Topics: Kidney Scare Urgent Care / Effexor / Plex ROCKS
Hello Folks, this is Shane arm and earlier in the past your seed with me passenger seat radio. It is November, 12, 2013, 1112, 13, and you’re on my 13 mile commute home.
Welcome to the show.
You haven’t had a whole bunch to talk about lately. So things have been kind of quiet
and I did have I started to record a couple of shows
and it’s like, you know,
just not feeling it. So I just shut them off so I’m sure I’ll miss something and fail to cover something that I previously covered in one of those peace meals and shows, but
what are you gonna do right I want to give you guys a bunch of garbage.
So
let me tell you about my latest kidney
scare
yeah okay so
last Friday
I woke up in the morning, I kind of like
my kidney eight. Now if you’ve had an 18 kidney
or you’ve ever had a
a
kidney stone or anything where
your kidney is affected, then you know what it feels like you understand the difference. Well, I woke up in the morning and I start I felt, that’s interesting. I didn’t hurt. It’s like kind of a little bit back day
so my okay well you know let’s just see how the day goes
so I went to work. We went to this place called mini men’s men’s burger look it up online. You can search for it. It’s in south Phoenix men’s
men’s burger memes
cafe, something like that, if I remember I’ll post away
anyway. So it’s this little ghetto, you know, barbecue and burger type place someplace,
you would never expect to go but we were looking for a halfway point between them. One of my co workers who was working from home and
you know the office because he wanted to have lunch with us. So we dug this place up and it’s, you know, got like 3.9 stars, you know, people are like yeah it’s it’s it’s quaint The food is fantastic and they’ve got old video games and blah blah blah. My old video games while I’m in now.
So we were getting ready to go. And my coworker, you know, calls and says, Listen, I’m gonna work through lunch. I’m a little bit behind so I guess we’ll try next time I said okay, that’s cool. We’re gonna go anyone. And so all morning long I still had kind of the age. A little bit more at eight and so that’s all I’m thinking about all morning long as I’m thinking about. One of my kidney aches. It was the same side the left side, the one that I’d had the stone with prior
and what’s going on down here
we have protesters out front. Where’s this building is that
one of those rubberneckers
now trying to figure out what’s going on. So watch
the news later
anyway so um
I’m not feeling all that good. I’ll tell you what, I’ll get to that in a minute. I’m not feeling all that good for other reasons,
but we go anyway
and the food is actually remarkably decent. The price was reasonable. But what a shithole. I mean, you would literally drive by and go. There’s no way I’m eating in that place, but I mean it was a one time deal will probably never go back, but the food was like I said remarkably decent and
they had a couple of old videos I have a picture of the the old video games. I’ll send you a picture then a couple of old pinball tables Black Rose Terminator two there was another one that sunset writers look like a cab. For those of you who know what that is and some weird game. I’d never seen before. So I got pictures of a weird enough I haven’t seen it, then I better get a picture.
Anyway, so after
the meal, we went back in
and it’s like this sucks. You know what I’m worried now I’m starting to get worried.
So I took right before lunch I took a sat next to call my them because I know what happens when I start worrying about stuff I took a Xanax and a couple of ibuprofen right I thought, Okay, well maybe if it’s muscular musculature if it’s muscular in nature than the ibuprofen will help. And so after lunch I decided that the ibuprofen did not help oddly enough, and even with the Xanax I was starting to get kind of worried, you know, typically for me. It always starts this way. I always get sick or something goes wrong on a Friday and here’s what happens if I do going on Friday
thing I have to go to Urgent Care over the weekend and that costs a lot of money and half the time the services that I might need like last time I had the stone. They had no imaging people on site that day because it was a weekend so saying oh well you know if it’s been Monday we have somebody, but now we have to send you up to the, you know, to ban or medical and they’re going to charge you, you know, 250 bucks for the imaging.
So I really, really wanted to just call my PCP haven’t checked me out and you know go from there. Well of course my piece. In fact, nobody in my network and I get this. This is crazy. You believe this this HMO at its finest at 130 on a Friday and not a single physician in my HMO network in the Greater Phoenix Valley that’s Sun City that’s downtown that’s quite that’s anywhere. Not a single opening of any physician and my network.
