The Manic Mechanic

So it finally happened. My credit card, or, more precisely, the number, got jacked. I got several calls from the issuing bank on Memorial day Monday telling me that the card has been deactivated because of activity not matching my usual patterns and coming from overseas. Great. Of course, I am not on the hook for these fraudulent charges, and they are sending a new card out. My only concern is I have some recurring bill-pay charges that drop monthly, and I now have to call all relevant parties and give the new info, not to mention clear the old card from various online outfits. People suck.

In other news, I've been hit with a nasty sore throat. My visit to the doc today netted me some antibiotics to help clear it out, it has been ruining my past few days. The weather here has been scorching, and I've been managing, but having a mild temperature makes it that much worse.

Yesterday Jeff took his truck for emissions testing. On his way home I was talking to him on his cell phone as he stops at the post office, he tells me that he smells antifreeze around his truck. I tell him to bring the truck down to the garage, where it proceeds to puke coolant from one of the water pump gaskets. Again. This is a new water pump, but I've had problems with the gaskets basically coming apart and the coolant furiously leaking. I'm going to toss this new pump, chalking the problems up to poorly machined mounting surfaces and/or a casting that moves too much with temp changes and get something different. I've never had such issues with a simple Chevy water pump before. The original went well over 100k, this one has been in and out of the truck twice to repair the gaskets.

Jeff has been having staff problems again at work, and he's gotta weed out more bad apples. This means, of course, more work for him, but he says he can manage. It should not be so damn difficult.

My illness du jour has slowed me down on things I wanted to take care of this month, couple that with the sudden dog days-like heat wave and my energy levels are practically zero. I hope this weekend is more seasonal. More record-breaking heat for the area. But, hey, there is no climate change, right?

Frustrations. I has quite a few. I continue to be a slave to pain killers, though not as much as I was pre- and post-surgery. Still, getting quality sleep is near impossible, I have mostly skipped anything resembling a schedule and just collapsed when I felt exhausted enough. I will eventually awaken from discomfort, then resign myself to get out of bed in a groggy, cranky state, pop a pill and futz around the house while the aches and pains subside. I've begun some physical therapy which has been helping, that's a good thing. This will run through this month and could be extended if needed. These are frustrations that will abate given time.

One thing that has gotten me more angry at my whole decrepit body situation is the continuing nerve troubles below the waist. The good news is the nerve pinching and inability to stand for more than a few minutes is firmly in the past. The setback is still the annoying tingling from just above the knees down. It's as though I've been sitting cross-legged on the floor for two hours and allowed my legs and feet to go totally numb. Touching lightly brings little sensation. A firmer tap or pressure comes at me in a blast of hash and static. The poor signal/noise ratio in my feet and further up leaves me with an awkward, stompy walk, and occasional unsteady footing. Again, while this is not like before, where I would be slugged with spasms and weakness, this new sensation of a lack of sensation is disheartening. I guess I have to give this time, but there is a chance this is permanent.

Since the surgery, I've been battling a near constant feeling of being cold. Anyone who has known me for a while can attest to my shrugging off cold weather as a minor convenience. It's not even truly cold yet and I am constantly sitting in front of space heaters and heat lamps trying to keep from shivering. With the feeling of cold brings about more pain too, and puts a damper on my day. I hope this corrects soon as well, and I chalk it up to my eating patterns and appetite being still out of kilter. At least food has a normal taste for me now, and my appetite is better.

Some of my frustrations are due to my own poor planning or downright stupidity. My short-term disability ended the day after the surgery, where I was to transition to a long-term plan. Well, guess who messed up in selecting benefits several years ago and has been going along thinking he has a long-term disability strategy when indeed there is absolutely nothing there.. Yep, the last month has left me with zero income, and going forward is becoming a serious drain on my savings. While not in dire straits yet, I've had to completely alter spending patterns and leave a few minor bills unpaid temporarily. The roof project that I had postponed for various reasons cannot go any longer, and with a big chunk of savings pulled out I will be taking care of that in upcoming weeks. I have a roofer lined up, and tonight I ordered up two skylights for the living room as well as one for the main bathroom. I should be able to carefully clamber about in the attic and frame up the three locations before the roofer shows up, whereupon I can cut open the roof deck and drop the skylights in as the roof is being done. I'll save the interior work for later, possibly during the spring. In the meantime, the attic space will be nice and sunny.

My beloved G.E. GeoSpring hybrid water heater seemed to have declined in health along with me, and in the last month has been running for longer and longer periods of time with the fans running at full blast. My troubleshooting found the refrigerant charge becoming lower and lower, resulting in coil freeze-ups (it uses a heat pump - an air conditioner in reverse - to heat the water) and very inefficient operation. It's under warranty, and Jeff and I decided to take our first query back to where we purchased the thing, at Sears. While I knew we would not be able to simply drag the thing back to the store and ask for a new one at this time (we got it in late March), I figured we would be able to get at least some friendly help from the sales staff. Instead, we were greeted with an almost instant defensiveness and downright hostile words from the people manning the post in the appliance section. The manager was not in at the time, and he never did get back with us by phone as promised. This action by the staff has guaranteed them a no-sale for the future, and our next purchase was to have been a fridge. I talked with a nice woman from G.E. who took all my information as well as my techy diagnoses to pass onto the service people who are scheduled to arrive on Friday morning. I'm hoping for a quick and friendly resolution to this issue. There is a price to be paid for being an early adopter of new technology, and this is an example of it in play. The water heater has made a noticeable decrease in the electric bill since installing it, and it also had a side benefit that I had planned on, since the operation of the heater also acts as a dehumidifier in the basement, allowing me to shut off the actual dehumidifier in the basement, saving at least another 25 bucks a month in electrical costs. Everything is set in the plumbing to attach a solar assist system, as well as supplemental solar whole-house heating. As my funds free up (read: I get back to work) I will make the cool heating apparatuses happen.

