Wipeout +7, back on the wheels ... and Spring has Sprung

A week after Dave wiped out on the road and it was blood, busted shoes and bent bits on the bike, he's back on two wheels and out for a looong ride in the McLaren Vale area with the local group of Cyloholocs. He must have inherited some gene for indestructibility ... he's found a way to bounce. Maybe he has a trick of turning off 90% of gravity in the split second after the back wheel drifts away and before the kneecaps impact the asphalt ... hmph. He could at least have the common decency to be creaky for a few weeks! But noooo...

Dave's Garmin Tracker app, running in real-time. Yup. He's back on the bike

...there's livin' proof of this particular pudd'n: the Garmin tracker app, running in realtime on my phone. Phablet. Whatchamacallit. (Difficult to call it a 'phone,' because virtually the only thing it never does is make a telephone phone call. Ahhh. Anybody remember what a telephone was...?)

Meanwhile, Spring has sprung with a vengeance:

Yup. Spring is here ... kerchoo! Pear blossom and silver rain -- front garden yesterday.

Truth is, it's been spring for about three weeks now, which also means we can expect summer to come in early and fast. In the last couple of years we've seen our first hot weather in October and the first very hot weather in November -- hundred degrees in "the old money." Sigh. Means we can expect to see the really hot weather in December, and the catastrophically hot weather in January and February. Now ... will the autumn/fall come in early too? With summer starting early, we'll be very, very ready for autumn by February!

Spring! Enjoy it while it lasts --

Waterfall Creek on the Coastal Trail, at Hallett Cove

It was so lovely yesterday we couldn't stay inside while we had the chance to get out. Leaving Mike to hold down the fort (since he has bronchitis, Mom has bronchitis, and they're having coughing contests; Mom is winning, hands down), we went over to Hallett Cove and hiked the boardwalk from the Hallett Cove Conservation Park to Marino. It really was beautiful.

Above is Waterfall Creek at the bottom of its gully ... yellow soursobs in the foreground tell you exactly what time of year this is; and if you notice the stairs/guardrail at top-right of this shot, you'll see how you climb down into the gully and back out again. There's no disabled access, but if you still have your feet under you, it's great. (If you'd like to see more of Hallett Cove -- and the Conservation Park -- I posted a photo essay to Meander to the Max ... find it here.) It's also a photographer's paradise: ocean, clifftop views, windy skies, the works. Don't forget the cameras.

Right now I have my fingers crossed. I tried Chinese massage for the head-neck-shoulders on Thursday ... looking for a way to get out from under the headache that's been bugging me every single day since December 4. For a while the GP has been saying he thinks the pain is very likely coming from the neck, and ... last week I actually heard/felt something go twang!!! in the neck a few seconds before migraine broadsided me. So ... remedial massage? Got a local one? Any chance of getting acupressure massage? Turns out yes. There's a place at Colonnades which, in traditional Chinese fashion doesn't advertise. They live and thrive on word of mouth. Right.

Well, it's coming up to 48 hours since I had the neck/head/shoulder massage, and so far I've had either no pain at all, or only the most slender tendrils which don't develop into full-blown headaches. Have no idea how long the effects will last, but if they were to wear off over a couple of weeks ... it's actually rather a pleasant way to spend 30 minutes. I can do that again. Fingers crossed.

The MRI Experience, Part Three: Getting the results

You wait a week for your GP to have time available to tell you, you don't actually have a  brain.. Aliens stole it years ago and replaced it with a cauliflower, and -- what's worse -- nobody noticed. (See here and here for the first two parts in this story)

Actually, you wait a week for your GP to come back from a well-earned holiday with his kids and tell you, your brain scans are totally normal, so we have zero idea of why you're dizzy and have constant headaches --

-- and here's me, in profile, looking like something out of Curse of the Mummy, proving that beauty really is skin-deep, and demonstrating how amazing it is to see the inside of your own head! This is just so fantastic...

...when's the last time you saw the inside of your head? I had a CT scan about eight years ago -- for the same problem of chronic headaches -- but the detail shown on those is little, if any, better than you'd see on an old-fashioned x-ray. Cool.

Anyway, the test results are "normal," so now the question is, where the [deleted expletive] are these symptoms coming from? In a few weeks' time, I expect I'll option the consultation with a neurologist, and we'll go from there.

For comparison purposes, here's the exterior scan, positive rather than negative, and color:

...LOL, a selfie in the car on the driveway, while I was waiting for Dave last week. No squillion-dollar equipment required. Wouldn't you know it? There's a brain behind those cucumber frames after all (thank you, Eric Morcambe). 

AWOL ... and I didn't go fishing!

