• Welcome to the Contour Enthusiasts Group, the best resource for the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique.

    You can register to join the community.

no happy new year thread?

We also just heard about a 98 Black/blue SVT for $3k, for sale by one of our mechanics in Concord, NH.
Mike can post more details about it in the morning.

You've always wanted an SVT, right? :D
 
No SVT. Never a Ford for a daily driver (and they wonder why they have poor sales right now .. they caused their past customers to leave forever and never look back). I don't have the driveway space, otherwise I'd be owning a CSVT right now as a weekend car. Again I need to figure out how bad the damage is and from there I'll decide what to do: fix the Maxima or start looking at cars in $15-17K range (Mazda6?) that will have a warranty. I have bad enough luck with cars in general that the warranty will more than well pay for itself in the few years.

Granted the Contour cost me less in repairs, but I was also not confident driving the car around since other things were unstable and little things started going a lot. Somehow the Maxima still invokes that confidence .. I'm still willing to drive it cross country without fear of breakdown. The suspension work is even just maintenance really (had the same stuff done to the Contour at ~70K miles). This is the reason I'm still considering repairing it.

Sorry for the topic hijack.

EDIT: Car isn't really drivable. The engine mount is almost, if not completely, detached from the radiator support. Being that I can't get any tradein value by towing a car to a dealer, I'll have this repaired and then begin to think about replacements (if appropriate). Bad pics, hard to get a camera in that exact location, but they give the gist of the problem. There is a gap in the plastic protective shielding right in front of this which I suspect had something to do with the excessive rust. You can see the gap in the first pic. First pic is a horizontal angle, second pic is down looking up (the point where mount meets support is slightly below where the lens shot).
 

Attachments

  • DSC01669 (Small).JPG
    DSC01669 (Small).JPG
    38 KB · Views: 0
  • DSC01666 (Small).JPG
    DSC01666 (Small).JPG
    20.7 KB · Views: 0
Last edited:
I went to see the specialist that my doctor referred me to today.

He said that by the looks of the inflamation the strep is clearing up. But the other source of agony is from an inflamed tonsil that resulted from the infection. As the doctor put it: my tonsil is pretty badly inflamed (tonsilitis). The nerves from the tonsil area run uphill where they meet up with and run next to the ear nerves. Becasue they run close to echother the signals can intermix slightly and confuse the brain as to which is actually carrying the message. Since its confused the brain just sends a signal to both the tonsil and the inner ear nerves, which activates the pain receptors in the tonsil and the ear, makes you ear ring like you just finished hearing loud noises and makes you feel dizzy.

His prognosis: the strep I had likely was not resistant to the first set of anti-biotics. The reason it got so bad is because the dosage of the first anti-biotics may not have been sufficent given my body weight to knock down the infection quickly. Now with different antibiotics and 800mg more per day I already feel much better just 24 hours after switching meds. The tonsilitis should clear up in a few days from the antibiotics.
 
That's really good news. I thought tonsilitis -> removal of tonsils. Was good to read the last two sentences of your post after thinking that!
 
I dont think it ends up that way anymore. Very rarely do they remove the tonsils. When I was sick with strep, if it that had gotten worse then they would have taken mine out. The tonsils area weak point in the throat and around that area it traps food particles and bacteria, so the strep just festures there and gets worse. thankfully, since then I haven't gotten strep. they told me the next time I get it the tonsils are comin out. Def dont want that to happen.

Thankfully I never got anyone sick, that I knew of, with strep. my family never got sick and I would not want them going through the same thing.

I am glad you are feeling better.
Dan
 
frenchblueC2 said:
We also just heard about a 98 Black/blue SVT for $3k, for sale by one of our mechanics in Concord, NH.
Mike can post more details about it in the morning.

You've always wanted an SVT, right? :D
Click to expand...

Yeah, the master mechanic at Concord Lincoln Mercury just picked i up to flip it. I'm betting he got it as a trade in. Employees can basically get them for trade in, that's what my dad has done a few times. He put new tires on it, and other than that it passed NH State Inspection. Its an E0 from what I gather and is black. It just turned 100,020 miles. I could go check it out for anyone interested.
 
