Category Archives: Health: Mental and Physical

A while back Cousin Lucy, in a comment I accidentally deleted, expressed a kind of apology at having found my description of my experiences with the blood panel and the urine sample hilarious.

I could not be more flattered or honored.  When I can—which is far from every entry—I try to be funny.  I exaggerate a tiny bit here or there to bring out the comic potential in an incident, word, or action.  The humor though is damn dead pan which is true also of my verbal or spoken humor. 

For example while getting to know Nephew Stephen’s little Jake when we visited down in San Diego, I asked him if all his toes had growed in yet, since we Tingles have late growing toes, and did he have an extra toe, since we Tingles sometimes grow an extra one and have some shoe fitting problems, consequently.  This was all dead pan and the poor boy looked mighty befuddled, and decided to run off when I said I would show him my extra toe if he wanted to see it.

I don’t know where this wise cracking comes from.  I did it all though school.  I would just let out something and the whole class would laugh, and it would be enough in the ball park that even the teacher didn’t get annoyed.

I still do it.  At meetings with my colleagues.  Sometimes, I must admit, quite inappropriately.  Once our head secretary was present at one of our interminable meetings and giving us the details of our piddling budget for such things as paper, and the copying machine, and envelopes. Turns out over half the budget was for the telephones.

I have this telephone in my office.  It’s useless.  It doesn’t take messages anymore and I can’t dial outside the area code with it.  So I started to get up and said I would go over right then and get my phone and give it to her if that would help with the budget. Cause I didn’t need the damn thing anymore.  And everybody laughed.  I don’t know why since I was dead serious.

Anyway I get real pleasure out of giving people a laugh even though I don’t know why or how I do it.  Humor is a tricky thing.

But if I can get somebody to laugh, I considered it my Boy Scout good deed for the day. There’s a Hebrew word, mitzvah that has come to mean an “act of human kindness.”

For me, giving a laugh or getting one, why it’s a mitzvah.

Sometime this Month—I think it was January 2, I went in for my yearly physical.  I sat there alone for a time in the doctor office thing room with that table you can lie back on in my nakedness covered by one of those smock things that you can tie up in the back but I didn’t tie it up, and felt so damn tired I lay back and closed my eyes and felt I would take a snooze.

But the doctor person came in pretty quickly.  Actually she is not a doctor but a registered nurse, and Carol and I have been seeing her for at least 15 years, maybe more, for our diverse flues, aches, pains, x-rays, meds and yearly physicals.  Her name is Donna and she is good at what she does: screen people to see if they need to see a doctor about something specific, like their carotid arteries or something.

I always dread the yearly physical because I figure they will find that I have cancer or that I am wasting away from some strange disease.  I start worrying about it at least 2 weeks before and by the time I get there my blood pressure is up like I am heading for a coronary.  Also I get pissed off because they always weigh me with my clothes on; like what sort of reading is that supposed to give….I mean my damn shoes probably weigh four pounds.  I insist on taking those off even though they don’t ask me to.

Donna did a med check and updated the documents and made sure I didn’t need a stool thing because last year they did the colon thing with the tube all the way up and back, I might add.  And she did the other stuff like with the finger—and she said the prostate felt fine, solid and in no way irregular.

But even though everything seemed A-OK I went away still convinced something was probably amiss, and so went in immediately the next day for the blood panel and urine test.  I went really early but still had to wait 45 minutes and when I went into the little bathroom with the sliding panel in the wall where you stick the urine, well, when I went in there I somehow lost control of the little urine cup and pissed propelled the little cup right into the toilet.  But I retrieved it and rinsed it off in the sink and urinated in it hoping that the test wouldn’t come back saying my urine had excessive chlorine in it.

Finally I got the results in the mail, and the Urine was OK.  In fact, it says the specific gravity of my urine is 1.002, whatever that means.  And after Urine Color it says Yellow.  This sort of stumps me because I would hate to think of Urine that isn’t yellow.  I wonder what sort of test they did to determine the color.  Do you think maybe they eye-balled it?

And everything else was normal.  The Comprehensive Metabolic Panel was normal; the cholesterol was better than normal; in fact I showed improvement in all categories.  Like my total cholesterol was like 155.  When I started this cholesterol stuff about 20 years ago I was at 360.  So there has been improvement in that area due both to Lipitor and diet…Also my Thyroid Reflex Panel was Normal; and my Complete Blood Count was Normal.

