Health

Snakes for your pain

No, not snakes on a plane, snakes for your PAIN. I really cannot understand how this would be relaxing to anyone. [C]lients at Ada Barak’s spa in northern Israel can add a wild twist to their treatment by having six non-venomous but very lively serpents slither and hiss a path across their aching muscles and stiff joints …. [the treatments] were inspired by her belief that once people get over any initial misgivings, they find physical contact with the creatures to be soothing.

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3-month followup

I really haven’t felt much like writing lately, and I feel bad about that. Not because I’m suffering any delusions that I’m letting down the two of you that visit my blog on occasion; it’s more that I feel ashamed for not making myself suffer, powering through my creative block until something forces its way to the top. Art should hurt, shouldn’t it? If it wasn’t excruciating to produce, it doesn’t really count, right? Ugh. Work is kicking my butt, and my always-laid-back boss has said that the theme for April is going to be “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” I’m sensing much overtime in my immediate future. Brittney has inspired me to try and find silver linings in lemons (pardon my mixed metaphor, har-d-har), so I will say that being busy is much better than being bored, and that May is looking like it won’t be nearly as bad. Plus, my boss has hard-coded a happy hour into our schedule for the end of April, so there is that to look forward to. Today (squeamish warning: stop reading here) I had another sonogram, so my doctor could inspect my inner girly bits. It turns out that my right ovary is totally cyst-free, and my left one only has two small cysts, which are both well within the range of normal. Also, since I began hormonal birth control in January, my periods have been half as long and half as heavy (thank god!) and right on schedule. I wasn’t wild about taking The Pill, but I am feeling soooo much better (physically and mentally) that I guess it was probably the right thing to do.

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Breathing is a good thing

Doc had a sleep study performed last week. He went to a sleep clinic, got hooked up to a bunch of equipment (“all my tubes and wires!”), and did his best to have a crappy night’s sleep, as is the norm for him. Turns out that he stops breathing an average of 34 times per hour. Also, he rarely enters REM sleep. So now he has this nifty machine called a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) that gives him a constant stream of air that helps keep his nose and throat open while he sleeps. It’s pretty small and quiet (I can barely hear it) and he no longer snores. Wednesday morning I got out of the shower and found him awake, cleaning the bathroom sink, singing. Had they replaced my regular husband with Folger’s Crystals?! He remembered the dreams he’d had, which rarely happens, and he said he felt, and I quote, “pretty good,” which I don’t believe I have ever heard him say upon awakening. I have great expectations and high hopes for this treatment. I know it’s going to take a while for him to recover from years of exhaustion and sleep deprivation, but it’s looking good so far. And there’s no telling what kind of impact that it may have on other areas of his life. I text messaged him the other day with a CPAP smiley: :@)—[]

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One resolution resolved

I managed to complete one of my New Year’s resolutions, only four days into the year. Not bad, eh?! I went to an ob/gyn to talk about all the problems I’ve been having lately. (The squeamish should stop reading right here). I explained that I’ve been having approximately 2 periods per month since September. He did a sonogram (whee! what fun) and they discovered two things: 1) my IUD is situated incorrectly, and 2) my ovaries are riddled with cysts. Either or both of these things could be what has been causing my recent problems. The cysts are benign, and they do eventually disappear on their own, but new ones keep forming in me. Each one that disappears leaves behind a little scar tissue, and the scar tissue is almost always the site where ovarian cancer forms. And guess what kind of cancer runs strongly in my family? He was surprised that I have an IUD, since he said that normally they don’t put them in women who haven’t had babies because our uteruses (uteri?) are usually too small to properly hold them in place. That’s why mine shifted — inadequate uterus. He recommended that they pull out the IUD and put me back on birth control pills. I wasn’t wild about this idea because the whole reason that I got an IUD in the first place was so I wouldn’t have to take hormone supplements every day of my life. He explained that the IUD was very likely CAUSING the cysts in the first place, and also that birth control pills have been shown in numerous studies to decrease the risk of breast and ovarian cancer by up to 90%. If he were to take out the IUD, my cysts would probably go away on their own, and the […]

