| medical question |
[Jun. 3rd, 2008|02:45 pm] |
What would you eat if you were told to stick to "soft" foods?
All I can think of is soup and yogurt. |
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| ramblin' ramblin' man |
[May. 7th, 2008|09:02 am] |
Two out of two medical professionals think ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) the_siobhan's current meat-suit is potentially salvagable. I rate that as a good day.
So to sum up; stomach issues sorted, skeletal issues sorted, respiratory and mouth issues in progress. Next thing on my check-list is to find out why my eyesight is suddenly deteriorating[1].
You know what else they don't tell you about getting older? The fact that it's so damn time-consuming.
[1]Oddly enough, I can view the prospect of going blind with a lot more equanimity that I can losing my teeth. I've been told by doctors that I would eventually lose most or all of my vision[2] since I was in my teens.
[2]Although in all probability, all I really need is bi-focals. |
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| radio-free vestibule |
[May. 6th, 2008|01:36 pm] |
It's been radio-silence around here lately, I know. Mostly because my CPU has been caught up with a bunch of pretty heavy real-life stuff that's going on. Nothing I can do about any of it, but it's keeping me kind of preoccupied.
I do have some good news to share. I got the referral I wanted to an asthma specialist. Two weeks ago I went for pulmonary testing; which consists of sitting in a pressurized Plexiglas box and breathing through a tube. It was utterly fascinating. Today I got to meet the respirologist, and I love her. She is incredibly thorough, listens carefully to everything that is said to her, and has the_axel's trick of explaining absolutely everything three different times in three different ways to make sure I completely understand it. (Unlike with the_axel, however, I didn't poke her in the nose to make her stop.)
Her first recommendation is that I go for something that is called something like an "induction test" if I'm remembering it correctly. Basically they will make me have an asthma attack in the lab so they can see what happens. Does it make me weird that I am really looking forward to this? Scientific experiment with me as the guinea pig. Fascinating.
Observation: Mount Siani Hospital has a "Sabbat Elevator". I don't know why that didn't occur to me before I actually spotted it, but it didn't.
For my next trick I go see the periodontist in a couple of hours. I probably won't want to talk about it unless the news is good. |
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| ugh |
[Apr. 28th, 2008|10:33 pm] |
I have the plague
Again.
Well, at least that explains why I pooped out early on Saturday. |
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| request for assistance |
[Apr. 3rd, 2008|09:45 pm] |
This request is specifically directed to those people on my f-list who are trying to lose weight, especially any who are doing so by calorie-counting.
Could you please take me off the filter for those particular posts, or else put the details behind a cut-tag?
Due to some other stresses in my life, the annoying 20-year-old in my head who thinks vodka and speed are the only two essential food groups has made her re-appearance in her special slot in the DMZ part of my brain. Just recently she's started actually sounding kind of convincing. I very much want to cut off that shit at the knees, because a 45 year-old with an eating disorder is just fucking embarrassing, thanks.
This isn't meant to single anybody out. It's my issue, I'm just asking for some help with it.
In slightly more positive news, today I got notification of my first date with a respirologist. We are about to become very close. Asthma can suck my dick.
[EDIT] FYI, other health related or exercise related posts are fine. My ED issues are specifically around calorie-counting and limiting food. |
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| ... and also for Ass, as in the feeling like |
[Mar. 12th, 2008|06:47 pm] |
Ever had one of those illnesses where you spent the night with one end in the toilet bowl and the other end in a bucket?
Blows, don't it? |
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| an unexpected victory |
[Feb. 16th, 2008|09:32 am] |
I've had the killer cold from hell since last weekend. I actually thought I was getting better on Thursday but no, it was just lulling me into a false sense of security so it could come back with renewed viciousness. My throat feels like I lost four rounds with a cheese-grater. I'm coughing so hard in my sleep that I'm waking up with a headache. And to add insult to injury I have the worst and ugliest case of conjunctivitis I've ever seen. Seriously my eye looks like I'm going to start weeping blood any second now.
So this is the condition I was in when I went for my follow-up gastroscopy yesterday. I didn't get the entertaining assistants this time but it's just as well, I really wasn't in the mood for joking around.
When they were done with me they woke me up and led me into a tiny room with an armchair where I could relax and gradually shake off the anaesthetic. My throat, already sore from the coughing, was rubbed completely raw by the scope. I'd also managed to drool enough to soak almost the entire left side of my tshirt.
Finally the doctor came in to see me and let me know that I could go. Oh, and the Barrett's I was diagnosed with last year? Gone.
...
Gone? What do you mean gone?
Yep, gone. Just like that. The mutant burned cells have been replaced with pink healthy new growth.
Oh, I'll have to keep an eye on it to make sure there are no future problems, but still. It just... grew back. I didn't even know it could do that.
Kind of makes the cold seem a whole lot more tolerable.
