trying again, and finally getting advanced help to figure out that it was an alignment issue. It wasn’t my eyes, it wasn’t my scope quality, it was the process I was doing combined with a computer problem. Fixed it, all excited leaving the guy’s house, pulled out on the road, and my tablet reminded me I had left it on the roof by flying off and tumbling along the road. $400 to fix. I destroyed it again 2 weeks later, paying $400 again. Again, the universe speaking to me, perhaps.

I thought maybe I could get a bit of momentum last year using my smartphone to take some basic astrophotography shots. I am not interested in the big long exposures with DSLRs, tons of processing time, high-end equipment, etc. Just some basics. Baby steps. Maybe someday I’ll do something more, I thought. But let me start with basic stuff.

I bought a simple adapter for my smartphone, gave it a go, no real luck. Upgraded the software, tried again. Struggled, again. Upgraded to a great adapter, practically foolproof. Found out that my phone was too old, too limited for what I was trying to do. Most people have iPhones that were outpacing everything, but I had an old Samsung. I borrowed Andrea’s iPhone 6 Plus and actually managed to get SOMETHING, although not awesome. But it was also her phone, and not a viable solution.

Took a break, figured at some point I would upgrade my phone and get the iPhone. Went back to visual observing only. And had a series of crappy nights for weather and struggled with maintaining my alignment. Not as bad as it had been, partly as I knew more about what I was doing, but still not inspiring. More like slogwork than an enjoyable hobby.

At New Year’s, I upgraded my phone and got a great iPhone XS Max. Should work great with the tools I have. Night Cap software, check. Best adapter on the market, check. Large light bucket telescope, check. There’s a guy out in Stittsville with the same setup doing amazing things; a guy on FB that I interact with who has basic setup doing amazing things. I gave it a go two weeks ago and couldn’t even get a single decent shot. This was my “momentum” builder idea. Get some shots, blog about stuff, learn as I write, stay interested. Hell, I volunteer with the local organization just so I have a reason not to flake out on the hobby.

So, yes, I’ve been struggling to keep interested. Keep working at it. Then, a seeming breakthrough. I went out on Sunday night and everything worked. I did a full star tour for the night sky, 100+ objects, alignment held well enough to see everything. I saw Mars. I saw Jupiter. I saw the Great Red Spot on Jupiter for the first time. Best night of viewing ever.

Then I screwed up. I forgot that the universe doesn’t seem to want me doing this hobby. I got happy and the universe apparently doesn’t like me happy. I got cocky and shared the news, partly to offset the less positive stories I have shared in the past about my astronomy hobby. Worse than that, I got hopeful, and that never ends well.

Last night, the sky was clear, and I was still feeling cocky, so I decided to set up in the back yard and see if I could image the moon or a couple of stars. Figure out the workflow. Went to the garage, got my scope and a portable grocery bin that I keep some basic stuff in (filters, etc.). Went back and got my full scope box. And I was there. Two trips, seemed like I finally had this “down” for my process for setting up even. Great work, Paul, I thought. Okay, let’s do a quick look at the moon, let Jacob see it too, and then he could have his bath, I’d go pick up Andrea, hopefully, the clouds would hold off, and I’d spend an hour on the imaging workflow. And the moon was a small crescent, an interesting target.

Let’s see, where did I put my eye-pieces? Huh. I didn’t bring them out. No wonder it only took me two trips. I forgot a box. Wait. How did I forget them? I just took the last box out of my astronomy cupboard with my scope in it, and the EP case wasn’t there. That’s weird. Maybe it’s on the floor.

Raced back to the garage. Not in the cupboard. Not on the floor. Not on the shelves by the cupboard. Not in the secondary cupboard. Not anywhere in the garage. Not by the front door. Not in the car still. Not anywhere.

Gone.

About $2K worth of eyepieces. Although it isn’t really about the cost. We have insurance, with a deductible of some sort, don’t remember right now.

And I don’t know if I somehow left them at the observing site (I checked, not there, and emailed a few people who could have seen them with no luck) or they were stolen from my garage (the door was open on the garage for a while on Monday or Tuesday night). It doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that the universe has spoken again. I keep struggling to get some momentum going, and it constantly feels like two steps forward and three steps back.

And if this was limited to just my astronomy hobby, I would find a way to roll with it. But it doesn’t feel like just astronomy.

Those who know me, know that I am huge on goal-setting, trying to make progress on lots of things. Like my 50by50 project for my 50th birthday. Not too many “bucket list” items on there, more small things. Baby steps. Things I can realistically achieve, to be honest.