And my Prostate (PSA) was Normal and I am very thankful for that because I was talking with Jay at the club whose PSA was not normal, and he had to go in for an operation, and he said they did it arthroscopically though a little cut right under his Navel!  He showed the scar so I don’t think he was kidding me.  I said, Jay, but isn’t the damn thing down there between the legs and he said yes and I said how the hell did they get the thing out through that little scar right under his navel so they could work on it, and he said he didn’t know and really didn’t want to.

I don’t want to either!

Sunday—I congratulated myself for having taken a day of rest.  Sure, I did some stuff.  I did my reading for Monday’s class, worked on the writing assignment a bit, and posted some emails.  But mostly I actually reclined on the sofa and watched TV.  I watched two football games.

First the San Diego Chargers.  I have been following them through their ups and mostly downs since about 1964 when they played in this tiny stadium next to Balboa Park.  So I just had to watch their game against Indianapolis.  They won strangely, though in the process LT—the league leading rusher—went out with a bruised knee, and then the erratic Rivers, the QB, also went out with a wobbly knee too.  Next week I expect they will be massacred by the robotic New England Patriots. It will be like watching paper go into a paper shredder.

Then, I watched New York against the Cowboys.  I didn’t watch as much of that.  I just wanted to see the Cowboys take a lick’en.  I have disliked them since the Tom Landry days when those Cowboys (I mean what are cow boys; let’s face it they are just boys with cows) claimed to be America’s team.  I don’t like mixing patriotism with sports or with much of anything else.

Then I watched some of a movie, as I recollect…and drifted off into a nap for a bit.  And that evening I watched a Laker’s game.  I have been watching the Lakers since 1980 when Magic, with his life-giving vitality, showed up on the court.  So I just had to watch, and they are doing better than last year.  When bingo—some time in the 2^nd quarter—their new, young center went down with a knee injury.

Three knee injuries in one day.  At least ones I remember.  I expect there were a lot more than that.

So I thought, jeez Nick…this is a psychological breakthrough.  You managed to rest—or at least try to—for a whole day.  But I wake up the next morning feeling completely washed out.  We have to go to the bank to sign some papers and while I am sitting there feeling like a lump (Carol says I looked like hell) the guy there starts talking about this stomach flu that’s going around, and I become more and more aware of gurgling noises in my stomach and the fact that I have had pretty sharp gas pains lately.  I have gas a lot but usually not pains with it.  And about half way through my first class, I start having muscle aches through by back and up my shoulder and mid-way through the next class I have a headache and feel completely wiped out.

So I didn’t have a psychological break threw.  I was taking a Tingle Vacation and didn’t know it.  Getting sick being the Tingle Idea of a Vacation.

 Today—I seem to be status quo—aches, pains, fatigue, but thank goodness so far no fever.  I hate fevers.

For kicks, I am asking my students to take an abbreviated form of the Meyers-Briggs personality inventory.  It’s supposed to sort of tell you who you are.  Online it’s possible to find a number of sites that offer the profile, but too many of them cost money.  I found one for my students to use that doesn’t charge.  So I ran through the inventory again myself and once again—for the nth time—I came out an INFP.  What is an INFP; well, here’s what they say:

The Portait of the Healer (INFP)

Healer Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in striving for their ends, and investigative and attentive in their interpersonal relations. Healer present a seemingly tranquil, and noticiably pleasant face to the world, and though to all appearances they might seem reserved, and even shy, on the inside they are anything but reserved, having a capacity for caring not always found in other types. They care deeply-indeed, passionately-about a few special persons or a favorite cause, and their fervent aim is to bring peace and integrity to their loved ones and the world.

Healers have a profound sense of idealism derived from a strong personal morality, and they conceive of the world as an ethical, honorable place. Indeed, to understand Healers, we must understand their idealism as almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. The Healer is the Prince or Princess of fairytale, the King’s Champion or Defender of the Faith, like Sir Galahad or Joan of Arc. Healers are found in only 1 percent of the general population, although, at times, their idealism leaves them feeling even more isolated from the rest of humanity.

