Dichroic Reflections

In other news, I had an odd but ultimately useful followup visit with my gastroenterologist yesterday.

First I waited 10-15 minutes in the waiting room, because they tell you to show up 15 minutes early even though all I had to do was confirm I’m on the same meds. Then the nursing assistant showed me into a room, took my weight, blood pressure and pulse, and left, saying it would be a few minutes because the doctor was just returning from the hospital (across the street). Half an hour later (luckily they had decent magazines) I walked out into the corridor to ask what was going on. The scheduling person nearby asked what was the issue and started to check with the assitant, but right then the doctor finally rushed in. He stopped somewhere first (presumably to wash his hands and put his stuff down) then came in. So I said, “Do I get a rebate on this visit?” pointing out that for my previous visit there he’d charged $450 or so for a very brief consult (I walked in, told him my symptoms and family history, said I thought I needed a colonoscopy, and he agreed and sent me to the scheduler.) And then he said “Well, this one will be free.”

!!!!!!

Of course I protested and said I wanted to pay what was fair, but he stuck to it – I have never had a doctor do anything like that before.

Anyway, then we had a very useful visit. The upshot is that I had a couple polyps, one large, that were benign but were of a type that can potentially become cancerous so I have to go back in 3 years. They were removed and everything is fine, so this is just to check it stays fine. He also discussed my IBS and had a useful suggestion (I wasn’t going to bring up, because I didn’t expect anything much could be done and mine isn’t bad enough to take any drastic steps but he had a non-medication suggestion that might help). He explained all his reasons, and didn’t dumb anything down or brush me off, so overall I was very happy.

I thought maybe he’d given up the “freebie” idea but he mentioned it again on the way out, and when I protested, just said, “I want to keep you coming back!”

So, you know, wow. Guess I will be going back.

Yesterday, an old friend of mine (by which I mean we were good friends in maybe 4-9th grade, saw each other sometimes in high school and had no contact after that until Facebook came around) posted something on FB about how the difference between people who fulfill their dreams and those who don’t is that the former never stop believing. I have a low tolerance for ‘follow your bliss’ and affirmations with low meaning content anyway – they ring a lot of my bells, including the fallacy of assuming everyone has a singular dream that consumes their life (aka Proper Job), and the way “you just have to believe” can obscure the need to actually work for your dreams. I thnk a lot of them are actively harmful, because they set people’s expectations wrongly. So I commented something like “In my experience, the people who fulfill their dreams get there by working their asses off, and by having a bit of luck either in being supported by people around them or being able to move to be around supportive people.” I probably should not have posted – people who post feelgood aspirational stuff never seem to tolerate disagreement well.

Well, she complained that I always seem to be either disagreeing with or ignoring her posts. I will admit to being more disagreeable than I intend all too often, but after more discussion it appears that her feelings are hurt because even though we have all this childhood history together I rarely Like or comment on her posts.

Which leaves me somewhere between a headtilt and a WTF.

I checked: all of her posts in the last month and a half have been either this sort of ‘inspirational thing’ or else about Bernie Sanders, except for with a picture of Multnomah Falls, to which I commented with some facts about how close it is to Portland (and how crowded – I think she’d thought it was off in the remote wilderness somewhere. SHe is in fact one of the three people who are part of the reason I voted for Hilary Clinton, because their incessant Bernie posts left me feeling bruised and bullied. (I did have some better reasons for my vote, as well – but I do tend to be recalcitrant when I feel like I’m being coerced.)

Interestingly since she hasn’t commented on any of my posts so far in all of 2016 – I don’t keep track and hadn’t noticed (and don’t really care), just went back and looked out of curiosity. Apparently this has been festering for a while, because when I commented on that she told me she’d stopped Liking my posts because I didn’t Like hers “even though it’s not tit for tat” and now doesn’t get shown them. I think I like my method of regarding these things better, which is to be grateful for comments and attention I get, and assume the ones I don’t get are because people are off being busy doing other things.

I would ignore the whole thing if I didn’t care about her, but I do like this person, or I did once, and I think I would like her now if only she’d shut up about Bernie. But literally all I know about who she is now is her city, her job, her Presidential candidate, that she’s close to her brother (another person who turned off the Bern for me) and that her mom died two years ago. And that apparently she views Facebook as a counting system you can use to determine who really cares about you. But she is not, currently, a friend. She is a Facebook friend, and despite their coopting the f-word, the two are not the same. I actually have a really easy way to tell, when it comes to Philadelphia people: when my dad died, two years ago, my actual friends were the people who showed up at the funeral or when we were sitting shiva, or who at least called/IMed/emailed to say they couldn’t make it but were thinking of us.

