Archive for the 'Health' Category

I was not expecting the odor

Published at October 16, 2009 in Aging gracefully or not, Health, Vanity, Travel and Uncategorized. 13 Comments

I just got back, as I said in the last post, from Montreal. The primary reason I went there was to get Lasik (Canada has more advanced technology than the US, and even when the FDA approves certain equipment, such as the particular laser I was treated with, the earlier approval means that Canadian eye surgeons have more experience with the equipment than their American counterparts. Plus, it’s cheaper. And it’s Montreal). I was tired of being extremely nearsighted, and what with the onset of reading glasses* and all, it was looking like I’d be in very expensive and unworkable progressive lenses before too long. Why not get the nearsightedness fixed, and then worry about the aging-related reading glasses as a single prescription?

So I biffed off up North, where the many public wi-fi networks refused to speak to my netbook. And after a few days of sightseeing and wonderful meals and lovely chocolat chaud, I went to the clinic for my surgery. The pre-op and post-op is being done locally, but I went to Montreal for the actual surgery.

I knew there would be Clockwork Orange eyelid clamps. I probably should have guessed that, yes, everyone makes the same Clockwork Orange joke when the clamps are put in. I knew there would be some “pressure,” though I hadn’t really been clear on what it was for (apparently, to make you go temporarily blind so you don’t see the blade that’s cutting the flap in your cornea) or how much it would hurt when my orbital bone was pushed on.

I did not, however, know that there was going to be an odor — specifically, the odor of burning hair. It was apparently just the laser burning some carbon in the air, not my eyeball getting vaporized. But disconcerting, nonetheless.

It was over in minutes. The first half-hour afterwards was just fine, if things were blurry and I had the world’s goofiest-looking eye shields on my face. Then the anaesthetic wore off, and the burning and itching and feeling of sand-in-the-eyes started. That lasted four hours or so, during which time I was instructed to rest but not sleep — as if I could fall asleep with my eyes burning like that — and to blink at least every five minutes to keep things lubricated. I got very familiar with the limitations of my hotel room, which featured not a separate bathroom, but a sink, shower stall and toilet closet right in the room. As a concept, not terribly objectionable — until you realize that the legroom in the toilet nook leaves a little something to be desired, and it’s not possible to both take the wide stance necessary to position yourself correctly AND pull your pants down. Others before me had similar issues, or at least that’s how I interpret the fact that the seat was forever popping out of place.

After four hours or so, things started feeling much better, but I had to leave the shields on nonetheless until the following morning. Whereupon I removed them and went back to the clinic for my first-day checkup. My vision was 20/15, which is right about where it should be, since they overcorrect due to the fact that as the eyes heal, they naturally settle out a little, so I should end up with 20/20. I had a little inflammation in one eye, so they had me use the antibiotic drops more frequently for the first two days; I also have dryness, which is normal, so I have drops for that as well.

I’m quite pleased.  Things are kind of foggy, I’ll need to use reading glasses for a few weeks until the overcorrection settles out, I have haloes at night, and my eyes are dry, but that’s all normal and should go away within a few days or weeks.   But for the first time since fourth grade, I can fucking SEE without glasses or contacts.  Yay!

____

* About those expensive progressive lenses that optometrist tried to push on me:  turns out I NEVER ACTUALLY NEEDED THEM AT ALL.  The doctor who did my pre-op for surgery figured that my contacts were overcorrecting my vision, which made reading a little difficult.  So he put me into weaker contacts, and that solved the reading problem while still enabling me to see distances.  Boy, am I glad I pushed back on those instead of spending almost $500 to solve a problem I didn’t even have.

This week in fat hatred

Published at August 14, 2009 in Health, Food, I see fat people, Woman-Hating and Dipshittery. 4 Comments

Item the first: Anti-donut signs can get you fired from your job as a county health director, but only if you name and piss off local businesses:

A 38-year-old former Army doctor who served in Iraq, Newsom returned home to Panama City a few years ago to run the Bay County Health Department and launched a one-man war on obesity by posting sardonic warnings on an electronic sign outside:

“Sweet Tea (equals) Liquid Sugar.”

“Hamburger (equals) Spare Tire.”

“French Fries (equals) Thunder Thighs.”

He also called out KFC by name to make people think twice about fried chicken.

Then he parodied “America Runs on Dunkin’,” the doughnut chain’s slogan, with: “America Dies on Dunkin’.”

Some power players in the Gulf Coast tourist town decided they had had their fill.

A county commissioner who owns a doughnut shop and two lawyers who own a new Dunkin’ Donuts on Panama City Beach turned against him, along with some of his own employees, Newsom says. After the lawyers threatened to sue, his bosses at the Florida Health Department made him remove the anti-fried dough rants and eventually forced him to resign, he says. . . .