Yeah they only seem to take tonsils out nowadays if you're getting frequent infections.
I used to get tonsilitis at least once a year. Knock on wood, I've been about 2 years free now.
I've only had strep once or twice as a kid, but it was much worse than tonsilitis.
I've gotten pretty good at seeing the warning signs early and lysterine-ing the hell out of it. Plus Advil Cold and Sinus - I swear that shiz is magic. :o
 
Well this morning I got a call from my doctor. The results of the blood test came back but the throat culture still hasn't come back yet. Now this is where the plot thickens.... I have mono.

That explains all the symptoms I've been having including the lack of appetite, fatigue and periodic muscle cramps which are not normally associated with strep. The fatigue, lack of appetite and muscle cramps I had been having for a week or so before the sore throat came on which leads me to believe that the mono may have been building up in my system for almost 2 weeks before I went to see my doctor (starting the week before the christmas holiday). The biggest thing that concerns me now is that a side effect of mono is an enlarged spleen which can rupture due to heavy exertion, strenous activity or receiving blows to the chest and upper abdomen. I'm feeling very foolish now becasue in the week or so before I saw my doctor when the symptoms were starting I was being very active at work with strenous activity. The week before christmas I spent 3 full days cutting fire wood from logs we took from a job cleaning up a fallen tree. The trunk was 24" diameter at the base and I was hand splitting the pieces I cut to 18" lengths to break them to more manageable 60 to 80 lb pieces before dead liftig them onto the log splitter. I did that for 3 days producing about 1.5 cords of split wood per day. I look back at it now and think to myself... if I had an enlarged spleen and ruptured it I could have killed myself.

Now my doctor told me to maintain light duty work for the next 5 weeks. As a self employeed landscaper there's not much heavy work to be done this time of year unless there is a snow storm. In which case I won't be lifting the 60lb snow blower in and out of the truck, carrying 80lb ice melt buckets around or shoveling snow like a madman. We do have a guy who will be helping us out with doing that work but without my help there's all the more work for him and all the longer it will take but it is what it is.

Until the restults of the throat culture comes back my doctor said to continue on the antibiotics. He is also going to call in a prescription for a 6 day treatment with prednisone (spelling) to help eliminate the inflamation of my tonsils and ease my pain.
 
frenchblueC2 said:
omg the kissing disease! hehe you pimp! ;)
Click to expand...

The next time I talk to Lira I need to tell her becasue I was starting to have the symptoms the last time I saw her before she went away so its possible that I could have passed it on. My doctor was telling me that mono has an incubation period of 5 to 60 days! depending mostly on the person.

Its mostly spead through direct contact through saliva and mucus (kissing) but can be trasmistted through shared drinking containers and utensils. It can also just be spread through coughing and even be spontaneous but that is very rare.

I'm just trying to figure out where I got it from. I started to feel the first faint symptoms the week following the last full weekend I saw Lira and that was the time when we went out to do some shopping at the mall near her and some other stores. Every store was so packed with people it was amazing and I'm thinking that maybe I got it from someone else who had it through the air.
 
Yeah, Mono sucks. I missed 2 weeks of college with it. I didn't really almost die, but it was unpleasant.
 
JSmith said:
Well this morning I got a call from my doctor. The results of the blood test came back but the throat culture still hasn't come back yet. Now this is where the plot thickens.... I have mono.
Click to expand...

Definitely take it easy, no over doing it! I hope you feel better soon!

I had mono in HS. By the time they figured it out it had been a few weeks after the symptoms started. I had started feeling better but the Doctor gave me a note to get out of gym class for 1 week to be safe, I changed the 1 to a 4. :laugh:
 
Cobra said:
Yeah, Mono sucks. I missed 2 weeks of college with it. I didn't really almost die, but it was unpleasant.
Click to expand...

well you had to go to the hospital and get an IV.
That's pretty bad in my book.
My older bro got it as a kid. He was skin and bones. It was gross.
 
One of my friends missed a few weeks of school freshman year due to mono as well. He spent nearly two weeks just curled up on a sofa or in bed at home, and ended up failing I think two classes because of the accelerated schedule. Sad to hear you've got it but at least you're on the recovering stage!!

As for the car, yeah seriously. It's only a 2000, but then again it is a very poor design since everything splashes right there.
 
I've lost some weight too. Moslty becasue my throat was so sore it was agony to eat anything so the only time I did eat was when I force fed myself when it was time to take an antibiotic pill. If I don't eat before taking the pill it messes up my stomach in a way that puts everything in the fast lane so to speak. Now I'm starting to feel a little better so I'm starting to have more of a normal appetite
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top