WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
Today.....is a LOVELY day....
Let me do a "LOTR" style prehistory... about 6 weeks ago I went to our local walk-in clinic with a lump under my left armpit and a weird feeling in my left arm. Now of course being 6'2 and 390 pounds my first thought was that this wasn't going to be good. A trip on to WebMD didn't help my thought processes when all it kept coming up with was lymphoma. So I see the doctor who tells me it is an abscess and its pinching a nerve in my arm. An injection followed by a prescription of antibiotics and in two weeks it was gone.
Then there's this last two weeks....the ones where everything is due, my boss is in the Carribean for a cruise and I'm taking up the load for another project manager who has been off after three successive back surgeries for the last 13 months. To say that I have been stressed is a gross understatement.
Then my arm started getting this numb feeling again, a tingle, and feeling like you just need to shake it out or pop it. This coupled with a tightness in my chest and sharp shooting pains in my left side did not brighten my view. So I go to a walk-in clinic. I tell them how I'm feeling.
They immediately do an EKG.
Then they tell me to go to the Emergency Room NOW and that they are calling ahead to get me in ASAP. AND they tell my wife that she has to drive. Considering that her father died three weeks ago of a heart attack out of the blue you can imagine how she was doing.
So we get to the hospital and I sit in the waiting room for an hour. They finally put me in a room and start whipping up the tests. They do an EKG of their own, then come back because two of the leads were hooked up wrong. They take blood and check for cardial enzymes. They take Xrays. They do a CT scan.
SIX Hours I'm in the ER.
Then they come back and tell me that ALL my tests are PERFECTLY baseline. My Heart, Lungs, Head and all are FINE. The walk-in clinic had hooked up my EKG WRONG to begin with which caused a false reading. I more than likely have something torn in my chest wall that was causing the radiating pains around my heart area and there is pinched nerves that are causing the arm problem. So the good news is that I am perfectly healthy except the weight which my wife has now informed me will be coming off whether I like it or not. She of course would like a few minutes alone with the people of the walk-in clinic. So now I'm taking my anti-imflamatory meds and traveling to the land of Vicodinia. This was a horrible day....and yet it was also a very GOOD day. It was a roller coaster ride of emotions and fortunately for me it didn't mean an end of the "Big Ride" of life.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Well, let that be a lesson to you - don't go to walk-in clinics
Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
Nothing like a scare.
My own attempts at defattification aren't going so great, but fortunately I'm unemployed, having to severely conserve funds, & cut back on eating, so there's always that. But my motivational point comes from a former Flare member, actually.
Siegfried hasn't been around in...forever, but his life's been progressing in some interesting ways. In August of 2006, he decided to start losing weight after going to the doctor & getting a high blood pressure scare. Many of you will remember that he was always a large guy for most of his life (& was all remember the Jedi picture). Anyway, he decided to start taking long walks ever night after work & during lunch breaks, as well as changing his diet. This picture is of him at the end of August 2006; in his own words, "it was taken about a month into my diet but before I started my regular evening walks. I weigh around 325 pounds, I think. "
Along the way he started really getting into it & someone at work hooked him up with one of those "5 free sessions with a personal trainer" at a gym thing. He was reluctant, but went with it. And he found it really helped, that the people were nice & willing to work with him, & he stuck with it, so much so that he's now widely recognized by the staff there.
This picture is him as of mid-December 2007. As he said, "The picture on the right is how I look as of a couple hours ago. It's been about seventeen months since I started my diet, and it's been about eight months since I started at the gym. I weigh approximately 200 pounds." He's looking to get down to I think 180 or so. But godDAMN. If he can do it, I can do it. And so can you.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
"Don't you ever worry about your weight?" "Only keeping it up." "I hate you."
I'd post pictures of how I looked in th ehospital right after they finally got me turned around, when I weiged 115lbs. and looked like an Auschwitz survivor. I couldn't eat for the ten months following because they didn't want to risk aggrivating the fistula, and IV nutrition can only do so much, I got up to about 150 and then couldn't get much higher. After I started eating again following my first surgery, prednisone munchies got me up to anout 200. And since I got off the steroids, it's tapered off to a comfortable ~185. Now I just need to tone that, especially the core that I haven't been able to work much during this whole thing.
I've had several scares during this whole thing. When I was initially getting diagnosed back in '96, I was relieved again and again to learn it wasn't cancer, or HIV, or Hepatitis, or many, many other things. Getting the Crohn's diagnosis, though, was traumatic enough, and I spent the next decade(ish) depressed and in denial and not really managing it.
Which led me to the second scare. All the water I was retaining and all the muscle mass I was losing... It was mysitfying and scary, and when I started having trouble breathing. It took me a month of trying to explain that I wasn't having touble breathing because of panic attacks -- I was panicking because I couldn't breathe. Not rocket science. After I almost drowned from the inside, they got it. Nothing like slowly starving for Oxygen and gradually blacking out and wondering if you'll ever wake up again to make you appreciate life.
Hopefully that's the last health scare I have personally.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
Well yesterday I learned that a nice old lady who used to take care of me when I was a wee lad passed away from essentially a heart attack. Even though she was not overweight, her death has got me worrying about my health since I'm overwight. Sometimes I'll eat something so fattening afterwards I'll feel like I'm living on borrowed time, which is bad cause I'm only 19. So if someone 300+ can do it, damnit so can I. More so since I'm lucky that I haven't gained more weight overtime. That is to say that the amount of pounds I need to lose has been pretty constant throughout my teen years. Plus I also want to get laid.
Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
My own financial troubles have me down to two meals a day, and I can't lose a damn pound. I've had the same tubby belly and chest and perfectly thin everything-else since I was 14 or so...bloody mystifying.
Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
I was pretty much a twig my whole life until I got married (120-130 through college). I seem to have leveled off around 175 now, but I really want to get rid of this belly I now have. I need to if I'm going to enter an upcoming 5k/10k race in the spring.
Yes, I know, you all hate me.
Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
I'm not saying i am the thinest for my age, infact far from it. But over the summer, i decided to get off my ass, and get in shape. I lost damn-near 15 pounds, but then my ass of a neurologist put me on anti-deppressants for my condition on the FIRST VISIT!! Aside from the fact that 16 year-olds shouldn't take anti-deppressants in the first place, they helped my gain all the weight i had lost back. He then decided to put me on Keppra, a medicine for epilepsey, which the idiot knows i do not have, and then after a month of emotional sideffects, he decided to put me on Lamictal, another epilepsey drug that is also a mood enhancer. Because of those pills of joy, i lost the weght again (which may have had something to do with not eating), and have continued to fluctuate back and forth between 175, and 190 seemingly at random. this coupled with normal teen-aged crap has made for an oh so fun year.
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". -George Carlin
Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
You know, that's funny..."around 14 or so" is when I started on SSRIs (type of anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications - been on a few different flavors). (Proud to say I'm off them now - I sorely oppose things like that long-term. I believe they should be short-term stopgap measures to allow therapy to work more effectively.) Soooo...given me something to think about, and ask a doctor about.
Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
The strange thing was how easily he was willing to give them to me. I was not depressed or anything. At least not untill he put me on them. And anti depressants only treat Tic Disorder in a small amount of people. i am not one of them. In fact, all of the medications that can be prescribed for it have equally didmal sideffects. Most of them screw with the reproductive system, most have emotional sideffects, and Lamictal, which i recently stopped taking because i cant swallow it anymore( it is an uncoated chalk like pill the size of a penny) has the pleasant side effect of a fatal skin rash if you stop taking it and then restart with out going through the month long dose-up. The Keppra is the only one that has helped, but only slightly, and the sideffects are almost unbearable. I am overly tired, have no energy, no immune system, very little apetite, very little uh... Attraction to the opposit sex... if you get what i mean, constipation AND diharea at the same time, headaches, jitters, muscle pain, and emotional numbness. I want to kill this guy. He had me up to the maximum dose of keppra ( 4 250 mg pills twice a day) within 3 weeks. You're actually suposed to wait 2 months before going that high, and then only if your body is not expirencing sideffects. Even better, he started these pills o' fun right at the beginning of the school year, which is why i have missed nearly 30 days of school to date.
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". -George Carlin
Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Unfortunately I think that's representative of the current trend in psychiatry - Medicate, Medicate, Medicate. One biology course which only touched on biochemistry was enough to convince me that the complexity they're dealing with in shoving this or that chemical into our bodies is *insane* and that they have very little idea what they're doing. I don't think medicine or psychiatry is a science; they try to be, but it's all just too complex as yet to allow us to really be scientific and systematic about it. It's more a lot of philosophy and guesswork in my quite humble and unqualified opinion.
That sounds like a load of hell. My sympathies. I can really sympathize on a few of those points, since I have a sleep disorder, possibly a second, a gastrointestinal disorder (and have even had my appendix *and* gallbladder removed), and a whole buffet of possible mental illnesses to choose from given my genetics and symptoms. If there's anything I can tell you, it's that you should try and come off the meds as much as possible and see a therapist - even if nothing is wrong with your head. My therapist worked wonders with most of my physical problems; you'd be surprised how much of the severity of medical problems can come from being stressed or upset, either about other factors or even about the medical problems themselves (vicious cycle and all that). If you do consider it, try to get one who believes in Rational Behavior Therapy (or Cognitive Behavior Therapy).
As for Wiz, something occurred to me - have you been checked out for carpal tunnel syndrome? The way you describe the feelings in your hands reminds me strongly of how it feels to have CTS.
Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
I keep meaning to get checked out for CTS... I have instances now and again of my arm going numb and tingly... even more instances of just my hand going numb, tingly AND cold...
-------------------- I haul cardboard and cardboard accessories
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
Actually, I am thinking of dumping the neuro altogtther. I have an appointment lined up with a therapist woh does CBT, and even better, he is friends with my psycologist. the school nurse and i have theorized that my tics are caused by stress (which i attract alot of) and we bothagree that my doc is an ass. she recommended the doctor i am going to see now, doctor bon jovi, bon jiovini, or bon giovonni, but i cant remember which it is. But even better is the name of another doctor she suggested. Dr Waxmonkey. Apparently, that is an old synonym for masturbation as my dad so kindly pointed out.
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". -George Carlin
Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged
posted
My theory is that I will die when I die, and hopefully not a moment sooner. But I have bad luck usually.
I have quit the drinking, 6 pack of 40 ouncers six nights a week that I used to wash down a pint. The seventh night was a fifth of run to wash down the pint. I quit cold turkey in Sept of 99 and had one relapse in 2004, and not a drop since.
Now, if I can convince myself to quit smoking I would be doing okay. It took 20 years to quit drinking..... I quit once a year for a bit, one time it will take.
Then I can be healthier and pay taxes for more years.
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