I've been gone from this blog for a few days, and I wish I could relate that I've been on a fantastic holiday ... Dave and I went to Fiji, lay on the beach drinking coconut punch, chartered a sailboat and cruised the outer islands, worked on our tan while we took an indescribable bus into the hills and fossicked through the local markets, trying their traditional food and listening to bands nobody ever heard of...

Well, I could write all that. It would certainly make for a great post -- and people would be wondering why I didn't share the pictures.

And the reason would be, because we didn't go to Fiji. I had a Very Major Migraine. People too often dismiss migraine as just a really bad headache, but the fact is, it's a lot more. It is a really bad headache ...  plus nausea, and the shivers of hypothermia while sweat pours out of you; plus dizziness, tachycardia, disorientation, light- and sound- sensitivity. Basically, you sit in the dark for twelve hours, eyes closed, nursing a whole suite of symptoms and wondering if you're even going to survive. The next day, you contend with the after-effects of the pills, which have some nasty side effects.

On the positive side, I think I might have tracked down at least one of the triggers -- and it's not as simple as saying, "Coffee gives me a migraine," or "chocolate gives me migraine." Both of those statements would be untrue: I can drink a cup of coffee once a week and get no hint of migraine. I can eat a little chocolate now and then and, again, get no hint of migraine...

But what happens when you hitch up a fantastic cup of coffee and some fabulous chocolate cake, eaten at the same time? Uh huh.

And it was fantastic coffee, and fabulous chocolate cake...

...as Dave's phone pic, from his facebook page, demonstrates. We shared the cake, about 70/30, and mine was the small, regular cappuccino; we shared the neat little caramel slice sitting behind the cake there. Dave never has a problem with migraine or even indigestion, but me?

Well, I'd be lying if I didn't admit, I had wondered about the combination -- but I don't remember ever having the chance to put this to the test. So: call this the test, right? Right.

Uh huh. The rest is history. So I guess the best thing to do from here on is to NOT have chocolate and coffee at the same time.

People report all kinds of things as migraine triggers: blue cheese, oranges, jalapeños, balsamic, alcohol, peanuts, onions ... even apples. One could live happily without the majority of items on that list, but, well -- coffee and chocolate is where it starts to smart. Sob.

Or, maybe it was also about the increasing barometric pressure plus coffee and chocolate. So the rule would be: don't eat coffee and chocolate when there's a storm coming in! 

Guess I'll have to experiment a little more.

Monday, right no cue, the screen door was fixed and is now rolling smoothly and silently. Wonderful. The company is Sliderfix, from Panorama, and that's all they do -- fix aberrant sliding glass doors. The job took about 90mins and cost under A$300, all up. Fantastic. So I can't grumble about the door anymore.

Meanwhile, Mom is slowly recovering. I think she's just about over the pneumonia now, and we just have to get her up and moving, get some mobility back, strength in the legs and so on. And get her switched to this liquid codeine we were told about at the pharmacy. Hmm. Turns out, you don't have to choke on horse pills after all -- which is a mercy, because she has swallowing problems, and choking many times per day on pills is how she got the aspirant pneumonia in the first place.

Life trundles on, while the next bank of rainy weather comes up out of the southwest. This morning's blue sky is gone, alas. Dave posted a phone pic from the Onkaparinga River mouth about an hour ago, but when I look out the front windows it's GRAY. It looks like RAIN.

Looks like an afternoon for curling up with a good book (or any kind of book), and wondering when this winter will end. Two warm days last week had us speculating about the probability of an early spring and a hot summer, but all that seems to have gone by --

What we need is a prognosticating groundhog. But, since this is Australia, of course it would have to be a marsupial groundhog, and he'd have to come out of his burrow on August 2nd, look around and see if he can see his shadow. Then he can tell us we're in for four more weeks of crap till spring actually gets here on September 1.

The MRI Experience ... Part Two: After

LOUD.

I said, !!!LOUD!!!

Can't say I wasn't warned, but I'm still surprised. The last time I was subjected to NOISE like that, I was about 19 and it was a Honda 1100RC racing bike with the throttle wound wide open, shrieking in the concrete cauldron of a workshop in Adelaide's CBD.

See Part One of this little tale to know what I'm talking about. Namely, an MRI machine --

"Dangitall, Ash, they sure make these medical scanners quiet these days."
"Yes, Captain; you should have heard them back in 2016." 

If you were hoping for something out of Star Trek, with Doctors Crusher and McCoy quietly ministering to you, you'd be somewhat ... disappointed. Why do you have to strip literally naked to get your HEAD scanned? Why are you taking off clothing that has no single trace of metal anywhere in/on it? Why is the "robe" they provide you with so tiny, it's barely adequate, necessitating one to parade in semi-public corridors, strutting stuff one would never strut in ten squillion years elsewhere? Why is a physically challenged 57 year old female required to limp around this way in the company of some form of technician who is male and 20 years old at a long stretch of the imagination, and who apparently doesn't know where to look?