In May, lawyers Bo Rivard and Michael Duncan, co-owners of a new Dunkin’ Donuts, asked Newsom to take down the “America Dies on Dunkin’” message. Newsom already had run other anti-doughnut warnings, including “Doughnuts (equals) Diabetes,” and “Dunkin’ Donuts (equals) Death.”

The businessmen had the backing of County Commissioner Mike Thomas, who owns a diner and a doughnut shop. Thomas called for Newsom’s ouster, saying the doctor shouldn’t have named businesses on the message board.

Note the two statements I’ve bolded. If that’s not conflation of health and thinness/aesthetics, I don’t know what is. But what I find a little disturbing is that his bosses were okay with this kind of hatefulness being funded by the taxpayers until the businesses he called out by name lawyered up.

Continue reading ‘This week in fat hatred’

A train of thought about public health brought on by a glimpse of ironic facial hair

Published at May 14, 2009 in Health, Misbegotten health care, Political theater and Dipshittery. 4 Comments

My mind goes to some odd places sometimes.  And today, the sight of a hipster with ironic facial hair on the subway (and of course he got off in Williamsburg) led to some thoughts about public health.  The sight of ironic facial hair led to thoughts about such facial hair worn non-ironically, which led to thoughts about men who wore such non-ironic facial hair, which led to thoughts of C. Everett Koop and his Gorton’s Fisherman beard and naval-looking uniform, which led to thoughts of the whole debacle of Obama nominating Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General, which led to the realization that it’s been over two months since Gupta withdrew his name, we’re in the middle of a public-health crisis, and . . . we have no Surgeon General.

And Obama hasn’t even floated any names to replace Gupta, as far as I can tell.  This isn’t like not having anyone helming HHS at the start of the swine flu; the problem there was that Kathleen Sebelius’s nomination wasn’t being acted upon because the shit-for-brains forced-birth contingent decided to demagogue.  At least there was a nominee.

But as important as it is to have a Secretary of HHS in place, it’s the Surgeon General who leads the Public Health Service, and pandemics and epidemics are under the aegis of the Public Health Service.  We’re in the middle of the beginning of a possible pandemic, and Obama doesn’t even have a backup after his completely ill-suited first nominee withdrew?

Surprise!

Published at November 17, 2008 in Health, Misbegotten health care and I see fat people. 14 Comments

So, as you know, I’m going to library school in the spring. And there are certain forms to be filled out and whatnot.

One of those forms is a medical evaluation, including an immunization form, required by state law, to show that I’m immune to measles, mumps and rubella.

Now, it’s been quite a while since I’ve been to the doctor, what with the being uninsured and being generally quite healthy thing. I’ve been to various orthopedic folks to fix my ankle, my back and my knees, but the internals have been humming along quite well, other than the odd sinus infection, so I haven’t ponied up for general medical care.

As for the immunizations, I don’t have any records of those (my pediatrician has been dead for years, as has my mother, and none of my prior schools is required to keep the records quite so long). So my only option was to get my blood drawn to check for serum immunity. Since I couldn’t quite get out of the physical, I made an appointment with a NYC health clinic (part of the City Health & Hospitals Corp.), which is supposed to provide low-cost health care for City residents.

More on that “supposed to” later. Continue reading ‘Surprise!’

Kitty update

Published at July 12, 2008 in Domesticity, Kitties and Health. 4 Comments

Sugarplum’s fine after her bloody vomit episode; the vet thinks it was just stress, since there was nothing else wrong with her.  I went with the senior wellness workup, since she’s 10 years old.  Bloodwork normal; her teeth need some attention for tartar, but I’ll wait on that until we’re settled in the new place.

However.

She weighed in at 20 pounds, which got me good and yelled at by the vet.  I hadn’t brought her to this vet in four years (her only other trip to the vet in that time was to the emergency vet when she had diarrhea on the weekend).  She was 15 pounds back then.

Here’s the kicker: I’ve been feeding her a controlled portion, between 1/2 and 5/8 of a cup, of high-quality, no-grain, high-protein dry food all that time.  And while that amount is theoretically just fine, and in fact should have resulted in her losing weight, it made her gain weight.  Which I hadn’t really noticed because I see her every day and I don’t have a scale.

For some perspective, consider this: while I was going through my papers and filing, I found her adoption record from 2000.  She was 7 pounds then, which was really too skinny (she’d been picked up off the street), but she would have been fine at something like 10 pounds.  Like a lot of street cats, she was very anxious about food, and I wound up leaving out dry food all day, which helped make her (as well as Zuzu) fat.  After the 2004 weigh-in at 15 pounds, I restricted her intake, which she adjusted to well; she didn’t even eat the dog food, which I left out all day because Junebug doesn’t really eat unless it’s something I’m eating.

Obviously, the whole dry-food thing isn’t working, even on a restricted basis.  So I bit the bullet and got high-protein (at least 12% by weight; a lot of canned food is 9%) canned food.  Now, I hate dealing with canned cat food.  It stinks, you have to wash the bowls twice a day, and then you have to deal with the cans (which will be a real joy when the dog comes back).  But, well, it’s for my cats’ sake.

