Universal Serial Bitching

Introduction and Greetings

[00:00:00 ]

Brett: Hey, you’re listening to Overtired. I am Brett Terpstra, and it’s just me and Christina Warren this morning. How you doing, Christina?

Christina: Doing pretty good. Doing pretty good. Yeah. This is the, this is the OG Overtired configuration.

Brett: right back to basics. Um,

Christina: We do miss you Jeff, though. Ho, ho, ho. Hope that Jeff is having a great holiday with his family.

Brett: we’ll have to have some, uh, gratuitous Wiki K hole that you go down just to, to commemorate the olden days. Um, so yeah, let’s, uh, let’s, let’s do a quick check-in.

Christina’s Health Update

Brett: Um, I’m curious about your health and all of the wildness that’s going on with your spine and whatnot.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Um, same. I wanna hear about you too. Um, so, uh, Christina’s cervical spine update, as it were. Um, I am [00:01:00 ] still waiting to, as we’re recording this, which is like. Uh, three days before Christmas, uh, I’m still waiting to hear from the, uh, hospital to see if I can, when I can get scheduled. Um, insurance has sort of been a pain in the ass, so when I talked to them last week, they were like, we sent them some paperwork.

We’re still waiting for some things back then. I called the insurance company and the, the, uh, like my insurance is like, has like an intermediary service that is supposed to contact the insurance company on your behalf and that person, but like, I can’t contact them directly. And then that person was like, oh, you don’t need pre-authorization.

Go ahead and schedule the surgery. And I’m like, this doesn’t feel right. Um, so, but, but we, we went ahead and we called back the, you know, the, the surgeon, um, his office and they were very nice and we were like. They say that we can get on the books. So I don’t know when that will be. I’m hoping that it will be, you know, like the first week of January, um, or, or, or thereabouts.

Um, but I don’t know. Um, [00:02:00 ] so I am still kind of in this like limbo stage where I don’t know exactly when I’m gonna have the surgery, except hopefully soon. And, um, and, and for anyone who hasn’t caught up, I, uh, I have a bulging disc on C seven on my cervical spine, and I’m going to get a, um, artificial disc replacement.

Um, so they’re gonna take out the, you know, bulging bone and all that and put in, uh, some synthetic piece and then hopefully that will immediately relieve the, the pain that has been primarily through the left side of, uh, my arm and my shoulder, um, uh, down through my fingers. But it’s been on my right side a little bit too.

So hopefully when that is done, it’ll be a relatively short recovery. Um, I’ll have an early scar and um, I will be, you know, not. Uh, the pain right now, like the levels aren’t terrible, but I’m pretty numb, uh, on my, my, my left arm, my, my right arm, um, uh, or right fingers I guess too, but, but really it’s, it’s, uh, the, the, the left side [00:03:00 ] that’s the worst.

And traveling. Um, I’m, I’m in Atlanta with my family right now and, you know, kind of doing other things is just not, it’s not great. So, um, hopefully I’ll be getting surgery sooner rather than later. But obviously all that stuff does impact your mental health too, when you’re in pain and, and you, you know, are freaked out too about, you know, like, even though like they do, you know, it, it’s not an uncommon surgery and, and it, and it should be fine, but you know, there’s always these things in the back of your mind.

You’re like, okay, well what if something goes wrong or whatever. So I’m just, I’m looking forward to, um, you know, light at the end of the tunnel, but um, still kind of in a holding pattern with that. So

Brett: Wow. So that scar’s, that scar’s gonna be on your throat.

Christina: Yeah,

Brett: Wow.

Christina: yeah. Like probably like. No, not really. I’m, I mean, I’m hoping that it’ll be, uh, like no, it really won’t be at all.

Brett: I, I, I would like to have it. I can understand why you wouldn’t.

Christina: yeah, I mean, you know, I will obviously, you know, uh, hopefully it’ll be like low enough to be [00:04:00 ] primarily covered by shirts or other things, although, who knows? ’cause I do like to wear like, lower cut things sometimes. I don’t know. It, it’ll hopefully, you

Brett: I heard chokers are coming back.

Christina: Yeah, I don’t, unfortunately. I think it’s gonna be too, uh, low for that.

Brett: Okay.

Christina: uh, like, it, it’s gonna be, I think like it might hit against my laryn is, is what they say. That’s the other thing too. I might have, you know, some hoarseness after, won’t we permanent? Um, you know, knock on wood.

Um,

Brett: go on Etsy, you can get, um, they’re for BDSM, they’re like neck, uh, they hold your chin up. They’re like posture enhancers. Uh, but they sell them within leather with like corset straps. ’cause they’re like A-B-D-S-M accessory. That would work.

Christina: No, no. Not even once. Uh, not even once. I mean, look, a good group of people who wanna do that, uh, I I will not be wearing a collar of any sort of that sort of thing. Uh, I, I, I don’t, I don’t really wanna, wanna be part [00:05:00 ] of, uh, one of that, those types of, you know, uh, Harlequin romance novels. ,

Brett’s Sleep and Work Routine

Brett: All right, well, I will go ahead and check in. Um, I, I’m sleeping really well for like two days at a time, and then I’ll have.

A string of like five or six hours of sleep, which isn’t nothing. Um, but it’s not quite enough