BOO!

[annathepiper]

I was right; I'm not taking enough Synthroid. My endoc confirmed it for me this afternoon. Apparently my T4 is within normal range but low, just going by the numbers, but my pituitary thinks I'm not making enough thyroid goop, so. I'm going up from 100 mcg to 137 mcg. Hopefully it'll be enough to take care of the annoying side effects I've been dealing with the last month and a half; we'll start finding out tomorrow. The one drawback is that I'd just recently refilled my 100 mcg prescription, so now I have a bunch of tablets I can't take since I can't chop them up into any meaningful fashion to fill up a 137 mcg daily dose. Oh well.

Tonight for Halloween: handing out candy to the kiddies, and spooky movies! So far we've watched (most) of Poltergeist. For extra spookarific mileage, when I wasn't able to sleep this morning between about 4 and 7, I watched The Vampire Bat, which was sort of fun vintage spook, and the first part of the miniseries remake of The Shining, which wasn't nearly as spookarific as Kubrick's version in 1980.

We were going to try to watch The Prophecy, with Christopher Walken and Viggo Mortensen, but the Tivo failed us and grabbed the wrong movie! DOH! So guess we're going to watch the original Nosferatu instead.

So far we've had a fun turnout of kids of a wide range of ages, from 'almost too young to actually walk up the steps under her own power' to 'older teenagers'. Eight total groups so far, and 23 total kids. And solarbird and spazzkat did some neat things with ghost cutouts and strategically placed lights to put spooky shadows in the windows. I particularly like the ghost in our upstairs window, the same one that you see silhouetted on the moon in The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the word "Boo" over it. Dara will have pictures, hopefully!

Monday miles: 1.9
Miles out of Hobbiton: 463.1
Miles out of Rivendell: 5.1
Miles to Lothlórien: 456.9

Comments

... who needs Halloween?

[lickingtoad.livejournal.com]

Both the first 'Prophecy' movie and 'Nosferatu' are movies I consider excellent enough to own and consistently re-watch. Do catch them.

Who needs Halloween movies... B O O !!!

[arthur-denger.livejournal.com]

When my 16-year old daughter returned from her boyfriend's house tonight (they were passing out candy) I was waiting just inside the back door. She did not flip on a light when she came in, so when I asked, "HOW WAS YOUR HALLOWEEN!?", she gave a shriek which would put Janet Leigh (Psycho) to shame, and kept holding her torso and repeating, 'omigod, omigod, omigod!'. Some things are just way better in real life than in the movies! I then proceeded to read ghost stories aloud to my lovely wife, who is easily frightened. Halloween is just the best!

I admit it, I'm an EVIL DAD. ;)

[firni.livejournal.com]

Do they check the TSH when they draw your blood, or just the T4? They always checked both with the kidlet.

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

Maybe you can hang onto the 100mcg tabs as backup in case you run out of the others.

Halloween..

[(Anonymous)]

In the decade or so I've lived in my house, I've never had the least bit of trouble at Halloween-the the trickertreeters are so polite I've wondered if they weren't Stepford Children or something.
Couldn't you slice up a pill into thirds with an Xacto knife? Or grind it and separate the powder into thirds? I had a "pillbuster" I bought in order to grind up pills I had to give my cat(I mixed the powder into potato salad. My older cat loves potato salad..weird old cat)and it had a calibrated chamber for the ground-up pill.
My Halloween movies were "Ghost Ship" and "Lost Voyage"..kinda going with the haunted ship theme...Scott

Re: Halloween..

[annathepiper]

Chopping up the pill is not the problem; if nothing else, solarbird has a pill cutter. Chopping it up into the right dosage is the problem. If I separated it into thirds, that still wouldn't be right; a third of 100 is 33 1/3, not 37, and what I need is 37. Getting "near" the right dosage is not enough. :)

As for the trick-or-treaters, most of the ones who came to our door were supervised by parents, so there would not have been any opportunity for mischief anyway. But it's good. Lots more actual trick-or-treating and a lot less Halloween vandalism, which is what we got in the U-district.

[annathepiper]

They checked both with me. My T4 was showing as within normal range if low, but my TSH was too high, which is why my endoc thought I needed a higher Synthroid dosage. So!

