Category Archives: Health

Better living through chemistry…

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Thursday and Friday were basically filled with spending quality time at the doctor’s office. The complete physical exam and stress test are clearly two of the most devious methods of torture ever devised by the minds of men. It’s hard to look casual when you’re wearing one of these little hospital gown thingies.

With the exception of some slightly elevated blood pressure, I am pleased to report that I am in good health and strong as a bull moose. I’ll tear your shit up on that treadmill, yo!

So now in addition to my beloved Nexium that is working to keep my stomach from escaping through my mouth, I’ve added a dose of Micardis to my daily regimen in an effort to bring my blood pressure into something approaching the “normal” range. We’ll check back in a month and see how that’s all working out. Incidentally, I love that my new doctor is a pill pusher. No fuss. No muss. Treat the symptoms and move on. Finally, a doctor I think I can work with.

Remember that time I bitched about taking too much time off?

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Yeah, I don’t usually bitch about that. I’m a lot of things, including a bit of a workaholic, but I’m a firm believer in using your leave instead of giving it back at the end of the year. I took a day of sick leave on Monday quite frankly because I didn’t get home until 1-somethhing in the morning and the 0530 wake-up call just wasn’t going to happen. Today I took off at 1:00 to go to a doctor’s appointment. Friday I’m taking leave so I can meet some repair people at the house. Next Thursday, I’m scheduled for a dentist appointment in the morning and a stress test in the afternoon. Friday I’m scheduled for a physical first thing in the morning. It’s all just ri-goddamn-diculous. What I want to do is go to work so I have a chance in hell of catching up from all the time I’ve spent on the road in the last month. Plus, I have to get up at 6:00 in the morning on a Friday so someone can play with my twig and berries, stick a finger up my ass, and not even get laid in the deal.

So yeah, this is why I avoid doctors like the plague. Once you see one, it’s like a never-ending cavalcade of office calls and follow-ups. There is always one more test, one more specialist, or just a few more minutes on the devil’s treadmill.

All I want to do is go to work and be left alone. Is that such a crime?

A funny thing happened on the way to the emergency room…

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OK, well maybe it wasn’t so much a funny thing as a ridiculously painful thing. After putzing around the yard most of the afternoon and busying myself shoving furniture around the living room, I noticed a dull ache that seemed to be centered around the bottom of my sternum. No big deal, thought I… I probably just pulled something heaving the couch into its new position. Grabbing a cold beverage and Tylenol, I started making dinner. Well, that lasted about 15 minutes before the pain started moving up and across my chest. Now, I’m not a fancy big city doctor, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this isn’t a good thing. After putting it off another ten or fifteen minutes, I knew it was time to go.

Having a bit of a “typical man” streak, I loaded the address of the local emergency room into my Garmin and set off. I certainly wasn’t in enough pain to justify calling an ambulance… Yet. It’s a quick drive to the ER, especially on a Sunday night, but when the waves of nausea set in, a 5 mile drive seems like it takes hours. Every stop light becomes a personal affront to my sense of order and well being. By this point, I really feel an overwhelming need to toss my cookies. Drawing up a reserve of determination not to spew all over my car’s interior, I drove on. By the time I get to the hospital, I was feeling more or less like someone was busy sticking me in the chest with an ice pick. It’s absolutely as much fun as it sounds.

After five hours of poking, prodding, having blood drawn, getting chest x-rays, EKGs, and meeting with 2 ER doctors, they decided that what I actually had was a bad case of acid reflux. There must be something to their diagnosis, as after giving me some ass-tasting meds and filling a prescription for Nexium, I was feeling much better. Although I’m feeling better and enjoying the unexpected day away from the office, now annoyed at the thought of what’s going to be a ridiculously large bill for a case of heartburn. I’m even more annoyed that I have to take more time off tomorrow to go visit my new “primary care” doc, who I was conveniently referred to by his friend running the ER. He’s supposed to be a specialist in stomach stuff and one of his partners is apparently a hot shot cardiac guy… so two birds with one stone, I suppose.

Flock of Seagulls…

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I was feeling fine when I went to bed last night, but woke up around 3:30 with a cough and sinus stuff going on. All very unpleasant. Even more unpleasant, of course, is that once I’m awake, the chances of actually going back to sleep hover between slim and none. So, reaching for the book I have been working on, I decided to prop myself up with a cup of coffee and read a bit. I don’t get the uninterrupted time to read that I use to, so I am still plowing through Castles of Steel, a really well-written analysis of British versus German fleet action during World War I.

Apparently, during the Great War, the Brits were working on a program that was supposed to train seagulls to poo on U-boat periscopes, preventing them from making torpedo attacks on commercial vessels making the run between England and the Americas. I’ve been working in government for a while now and we hear a lot of dumb ideas, but I’m having a hard time figuring out how someone could walk into a room of senior admirals of what was then the world’s most well-respected navy and recommend that enemy submarines could be defeated by having a flock of seagulls drop a duce right on their eyepiece. I haven’t decided if that was wishful thinking or just plain disturbing.

Oh, and for the record, I think I’ll be staying home today. I’m a half-dozen pages into Jutland and want to see how it turns out… well, that and every time I move my head I can actually feel my brain banging around. Sinus pressure blows.