HEALTH UPDATE: to surgery on Thursday
Jan. 16th, 2008 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaMy husband, Don, is going to undergo a cardiac catheterization on Thursday morning around 8AM Central time. We'd certainly appreciate your prayers and positive thoughts. He'll be staying in the hospital overnight.
The doctor said they see a blockage in the lower left of his heart, probably the front artery but perhaps more than one, but the cardiologist says that there's a 70% chance they can just fix it right there with stents (they can place up to four stents, unless I misunderstood him), and only a 30% chance that they'll need to go do a bypass or more serious surgery. My focus will be on wanting him to not die or have a stroke during or after the procedure and to get him home safely without any need to do further surgery such as a bypass. My mother is all worried about him "becoming an invalid," but I suspect she's more worried about his not being able to go back to work. Software weenies don't have to do heavy lifting, so I'm really not concerned about that so much.
He's all bloated up with gas right now and has been for two days, since he first got the news that he'd have to talk further to the doctor after the test. Now he's worried that he can't get rid of the stomach pains and churning (most likely from anxiety and nerves) in time to be able to lie flat for the procedure and for four to six hours afterward (they have you lie flat so as not to tear that groin incision they've done in the major artery.) He's also nauseated, but then so am I. I think he has been neglecting his health for some time, so I'm not totally surprised, but I'm still worried.
We're going to postpone Mama's tests until sometime next week when hubby's well. My knee is swelling up and getting stiff, but that's because I'm up on it and have no time to spend staying off of it . . . having to climb stairs and walk across parking lots and scurry from place to place inside the giant hospital two days in a row has been too much for it, because I had overexerted and even twisted it over the Christmas non-festivities. I need to go ice it down for fifteen minutes.
Thank you all for your kind comments and positive prayers. Also, those sentences y'all sent for my all-stolen novel really rock! I haven't had time to sit down and respond to it all, but man, it looks as if it would be lots harder to do than a novel that you write yourself. Gotta hand it to the people who came up with this "steal first, apologize later" stuff. They're working a lot harder than they would by just writing it all themselves.
However, I'm still going to steal this bit from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
medusa's LJ: "It was raining lots today, so we eschewed the Zoo in favour of the Book Barn, where I fell off a ladder while hunting for books about the Empress Maria Theresa." How could I resist? (It'll have to go into a scene during a Texas twister.)
And a note to several online sites: FREE VERSE you can rail against if you like, but it is NOT THE SAME AS BLANK VERSE! BLANK VERSE ::= unrhymed iambic pentameter. You know, like most of Shakespeare's plays, Milton's PARADISE LOST, and so forth. It is not the same as those "shaped poems" such as the one consisting of iteratins of the word "frog" and shaped like a frog. So don't wax eloquently against the awfulness of blank verse and how you think it's just a prose sentence broken up and scattered around the page. That's free verse, and some of it I like fairly well. (Guilty pleasure? You decide.)
Oh, and hurray Sen. Hillary Clinton for calling her worthy opponent "Barack" in tonight's debate. He calls her "Hillary," and frankly I have been thinking that the men in the race are getting called by their last names and she's getting called by her first name like a secretary . . . not fair. Either they're all "Mr. Smith" or they're all "Bubba." Otherwise, it's like having the female contender called "Honey" and "Little Lady" while the others are all "Dr. Strangelove" and "Mr. Darcy." Boo! So this is a step forward that puts the spotlight on the subconscious sexist treatment of women that still happens sometimes.
For the record, I would be flattered if someone called me "Honey" and "Chickie," because mostly they refer to me as "that old battle-axe" or "that crazy 3@$%*&!! with the yappy Pomeranian in her arms." However, in the Presidential race and other such venues, it's better to put everyone on equal footing, even when it comes to the subconscious stuff.
(If you don't think there's any sexism remaining today--and I'll grant there's a LOT less than when I was a preteen and Ms. magazine first came out--consider this. You always hear jokes such as, "It was so cold that Farrah's faucets froze," but you never hear ones like, "It was so cold that Barack's Obama froze." See how silly? Yes, that's silly. But so is the first one, which made the rounds back in the "Charlie's Angels" days and irritated me because of its demeaning premise in the first place. [It would be nice if I could think of a more recent sexist joke, but my mind is too tired and it can only bring to the surface familiar old stuff it has known for years, such as Norm Crosby's old Vegas act and jokes from "Laugh-In." And Robert Benchley lines, but they're never funny out of context.] We may never get rid of sexism and patronizing remarks completely, but at least we can make people aware that it happens.)
