I have long been grateful for the good health I enjoy. Those who know me well know how seldom I am sick. Other than my omnipresent nasal congestion–which I attribute to an allergy to dust and cat hair–I almost always feel 100% fine. I did, that is, until I started school last year. I used to credit my good health to a naturally strong immune system and good habits like frequent hand-washing. But my defenses are no match for an enclosed, windowless classroom of sneezing, coughing, wheezing, disease-stricken students. (Not that having windows makes much difference these days, since in most modern buildings, what windows there are are designed not to be opened, but the four different rooms in which I take classes this semester have no windows whatever. One apparently did a long time ago, but they are closed up, and on the other side is a hallway and an elevator.) Germs are all around me all day, and it was inevitable that I’d catch a bad cold sooner or later.
By Saturday evening I was feeling uncomfortable, and Sunday I couldn’t breath through my nose at all. I took a “decongestant” last night. I didn’t read the warning label, but it must read, “side-effects include nasal faucet”. I’d rather be congested. Last night I didn’t sleep at all well, and when I awoke this morning I knew work was a bad idea. It isn’t that I couldn’t have performed my job. It’s not demanding phsically. I remain seated most of the time, and I don’t have much interaction with others. But nobody wants to hear an apparently dying man on the radio, so, I took the extraordinary step of calling in sick. I don’t think I’ve missed a day of work from illness since the 1990s.
So, I am at home today. And even if I were physically able to go out and put the finishing touches on my motorized bicycle, I cannot: it’s been raining all day. This happens every week. Next it’ll turn freezing cold.
School tomorrow will be torture.
Filed under: Health, School on February 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »
Filed under: Family, Health on January 29th, 2009 | Enter your password to view comments.
I went to the optometrist today for my first eye examination in eight years. The last time I went was in the summer of 2000, when my roommate Lee and I walked down to the Reitz Union, which used to have a business that sold eyeglasses and a great doctor. It was the first time anyone ever explained to me how my astigmatism made my eyesight much worse than simple near-sightedness. The doctor used a racquetball cut in half. It was helpful. But he told me at the time that contacts to correct astigmatism were expensive, so I went with glasses, and the cheapest $8 frames I could find at Walgreens.
These days, however, they have contacts for any vision malady, so I had an exam for contacts today. They dilated my pupils, and I could barely keep my eyes open all afternoon. But the doctor was nice–the good doctor from 2000 closed his practice, so I had to find a new one–and her office was really nice. She did an odd test with moving dots of light to test my peripheral vision. And after several varieties of drops were squirted in my eye I could barely see anything. But I’ll go back sometime this coming week to get “fitted” for my contact lenses. I am excited.
Filed under: Health on September 18th, 2008 | No Comments »
Here’s what I think about the controversy involving Governor Palin’s seventeen-year-old pregnant daughter: it’s much ado about nothing. Teenage girls get pregnant all the time. It’s been happening since the beginning of time, and it can happen to anybody. Having a pregnant daughter doesn’t make Sarah Palin a bad mother by any stretch of the imagination. Nor does it make her less qualified to hold whatever office she currently holds or seeks to hold. In spite of parents’ best intentions, they cannot supervise children every minute of every day.
My only issue concerns the Republicans’ focus on abstinence-only education. It’s pretty obvious that kids like doin’ it. Nothing on earth is going to change that. But children who have all the facts, and have access to contraception are much less likely to find themselves in the position in which young Miss Palin finds herself. Access to facts about sexuality will not make kids sluttier. Rather, it will lower the number of abortions, and reduce unwanted marriages. I don’t know what Governor Palin’s position is on abstinence-only education, but if she favors it, I would then have to question her intelligence. Adherence to irrational dogma in the face of manifest evidence contradicting that dogma is the definition of irresponsibility.
Filed under: Current Events, Health, Politics on September 2nd, 2008 | No Comments »
I shouldn’t have to point this out, but for everyone so intrigued by this so-called “pregnant man,” let me be clear: there is no such thing. Thomas Beatie is not a man, Thomas Beatie is a woman. Period.
Now, far be it from me to deny anyone the right to identify with whatever sex they wish to identify. And, of course, it is anyone’s constitutional right to call themselves whatever they want (within reason; you cannot say you’re a police officer if you aren’t, for example). And I have no problem with Thomas Beatie having a child with another woman and raising it as though they were a typical nuclear family. I don’t have a problem with any of this. The only problem I have is with people somehow being so astonished and shocked.
So, let’s make a few things clear: boys have a penis; girls have a vagina. Every kindergartener knows this. Thomas Beatie has all the female reproductive organs and none of the male reproductive organs. Just because you take testosterone and grow a beard doesn’t make you a male from an anatomical point of view. If you want to call yourself a dude, be my guest. And if you can convince a state government to call you a male when you’re really a female, well, more power to you. But for the public to marvel at the spectacle of a “male pregnancy” betrays a depressing ignorance of science.
Filed under: Current Events, Health, Rantings on April 6th, 2008 | 1 Comment »