Cav's Place

Finished the treatment yesterday and don’t like how I woke up today, but it’s too soon to say whether the symptoms will actually reappear and I should really get around to writing about the flu and doctors, even more so since Wednesday I finished the book and wrote the quick review, leaving me even more depressed than I usually am but also with one less excuse. Still, first I’ll mention that I ran again Monday, still embarrassingly slowly. The time was 53:25, with sector times of 4:29, 5:35, 6:32, 4:55, 5:38, 6:37, 5:04, 5:45, 6:45 and 2:05, making for lap times of 16:36, 17:10 and 17:34. The reported temperature was 2-3°C and there was some wind, plus a bit of muck left in a few small areas, and I again didn’t pick the most efficient paths, but I thought the real problem would be the rib… And I can say that I pretty much forgot about that due to needing to struggle not to shit myself from the very beginning, feeling like I had to go again just before going out the door but deciding not to, since I didn’t have the time, and being quite certain that I was going to end up literally shitting myself even early on. Sort of went from toilet to toilet, whenever I passed one thinking that I had to make it at least to the next, until sector three of lap three, when I knew that the next toilets were close to the end of the lap and I told myself that I’ll finish even if I will shit myself, and somehow managed not to anyway. Obviously no way to push under those circumstances, and on the final sector I took it quite easy, just trying to finish without something in my boxers…
Had set the alarm at 10:10 AM that morning, to watch Halep’s match, then considered going to run right after it, but instead just went to the toilet and then got back to bed, setting the alarm at 3 PM and then rushing to eat something, mostly what I usually do before running, taking the pills and then going out the door at 3:55 PM, rushing a bit to the park, to start running ten minutes later. Rushed back too, sorted out that pressing matter faster than I thought I would, then changed clothes and rushed to the doctor to have my ears checked after she had cleared the stuff from there Thursday, since I had mentioned that problem to the family doctor as well since I was at the clinic anyway. Since I had to go there on my own, dad meeting me there, since we both had an appointment but he was coming directly from where he had been until then, I got a bit confused on the way, going two wrong ways at an intersection before figuring out the right one and not noticing that dad had apparently called me right during that time either, but I ended up being only some three minutes late. He told me that a woman with a child had showed up just before me and he allowed them to go in first, since I wasn’t there yet, but they came out quickly, so it was fine anyway.

Today I first woke up early, seeing 9:14 AM when I checked the time, but managed to get back to sleep… Only to have a scary dream about my computer messing up badly and waking up again quite quickly, seeing 10:23 AM when I could recover enough to check the time, after at first being convinced that the dream had in fact been real and wondering what I was going to do. Still, after that I set the alarm at 10:50 AM and probably managed to just get a few more minutes of sleep before waking up to watch ski jumping, only to find that the session was delayed and ending up sort of watching tennis. Then, since the ski jumping wasn’t on TV when it actually took place and I had also just received the message notifying me that I could pick up the debit card I had to get, I went out and got that over with as well, then got back to see that the recorded ski jumping session started earlier than the TV schedule said it would, so I could see starting from the 21st jumper.

Since I mentioned the computer, I’ll get back to January 5, when I restored from backup one more time. Had updated Emsisoft Anti-Malware (EAM), since the delayed branch had been updated to a new version as well, disabled debug logging after doing so, and that apparently triggered another bug that made it freeze my computer. The support guy said that the reports about that issue ended after this version was released, so he thought it had been fixed, but apparently not, or at least not for me, since for me it’s the first time it happens. Not that I had debug logging enabled in a long time, so I can’t know when it started doing this when it’s disabled, or under what circumstances it may happen. But it still has to do with starting another program, since after turning debug logging off I played a bit more Jotun, then quit the game, started the TV tuner’s software, then tried to open the browser as well and nothing happened. Started Task Manager and, while slowly, it did show up, seeing two instances of iexplore.exe but nothing showing up. So I terminated those processes, tried again, and the result was the same, and then the CPU use fell first to 50% and then to zero, meaning that BOINC couldn’t work anymore either. And nothing worked after that, so had to do a hard reset again, and that put me between a rock and a hard place.