And it seems to be working.  I don’t have a scale, like I said, so I can’t check her weight, but she appears a bit thinner, and she’s more active just in the short time (about 2-3 weeks) I’ve been feeding her the wet food (which, incidentally, is the same brand as the dry food).

But the best part?  Her shit doesn’t stink!  Seriously — I used to be able to smell her shit all the way across a 950-square-foot apartment, and now I can’t smell it five feet away.  The litterbox in this place is, literally, five feet from the couch where I watch TV and work on the computer, and had I not had a confirmed sighting of a huge turd sitting there, unburied, I would not have known she’d taken a crap this morning.

Back to the gym

Published at July 12, 2008 in Iron, Aging gracefully or not and Health. 3 Comments

Whee! I’m finally cleared to go back to the gym for the first time in about six months.  My back’s okay, my toe has healed up, and my knee is at a point where workouts are encouraged to strengthen it.  So I called up my trainer and booked 20 sessions.

I haven’t lost as much ground as I had been afraid I would; Elizabeth, my trainer, told me it’s much easier to regain lost ground than to build up the muscles in the first place.

The coolest thing is the whole chest business.  There came a point, about a year into my workouts, when I suddenly felt my chest engaging when I did bench presses.  It was very odd; I had thought it was working before, but apparently not.  According to E., it takes a while for the body to learn to do that instead of relying on the arms and back.  And the cool part was that my body remembered that when I got onto the bench.

I also was able to bench-press the 45-pound bar plus two 10-pound plates first time out.  I had last gotten up to the 35-pound plates, so it was pretty great to see I hadn’t deteriorated back to square one.  I think it had taken me six months to get to the bar alone.

The only real drawback is that E. is leaving the gym in a few months, having had it with being a trainer.  But we’re going to work out some kind of “workout buddy” arrangement to continue, where we train together on the weekends and I’m on my own during the week.  I may also take the money I save from not buying training sessions and start going to a yoga studio as well to increase my flexibility.  Because one of the things that doomed my knee was tight, very tight, super tight IT bands and calves.

Did I say Magic?

Published at June 18, 2008 in Health. 2 Comments

FUCKING magic!

Can’t believe how well ultrasound works.  Next time I fuck up my knee, I’ll call my chiro straightaway rather than try to ice and drug the inflammation away.

The heavens open, the angels sing

Published at June 17, 2008 in Aging gracefully or not and Health. 2 Comments

I fucked up my right knee but good during last week’s move.  I’d been hoping that ice, elevation, rest, etc. would help, and it has, but it’s still really goddamn painful.

So yesterday, I decided to call someone.  I called up the guy who’d fixed my left leg and knee with Active Release Technique (which is extremely painful, but brilliantly effective), but his office was closed.  Then my regular chiropractor called to confirm my Thursday appointment and I mentioned to her that my back was fine, but my knee was painful.  She said she could help with that.  So I changed the appointment to yesterday and limped in.

She hit me with some ultrasound and gave me some ice.

I’m telling you, the ultrasound was MAGIC.  Immediate relief of a good deal of the inflammation, pressure and pain.  I’m going back again on Wednesday for another hit.

I’ll still see the ART guy, since the problem was likely caused by tightness and nastiness that he can deal with (I used to have the same problem on the left, but not since he fixed that).  But for immediate relief of the knee itself, I’ll keep on keeping on with the ultrasound.

Bloody vomit: DO NOT WANT

Published at June 14, 2008 in Kitties and Health. 2 Comments

While trying to cough up a hairball this morning, Sugarplum spewed up some bloody discharge.

Not the kind of thing you want to see coming out of your cat. Out of any living creature, really.

I’m hoping that there’s nothing more seriously wrong than a stuck hairball causing abrasions (the blood looks fresh, and abrasions caused by some swallowed object have been given me as a reason for Junebug’s occasional bloody poop). There are more serious causes for bloody vomit, but none seem to apply here, or the symptoms don’t match — the blood is fresh rather than old and clotted; she’s not on any medications that might cause ulcers; she hasn’t eaten any rat poison. For all I know, she has bleeding gums, but I don’t want to lose a finger trying to find out.

Still, it’s worrisome. She’s a 10-year-old cat who just went through quite a bit of trauma, what with the movers coming in and making all that noise, and the being put in a carrier and driven to a new, strange place smelling of another cat. And then the heat wave, when she wasn’t eating or drinking much at all. Now I’ve got to put her into the carrier again and take her on the subway to the vet’s office, which will not make her happy, either.

Well, screw that.

Published at January 22, 2008 in Health and Food. 6 Comments

I gave in to the headaches and cravings and am enjoying a sweet, sweet cup of coffee.