Now if I could just stop with the damn coughing already. |
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| yet more random |
[Dec. 21st, 2007|12:21 pm] |
Is there such a thing as being the opposite of feverish? |
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| i hate the way you eat your toast |
[Dec. 7th, 2007|01:00 pm] |
One of these days I'm going to get up in the morning and my head is just going to break right off my neck and roll under the bed.
And on that day I will still have to jam it back on my fucking shoulders dust bunnies and all, wash the dishes, help somebody find his keys, organize a home repair and get dinged for being 10 minutes late for fucking work. |
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| things that make you go hrmm |
[Nov. 14th, 2007|09:50 am] |
The week before I left for Haiti I was waking up in the middle of the night with pain so bad that had I not known what was going on, I would have been convinced I was having a heart attack.
It occurred to me a couple of days ago that along with the vast quantities of beans and rice, I ate an awful lot of bread when I was in Haiti - along with pancakes and white pasta.
I did not have one single stomach issue. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
There's obviously something else going on here. |
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| nobody here gets out alive |
[Oct. 27th, 2007|11:56 am] |
Christmas is less than two months away. That means that I will shortly be receiving my yearly bag of bath oils, lotions and perfumes.
I've done a reasonably good job of convincing the rest of my family to give up on the Christmas present thing, but my mother is the last hold-out. I suspect she always will be. And every year she gives all of her daughters a huge bag full of toiletries, just "a little something" that she managed to accumulate over the course of the year. A lot of them are freebies that she gets as rewards for spending a not-inconsiderable chunk of change on her own supply of lotions, oils, make-up and aesthetically-shaped bath beads designed solely to sit in a ornate bowl on the back of the toilet. (One area where I am decidedly Not A Girl. The back of the toilet is where I keep reading material and extra toilet paper. It would never occur to me that it's proper role is to support bowls of sea shells and coloured bath beads.)
So anyway, every year I get a bag of all this stuff. I give away anything I'm actively allergic to, add the make-up to the rest of the stock that's sitting around and collecting dust and sometimes get around to using the rest. I do tend to make good use a lot of lotions because I have chronic dry skin so I'm always slathering myself with stuff designed to keep my outside bits fully functional in their role of keeping my inside bits where they belong. So it's not like her gifts go completely unappreciated.
Except that in the last couple of years she's started throwing in wrinkle cream.
And I gotta' tell yah, I am entirely not sure how to take that.
It just so happens that in the last couple of months we've been digging through the clutter in our house and I stumbled across these little vials in tastefully subdued colours proclaiming their Regenerative, Hydrating, Age-Defying, Gravity-Defying properties. And I figured, what the hell?
At first I eyed them suspiciously. In what way exactly, would they serve to beautify my wrinkles? Make them plumper, fuller and longer? More shiny and conditioned? Cover them with glitter? (I have to admit, the gravity-defying part sure sounded like a hell of a lot of fun.)
I was somewhat mollified when I opened them up to discover they were pretty much just really small really expensive containers of skin cream. OK, not much threatening about that. I rubbed a little around my eyes and examined my face in the mirror. Looked exactly the same to me. I waited hopefully but I showed no signs of levitation so I pretty much shrugged my shoulders, tossed the vial on the counter and went about my day.
Those little vials stayed on the counter and every once in a while I would remember they were there and rub a little more of the glop into my face.
And I started noticing something.
I have wrinkles.
For the first time in my life I was bellying up to the mirror and taking a really close look at the skin on the parts of my face that move when I laugh or cry or have any expression at all. I wasn't looking at my face. I was looking at those little lines and crinkles and the closer I looked at them the larger they loomed.
And I stepped back from the mirror, took all those little vials of coloured creamy crap and dropped them all straight into the trash.
That was about a week ago. And it occurred to me this morning that maybe that stuff really does work.
After all, I haven't seen a wrinkle since. |
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| notes to self |
[Oct. 24th, 2007|06:41 pm] |
If you are gargling and then blow your nose at the same time, mouthwash gets forced into your sinuses.
Motherfucking ow! |
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| !!! |
[Sep. 21st, 2007|10:10 am] |
IT WORKED!!!
And then I spilled coffee all over the floor. Good thing I never claimed it was the dizziness that made me a klutz. |
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| ... |
[Sep. 21st, 2007|10:08 am] |
...and... |
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| ... |
[Sep. 21st, 2007|10:03 am] |
... and ... |
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| it's the moment of truth |
[Sep. 21st, 2007|10:01 am] |
I am about to tilt my head. |
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| which way is up? |
[Sep. 20th, 2007|01:59 pm] |
Holy crap am I tired.
Yesterday I went to get my vertigo sorted out - an exercise that basically consisted of my chiropractor rolling me around on a table to try and guide out whatever is bumping around in my ear canal. I'm not sure if it worked because the only way to tell is to tilt my head and see if I get dizzy - and I'm not allowed to do that for 48 hours.
