pityriasis rosea

Posted on by — 3 Comments ↓

I mentioned a while back having mistakenly brushed my teeth with a topical cream I had on hand to treat my off and on again out breaks of psoriasis.  At the time I had an unsightly scaling thing going on along the folds of my nose on both sides.  That has since cleared up, but I developed some sort of itchy rash in the last three weeks or so on my back and especially at first—it felt as if—down on the belt line.

I thought perhaps that too was a form of psoriasis, so because I couldn’t reach back there Carol applied the topical cream for me.

Then a week or so Carol developed the rash.  From that I concluded that what I had on my back wasn’t psoriasis since it is not supposed to be contagious.

Looking into the matter I have concluded that we may both have some variant of pityriasis rosea.  This several sources described as a “common skin complaint” that occurs frequently in the spring or fall.  So apparently changes in the weather have something to do with it.  Sometimes, the skin outbreak is preceded by an upper respiratory complaint, including sore throat (which, come to think of it, must be an upper respiratory complaint).

The problem with this diagnosis is that pityriasis rosea—though they don’t know the cause of it (perhaps a virus)—is not supposed to be contagious ALTHOUGH people living together in the same family have been known to develop the complaint at the same time.  I am not a scientist, but the fact that many people in a family may develop the same complaint at roughly the same time suggests to me that it is contagious.  I guess scientists must have a more exacting standard of contagion than the one I have.

This stuff is pretty itchy.  I am pretty sure I have had this itch before back in 1972.  I got these red spots in the fall all over the torso area and went to a dermatologist.  He told me I had pityriasis rosea.  He gave me treatments of UV light, some shots of some kind, and some topical cream and I gave him 300! 1972 dollars.  When the stuff finally went away, I thanked the doctor for his good work, and he said, oh he hadn’t done anything.  The stuff goes away of its own accord in a few weeks or a couple of months.

I wish he had told me that in the first place.  I would have lived with the itch since 300! 1972 dollars were hard to come by.

House Fire!

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Brother Steve wrote, from Clinton SC, this Christmas Eve day:

….about four in the morning my neighbor’s house caught on fire….he had left a pot on the stove….the fire department got here real fast, it is only two blocks away, but the fire was shooting up the side of the house and got under the rafters and into the attic…..they got themselves and their dogs out OK, but between fire and smoke and water I think the house is a total loss.

house fire 

Spoke via phone with Brother Steve later in the day who added details.  The neighbor left the heat on under a pot of oil used to make French fries.  Neighbor first tried to put out fire him self.  A mistake.  Phone dead for some reason. Had to go next door to make call to fire department.  Went to truck for fire extinguisher but it wouldn’t work.  The fire extinguisher, not the truck.  Flames leapt, from kitchen window, up the side of the house to roof; the roof beam burned through and it appears the house is beyond repair.

Some concerns were expressed as to whether the sale of the lot would pay for the demolition of the burned out house.

Brother Steve believes local ordinances will require that the house be demolished and the lot cleared.

Brother Steve believes his property values may rise since the Presbyterian College (Go Bluestockings!) plans to put in a school of pharmacy not two blocks away increasing the need for residential housing.  But this is still in the works and a long way off.

Wallpaper

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

We are back in the condo.  This is the first day in two weeks that we have not been in some way involved with and troubled by plumbing problems.  Last week we had to move out.  Friday we moved back in to holes all over the place.  Brother Dan came by on my birthday; he kept saying, “Oh my God.  The holes!  The holes.”

Funny after a day or so I didn’t notice them anymore.

Then on Monday and most of Tuesday we have a guy in and out of the condo all day plugging the holes with sheetrock.  He was an ok guy and did good work.  Still it was a pain and while he was doing the work, it was raining.  So we let him work out of our half of a garage which meant we couldn’t get in and out of there much either.  Though all I needed really was some toilet paper.

So now the holes are plugged, but the finishers are two weeks behind at least.  They won’t be by to make things look normal for quite a bit, and then after that we will have to get somebody to paint over the finished areas.  Be damned if I am going to get it.

We will probably get Bobby to do it.  He is the son of the carpenter who built my little office.  He is back from Iraq after three tours over there and is going back to college.  But he’s on break and drove down yesterday from Lompoc to pull this god awful textured wall paper that has lined the walls of our downstairs half bath and the area housing our washer and dryer.  This was awful stuff—turd brown, to put it graphically.  And, as I said, textured.  So he pulled the stuff down and cleaned up with a pretty expensive solvent—took him the day—and I swear even with holes and ugly old yellowish paint now visible, it still looks better than the other stuff.

And, oh, today, we have people coming to re-appraise the condo because we are going to re-fi (as people say) our mortgage.  We talked this over with a number of people and even with the upfront costs, we will make our money back and more what with 5.185 interest (or something like that) on a fixed rate 30 year loan.

I forgot to send in the paper work for a new driver’s license, so I drove around a couple days with an expired license.  It came yesterday.  I have been renewed until 12/14/2013.  Being who I am, I immediately thought.  That’s pretty optimistic.  2013?  Does the DMV know something I don’t.

