I just got offered a new job here at UNI, for about $9,000 more a year than I'm making now. Of course, as the song says, With "Mo' Money" comes "Mo' Problems", so I'm waiting to hear on a counter-offer from my boss before I decide...
My wife found out the hard way that she's allergic to high-contrast dye today. She went in for an X-ray of her bladder, and wound up with the ER team taking care of her. She said that she started sneezing right after she got the dye, and then had problems with her throat. After a shot of anti-histamine, her blood pressure still wasn't going down, and the doc called for the ER team to respond. They elevated her feet, and after a few minutes more, the drugs did their job, and she started to return to normal, so she was dicharged after a few hours of observation. She's okay now, is at home resting, after taking the rest of the day off work. They hit her with benadryl to stop the reaction, and that's why she's so drowsy. I wasn't there when it happened, it was only supposed to be a simple X-ray after all, but she said she thought she was going to die for a bit there.
For future reference, if you're having a similar procedure done:
Allergy to iodinated contrast (dye) may take the form of hives, skin rash, itching, running nose, sneezing, bronchospasm, wheezing, laryngeal edema, pulmonary edema, as well as more severe life threatening reactions. The incidence of allergic reaction has decreased considerably with the advent on the newer non-ionic contrast agents.
If there is a pre-existing allergy to contrast material (dye), the patient may be pre-treated with Benadryl and Prednisone and then given non-ionic IV contrast.
Just woke up, can't reallly get back to sleep, so I checked CNN. I was surpised to see that John Ritter and Johnny Cash have both checked out tonight. I knew Johnny Cash was in bad shape, but I'd just seen the story that he'd checked out of the hospital a few days ago. I certainly wasn't expecting John Ritter to die anytime soon, apparently, Ritter suffered a dissection of the aorta, was rushed to the hospital, but was unable to be saved.
If you're reading this from a Windows computer, stop what you're doing and visit WindowsUpdate. Get all the critical patches. This is important. The son of the Blaster worm will be coming soon, you need to be patched up to protect yourself. Go do it now. I worked a 13 hour day yesterday, getting all our systems and servers patched up with the latest version of the RPC/DCOM patch. I still have one more machine on our network that needs to be patched, then we should be all done. This one was set up by a professor, so I don't have any idea what the admin password is, or any control over the box, but if he doesn't have it secured by noon tomorrow, I'm going to have his network port turned off, a procedure which eliminates 100% of network security problems. :)
Until my job interview, that is. I'm one of four final candidates, selected from the initial pool of 67 applicants. My wife helped pick out a new outfit for me to wear tomorrow, I'm even wearing a tie. Considering I normally wear a T-shirt and shorts to work this time of year, I'm sure it'll get noticed.
