Eric and the things he should know

I have a question for all the adults responsible for molding my young mind. What is the Christian flag?  I was just driving by CCS and I saw the flag waving in the wind and thought to myself for the first time (as far as I can remember anyway) what is that thing?  If it was ever explained to me then I wasn’t paying attention, but I have no idea what it is or where it came from.  I mean I must’ve said a pledge to it every morning for at least four years and maybe a few times after that and I don’t even know why.  I mean the Bible pledge I get but did we just make the flag up or did it come from somewhere?  I know this sounds sarcastic but this is an actual legitimate question that I would like an answer to.  I suppose I could just Google it or ask my mom (I’m sure she knows), but that would be less public and far less potential for embarrassment than this.  I’m just wondering. Now tell me why I’m an idiot.

Eric Anderson

Eric and the Hypochondria III

I’m writing this post immediately after finishing the last one so you should definitely read it first(and probably part one as well if you even care a little about this craziness making any sense, and even then it probably won’t).

So yesterday I wake up and my head hurts in the same spot it did before only worse and I’m freaking out.  Could it be my teeth, or even my jaw, could it be an ear infection(my ears did hurt a little bit, and my balance has been off for a while).  I’ve got all these questions and I’m growing more concerned by the second(all of this thinking and worrying is happening in the shower by the way, quiet time is the enemy).  I get out of the shower and go into the living room where I sit down to check to see what the almighty Google knows about my problem.  Then the right side of my face gets really hot like I’m close to a fire or heater.  This does not help the freaking out.  What the hell is wrong with me?  My right eye also seems a little blurry while the left one is working fine.  Also the head pain is on the right side so maybe that’s affecting my vision. I don’t know.

I get to work and start googling some more(only on my breaks, of course[my boss reads this]).  I knew a guy who recently died of a very rare disease call Creutzfeld-Jakob disease(CJD, pronounced KROITS-felt YA-kob).  He’s actually one of the founders of the company I work for and he was an awesome dude, the smartest person I’ve ever known.  The disease is not known to be contagious but it’s so rare how can they know for sure, right.  So I look up the symptoms and, as is usually the case with the diseases I look up,  I have at least 5 of the symptoms.  Depression. Check. Memory loss. Check. Personality changes. Check. Speech impairement. Sort of.  Balance and coordination dysfunction. Check.  So I don’t have dementia, seizures, or hallucination…yet.  Obviously, I don’t want this disease(because it’s fatal in like 6 months or something) and I know I’m being paranoid because I know someone who had it.  I’ve tried to think about what I did Monday that’s different than any other day but is the same as what I was doing 3 weeks ago.  This morning in the shower something came to me

This is just a theory and it will sound crazy but here goes.  I was eating quinoa for breakfast every day for like 2 weeks( all during the time when the head pain was the worst).  Then I quit and started eating oatmeal because I was worried about my cholesterol(200).  That’s when the head pain went down to a 1 from a 4 or 5.  Monday night we ate quinoa for dinner(the first time I’ve had it since I quit eating it for breakfast).   So as best I can figure the only thing I did differently was eat something everyone says is the greatest, most healthy food ever made.  What? Ok, maybe it’s like pomegranate juice, that stuff makes me feel nauseous every time I drink it but I keep doing it because it is awesome and allegedly awesome for me.  My theory on the pomegranate juice has always been, maybe the juice is killing something bad in my and it doesn’t like it so it makes me sick.  If I apply this same theory to the ever-present head pain then I can assume that the head pain is being irritated by whatever is in the quinoa and it doesn’t like it.  Now I realize that the head pain is just a symptom and not the actual problem so it doesn’t make sense that everyone keeps telling me just to stop eating quinoa if I want the pain to go away.  I don’t want the pain to go away, I want the cause of the pain to go away.

Today my head is back to the 1 again and I still don’t know what else to do.  I quit the Prilosec so the heartburn is back and worse than before.  I’m going to try eating garlic cloves and drinking apple cider vinegar and baking soda(read it on the internet).   Have a nice day

Eric Anderson

Eric and the Hypochondria II

I’m not crazy, I swear, although I guess that might be something a crazy person would say.  Last time I brought up this subject I was waiting on a doctor’s appointment, so about 4 ½ weeks ago.  I went to see the doctor that Monday and explained the whole headache/head pain situation.  He said that it can’t be sinuses because there are no sinuses in that part of your skull.  He didn’t think it was a tumor but just to be sure he scheduled me for an MRI on Thursday (Thursday!?! Really, Doc?!  I could be dead by Thursday, my head hurts now!). So I carried on for four days and worried and prayed (sort of, prayer is not my strongest point).  Thinking what if I can’t fit in the MRI machine, what if it is a tumor, what if it isn’t, what else could it be, what if it’s worse, what does Google have to say about all of this?

