Saturday, November 11, 2006
Did you know that you can vomit through your NOSE?!! :-O
As you've probably guessed from the title, this post will contain references to unpleasant excretory functions; if that'll bother you, the short version is that my husband and I got the most hideous food poisoning in the history of Western civilization but are slowly getting better-you can skip the details included below.
Still with me? Gotta hear the icky bits, huh? Don't say I didn't warn ya:
Tuesday evening, in a rare attempt to eat healthy, my husband and I had takeout salads for dinner; afterwards, he went to his study to take a nap, and I... what, do you have to ask? I got back on the computer. Within an hour, I knew something wasn't sitting right; if I could have seen into the future (precognition never happens when you could really use it, does it?), I'd have been in the bathroom frantically sticking my fingers down my throat to try to avoid what followed with a preemptive barf, but all I anticipated at that point was a bout of the runs... whatever the bug was that bit us, it was sure stealthy about it.
Another hour passed, and it felt like it was time to, uh, release the runs, so I headed for the restroom; on the way there, I suddenly felt very hot... and then I was sprinting the last few yards and engaging in the opposite form of high-powered waste release. This is never pleasant, especially for ME because I hate throwing up so much that I'll nearly explode trying to prevent it (I could NEVER be a bulimic), but this time it was worse; I thought at 1st that the straining must be making my eyes water so much that it was causing my nose to run... and then I realized that I was actually VOMITING through my NOSE, not just a stray drop or 2 but a steady flow from both nostrils. I knelt there in front of the toilet frozen with shock, gushing in 3-part harmony and not knowing what to do; I'd never heard that this was even POSSIBLE, and I had no idea how to handle it... all I could come up with was not to sniff or try to breathe through my nose, because if anything from the stomach gets into the lungs it can cause pneumonia. Once what looked like everything I'd eaten for a WEEK had finished pouring forth, I blew my nose until brains nearly came out, swabbed as far up as I could reach (it's a tribute to the resiliency of nasal passages that there seems to have been no lasting harm to them from what they endured, although there was nothing I could do to clean any but the last couple of inches), rinsed out my mouth, and heaved a sigh of relief... it had been grim, but it was done.
Or so I thought.
I trudged back to the family room, got some soda and pretzels to settle my stomach and refill it a little, and went back to work. About 20 minutes later, I started feeling warm again; although I don't think I've ever had to go through more than 1 round of throwing up in my entire life, I instinctively grasped that Round 2 was starting in a few seconds, and scrambled for the bathroom. I don't know what was more of a shock, that I was vomiting again or that I was vomiting through my NOSE again... I sure hope this isn't aging-related (an online search turned up virtually no mention of this phenomenon, so I have no idea what's behind it), because I do NOT want this to be how it works for the rest of my life. Scarily, the force and amount of what was being expelled was even worse than the 1st time; in what will probably stand out as the single greatest incident of dark humor in my entire life, I realized that I probably resembled comedian Larry the Cable Guy in the episode of "Blue Collar TV" where he went to the "gravy spa" and had the "gravy enema," which was what looked like a fire hose stuck up his rear end that was supposed to be pumping gravy into him in such vast quantities that it started spurting out of his mouth in a wide brown stream (even in a skit whose unmistakable purpose was to go for the gross-out laugh they didn't think to have anything coming out of his NOSE, though, sigh).
Once I'd finished retching and cleaning up, I struggled strengthlessly to my feet and began groping my way to the door of my husband's study; my voice was low and hoarse (presumably because my throat was too traumatized to work properly), but I eventually managed to wake him and make clear that he had to get up because I was seriously sick... and once he did, it became obvious that HE was sick too, although nowhere near as sick as I was (despite the fact that he ate all of his salad and I only had half of mine-I must have just gotten more of whatever it was that was contaminated). Our horrific 1st night of joint food poisoning had begun.