So it’s like okay so my only choice is urgent care
Urgent Care 75 bucks and a guaranteed four hours of your life. You’ll never get back usually longer but I thought what the hell 130 in the afternoon, there shouldn’t be a whole lot of people there. Maybe
I can get in and out.
So I get down there and of course the first thing I you know I’m not feeling well at all. And again, I’ll get I’ll get to the reason why so I’m pretty much tweaking out anyway.
And
so I get in there and of course the first thing they want. First of all it took about an hour to get into the room which is actually not bad. Usually
it’s
several hours just to get in the room and then an hour to before somebody sees you and then an hour. So before they get back to you. So it’s usually like a four hour deal so I get into the room about 230 ish almost three, which isn’t bad. Like I said, Not bad. Why don’t we not taking
a free right here. People guys are freaking killing
because one France going straight fantastic
anyway so
so of course the first thing they do when they get me in the room is
we need a sample, which I knew was coming. Unfortunately IP just before lunch so I knew I was going to be screwed. So
I said, Yeah, I thought you might say that I’m gonna need some water. So they got me a bunch of water and I’m guzzling watered down like it’s well it is free about that I’ve guzzling water down doesn’t Gazelle Gazelle doesn’t guzzle
pretty much nauseous I drinking water. I hate it, I hate
water. I don’t like water with lemon in it.
I don’t I mean the best I can do is like water with a splash of meal in it. That’s the best I can do. Actually, you know what I had me a with me. I don’t know what I was thinking. Ella anyway so I’m drinking water and drinking water took about 30 minutes before I can finally P.
So I go in and of course you know
I know for those Does everyone know what it’s like to have a sample I’m assuming, especially at my age. So the idea is you take out your you wipe it down with like a towel let you know as a wet naps used to get from KFC you’ll wipe down the tip and you start paying and you’re supposed to catch your stream like halfway through your
so you’re sitting there trying to and get everything situated and then with that cup under there and time to get enough. I remember I don’t have to go real bad yet but I’m thinking there’s enough pressure on the bladder that I can get enough out
to put in the in the clinic.
So
I start the peace process. I’m peeing and then I leave the cup over to catch my stream right
as I’m leaning over my shirt drops in front of my. So now my now my stream is caught and all over the place by the tip of my shirt
on frickin believable and so then you’re wondering, this is a man thing, you know, sorry ladies for listening, you’re gonna feel left out. So then you’re wondering you
know in my clock because you know like after or whatever. Sometimes you get clogged and you start to the wrong direction. If you ever seen me myself and Irene
the part where Jim carries basically on the ceiling at Burning online. Yeah, same idea. So I’m like, What the hell’s going on and I didn’t mean I didn’t realize I just fat. Okay. I’m a fatty fat and I couldn’t see the tip of my shirt in my piece stream. Okay, let’s get that out of the way we’re all happy now. All right, so I’m fighting to the literally the bought my shirt is just swelling now with and discuss it. I all over my hand I peed all over the cup. You know, I didn’t have to pay that much to begin with. And yet I still managed to get enough in the cup and this is disgusting. Right. So I’m sitting here with my shirts soaking it in soapy water and of course the best part of that is
at some point you have to leave the bathroom and of course you’ve got that perfect crescent shape of wetness on your shirt. So it’s basically a dead giveaway that you on yourself right not a good thing.
All this time I you know I’m worried. I should be more worried about my kidney. But no, I’m worried about paying over my shirt, probably because there was a pretty attractive orderly running around and I knew at some point if I didn’t on my self, I would have never met her, but because I went ahead and Pete all over my hand and my shirt. Surely she would cross paths with me at some point before the day was over. So I got the out of the shirt I soaked it I used I used to anti bacterial so it’s not disgusting. It’s just what
wring it out. There’s no hair air dryer. Right. So I’m literally wrapping the bottom of my shirt in towels no paper towels trying to at least make it look like I didn’t pay myself
so about an hour. This then another hour almost an hour and a half goes by before somebody finally comes in doctor comes in on like, oh man, you know what I thought you guys almost forgot about me. I mean, it’s been a long time he’s like yeah I don’t know I just got here and it’s like a weight of it. So the off going doctor didn’t want to see me because he was getting off so he weighed made me wait around until the next doctor came in fantastic real nice guy kind of had that Robin Hood Liam’s on crack thing going on you know talk really fast really energetic, you know, he just got there, so of course he’s talking fast and energetic. Right. And he’s like, Listen, you know, we looked at the. Everything is top notch. You know, there’s no blood. There’s no sugar. There’s no proteins.