The problem is that whatever causes that conflict that results in a black screen and a conhost.exe crash when attempting to log on seems to be permanent with EAM 2018.11, no longer just happening once after a reboot, usually after a Windows update, and then working normally if rebooting again. And since I had uninstalled and reinstalled EAM in order to get around this issue before and they changed the installer, there’s no separate uninstall option anymore and it can’t be uninstalled under safe mode either, so I thought my only option was to restore from that backup made on December 22 again, the couple of other options the support guy mentioned when I told him about it later not even crossing my mind. That might have still not been enough, since EAM tried to update itself right away, noticing that it hadn’t been updated in a long time, and if it’d have done that I’d have been stuck yet again, since I had to reboot to reinstall that Internet Explorer update too, but I noticed and stopped it.
After rebooting again, saw that the fans were stuck at 70% again, the speed not changing according to the temperature, and since I knew that I needed to shut down the computer, not just reboot, in order to fix that, I did that too, apparently just when EAM was trying to update again, resulting in quite some time passing before it actually shut down and an error in logs, stating that EAM didn’t properly shut down. But the computer started just fine after that, once again without any of those black screens and crashes, the fans were operating normally as well and everything seemed fine, so I allowed EAM to update too, turned debug logging on again, and haven’t rebooted since, seeing as the January Windows updates didn’t seem to include anything critical. But, of course, I will need to install updates and reboot, likely after the February ones will be released, plus that needing to keep debug logging on to avoid my computer from freezing isn’t a solution either, as the logs already take up several GB and my system partition doesn’t have that much free space.
Then again, my license expires on February 14, so I’ll see whether the support guy says that anything has been fixed when the next update will be released, though he did say that since I’m the only one reporting these problems now the developers just flatly said they have no time for it, then likely test myself just then, and depending on how things stand I’ll decide whether I’ll purchase another year or need to get back to testing various other products again. Sure don’t want to do that, especially when there’s just one year left until I’ll unfortunately need to change the operating system as well, which is a prospect that truly horrifies me, seeing as all options are just awful, but if EAM won’t allow me to use my computer anymore, I’ll need to.

That night I went to bed at 4:10 AM, so about one hour early, feeling feverish and weak, and the fever didn’t seem to break while I slept. Woke up the next day with a bad cramp, then had headaches too, and in the evening it got even worse again. The snot wasn’t as much of a problem as it usually is, but I really felt rotten, though the following morning the fever seemed to break after I struggled to blow and spit stuff out at 8 AM, since I was starting to feel something in my chest as well, after being surprised that I hadn’t felt anything there until then. Spent most of that day in bed and the symptoms seemed to change, getting closer to those of a regular cold, and not a bad one at that, so I thought I was on the path to recovery at that point.
Well, things started getting nasty on January 8, when as I was waking up to blow and spit in the morning I noticed more and more blood from my nose. Put a few nose drops then, though I did it while standing and just keeping my nose up, so not sure how far they got, but they did seem to help at first, even if that also meant chunkier stuff ending up in my chest. Later that day I thought I was starting to pretty much clean up, coughing and spitting stuff out easily, and then continued to believe that as I ate at night, when I had a coughing fit every couple of bites, needing to spit stuff out and give myself a moment to recover before being able to take a couple more bites, and then having to go through it all over again.
The morning of January 10 was again hard, still having to wake up to cough and blow stuff out, eyes being runny and bloodshot and just feeling exhausted, though it was much better after I managed to catch another hour of sleep in the evening. The cough wasn’t getting better though, and when I took a bath and got myself fully under water I couldn’t make it ten seconds without a bad coughing fit and needing to spit, which I guess would have been a way to get a lot of crap out but was too tedious, so I gave up after a while. It was even worse while eating that night though, with bad coughing fits pretty much every time I swallowed, my chest and back starting to hurt, getting really tired because of it and continuing to cough after I finished eating too. The other symptoms seemed gone, but the cough was getting really worrying.
