Wandering with Tedder and Tamara

My left eye has been bothering me for a couple of days. I assumed I got some dust in it last weekend, when we went up the teleferiquo. I checked for junk (like an eyelash) several times a day, but didn't find anything until yesterday, when I found a small eyelash. It took a while to extract, and my eye didn't feel better afterwards. In fact, during the night my eye produced a ton of goobers (technical term) and has been tearing like crazy.

So we researched ophthalmologists this morning, thanks to SAE's listings. Tamara shortened her language lesson and we went hunting for one of the doctors at about 10:30am. We didn't find the office, so we went to the second one. He was there, and was in an office with other doctors, which was nice. We explained we didn't have an appointment and asked if they could fit us in. Sure enough, it was only about 15 minutes before we saw the doctor.

The doctor was a very nice guy. His English was quite passable, which helped when we were talking about things like viruses, cornea transplants, and the like. He confirmed that my eye didn't have herpes (a big concern for me- I have herpes in my other eye), and that it was just conjunctivitis. He said it is common here because of the pollution and dry climate (which makes eyes more susceptible to getting a bacteria). He gave us a prescription for Vigamox, told us to come back early next week if it isn't better, and told us it was really contagious (which we knew).

So, hopefully things will clear up. The left side of my face is crusty from all the tearing. Sounds silly, I know.

(The flowers are some that Tamara bought yesterday. The entire bouquet was $6).

Labels: eye, health, medical

So I've had some weird indigestion, I figured it was stress-related acid reflux or something. It came on quite suddenly though, so I called my doctor's office. They got me in the same day, which makes me think they were worried, too.

Basically: doesn't seem to be acid reflux or something similar. Was worried it was gall stones, so I went to ER last night and spent some time with the ultrasound tech. Got home late- the net is that things seem to be okay, probably just burned part of my stomach lining or something. Take Prilosec, it should get better in a week.

Back to normal life- Tamara got more of her dental work done, hopefully she'll be done on Saturday. She also painted even more around the house. I worked with the carpet installers, so now the CARPET IS DONE! Yay!

My trip laptop, a Vaio TX750, arrived on-time yesterday. It's a wonderful little piece of kit- tiny, with a tiny keyboard, but plenty of power and a dual-layer DVD burner drive. That means we can blog on the road, edit and store our photos, watch movies, send backups of photos home, and store/publish our GPS tracks like I did in Alaska.

Labels: geek, medical, pretrip

We jumped on the bike and left around 10:30am today. First stop- up to the doctor at PacMed. Always kind of weird to go there, considering I worked at Amazon in that building for three years.

Doctor liked what we were doing, gave us her personal email so we can chat on the road about medical things, and helped answer some of our final questions about how to handle medicines, dosages, and the minor medical issues we have. Also poked us for tetanus and wrote some extended prescrips for normal drugs.

Next was past our place to a travel medicine clinic. (riders: it's basically across the street from RMC. nonbikers: it's near Ikea). It so happens they share a building with AAA, so we could kill two birds with one stone. Didn't remember if our appointment was at 1 or 1:30, so we went in at 1. It was later, but they went ahead and got us going.

Basically, it boils down to this: we got our yellow fever vaccine, plus our refrigerated typhoid vaccine. The latter is better than a shot because it lasts longer and doesn't tend to interfere with other jabs.. many travelers can't do it, because it means carrying an insulated cooler for 8 days, not easy to do if you are on a plane. Perfect for us though.

Lots of talk about malaria, where to be worried, what to do, etc. She prescribed Doxycycline for us- decently priced ($40-50/year at costco, hopefully), easy to carry, doesn't interfere with riding, easy to get in other countries, etc.

Lots of talk about poo. (anyone else watching Scrubs lately?) Talked about how to be realistic about what we eat and drink, and yet stay somewhat safe. Everyone's favorite anthrax drug,
Cipro, ends up being the right thing for traveler's diarrhea. Usage is absolutely opposite of how you normally take antibiotics- you are supposed to start taking it as soon as the curse hits, and once you feel better, stop taking it immediately. So if you have Montezuma's Revenge for 3 days, you only take the Cipro for 3 days. It'll take a while to wrap my brain around that, since that is opposite of how antibiotics are normally used.

Through the atrium to AAA. Needed our IDL, plus the variation that is accepted in Brazil. Maybe we could have done without the latter- they are only good for a year anyhow. Oh well. We'll figure out what to do next year.

Raced from there back to downtown to get Tamara to her endodontist appointment. Still trying to get those British teeth fixed up for the trip.

I knew I had at least 1.5 hours to kill, so I went up to a DOL office and got new tabs for the bike, then went up to Ride West for some gloves. I was intending on getting yet another set of Held Steve gloves, but they didn't have any, since Held is still messing around with their distribution channels after the Intersport reorganization.

I tried on a million pair of gloves, frustrated that they were relatively stiff and I was perfectly in between sizes. I was about to give up, but I asked the fellow that was helping me (Bill) if there was anything in a slightly lighter weight glove. I really didn't want something mesh, but I didn't need a racy carbon fiber thing, either.

Bill was great- he's the parts manager at Ride West, and he is a fan of Held Steve gloves, obviously a riding enthusiast, not someone who was trying to push a sale. He offered to call me in a few months when they got the Steves in rather than pushing something else on me.

Well, I found the gloves of my dreams the moment I tried on a size 10 BMW Rallye 2. These are basically the official glove of the BMW GS, so I shouldn't be surprised they were so nice, but .. wow. They are really stretchy, still have excellent protection (including hard knuckles and kangaroo skin palm), but breathable and strechy. Did I mention how stretchy they are? It's like the difference between wearing a set of big ski gloves and a set of lightweight mittens. The latter can come in a lot of different sizes and will fit much more comfortably than the ski gloves. That's how these are.

It gets even better- I was encouraged to try on the slightly smaller size (I was running between 9 and 10). I told them there was no reason to bother, they couldn't get more comfortable.

Well, they did. I put on the size 9 gloves and wore them for about 15 minutes. The fingers were long enough, the material didn't bunch up, my hands could BREATHE, wow. I'm so glad the Steves are so hard to find now- I have a new best friend in my BMW gloves.

Ride West has a soft spot in my heart anyhow. When I got back into riding, I researched bikes and bought a used F650ST from Ride West. The salesman stayed late, loaned gear, patiently helped me through things, and I've been a fan of that shop ever since. Keep in mind I've never owned a BMW besides the F650- but I still feel very much at home when I visit their shop. If they sold Suzuki parts I'd probably never go anywhere else :-)

Back from there to downtown. Parked on the sidewalk for about 20 minutes until Tamara was done with her mouth remodeling. We went to the grocery store, got prescrips and some food, then home. So about 10 hours on the bike, all over town. Good practice!

Labels: bmw, medical, moto, pretrip