Everything is fit as a fiddle and I said, Wow, okay. I mean, it feels internal IT FEELS kidney ish.
And he said, Well, you know, let’s let me examine you. So it gives me the examination. He says, Listen, you got something really not it back here. I mean, it must feel you know there’s you’ve got there’s definitely a muscular this difference between your right and your left side. He says, I’m thinking you got something kind of tightened up balled up in their muscle wise and it’s causing you some grief. So
here’s I’m going to do I’m going to give you these
top notch muscle relaxers some industrial strength. The painkillers, you know, just like over the counter stuff stronger and then I’ll throw a couple of Viking your way so you know something really happens you know heavy and you really did pained up and you can’t sleep or whatever you got, you know, got a little narcotic action throwback on like, okay, cool, cool.
I felt so much better than it wasn’t my kidney because I did not want to go through that again. Unbelievable.
So he’s like,
okay, you know, I’ll have your scripts here in just a minute. So another 3040
minutes goes by. Thank God I had my next Stan and extra batteries. That’s all I’m saying.
So about 3540 minutes come goes by, by now by the way my shirt is completely drying. I’ve been soaking it with towels. I’ve been squeezing and squeezing and squeezing I did a first class job. You’d never would have noticed and thank God I did because, guess who brings me my scripts, the hot intern or orderly or whatever the hell she was she wasn’t a doctor. So whatever she wasn’t a nurse. I don’t think so I’m assuming orderly is the right phraseology anyway so she comes up and you know gives me the spiel here’s you know your medication, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Here’s your you know your breakdown of the services we gave you today, yada, yada, yada,
so that ended that and I got out of there around four, which is huge right and go back and do the math, I probably told you like seven hours, but it’s got out of that around forest. So I was only there for, I don’t know, maybe two and a half hours. It seemed like longer especially when you’re in there doing absolutely nothing and nobody checks on you and nobody gives you at least when you’re on the phone and you’re on, you know, waiting online for like 45 minutes they come on every now and then as a you know Your call is important to us.
You’re expected wait time is 42 minutes and there are eight people and look you in front of you, your college valuables. Oh boy. Stay on the line.
You’ll get any of that. Urgent Care man least not my Urgent Care
absolute crazy.
Alright, so what’s the,
what was the side story of the why I wasn’t feeling well why I was tweeting out.
So some of you have followed my story long enough here to
know what it was like when I got off of Effexor
yeah effects
are it took for a few years. The reason I wanted off of Effexor was one I didn’t figure I probably needed it anymore.
The high stress high impact life that I was leading kind of settled down, plus the bad part about Effexor is is it’s got an amazing half life.
In other words, it takes about six hours for effects are to drop out of your system. So if you miss a dose. If you miss a dose. Now here’s the worst part so okay so drops out in six hours. So one. The problem is now I was corrected by my psychiatrist effects or does not have withdrawal symptoms,
the fixer has something called
discontinuation syndrome or something to that effect. Right. It’s not withdraw unless it’s a barbiturate or a narcotic something like that. Everything else the SS our eyes and everything are considered discontinuing symptoms something to that effect. So I went in for my every month I go in to see my psychiatrist for medicine, you know, medicine, most of you have been listening to the show. I’ve been chasing this lightheaded feeling so I’ve been trying to get back on something to
get rid of that right because it’s kind of an impediment my day to day life. So I’ve been rotating through drugs and none of them done the trick I went to the neurologist, just to get checked out, you know, just to say if you see anything funny anything I should be worried about. And you’re all just sitting down
and I told him that I’ve been on affects her one time, and he’s like, you know, why’d you get off. And I said, well, simple if I miss a dose it six o’clock in the morning, which is what I typically take meds before word if I missed that dose by noon one o’clock I am freaking out. If you really want to know. I mean I apparently have a very light version of effects or withdrawal
brothers over here, walking hope he’s talking on a cell phone is I just screaming it himself. You probably can’t hear that on the tape
I was screaming at something.