The next day dad was supposed to go to the family doctor anyway, to get my mother’s prescription, and considering the hard and scary morning I had, being unable to stop coughing, needing to carefully control breathing to have any chance to catch bits of sleep between being woken up by more bad coughing fits, and blowing mostly dried blood from my nose as well, I sent him a message, asking him to ask her about it as well. The problem is that she doesn’t schedule people, or if she tells them to come at a certain time the schedule’s not respected, people usually being received in the order they arrive in, and staying inside longer than they should because she’s alone in the office and answers the phone while patients are there too, so he waited for quite some time and eventually left, saying there were still 12 people ahead of him at that point and he’ll try again Monday, so he just got a few more things from a pharmacy on the way back. My nose also got stuffy again after I sent him that message, but it cleared again by evening, the problem remaining the cough, which was scaring me more and more. It wasn’t dry anymore during the day, but the feeling was the same, as if something was tickling me inside my chest, just that I had stuff to spit out too. Eating and drinking hot things, including hot milk with honey, helped for a bit, but then that feeling returned, and I started seeing some traces of blood in what I was spitting out too, though just occasionally and, considering what was coming from my nose, it didn’t mean that any of it was actually coming from my chest.
When I got in bed the next morning I noticed I could resist coughing for a little bit of time even in positions in which I immediately had a coughing fit until then, so I tried that, only coughing lightly once or twice every few seconds, and managed to fall asleep, only waking up almost three hours after going to bed, my body having apparently decided to show me what it meant to do so, since my nose was really stuffy and there was a whistling sound from my chest when I breathed, which definitely hadn’t happened until then. Could clear my nose after a few attempts, but all the coughing didn’t produce anything from my chest, yet I managed to get back to sleep and only woke up close to two and a half hours later, and only because of the noise, the plumber being in the building again, continuing to replace the water meters. More coughing and blowing, the coughing again completely dry, then back to sleep and only waking up again some two and a half hours later, just before the plumber got here too. Did have quite a coughing fit when I woke up that time, but heard the door right away, so very carefully controlled my breathing and position and somehow managed to wait until he left.
After eating that night, the bad dry coughing fits continued, and the first few hours in bed were very hard. Couldn’t do anything, couldn’t stop coughing, no way to sleep, eventually tried to sleep facedown and that resulted in my nose getting stuffy and runny instantly, needing to get up a couple more times… However, I know I got up around 8:45 AM and then I’m not sure whether I did so one more time or that was actually the last, was quite confused at that point, but what I do know is that after that I just crashed, probably passed out more than simply falling asleep, and only got up at 5:10 PM. A rib seemed to hurt, having started to do so during the morning, and there was snot to get rid of, but both nose and chest seemed to clear easily enough. Tried to tell my mother, who was just getting ready to leave again, that it’s bad, but it’s hard to talk about such things, or to my parents about anything, and she was making it harder by trying to fill in the blanks while I was struggling to get the words out, and then it all came to nothing when I mentioned the doctor and said that I don’t trust her and may not want to take what she’ll prescribe, and that they’ll likely get on my case because of that… And she started to do just that, so I just said we have nothing to talk about and just ran back to my room, avoiding her until she left.

Still, with dad going to the doctor again the next day, I ended up going with him. Considered going to a hospital myself, perhaps even at night, before he got back from work, when there should have been fewer people too and the cough was really bad, and the doctors from there would have been unknown to me, so at least I’d have been neutral about them, not distrustful from the start, but I was too afraid, so after he went to bed I left him a note in the kitchen, asking him to wake me so we’ll go together and explaining some things, including mentioning that we are so completely and fundamentally incompatible, starting from the most basic thought patterns, that any attempt to communicate can only result in anger and frustration on both sides, bad misunderstandings and a feeling of ill will from the other. Not that I’d be compatible with anyone else, but with my parents it’s very obvious and very bad.
