Waiting for the Medicine Call

[pameladean]

That sounds a bit like the title of a fantasy novel, but really it's just my way of saying that I put a call in to the Multispeciality Clinic, to the nephrology nurse whom I saw when they thought there might be something wrong with my kidneys, to see if she has any more free samples of two of the drugs I'm taking. I found the newer and more expensive one on a Canadian website for a not impossible price, and that's good, because I am pretty sure she hasn't got any more of it squirrelled away. For some reason the clinic has a huge supply of the other one, which is an extended-release form of a beta blocker. I hope they still have it. Canadian pharmacies don't sell it, and the extended-release aspect makes it a new drug and hence expensive. I guess I could go back to a regular beta blocker. The one I was taking was old and cheap. On the other hand, my blood pressure was 110 over 74 this morning and I would rather like to keep it that way. I used to be able to feel the old beta blocker kicking in and wearing off, and both sensations were unpleasant.

Picking up my narrative of Tuesday night, strictly for my own amusement: I settled down to read Vol. IV of Liavek, and Eric to painstakingly work his way through an extremely dense essay in historiography. He came out of the kitchen at one point saying, "I know what this is! This is epistemology! No wonder I'm having such a hard time with it!" The bits he read me were remarkable. The writing was actually not bad as writing, but it was terrifically dense and full of abstruse terminology very closely packed in complex sentences. Mostly when something makes my head go round, it has faulty grammar or a bad rhythm. This was just the content. Yipes.

Eric got to bed rather late, apologizing. We were both very sleepy, but ended up having a conversation about religious faction and other things, and in the end didn't get to sleep until something like five in the morning.

At ten-thirty I asked Eric if he still wanted to get out of the house by noon, or should I stop pestering him, and he said, "Neither." I tried various methods of getting him to get up, which was difficult because I didn't want him to, and anyway Toliman had crept in between us and was lying partly upsidedown, purring. Eventually I said that I would get up and make coffee, and that did it. Not because I make bad coffee, but because he feared his kitchen would be mean to me.

He entertained me during breakfast with some of the training stuff he's doing, about vocabulary, and we got quite giggly. Eventually I got dressed and left. He looked so overwhelmed that I half wondered if he were mad at me, but ascertained later that he wasn't, just overwhelmed. He's having a hard time with a lot of stuff and there isn't very much I can do.

I went downtown and picked up my prescription for the ACE inhibitor. I was completely out, having, when I left the original request for refills, failed to tell them which pharmacy they should call it in to, and having had to realize this and rectify it. So I shook a pill out of the bottle right away. Instead of being flat and yellow, it was chunky and green. I went back to the window and got a pharmacist to look at it. "Oh, yeah, we changed the brand," he said. "Didn't they put a note on it?" "Well, yeah, but all my medication always has those notes." "Oh, we only put those on medications where we've changed brands in the past six months." I guess the other changes were too subtle for me to have noticed.

I took the pill, still feeling wary, but while it for some reason had a kick I'm not accustomed to, possibly because I took it two hours late, it didn't do anything untoward.

I stopped at Target and was unable to decide on terribly complex things like new underwear and socks or whether to buy some of their nice cheap men's cotton T-shirts, so I executed a few small commissions for Raphael and came home on the bus.

David had gone shooting with Joel and happily told me all about it; we also discussed money some more, and computer upgrades, and what the cats were up to.

I tried to feed Chumley. He is now suspected of having an allergy, and is supposed to eat protein he has never had before. Lydy got him Rabbit and Green Pea. He doesn't like it. Fester does. I mixed some of the stinky food I got when he wouldn't eat at all in with it, but he still didn't want any. I shut him in the media room with it so Fester wouldn't get it all. An hour later I checked on him. He was lying on the daybed looking confused, and the untouched plate was on the floor. I brought it to him. He ate about two-thirds of it. Fester came in and supervised, but didn't try to steal any food. Lydy was hoping to get the kangaroo instead of the rabbit, but I'm not sure how that's going.

Chumley may be eating the dry-food version of the rabbit when we aren't looking, as he seems quite lively.

Pamela

Comments

[elisem.livejournal.com]

The stories about you and Eric are quite endearing, dear Obble. I hope his studies and your health both go in good directions, particularly in ones of surprising ease and good progress and excellent results.

When I get well, I shall invite you both to tea. (I know, scheduling will be interesting.)

You're feeding the cats kangaroos? Whatever happened to "Do cats eat bats?"

[pameladean]

Aww. I like hearing about you and the Juanster too, and you and dear Mr. Ford.

We'd love to come to tea. Eric esteems you very much.

We are only hoping to feed the cat kangaroo. And imagine there is no bat cat food. How remiss of them. There are rabbit, duck, kangaroo, and venison. No bats. Perhaps they think they have answered that question.

Pamela

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

Historiography? Is Eric a faculty member at UMN?

[pameladean]

No, he's an undergraduate, finishing up his degree after a hiatus. The seminar he is taking is actually a graduate seminar, but he got permission to take it. Such bits of it as I have been privileged to hear are quite fascinating, but it's a tremendous lot of abstruse reading.

Pamela

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

Historiography is a bit of a bear when you're dumped into it as an undergraduate because it's really a mix of five different ways of analyzing history:

• The substantive arguments about a subfield/topic
  
• The social theories of change behind those substantive arguments
  
• The tropes that historians use
  
• The intellectual history of the discipline of history
  
• Philosophies of history (or what may be better described as attitudes towards history rather than formal philosophy)
  

The best historiography typically combines two of these aspects. Thus, Peter Novick's That Noble Dream, about the holy grail of historical "objectivity," combines an intellectual history of the field in the past 120 years with a wonderful poke at the attitude that history is just gathering facts. David W. Noble's Historians against History, on the other hand, combines intellectual history (from earlier in the 19th century) with an analysis of the trope that American history is "outside history" somehow.

If I get the sabbatical next year I applied for, I'll be trying my own hand at historiography, using my subfield (history of education) as an easy focus (at least for me). Tell Eric I wish him the best in untangling my field's at least occasional self-delusions of grandeur.

[pameladean]

Thanks; I'll see that he sees this, one way or another.

I wonder if you guys remember one another from the Fidonet SF Echo at all.

Pamela

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

My brain's on the fritz, and I don't think you've mentioned Eric's last name. Was he on the Regency Council?

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Your report on having a healthy blood pressure is cheering, since last time I recall you wrote about it you were not reporting such good numbers and were reporting high stress over the taking to the reading itself.

K. [kangaroo cat food... what a world we live in]

[pameladean]

Yes, this is much better. It's been higher in the recent past, on the same meds. There's a definite stress component. I just hope it looks good at the clinic when I go in for my checkup. They don't really believe in this medication regimen yet. They are far more exercised about and rigid about hypertension than the kidney people were. And they don't like to believe in the home readings, which the kidney people quite cheerfully did.

Pamela

Pamela