I am irritated, and I refuse to feel guilty.

Anyway, I ended up sending the following note last night, on the theory that if I didn’t say something she’d just continue to get madder at me for not responding. No comment so far; I don’t know if I’ve done more harm than good.

“I’ve been thinking about how to respond to this – because if I don’t, the same thing will happen again down the line. I think you and I must use FaceBook in very different ways. I don’t consider it a test or a metric for how much someone likes me or vice versa – some of the people I care about most aren’t even on FB, or are on rarely, and there are people who comment on my stuff whom I barely know (as well as some I’ve come to know and like just from conversations we’ve had on FB). I like having conversations, but when someone “scatters breadcrumbs” in a public post, I don’t feel obliged to pick them up. On the other hand, if you want to talk to me, I’d be happy to talk to you – by phone, by Skype, by old fashioned letter, by email, by IM, or in FB messages like this. We were good friends back in about junior high, but we don’t even really know each other now – I know who you’re voting for, but not what you like to do for fun, what you like to read or watch, how you think or feel (aside from mad at me right now). I do know I liked you as a kid, and I bet I’d like you as an adult if I knew you better. And then you’ll know because I tell you or show it, not by how many posts here I respond to.”

I just bought a gallon of milk. I don’t drink milk. I buy it sometimes for cooking, but I don’t know if I’ve ever bought so much as a gallon. So why did I do it today? Because a woman at my lunchtime knitting group (who also works in the LYS part time) mentioned that they were having some trouble getting her husband’s disability paid, and that when he went to the food bank they didn’t give him milk and cereal, though they gave those to other people with kids (they may have run out; she wasn’t sure). They are a family of 7. She didn’t say any of this in an asking-for-help way, just that we all tend to talk about our lives as we sit and knit. Well, I go on Tuesdays at lunch to sit and knit for a while, then I go to the grocery store down the street, pick up lunch and bring it back to eat at my desk. So I asked if she wanted to go with me so I could get her some milk (I don’t think I said it that clearly but she understood what I meant). Bought some cherries too, because I wanted some for me and even people dealing with hard times need a treat now and then. Maybe especially people dealing with hard times. And told her about the time I was on unemployment and it turns out Arizona only pays $200/week, max.

I love my country but some days I don’t like it very much. Our safety nets are too holey.

On the other hand, in happier beverage news, we had a great long weekend – the in-laws came to visit us at the lake, and much wine was consumed.

Writing up an account of what the whole colonoscopy thing was like for me (avoiding graphic detail!) in case it’s useful info for anyone who needs to have one.

Overall verdict:
Not as bad as expected.

Liquid diet: actually, I thought this would be the worst part of hte whoel thing, but it was OK, really. I was able to ingest enough calories to keep from feeling dizzy, lightheaded or “hangry”. (So much so that I may eventually decide to do a liquid diet for Yom Kippur, on the theory that it drives in the notion of abstention and departure from every day practice, without ruining my ability to focus on the contemplation we’re supposed to be doing.) I was allowed to eat a “light” breakfast before 6AM and went to some lengths to make sure I had acceptable food prepared, and then I totally forgot to bring it in to work, and arrived at work to a whole bunch of emails that needed immediate response and forgot to eat anything else. So I was basically on only liquids from the time I woke up.

That famously nauseating stuff you have to drink: There are several variants of this – one friend mentioned having to drink disgusting stuff over 6 hours. Oig. The stuff I had was called MoviPrep, and what it tasted like most was the Japanese sports drink Pocari Sweat, only more so.(Think Gatorade, but more salty and less sweet.) Keeping it in the fridge definitely helped. I’d never drink it if I didn’t have to, but it didn’t make me gag, even at 6AM, and was all around not as bad as reported (quite possibly some of the other variants are worse). I think it basically combines a laxative with the electrolytes of Gatorade. After spending all of Thursday on the liquid diet I had to drink a quart of it that night – 8 oz (roughly .24 liter) every 15 minutes starting at 6PM, then another quart the next morning at 6AM. The morning time depends on when your procedure is scheduled; they want you to have it ~3 hours before you have to show up, so you’re not, like, white knuckled and wishing for in-car restrooms on the way there.

