WUMF: July 2012 Edition

Summer just be flying by.  I didn't realize it was time for another WUMF.

Olympics 2012
I’ve been waiting to watch the Olympics for awhile now, but since the games are not being shown on Qubo or Nick Jr. the odds of me actually watching much of them are slim to none. I did manage to get my kid interested in the diving and gymnastics events only because they were flashy. Once they went back to showing just the races, she tuned out and asked for her show. I sort of almost decided against the entire thing after catching a few minutes of the God awful opening ceremonies. That trip through history to return an iPhone was pretty awful.

Other than that, the Internet is doing a great job of covering the games. All of the results are coming in WAAAAY before NBC gets off their asses and airs the actual event. Waiting for NBC to show you the swimming competition is like working in IT and waiting to see Dark Knight Rises after the crowds die down a bit. You’re expecting your geek coworkers to not spoil it for you the minute after it comes out.

Does NBC understand that with Twitter and Facebook and oh, I don’t know Google and every other news site, that the results will be announced as they happen at the games and not during prime time when you choose to air the events? Maybe this is just proof at how vapid of a culture we’ve become, expecting the rest of the world to wait for us to show up… much like Michael Phelps at the pool. All that Subway made him slow.

Actually, I’ve got this vibe of treating this like it’s a reality show house competition. It seems very unpatriotic… or maybe uber-patriotic… like the bad kind of patriotism.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Beetles!
When we moved into our house in 2004, we were told by the exterminator who was doing work for the previous owners as part of the contract that we have a lot of bugs. Not in the house, but on the property. With two big oaks, two big maples, and a shit load of pines, there are plenty of reasons why there are lots of spiders, ants, and termites. Now, we’ve got beetles.

I had just cut the grass and we were relaxing in our patio chairs. I could distinctly smell the all too familiar scent of cat shit from our neighbor strays and it was pissing me off as usual. As my daughter wandered around playing and looking at bugs, she told me to come check out these strange, HUGE bugs. Sure enough, there was these gigantic beetles crawling in and around a pile of cat shit. Three to five of them were just frantically crawling out from under a pile of dirt and grass and poop. I walked throughout the yard and noticed another set of beetles doing the same thing. Apparently, I was lucky enough to not have stepped in either pile during my cutting of the grass.

We checked the Internet to try and find out what kind of beetles these were but no such luck. They are either dung beetles or hister beetles from what we could narrow down.

I went back out after dark with the camera but could find no trace of them.  I even looked again this evening and no trace of them. 

Squirrel Hill Tunnel Traffic
They have been working on the Squirrel Hill Tunnels for what seems like years.  This past weekend they closed down from Friday through to Monday at 5:00AM to do more work.  Traffic was still backed up at 6:30AM this morning as we were backing up to the Churchill exit.  I thought they had gone late or there was an accident.  No such thing.

Do you know what was backing traffic up so badly, this morning?  Hundreds of commuters didn't expect to see half of the roof missing on the inside of the tunnel and had to slow down to inspect it REEEALLLL close. 

Now, you may think I'm exaggerating, but for the 600 yards the roof had been ripped up above us, traffic slowed to a crawl.  However, when we reached the end of where the work had been done, everybody took off like a shot.  Literally no traffic exiting the tunnel.  It's like, "Is it going to fall on me? What the hell is that curved thing up there?"

I was inspired to parody a meme that has been done to death, but it's been selling pretty good in my online stores.

Keep Calm and Maintain Speed Thru Tunnels

I even got a shout out on Twitter from PittGirl

Best "Keep Calm and ...." shirt ever? Yes. #pittsburgh #tunnels skreened.com/mongoware/keep…
— Virginia Montanez (@JanePitt) July 30, 2012

I love this town and the people in it.  Just... not... the ones staring up at the roof of the tunnels instead of actually driving.

Drive on, Pittsburgh

Convenience Store Hotdog Healthcare Part Two

In my last post, I set up the scenario wherein my wife was complaining of a bladder infection, accompanied by a fever, chills, and rigors. We went to MedExpress and they all but scared her into going to the ER to be treated with IV antibiotics. However, she took a shot in the ass and a script for Cipro and went on her, only to end up in the ER the next night, no better.

The doctor took a look at her and ordered a chest x-ray after setting her up with an IV drip and I had gone home to fetch our daughter and waited for the phone to ring. So, do you know what the prognosis was?

Well, my one and only commenter guessed right. She had pneumonia.

We never would have guessed for two reasons. The first one, I gave. MedExpress listened to her chest and found no reason to think pneumonia. The second reason, which I forgot to add, was that she had just come off a round of Zithromax the day before she started noticing symptoms of the infection. So, there was little reason to think she would have developed pneumonia after being treated for bronchitis. Still, I was glad it was nothing truly serious and she called me close to 11pm saying she was discharged.

I gathered up our kid and went to pick her up, knowing that she would be sleeping in her own bed, not hooked up to tubes and wires. In the end, she was treated for both the pneumonia and bladder infection and has been much better.

So, to my original point, when you’re sure you know what’s wrong with you and you just need to get a script or confirmation, MedExpress or urgent care is perfectly fine. Your co-pay is more to get in there but you can use your local pharmacy instead of paying their higher prices for drugs. If you have the time and patience, your PCP is great. But if you’re going all out and need to get that excellent hot dog healthcare which is sure to harden your arteries and leave a smile on your face, go to the ER.

