This is taken from a Kirkland waterfront park on the evening of August 29th, 2016 at about 9pm. I used a combination of flash and natural lighting so that I could capture the waves crashing up against the bulkhead.  The date is wrong in the post header because of a bug in the current version of WordPress.  I have the correct time zone set but it still calculates the date based upon GMT time.

   I’m not a big fan of the whole metal genre and BabyMetal is far less than musical genius but they do have a fun stage gig and are exceedingly cute.  They are a Japanese female trio.  They are more fun to watch than to listen to.

     They remind me of the Japanese twins in the Austin Powers film “Goldmember”, Fook Mi and Fook U.

Japanese Twins Fook Mi and Fook U.

    Listen to the Lyrics on this one.  Also, this is an acoustic performance which differs from the studio recording both in not having the hard electric guitar but also having a completely different cadence which makes it much easier to hear and appreciate the lyrics.

Located approximately 22 000 light-years away in the constellation of Musca (The Fly), this tightly packed collection of stars — known as a globular cluster — goes by the name of NGC 4833. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the dazzling stellar group in all its glory. NGC 4833 is one of the over 150 globular clusters known to reside within the Milky Way. These objects are thought to contain some of the oldest stars in our galaxy. Studying these ancient cosmic clusters can help astronomers to unravel how a galaxy formed and evolved, and give an idea of the galaxy’s age. Globular clusters are responsible for some of the most striking sights in the cosmos, with hundreds of thousands of stars congregating in the same region of space. Hubble has observed many of these clusters during its time in orbit around our planet, each as breathtaking as the last.

     In this photo taken from the “Hubble Space Telescope mission” section of Nasa.gov, I have enhanced the detail to make the smaller stars more visible so you can better appreciate their numbers. I have also enhanced color to make the stars temperature more visible.

     The pain flare-up that started Friday is behaving strangely this time around.  Prior, all of those I have had since Lyrica ended in four hours, not this one, although the period of high intensity only lasted about four hours.

     Since late Friday evening some pain has remained in my legs and feet and some allodynia in my thighs and belly.  It is at a low enough level that it does not prevent me from sleeping or working but still it is a constant nagging pain that doesn’t do good things for my overall mood or outlook on life.

     Yesterday’s pain flare up is the longest I’ve experienced while using Lyrica.  The intense portion only lasted about four hours, but there is a small amount of residual pain today and significant allodynia on my belly and thighs.

     This morning I quaffed another 160mg of tianeptine sodium and six kratom capsules in hopes of smothering what is left of the pain.  Also took 50mg of Benadryl hoping it would help with itching which also persists.

     Another fun symptom that I have begun experiencing during flare-ups involving my feet is cramping of toes or at least the muscles that control them.  It seems touching the top of my foot about 2-1/2 inches back from the toes will sometimes trigger these spams as if the sensory nerve information is somehow leaking back into the motor neurons.

     Another thing to e-mail my neurologist about.  He is less than thrilled about the amount of feedback he gets from me, he obviously has a very high workload as just scheduling a phone call requires on average 16 days of lead time.  But I am not responsible for his workload, that’s an issue with Group Health policy, their willingness to hire enough staff, and so as much as I don’t like to be a pain I gotta get help with this so I must.

   The whole health care situation in this country is abysmal.  More than two weeks just to get a call back, not acceptable but I have no choice.  Rich people they got choices, they can go pay someone $500 an our for a message or whatever, but my finances don’t permit such extravagance.

     Today started off good, no pain this morning.

     Around 3pm my feet started tingling, by 5pm they were hurting pretty bad.  Now that pain has traveled up my legs.  I am also itching very badly.

     My neurologist is aware of my pain but all we do is trial and error with drugs that have proven ineffective for the majority of nerve pain patients.

     The most recent experiment is Lyrica.  It is an improvement over gabapentin.  Now instead of most days being bad, maybe 1 in 5 is bad.  Unfortunately for me today is one of those 1 in 5.

     The pain episodes have been shorter on Lyrica, about 4 hours has been the longest, I’m about two hours into the serious bad pain part of this one so hoping things will get better soon.

     I’m a little afraid to take more drugs, I’ve already vomited once today.

     I am with Group Health so not a lot of choices in terms of doctors.  Nor is it possible to see anyone on short notice, they are badly overbooked.

     Kaiser is investing in billions of dollars worth of new equipment.  What they really need more than new equipment is doctors with an ounce of compassion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tr7A8ydp2Y

     Just awoke from another prison dream / nightmare.  It’s been 4-years and 4-months now and these still keep coming.

     In this dream, they had come and re-captured me and put me back into prison after I had been released.

     I had been there again for many months with no court action or explanation of why they put me there.  I talked to a woman who came in from a church, she was clergy of some sort.  She helped arrange to get me released.

     The warden came and talked to me as they prepared to release me.  He said they had a record of my having been released, no record of my having been brought back nor reason I should have been.

     I was tempted to go ballistic but I thought what I want to do is first get out, then leave the state so there is no chance fo being recaptured again without an extradition procedure and then at least some explanation of why, and then find a lawyer and sue their asses off.

     At this point our dog woke me up barking at something outside, I know not what but pretty much anything moving in a six mile radius qualifies as worthy to bark at.