More information that you perhaps wanted...

So a rule if you're reading this blog is not to be squeamish about anything related to medical conditions.

On that note, I think I've been constipated for the last day or two. It's actually pretty hard to tell when you have "abstract" pain in your abdomen and back. Is it the normal chronic pain, or is it your gut telling you that it is brimming over? I haven't had a good bowel movement in about 1.5-2 days now, which in "normal" circumstances wouldn't be a big deal. But my bowels still haven't really returned to normal since being hacked apart and put back together. My stools have started to harden up, which I think may be slowing things down again. I've been told by my surgeon to switch from my no-fiber diet to a high-fiber diet (now that things have healed enough). I haven't done that yet, so that's the next step. I've been taking milk of magnesia and colace in the hopes of getting things moving normally, but no real luck so far. On Wednesday I had quite a bit of narcotic pumped through me (from the anesthesia and then to dull the pain from the incisions. I think I took about 30mg of oxycodone throughout the day on top of whatever they gave me in the anesthesia). Narcotics have a way of stopping you up. So perhaps that's what is going on too.

In any case, I didn't go to work yesterday, like I said, because I was trying to stay home and heal. Well later in the day I started to feel pretty shitty. It continued through to this morning, where I felt even shittier. I got out of bed and took a shower around 8:30 with the hopes of getting in to work around 10:30-11:00. Well, I took a phenagran (anti-nausea) and 20 minutes later took 2 tbsp of milk of magnesia, then ate a couple bites of a bagel of a bit later. Then I threw it all up. That was about the end of my ambitions for the day, and I just went back to bed to try and settle my stomach down. Which is unfortunate because I was actually look forward to going into work and to not continue to hemorrhage whatever leave I have left.

When I finally got back out of bed around 3pm I felt a little better. I managed to finish the bagel and it's still down, so that is good. I called Dr. Kasamon's office and asked them to fax whatever records they had to Hopkins. I decided that I'm going to go see Dr. Diaz after all, and I'll just bring what I have and whatever he has, well hopefully it's sufficient. I think it should be for an initial consultation. We'll see how it goes. Emily has this complication of her horse's feet are being done at the same time and she already told her farrier that she was going to be there, so I don't know what will happen with that.

Patrick and Minh Chau are coming up to visit tomorrow. I think we're planning to do nothing and just watch TV and play video games. It will be a grand old time.

Also: cars. Emily and I have been idly tossing around the idea of getting a new (well, most likely a used, but new to us) car for a while now. While my mom was up visiting, my car's coolant light came on and was making one hell of a racket. She thought it was normal, which is perhaps understandable since I have been driving it around. It was making some noise which didn't sound good, but I hadn't had it looked at. But when I went out to take a look, the coolant reservoir was basically empty and the noise was like 1000% worse. Turns out the water pump was giving up the ghost. I drove it to British American auto that morning to get the noise checked out, and about 1 mile away the water pump completely failed. The car was in the red by the time I got it parked. The quote for the repair was $640 (to replace the water pump and belts, and then to see what else might be wrong). This was unfortunately within my bounds of how much I was willing to spend. They fixed it, and didn't find any other major engine problems. So I now theoretically have a working vehicle again (though I haven't driven it since).

Still though, my cars has 120k miles and burns oil (and has a good deal of normal maintenance coming due). Emily's car has like 85k miles I think and is 10 years old. Neither of us trust our cars and neither of us have ever really owned a "nice" car. So the urge is there and strong to get another.

I very much like the 5-door hatchback body style, though it isn't all that popular in the U.S. I saw tons of cars like this in the U.K. Examples include: Honda Fit, Nissan Versa, Toyota Yaris, Mazda Mazda3 hatchback, Saab 9-3 wagon, and a couple of others. I also like the idea of nice comfortable heated seats, which typically means you're looking at leather upholstery. I dislike sunroofs/moonroofs. This is a very complicating factor because they are included on basically every model that is nice enough to have heated seats. Another issue is that most of the 5-door hatchbacks I listed there are the cheapest entry-level car made by the manufacturer. They get great gas mileage, but they are still "cheap" cars. If I buy another car, I want to be able to drive at highway speeds and not listen to 50dB of road noise while I'm doing it. It also makes it hard to get all of the options I would want.

I have found that the Mazda3 s Grand Touring hatchback model actually meets all of my requirements. It gets good gas mileage (29mpg highway), is available without a sunroof/moonroof, has heated leather seats. I don't know how the ride quality is, so I guess I'd just have to test drive one. But it is kind of expensive for what I was looking to spend. Another option is the venerable Honda Accord. It's not a hatchback, but it is a nice car and I know several people who own them and they are very nice. The V6 model, which while being more than I feel like I will need in an engine, has a lot of nice options standard. Problem with the Accord is that it's basically not available without a sunroof. I think my ceiling price is also about $20k, which puts new models of both of these out of my price range (not that I'm sure I want a new car anyway). And both of these models are very desirable and thus there usually isn't a huge static selection of used cars. I've been looking.

In any case, maybe in the coming months we'll get a nice shiny new car doodad. Then I won't feel like I'm taking some kind of chance by driving a few hundred miles away for a weekend excursion.