What is technically south Phoenix like other people across the streets I get another day some other whack job yelling at his phone.
Anyway, so I told him that the effects are you know what if I missed a dose. I was useless in six hours and what would happen is I would get light I mean literally almost complete vertigo,
I couldn’t even I couldn’t Dart my eyes around without almost wanting to throw up it’s it’s really bad.
And if you look at what other people talk about the fixer withdrawals.
I mean, they have things called brings apps and I’ve never had
one of those, but they say it’s like an electrical charge zapping through your head. Can you believe that
and that goes on for weeks as you get off the effects are right so when I got up effects for the first time I swore I swear to God I would never get on effects or again, ever, ever, ever, ever, no matter how bad life was I would never get on effects or again.
Well, the neurologist said, Listen, they they
re orchestrated Effexor
into something called Pristiq
and he says it works really well. It doesn’t have, you know, it doesn’t
die out as fast so it’s got a longer Half Life, whatever. So, you know,
maybe, you know, talk to your psychiatrist about this and I said, Okay, well you know if it’s not, I’m willing to get me I’m getting at the end of my rope here in terms of trying drugs. I’ve been through all
well most of them anyway. And
so
I go to see my psychiatrist and he gives me says here. Here’s 30. He’s got the samples right pharmaceutical company bastards. He’s like here. Here’s 30 days. Try it out see what you think. So I’m trying out this Pristiq and it’s not working out well. In fact, it’s actually worse. I’m having worse issues with my problems than I was before. So I went in this last Thursday last last Thursday.
And I said, I don’t know what else to do here.
This is it’s not working out
and he says just stopped taking he says let’s let’s see what you’re like without anything. Maybe you know maybe that’s the maybe the drugs are the problem. I said, okay, but I’m worried about this withdrawal thing he’s like no no there is no victim. There’s no throw at the effects and I’m like dude. I’ve been through effects or withdraws and I’m not with withdrawal happens only with barbiturate narcotics. I’m like, okay, okay. All right, so I’m ready to go cold turkey
not smart,
so I stopped taking it as a Thursday at one pill left by the way, one last pill of the pristine
now here’s the thing about pristine if you look it up on any SSRI is you’re supposed to do something called tapering off that is take less and less and less of a dose over a period of time until you’re weaned off,
we can do that for Steve, the way that the pills are constructed, they only come in two different dosages 50 milligrams and 100 milligrams. You can’t cut them because their extended release and it ruins it basically shocks your body with a full dose and effects or if you cut them. So there’s also I mean seriously go out to the internet search. This should I I cannot even make this up there people desperate enough to get off the Pristiq they will take their Pristiq tablets to a pharmacist scratches the coatings off chops up the pills Murray puts it into some other extended release type format
so that they can wean down
so I will give them. I will give Pristiq one thing it does not have the same half like I took my last pill. I think Wednesday night I hadn’t taken Thursday nights and I did,
I didn’t start tweaking until Saturday, but Saturday morning ish I was tweaking st is the effects are wanting to throw up almost falling down absolute horror so bad. It was by Saturday night
so bad. It was that I went in to my little stash of pills that I’ve been gathering and I hot back on the Prozac and here’s something really important this is. This is your public service announcement. If you are trying to get off effects or Pristiq
either one. You can cross over to Prozac right away and get benefit. Now it looks several days. I mean, I was still tweaking it takes a few days for the Prozac again
before I can start feeling that in every day takes a little bit longer for the
the
swelling for the symptoms to come on right so like on Sunday I had relief till like nine o’clock in the morning and then I started tweaking by Monday I was a little bit better, blah, blah. You see it. You see that this goes so it takes a while to recharge your backup that holy hell I totally forgotten how bad that was so
currently I am back on the Prozac and I might just sit my here for a little while until everything levels out and then wean myself off properly because you can do that with Prozac they actually have Prozac liquid. That’s how great Zach is a now it’s a random the random road to see a random hot chick walking along. That’s crazy.