One of my goal themes is health, fitness and cooking.

I cannot get momentum on my weight loss. I’m yoyoing on my weight, creeping slowly back to where I started, having gained 10 pounds back. The mental energy to keep focused is wearing me down like crazy. I took a break when I was overwhelmed, and I am struggling to muster any interest or energy to embrace anything else.

I bought a fitness gym, great idea, except it requires me to completely reorganize the basement. Dominoes that have to fall to get to the domino I want, and it’s just slogwork. And no guarantees of any success when I’m done. Maybe I’ll just flake out on it, maybe I’ll find it too hard. Or I’ll hurt myself and be unable to do it. The universe has many voices.

On the cooking front, I thought perhaps doing HelloFresh would help with stuff. Pre-organized meals. But mostly it has just meant a lot more work. Andrea is doing about the same, maybe more, and our prep time is way longer, even if we are doing more things together. Yet it still feels overwhelming, but without much in the way of “wow” improvements. Not sure it is worth it.

For the family / home / reading front, it’s a mixed bag of outcomes, partly because “outcome” doesn’t really apply to relationships. With Jacob, I keep trying to find things we can do together other than video games. Something that will spark a mutual interest. I was so excited for him to start the new school this year with the extra clubs — chess, math, coding. And none of those have worked out for him really. He did the math contests, throwaway days, nothing sustainable in his eyes. And one of his friends is being bullied, without much in the way of success to do anything about it. I’ve even spoken to the principal about it. J is hating school these days and about all we have to offer is that the summer is coming. Last year, we got him a remote control car, and I thought that would be awesome for him. A drone for me kind of fizzled, I need a much larger open space to find a way to control it easily, but I thought the car would be great. Got it going in Peterborough, worked well for about 20 minutes, and then it crashed and broke. I’ve got all the new parts but haven’t had the energy to hope it will work well for him after the first crushing failure. It was fun, and then just a disappointment for him. The universe is a sick fuck sometimes. I can deal when it kicks me, but when it kicks him, it is soul-crushing.

For the home side, there’s tons of stuff we should be doing, none of it ends well for me with home projects doing it myself. I’m good at writing cheques. That’s about it.

For the reading front, I started a Reading Challenge this year, and while there was initial interest from people, not many seem to be doing it, which is fine. I’m still doing it for myself, which was the original goal. And I wanted to use it as a prompt to purge some books too. Except after boxing up a bunch of boxes, I realized that there were two other dominoes that needed to fall before I could purge them, one of which has taken some time to figure out, and so they sit in the living room. Mocking me daily.

On the third theme, Finances / Organize / Activities, I was really hoping to do some retirement planning stuff. Except we need our benefits statements from the government, and all that stuff is screwed up by Phoenix. Hard to do planning without the data. Part of my interest is that I got excited last year about retirement, but then the universe nudged me on a couple of financial things, and I realized that my excitement is probably premature. There’s a small glimmer that I’ll be able to go in 7 years, but I suspect it is probably more like 12. On the organizational front, there are a ton of dominoes, and I have no interest in any of them. Just on my list. Too many other energy-sucking projects. Similarly for some of my activities, like trying to knit something, or going for axe-throwing. I just don’t have the energy to work on it.

Learning / Photography / Astronomy is my fourth theme, and we all know how well the astronomy stuff is going. On the Learning front, I forced myself to do some work on a course called Metaliteracy. Interesting, but in order to finish it, other people have to mark your assignments — it’s kind of like a group learning experience. Except if there aren’t enough people doing it, your assignment doesn’t get marked, and you kind of sit there stalled, waiting for someone to review your stuff. Which finally happened, but after I did weeks 1-4, out of ten in total, I kind of lost interest while waiting for the other inputs. It’s like the worst part of group assignments in regular school, added to a MOOC. I hate it, even if I want to finish the class.

On the photography front, I did a course at Henry’s, learned a lot, and a month after it was over, I’d forgotten just about all of it. I just can’t retain the process and workflow techniques. I understand the concepts, but the mechanics of applying the technique to a situation is lost to me as soon as the class is over. I’m doing an online video one now, and it’s the third time I’m trying to learn it. Maybe it will stick this time, but I’m not hopeful. Maybe this is just another hobby the universe doesn’t want me dabbling in. I’ve had similar experiences with origami. I love it, but I can’t remember the folds as soon as the diagram goes away.

I am not sure what to even say about my website. I write, I post, the abyss beckons. I wish I knew how to better engage people for comments. My hit count is up, but mostly it is dine-and-dash viewers. Whatever, it is still mainly for me. But the universe hasn’t fucked with me on it for a while, so I’m probably due.

