Pain be Damned
For those who didn't know, I suffer from Gout, a terribly painful attack where crystals form as needles in your joints. For most people Gout forms usually in the big toe and, while intensely painful is generally a localized problem. Gout for me is a much more widespread issue. It affects my entire foot, ankles, knees and sometimes occurs in both feet at the same time. When an attack is left untreated, the pain can persist for several weeks and during that time, I am unable to walk for a good portion of that time. There are only a few medicines that can actually treat a Gout attack, and specifically for me, there is only one combination of two medicines (Colchicine and Indomethacin) that reliably works. And guess what... The US government is taking away my pain relief and damning me to be bed ridden for weeks at a time.Even though there have been generic forms Colchicine on the market for decades, the FDA has ordered a halt to all companies selling generics in order to give the exclusive right to sell to a single company (URL Pharma). That company, once granted the exclusivity, raised the price of a bottle from $9 to $485. As such, my insurance company now refuses to pay for the medicine. Do you wonder, much as I did, how the FDA gets away with granting exclusivity over a drug to a company, even one who did not discover the medicine? Apparently a Bush era law permits the FDA to sell exclusive rights for a drug to the highest bidder in order to pay for further testing on that drug. I hope I never have another Gout attack... or better yet, I hope the generics are still available in Belize!-- A special thanks goes out to G.W. and his buddies at URL Pharma.Michigan Sucks
I just thought I'd get it out there just how much I hate the snow and cold. I mean, look at what it has done to my poor dog!
Choices....
Back in 2000 I nearly bought a home when I was living in San Diego. I had made the offer for $300k and it was accepted. The day of the inspection just happened to be one of the few days in San Diego when it was raining... and not just any rain. It was a full on downpour. The inspector found several minor things wrong with the house but the biggie was the back family room which happened to be under a foot of water due to the rains. I used that as an excuse to get out of the deal.
Tesla and Papa
On day 2 of our little girl's life, I had some special one-on-one time with our expressive little one.Tesla and Mommy
Thought I would share a video of Tesla and Mommy together on Tesla's birthday.Happy Birthday Tesla
We are very happy and proud to announce the birth of our daughter, Tesla Paige Southwell at 9:38am on July 21st, 2010. Tesla is a healthy 8.6 lbs and 19" tall.
Hello from the Hospital
We are all settled in and ready for the big day. Will post again when there is news to share.
A bit of awesome news
I just wanted to share with everyone that I’m actually going to be a dad.
It’s a little hard for me to believe that it’s true, but the doctor claims it to be the case… and who am I to argue with the person waving the magic ultrasound wand.
Provided everything progresses normally, we should be celebrating a birthday around the first of August.
Diet Begins Today
My diet officially begins again today. I should be getting my twitter scale today as well, so I’ll be doing my first official weigh-in soon. If you wish, you can keep up with my progress at http://twitter.com/JasonsDiet
For the record, the day’s not even half over and I’m starved… But more because I’ve been too busy to eat than being limited by what I can eat.
My Diet - again
So if you’ve known me for any length of time, you know my weight fluctuates nearly as much as Oprah’s… and I recently noticed an odd correlation to my charted weight with the 5 year NASDAQ chart.
So it’s time again for me to take the financial sector to it’s knees with another diet.
Last year about this time I started a diet and managed to lose 65 pounds. I did it using a diet comprising of extremely bland food in exactly measured quantities with little exercise. It worked great for 6 months, but as soon as I got sick of the crappy food, I started regaining weight. I’m still netting 20 pounds less this New Years than last New Years, but all those clothes I bought at my low no longer fit.
So time to get back on the wagon. I really think I need to get back to the gym, so I’m going to start doing this with good exercise regimen. Also, I’m going to try to do it with a little less effort on measuring what I eat. I’ll just stay away from the bad stuff and stick to more of the good stuff. We’ll see how it goes.
The biggest diet change though that I’m going to make this year though is that I’m going to do this in public. I’ve created a new twitter account http://twitter.com/jasonsdiet where you will be able to track my progress. I’ll be tweeting from there throughout the diet, but more importantly my daily weigh-ins will be automatically tweeted from my new twitter enabled scale. I won’t be able to lie about it, even if I wanted to.
I’m calling out to my friends and family who are out there reading this. Please help keep me accountable. Diet starts Saturday and tweets should start rolling through on Tuesday.
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