We went through endless bouts of barfing and diarrhea, with mine staying far worse than his; I soon got to the point where all I had coming out was the water I was drinking as steadily as I could manage (to prevent becoming dangerously dehydrated)... have you ever had what I guess you'd still have to technically call diarrhea and not been able to see anything in the bowl because you're out of food, out of bile, and are literally just passing water? Even more terrifying was when NOTHING was coming out anymore, my body's fervent efforts notwithstanding; I'd plainly emptied my entire digestive tract, and despite my best efforts could feel myself dehydrating rapidly... if I hadn't managed to drink some water and then nap long enough to absorb part of it (before I woke up and threw the rest up) I'd have had to go to the emergency room and get started on an IV, because I'd become so ill that I could barely move, and was swinging between being so hot that sweat trickled down my sides to being so cold that my nails were blue.
My husband likes to isolate himself when he feels sick, but I was afraid that I'd vomit in my sleep or in a daze and choke to death, or end up comatose from dehydration, or spend hours calling for help and he wouldn't be able to hear me, so we sort of camped out on the bed, on top of the covers (with extra blankets to huddle under, of course) so that we could lunge for the bathroom without getting trapped for too many crucial seconds, and with the lights on (again to facilitate speedy bathroom access), and dozed as best as we could. When we were awake, we talked ramblingly about odd topics that'd probably have seemed deranged to other people... like how when I became president I'd make him call me Your Majesty, and his focus as "First Husband" would be putting computers in underprivileged schools and teaching kids how to use them. When one of us had to run to the restroom, upon return we gave the other person an intricate description of what had been disgorged (as I've often said, marriage is GROSS); when we were too weary to talk and too uncomfortable to sleep, we lay there and held hands.
Although taking pills can bother my stomach a bit even under the best of circumstances, I eventually had to take some Imodium to bring the nonstop peristalsis to a halt; I had to take a 2nd dose a little later, but that one did the trick, luckily, so that the precious water I was still doggedly consuming was only shooting back out in ONE direction. The funny thing was that my husband had bought the Imodium in error, when I made the mistake of letting him sort coupons unattended for 2 minutes and he'd decided that, although neither of us had used an anti-diarrheal in many years, he'd take a coupon for it and buy it... and in the 6 WEEKS since then had managed to consistently "forget" to return it. It's amazing how often his screwups end up being beneficial in unforeseen ways, and it cheered him in his misery to see that it had worked out that way yet again.
Wednesday we did alot of sleeping and water-drinking; we didn't eat much, but nothing much was coming out, either, so it wasn't nearly as bad as the previous night. When I was awake, I was assaulted by the noises coming from my abdomen as my emptied-out and bile-less digestive system tried to readjust to having something in it for more than 30 seconds; it sounded like a demonic being was going nuts in there, and was so loud that it could be heard clearly in the next room. I felt strong enough by late afternoon to wend my way through the various segments of the local health department's system to report the food poisoning; not only did they not have anyone available to take my call, but they never called me back... I'll have a few choice words to say to them on Monday for blowing off the report of what's obviously a bug that's dangerous even to healthy adults, and possibly deadly to old folks and kids.
Thursday I felt better... and so of course did too much trying to catch up, tired myself out and thus felt worse today. I'm still so dehydrated that I have to constantly guzzle water, and haven't been able to eat anything more challenging than soup; my husband is eating more normally, but far less than usual... we're both going to end up a few pounds thinner from all this. We're not quite squared away in the excretory department, either; we've long since stopped vomiting, but he's still having low-key runs, and when the Imodium that I took late Tuesday/early Wednesday petered out today... imagine what a goldfish bowl looks like just after you feed the fish. We're both going to take it VERY easy this weekend, and hopefully that'll get us back to feeling normal; I'm betting that it'll take a while longer to get back to our usual diets, but a week or 2 without eating garbage won't kill us.
And all this because it seemed so virtuous to have salads for dinner; the next time anyone asks why we don't eat healthier, I'm gonna tell them this story.
Still with me? Gotta hear the icky bits, huh? Don't say I didn't warn ya:
Tuesday evening, in a rare attempt to eat healthy, my husband and I had takeout salads for dinner; afterwards, he went to his study to take a nap, and I... what, do you have to ask? I got back on the computer. Within an hour, I knew something wasn't sitting right; if I could have seen into the future (precognition never happens when you could really use it, does it?), I'd have been in the bathroom frantically sticking my fingers down my throat to try to avoid what followed with a preemptive barf, but all I anticipated at that point was a bout of the runs... whatever the bug was that bit us, it was sure stealthy about it.