I was hoping to finish my HR guide, and then found out that I’m going to have to have it reviewed by the Conflict of Interest people, with the likely outcome that I can maybe, possibly, give it away, but I likely, definitely can’t sell it as a book if I’m ever going to run a competition again. At least not while working for the government. Kind of kills any desire to keep writing.

On the work front, I had a great job, a good work-life balance, and I wanted a change after nine years. So I took one, ended up with a terrible management situation. Then I moved to what looked like an ideal outcome, everything I wanted, only for the project to accomplish almost nothing, and the subsequent work arrangement moved from working with three people I wanted to work with to instead one of them leaving, one of them retiring, and the job changing drastically to something I have done before and hoped not to do again. It’s not horrible, it’s just not great.

And yet I can’t help wondering if that is what the universe is trying to tell me. That “okay” should be the benchmark I aim for. I sure as hell can’t shoot for the stars, literally or figuratively.

The universe is trying to tell me something, shouting as loud as it can, and I am apparently too deaf or too stupid to know what it is telling me. And the frustration leads to anger, the anger to the dark side of the Force. Which right now feels about right. I want to grip the universe’s throat and choke the living shit out of it, just to see it squirm in fear. I just don’t have the energy to bother to think it would change anything.

♫ I’ve got radioactive blood ♫

The PolyBlog
March 7 2019

Two weeks ago, I was on my way to work after a quick appointment in the morning, nothing special, mostly administrative. I got to work, parked the car in the lower underground lot, grabbed my bag from the trunk, and started off up the stairs. Four half-flights up the stairs, I’m on the lowest level of the building and I notice as I’m getting close to the elevator that my chest is hurting a bit. 

I hesitated to call it chest pain, because it was more like indigestion, centred right on my sternum and unusual. I don’t normally have anything like that. Hmm…got up to my desk, sat down, did some stuff, it went away. I had been having some challenges with my back the previous few weeks, and I knew I had at least a rib or two out, so maybe it was just positional I thought. No big deal, I guess, it went away. And it wasn’t like it was really painful, maybe a 2 on a scale of 1-10. More than simply “there”, but not causing me great discomfort. And, like I said, it went away.

About 45 minutes later, I needed to talk to a few people, so I started wandering around the building. Ten minutes later, the pain was back. Steady. As long as I was moving, it was there. WTF?

My heart SHOULD have been fine

If you’ve read my blog in recent months, you know I tried to do a treadmill stress test back in September (#50by50ish #36 – A stress test with a side of manscaping) without much initial success, partly as I’m a slug, and partly because they didn’t tell me to stop my amlodipine (calcium-based drugs are bad apparently). I did a follow up test, an ultrasound stress test (aka a stress-echocardiogram) where they give you a drug to jack your heart rate while they take an ultrasound at rest and then again while you’re feeling like a jackrabbit.

Here’s the way it worked. I arrived at the hospital, got registered, wandered down to the unit, got settled in a bed, and they gave me an IV. To ensure they got good pics, they used a contrasting agent called Definity. This is a WEIRD feeling drug. I felt it go up through my arm, enter at the base of my skull and then in a one- to two-second timeline, cascade up the back of my head, over the top and around to the front. Picture putting a tight-fitting hoodie on, and have it lightly tickle your neck, back of your head, top of your head and then front lobes as it goes over top. It’s weird. Then they gave me a drug called dobutamine to make me heart beat faster and see if anything isn’t working somewhere (blockages, etc.). In addition to the imaging, they hooked me up to a monitor and measured heart rates all over my body (check, arms, ankles, etc.). When the dobutamine got going, my heart went up to something like 175 bpm. I felt like I was both vibrating and my entire body was twitching. Not the best of feelings, but it was okay. I couldn’t quite get to the desired level, so they added something like atropine to get me the rest of the way. I lay on my side, the ultrasound paparazzi did their thing, and then they killed the drug to bring me back to normal.

I was doing the test as a preventative to make sure everything was great before starting an active exercise routine, part of a long overdue physical and movement toward addressing my weight and diabetes. The result of the test? My heart was fine. No issues, go do whatever I wanted.

That was in November, this was only February. So why was I getting chest pains from basic exertion? Grrr…

Emergency room 101

After about 90 minutes from the first symptoms down in the parking lot, I decided I would head over to the emergency room at the hospital. Like the ads say, every second counts for protecting deteriorating heart muscle, and while the pain wasn’t acute, it was steady. Plus I have a family history, weight, recent diabetes diagnosis, sleep apnea, and blood pressure issues (albeit corrected to normal with medicine). A heart attack is not out of the realm of possibilities.

