Claus is Back in the Pilot's Seat!

Hurrah!

I can't believe that I have gone almost half-a-month without posting.

Sometime after getting back from Austin last month I came down with a chest cold. Not an unusual thing...I get them at least twice a year.

However, after tolerating it for about two weeks, it decided to do one up on me.  One Friday night about four weeks ago I ended up having the Mother of all Coughing Fits.

When I woke up the next morning I could hardly move.  Felt like I fractured a few ribs.

I kept up at work for the next week, but the pain didn't abate. So the following Monday I ate humble pie and went to our family doctor's office.

Got X-rays and everything.

In the end, the diagnosis was Costochondritis; a very painful inflammation of the junctions where the ribs join with the cartilage.  My entire left side rib-cage felt like I had been tackled by a free-safety at full speed.  As long as I found my "happy position" all was well, but to move outside of it was pure misery.

Treatment was a regime of steroids and muscle relaxants and some cough medicine to keep the occasional cough from bringing me to my knees.

Yes...I kept going to work as well.

(When I mentioned this diagnosis to Mom a week ago, she said that she had it as well back when I was a kid and she had to be put into the hospital for a few days for treatment.  Yikes!  Either I'm really tough, stupid, or lucky it didn't get that bad!)

So for two weeks I've put up with this, along with having my eyesight blown-out a few steps by one of the side-effects of the steroids....something called "inter-ocular pressure" in the little indications brochure that came with the steroid pack that no-one reads but me.

I've been off them for a week now and my eyesight is returning back to its regular "corrected" state. Whew.

So during these few weeks of hiatus, I've been crashing in bed on the weekends and only lightly keeping up with my RSS feed pile.  Luckily it has been a slow month so far.

That and the seriously large phone-system deployment I've been managing has meant some very late-night stints as we do after-business hour cutovers to replace some aging phone systems.  I'm not used to working--in pain--until near midnight, then having to commute another hour and a half or more home, then turn around and be back at the site the next day bright and early.

Fortunately, the weekend here in the Houston area is cool, breezy and sunny.  A perfect Spring day.  My energy is picking up, the pain is now a faint echo, and my eyesight is near normal. Perfect conditions for recharging and flying high again!

So, hopefully great things will appear again here at GSD!

Cheers!

--Claus