Another hour passed, and it felt like it was time to, uh, release the runs, so I headed for the restroom; on the way there, I suddenly felt very hot... and then I was sprinting the last few yards and engaging in the opposite form of high-powered waste release. This is never pleasant, especially for ME because I hate throwing up so much that I'll nearly explode trying to prevent it (I could NEVER be a bulimic), but this time it was worse; I thought at 1st that the straining must be making my eyes water so much that it was causing my nose to run... and then I realized that I was actually VOMITING through my NOSE, not just a stray drop or 2 but a steady flow from both nostrils. I knelt there in front of the toilet frozen with shock, gushing in 3-part harmony and not knowing what to do; I'd never heard that this was even POSSIBLE, and I had no idea how to handle it... all I could come up with was not to sniff or try to breathe through my nose, because if anything from the stomach gets into the lungs it can cause pneumonia. Once what looked like everything I'd eaten for a WEEK had finished pouring forth, I blew my nose until brains nearly came out, swabbed as far up as I could reach (it's a tribute to the resiliency of nasal passages that there seems to have been no lasting harm to them from what they endured, although there was nothing I could do to clean any but the last couple of inches), rinsed out my mouth, and heaved a sigh of relief... it had been grim, but it was done.
Or so I thought.
I trudged back to the family room, got some soda and pretzels to settle my stomach and refill it a little, and went back to work. About 20 minutes later, I started feeling warm again; although I don't think I've ever had to go through more than 1 round of throwing up in my entire life, I instinctively grasped that Round 2 was starting in a few seconds, and scrambled for the bathroom. I don't know what was more of a shock, that I was vomiting again or that I was vomiting through my NOSE again... I sure hope this isn't aging-related (an online search turned up virtually no mention of this phenomenon, so I have no idea what's behind it), because I do NOT want this to be how it works for the rest of my life. Scarily, the force and amount of what was being expelled was even worse than the 1st time; in what will probably stand out as the single greatest incident of dark humor in my entire life, I realized that I probably resembled comedian Larry the Cable Guy in the episode of "Blue Collar TV" where he went to the "gravy spa" and had the "gravy enema," which was what looked like a fire hose stuck up his rear end that was supposed to be pumping gravy into him in such vast quantities that it started spurting out of his mouth in a wide brown stream (even in a skit whose unmistakable purpose was to go for the gross-out laugh they didn't think to have anything coming out of his NOSE, though, sigh).
Once I'd finished retching and cleaning up, I struggled strengthlessly to my feet and began groping my way to the door of my husband's study; my voice was low and hoarse (presumably because my throat was too traumatized to work properly), but I eventually managed to wake him and make clear that he had to get up because I was seriously sick... and once he did, it became obvious that HE was sick too, although nowhere near as sick as I was (despite the fact that he ate all of his salad and I only had half of mine-I must have just gotten more of whatever it was that was contaminated). Our horrific 1st night of joint food poisoning had begun.
We went through endless bouts of barfing and diarrhea, with mine staying far worse than his; I soon got to the point where all I had coming out was the water I was drinking as steadily as I could manage (to prevent becoming dangerously dehydrated)... have you ever had what I guess you'd still have to technically call diarrhea and not been able to see anything in the bowl because you're out of food, out of bile, and are literally just passing water? Even more terrifying was when NOTHING was coming out anymore, my body's fervent efforts notwithstanding; I'd plainly emptied my entire digestive tract, and despite my best efforts could feel myself dehydrating rapidly... if I hadn't managed to drink some water and then nap long enough to absorb part of it (before I woke up and threw the rest up) I'd have had to go to the emergency room and get started on an IV, because I'd become so ill that I could barely move, and was swinging between being so hot that sweat trickled down my sides to being so cold that my nails were blue.