Read MoreOne resolution resolved

2006 in review

Usually I’m not one for year-end reflections and New Year’s resolutions, but I’ve felt a bit introspective lately and I find myself wanting to measure and tally my achievements and accomplishments as well as put forth some goals for the next 12 months. So: The year in review. 2006 has been a year of changes on a personal level, more of them than I can remember in a long time. On the material side of things, we replaced a number of old worn out items with new ones: our bed (12 years), my computer (4-1/2 years), a refrigerator (13 years), the vacuum cleaner (12 years). And we acquired a couple of things we’ve been wanting for a while: a treadmill and a new car. So it’s been a rather expensive year as well. We also joined the local Freecycling group, and we’ve given away a lot of extra stuff that we don’t need or don’t use anymore. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. I don’t think I mentioned it before, but we also have ordered (and will receive in mid-January) two new office chairs to replace both of our old broken workstation chairs. This was a serious splurge but the way I see it, if we’re going to be sitting in these chairs for 12 hours a day or more (Doc) and have back problems (me), it’s totally worth it to have a good chair. So hello, Herman Miller! 🙂 This year has brought an onslaught of health issues for me. It kind of feels sometimes like I’m just falling apart and I don’t know how to stop it. My migraine headaches have returned after years of dormancy; I tore my rotator cuff; I fell a couple of times (stairs and sidewalk), thankfully not seriously injuring myself but enough […]

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Heave yourself a merry little Christmas

Oooh, how I wish that post title was a typo. Guess what I got for Christmas? Stomach flu! I actually managed to LOSE weight over the holidays, but in a totally not worth it kind of way. We have spent the past few days with my parents in Houston, and they have assured us that it will be the last Christmas in that crowded, hot, sweaty, smelly city with nutjob freak drivers and no zoning laws (there is a preschool next door to an oil refinery a few blocks away from my parents’ neighborhood). Of all the places I have lived, Houston is at the bottom of the list. Yes, even Sherman ranks higher. The parents feel the same way and can’t wait to move next year to a cool, sunny city on the ocean. Mike, Vanessa, and Bob flew in and it was fantastic to see all of them, as usual. I have the greatest brothers and sister-in-law. All very smart, very cool people. I was having a nice time up until about 6 a.m. Christmas morning when I woke up from a nightmare about being queasy. And it was all downhill from there. The entire day was kind of a blur of crawling back and forth to the bathroom, trying to catch brief snatches of sleep, trying to drink fluids (nope, not even water was agreeing with me), shivering under four blankets, and apologizing to Doc for ruining Christmas. He was being his usual sweet self, checking on me every few minutes, going all over the city to find a store that was open so I could have juice and ginger ale (which I wasn’t even able to drink until the next day), and trying to make me comfortable. Meanwhile, I heaved and whined and shivered and complained […]

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I feel so broken, so defective

I went back to the doctor today. (TMI WARNING: the squeamish and anyone related to me should bail now) Last month I mentioned that I was having problems with my periods, specifically that I got one only 16 days after the previous one. The doctor said that everything appeared normal, it might just be stress, and to keep an eye on my cycles for a while. The one after that was right on schedule if not a tad bit late, but it’s been going for about 20 days now nonstop. Also, I’ve had very sore breasts, and normally I get a little bit of that around my period but this is to the extent that I can’t sleep on my stomach. Seriously, not fun. He said that it was, of course, not normal, but that it could be attributed to any number of reasons: the fact that I was training for the marathon and then stopped; the diva cup, although that’s unlikely; stress; hormonal fluctuations; needing a new IUD. I told him that I didn’t want to be on birth control pills to regulate my hormones, which was one recommended course of treatment. He sent me for bloodwork and told me to go to an ob/gyn for further testing. They may need to do an endometrial biopsy, or go exploring in my uterus with a tiny little Utero-Cam, or possibly take out my IUD and give me a new one, and none of these options is anything I want to do because in my experience, any kind of medical-related jacking around up in there causes extreme crying-and-throwing-up style pain. I will, however, be a good little patient and call for the ob/gyn consult. The good news is that he said that it was unlikely to be cancer, which was of […]

Read MoreI feel so broken, so defective

no news is good news, maybe

I got the results of my lab tests back from my doctor yesterday. My bloodwork is all normal. So what this means for my recent early periods, I don’t know. Stress? Hormonal fluctuation? At least I’m not pregnant (confirmed by the pee test) but my doctor did bring up the word “miscarriage” which kind of freaked me out, although that’s supposed to be accompanied by severe cramps, which I did not have. So that likely wasn’t what’s going on. I am supposed to just keep an eye on my cycles and if it happens again, they’ll look into it further. In other news, I mentioned to my doctor that I am going to Belize in a few months, and in addition to prescribing me seasickness patches and malaria drugs, she suggested I get a tetanus shot. Which, conveniently, she could give me that very day. Cool, I thought, that saves me a trip back here later. But then she mentioned that the shot also contained the pertussis vaccine (a.k.a. whooping cough), and that set off vague little warning bells in the back of my head. I didn’t get the shot, and instead called my mom, who did confirm that when I was little and got a DPT vaccine (diptheria, tetanus, pertussis), the “P” part of it made me very sick. I had to get a booster immunization for school, so the next time they gave it to me in two half-doses, which still made me sick but not as badly. Anyway, my doctor had to special-order a tetanus shot without pertussis in it for me.

Read Moreno news is good news, maybe

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