That's just an academic observation, though. In my current frame of mind, I really don't give a 3@$%$^!!* if sexism and every other sin runs rampant across the Universe and everyone gets a ticket. All I care about is that I don't lose everything over the next couple of days or weeks. I know my karma must be the pits, but let's hope I've worked off at least some of the worst of it so that we come out of this healthier and on a better path. I promised the family that we'd go on a vacation over my birthday weekend in March because we need to do something fun and go somewhere other than the inside of offices, and we will. Keep a good thought for us.
The doctor said they see a blockage in the lower left of his heart, probably the front artery but perhaps more than one, but the cardiologist says that there's a 70% chance they can just fix it right there with stents (they can place up to four stents, unless I misunderstood him), and only a 30% chance that they'll need to go do a bypass or more serious surgery. My focus will be on wanting him to not die or have a stroke during or after the procedure and to get him home safely without any need to do further surgery such as a bypass. My mother is all worried about him "becoming an invalid," but I suspect she's more worried about his not being able to go back to work. Software weenies don't have to do heavy lifting, so I'm really not concerned about that so much.
He's all bloated up with gas right now and has been for two days, since he first got the news that he'd have to talk further to the doctor after the test. Now he's worried that he can't get rid of the stomach pains and churning (most likely from anxiety and nerves) in time to be able to lie flat for the procedure and for four to six hours afterward (they have you lie flat so as not to tear that groin incision they've done in the major artery.) He's also nauseated, but then so am I. I think he has been neglecting his health for some time, so I'm not totally surprised, but I'm still worried.
We're going to postpone Mama's tests until sometime next week when hubby's well. My knee is swelling up and getting stiff, but that's because I'm up on it and have no time to spend staying off of it . . . having to climb stairs and walk across parking lots and scurry from place to place inside the giant hospital two days in a row has been too much for it, because I had overexerted and even twisted it over the Christmas non-festivities. I need to go ice it down for fifteen minutes.
Thank you all for your kind comments and positive prayers. Also, those sentences y'all sent for my all-stolen novel really rock! I haven't had time to sit down and respond to it all, but man, it looks as if it would be lots harder to do than a novel that you write yourself. Gotta hand it to the people who came up with this "steal first, apologize later" stuff. They're working a lot harder than they would by just writing it all themselves.
However, I'm still going to steal this bit from
medusa's LJ: "It was raining lots today, so we eschewed the Zoo in favour of the Book Barn, where I fell off a ladder while hunting for books about the Empress Maria Theresa." How could I resist? (It'll have to go into a scene during a Texas twister.)And a note to several online sites: FREE VERSE you can rail against if you like, but it is NOT THE SAME AS BLANK VERSE! BLANK VERSE ::= unrhymed iambic pentameter. You know, like most of Shakespeare's plays, Milton's PARADISE LOST, and so forth. It is not the same as those "shaped poems" such as the one consisting of iteratins of the word "frog" and shaped like a frog. So don't wax eloquently against the awfulness of blank verse and how you think it's just a prose sentence broken up and scattered around the page. That's free verse, and some of it I like fairly well. (Guilty pleasure? You decide.)
Oh, and hurray Sen. Hillary Clinton for calling her worthy opponent "Barack" in tonight's debate. He calls her "Hillary," and frankly I have been thinking that the men in the race are getting called by their last names and she's getting called by her first name like a secretary . . . not fair. Either they're all "Mr. Smith" or they're all "Bubba." Otherwise, it's like having the female contender called "Honey" and "Little Lady" while the others are all "Dr. Strangelove" and "Mr. Darcy." Boo! So this is a step forward that puts the spotlight on the subconscious sexist treatment of women that still happens sometimes.
For the record, I would be flattered if someone called me "Honey" and "Chickie," because mostly they refer to me as "that old battle-axe" or "that crazy 3@$%*&!! with the yappy Pomeranian in her arms." However, in the Presidential race and other such venues, it's better to put everyone on equal footing, even when it comes to the subconscious stuff.
(If you don't think there's any sexism remaining today--and I'll grant there's a LOT less than when I was a preteen and Ms. magazine first came out--consider this. You always hear jokes such as, "It was so cold that Farrah's faucets froze," but you never hear ones like, "It was so cold that Barack's Obama froze." See how silly? Yes, that's silly. But so is the first one, which made the rounds back in the "Charlie's Angels" days and irritated me because of its demeaning premise in the first place. [It would be nice if I could think of a more recent sexist joke, but my mind is too tired and it can only bring to the surface familiar old stuff it has known for years, such as Norm Crosby's old Vegas act and jokes from "Laugh-In." And Robert Benchley lines, but they're never funny out of context.] We may never get rid of sexism and patronizing remarks completely, but at least we can make people aware that it happens.)
