Medical Adventures
More than one person has, of late, commented that losing weight as quickly as I have isn’t healthy. I’m aware of that, thanks, and even if I weren’t, the feeling-like-crap part would probably have been a good clue. Bowing to the collective wisdom of friends and family, I hied myself to the family doctor today. Best to deal with this while I am still at a healthy weight than to let it go until I am underweight and worse off. (Seriously, I am at something like a healthy weight; I am coming in slightly above the top of what the computer at my gym considers ideal. When you know that your mom reads your blog, sometimes you have to be really explicit about the fact that there’s nothing to worry about.)
Without going into too much distasteful detail, the doctor is indeed convinced that I have a digestive-system problem, and has ordered some tests. One is a take-home, which I sha’n't describe, as I’d have to think about it. I’ll also be leaving some blood in test tubes at my friendly neighborhood medical lab tomorrow morning. I have an as-needed presciption for the digestive problem, which I hope I won’t need very often…but hey, if I didn’t have a problem, I wouldn’t have been to the doctor in the first place, so who am I trying to kid, here?
The doctor also suggested that there may be some depression going on, and he wasn’t the first person to bring it up. Frankly, I’m skeptical; I’ve been depressed and this doesn’t feel like it. I turned down the idea of an antidepressant; my doctor tends not to write a lot of prescriptions anyway, and brought it up mostly as something that might be appropriate in the future. If he doesn’t think I need it now, and I don’t think I need it now, there’s no point.
By a truly amazing coincidence, when I got in my car to go back to work, the local public radio station was airing a program in which the participants were talking about the selfsame digestive-system condition that the doctor suspects I’ve got. The really interesting part of the discussion—and something the doc didn’t mention, probably because of time constraints—was the role of neurotransmitters in the gastroenteric system. Fascinating stuff, and wonderfully relevant, too. I felt a lot better about the problem when I heard actual medical experts saying that stress can cause the problem, and it may or may not have anything to do with depression. Just the possibility that the fact that I have the digestive-system problem doesn’t automatically mean I’m depressed is quite a relief. I’ve been saying all along that it feels like a nasty stress reaction. It’s nice to know that I’m paying enough attention to my body that I might be right.
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August 25th, 2005 at 9:11 pm
Hope your system returns to rights very soon!
(And… I’ve got a few shirts that may now work a lot better for you than they do for me. They turned out not to be as, er, compliant as I needed them to be. If you’re gonna be around this weekend, drop me an email and I’ll drop them by your house to see if they work for you….)
September 1st, 2005 at 10:02 pm
[...] Just in case you’re keeping track (and if you are, you need to get a life of your own, because mine’s just not that interesting) I got the results from my recent blood work, and according to the doctor’s office, it’s “perfect.” [...]
September 27th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
[...] Last Tuesday, I had a suspicious mole removed. To be honest, I’ve always been suspicious of that mole, for as long as I can remember. It looked like a mole that was up to something, or at the very least, desperately wanted to be up to something. Recently, it started to change shape and texture ever so slightly. I was happy to finally have an excuse to have the damed thing removed so I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. As it happened, I needed a followup visit for my weight problem, so I decided to only make one copayment and address both problems in one visit. [...]