So -- to misquote Queen Victoria, we are unimpressed by the process, even before we talk about the scan.

The machine is huge, white, and quarantined in a special room. You lie on a rolling board with your knees on a pillow; they trundle you into the gismo -- then the two women who operate the thing run away, so they don't have to listen to it. Just as an x-ray machine is situated in a radiation-proof room,  an MRI machine is situated in a SOUND PROOF ROOM. They give you "industrial grade" ear pads before they take to their heels and flee; and in your hand is what I can only describe as a "chicken switch," in case some poor person panics so badly they have to stop.

It rings. It knocks. Whines. Buzzes. Whirrs. Bangs. Clatters. For fifteen minutes or so, I believe, and the volume is utterly overwhelming. Not everyone is noise-sensitive, like myself. If you're partially deaf because your favorite hangout is a club at 2:00am where you can't hear yourself think, you'd probably get through this with a grin; and if you're a beach bunny, strutting your stuff and flashing those gorgeous bare legs of yours in the little robe would be a source of great joy. If you're neither of those critters ... MRI is a chore, even though it's not invasive (so long as they're not injecting you with radioactive dyes).

Bottom line: it's not invasive, just colossally aggravating. Be prepared. You're not doing this for fun, so ... what the hey?

Now we wait till next week to get the results. Such fun. (Here they are -- just posted, with pictures of the cauliflower the aliens left in my skull some time ago when they made off with my brain... Luckier than Spock, I guess; they didn't even leave him the cauliflower.)

When is somebody going to invent a medical tricorder that they point at you from across the room, and you get instant results QUIETLY.

It's dead, Jim ... whatever it is. And it's QUIET. Like this gizmo of mine.

The MRI Experience ... Part One: Before

The scan is booked for 2:30 this afternoon, and this morning I find myself ... hyper. Couldn't tell you why, because an MRI is absolutely UN-invasive, and the worst you can say for the experience is, it's noisy. They might or might not offer ear protection, so I'm taking my own. They put little kids in MRI machines, fagodsakes, and although I have a couple of phobias, I know I'm not claustrophobic, so...

...so why am I antsy? Probably because of what the scan might reveal, I suppose. For those coming in late, I've been having headaches every day since December 4 last year -- makes over seven months of daily headaches, 95% of them in the same place. Plus an assortment of other symptoms that make an MRI a good idea: make sure there ain't something in this noggin that ought to be taken care of at once, if not sooner (though, seven months after the pain began really doesn't constitute "at once").

The scan isn't what bothers me, honestly. It's the thought of the allopathic treatments to follow, if it turns out there is something in there. All the radio and chemo. Or -- as my father suffered -- the surgery. It's over 30 years since Dad had a brain tumor following lung cancer. By 2000, medicine knew enough that if someone has lung cancer, the next thing they do is scan his/her brain, because that's where cancer metastasizes next.

1985 or so, Dad was lucky -- the tumor was on the outside of his brain, left-hand-side. The surgery was simple: cut a horseshoe-shaped flap of his scalp, take out a disk of bone, lift out the tumor (described to me at the time as exactly like  "lifting an apple out of jelly"), put the disk of bone back into place with gold wire; replace the flap of skin, suture, dress, and ... done. They didn't follow up with any chemo or radio, and he lived 16 years after the surgery before succumbing to  congestive heart failure which was the result of running on one lung for 18 years.

Maybe memories of what Dad went through are making me antsy.

But I find myself hyper this morning. I've been cleaning the house for three hours, and am making myself stop, because I have a headache (duh), and don't feel too good. Exhausting myself will achieve nothing. In fact, it's a daft thing to do.

So here I am blogging about it, to thrash out what I think that I think...

And I think it's this: I usually hate allopathic treatments, drugs and whatnot. Last Christmas, a problem blew up with my gallbladder, and the best orthodox medicine could do was offer to take out my gallbladder in -- oh, a year or two, or three: there's a loooong waiting list for this surgery, since you don't count as an emergency, even though you're in pain.

I didn't want that, so I researched alternative treatments, and by our wedding anniversary dinner in March I was cured. We went out to celebrate the day, and I put the cure to the test by eating fish and chips and cheesecake. No pain; no nothing from the gallbladder. Fixed.

So I think I'm antsy about the MRI, not because I'm anxious regarding the scan itself, but because the thought of all those potential drugs and treatments is getting under my skin like glass powder. Makes your adrenalin pump.

So: calm down, Jen. Do your Taoist breathing exercises. Take some Ashwaganda.

And blog about the actual scan later, when it's been done.