Home office

After a seven week paid "vacation" the Canadian had to go back to the salt mines last Monday; starting off his new job with four days of training in Santa Rosa. Friday was his first day back home working on his own.  His company set him up with the tools to work from home so he didn't lose any time meeting with a local engineering company and getting himself set up with a set of plans to review. When I got home on Friday he had commandeered the dining room table and was on speaker phone with his old wastewater company in Oregon.

Since he probably won't literally be working in the poo trenches with this job we got him all set up with fancy new duds (i.e. sweater vests) which with to dazzle the ladies. Meow! No seriously, he had three ladies give him compliments while he was gone.

While he was gone I spent my week at various doctors' appointments. On Tuesday I met with my general doctor to go over my allergy testing results. In short I'm not allergic to anything, just intolerant which needs to be treated the same as an allergy. So, I will continue eating gluten free (ideally grain free) and keep dairy to only hard, aged cheeses (lowest in lactose) if any. The best news was that my synthetic thyroid medicine is working. My T-4 levels went from 0.6 (minimum threshold) up to 1.4 which is towards the top of the regular range. I'll have to stay on the medicine for the rest of my miserable life, but at least I can get away with the cheaper synthetic. At the end of the appointment I asked him, if I don't have any food allergies then why do I continue to have a horrible eye and neck rash? He figured it must be something I'm coming in contact with, but wanted to send me to a dermatologist to figure it out.

The next day the dermatologist's office called and scheduled for me to see the physician's assistant, Jackie, Thursday afternoon. She was super nice and took about two seconds to agree that I'm having a nasty reaction to something before prescribing me two medicated creams. One for my eyes and a stronger one for my neck. I need to put them on twice a day for two weeks and then I go back for a follow up. Thankfully my eyes started looking better after only two days and while my neck still has a rash, it's very minimal and doesn't actively itch. Jackie said that even if I wasn't in contact anymore with whatever was causing the outbreak, my skin was in such a state of disaster that it very likely couldn't reduce the inflammation without some sort of help, hence the creams. Because nothing says holiday giving more than coughing up $140 in co-pays and prescriptions after only one week into December - Merry Christmas to me!