Frozen Water

I'm sorta bummed out right now.  Our water pump started acting up so I unplugged it.  It appeared to be overheating.  The smoke coming out of it was my first clue.  Then when I plugged it back in, the water is frozen.  I don't understand why.  It's only 38 below zero!

Now I notice all the laundry that needs to be washed and the dirty dishes stacked on the counter.  The dishwasher is even full of unwashed dishes.  I have a doctor's appointment today, and I'd surely like to take a shower before I have the pelvic exam.

On the plus side, I do have some stashed water for just such occasions.  In the pantry I have a stockpile of bottled water.  I have over a gallon of drinking water in the refrigerator, and I have two gallon jugs in the linen closet which sits right over the furnace.  As a result this two gallons of water is hot.  Hmmm... I wonder if I can take a bath in two gallons of water?

I believe the song is true.  "You don't miss your water till the well runs dry."

Three Hours Daylight

Arctic Cam has a new URL.

Dear Friends,

The daylight has broken the four hour barrier, if you can call what we've got now daylight.  The sun officially rises at 10:50 a.m. this morning and goes down at 2:40 p.m.  The visibility is one mile at the airport which is next to the Tanana River.

Up on the hill, though, I can see the North Pole Refinery lights, and that's at least 15 miles.  Sometimes during the day when Fairbanks is swaddled in ice fog, I can see all the way to the Alaska Range which is at least 100 miles away.  I love the lavendar hues that paint the sky on arctic days.

Oh, and why is there ice fog?  Probably because the temperature is a balmy (grin) 36 degrees below zero F.  Here I am up at 5 a.m. to check on the water to make sure it isn't freezing.  There's no rhyme nor reason when it freezes as far as I can tell.

My best guess is that it freezes from non-use.  My theory is that if I use some water every hour or so, it won't freeze.  So I set the timer and run some water, flush a toilet, or start a load of laundry.  Yup, there goes the timer now.

The last time the water froze was a couple of weeks ago.  Keith woke me up saying he was going down to rent the thawer.  I called time and temperature, and I thought the weatherman said,

"It's 53 degrees below zero," and I thought,

"Wow!  No wonder the water froze!"  But I must have misheard because it was only three degrees below zero.  So it's been cold for the past two days and the water is fine.  Go figure.

Perhaps I should go back to bed and get some sleep.  It's five hours until sunrise.  I wouldn't want to doze off during the three hours and fifty minutes of daylight, now, would I?

Shingles is not for sissies

As with a lot of experiences that accumulate as one gets older (and hopefully wiser), shingles is not for sissies.

I definitely didn't have a clue what shingles involved until my father developed it several years ago.  He described the pain as like being on fire, and an overwhelming fatigue sapped his strength.  My father is always on the move.  He cuts dead trees, splits it into firewood, stacks it into ricks, and delivers wood for at least three families every winter.  When he was unable to do this, I knew he was feeling sick.

I originally thought that shingles was like hives, a red, itchy rash.  Sure, shingles includes an itchy rash, but in addtion you also have nerve symptoms.  Each person gets a unique reaction to the shingles virus which is the same virus that causes chicken pox.  A person cannot develop shingles unless they've previously been infected with chicken pox.

My shingles started with a sharp pain in my side.  Curtis and I had spent the day downtown shopping.  The pain felt like the stitch one gets in ones side after running a race.  I figured that I'd overdone it, and I went home to rest.  I fell into bed about 6 p.m. and slept for 14 hours.  The next day, the area around the pain began to numb.  The area around my waistband began to itch.

Over the next couple of days the numbness spread from the midline of my abdomen to the midline of my back.  Because the numbness affected only one side of my body, I suspected shingles.  However, the sharp side pain had me wondering if I had appendicitis, an intestinal blockage, or ovarian cancer.

On Thursday morning, the pain was so intense that I couldn't see straight.  Usually I can concentrate on a task, and my pain recedes from consciousness.  I couldn't even surf the Net.  Now that's serious.

I called the clinic to make an appointment to see a doctor.  The appointment clerk referred me to the nurse.  I must have really been in pain because I had to wait over half an hour before it was my turn to speak to the nurse.  She said, "If the pain is bad enough to keep you from working on an absorbing task, then it is serious enough to have a doctor look at it right away."

After the phone call, I took my daily vitamins and medicines.  Ever since the auto accident, I've been taking time-release naproxen for the pain.  By the time I saw the doctor a few hours later, I was feeling much better.  The sharp pain was still there, but the flood of nausea and waves of pain had softened to manageable proportions.

The doctor suggested that I have a pelvic exam, and he asked me if I was in a monogamous relationship.  I have to smile because I think the question embarrassed him more to ask it than it did for me to answer it.  I think he wanted to rule out STDs.  The pain was on the left side; so it wasn't appendicitis.  I was having bowel movements; so it wasn't an intestinal blockage.  He also didn't think eating wheat would cause this much pain.  He wanted to see me again the next week; however, he was really booked up.  I scheduled a fifteen-minute visit for the next Friday.

By Monday, I started feeling bumps on my back.  I couldn't quite see them.  Curtis said they looked like mosquito bites.  Since I have frequent episodes of the hives, I know better than to scratch an itch.  It only makes it worse.  So I tried my best not to aggravate the rash.

However, now I was ninety per cent sure that I had shingles.  I searched the Net and found that I could use acyclovir to lessen the attack.  I had this medication on hand because I have frequent cold sores on my lips.  If I take it at the first sign of tingling, I can avert a full-blown episode.

When I saw the doctor on Friday, November 23, I was feeling ninety per cent better than I had the week before.  He took one look at the rash, and said, "Yes, that's shingles." He advised me to avoid contact with older people and pregnant women.  He wrote me a prescription for a stronger version of acyclovir.

Now here it is four weeks since that initial pain in my side.  I'm still sleeping odd hours day and night.  I have no energy.  My appetite is next to nothing, and I feel shaky like I'm hungry.  So I eat whatever is available to stave off the shakes.  When I don't get enough rest, the symptoms flare up again.

Between the naproxen and the acyclovir, I've managed to have a much less painful experience than my father had.  I didn't miss out on the fatigue, however.

Suspicions confirmed

Yeppers, I went to the doctor and he confirmed that my side pain and the rash around my middle are the shingles.  When I went to the doctor the first time, the rash hadn't appeared so I think he was suspecting something gynecological.  It's a good thing it's not because I couldn't get an appointment for a physical until December 20.