63

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

Had I been asked forty years ago
I would have said I don’t know
If then I would live to see
The day that I would turn 63
Well here it is, it has arrived
And what you know I’m still alive
And if I live it out one more
Why then I will be 64
And that would be this time next year
If that is I am still here
For that I will have to wait and see
In the meantime:

 

Happy Birthday to me.

Topical Cream

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

Those anti-depressants have all sorts of side effects from nausea to hair loss.  I went on one a few years back, and after a week or two of being on it, started to develop a rash on my arms and part of my chest.  Sure enough one of the side-effects of that med was “possible skin rashes.”  So I went to the dermatologist and he said he didn’t know if it was the anti-depressant or not but I had “the heartbreak of psoriasis.”  And he gave me a topical cream and after a while the stuff went away. 

I went to the dermatologist at the end of the summer for my yearly visit.  I had been struggling with some crud along the side of my nose.  I thought maybe it was dry skin or maybe my new glasses had some stuff in the pads that rest by the sides of the nose that was toxic. I wondered about that because the guy who fitted me for my new glasses had acted pretty suspiciously (though I won’t go into that now).  The dermatologist said, no it was psoriasis and renewed my topical cream.

I applied it for a while and the rash went away.  I don’t know if the cream helped or not.  Psoriasis is a genetic complaint and appears related to stress.  I don’t remember any stress going away.  But maybe it did.  Then the rash came back.  Maybe stress from the world economic situation or something or maybe because I am trying to withdraw from an anti-depressant…I don’t know.

So now we are in this motel because we were kicked out of our condo for plumbing repair.  And yesterday I clean my teeth but it tastes real funny, and I look down and see a tube of the topical cream for my skin rash in my left hand.  I conclude on the basis of that and the funny taste that I just brushed my teeth with a topical cream designed to salve the “heartbreak of psoriasis.”

So now I am pretty sure I have poisoned myself possibly to death.  But I rinse like crazy and spit repeatedly and then clean my teeth over and over with toothpaste and not topical cream and the label of the topical cream does not say poisonous or avoid swallowing or anything.  I wait around to see if I will have stomach spasms.  But nothing happens though one side of my tongue feels a little numb, maybe from the topical cream or maybe from my having brushed it too vigorously.

That’s how things are lately.  I brush my teeth with topical cream and I can’t remember where anything is.  As I was waiting to see if I got stomach spasms, I got a call from my dentist, saying where was I?  Since I was supposed to be at the dentist at 11 but now it was 11:30.  It was for a teeth cleaning.  I said I was sorry and maybe I had missed their message because I was not at home but in a motel.  They said it was OK.  So now I go in tomorrow at 10 if I can remember to do it.  About an hour after I scheduled the new appointment I had to call back because I couldn’t remember if the new appointment was for 11 on the 10th or at 10 on the 11th.  I think you can understand my confusion.

Very Unsettled

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Carol and I have had to evacuate the condo.  We knew this was coming.  As reported here we have had three plumbing problems—two major—over the last three years and we were not the only ones.  In fact, the company who insures the condo complex said they would no longer do so unless the plumbing was fixed.  So now it is being fixed.  And we have to vacate—four days and 5 nights while the work is done.

They will come in, knock holes in our walls, replace the pipe, and direct the flow over all down from the attic rather than up through the slab.  What a mess.  Then after the new pipe is put in—some plastic stuff from Germany, very high tech—we will be allowed back in (the water will be on again); and then for two weeks or so more we will have to put up with people coming and going as they patch up the walls.

Then we will have to get it painted, or do it ourselves.

Damn!

I am grading final papers.  One of my far from favorite things, and then this evacuation.  We had to empty a bunch of books shelves and closets and cabinets so the plumbers could get to the walls to do their work.  The place is now a complete mess, with books and other assorted crap stacked all over the place.  True, it was a mess before but at least the mess was familiar.  So we will move back in to an unfamiliar mess that we will have to clean up.

We took the kitty-kat with us.  No way we were going to lock her in a bedroom and let her get scared to death with all the banging and other racket.  She’s an old cat now, at least 14, and like all older beings does not adjust well to changes in her surroundings.  So she is now in a motel with us and not adjusting well to that.  Six of one, half a dozen of another.  But she seems to take some comfort in our being about.  Though when I went out for a cup of coffee and came back, to grade more papers, I couldn’t find her anywhere for a half an hour.

I will be glad to get back to our little condo.  Though, as it turns out, our excellent neighbors have put their condo on the market.  They want to buy a house, and I will have to go through paranoid anxiety worrying about whether crazy people will move in next door.

Things feel unsettled.  Very.

Whence Consumerism

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

On so-called Black Friday, a part-time worker in Valley Stream on Long Island was trampled to death when a horde or perhaps mob of discount seekers stormed the doors of a Wal-Mart during a 5 am “door buster” promotion.

