I’ve had a string of bad luck since I returned home from
wintering in Florida. It all happened in
a 3 week period starting at the end of March.
First, there was the colitis flare up that hit me the day
after getting home. My bowels had pretty
much been behaving themselves while in Florida and I had made it thru the long
drive home without shitting my pants.
But then some bloody diarrhea hit me for a few days. It’s always unnerving to see the toilet bowl
full of crimson red fluid. Luckily, it
only lasted about a week until I could get it under control.
Then there was the extreme fatigue and unexplained weight
loss that struck me in Florida. Walking
up a flight of stairs or doing any physical exertion winded me and necessitated
that I sit down to catch my breath. And
I dropped another 5 lbs even though I thought I was packing in the food. In total, I had dropped 25 lbs over the
course of a year without trying. Some would
welcome this type of weight loss. But
for someone who was pretty fit at 190 lbs and could ride a bike 100 miles,
being down to 165 lbs and getting winded walking up stairs is a little scary. Once I got home, I went to see my Doctor. Blood tests showed I was pretty anemic and had
low iron levels, which was causing the extreme fatigue. Don’t know how the anemia happened, since it
started before the colitis flare, but I was put on iron supplements to help get
my strength back.
Then in the course of diagnosing my fatigue and weight loss
a chest X-ray and CT scan showed I had some very small undetermined masses/inflammation
in my lungs. Luckily it wasn’t lung
cancer, but the lung specialist says I have “organizing pneumonia” in some
small areas of my lungs (a type of lung disease). It’s not causing me any problems and can be
treated, but it’s not something that goes away on its own. In some rare cases, this can be caused by my
colitis or the medication I take for my colitis. Great.
Ever since I got diagnosed with colitis over 2 years ago, I’ve been a
case study for rare side effects. I’ve
had drug induced hepatitis, drugs that made me sick as dog, and a rare drug
induced blistering skin condition that could have killed me. Having colitis is bad enough, but having it
cause problems in another vital organ sucks.
Then there was the episode of running in my sleep. Yes, you read that right - running while I was
asleep. It’s a much faster version of
sleep walking. About a week after getting
home, I was having a dream that I was running thru the woods. In reality, I was running in my bedroom. I was head down going flat out like a football running
back when I ran into a door frame and went careening sideways into the
hallway. Hitting a door frame while
running is a sure fire way to get woken up.
It also woke everyone else up in the house. As I lay in the hallway re-gaining my senses,
I thought I might have broken my hip and big toe. Turned out I was lucky and just
got some really bad bruising and some soreness.
Then there was the crème de la crème of my bad luck. While working in my garage, a 16oz claw
hammer fell off its hook and hit me squarely on the top of my head. The hammer was up on the wall and had a
chance to build up some speed before it smacked me in the head, claw first. There was much swearing and cuss words
spewing from my mouth as I thought I might pass out from the hit. It also left a mark as the blood tricked down
the side of my head. Turns out, my head is
pretty hard and I was left with just a scab and a lump the size for of small
egg.
After the hammer hit incident, I told my wife to be prepared
for me to get electrocuted or set on fire.
It’s been that type of 3 weeks.
When bad shit happens to me, I sometimes think about other folks
that have it worse than me as a way to put it into perspective. But I don’t know - maybe I’m one of those other
guys.
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