My husband likes to isolate himself when he feels sick, but I was afraid that I'd vomit in my sleep or in a daze and choke to death, or end up comatose from dehydration, or spend hours calling for help and he wouldn't be able to hear me, so we sort of camped out on the bed, on top of the covers (with extra blankets to huddle under, of course) so that we could lunge for the bathroom without getting trapped for too many crucial seconds, and with the lights on (again to facilitate speedy bathroom access), and dozed as best as we could. When we were awake, we talked ramblingly about odd topics that'd probably have seemed deranged to other people... like how when I became president I'd make him call me Your Majesty, and his focus as "First Husband" would be putting computers in underprivileged schools and teaching kids how to use them. When one of us had to run to the restroom, upon return we gave the other person an intricate description of what had been disgorged (as I've often said, marriage is GROSS); when we were too weary to talk and too uncomfortable to sleep, we lay there and held hands.
Although taking pills can bother my stomach a bit even under the best of circumstances, I eventually had to take some Imodium to bring the nonstop peristalsis to a halt; I had to take a 2nd dose a little later, but that one did the trick, luckily, so that the precious water I was still doggedly consuming was only shooting back out in ONE direction. The funny thing was that my husband had bought the Imodium in error, when I made the mistake of letting him sort coupons unattended for 2 minutes and he'd decided that, although neither of us had used an anti-diarrheal in many years, he'd take a coupon for it and buy it... and in the 6 WEEKS since then had managed to consistently "forget" to return it. It's amazing how often his screwups end up being beneficial in unforeseen ways, and it cheered him in his misery to see that it had worked out that way yet again.
Wednesday we did alot of sleeping and water-drinking; we didn't eat much, but nothing much was coming out, either, so it wasn't nearly as bad as the previous night. When I was awake, I was assaulted by the noises coming from my abdomen as my emptied-out and bile-less digestive system tried to readjust to having something in it for more than 30 seconds; it sounded like a demonic being was going nuts in there, and was so loud that it could be heard clearly in the next room. I felt strong enough by late afternoon to wend my way through the various segments of the local health department's system to report the food poisoning; not only did they not have anyone available to take my call, but they never called me back... I'll have a few choice words to say to them on Monday for blowing off the report of what's obviously a bug that's dangerous even to healthy adults, and possibly deadly to old folks and kids.
Thursday I felt better... and so of course did too much trying to catch up, tired myself out and thus felt worse today. I'm still so dehydrated that I have to constantly guzzle water, and haven't been able to eat anything more challenging than soup; my husband is eating more normally, but far less than usual... we're both going to end up a few pounds thinner from all this. We're not quite squared away in the excretory department, either; we've long since stopped vomiting, but he's still having low-key runs, and when the Imodium that I took late Tuesday/early Wednesday petered out today... imagine what a goldfish bowl looks like just after you feed the fish. We're both going to take it VERY easy this weekend, and hopefully that'll get us back to feeling normal; I'm betting that it'll take a while longer to get back to our usual diets, but a week or 2 without eating garbage won't kill us.
And all this because it seemed so virtuous to have salads for dinner; the next time anyone asks why we don't eat healthier, I'm gonna tell them this story.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
2 updates and some food news
Long-term readers might be puzzled as to why it's been so long since I said anything about my mother (who has stage 3 breast cancer); the main reason is that we had no contact for almost 2 months, which is typical for us and hasn't changed since she was diagnosed. I'd last spoken to her the day before she went to the doctor to get her radiation treatments set up and went back to work (after being off for 6 weeks due to the surgery in which they removed the tumor), and she repeatedly said that she'd call me the next day to give me the news; never one to consider keeping her word to family members to be necessary, and not needing rides for the radiation as she had for the chemo, she blew me off instead... and if I hadn't had to talk to her about a family matter, we STILL wouldn't have spoken. (Why didn't I call her during the preceding months? Because I don't reward people for spitting in my face by running after them-I'm funny that way.)
