(Phaysis)

I am tired of my stomach. If I could have it cheaply removed surgically and still survive without a stomach (and survive the surgery) I probably would do it. I laid down for bed last night and within five minutes I was sitting back up and taking care to not lose my dinner. I turned my lamp on, sat up and focused on breathing. After a ginger candy and some time to steady myself, I made the second attempt for sleep. I felt slightly better this morning, but my rough stomach has been with me all day.

I was talking with “BC” about my stomach problems during a break at work, and he mentioned that I quite possibly have acid reflux or something. Said he found that those who have A-R and smoke are significantly increasing their chances for throat cancer because the acid leaves the throat open for carcinogenic tampering. That was a wake-up call to me. We discussed using Prilosec now that it’s over the counter; he suffers the same thing I do, just not as bad. Said he’s planning on getting a box of it to see how it does.

So, earlier tonight, while at the store, I got a box. Fourteen-day treatment goes for $10. All I know is that a few months ago I got a prescription of it from my doctor and I gave it a pass thinking he just wrote the scrip in order to please his pharmaceutical rep. I probably should’ve filled the order; at least that’s how I feel now while I’m sitting with a sour stomach, rough throat, and churning esophagus. (Yuck, I know.) So, I will be taking my first pill in the morning.

Speaking of morning, tomorrow morning I have to get up early (on a Saturday, no less) to pack up my car and head off to Texas Renaissance Festival for the weekend. My presence is required (Hi Maeralin!), so I dutifully will be going, stomach funk or not. This’ll be my first go at TRF since 2000; it’ll be nice to see what’s changed about it, and see a few old friends from that year (Hi Pete!). And most importantly I’ll be seeing my old friend “Maeralin” who I have not seen in the thirteen years since the summer after our high school graduation in 1990. We’ve been talking online for about 4 years now, and it’s good to finally be able to see her.

As much as I hate traveling, once I get on the road, I’ll be more gung-ho about it. It’s just the preparation, the packing, the looking ahead, the expenditure, the energy it takes to do it, and the nerve-wracking anticipation of dealing with the unexpected on the open road.

Time to gather my things and collect myself for this weekend. I’ll be camping out Saturday night, which I’ve not done in 3 years, and wouldn’t you know it the weatherman says it looks like rain.

It looks like rain. :sighs: Wish me luck.

Poked, prodded, stuck, bled, shaved, scraped, patched, shot up, scanned, pushed, run to death. A night on Sixth Street? An evening in the LAPD hotel? A bad time in a Tijuana brothel? Nope.

I had my stress test yesterday.

I went in for my 1pm appointment at a local cardiovascular specialist office for my nuclear stress test. In a nutshell, this kind of test involves radioactive dyes and a little bit of exercise. They brought me in, shot me up with a radioactive isotope drug (the gamma-ray dosage was much less than a typical X-ray) which binds to my heart muscles. After a 30-minute break, to give the drug enough time to find my heart, where I read some angry literary bitterness from Henry Rollins, I was laid down on a sensor machine and slid into this set of rings which contained these huge boxes loaded with sensors. I had to get really comfy, because for the next 15 minutes I had to remain motionless. Thankfully, it was over sooner than I had thought.

After the scan, I went to another room where my chest was shaved in patches with one of those single-use razors they love to use in operating rooms (the guy was kinda rough). Then he swabbed the shaved patches with rubbing alcohol and followed it up with something resembling 400-grit sandpaper. Oouuuch. Apparently this was to make my skin completely conductive for the ton of sensor patches that were stuck on me. (Regardless of all the shaving, some hair was *still* pulled when those were taken off.) I was wired up to the EKG machine, everything worked and checked out, then the doctor came in to monitor the machine while I worked out on the treadmill.

Clunk! “Ooh, that wasn’t a good sound,” said the Doc. The first treadmill we tried was broken. Crap. I had to be taken to another room and get wired up again for a different treadmill. :sighs: At least this corner room had a much better view of the scene around the office tower.

The treadmill started out at 1.7 mph at a 10% incline. That was equivalent to a decent walk down the street, and this stage lasted for about four minutes. Then the treadmill got a little more difficult – it sped up and the incline stepped up to 12.5% grade. This went on for two more “stages” where by the time my heartrate reached the target of 160 beats per minute I was running up a serious hill. It was at that point that the doc injected me with a final dose of isotope and needed me to run for one more minute. This is to make sure the drug gets a good circulation through my bloodstream.

Off the treadmill, the physician’s assistant removed all but three of the EKG pads and took the IV out of my arm. I was then sent into the break room to eat the high-fat lunch I was told to bring, which I did gladly and with much gusto after having to fast for six hours before this test. Mmmm. Reheated Sonic burger and tots.

After lunch, I had to lay down on the sensor again, this time for a shorter session. The EKG was attached, I was slid into the rings, and this time I managed to lay with my head turned enough to see the computer monitor. What I saw was pretty interesting – after every small motion of the sensors around my chest, the computer would accumulate more scans together into a final image for that angle. When the sensors moved again, the process repeated. It was really interesting seeing inside my chest; looked kind of like a ghostly glow shot with a security cam in low light. And it doesn’t matter that I’m at a cardiology specialist’s office, my geekhood still rides high because as I’m looking at the scanner’s monitor I noticed that according to the look of the “widgets” on the graphical interface the computer was running Gnome on some version of X-Windows (Linux or Unix) or plain-ol’ Microsoft Windows using a Gnome widget library. Heh.

When the second test was done, the docs helped me up, disconnected me from the machine, shook my hand and told me to expect a call later this week for the interpretation. From everything I heard and gathered, my heart was acting normally for them. Everything was normal. But the interpretation of the many EKG readings while under stress and while at rest, and the interpretation of the images from my chest, may tell the doctors something different. I dunno.

Last night I took some pleasure in explaining to my buddies that I was full of gamma-ray radiation. Should’ve seen the looks and the backpedalling.

Time to get ready for work. Later.