For those of you interested I am at the corner of rosewood. I’m sorry orange wood and 31st Avenue, get a street view of that tell me that you’d be you know surprised that like in the middle of nowhere. There’s I check walking on what’s this is this more objects with I did I win the lottery today
are to tell
definitely worth taking a second look at me. Sure.
So anyway, that’s how my battle with
chemical dependencies working out,
but that’s okay you know what
yeah
I’m glad I’m glad I did not get to you down the Pristiq path for anyone to time. I think that
that’s just that’s just the wrong drug man, at least for me. The effects are pristine whatever they need. They want to slap on it. Next, it’s some
not the right choice, not the right choice at all
right so what else is going on. Let’s see, you know,
I made a list and promptly
left it at work.
We see I catch you up on the kidney thing and kind of chip on the med changes.
Let’s see. Oh, I wanted to talk to you about Plex
This is sort of my my non profit plug for the show. Now I tried Plex years ago. So here’s my here’s my problem I have hard drives filled with TV and movies. Right.
And over the course of the last one, five years or so, I’ve been trying to find a solution that will properly stream
video from my servers from
my hard
drives at home to portable device such as a cell phone or a tablet
and it for a while I was I tried sub Sonic sub Sonic has a flash player that they do some transcoding and it kind of works, it kind of doesn’t work. It could be better. Actually, it could be a lot
better. In fact, it doesn’t work that well at all. In the end, it just simply was a nice try but now
so I so what is, what am I, what’s my solution been
my wife if now that only it does work on high bandwidth. It just doesn’t work well on lower bandwidth. So my wife was kind of trying to watch her TV shows at work, but she can get on the computer which is on the network. And that was fast enough to let her watch her shows with some stuttering. It wasn’t a great solution. Now I tried Plex, like I said, God got to be three, four years ago and it was not an ample solution, but you gotta understand my wife wants things as simple as possible
as simple as possible as most people do me I don’t mind hopping through a couple of hoops to get what I want my wife like other people. I now if it if it becomes more than a five minute ordeal. And there’s any feeling to be done. It’s just not gonna happen. It’s not going to do just not going to do it at all.
So anyway, I heard some people now here you go Google Plus pays off a couple of people were talking about Plexus again and it’s like wow I mean they’re really saying right things
about and it’s like, I don’t know, man. Last time I was looked at it was pretty bad. So I decided to take another look at it and wow has Plex matured.
It is an amazing product, man. So here’s what you do. This is this is really just how easy it is yet install Plex on your server if you got a NASS like my disguise my sin ology dissertation you they actually have a Plex server for that product so you don’t have to use your own server, but I thought, you know, before I install it on the NASA get it all configured. Let me just work it locally and, you know, one of my servers and so I stole the thing you’re pulling in all of the different drives and have your
movies videos TV whatever you pointed there
and you wait.
And over the course of, you know, the next day. It’s spiders all your content gives you an incredible interface to get to your TV shows and your movies.
It is polished as hell.
And as a bonus
it trans codes and delivers to mobile devices. Fantastic,
here’s the best part. You don’t have to fumble with some weird
you know HTML interface that only half assed works on Android, whatever native Android app works great on the tablet and literally it. It keeps track of what you’ve been watching it keeps track of how far along in the episode you are blah blah blah. And it’s like, this is really neat. So now I was able to
and of course the next part is sharing non core of my wife and I haven’t you know the master password to get into the site to get into the server with the app, but I was thinking, Man, you know, my friends could really make use of this, you know,
because my friends were was like oh I miss this episode of, you know, Sons of Anarchy or I miss this or I want to watch this episode again or Hey Shane. Do you have this movie and it’s like yeah I could loan it to you but I gotta go pick it up you know from my house. I’ll bring it in tomorrow but it sitting right on Plex so I was looking this over and it turns out that Plex does support sharing
with the free model, though, that I mentioned that it was free. Yeah, go figure
the free model does not isolate
they don’t give it doesn’t give your friends,
their own dashboard. They share your dashboard which is fine and it’s no big deal. But if I’m watching you know Ancient Aliens the latest episode and one of my friends hops on and starts watching it, he’ll pick up where I left off or he’ll restart it. And then I’ll lose my spot
so it’s kind of a shared ordeal. So
Plexus Plex funds itself by offering something called the Plex pass now essentially the the biggest part of there’s three
major parts of Plex pass right,
first of all, it allows you to individualize your dashboards. So anybody that you’re sharing your server with gets their own dashboard their own on deck their own recently watched all of their own metadata. That’s huge.