Anyways: She's been having radiation 5 days a week during the intervening time. Her skin got all burned, and, although this is standard, they didn't have the cream for it available to give to her, and she had to pay for it out of pocket ($85 for a tiny tube) and then fight the HMO protractedly until they admitted that maybe they SHOULD be paying for this absolutely essential item; she's still fighting to get them to pay her back for the 1st tube, weeks later... she's like me x10, though, and she'll force it out of them eventually. Her last treatment was today, so now she's just going to be glopping on the cream and waiting for her skin to recover (it's CRACKED now too), and periodically seeing a doctor to monitor the progress of that issue and the "surgery area"; yes, over 3 months later she's STILL not fully recovered... she still has bruising, swelling, and soreness, and is still wearing the post-surgical support garment (a bra wouldn't hold the breast immobile). When they say that elderly people don't recover from surgery as fast as younger folks, they're not kidding; almost as hard as the slow recovery for my mother, as a woman, is that the breast that was operated on is quite a bit smaller than the other one now, and she can't pad that side until she can wear regular bras again... she's very self-conscious, and is wearing loose layers to try to conceal it. She's not going to have any reconstructive surgery, so the sunken, scarred part of her chest will always look that way; she's going to have to get rid of any shirt that doesn't cover that area completely. When she gets too bummed about being permanently disfigured, I say something like "So I guess you'll have to give up your plans to start a career in pole-dancing?" and she finds that endlessly amusing; we're an odd family.
Thank you, again, to those of you who've been sending my mother your prayers and good thoughts; it's greatly appreciated.
The other update is for my previous post; I wasn't expecting to have to say anything else about the topic, but the phone company's behavior has been so outrageous that I feel compelled to comment:
When we left off, I'd been scheduled to receive a phone call from a supervisor, who I intended to regale with the numerous problems I'd encountered with their bug-filled voice-activated system and inept so-called customer service people, especially the one who'd lied to my husband about having arranged for a tech to come and fix our dead phone line (which DID get fixed on Friday via the appointment *I* set up, luckily); it probably won't surprise you much to hear that the promised call never happened. When another business day had passed and still no call, I gritted my teeth and called THEM; it took me nearly half an hour to reach a human being, most of that time on hold but part of it struggling with the voice system, which threw a new curve at me... it claimed that if I said "agent" it'd transfer me to one, but naturally refused to recognize that word any of the 200 times I used it.
The 1st person I spoke to was a well-meaning lady who took down my entire story; she passed me up the ladder to a supervisor (the claim of the last guy I'd spoken to that supervisors aren't available upon request was apparently a lie, as were several other things he told me, it turns out, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr), and she also took my entire story before passing me up the ladder to the next highest level, where ANOTHER nice lady took my entire story and, since even SHE had no power to research much less take action on any of the issues (have you ever heard of such worthless tiers of management?), she put me on hold while she tracked down someone on the next level up, and he... no, this has gotta be a paragraph unto itself:
The "gentleman" at the highest level of management my persistence was able to reach declined to speak to me directly; he made the poor woman who'd found him for me pass messages from him on one line to me on another... what is he, ROYALTY? He'd been given the entire story, and his response to hearing about all I'd been through, all the lies and screw-ups of his employees, all the failures of his system, and the many hours I'd spent on the phone to his company on 2 different days, giving my story in detail to a whole slew of agents, was... I experienced this but I still can't believe it... that I had to write a LETTER with a description of the problems and mail it to the corporate headquarters before any action would be taken. A LETTER. Half the frigging employees of that company have written lengthy depictions of the events I endured in my file, but *I* have to write it down and MAIL it to them? Oh REALLY?!! Not being an idiot, I knew that they'd never admit to having gotten any such letter if it was sent to them, much less instigate an investigation in reference to it; the manager's instructions translated approximately to, "f*ck off."
I didn't expect anything dramatic to result from my lodging complaints, but even the managers at the least customer-friendly corporations have always previously shown some shred of interest in ameliorating the most egregious problems with their staff and computers; this refusal to even speak to me directly much less take action, coupled with the inexcusable BS about a LETTER, constitutes an all-time low for the telecommunications industry.
