Wandering with Tedder and Tamara

I'm really happy. I went to a GI specialist today, who told me my pain/heartburn/whatever was probably (mostly) mental, encouraged me to adjust my antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. C'mon. Really. I've tried everything from a box of Tums, Zantac, and Prilosec, all the way to Xanax and Percocet.

She said she'd run an endoscopy anyhow, mainly because of our timeline. So, in to the procedure room, a little Verced to erase the mental etch-a-sketch. After I wake up, they show me pictures from the endoscopy- there is an ulcer (or two) in my esophagus.

Now, they weren't happy, but I am! It's great to actually see a problem, rather than be told it's in your head.

They've sent off for cultures of this thing. It can happen from having a pill get stuck as you are swallowing it, but they really think this is CMV. It's considered rare in healthy adults- but what else is new for me? Just to make sure, they are running an HIV/AIDS test on me. I'm not worried, of course.

So, what's next? They'll tell me the results of the culture in a couple of days. In the meantime, I have a prescription to drink Lidocaine and take a pill that is used to coat the esophagus lining. It'll heal on its own, and it isn't something that would be a long-term worry like ecophageal spasm (which doesn't have a good solution).

We'll blog about the rest of our progress later. Things are on track for Thursday.

Labels: health, pretrip, ted

Didn't mention that we went to Glazer's Camera yesterday and got our photo situation sorted out. We're taking the 75-300mm lens we had, but also bought a 18-200mm Tamron. It's a much better quality lens than the crappy Minolta 28-200 that we had on there, and it gives us the better wide-angle capability (important for Tamara).

That lens set us back a considerable amount. Yow.

Labels: photography, pretrip

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

Wow. How many crazy days can I have?

Went to costco this morning. One year of antimalarial pills is a couple pennies under $30. They'll be in tomorrow. What a deal- it was going to be at least $120 everywhere else I checked.

Came home, then time with MAD: Ran up to Tamara's apartment, then back home, then lunch, then back to break down my fancy-pants dual-core Shuttle box for MAD. Also loaded my MIG welding setup in Toucan's truck, and talked to a stupid carpet installer/estimator.

Tamara ran off for her replacement drivers license (they *mail* them? hmm, didn't know that). I worked on clearing out the woodshop. Also got more paint, then came back and painted the ceiling in the woodshop (still painting, as of 11:30pm).

I spent way too much time researching my FSA reimbursement (if someone is interested, I'll post how I got nearly $2000 in free money), then several hours researching international health insurance. Thought I had it figured out a couple of times, but didn't. Feh.

Are we on schedule? I hope so. I'll know tomorrow if my Happy Trails gear is shipping now or soon, once I know it has shipped we'll schedule our going-away party. (should be the 22nd).

If things go as I expect, we'll have the house prepped for the market sometime between Friday and Monday.

Labels: health, 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