So I had to sleep sitting up last night. Axel tucked me onto the couch with various pillows and blankets wedging me into place and I spent the night drifting in and out of a half-awake half-dreaming state that never completely resolved into sleep. Today I'm tripping over my own feet.
So far I'm doing ok with putting on shoes and navigating stairs. The worst part is not being able to look down at the toilet seat in the public bathrooms at work. The women who work here are nasty. |
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| you know where I bet would be the worst place to have a heart attack? during a game of charades. |
[Sep. 15th, 2007|01:20 pm] |
Anybody who spends any time hanging out with me knows that I am brutally allergic to cigarettes. Over the last ten years my allergy and my asthma has gotten to the point where I can't be near the stuff at all - even the stale smoke coming off the clothes of somebody I'm sitting next to can have my lungs contracting in protest.
But I don't react nearly as strongly to pipe or cigarette smoke. If I get it blown in face I get about the same amount of a reaction as I would to getting a face full of street dust. In fact I've smoked the odd cigar and enjoyed it. Which leads me to believe that I'm not actually allergic to tobacco, but to something in the curing process or additives that are specific to cigarettes.
A few years ago there was an anti-smoking ad that showed a couple of teenagers diving into an oily-looking pool while a text-over listed all the toxic ingredients that are found in cigarettes. Tar. Formaldehyde. Ammonia. Now I don't know how many of those things are also found in other tobacco products or are just a by-product of burning leaves and twigs and bug-poo and sucking them into your lungs, but it's a well-known fact that cigarette manufacturers add all kinds of glop specifically intended to make the things more addictive.
And I gotta wonder, why do we let them?
Everybody knows quitting smoking is hard, whether you've actually ever smoked or not. At this point I think I've still known more people who have successfully quite heroin or cocaine than I've know people who have successfully quit smoking, and it's not like I've spent a lot of time hanging around with illegal drug users in the last decade. Yet we still allow manufactures to lace their product with toxic chemicals that are specifically designed to make it harder.
Given the amount of money that we fork over through our taxes on health care, wouldn't it make more sense to tell the cigarette companies to knock that shit off and stop trying to poison us?
And maybe if they did I'd be able to sit next to my friends on a bar patio again. |
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| 26 reds and a bottle of wine |
[Sep. 14th, 2007|10:00 pm] |
Thanks to everybody for the recipes, links and advice, btw. I'm still a bit overwhelmed, but it is useful and I will look at everything that gets sent to me.
Good thing number one! This is day five of no grains whatsoever and I have had zero problems with my stomach since day two. Even after polishing off a full bottle of red wine last night. My diet has otherwise been pretty crappy this week, so if I had any doubts about the source of my problem they are pretty much settled now.
Good thing number two! I happened to be in a bulk/health food store this morning and I discovered that they carry pasta made out of soybean, rice and quinoa flour. Score.
Good thing number three! I spoke to my chiro today and she thinks she can fix the dizziness problem. She tilted my head around in different directions and told me I have something called Benign Positional Vertigo. She could have done it right there but she wants me to have somebody to spot me when I leave as apparently the immediate after-affects of having one's orientation adjusted can be a bit rough. I'm crossing my fingers this will do the trick. |
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| i got the poison, i got the remedy |
[Sep. 13th, 2007|02:30 pm] |
This is me stressing about my meat stuffs again, so hit the downspace key right now if you're tired of it.
One of the instructions that seems to be pretty much universal for dealing with my acid reflux issue is to eat more frequent and much smaller meals. Which I've been trying to do, while working around the fact that the breaks at work aren't really long enough to do much more than grab a coffee and skate back up to my desk.
The problem with this is that to deal with my teeth issue I have to spend 10 minutes cleaning up my mouth every single time I eat or drink anything other than water, no exceptions. This has resulted me having oh, at minimum about an extra hour a day devoted specifically to the task of how I feed myself.
Add that to the fact that I'm trying to avoid grains this week as part of my "figure out how to make at least one of my physical problems just go the fuck away and stop pestering me" strategy and yesterday I didn't eat breakfast at all. I honestly just could not come up with one single thing that I wanted to eat badly enough to have to deal with doing all that scrubbing and flossing and rinsing afterwards.
As you could probably have predicted, physical issues are turning into enough of a resource hog that they are starting to leak heavily over into the realm of mental issues. This whole situation is twigging my eating disorder Stuff like you would Not. Fucking. Believe. And I'm not kidding, my main defense? My full-blown anorexia was in 1985-86, so I keep visualizing going back there by picturing myself in leg-warmers and headbands and teased bangs.
So what I am essentially communicating to you all is that the knowledge that a 45 year-old women would look like a complete 'tard in leg-warmers is the only thing that stands between me and bugfuck crazy.
This is one of those situations where I'm honestly not sure which is worse, the disease or the cure. |
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