WauloK : The life and interests of an Aussie

It seems like I’m still recovering from my visit to Red Cross.

On Friday I wasn’t sure if I should go to work, but did and then told the boss I was heading home. Came home and bought some dinner on the way and popped into the doctor to book an appointment (not just because of how I was feeling but because Red Cross said I should get a checkup).  I came home and ate dinner then slept until 3:30pm when I got up to go to the doctor.  He said everything was fine besides a viral chest infection (I had been coughing and phlegmy for a few days). He gave me some Polaramine antihystamines and sent me off. I picked up Sienna and we came home again. Sienna hasn’t been 100% either so we both had a quiet day yesterday.

Sienna woke me at 7am this morning as she’d been to the toilet and needed cleaning up. Looks like a bit of diarrohea. I cleaned her up and got us some breakfast and lay on the couch watching TV while she played.  I kept falling asleep all morning and eventually Sienna fell asleep too. I turned off the TV and finally woke up at lunch time. I got some fish and chips out of the freezer and put them in the oven.  Now I’m just watching some poker I recorded a week ago or so while Sienna sleeps.  I’m still deciding if I’ll play poker tonight. At this rate I might give it a miss.  I don’t know that I’m going back to donate blood ever again. The doctor I saw Friday said it wasn’t an allergic reaction to the anticoagulant but passed out due to so much blood loss.  I don’t think the blood plasma donation is more than normal blood donation as they do it in three stages and pump the blood back into you.

I posted some blogs from my mobile yesterday but they seem to have gone missing in action.

I went to the Red Cross yesterday to donate some blood plasma. I sat down at about 1:30pm and the machine drew out blood twice and took the plasma, mixed it with anticoagulant and pumped the blood with red blood cells back into me. The third time, when it was almost complete, I felt faint and told a nurse “I think I’m going to faint” then passed out.  I woke up with my feet in the air as they tried to drain blood and oxygen back into my brain.

After a while they sat me up a little bit then did that a few more times over about 45 mins. Once I was sitting upright they decided to give me a cabcharge and send me off home. Well, after about 10 mins I passed out again so they got the ambulance in not long before 5pm.

I had a trip in the ambulance to the local private hospital and spent the afternoon there getting saline dripped into me and monitored my pulse and blood pressure. The last number I saw before leaving was 115/67 and I said “It seems to have come up a bit since I was admitted”. The doctor said “Yes, you are up about 20 points from when you came in”. I’m guessing I was lower at the Red Cross, though.  Mum says this is a lot and got a bit of a shock when she heard. She says it sounds like anaphylactic shock.. probably from the anticoagulant pumped back into me. The nurses did say there was a slight chance of an allergic reaction, but said I didn’t have to go and prove them right I said “Some guys will do anything just to get an afternoon off work, but this is a bit extreme!”.

Just before 6pm I went to the loo since I’d had so much fluid put into me and walked there and back fine without passing out, so they said I could discharge myself.  I had a cup of tea and some sandwiches and checked out. I got a taxi back to Bec’s mum and dad’s place and spent the night there so someone would be able to keep an eye on me. I had more water.. about 750ml of cold fridge water and some sandwiches and went to bed at 9pm. I was feeling so exhausted.

I got up this morning and Bec’s mum dropped me off at the train station so I caught a train home, got changed and showered and came back into work again. I had my multivitamins and a glass of V8 vegetable and fruit juice drink I’ve started getting into. Before I got a train I picked up a ham and cheese croissant and a mocha coffee from a local coffee shop to have for some breakfast. Boy did I need it!

I don’t think I’ll be going back to the Red Cross again. I had no problems donating just blood a couple of months ago, but once bitten twice shy so they say.

Check out this website Joey just sent me a link to:

Oceangram

Write a message and send it in a bottle or just wait until one washes up on the shore of your browser, read it, add to it and send again!

He’s got a boat, Baldrick.

Today was compulsory voting day for Queensland (well.. in Australia ALL voting days are compulsory).

I’m not even sure what the Liberals or anyone else stand for. All I saw on TV were anti-ads against Labor. One woman lamenting that her darling son was ‘killed’ by Paul Beattie, the current leader because he didn’t fix the health system or roads or something… WTF?!?!?!  These kinds of ads I find disgusting. The only other advertising they offered were to slander and attack the current party’s failures but I haven’t seen anything about what they stand for. I even read the local newspaper where the member for Labor (Jo-Ann Miller) talked about things she had done and some plans for the future, while the opposition were once again slandering her and talking about her failures and not mentioning once what they have in plan to fix things. What’s the bloody point? Stupid Liberals. I’ve no sympathy at all.

