There's a guy at work who was telling me proudly how quickly he was back on his feet after major surgery (they said weeks, he took hours), and then telling me how quickly he was back in for more foot surgery, and I couldn't but wonder--if he'd stayed down the first time, would he have had to have a second time?

That's like being proud of your height. Crazy.

How much red is enough red? The coincidence between the transmission of faint ginger and migraines coming through the same familial pipes amuses me a bit.

From what I've read, more likely if you're redhaired, still possible if you just carry the gene.

I finally got a ripe orange off the non-navel tree! I am pretty sure the rest of the fruit on that tree came in significantly later, so I'm not going to do a major gather just yet, but it is still an exciting milestone! I have been watching these oranges since April. Clearly, I do not grok their seasonality.

My sprained ankle seems to be doing awesome, even if I can't get past the swelling over the actual injury site. The bitch is the swelling on the top of my foot, which high water pressure in the shower beats at like a bitch. I almost have full articulation, and the walking seems to keep my toes from chubbing up, but damn, the top of my foot...

Oh, I stand corrected -- she took a Tylenol for a wisdom tooth removal.

My dad refused pain meds the day after his back surgery, and is only taking pain meds at night now that he's home. But the herniated disk had affected his right leg, and it was so painful, that now that it's not, I guess the incision site seems like small potatoes? I don't know. I've called dibs on whatever Percoset he doesn't use, for emergencies.

When I was having really bad back pain, I snagged a few of my dad's percoset and oxy-somethings. Both of which made me feel crappy as hell while barely affecting the back pain.

For me, the solution ended up being whisky and large amounts of dollar store aspirin, alone or in combination. And maybe a heat pad.

Point being, you don't know what will work, and controlled narcotics aren't always the most effective. But you should have the freedom to find that out for sure.

Oh, but that reminds me. Is anyone aware of weed being used to slow the growth of cancer? Is this a new thing? People in his support group are telling my father he should be using medical marijuana for his prostate cancer.

(He's starting radiation soon, and if it were for symptom relief I've got no issue. But what he's hearing is more like it will actually affect the cancer. If that's the case I haven't heard about it but he is looking for advice. )

I have not heard that, brenda. It seems unlikely, but I'm not really up on anything but the symptom relief.

That's my reaction, but before I tell him it's bs I want to do due diligence. He's doing the traditional treatment regardless so it's not like he's in danger of deciding to go with the woo instead.

(When MA finally gets around to instituting its medical marijuana law, I'm planning to see if I can try it, it sounds as though a small dose of THC might be an effective intervention for my fibromyalgia, because opiods are not a good solution. I don't need a firehose, I need something like a dry ice fire extinguisher.)

When we were in California, we drove past a medical marijuana storefront called Herban Legand. Durr hurr hurr. But I really wanted some pot for my insomnia. Stupid Ohio.

My dad refused pain meds the day after his back surgery, and is only taking pain meds at night now that he's home. But the herniated disk had affected his right leg, and it was so painful, that now that it's not, I guess the incision site seems like small potatoes? I don't know.

True story: when I had my back surgery, I was 100% pain-free when I woke up in recovery, because the when they removed the herniated disc material, there wasn't anything pressing on the sciatic nerve. So I didn't need pain meds.

Except for the part where I had been taking the maximum prescribed dose of percocet around the clock for 6 weeks and then stopped abruptly, kicking my junkie ass into withdrawal. Shakes, sweats, insomnia, other horrible symptoms. Good times.