That's just an academic observation, though. In my current frame of mind, I really don't give a 3@$%$^!!* if sexism and every other sin runs rampant across the Universe and everyone gets a ticket. All I care about is that I don't lose everything over the next couple of days or weeks. I know my karma must be the pits, but let's hope I've worked off at least some of the worst of it so that we come out of this healthier and on a better path. I promised the family that we'd go on a vacation over my birthday weekend in March because we need to do something fun and go somewhere other than the inside of offices, and we will. Keep a good thought for us.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 12:30 pm (UTC)I'm way too thinky this morning, probably too little sleep
Date: 2008-01-16 01:33 pm (UTC)I find myself thinking of her as 'Hillary' because that disambiguates former-president Clinton from potential-future-president Clinton easily, and I often find myself about to say 'Hillary', but every time it's about to come out of my mouth I cringe because, being the only woman among the candidates-considered-serious, the effect is what you just described regardless of the intent. I'm not sure how many times I've failed to correct myself to use her last name in time, so I may still be guilty of being part of the problem, but it does feel like a mistake when I'm about to say it.
I suspect the long habit of devout Hillary-haters (who frankly puzzle me*) referring to her that way continuously since her time as First Lady is also a factor. (But if I'm right about that, then what are supposedly neutral reporters doing echoing that?)
It'd be easier to sort out how much of this name-form difference is because of her husband's fame and former position and how much is the cultural/linguistic meme that downplays women's status by referring to them by the more familiar form of address, if she were known as Rodham instead of Clinton, or if several women were in the race.
FWIW, I remember that (when she was relevant) referring to Ferraro by her surname felt completely natural, and I can't recall anyone referring to her as 'Geraldine' without also saying her surname, back then.
Anyhow, the reason I'm prattling on is that I too have noticed and been bothered by the disparity in forms of address-as-reference -- and it probably goes without saying**, not the fact that Clinton's so often called by her first name per se, as the fact that it's a marked difference between the only female major candidate and all the males. If reporters and commentators, not just Sen. Clinton, were referring to Ron and Barack and Fred and Dennis by their first names, the effect of referring to her by her first name would be innocuous.
I do hear her referred to as 'Clinton' or 'Sen. Clinton' quite a lot on television, but 'Hillary' crops up just often enough to register as a difference -- and outside of television, in casual discussions among non-media-folks, I hear her first name used alone a lot more often.
Hmm. And I've noticed that I hear Paul referred to by first-and-last-names as opposed to just his last name, more often than the other male candidates. I now wonder: is that just because both names are so short, or is it because his surname could also be a given name so calling him 'Paul' sounds too much like the familiar/lower-status reference used so often for women regardless of position?
* I'm disinclined to vote for her because she appears to be too far to the right for my tastes, not because she's the Dreaded Hillary or because she's a woman; unless one of the Republicans impresses me in a way I doubt any of the current crop are capable of, or the Greens pick somebody I can't resist, I'll be voting for Clinton if she wins the nomination. That there are three candidates in the running whom I could see voting for instead of voting against somebody else, is remarkable.
** Or rather, would have gone without saying if I hadn't said it to be safe.
sexism in humour
Date: 2008-01-16 01:45 pm (UTC)It's been bugging me for months and months that jokes that boil down to "$[female celebrity] has had a lot of sex partners" and "$[female celebrity] isn't absolutely as attractive as she could possibly be [or is unconventional in her looks]" (the latter largely being fat jokes) remain an effing staple of late-night television comedy. Pick any week to tune in; you may not get such a memorable single joke as any of the Farrah Fawcett jokes, but the pattern will be there. Recently I've been noticing more "I'm so clever because I implied promiscuity in the punch line" jokes than fat/ugly jokes on late-night television, but I haven't made a scientific count.
I've been noticing similar things about jokes relying on a reference to or clever suggestion of homosexuality as well, but that takes us off on a tangent that I should probably think about more and post to my own journal.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 05:46 pm (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 08:42 pm (UTC)Thurs. -- and don't worry, I didn't get Wed. today
Date: 2008-01-16 08:49 pm (UTC)Be strong. Keep faith.
My take on something late in your post
Date: 2008-01-17 06:12 pm (UTC)I am so sorry. I just couldn't resist. Thought perhaps you could use the laugh, but then recalled your remark about being nauseated. Well, I'll hope for the best. *grin*