As for the results of the prep, for a person with IBS it can best be described as “a random Tuesday when maybe lunch didn’t quite agree with you”. Well, OK, it was a little more thorough than that and went on a little longer, but on the other hand it was easier for me to put up with and less traumatic because a) no queasiness, everything going the proper direction and b) this was, like, what I was supposed to be doing. I had the time planned and I was at home, not trying to finish up, quit hogging a work restroom and get back to whatever I was scheduled to be doing. Also, while I did spend most of my prep time in the bathroom, I was able to go sit on the sofa between times – I never felt I didn’t have time to get from there to the bathroom.

The colonoscopy itself was weird because I’ve almost never been in a hospital as a patient, except for having my wisdom teeth out at 18, and that was outpatient surgery. This time they took me to my “own” room, where we sat around for a bit, then they stuck heart monitors on my chest, started an IV (which took two tries), then we sat around a bit more. At this point, the IV was just saline solotion, probably a good idea since I’m sure I was dehydrated by then. About ten minutes after the scheduled time, they kicked Ted out wheeled me into the procedure room, plugged various wires into the monitors they’d put on me before, and then sat around watching the readouts for another ten minutes or so until the doctor was ready. (I’d given all my stuff to Ted, but wished at this point I’d brought a book. There were nurses around to talk to, though.) The nurse in charge of anesthesia asked me how out of it I’d like to be and told me they “were happy to customize my experience” in a way that sounded oddly spa-like, but I didn’t feel they really needed my (conscious) presence. After that, they hooked some drugs into my IV, told me to roll onto my left side …. and the next thing was that I have a woozy memory of being offered some water, OJ, saltines and graham crackers, then walked out to where Ted was waiting with the car.

Apparently they pump air into you during the procedure; for my doctor it’s standard procedure to pump it back out (I gather this is not universal – I asked, after reading a recommendation to somewhere online). I did not feel bloated at all afterward. I was afraid my gut would remain a bit unsettled afterward, but it really didn’t. When we got home I crashed and slept HARD for a couple hours. After that we drove out to the lake house (2.5 hours); I did request a couple of pit stops in the first half of the trip (I’d warned Ted in advance this might happen!) but was OK after that.

They tell you not to drive or make important decisions for 16-24 hours after the procedure. I intended to row lightly Saturday (which would have been close to 24 hours later), but got out there and somehow it was just a giant NOPE! so I came back in. Sunday I still felt slightly fragile somehow so I just erged 5K at about a half-pressure pace. Other than that I took it fairly easy over the weekend, doing nothing else more strenuous than a bit of weeding.

Other things I can’t say outside this blog: My friend who lost her baby? Literally the day before the baby got sick, the mother posted on Facebook about how said she was that her own grandmother would never get to know her daughter. I will not write “be careful what you wish for,” because I do not believe, in my conflicted agnostic soul, that either an implacable universe or an omniscient God would connect that to a baby’s death.

But still, ouch. (Though I hope some day the image of a beloved grandmother rocking a beloved daughter helps comfort my friend.)

We’re all a little shell-shocked around my Ravelry community these days.

Otherwise my life is fine – we went to a fun wineblending event last Saturday, I went downtown shopping at the cool stores (Title Nine, Athleta) Sunday, and we’re looking forward to our big Galapagos trip in July I’m also looking forward, in the sense of “get this over with”, to this damned colonoscopy Friday. I just broke the code of silence around TMI matters to talk to a couple of coworkers (nice thing about older people: they’ve all been through this) and figure if they can, I can.

But I still keep coming back to that tiny hole in the universe that was once filled by a happy baby I only ever ‘met’ in photographs. Grief is like that; it never wants to go away – and it can be cumulative. Tomorrow is Dad’s yahrzeit, so that will be hard.