I've had a few other things go haywire or break down in the past few weeks and months. Jeff's truck needs (another) new intake manifold gasket, since it has begun leaking coolant (again) furiously. I should be able to deal with that without too much grief in a few more weeks as I heal up. My old truck has still not received any love since last year, so it sits unusable. Likewise, the garage never got finished in order for me to put the Dart back in. I guess the saddest thing is the big spruce tree that toppled in last winter's blizzard conditions is still laying across the garden bed next to the driveway. I could not get any of my friends to help me with this albatross that, were it not for my injuries, would have been at most a three hour job. To make matters worse, Jeff had contacted several people via online ads to come over, give an estimate for the work and hack the thing up. Not a single one of them followed through. The damn thing sits there as a hugely frustrating reminder that, no matter how I slice it (no pun intended), I am completely alone when it comes to dealing with certain things. Not a single friend stepped up to help me with most stuff. I don't expect everyone I know to be, say, a lumberjack. But this would ordinarily have been just like the times where I helped my buds out by cutting down trees at their places, where it was more like a party atmosphere rather than a task. A cooler of beer, some barbecue, and some simple physical labor aimed at getting a job done for one's fellow man. I've done it a bazillion times, and I realize I was never to get a bit of it in return. I guess my biggest frustration was finding so many backs turned on me when I thought I could count on friends returning favors. That alone hurts more than spinal stenosis, or the time I got smashed up in that car accident in '00.

I'm going to chop up that tree if it kills me. And, no, I don't expect anyone to come to my funeral if it does.

Here's hoping that I can have some fun, some work, and some income in the not too distant future.

I guess I should update this thing somewhat, and expand upon my previous post showing my leg in an aircast. I've been plagued with Achilles's tendinitis in my left ankle for a few years now. It's mostly been a background issue that would flare up every now and then. In recent months (well, probably about a year now) it has gotten bad enough where I would favor my right leg and walk flat-footed on the left, ending up with a limp. The past month or so started to become unbearable, and with our trip to P-Town in the dumpster, I decided to take care of it. The doc's course of action is to immobilize the joint for about three months, along with various rehab/treatments such as e-stim, ultrasound treatments, stretching, icing, etc.. I'm stuck in the boot otherwise. I can honestly say I feel a slight, albeit noticeable reduction in pain since being fitted with the contraption. But it has not been without other consequences.

I'm trying to get used to daily life with this thing on. It's not easy. I have to clomp around every where I go, I've lost my balance on more than a few occasions now and took a couple of spills. I've increased my bull-in-a-china-shop factor by an order of magnitude, whereupon I've crashed this contraption into various items, knocking stuff down and generally felt stupid and clumsy. Most of all, my mood has not been pleasant, my fuse far shorter than usual. Jeff has unapologetically told his parents how awful I've become, making me want to avoid him just as much as people in general. Sleeping with this thing on is no fun as you'd imagine, and because of the thrashing and tossing I end up doing in order to try and get comfortable, I now sleep alone. Jeff won't admit it, but he's far better off these days and knows it. I've kicked myself in my sleep with the aircast; it feels like someone threw a small television at the foot of the bed. I eventually manage to get some rest, but it's not peaceful at all.

I'm still in a state of flux pertaining to work, as I have not gotten an okay to return to work from the doctors. I'm also trying to find out if having hernia surgery will interfere with rehab of the ankle (my guess is no, but the doctors might think otherwise). I'd like to take care of both of these conditions concurrently to minimize downtime. I am also not sure yet even if my short-term disability pay has been approved. If it hasn't, I am going to cancel everything and force a return to work, as I cannot afford being screwed over like this again. My employer has shifted such administration to an external agency (Unum Provident) which is known for denying valid claims. I'll know later this week if this is the case. Either way, my stress levels are through the roof.

Speaking of stress levels, I've been trying my best to keep myself occupied with various little projects and other mild entertainment to pass the time. Some of this has been successful. Some, like tonight, has been costly. Trying to rewire a rather expensive bathroom light fixture proved to be my undoing (again) causing me to lose it and destroy the fixture. This is not the only thing I have gotten all Angry Alan on since being 'disabled'. In other cases I just get overwhelmed by frustration of having to go it alone on so many things that need to be done around here. I guess I should not be trying to fix a three foot deep sink hole in my driveway, but it would not get done otherwise. And it would be just my luck if someone wandered over to it and somehow got hurt.

So, there it is. Rather than try to go back and answer so many queries and comments as to what happened, this is the explanation. And, as Jeff will nearly break his neck nodding in agreement, I just don't "sick well". But this is born out of the feeling that when I am in such a situation, I am truly alone in ultimately dealing with it. It's overwhelming at times.