Thursday comes and the headache is still there so I go to the hospital and wait…and wait…and wait…I hear people talking in the hall about calling a repairman and something’s wrong and this has never happened before and frantic whispering that I can’t understand and I wait…2 hours later the tech comes out and apologizes to me and the other people waiting with me.  He explained the machine broke down and they had to call the fix it guy and blah blah blah it’ll be 15 more minutes.  Awesome, it’s not like I have a job to be at or anything.  I know it’s not his fault but someone could have at least let us know what was going on.  So I get in the room and I have to remove all metal from my person (glasses, wedding ring [which was really hard to get off], etc…).  As I had suspected it was somewhat difficult to jam my fat ass into the tiny little tube but there’s little I can do about that right now.  If you’ve never been inside an MRI machine you should know that it’s very loud and, for me anyway, very cramped.  I get out after 20 minutes or what felt like 3 days and try my best to interpret what the pictures mean while I put my shoes, glasses, and coat back on.  The tech looks at me and says “are you alright?” to which I respond “not really”.  Then he tells me I should call the dr. and ask him to call the hospital and examine the results, but today is dr. jones’ day off so I know that I have to wait.

The next day was donate blood day at work, something that I’ve never done before but I don’t have a problem with needles and I’ve always been under the assumption that getting rid of some old blood is good for you(who knows).  When you donate blood you have to fill out quite a bit of paperwork and answer a bunch of questions about your history, medical and otherwise.  The first question they ask is “do you feel healthy?” wow, is that a good question? No but it’s just my brain so it should be alright, right?  The dr.’s office called me about noon and Lane told me that the results came out clean.  No tumor, no signs of MS (what I wasn’t even worried about that, now I am), everything’s good. Great, awesome, that’s the best news I’ve heard all…wait, what the hell is wrong with me?  The dr. said a little bit of sinusitis showed up so I should take antibiotics and come back in week or so.  I thought he said my sinuses weren’t in that part of the skull.  They’re not, but just take the medicine. Fine, so I took the antibiotics for ten days and on the tenth day I went back to the doctor.

I told him that I thought the headache was 75% better at that point but I could still feel the irritation if I thought about it. Here’s an idea, don’t think about it.  Easier said than done, doc.  He decided to change my blood pressure medicine and see what happens in a month.  I was skeptical to say the least, but he’s the doctor.  Also, he said that it can’t be a pinched nerve because they don’t affect your brain.  Fine, just shoot down all my theories (and the theories of all the “doctors” I work with).  Four days and 3000 Google searches later I decide that the Prilosec has to be the problem.  I call the dr. and let him know what I’ve discovered and he tell me “fine, stop taking it”.  So I stopped taking it, and it’s been about a week and ½ and the headache/ head pain thing is all but gone( I can still kind of feel something but I’m just hoping it’s going to go away eventually).  Yesterday I woke up and it was back and worse than it ever was before.  I’ll give you my theories on that later.

Eric Anderson

Eric and the Excuses

So, you want to be a writer? Step one: write something, Step two: write something else, and Step three: DON’T QUIT!!!!!.

I’ve been trying to write for two weeks now and I’ve even gone so far as to start five separate essays/pages/blog entries/whatever these things are and just stopped for multiple reasons.  I’ve been kind of depressed about my health issues and my job is getting a little more stressful but those are just excuses right?  I mean this weekend alone I watched literally ten straight episodes of Veronica Mars on Netflix (the end of the first season and the beginning of the second).  The worst part about that is that I’ve already seen every episode of that show.  The last couple of years I’ve been drained mentally and I can’t really explain it.  I don’t want to do anything but watch television and play on the computer/iPod/iPhone.  I used to love playing video games, mostly on my Xbox 360 but also the Wii and DS, but something happened in January of 2008.  I discovered MySpace (I know I was a little behind, and by the way, thanks Jeromy) which quickly led to Facebook.  Facebook has these retarded button pushing “games” that require you to push a button and then come back later and push another button and repeat.  For some reason I have become addicted to these stupid things and they have made me completely brain dead.  I don’t even read anymore.

Here’s how bad it is.  I will put my iPhone down, close my computer and start watching TV., about 2 ½ minutes into a show I’ll check my phone or open my laptop and start pushing stupid buttons while half way watching TV. at the same time.  If we go anywhere I’ll check my phone about 10.37 million times.  I know these things are idiotic and that they are ruining my life but I just have to keep pushing the button, like Desmond on Lost.  Every now and then I’ll make the decision to cut down to just one game and that works for a little while but I’ll slowly get sucked back into the retardedness.  I’m working on a theory that somehow Farmville has all this button mashing connected to something evil that we’re all playing into like we’re all plugged into the matrix and contributing to the destruction of mankind.

I know it’s sounds silly to make excuses for not playing video games like I’m just giving up one time wasting thing to do another time wasting thing but video games are really important to me.  I’ll have these thoughts sometimes about cancelling the cable and Netflix and the internet and all the things that distract me from do something that could actually lead to my life being better but then I talk myself out of it.  The kid needs TV. because if she doesn’t have anything to watch then we’ll have to actually spend time with her. What?!?! Don’t judge me I’m tired.

Okay now you’ve heard the excuses, health, stress, Facebook, iPhone, tired, Veronica Mars, etc…  It’s time for me to do something about it.  They say that recognizing the problem is the first step, right?  It’s time to focus on important substantial things that’s have an actual lasting effect on my life.  I don’t know I am pretty tired.

Eric Anderson

P.S. I truly am sorry if I offended anyone by posting their picture on Facebook without their permission.  If you want I will take them down.

P.P.S. Veronica Mars is awesome and never should have been cancelled ever.

P.P.P.S. Zynga games is the matrix and it’s harnessing power from our slowly dying souls