What a depressing day. An online friend of mine has just lost her child, and it’s giving me feelings of, “No, the universe isn’t supposed to work that way!!!” The three-month-old baby was fine Sunday, in the hospital with viral pneumonia Monday, better Wednesday, worse Thursday and now gone. I knew that any time you have an infant (or anyone, I guess), in the ICU, it’s very serious, but I guess I just expect that people will get better from diseases. I mean, I understand that miscarriages happen all the time because so many things can go wrong in developing a whole new person; I understand that sometimes neonates die because something was wrong with them or went wrong with the birth; I even understand that sometimes babies die for no apparent reason with SIDS. I’m just used to modern medicine being good enough that diseases get handled and people get better. It seems trebly tragic because her mother went through a lot to conceive her, then had a difficult pregnancy, and was so happy to be a mom. Also, the baby’s name was Felicity, so I keep harking back somehow to the loss of Joyce (Joy for short) in Anne’s House of Dreams – I guess I tend to sink into stories as a way to react to real life occurrances. (I am only writing about my own reactions here, in my own blog, because the mom is on other social media I participate in, and any mention of the death there should be about trying to support and comfort her.)

She’s someone I know via a Ravelry group; I’m really hoping we can pull together to do something, whether it’s a group donation, a blanket, or whatever. Not getting much response yet, though.

I’m a bit down at the moment anyway; this is the week between the anniversary of my dad’s death in the Gregorian calendar and the yahrzeit in the Hebrew calendar. Then yesterday, I got scheduled for a colonoscopy next Friday and I think this will majorly suck. Not so much the procedure itself, for which I’ll be sedated, as the prep and maybe the recovery. I have to go on a clear-liquid diet Thursday, which is going to make the workday interesting, drink 32 ounces of some stuff that’s said to be fairly unpleasant that night, drink 32 more ounces in the morning, go in at 9:15, come out three hours later and have someone to drive me because I’ll be groggy, and not drive a car for 16-24 hours after due to persisting grogginess. Apparently I won’t be completely knocked out, but the stuff they give you has an “amnesiac effect” (the doctor’s words) so I likely won’t remember it anyway. Somehow this has always seemed like slightly less of a big deal when it was my mom going through it, which is probably partly because it always seems worse when it’s yourself, and partly because she’s brave about this kind of thing.

I’m scheduled to get a mammogram AND see a gastroenterologist today. Indignities at both ends!

ETA:
Mammograms kind of hurt. I am just not very squishy!

Also, on the no-so-ugh front, I got a new haircut the other day. I like it but have been having trouble taking a good photo. I think this one works, though.

This is getting ridiculous. It seems like I’ve done nothing but go to doctor this year – and I’m healthy, for the most part! Now I’ve managed to unwittingly schedule two appointments for the same day, though at least fortunately they’re not close together in time.

Here’s what I’ve had and have scheduled, so far:

• Annual physical provided from work
• Annual physical from my own doctor (because my company got a new provider in to do these this year, and they don’t do as many blood tests – including the one that found low thyroid levels last year.
• Trip to lab before physical, to get blood taken for testing.
• Dentist for cleaning and checkup – no fillings needed, yay!
• Optometrist for annual checkup – no change in prescription
• Followup with my GP to recheck thyroid (I’d been told to take it in the morning and was missing a few per week. She told me it was OK to take it at night after all – since when I haven’t missed a dose – and wanted to recheck after 6 weeks of more consistent meds. Bear in mind I have *no* symptoms and only knew thyroid was low due to blood tests. TSH level is in the normal range but on the high end (meaning low-ish thyroid) so she upped my dosage.
• Dermatologist. Had never been to one and it seemed like time to get a baseline check.
• Superamazing internationally known (according to dermatologist) nail specialist – to get mysterious line in my toenail checked out and make sure it’s nothing much. It is indeed nothing much, as expected.
• Mammogram scheduled next week. I think I’m quite low risk, but I’m old enough that I’m supposed to be getting them every few years.
• Gastroenterologist scheduled for next week. Like the nail doctor check, just to look at a minor symptom and make 100% sure it has a correspondingly minor cause. Will probably end up with a colonoscopy, which I’d have had to get next year anyway, due to turning 50.
• I will also need to go back tot he blood lab in another 6 weeks or so, just to recheck thyroid numbers again after the doctor upped my med.

I try to be responsible and all, but that sure seems like an awful lot of highly educated people, just to tell me I’m very healthy!

I’m on three meds: birth control (yes, still needed); a special extra-fluoride toothpaste (they have prescription toothpaste – who knew?); and thyroxin to increase thyroid function (as noted I have NO symptoms – but am curious as to whether increased thyroid function would give me thicker hair (seems like it has), better cold tolerance (no), weight loss (not so far), and more energy (maybe but it’s hard to tell – erg workouts have been seeming slightly easier to finish).