It also gives you something called the cloud Plex cloud or something like that. Anyway, what it lets you do is it lets you offload your shows to popular cloud storage service like Dropbox or Google Drive and optimize it in a way that be whatever your destination device is going to be
right. So if you want to catch you know you’re on a plane trip. Right, let’s say you’re on a plane trip and you want to use
Plex well you can’t because you’re not connected in flight. Well, the part of this cloud service will let it sink your device with a standalone copy trans voted for that device.
So let’s say you want to catch a couple episodes of Sons of Anarchy right you’re buying a couple of episodes, you’re going to be on a plane, you’d like to watch them. Now you could copy these, you know, two gigabyte files onto a flash drive or you can tell Plex hey I want to sing to my Nexus 10 these two episodes right and it goes in the transpose it for you through the Plex app on your device automatically pushes it over for you, you’re ready to go. So now you can enjoy off you know offline the shows you’re gonna watch online. So that’s pretty neat.
Plus less Be honest. It is such a fantastic piece of software, it gets regular updates and they listen to their users. It’s really, really cool for all of that you want to pay. It’s that good. It’s like It’s so good. You want to throw some cash there
so you so what does it cost. Well, you can do like a yearly thing or whatever and to get this past or the offer a lifetime thing. I love it when they offer lifetime services to software. So for the low low price of just $75
I was able to get a lifetime Plex pass and believe me it’s totally worth it. My parents came to visit me. We talked about that recently on the show my parents recently came to visit and they’re almost to the point where they’re fed up enough with television and dv ours and all the they want what I’ve got. They want mine media centers set for your portal setup. But I told him, I said, Listen, you know, we could probably rig it up but you know it it takes you know you’re gonna need to buy a machine, drop it in your living room. We’re gonna have to set this up, we’re going to set that blah blah blah. And I said, Well, you know what you watch. Most of the same that we watch right and we ran through all their favorite shows is like yeah yeah we do that when we do that when we do that when we do that with okay we don’t do that one. So, or two or three of them that we missed. But overall, for the most part we watch the same shows. And I said, Well, listen, we’re going to solve this right now I’m going to give you access to my Plex server. So when you want to catch the latest episode of The Mentalist or whatever you can catch up.
And so I started looking, you know, for them a solution that they could plug into their TV. Turns out, Samsung Smart devices like blu ray players and TVs these smart TVs have their own sort of App Store and Plex is available so they can download it to their TV or their blu ray or in this case are going to end up getting a Roku that has the Plex pass for the Plex service built into it right they’re going to be getting one of these guys and then they
can access my server as well with pretty much zero need for me to set them up or go through the whole bit a huge, huge thing. It’s very cool
so yeah Plex has been very, very neat. And you know what, I even find myself hopping on Plex myself to see you know what’s new
and they have all sorts of cool things where you can
you can actually add a Plex let’s say that you’re a YouTube watcher right you watch a lot of YouTube, Vimeo, whatever
you can add an extension to your browser that ties into your Plex server. So let’s say that you hear somebody send your link to YouTube, you bring up you do and it’s like. I’ll watch this later. Well, you could book market or get send it over to your black server it snatches the video adds it to your your dashboard and now you can watch it via your Plex app whenever you want. It’s pretty cool. Alright gang. I am home time for dinner. I hope you
enjoyed the show, hopefully I’ll get to the rest of the stuff I had on the list next time this is Shane arm in Rome pass your seat radio. We’ll see you next time.