Did I mention I thought I might be having a heart attack once before? Yep, about 10 years back. My brother had one, which he initially thought was heartburn and then discovered the next morning that no, it was a heart attack. A few weeks later, I got really bad heartburn one night, unlike anything I had had before, and was thinking, “Wow, that’s a bit painful in my chest…hey, wait a minute”. Turned out mine was indeed just reflux, solved with meds.

Anyway, this didn’t feel the same so off I went to the hospital to be sure. I’d rather be safe than a cliché where people later say, “He thought it was just heartburn, so he didn’t go to the hospital…stupid twit, may he rest in peace.” I work in the same building with my wife, so I went to tell her I was going, and she came with me. Probably overkill but I was glad to have her along. I didn’t feel it was serious enough to call an ambulance. As I sat in the car on the way there, the feeling seemed to go away. 

Arrived at the hospital, and chest pains opened the door to the Magic Kingdom pretty readily. One EKG later, plus some blood work, and I was all clear. No signs of a heart attack. They referred me to the Ottawa Heart Institute, the gold standard locally, and gave me a prescription for a baby aspirin a day. I picked up the prescription and started taking it.

I also squeezed in a chiro appointment the next day. Like I said, my back was out of alignment and separate from neck adjustments, he managed to do five full separate adjustments of my ribs and spine. Later that day,  the pain was down to about a 1/10. Did the adjustment help? No idea, but it obviously didn’t hurt (no pun intended).

Time for a PET scan

So I’d had a CAT scan five years ago, and lots of LAB work, why not something with PETs? 🙂

The real name of the scan is Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Myocardial Perfusion Imaging. It is another form of picture taking of my heart, both at rest and with heart rate elevated, but a different imaging technique than the ultrasound. 

The previous test was done while lying on a table with someone working a little hand held ultrasound over my heart. This one was a little more formal and elaborate.

First, you lie on a table with your hands above your head. I thought from one of the pictures they showed that there would be some sort of strap there to hold on to, but no, you just hold them there. They give you some blankets and pillows to help prop them in position, but you need to basically hold them there for 30-45 minutes. 

Second, they raise the table and run it into a little tube about two feet deep. This is the camera, and unlike CAT scans or MRIs, it is only wide enough to basically take a picture of your upper torso. Your head and arms stick out the one side, your lower body out the other.

Third, they give you a “radioactive tracer” i.e. a drug that makes your blood radioactive so the camera can detect the radiation being released. In effect, it works like the contrast agent in the first test. Except the previous contrast agent made me feel wonky with the drug-induced hoody, this drug did nothing noticeable to me.

Fourth, after finishing the “at rest” images, they give me a drug to boost my heart. I assumed it was like the first time, the dobutamine, but no, this one is much less aggressive. Instead of taking my heart rate into the stratosphere, they gave me something called persantine / dipyridamole to take my heart rate up 20-30 bpm above normal. Hardly noticeable.

To be clear, the increased heart rate wasn’t noticeable; the drug certainly was though. They warned me, when it was going in, that it would need to be in my blood for about 4-6 minutes, and then they would give me the “antidote”. The fact that it required an antidote was a good indicator it wouldn’t be pleasant. You know that lovely medicine taste you sometimes get in your mouth with anesthetic? This was similar except I could taste it ALL THROUGH MY BODY and it made every square inch feel like it was nauseated. Like my toes were debating whether they should throw up. It is a CRAPPY, CRAPPY feeling. That lasts, as I said, about 4-6 minutes, then they give you the antidote called aminophylline to counteract it, and the nausea goes away. Not completely, you still feel as if you had been sick, and now you’re not sure you are completely done yet.

Fifth, once you’re back to resting heart rate, they take a few more pics, and you’re done.

Near the end, my right bicep was SCREAMING to MOVE, but, of course, you have to stay still. Then when we were done, they moved the bed back out of the scanner, I could put my shirt back on, and wait in the waiting room until my IV wound stopped bleeding. I’m not joking, the instructions for everyone were, “Sit over there until you stop bleeding.” 

I stopped bleeding, but I didn’t leave immediately. I had been a bit slow to get up off the bed initially, a little light-headed, and I was still feeling a bit off while waiting for the IV wound to close. I was probably still looking a little pale as the tech wandering by stopped to see if I was okay. I was wondering about some food and how my body would react, partly as you can’t eat before the scan, so I hadn’t eaten anything in 14 hours or so, and partly because I was nauseated a bit. He told me to start with something with caffeine as it counteracts the drug really well (and the reason you can’t have anything with caffeine in the 24h before the scan too). One chocolate milk and about five minutes later, and I was right as rain. 