This promotion lived up to its name.  The workers proved a little tardy in opening the doors and the amped up consumers, some of whom had been waiting outside in the cold since 9 pm the evening before, busted the door and in so doing knocked down the worker who was then trampled to death as approximately 2000 people stormed the building like cows down a chute.

Now people are trying to fix blame.  Some hold the mob responsible.  Other shoppers described their fellow shoppers as “barbaric animals.”  Many kept on flowing in apparently walking around the body of the downed worker and impeding police when they tried to help the young man.

Others—including individuals and the Union representing the slain worker—hold Wal-Mart responsible.  According to the union leader, this would not and could not have happened had Wal-Mart had sufficient guards on hand to control the movement of the crowd.

Meanwhile police are looking through surveillance tapes to see if they can spot and identify consumers who might have been directly involved in the trampling.

I don’t know who might be to blame.  I have never attended a “Black Friday” door buster.  I made fun of the practice when discussing how Black Friday got its name in class but one student objected saying she had attended such pre-dawn events with her mother and that it had been fun and a bonding experience.  I expect this is possible.  And others said they had fun experiences shopping.  I expect this is possible too though I have never experienced it.  Finally, I can’t stand crowds.  I assiduously avoid places where people gather in large number.  I consider a crowd anything more than five people.

So in light of my personal experience as arising from personal inclination, I don’t know how to assess the situation.  As far as I am concerned anybody who gets up before dawn to make a purchase is nuts.  But I am also concerned about 5 am "sales events" advertised as “door-busters.”

 

Movie of the Week

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

During the coverage of the disaster in Mumbai, one of the channels played a two minute tape of a man talking about his experience of having been trapped in one of the hotels for 40 hours.  The speaker, a Brit I think, spoke clearly and analytically.  He had mapped out his little story before hand in his head.  Every detail was to the point.

Perhaps because some students in my research paper class on consumerism are writing reports on the communications revolution, roughly, the Web 2.0 as some are calling it, I paid close attention when the man mentioned his Blackberry.  He had decided, rather than to try to make a break for it, to hole up in his room for the duration.  And while he was trapped he began somehow to communicate with other people trapped through out the hotel through his Blackberry and they through theirs.

He was a tech person, he said, and had helped to set up (I don’t know what he meant or how he had done it) a method (who knows, perhaps a message board) by which the people in the hotel were more able easily to communicate with each other.  He had no food for 40 hours, and he said that while it might be possible to go a week without food or three days without water, it would not have been possible to endure those 40 hours without—and I had expected him to say communication with other people—“information.”  Information, he continued, had been absolutely necessary to his ability to control his situation.

Honestly, I couldn’t follow him on that.  I don’t see how information coming to him, say from the other side of the hotel, helped him control his situation.  I think rather than having the information that, say, police were visible from one angle of the building might have helped him feel in control that this information did not put him at all in control of it.  I think he might better have said that without the information he might have gone crazy not knowing what was up—what with smoke coming under the door and the sounds of people outside running up and down the corridor. But of course too he was perhaps able to tap into the internet and get reports from outside the building on the course of events. 

I wonder if the police and other officials were aware of the Blackberry communications going on in the hotel.  They might have tapped into those to gather information themselves and to supply it.

I see the potential for a movie of the week in this—along the lines of a film like “The Poseidon Adventure.”  Different kinds and sorts of people (nice people and of course bad people) trapped in a hotel with gunfire outside and inside.  And the usual suspense of such films—who will survive and who won’t.  I suppose a plot with people trapped in their rooms might be pretty dull; but then it might be told in a somewhat different way, through text messaging, message boards, and images captured by cell phones.

I will have to ask my students how a messaging system of this sort could be set up so quickly.

I think maybe I should buy a Blackberry.

Out of Business!

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

If you are thinking of buying gift cards for friends and relatives, you might want to think again.  Stores going out of business can sell these gift cards quite legally up till the day they go out of business.  And then what?  You have a gift card worth nothing.  And you might not want either to buy a gift card for a nearby store that is part of a chain; for while the chain may continue to exist, the local store may disappear and you might end up driving quite a ways to redeem the card.

 

The list is sort scary long.

 

* Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)

* Mervyns (filed Chapter 7)

*Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide closing

* Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug and Catherine’s to close 150 stores nationwide

* Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January

* Cache will close all stores

* Talbots closing down specialty stores

* J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)

* Pacific Sunwear (also owned by Talbots)

* GAP closing 85 stores

* Footlocker closing 140 stores, more to close after January

* Wickes Furniture closing down

* Levitz closing down remaining stores

* Bombay closing remaining stores

* Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January

* Whitehall closing all stores

* Piercing Pagoda closing all stores

* Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.

* Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )

* Macys to close 9 stores after January

* Linens and Things closing all stores

* Movie Galley closing all stores

* Pep Boys Closing 33 stores

* Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores

* JC Penney closing a number of stores after January

* Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.

* Wilson Leather closing down all stores

* Sharper Image closing down all stores

* K B Toys closing 356 stores

* Loews to close down some stores

* Dillard’s to close some stores