Tag: Dancing with Death…

I am going to go through a short list of hell.

While my vacation in Buffalo was awesome, the previous weeks in December and the days since have been a bit stressful and up until today…left me with a HUGE nagging feeling that something really bad was happening to my health. I don’t need to exaggerate because after reading the list and a little background you’ll know why I was a little stressed.

At the end of November, I caught swine flu. This monster wreaked havoc on me and despite working very hard to keep myself optimal, the dehydration that occurred caused very startling problems afterward. I lived on soup that week. Re-hydrating as much as possible because when Tony dehydrates, he gets the mother of all arthritis attacks.

So…just after I am sure I am over the flu, I am stricken with an insane case of sodium edema….this happens when you take on too much sodium (canned soup is the most unhealthy shit in the world…I know this now) when dehydrated, and then hydrate heavily. Instead of passing through your body the water and sodium decide to turn you into a balloon. The sodium follows the water that follows the sodium – ergo, your limbs swell up with all the water you drink. I gained ~25lbs in under two weeks. Then came the fun part…going to see the doctor and totally stressing about it.

You see I know what edema means. Everyone that’s had a friend or loved one or associate with heart problems knows it’s one of the more important forewarnings of very nasty heart-related problems. Going to the doctor for what should have been a routine physical at that time turned into my own little House episode. At the same time I am in the middle of my testing for apnia, I am now a prime candidate for heart problems.

Dumping the water-weight took over a week, but after I felt like a million bucks…but theres one problem. My initial blood panel is back. We’re pretty sure there is nothing even remotely wrong with my ticker, but there is evidence of not one, but FOUR liver function problems. Not being one for wisdom, I put the tests on hold and went to New York for vacation…yeah…that’s me on a smart day 😉

Now if you haven’t heard, I have one tiny little issue with flying. I get mad-hasty earaches and ear infections when I fly. This time was not exception and the night I touched down in Buffalo, I had a scratch in the back of my throat/nose that told me right off I was getting a cold. Yeah…only a week after finally getting over the flu, I got a mad-nasty cold…on vacation. Now the vacation itself was awesome, and there isn’t much to tell except I think I may have been possessed or something because there is NO WAY a human can produce so much mucus. Anyhow, the big detail in this is that I didn’t go see a doctor while I was in New York. I stayed on my game by chewing no less than 70 Halls and 30 Dayquill and 30 Nyquil caps each. While the cold did in fact dwindle away, it left me with a little present – a sinus infection on both sides moving into both ears.

So the flight back was interesting. Everyone was wondering wtf I was doing holding my hand to the side of my head covering my right ear. It was because the pressurization made me feel like someone was digging around in my ear with a salted ice pick. By the time I’s touched down, I was sick, couldn’t hear out of my right ear at all and my other ear made everything sound like I was underwater. I’d let the infection go for too long and now my ears are completely effed up…still…but my ears are NOTHING compared to the discussion I had with my doctor. I had an appointment with him asap and there was alot to talk about.

While we are pretty sure the heart problem was a non-entity, the only other items left to be concerned about was the toxicology reports from the initial panel. Remember the blood panel I completley shrugged off before vacation? Well…it was lecture time. Apparently I am VERY lucky that I 86’ed all the “extracurriculars” so long ago…because I’d be dead already if I’d continued. The doc and I have this really cool heart to heart where I learn about the direction the testing is going. We’re headed down a very specific road of blood panels that test for nothing but diseases that would have seriously made me consider the afterlife. Hep, HIV…liver disease, etc. All the not-so-fun stuff that if testing positive, would suck like nothing has sucked for me before…and I have been through some effed up stuff.

So…why is it a good day? Because after all that stressing, I finally got the results back from the tests along with the prognosis and it’s 100 percent good news. I don’t have heart disease, my liver isn’t rotting, and I am not going to keel over from hereditary probability…at least not yet 😉 The doctor praised the results and was impressed with how well I’ve been taking the weight off.

So yeah, I’m not dying, it’s a damn good day.

Ciao!

-Tony