Septoplasty Recovery

It's been a long and mildly painful two weeks, but I'm two days and however many hours from having my nasal splints removed... I talked about the surgery, so I figure I may as well go into a bit of a story about the recovery.

So, I already wrote about day one and all the bleeding. The day after, mom goes back home and I'm back to keeping my own sick, achy ass alive. I've managed to contract a cold while my immune system is flatlined thanks to my body requiring all the energy I have to make sure my nose heals properly. So, ironically enough, more nose problems. I've got the runny nose from hell, so I keep the paper towel on for another two or three days, because wiping my nose every 30 seconds wasn't a goddamn option. I sleep a /lot/. That's really about it. I didn't do much at all.

Saturday and Sunday, I VPN into work. I find this isn't as easy as I thought it might be, simply because I'm dead fucking tired and on Percocet. I get through the day with a lot of 20-30 minute naps, then I pretty much go right to sleep when I'm done with work. I spend the majority of the weekend in a Percocet haze.

I decide I'm too horrible to go in on Monday and Tuesday, so I gift myself a five-day weekend. Monday night comes, I get a call from Mom. Basic rundown, "I slept on your bed, and it's fucking horrible. We're buying you a new one. They'll deliver it on Wednesday." I put what little energy I have to use in celebrating this new bed, as I've been sleeping on a mattress and box spring that cost a total of $99 two years ago. Monday and Tuesday, I have basically no energy at all. Wednesday comes, and with it comes sweet bliss in a bed. Really fancy memory foam mattress gets delivered, and I sleep on it happily. The next day, I find my energy has picked up. I spend a fair amount of the day cleaning, as my apartment's gotten really trashy over the week of recovery. Friday passes uneventfully, Saturday and Sunday are spent VPNing in again. I find as the weekend progresses that Thursday was a brief spike in energy, and I'm right back to feeling like hell. My face hurts, and I don't want to get up and do anything. This leads me to where I am now. Monday and Tuesday will be spent convalescing, and the splints are set to be removed on Wednesday.

(cross-posted)

Deviated Septum Repair Surgery

Okay, so. Here's my day in a nutshell.

Before I went to sleep, I was not allowed to eat anything after midnight. Period. Not even water. 9am comes, I get to the hospital for my pre-surgery checkup to make sure I'm still in a reasonable condition to have them cut me up. I show up, the doc checks me out, shows me the x-rays and gives me the basic rundown as far as what they're going to do to me. Information on what it is and what they did and all that, for the medically curious, can be found here.

So I walk around and generally waste time for an hour, since I can't check in until 10:20, and my checkup is at 9am. So I wander around for a while until check-in time, upon which they take all my medical history again, all the usual information and all that crap, then I hand over all my belongings so they can stash it safely away. They take me away to a little room so I can change into the ridiculous no-ass hospital gown, but they give me a second one so I can wear it like a coat and hide my boxers-clad ass from the world. After changing, I get taken to this really comfortable chair. They hand me Afrin, and I have to take this shit, like, every 15 minutes, when the label says no more than 2 doses in 12 hours. So I dose myself up on this shit and sit there for around 45 minutes before the anesthesiologist decides to show up. In the meantime, one of the nurses sets me up with an IV. Apparently, my veins are relatively uncooperative, because the act of numbing my hand would have resulted in the vein possibly becoming invisible to her eyes, so she surprised me with a fucking needle in the hand, just so she could get a vein while she could still see it.

Time passes, and they finally get there. They give me a rundown of what they're gonna do to put me under, then I finally get walked to the operating room. I lay down on the table, and they gas me up. X amount of time passes, and I wake up. Mom's finally showed up, 'cause someone has to take me outta the hospital that isn't me. Apparently, I recover from being under anesthesia pretty quickly, 'cause they wanted me to take it easy and all that and I had hopped out of bed and was walking under my own power as soon as they took the IV out of my arm. I change back into my own clothes, then apparently it's standard procedure to be wheelchaired out, so they sat my ass back down and this guy named Allen pushes me around for a little while until I get my prescriptions.

They've got me on an antibiotic and the generic equivalent of Percocet for the next couple weeks, and I've got nasal splints up my nose to hold my septum in place. Those, honestly, are EXTREMELY fucking unpleasant. I had to take Afrin a couple times an hour for a few hours, now I gotta take it a few times a day. I gotta irrigate my nose a few times a day, too, to clean all the shit out. The splints gotta stay in for two weeks, then I go in to have them removed. In the meantime, my nose is bleeding a LOT, and I have to keep a paper towel against my nostrils pretty much constantly to handle the bleeding.

I'm told it will all be worth it in the long run, but the next couple weeks will have me feeling like hell warmed over.

And that, in a nutshell, is what my day of surgery was like.

(cross-posted to lol livejournal)

Vulcan(?) Dunes

I have decided to add a new subject to the site, as well; my quote-end quote exploits within the world of MMOs.


While many people may not care; fuck it, that's not why I'm here.

With that, I begin with a simple snippet; literacy. Seriously, it tells you the name of the zone every time you go into it, and it's the most infamous newbie zone ever. How did Valkurm Dunes turn into this;




IT'S NOT EVEN FUCKING CLOSE. C_C_

Customer Snippets, Mk. I

Customer since 7/2005 - "We'd like to cancel our service. The payments are much more than we were expecting to pay." ( Somehow, they've been paying more than they've been expecting to pay for two years? Right. )

On Moving, and Cancellations During a Contract - 'But you can't give us service at the new location!' 'And I do apologize for that, but you did sign a 12 month contract at your current location.' 'Well, we moved! You can't get us service there, so we shouldn't have to pay the termination fee.' '... but you agreed to a service period of no less than 12 months at that location.' 'AT&T isn't charging us to disconnect!' 'Did you sign a contract with them?' '.. well, no...' 'Well, that's why, then.'

Only the Cat Knew He Didn't Belong On the Internet - "What lights are on on the modem?" "None of them are." "Is the modem plugged in right now, sir?" "Um... (in background: GOD DAMN CAT.) *silence* Yeah, I got lights back on on the modem now."

Dreams...

This has managed to sum up my views on life, and after reading it a few times, is part of what's helping me to redefine myself beyond someone who just works and sleeps day in and day out.

To some, it's just a webcomic. To others, it's a little reminder that there's more to life.

Everyone's gotta start somewhere...

The purpose behind this blog. Honestly, I'm not going to say that I'm going to update it with any regularity, because we've seen what happens when I say that. First, let me explain the dual domain names that reference this blog; www.professionalslacker.net and www.rageslave.net.

Professional Slacker - For most of my adult life, I've done as little as possible, while attempting to make money from it.

Rage Slave - Dual meaning behind this. For a long time now, I've been guided by my anger. As well, I found it to be an amusing play on the old phrase "wage slave", which ties into Professional Slacker.

Both of these are qualities that have found defining roles in my attitude over the past few years, and neither are qualities that I particularly relish. However, I cannot deny who I am; I can only try to change it for the better. However, they do define me to some extent, and that is what this blog is about; a wage slave and a rage slave, a professional slacker.

I will, most likely, be involved in two different posting types; snippets of customer conversations that make me wonder why I continue to work where I do, and personal ramblings regarding my life in general. The former will allow me some slight measure of venting, and the latter will allow me to chronicle anything that I do manage to do, in the event that I stick with this year's plans.
To be honest, I doubt that many people will be reading this, but in the event that you do;

Hi. I'm Dave, and I'm just another cog in the corporate hate machine. Pleasure to meet you.