So he woke me around 1 PM, not that I had slept much, having manged to nap a bit after going to bed, maybe a bit more at some later point, and then again at some point after 11 AM, until he woke me up. Then we went there, waited our turn, during which time I just read, having taken the book with me just for that purpose, and as soon as we went in and I said something, she jumped to write a prescription. Didn’t give me any diagnosis, listened to my lungs and said she didn’t hear anything, which was obvious, since it was a dry cough, sent me to get an x-ray done, stating that it likely won’t be free but nevertheless specifying a place, though I ended up having it done somewhere else anyway, but either way told me to start taking the stuff immediately, since from what I was saying at least the sinus infection was clear. And the treatment included a powerful antibiotic, now when everyone is finally shouting about antibiotic resistance and the need to only take exactly the right kind and only when absolutely necessary, plus something to protect my stomach from it, though no probiotic. It also included a cough syrup with nothing natural in it, in fact having a single active ingredient that has the sole listed purpose of blocking the cough reflex in order to reduce the patient’s discomfort while the cause of the cough is being treated, but also some pills to liquefy the stuff, plus some regular cold medicine and some expensive vitamins. I had mentioned the pills and the cough syrup I wanted to take and she just blew me off. Even the pharmacist looked oddly at that syrup and those pills on the same prescription, saying that I should ask again how I’m supposed to take them, because the pills should make me spit stuff out and the syrup would make it impossible to do so, and dad had bought better cold medicine already. Admittedly, she couldn’t have known this last part, but she could have asked.
Since I mentioned the pharmacist, dad went to the pharmacy from that clinic to get the stuff, insisting to “get it done” even though I wanted to check the prices at the cheaper ones I knew first… And he spent a third more just because of that, the price of, say, a pizza, just because he insisted on getting the stuff, a part of it unnecessary anyway, from one place instead of another. He did stop at that, asking for the price of the things on my mother’s prescription and deciding against getting those or the one thing he had been prescribed from there when he saw the difference, knowing how much he usually spends for my mother’s stuff, but that just made me responsible for that additional expense, including, I state again, things which shouldn’t have been purchased in the first place. And no, I didn’t even touch that cough syrup, just waiting for the antibiotic to do its job, which started happening quickly, both the cough and the sinus infection going away after a few days, and with it having such a limited use, I doubt we’ll use it later either, so that was another expense which should have definitely been avoided.
Was furious after that, just shaking with anger, due to how the doctor treated me, having to take stuff I didn’t mean to take and feeling responsible for those expenses through no fault of my own. And then it got worse when I told dad in the evening that we should go and have that x-ray done right away, the next day, to see exactly how things stand before the treatment kicks in, and he said that since the doctor won’t be there the next day and she said to bring her the x-ray right away, there’s no point, and in fact I should want to delay it, just to give the treatment a few days to kick in and then see that things are good, so I won’t see that something’s wrong and then worry. So, again, proving those fundamental differences, and convincing me that I needed to go alone and have it done, which I tried and failed the next day, since that clinic required appointments despite what the doctor had said and I was told that they had no more spots that day either way. Did manage to catch a nap that evening though, despite the anger, waking up at 12:15 AM.

After having the x-ray done, which I wrote about in the previous personal post, on January 17 I woke up at 10 AM and we left at 10:45 AM, in case we’ll need to walk to the clinic. But we took the car after all, so we were there earlier than planned, and she had a look at the x-ray and said it looks quite fine, that I either still have or just had stuff in my lungs but there’s no bronchitis or any other serious problem. However, she was very condescending when I was trying to have a look at the x-ray as well, saying that I may be “a smart boy” but there’s nothing I could see there, that only those who know how to read an x-ray can, then asking what could I possibly see there when I nevertheless got up and had a closer look.
Still, since I was there, I mentioned the wax clogging my left ear for so long and that it had again gotten in a position that made me not hear with that ear just then, and even though she again dismissed what I was saying and insisted that it was also because of the flu, or I guess the sinus infection, and wrote a diagnosis related to that, the doctor handling these things knew what she was doing, so I went in quickly, without needing to wait, the procedure was free and I had both ears cleared, since she said the right one was in a similar state, though it didn’t bother me. She did speak oddly, seeming used to have children as patients, using a lot of diminutives and at the same time being very firm and trying to direct the behavior of the patients in every way while in her office, but she actually seemed to be a good doctor, and despite repeating her recommendations, for both me and dad, since he went there too, for a different issue, and not really accepting being talked back to, she also stressed that she’s just giving advice and it’s all the patient’s choice in the end. Still, it was odd when she put the stuff from my ear on my hand and then, after she gave me a tissue and I tried to wipe off the bit which had ended up on the chair too, she just said “no”, repeating, louder, when I just stared at her in confusion, then told me to throw it in a tray, again just saying “no” when I couldn’t find the tray in question and tried the trash can, then put something else in the trash can herself and seemed to pretty much forget about me for a moment when I did finally spot the tray.