Getting the results

The tech told me the results would be sent to my family doctor, kind of like a “see ya later” kiss-off. I had assumed I would see someone in the Heart Institute for follow up but apparently not, I was to follow up with my family doctor. I did a dance with the office nurse on the phone, he was trying to get permission from the doctor to tell me the results over the phone or to see if the doctor wanted to see me in person. In the meantime, the Heart Institute called. They DID want to see me (and the nurse said she wished the techs would stop telling people to just follow-up with the family doctor). Right, back to the Heart Institute.

I had the chest pains 14 days ago, did the test 10 days ago, and saw the cardiologist this morning, a Dr. H. They re-ran the EKG, no change, and the bottom-line was that my PET scan is normal. Or as he put it, “Why are you here?”.

I ran him through the incident that put me in emergency, and like all good heart specialists or GPs or anyone with an ounce of medical sense, he congratulated me for taking it seriously and going to emergency rather than sitting there thinking it is probably nothing. We also ran through other medical history, family history, blah blah blah, and bottom-line, it’s not my heart. My heart is working great.

His metaphor for the test is that of a faucet. Turn the faucet on half-way, that’s normal heart; turn it on full, that was the heart after exercising. Full blood flow pumping through all the openings. And my heart works the way it is supposed to, it pumps where it is supposed to, no signs of blockages, etc. Like the previous ultrasound test, all clear. 

He asked me about how I had felt since that day. I mentioned the pain was intermittent, sometimes positional, different times of day, etc. I mentioned though that the day before I felt pretty good, and even that morning, I was running a bit late for the appointment (they like you there 15 minutes early, I was only going to be 10 minutes after a parking delay), so I had walked fairly briskly from the garage to the Heart Institute. No pain, it actually felt like a nice little jaunt in the cold morning air.

He said that was practically the definition of proof that it wasn’t the heart. If it had been exercise related heart problems, he said it would ALWAYS do it whenever I exercised. Replicability would be 100%, no exceptions. Of course, he already knew that the test had shown nothing, so easier to say too.

I then asked him about how the test linked to other things like circulation…what if I had a blocked artery somewhere? To go back to his metaphor, he pointed out that if there was a blocked pipe, the heart test would have shown that. If it was seriously narrowed, it likely would have shown too. But general narrowing? No. And he said he would guarantee there was SOME narrowing based on weight, diet, family history, etc.

A few other things were on my mind to see if there was any link, but there wasn’t. None of it heart or circulatory. So he doesn’t need to see me again, unless something happens, in which case I should go back to emergency.

Next steps

In the meantime, I am to go back to my family doctor with three elements:

  1. He recommends I keep taking the baby aspirin, given the other variables at play, so long as my stomach tolerates it;
  2. He wants my doctor and I to keep a focused eye on my cholesterol levels just in case (I’ve never had issues); and,
  3. Explore the likelihood that it is “gut-related”, since it definitely isn’t heart.

This is good news, of course, as dropping from CARDIAC to GASTRO takes a lot of the scariness out of the equation for immediacy and overall risk. Not nothing, and I have to keep taking it seriously, but not OMG HE’S GOING TO DIE TOMORROW!

And the gastro side isn’t news. I take my Prevacid given a long time problem with reflux, plus I’m on Metformin which is notoriously hard on stomachs. I did take Gaviscon a couple of nights when I had recent pain but it didn’t seem to clear it.

In the end, I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I know one more thing that it isn’t.

On the positive side, the test did give me radioactive blood (I even have a letter to give to airport security officials in case I set off any detectors!). I haven’t seen any signs of super powers yet though. I do have the Spider-Man song in my head:

Is he strong? Listen, bud,
He’s got radioactive blood.

Can he swing from a thread?
Take a look overhead

Hey, there
There goes the Spider-Man.

I figure I’m one lightning strike from turning into the Flash, Hulk or Spider-Man. I don’t know if a Hulk tadpole is that great though. I can’t see anyone worrying about me turning into an enraged frog, saying “Poly angry, Poly smash” and then hopping up and down on things. Maybe a baby Avenger movie.

Physically, it’s not as serious as a heart attack. Which was originally the other name for this post — “not as serious as…”. But that is a bit dark even for me, particularly the number of heart attack events just in my immediate family history. Mentally, it’s kind of just throwing another log on the fire.

♫ Is he strong? Listen, bud…♫