Sunday 7 November 2004

Pic of the day: It is so late fall that it is not even funny. Winter could really come any day, although by force of habit it probably won't. It isn't that cold really.

Bextra ordinary day

Yesterday and today I have taken the painkiller Bextra (valdecoxib). This is not so much a “quick relief” painkiller, at least in the dosage used, but works by subtly altering the body chemistry to make inflammation less likely. It is still possible to feel pain from a variety of causes, including my tendonitis, but it is less likely to escalate. The effect from moderate doses of valdecoxib becomes more pronounced over time.

Sadly, time is not going to be on my side in this case. I will not take the drug tomorrow. The reason for this is that one of the rare side effects is an allergic reaction that is first seen as blisters in the mouth. If such a reaction occurs, medical assistance should be called for as the reaction may become life threatening. However, I have slept less than six hours for the last two nights and am likely to do so again. When I sleep this little for several consecutive days, I will often as not develop cold sores, oral herpes, which takes the form of blisters in my mouth. In order to not risk confusing the two, I must stop taking Bextra until I can re-establish sound sleep patterns.

The reason for this inconvenience is that I return to work tomorrow. I have been off work for two weeks. Very quickly after I stopped going to work, my ideal sleep pattern emerged. This consists of sleeping from around 6 in the morning till 13 (1PM). At this time my sleep is deep and undisturbed, and I wake up greatly refreshed. Yes, it happens to be very close to a normal workday ... just an hour or two earlier. I am fully aware of the irony of this, as expressed in an informal proverb famous among office workers here in Scandinavia: “If you can't do with 8 hours of sleep, you may have to use the night as well.”

Now I am trying to go back to staying awake at day, but it is a lot harder to make the river run its old course once it has broken through to lower terrain.

***

Speaking of terrain: The doctor impressed on me the need for an hour of brisk walking each day. So I set out to do so today again, as I had on Saturday. However, I had not gone far before I noticed a problem when walking downhill. (The terrain here is naturally hilly, to the point where I cannot avoid walking uphill and downhill at some stretches of the road.) At this point, my legs felt very weak. It did not hurt, I wasn't stiff, I just lacked energy. A most curious feeling. Despite this, I pressed on and completed my one hour journey. This was a mistake, I'm afraid. The stiffness set in later. Bextra or no Bextra, my legs became as stiff as they haven't been for years. This came much later, though.

In the evening, I wrote chapter 10 of my current November novel, Sugar High School, a book about friendship with the strength of love and the broad range of warm feelings that can exist between innocent young people. Not too exciting, I suppose, so I have also added a supernatural element and set it in an alternate world. Anyway, possibly because of the lack of sleep, this chapter was quite embarrassing to the female main character. It seems to become my trademark, to make the first meeting between the female protagonist and her tentative love interest highly embarrassing and somewhat physical. I still think it stays within the 11+ rating I have set out with. Yes, the bath towel did slip a bit, but there is no mention of exactly what or how much it reveals. (Actually, mature readers probably imagine more than I did ... I am a rather immature writer!)

The 10 chapters are all available off my new site, ChaosNode.net. Also available as a PDF file for your viewing or printing enjoyment if the HTML (web) pages are just too ugly or confusing.

That's it, mostly. I watched a funny anime episode in the evening, about a rather harmless vampire girl and the thickheaded boy who tries to help her. I also played quite a bit of Sims2 again. (Cecilie graduated today.)

In the real world, I'm sorry to say, a couple early grade schoolers made a small fire in the densely forested hillside just down from the house, but they seem to have put out the fire properly (amazingly enough) and then it started to rain. I hope they don't make it a habit though.

Today was also the last day, for now at least, that I thought I was fat. Otherwise I don't think it was memorable in any way.