Back near the end of September I notified the winners, but it is now posted here. Yea!

August 2004

No time to write very much for this top ten. I am writing by battery power while Hurricane Jeanne is roaring overhead. So no really exciting analysis. Kelly decided to win and did. Ivan and Ron are back after being gone awhile. Marilyn fell off the list.

Of course, the sad thing is, the web is now completely caught up with the actual count. Because of the hard drive explosion in October, the September count is still not complete. I have all the raw material needed at this point to recreate the count as best I can (although not perfectly). And I have done some of that work, but not all. I need to get back to that. I am way behind. Then after that I have to do October, which will be similarly labor intensive!

Without October’s results, I won’t know who has to get Christmas presents! Now that August’s results are posted, I can buy presents for people with October birthdays who have made the top 5 in the previous year. Once September is posted I can do November birthdays. The finally once October results are posted, I can do December birthdays and Christmas.

There may not be Christmas presents until February folks! Sorry about that! I may be running a bit late this year! :-)

Brandy’s back has been acting up for awhile. Over the past few weeks three times she had to spend two or three days in bed to try to get to the point where she felt like she could walk again.

The most recent time started Sunday evening after we got back from a little shopping. Boom. Brandy was in pain and horizontal. The bed was too soft, so it was the couch, or the floor at times. It was just getting worse and worse.

When I came home for lunch Tueday, as I usually do, she was in pretty bad shape, and we collectively decided that a trip to the emergency room was in order.

We headed to the emergency room, and I called out of work for the rest of the day. Brandy had to lie down in the chairs in the waiting room because she was unable to sit. Walking to and from the car and too and from checking in was very slow and painful for her. Once signed in, over 5 hours of waiting ensued. (At one point I went and picked Amy up from school).

A little after 6 PM Brandy was finally seen by someone. Not a doctor, but a physician’s assistant. He took a history. Ah, previous back injury from the military. There were no tests. He just ordered a shot and a few pills on the spot and gave out prescriptions for new pills. antinflamitories and pain killers. Stong pain killers.

Now, while we were waiting for Brandy to be given her pills, I started having pains in my lower abdomen. Familiar pains. Now, for the last several weeks I’d been off and on having that sort of symptom along with UTI type symptoms. I’d actually seen the doctor at a couple points. He had ordered some tests, then determined that at that particular day I wasn’t bad enough for antibiotics… but by then I’d caught a bad cold, so he gave me stuff for that, plus one of my test results had shown an abnormal liver result, so he ordered follow up tests, and I was supposed to see him next week about that. But meanwhile, the pains had been off and on. But never TOO bad. I was taking some analgesic stuff to help me not mind as much, and was basically waiting to see him next week.

But as we were sitting there waiting for Brandy to get her meds, my pain was getting worse and worse very rapidly, accompanied by a very urgent need to go to the restroom every 3 minutes. But without much of any ability to do anything once there. Yup, I knew this feeling. Kidney Stones.

By the time Brandy’s meds arrived… which included some percoset, I was joking that I wanted some too. But I wasn’t crippled in pain, it was bad, but not yet disabling. And besides, we were there for Brandy and Brandy was hurting a lot and still could not move without excruciating pain. So I ran back and forth to the restroom in between holding Brandy’s hand while she was on the stretcher.

They were completely overbooked and busy. All the rooms were full. After our five hours in the waiting room, we had finally been given an exam room in the ER, but then someone with chest pains was rushed in, and we were moved to a hallway. So we were out in a hallway for a long time.

Finally Brandy got her meds. It took almost an hour for them to kick in. But then she was quite loopy. Plus we had a couple prescriptions to take to the drug store. But we were finally leaving. Over 8 hours after first going in.

As we left, I joked about checking myself in. Aside from the fact that we would have been waiting another six hours most likely, it might have been a good idea. My pain was increasing very very quickly. By now Brandy was actually able to walk, although still with pain. I just wanted to rush home as fast as I could to take some of my own supply of percocet and then crash.

We needed to stop on the way home at the drug store though to fill Brandy’s prescriptions. I had forgotten about this and was hoping it would be mere minutes until we were home. Now it was likely to be half an hour.

And yes, sure enough (leving the yicky details out), there in the CVS restroom, in one of many trips I made in the time we were at the store, I passed a kidney stone. Not a huge one. Probably just a couple millimeters in diameter. But it hurt like hell. And I was sweaty and feaverish from the pain.

So we rush home. Brandy has her meds, and her pain killers are fully kicked in. I am in agony. I just passed a stone, but it was not improving yet. First of all the damn things do a lot of damage as they pass, and second, there may be more… I can barely concentrate to drive, but I am better off than Brandy who is now drugged to the hilt. By the time we get home Brandy is good enough to walk on her own, and I literally run in to drug myself with a couple percocets. (And to get back to a bathroom.)

So now, as I write, Brandy is still in pain and not as mobile as she should be, but is in a nice painkiller haze…. (And of course the painkillers don’t actually fix her back problem… that may not be fixable, it is a degenerate disease… but to feel normal again she’ll still have to be on bedrest the rest of the week probably.) My painkillers have still not fully kicked in. I feel better than I did an hour ago, but am still in a lot of pain. I hurt constantly and am trying to distract myself by writing, and I can’t spend more than about 3 minutes away from the bathroom at a stretch. And the percs are starting to make me dizzy and nauseous. Hopefully they will kick in before I upchuck, or we may be heading back to the ER.

Don’t we make a wonderful healthy couple?

We are both a complete mess tonight.

I really hope tomorrow is better for both of us.

My good friend Rebecca just announced to the world what the name of her and Chris’s baby would be. You can see the full post here. This is after Rebecca and Chris went through a lengthy process for deciding on a name. No, it isn’t Ibengdo, although that is what it would be in the same way that my name (Samuel) turns into Abulsme. Perhaps I will call him Ibengdo. But that is not it. See her post for the real name.

I’ll be honest, my first reaction was much the same as the one Rebecca got at her shower. Yes, I think the only thing that will save the youngster from getting beaten at school over his name is the fact that he will be six feet tall by the time he is seven years old. :-)

However, as I started to think about it, I remembered the many emails Rebecca had sent me talking about how “proper” children should behave. You know… Being quiet and well mannered at restaurants. Not running around and making noise at grocery stores. Not having to be told more than once to do something. Not talking back to their parents. You know, that sort of thing. And then, when I pictured in my head a kid that behaves that way all the time, yes, yes… I could see that name. It fits perfectly! :-)

In any case, I am looking forward to meeting the young man in a few months. Congrats Reb and Chris on the name choice. Sorry I couldn’t make either of the two baby showers. I sent something along, you should have it in a few days. Hope Ibengdo likes it!