Off and on throughout September, I’d had some strange symptoms (stomach pain and loss of appetite, among others). On Thursday night, the pain became so severe that I had to go to the E/R. I was there from about 1am to 6am, getting a blood test, a urine tests, and a CT scan, and of course waiting around for hours and hours. Luckily all the nurses were excited to talk to me about my weight loss during the down time. I’d only mentioned it to the one admitting nurse, but I guess she told everyone else. She was particularly excited to meet me because she used to work out at DIAKADI a few years ago.
I told the E/R doctor about the symptoms I’d had all month, and suggested that maybe all my internal organs were mad at me for losing over 70 pounds, because they used to have a lot of more space, and now they’re all crammed together, and this would obviously make them grumpy. He looked at me like I was an idiot, which, in retrospect, was fair. He also looked at me funny when I asked how many calories in the barium solution I had to drink for the CT scan. (Turns out barium isn’t in the Eating Free database anyway, so I logged it as a “Starch” since it tasted like chalk.)
After the CT scan, they told me my gall bladder was inflamed and leaking fluid everywhere, but they didn’t “see any need to worry about that tonight.” One wonders what it has to be like in order for someone to be concerned about it. I think if I were an inflamed car leaking fluid, a mechanic (or a fireman, for that matter) would fix that right away, right? I guess they weren’t so worried about it since my gall bladder was no where near my pain (upper right vs. lower left), so it clearly wasn’t the source of the problem.
The tests seemed to point to a bacterial infection of some sort in my stomach or intestines, so they put me on antibiotics for seven days. My pharmacist said that while I was on these antibiotics I should avoid dairy, alcohol, caffeine, antacids, vitamins and sunlight, so that pretty much killed my weekend plans to drink White Russians and Red Bull from my deck chair while downing fruity Pepcid and Flintstones tablets. So I will be living in a cave eating nothing but water for the next week.
I pretty much had to sleep all day on Friday, and cancel my performance on Friday night at the Sacramento Comedy Festival. I felt bad about that, but whoever said “the show must go on” obviously didn’t spend all night in an E/R coked up on barium and tracking dyes.
I did manage to get out and about to the Castro Street Fair today, where I balanced a sword on my head. Look how skinny I look in these pictures! Swords are slimming, and apparently man magnets. These cute boys from Mexico jumped into the picture with me and the tall one licked my sword. It was a great end to an otherwise traumatic week.