And now for the good news from the fast-food front; Jack in the Box has introduced an AMAZING new burger called "the House Burger," which the flier we got in the mail didn't even do justice to... it's not like the usual disappointing thing where the beautiful burger in the ad turns out to have half the toppings in real life. This burger is HUGE, not just thick but WIDE; the box it comes in is twice the size of the usual burger box. They give you an unheard-of choice of which ingredients go on it; you start out by deciding if you want just a cheeseburger or a bacon cheeseburger, then you choose the type of cheese (American, cheddar or REAL Swiss) AND what kind of onions you want (red or grilled)... and then they bring in a wheelbarrow full of stuff and make your burger.
The bun's one of those fancy ones; I don't know what to call it... it's vaguely yellowish. The secret sauce AND the meat had little flecks in them, so clearly they're both seasoned with real herbs, which is unusual, especially for the latter. You get 2 slices each of cheese and tomato, and plenty of lettuce. Surprisingly, they put on lots of good-looking bacon, not the couple of scrawny strips you usually get, and, instead of the tiny quarter-sized pickle slices normally found on burgers, they had the big lengthwise slices... which were NOT mushy like fast food pickles generally are. I got the red onion, and there was so much that I pulled off 2/3 of it and gave it to my husband. He was going to some noxious punk show, and commented that it was a bad time to have onion breath; I pointed out that that paled beside what would happen once he started digesting the onions... he was gonna have the entire mosh pit to himself, lol.
Once I'd gotten the remaining onion evenly redistributed, most of the sauce scraped off (it was good, but I don't like too wet of a burger), and all the toppings neatly lined up over the patty and not protruding past it (anal, yes, I know), I gazed down at my enormous burger, trying to figure out how to hold it all together and compress it enough to fit into my mouth; at that point, my husband returned to the room in a cloud of onion, and:
Me: It's so BIG.
Him: I've waited many years to hear you say that to me.
Me: LOL!! That's going in tonight's blog entry.
Him: Uh, ok, lol.
Levity aside, it's a top-notch burger; give it a try sometime when you're REALLY hungry.
Anyways: She's been having radiation 5 days a week during the intervening time. Her skin got all burned, and, although this is standard, they didn't have the cream for it available to give to her, and she had to pay for it out of pocket ($85 for a tiny tube) and then fight the HMO protractedly until they admitted that maybe they SHOULD be paying for this absolutely essential item; she's still fighting to get them to pay her back for the 1st tube, weeks later... she's like me x10, though, and she'll force it out of them eventually. Her last treatment was today, so now she's just going to be glopping on the cream and waiting for her skin to recover (it's CRACKED now too), and periodically seeing a doctor to monitor the progress of that issue and the "surgery area"; yes, over 3 months later she's STILL not fully recovered... she still has bruising, swelling, and soreness, and is still wearing the post-surgical support garment (a bra wouldn't hold the breast immobile). When they say that elderly people don't recover from surgery as fast as younger folks, they're not kidding; almost as hard as the slow recovery for my mother, as a woman, is that the breast that was operated on is quite a bit smaller than the other one now, and she can't pad that side until she can wear regular bras again... she's very self-conscious, and is wearing loose layers to try to conceal it. She's not going to have any reconstructive surgery, so the sunken, scarred part of her chest will always look that way; she's going to have to get rid of any shirt that doesn't cover that area completely. When she gets too bummed about being permanently disfigured, I say something like "So I guess you'll have to give up your plans to start a career in pole-dancing?" and she finds that endlessly amusing; we're an odd family.
Thank you, again, to those of you who've been sending my mother your prayers and good thoughts; it's greatly appreciated.
The other update is for my previous post; I wasn't expecting to have to say anything else about the topic, but the phone company's behavior has been so outrageous that I feel compelled to comment:
When we left off, I'd been scheduled to receive a phone call from a supervisor, who I intended to regale with the numerous problems I'd encountered with their bug-filled voice-activated system and inept so-called customer service people, especially the one who'd lied to my husband about having arranged for a tech to come and fix our dead phone line (which DID get fixed on Friday via the appointment *I* set up, luckily); it probably won't surprise you much to hear that the promised call never happened. When another business day had passed and still no call, I gritted my teeth and called THEM; it took me nearly half an hour to reach a human being, most of that time on hold but part of it struggling with the voice system, which threw a new curve at me... it claimed that if I said "agent" it'd transfer me to one, but naturally refused to recognize that word any of the 200 times I used it.
