A number of people have mentioned that not only have I been scarce recently, but that my blog has not been updated in a while. True as it is, at least it’s for good reasons – sort of.
As you probably know I changed jobs in May. An opportunity came my way for what is essentially my dream job. I am running the
As my wife observed a couple of weeks ago, “I’ve never seen you work so hard, yet not complain a lick.” It’s true, and is a combination of loving the work, the people, and the culture of the company. It is truly a collaborative, collegial, and supportive organization filled with very smart, very passionate people and I am proud to be associated with it. That being said, I am working my brains out, and with many summer weekends at my in-laws pace on
While settling in, I had a somewhat un-settling thing happen to me earlier in the summer. Around mid-June I was having some unusual abdominal pains that were not going away (don’t worry – everything turned out okay). It was somewhat confounding and after about 3 weeks, I finally went to my doctor. After ruling out appendicitis and an intestinal infection, he was both confounded and confused. I was too and my anxiety was heightened by the fact that he couldn’t figure it out and that wanted me to have a CT scan.
Now this was a big deal for me. I am a bit of a baby when it comes to my own health so not only was I completely unnerved by imagining all of the worst case scenarios of what might be wrong with me, I was also worrying about the CT scan. It wasn’t the scan itself that bothered me, but the fact that it was to be with contrast. For those who don’t know, in order to have one’s insides show up better in a scan, there needs to be contrast material in those insides. For the abdomen, you don’t eat for a day and then are given a barium smoothie to drink (radioactive substance that essentially makes your intestines glow). For the pelvis, however, iodine-based contrast dye is given intravenously just prior to and during the scan.
I was most anxious about the dye. Aside from the fact that there are not-in-frequent cases of people being allergic to the dye with potentially life-threatening results, I have never had an IV before and I hate needles.
Upon arriving at the imaging center, I was given about 48 ounces of an apple-scented, chalky white substance to drink – the barium smoothie. Yum. When brought in for the scan, I was given the IV. Although I had a mild panic attack, due more to anticipatory anxiety than anything else, it went fine. At least I’m not afraid of IVs any more.
The funny part, however, were the breathing instructions for the scan itself. The technician, who cannot be in the room during the scan, told me to just relax and the machine would give me breathing instructions. It is a recorded voice, and I don’t know how they found this guy or where he was recorded, but it sounded like a conductor’s announcement on the
Lo and behold, the CT was negative. Just before seeing my doctor, I had been reading up on my symptoms and found that if it was something irritating my colon, then a liquid diet was in order. Doing that actually started to soothe some of the pain and my doctor told me to continue on it for a few days and then move to a bland diet. He was of the opinion that if these steps resolved my symptoms, then I likely had an irritated colon, cause unknown. If it didn’t, I would have to have a colonoscopy. Luckily my symptoms resolved, and I have lost some weight as part of the bargain. I’m not eating dairy, red meat, spicy or acidic foods, but my tummy is much better.
Speaking of colonoscopies (how’s THAT for a segue), it reminds me of the first time my mother had one. I had referred her to a physician whom I liked at
Long story short (or long story long), life is good. I love my job, I have my health, and in a few hours I leave to take my family to
