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Woke up this morning covered ankle to neck in a rash, never have I seen such a thing. Doctor says I am allergic to one of the antibiotics I took, in particular the Septra, and, surprisingly, the allergic reaction usually starts after the meds are taken, not whilst. I have some steroids that may help relieve the redness (it doesn’t itch – yet?) but basically I’m stuck looking a little like I escaped a leper colony for up to 3 weeks.

Note to self: future doctor visits, let them know I am allergic to sulfa.

As I approach my 42nd birthday I am reminded of the wise sayings at the time of my 40th, that everything would go rapidly downhill from there, health wise. It certainly seems that way this year. It took 3 painful weeks to recover the vasectomy, and recently a week of pain from the boil, followed by a week of discomfort from the lancing. And now I have a real painful lower back (I’m guessing the kidneys are out of whack from the antibiotics). I bet my San Diego neighbours can’t remember a time they saw me able to walk without looking like an old man.

Well, I certainly feel like an old man these days.

My building is part of a free community wi-fi but for some reason my macbook has never been able to see it reliably enough to connect to it. My work VAIO has no trouble, even my Dell Axim can do it, poor macbook cannot. Fortunately, some kind soul nearby has an unsecured wireless network that the macbook can see and I have been using it ever since I canceled my cable modem service.

But…. post-Leopard install I have noticed that the wifi network now always appears with a very weak signal strength since the upgrade, and is almost useless. It could be coincidence but if this continues I may have to stop using the unsecured wifi in my building and pay for cable again (shudder). Or I suppose ditch the macbook ?

When I first came to the US I opened accounts with NetBank, Inc, an online-only bank that had great checking and savings rates. I’ve been with them ever since though this year I opened an account with a local bank just to make deposits and withdrawals easier and cheaper. Recently I got a letter from ING saying that they my accounts with NetBank were being moved to them, and I figured that it was a takeover/buyout. But doing a little research today I discovered that they actually went bankrupt in October and all the insured funds were taken over by ING. There were $109M of uninsured funds for which the FDIC were paying out 50%; for once I am glad I don’t have $100k in the bank. ING look pretty good (love the orange) but I might move what paltry funds I have somewhere else anyway.

Last weekend I developed a spot on my leg which turned into a boil/abscess of some kind. The position is such that its painful to sit, stand and you damn well better not touch it. Some hot compresses had failed to relieve the pressure but had turned it into a bloody mess so today Teri persuaded me to go to the ER. Now I hate doctors but I figured that I clearly needed antibiotics and best to start sooner rather than later.

A very nice blonde doctor (or physician of some kind) did her best to make the draining as painless as possible but I won’t pretend that it didn’t hurt like a sonofabitch. And the water she used for irrigating the wound was very cold and kept running down my bum which was actually kind of nice in a perverse way.

Afterwards I had to wait 20 minutes for my discharge papers, spent the time exchanging jokes some off-roaders who were there for a torn hand. Then some more came in, all laughing about their injuries as well: I hadn’t realised that the ER was such a fun place to hang out.

I have to go back tomorrow to get the result of the blood culture (MSRA anyone?) and have them inspect the pads they put in the abscess. It is not going to be fun – they taped gauze over the wound with a lot of tape. I have quite hairy legs, even the lady doctor said they “will have fun getting this off”.