The great thing about getting that gigantic chili dog with cheese fries early in the season is that once you’ve met your deductible, you can the high class brand of healthcare for the cost of your co-pay… extra cheese fries at no additional charge. I managed to max out my deductible in the first week of the year with a blood test and other routine exams.

Convenience Store Hotdog Healthcare Part One

Food. Food is good. I like food. If you look at me, you can probably tell that right away.

I also like being in pretty decent health. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, as one might think. I’ll admit, I have a vice and there are detriments to my health from enjoying that vice. However, my health is usually pretty good to the point that I am seeing a doctor maybe once a year.

Now, when I do need to see the doctor, I have my choice. I can either see my PCP or go to an urgent care facility. People will swear up one side and down the other that urgent care is like going to Dr. Nick in Springfield. I am here to tell you that it’s not a given that places like MedExpress will be a bad option when it comes to care. It’s simply an option. In terms of the quality of care, I will use food as an analogy. Politicians may want to call it broccoli, for whatever reason, but my analogy is more aligned with where you get the food.

Let’s say you want to get a hotdog. Hotdogs are good, but it’s best that you don’t know what’s exactly in them from an ingredients standpoint. Relating that to a medical situation, the hotdog is an illness or ailment where you don’t exactly know what’s wrong with you. It’s not like a cold where you know what’s wrong with you.  You need some diagnosis beyond what you can see or feel.

Just like getting a hotdog, you have a few options. You can go to a ball park and pay a lot for an authentic hotdog. We’ll call that a hospital hotdog. You can go to the grocery store and buy a pack of hotdogs for much cheaper and somewhat relative quality to the ballpark. We’ll call that a family doctor dog. Or, you can go down to the local convenience store / gas station and get a dog from the counter which is on those heat rollers. We’ll call that the urgent care dog. Price may vary.

You can go to a ballpark to get a hotdog, which is awesome, but you’ll spend a lot of money to get that kind of quality. You’ll also be there for awhile. There are a lot of other people that you have to sort of "queue up" with to get that hotdog. The game could go into extra innings or overtime, keeping you there longer but that hotdog is pretty darn good.

You can go to the grocery store and get a pack of hotdogs. You know the quality is probably pretty decent but the ambiance is lessened. You take the hotdogs home and finish them but they’re pretty much cooked already. You still want to follow the directions on the packaging. You may have to fight through the crowds on a Sunday during football season or right around a summer holiday, but you can expect to pay a small amount and go home with a pretty good dog.

Now, the convenience store dog has been in that hot box on a roller for who knows how long. It’s probably not exactly the best quality of hotdog and when you add cheese or chili you’ve probably brought the quality down considerably. That hotdog is unknown territory and you could find yourself worse off after you’ve eaten it. The price is based on convenience. The same amount for a pack of dogs at the grocery store gets you two, cooked dogs, at the convenience store but do you really trust them in messing around in your digestive system?

Now, if I was going to the convenience store to get a bottle of Coke out of the case or a bag of Doritos, no problem. As long as the dates are good, should be OK. Candy Bar? Sure. I’m pretty secure in the fact that the food I will consume will be OK. Yeah, I’m going to pay a bit more than at a grocery store, but I got right in, got my snack, and am on my way.

The same goes for what my wife experienced over the last week.

She noticed that she felt like she had a bladder infection. Normal symptoms were all there. Figured she could hold off to see her doctor after the weekend. By Sunday, she was in pretty bad shape. I came inside to find her sitting on the couch, wrapped in blankets and a hoodie, shivering. This was beyond just a simple infection.

I took her to MedExpress, which I trusted, and they confirmed she had an infection, but the fever, chills, and rigors were speaking more towards a blood infection. One of her friends went through this and ended up in the hospital in a coma with a brain infection that made her act belligerent and out of character. It all started with a kidney infection. So, they did a urine test and even listened to her lungs. They came back and said she needed to go to the ER, right away and get IV antibiotics. That’s a 2-3 day treatment and with a five year old involved, it messes up our scheduling. I have to take off from work, she has to take off from work, we need to figure out what to do with the kid who goes to Kindercare two days during the week. Pretty messed up situation.

So, she opted to go against medical advice, they gave her an antibiotic shot in the ass and a script for Cipro and we were on our way. Monday evening, she wasn’t any better. Still had a fever, chills, and rigors. We took my kid to my Father-in-law’s and went to the ER at Westmoreland Hospital.

Now, first off, the parking at their ER is ridiculous. It’s an Emergency Room and all of the parking spaces are either, 15 minute parking, handicapped parking, or Ambulance parking. You sit for 20 minutes alone, waiting for them to even get to you. So, I parked across the street after dropping her off at the door. Luckily, she was able to do fine on her own from there. They got her registered and triaged her. By 9:15PM, they had an IV run with another antibiotic, blood draws, and a sample of urine.

By 10PM we made a decision that if they planned to keep her all night, I would work from home on Tuesday, then take the kid to my parents for the night, after being at Kindercare. I would go to work on Wed and then pick up her up and do the same for Thursday and Friday. If they planned to release her, I would simply take the kid and go pick up my wife.

The doctor came in and examined my wife. Did all the same steps MedExpress did but after examining her, sent her for a chest X-Ray. This was something MedExpress didn’t do. I went and picked up the kiddo from her Pappy’s, and we kind of had a stay up and play session while we waited for the news.

So, what do you think the prognosis was? I’ll give you a hint. The X-Ray is the key.



Stay Tuned.