I’d not even heard of the name of the Liberal member who is trying to get elected. No idea at all. Yet, I’ve heard all about Jo-Ann Miller in the paper and met her at the train station and read her spam in the mail.

Today, we got busy with washing the clothes and dishes and did that voting thing above.  We got home and finished washing then went shopping. I wanted a cheapish frying pan as mine is rusting. Usually in the shops I can find one Teflon one for $14 or more. Today at Crazy Clark’s I found THREE for $10! A small, medium and large one together in a pack. SWEET!  I also bought some underwear from KMart. Found a pack of 3 for $20 so got two packs. I have too many holes in my current drawer full of underpants. Must be too big for them and keep tearing holes in them

After we put that stuff in the car, we went to Coles and bought some groceries and stuff. I wanted a good mop as my tiled floors get really scuffed and dirty. My current sponge mop seems pretty useless. All I could find was a $17 microfibre super mop thingy, so I got it to try out. We got home about 3-ish and I packed everything away then took Sienna to her room for a nap. She fell asleep about 3:30pm and didn’t wake up until about 5pm.

In the meantime, I put “Sin City” on the TV to check out. A friend at work told me about it so I taped it last night with my funky Foxtel IQ box (they tell me hopefully by the end of the year they will be able to transmit Channels 7 & 10 to the satellite people. No idea why cable subscribers can get it and not satellite ones.. oh well). It seems watchable. I had it on in the background and watched it in bits and pieces while searching the web for some sort of CPU cooling application. My PC randomly reboots and I’ve no real idea why yet. I guessed maybe it was something to do with the CPU overheating.. although that sort of thing should not really happen these days. I downloaded SpeedFan and installed it. It has no clear instructions so I fiddled a bit with the numbers and crossed my fingers something good will happen.  The other reason I’ve had problems with reboots seems to be due to my PC running out of IRQs. If I had all my stuff plugged in and hit DIAL on the XP dialup program, the PC would spontaneously reboot! I unplugged my PocketPC, Webcam, SE K800i phone and printer to see if that helps. It let me dial up again to teh interwebbeh so that’s something I guess. As I said it still randomly reboots but not so often. That’s why I’m trying this CPU cooling idea. I don’t want to spend $50 on a cooler fan to suck hot air out thru a PCI slot in the back if it’s not temperature causing the issue. Then again, if the software DOES work I won’t need the fan either hehe

Things I’m going to keep an eye out for:

Dead Man’s Chest Exclusive 2 Disc Collector’s Tin!

Da Vinci Code, The – Extended Edition (EXCLUSIVE Collector’s Tin

House, M.D. – Season 2 (6 Disc Set) (FREE Thermometer)

Tru Calling – The Complete DVD Collection (8 Disc Box Set)

My Name Is Earl – Season 1 (4 Disc Set)

What The Bleep!? – Down The Rabbit Hole: Deluxe Collector’s Edition!!!!! OMG OMG OMG!!!@$#@!

What the Bleep Do We Know info c/o Wikipedia:

What the Bleep Do We Know (according to the makers “Bleep” is a bowdlerization of “fuck” — William Arntz has referred to the film as “WTFDWK” in a message to ‘Bleeps’ “Street Team”) blends a fictional story line, discussion, and computer animation to present a view of the physical universe and human life within it, often relating this to neuroscience and quantum physics. Some claims discussed include: that the universe is better thought of as being constructed from thought (or ideas) than from substance; that what has long been considered “empty space” is anything but empty; and that our beliefs in who we are and what is real are not simply observations, but rather form ourselves and our realities. Additionally, a brief discussion of the theory that peptides manufactured in your brain can cause a bodily reaction to an emotion is used to claim a new perspective to old adages such as “think positively” and “be careful what you wish for.”
In the fictional story, a deaf photographer (Marlee Matlin) acts as the viewer’s avatar as she experiences her life from startlingly new and different perspectives. In addition to the story line, a team of purported experts in quantum physics, biology, medicine, psychiatry, and theology discuss the roots and meaning of Amanda’s experiences. However, the viewers are left in the dark on the credentials of the experts until the credits at the end of the movie.
Marlee Matlin as Amanda in What the Bleep do We KnowThe comments of those presented as scientific experts converge on a single theme: “We all create our own reality.” This is not a widely held view of physics by the scientific community, but it correlates well with subjective experience.