rains and pours

of course there's the unsettled weather, perhaps caused by global warming. a summer that seems to be hanging around all year long interspersed with the furies of tropical cyclones, and when those tempests are not to be found, afternoon or early evening thunderstorms.

...boy, those are really some thunderstorms. great cracking bolts of lightning and car-alarm-tripping thunderclaps amidst instant road-flooding deluges (both in las pinas and makati).

but that's not what this post is about.

i'd been feeling a little pressure in my left groin area (wrong side for an appendicitis episode). it wasn't painful, just somewhat uncomfortable. last friday, however, it turned into a pain, but not like the stabbing pain that lit up my back when my (former) kidney stone announced its presence some years back.

drunk a couple of tylenols and waited for the pain to dull, which it took an hour to. took a bath -- and a leak, and pink urine.

blood.

worrisome to say the least.

long story short, get to makati, drag housemate to makati med e.r. and get this looked at.

took a while, and took a while longer to get the result of the urinalysis. blood in the urine.

location of the pain seems to mean that the stone is near the bladder already, so may actually pass soon. to aid that eventuality, i was prescribed a 10-day regimen of little golden spheroidal gelcaps (at 3x a day). after which, see a urologist for further instructions.

hmm. this is looking to be expensive. at any rate, that's still next week, so just take meds and lots of water and hope for the best.

...and then this morning...

parking at the las pinas apartment has its own little thing going on, primarily because the person i refer to as "the green bastard" insists on considering the whole driveway fronting the units to be his particular right (and right of way, nevermind what godforsaken hour he feels the need to go out). also, he does not park in his unit's carport, which makes it difficult to park in our carport unless i reverse up the driveway.

whole other story. suffice to say i've made an arrangement with the landlords where i use the parking allotment of the first unit (where they stay).

back to this morning. thanks to an enthusiastic attendant at a gas station, who cleaned the radiator overflow bottle unasked (and managed to crack the old, brittle plastic), i've taken to filling up the radiator every few days. today, was another of those days. i took the car out of the "unit a" carport and parked it in front of our unit. stopped the engine, popped the hood, topped up the radiator.

car wouldn't start. engine would turn over twice, and then the dash indicators would die.

um.

commute to office, check online, batteries are in the 4-5K range.

so that's my rains and pours; looming expenses for test procedures and specialized medications -- and now the car also needs attention. could be just the battery, could be more than that.

ah, well.