zombie

if i lie in bed for 2 hours and still cant fall asleep... then take two sleeping pills and still cant fall asleep..... its not gonna be a fun night.

Hydrogen Photo Bomb

Medical Musings

An few axioms from the medical/surgical world, "Eat when you can, sleep when you can." As you never know what is going to happen in life, so don't get caught out by running yourself down. When an opportunity presents itself to take care of your needs, jump on it.

"Better is the enemy of good." Don't mess something that is good up by trying to make it better. Just like Bruce Lee said that thinking is the enemy of perfection this is the same deal. Some stuff just needs to be left well enough alone and for you to stop fiddling with it.

In personal medical stuff, 'cause that is a big theme recently, I finally have an appointment date with my UCSD referral. Monday October 24th. The real trick will be to see if my records from my HMO get there before I do. If not, I'm trying to get something prepared outside of official channels to cover me for their expected failure.

The chest pain I have had riding and running worries my doctor enough that I am scheduled for a bunch of lab tests and a stress echo. This is getting all hooked up to an EKG machine and then running on a treadmill. Once my heart rate is nice and high I lay down quickly and then they do an ultrasound of my heart. He marked the appointment request urgent, so I should have this done in the next couple weeks.

And in a month I should also know if my low testosterone is caused by having taken high doses of Prednisone or a pituitary gland problem.

If one's genes were the result of a lottery then I would be considered holding a losing ticket. Oh well. At least I'm not the dude who died earlier this week landing wrong off a jump mountain biking, just outside of San Diego. On a trail I rode 3 days before he died there.

Or the dude who died last month after getting bit by a rattlesnake near where I frequently trail run.

Hong Kong Phooey

OR "I don't know karate but I know ka-razy"

Today I mailed off two gis to a friend who trains at Brazilian Top Team. He needed them, I donated them. A white Koral MKM and a white Vulkan ProLite. He'll have to take the Galvao patch off one of them though, hehehe.

As I was filling out the shipping form the clerk at the UPS store asks me, "Oh I see you do karate."

To which my reply is, "Yeah, kinda." Then when she filled out the shipping contents she wrote "karate gear". I didn't feel like explaining Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to her.

Another time I was talking to a doctor about activity after surgery and said certain things were ok, "But don't do any karate. No karate." HA! Thanks! I told him in no uncertain terms that I absolutely would not be doing any karate.

No karate.

In college I was training and thought I could escape an armbar and the guy snapped my arm. When the xray showed a broken radial head the doctor asked me to explain the way I was hurt. The mechanism of injury as it's called.

"So a guy was sitting on top of me and I was trying to get away. I made a mistake and he grabbed my wrist with his hands and his legs were on either side of my shoulder. So he lays back, kinda perpendicular to my torso with my elbow in his groin. I'm trying to get away and he is trying to break my arm by lifting his hips and bending my elbow joint backwards the wrong way. That's how I broke my arm." The doctor did not really understand any of this. He was content with 'someone hyper-extended your elbow in a fight'. OK, sure thing.

Dude probably knew karate.

And as I'm a fan of 80's cartoons, that having been my youth, and also a fan of 90's rock, that having been college, here is a special tribute. Martial arts, Sublime and cartoons all in one.

Hong Kong Phooey.

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear. Lord Byron

Ok here is the deal and why it is important.......

Some background information. I have had Crohns disease since I was like 11 or 12. I have now had 9 surgeries on my small bowel.

2.5cm equal one inch. I have 110cm left of small bowel. Anything less than 100cm of small bowel puts one in danger of having small bowel syndrome.

I have a 10cm buffer, or 4 inches.

Four inches separate me between being normal-ish and never being able to eat again.

Your large intestine absorbs water. Your small intestine absorbs nutrients. With less than 100cm of it you run the risk of never being able to absorb enough nutrients to live.

Then you go on TPN. That was the 'everything you need' fluid through my special IV line. And then you die two years later due to liver failure.

And they don't do small bowel transplants. They are still considered experimental in the US. Something very rare and very expensive. And I don't meet the criteria.

From everything I know, have researched and heard from the doctors at my HMO I have to have surgery to close the two fistulas (holes) I have in my abdomen from my small intestine. There are no papers I can find that show any closure rate for a fistula after 3 months. I have had mine 9 months.

This surgery could easily remove 20cm of my small bowel. Which puts me firmly in small bowel syndrome territory.

It's kind of a big deal. I either come out of this surgery with a regular life or a nutritional cripple. No middle ground.

So thus I wait to hear from one famous doctor who just moved to San Diego to see if he has any last ditch tricks to try and close my fistulas. Which I honestly doubt he has.

Sometime this year I will likely wake up from surgery and know, will the rest of my life be normal? Or not.................

Great words I heard tonight....

"When the moment of decision arrives, the chance for preparation has passed."

Tang, Velcro, dehydrated food and me, Rowdy.

What do those four things have in common? Well they all wanted to be astronauts when they were little. Tang, Velcro and dehydrated food made it into space and I didn't.

Still when I was a little boy I either wanted to be an ichthyologist due to my fascination with sharks and ancient sea creatures or an astronaut.

I did come close once and here are the two stories behind my chance.

Version #1. The Ralphie and icicle version of Spaceman Rowdy.

I was wandering around a house I was interested in buying and it was full of interesting items, a pogo stick, 30 gallons of whiskey, cowboy hats and in one bedroom closet a large clear bowl.

It was on the top shelf of the closet and as I was just standing there looking at it when it just fell off the shelf! CRASH. Striking me in the head and breaking! Glass cutting my ear and face.

Wow, the owner should really be more careful about how they leave stuff lying around. I could have lost an eye...

Version #2. The Spaceman Rowdy truth is out there.
I was wandering around a house I was interested in buying and it was full of interesting items, a pogo stick, 30 gallons of whiskey, cowboy hats and in one bedroom closet a large clear bowl.

It was on the top shelf of the close and I was just standing there looking at it when I reached my hands up, on my tippy toes and took it off the shelf.

Immediately I thought, this is just like a 60s astronaut helmet!


So I tried to put it over my head. Thinking to myself, "Won't this be funny when I come down stairs and my real estate agent sees me with this glass bowl over my head like an astronaut? Now is my chance to live my childhood dream!"

Hmmmmm, doesn't quite fit. Maybe I should push this glass bowl down on my head a little farther. Oh, but what if it 'pops' on and I can't get it off? I'll solve that later, push harder!

Ccccrrrreak, CRASH. Striking me in the head and breaking! Glass cutting my ear and head.

So much for getting to be an astronaut.... I couldn't even get "my" helmet on...

(Version 1 is what my real estate agent knew for over a year. Version 2 was finally revealed as the truth eventually to her. I think at her wedding reception. haha)