Had the sigmoidoscopy, not the most pleasant thing ever, but no cancer was found so that's good. A few biopsies were done, which is where a little grabber arm thing tears a chunk off of your sigmoid colon (Hellraiser comparisons come to mind) and those were sent off to a lab somewhere, so the doctor is hoping that will give him some answers. Next up is the gastroenterologist, who is specialized in colitis, which is the inflammation of the sigmoid colon (in some cases it could also be the inflammation of other parts of the digestive tract as well).
I'm getting pretty good at avoiding the painkillers (they make me woozy), so I think it's a combination of eating bland foods (although I had some really delicious mashed potatoes and gravy and a pizza pocket which I may or may not regret tomorrow), and keeping on the medicine regimen.
Dropping weight like a fiend...I wish that would stop.
Because of the stomach nausea and cramps I'm going to see about filing for family medical leave at work. I don't know what else to do at this point. It doesn't make sense to go to work on this, at least while everything is inflamed. Doing that could make it worse.
I don't know what's next...Armed with saltine crackers and 7up, plus popsicles, Jell-O and yoghurt... I guess that's all you can do, right?
Also kind of curious if it's a bad idea to wash down the anti-inflamatory pills with 7-up. Haven't had any problems so far, in fact it made it easier to take the medicine for some reason (and I hate the taste of water). I just wonder if the 7-up could be disintegrating the pill before it gets to the colon to do its work.
I'm in no position to offer health advice, but that's never stopped me yet. Don, when you say you hate the taste of water, am I to understand from that that you don't drink any? I know it's a full time job, one I struggle with daily myself, but I understand it is non-negotiable to drink minimally half your weight in ounces of nice plain water each day.
ReplyDeleteSo if you weighed 120lbs you'd need to down 60 ounces each day, etc. I put a few grains of sea salt in mine to help the water better get into the cells.
Just saying.
Good point, I guess everything I drink has water in it, but I usually drink Gatorade every day or every other day. Another drink of choice is 7up, which is mostly water. I like it when it gets a little flat because it's not as hard on my stomach.
ReplyDeleteI agree, that I should be drinking a lot of water. I'll try to drink more, probably with ice. The stuff that comes out of the tap isn't appealing to me at all. I also don't like how it passes straight through me.
sorry man.
ReplyDeletejriggity
Hi Don I haven't spoken to you in a good long while, it's Andy from the UK. I actually was looking you up to see how BES turned out, and I see you are having all this medical drama, hope all that pans out for you. It was interested to read your post about it costing you $250 for a visit to the Emergency Room, how does that work over in the States, I take it if you don't have medical insurance you need to pay. Thank god that's one thing we don't need to worry about over here, doesn't quite make up for having to live in a parochial back water, but at least all the crap is taken care of. It's not exactly free, it gets paid for straight out of your wages, which leads to some pretty dismal pay packets, but at least if you are sick you don't have the money to worry about, I couldn't imagine being seriously ill and having the additional worry of how to pay for it. It's funny because even prescription are free now in Scotland, whilst in England they need to be paid for them. They just pay a flat rate of like £6.50 or something so they don't actually pay the full price of the drugs, but still it's great not having to pay when I pick up my asthma stuff every couple of weeks. Whilst I was looking you up tonight I came across another couple of artists called Don Carlson, must be something about that name that is artistic. Do you know in the UK the ER is called Casualty it's actually The Casualty Department, or some places call it A&E (accident and emergency), not to be confused with the cable TV channel A&E, which we don't have in the UK, although there is a TV show called Casualty, which is like a crap version of ER, but whereas in ER the action revolves around ppl who have received gunshots from gang related drive by shooting, in Casualty it's all about ppl who have a nasty scolding accident, from a toasting fork whilst preparing crumpets, in a Tea related accident. In fact I could just go some crumpets now, but i'll have to remember to be careful, anyhoo Don you take care my friend I am off to find my toasting fork.
ReplyDeleteAndy....X
I love you Don.
ReplyDeleteHey there, Andy! BAS turned out horribly. People have commented that it looks like a bunch of random clips instead of a coherent story. I think I know how to tell a story, but in this case I wasn't trying hard enough to. I was also drinking a lot of caffeinated stuff, which may have intoxicated me and fragmented my thought process. Whatever the reason, I want to fix it. It didn't turn out right and I'm not interested in failure. On the bright side, I learned a lot about animation while making it. I refined my lip sync technique and learned some lighting tricks. One of the main problems with the film is that it has too much digital camera movement in it. This can be jarring. In some cases, I added those moves to hide just plain bad animation. In other cases, I thought it would help advance the story, but it only confused people. So, I'm taking notes from that. Another problem is that I did not stick to the original plan and cut some important parts from the script in order to shorten it. That played havoc with the story.
ReplyDeleteOf course, stress from all that is not why I got sick. I got sick because I was picked on and psychologically terrorized by an entire forum. I didn't know what to make of it... Never been taken so seriously on a humor board. Some people are just jerks beyond all reason.
Hey Jriggity, don't be sorry, this forced me to make some changes to my outlook and diet. I've let go of a lot of anxiety I had and am far more positive. Anything that can alter you that much can't be a bad thing. Could be a blessing in disguise.
Hi Ken, I'm not sure if I know who this is but I appreciate the sentiment. Right back at ya!
I find that if I sip sip sip filtered water through the day I can get it down w/o it rushing through. Not enough though. Everyday I am so dehydrated it isn't funny. But I continuously go for it as though my life depends on it.
ReplyDeleteI don't think doctors know this, but I understand sugar and caffeine, along with whatever chronic emotional stuff, can cause all kinds of inflammation and horrible pains. These chronic painful reactions can be diagnosed as all sorts of conditions so that there is something that can be done.
I don't know how much radical change in your life would have to happen for you to see whether a health nut diet would resolve the causes of your pain, or even if it would, but maybe a slight shift towards that might give some relief?
If you turned your detailed passionate mind toward being a health nut even a quarter of as much as you did on working out the best clay formulas, I'm sure you'd start to glow in daylight with vibrant health!
Hahaha! That would be cool- to glow like The Last Dragon.
ReplyDeleteI watched the film obviously BAS and not BES as I said weren't they a band or was that BEF, anyway, er yeah the animation in it is great really is, it always astounds me the amount of work that just a few seconds takes so BAS is a whole lot of work, especially for someone working on their own, it seems a shame that it didn't work as you planned, is there no way that edditing it could fix it, cuz it's a bit hard to follow but as a piece of animation it really stands up.
ReplyDeleteandy