The 1st person I spoke to was a well-meaning lady who took down my entire story; she passed me up the ladder to a supervisor (the claim of the last guy I'd spoken to that supervisors aren't available upon request was apparently a lie, as were several other things he told me, it turns out, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr), and she also took my entire story before passing me up the ladder to the next highest level, where ANOTHER nice lady took my entire story and, since even SHE had no power to research much less take action on any of the issues (have you ever heard of such worthless tiers of management?), she put me on hold while she tracked down someone on the next level up, and he... no, this has gotta be a paragraph unto itself:
The "gentleman" at the highest level of management my persistence was able to reach declined to speak to me directly; he made the poor woman who'd found him for me pass messages from him on one line to me on another... what is he, ROYALTY? He'd been given the entire story, and his response to hearing about all I'd been through, all the lies and screw-ups of his employees, all the failures of his system, and the many hours I'd spent on the phone to his company on 2 different days, giving my story in detail to a whole slew of agents, was... I experienced this but I still can't believe it... that I had to write a LETTER with a description of the problems and mail it to the corporate headquarters before any action would be taken. A LETTER. Half the frigging employees of that company have written lengthy depictions of the events I endured in my file, but *I* have to write it down and MAIL it to them? Oh REALLY?!! Not being an idiot, I knew that they'd never admit to having gotten any such letter if it was sent to them, much less instigate an investigation in reference to it; the manager's instructions translated approximately to, "f*ck off."
I didn't expect anything dramatic to result from my lodging complaints, but even the managers at the least customer-friendly corporations have always previously shown some shred of interest in ameliorating the most egregious problems with their staff and computers; this refusal to even speak to me directly much less take action, coupled with the inexcusable BS about a LETTER, constitutes an all-time low for the telecommunications industry.
And now for the good news from the fast-food front; Jack in the Box has introduced an AMAZING new burger called "the House Burger," which the flier we got in the mail didn't even do justice to... it's not like the usual disappointing thing where the beautiful burger in the ad turns out to have half the toppings in real life. This burger is HUGE, not just thick but WIDE; the box it comes in is twice the size of the usual burger box. They give you an unheard-of choice of which ingredients go on it; you start out by deciding if you want just a cheeseburger or a bacon cheeseburger, then you choose the type of cheese (American, cheddar or REAL Swiss) AND what kind of onions you want (red or grilled)... and then they bring in a wheelbarrow full of stuff and make your burger.
The bun's one of those fancy ones; I don't know what to call it... it's vaguely yellowish. The secret sauce AND the meat had little flecks in them, so clearly they're both seasoned with real herbs, which is unusual, especially for the latter. You get 2 slices each of cheese and tomato, and plenty of lettuce. Surprisingly, they put on lots of good-looking bacon, not the couple of scrawny strips you usually get, and, instead of the tiny quarter-sized pickle slices normally found on burgers, they had the big lengthwise slices... which were NOT mushy like fast food pickles generally are. I got the red onion, and there was so much that I pulled off 2/3 of it and gave it to my husband. He was going to some noxious punk show, and commented that it was a bad time to have onion breath; I pointed out that that paled beside what would happen once he started digesting the onions... he was gonna have the entire mosh pit to himself, lol.
Once I'd gotten the remaining onion evenly redistributed, most of the sauce scraped off (it was good, but I don't like too wet of a burger), and all the toppings neatly lined up over the patty and not protruding past it (anal, yes, I know), I gazed down at my enormous burger, trying to figure out how to hold it all together and compress it enough to fit into my mouth; at that point, my husband returned to the room in a cloud of onion, and:
Me: It's so BIG.
Him: I've waited many years to hear you say that to me.
Me: LOL!! That's going in tonight's blog entry.
Him: Uh, ok, lol.
Levity aside, it's a top-notch burger; give it a try sometime when you're REALLY hungry.