[annathepiper]

Oh, there's not more than 30 tablets in one of these rounds of Synthroid, so I will run out regardless. But if I run out before I actually have an opportunity to go get more, yeah, it'd be good to have the 100 mcg tablets as backup.

(Not that I think it's at all likely that I'll not go get more; my pharmacy is within walking distance of the house, so no excuse whatsoever to not go get refills in a timely fashion. :) )

Re: Halloween..

[(Anonymous)]

I was thinking the dosage might have enough "give" in it that a third would be close enough...I suppose you could guesstimate that last bit-how critical is this stuff? Seems to be fairly critical, since they're using 137, instead of rounding it off to 135 or 140.
My experience with medication is fairly limited-the occassional round of antibiotics, which come in standardized dosages-nothing "tuned" just for me.
About half the ones that came to my door had some sort of supervision, but even the ones that didn't were polite..Scott

Re: Halloween..

[annathepiper]

Getting the dosage right is critical, yeah. There are side effects if I get too little (some of which I've been suffering ever since the surgery, after having burned through all the leftover hormone in my system and not getting a high enough dosage to compensate yet), and there are other side effects if I get too much. This is why they have to test my levels of the relevant hormones in my blood, to be able to prescribe the proper dosage.

It may take a bit to find the exact right dosage for me; I wouldn't be the first person to have gone through several weeks of juggling back and forth till the right dosage is found. It turns out that there are actually two intervening dosage levels between my last ones (100 mcg) and my new ones (137 mg)--112 and 125 mcg are the intervals between. So if I'm on the 137's for a while and start feeling very jittery and nervous, I might have to drop back down to the 125's, in which case I could chop up my leftover 100's into fourths.

[kissare.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the Synthroid increase... and also with The Prophecy! Kiera and I get together once every two years or so, order pizza, and watch the whole trilogy. Viggo Mortensen is my favorite movie Satan, and we're both hopeless Christopher Walken addicts!

I am hoping to schedule a Prophecy night with her again soon, but this time, I intend to follow it up with a 'new' Walken gem... I just recently acquired on DVD his early 80's live-action rendition of Puss in Boots... in which he is Puss! There are very few things as adorable as Christopher Walken doing a soft-shoe in a barn singing about what a happy cat he is.

[annathepiper]

Congratulations. I think you just broke my brain trying to make me think of "Christopher Walken" and "adorable" in the same sentence. ;)

(Also, I didn't know there were three Prophecy movies! Cool.)

[kissare.livejournal.com]

Back in the ol' Pern days, I did a ton of research on Christopher Walken for a dragon I was writing. I can never look at him the same way again. ;) And you have GOT to see the Puss in Boots movie - it will fix your broken brain! ;)

Yep, Prophecy is a trilogy. The first is great, with Viggo Mortensen. The second has Kiera's favorite Prophecy male lead in it. The third has mine. The male lead changes in every film (actually, so does the female lead... and nearly all the supporting characters); there are only two significant characters who remain throughout all three. One is Christopher Walken - and he's the only one who undergoes a serious character arc. If you like the first one, I DEFINITELY recommend checking out the other two, even if only to enjoy the Gabriel character arc.

[annathepiper]

'Fix' for some odd definition of 'fix', perhaps! ;) I have a hard time thinking of Christopher Walken in conjunction with Pern dragons, too, for that matter!

And duly noted about the movies. We'll see what happens if we get around to seeing the first one. :)

[kissare.livejournal.com]

Well, I was trying to base a dragon personality around a sort of combination of the Gabriel character and also what I could glean from various interviews and such of Christopher Walken himself. I was crazy in love with that dragon.

If you do get around to seeing the first movie, I'll be interested in reading your review of it. :)

[annathepiper]

That had to be a weird dragon! Though come to think of it, I seem to recollect you mentioning this before at some point.

And rest assured that if we get to see this movie, I'll sing out!

Re: Who needs Halloween movies... B O O !!!

[annathepiper]

GOODNESS, I'm way behind on my LJ comments... trying to put a dent in them today while my muse is still blocked. ;P

*snicker* Sounds like you had a great Halloween, though. Hope your upcoming holidays will be just as fun!

Re: ... who needs Halloween?

[annathepiper]

Old comment at this point, but as I'm Writer's Block Girl right now and trying to get caught up on my email, just wanted to let you know I did see this. Thanks for the recommendations. :)