Healers seek unity in their lives, unity of body and mind, emotions and intellect, perhaps because they are likely to have a sense of inner division threaded through their lives, which comes from their often unhappy childhood. Healers live a fantasy-filled childhood, which, unfortunately, is discouraged or even punished by many parents. In a practical-minded family, required by their parents to be sociable and industrious in concrete ways, and also given down-to-earth siblings who conform to these parental expectations, Healers come to see themselves as ugly ducklings. Other types usually shrug off parental expectations that do not fit them, but not the Healers. Wishing to please their parents and siblings, but not knowing quite how to do it, they try to hide their differences, believing they are bad to be so fanciful, so unlike their more solid brothers and sisters. They wonder, some of them for the rest of their lives, whether they are OK. They are quite OK, just different from the rest of their family-swans reared in a family of ducks. Even so, to realize and really believe this is not easy for them. Deeply committed to the positive and the good, yet taught to believe there is evil in them, Healers can come to develop a certain fascination with the problem of good and evil, sacred and profane. Healers are drawn toward purity, but can become engrossed with the profane, continuously on the lookout for the wickedness that lurks within them. Then, when Healers believe thay have yielded to an impure temptation, they may be given to acts of self-sacrifice in atonement. Others seldom detect this inner turmoil, however, for the struggle between good and evil is within the Healer, who does not feel compelled to make the issue public.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I do think this captures, in its particular and peculiar language, some aspects of me.  Although I am a bit repelled at the idea that I have something in common with Joan of Arc.

The free online site may be accessed by clicking here.  It doesn’t take long.  Read carefully enough to understand the question but try not to think at all about the answer.

If you do run through the inventory, let me know what kind of person it says you are and if you agree or not.  Or if you think the whole thing is just bunk.

It would be cool to know who we are, especially us Tingles, since we seem a particular clan.

Again for the free online site click here. 

In my ongoing pursuit of a good night’s sleep, I have been led to check into circadian rhythms.  One might think that going to sleep in darkness and waking when the light comes up is “natural.”  I suppose it is, but also very complicated. 

Circadian rhythms are produced endogenously.  They are built into the body, per se, and not the result of an external stimulus, such as the sun coming up or alternately going down.  They were discovered by a French person who noted that a certain flower opened and closed its leaves when left completely in the dark in the course of a day cycle.

Or in other words, if a person was locked in a room with 24 hour light, he or she would nonetheless, with no cue from the sun, begin to feel drowsy and sleepy at one time and wakeful at another.

The clock is said to go in a 24 hour cycle, though this is not accurate since the idea of a 24 hour day is but a human convention.  More accurately one might say that the rhythm goes though a complete cycle from one sunset to the next, even though the rhythm is not stimulated by the sun setting.

This rhythm is found in all sorts of plants and animals and evolutionarily speaking must have arisen from some relation to the movements of the sun.

Why I have to wonder—did it become necessary for the body to internalize the mechanism of the cycle.  What ever the reason, it did.

Whatever the reason when a certain time of day is reached, say night, the biological clock sets in motion the release of the hormone melatonin which is said to induce sleep.  But this clock does respond to some degree to external stimuli; when for example the seasons change the clock resets itself to synchronize with the changes in light and dark.

Some believe that some sleep disorders may be related to screw ups in the circadian rhythms.  Jet-lag is the prime example; people traveling from the US to China may take a week to readjust the clock.  They feel awake when it is dark and sleepy when it is light.  Some believe that work at the genetic and cellular level may help with people whose clocks seem permanently screwed up.

Another factor leading to screw ups may be the electrical light bulb.  Most likely in the pre historic past, when there were no light bulbs, your average cave person went to sleep when the sun went down and arouse when the sun came up.  This would make sense—a perfect synchronicity between sun and the biological clock. 

Others argue that the winter blues may in part result from the abruptness of the time change produced by the artifice of Day Light Savings Time.  These people are pretty serious and believe that a good deal of mental distress, even illness may be produced by Day Light Savings Time.

Personally, I dread each year the arrival of Day Light Savings Time.  Perhaps my sense of fatigue is produced by the government of the United States that instituted Day Light Savings Time so people would have more time to shop.  Perhaps my mental health is being destroyed by big business.

I spoke today, briefly, with Sister-in-Law Teresa who has suffered terrible sinus problems and who swears by the sea salt rinse, as does JT, for the amelioration of sinus problems.  Also to be used in the case of a cold, as I can testify having used a store bought form of sinus rinse before bed.  I managed to get to sleep without an assist from that wretched Nyquil substance.  Teresa recommends a home brew: 1 gallon distilled water, four tablespoons of sea salt, two tablespoons of baking soda.  She much prefers this home mix as doing the job perfectly well and not causing the burning that some of the store bought kinds do.

Carol and I took a long walk along the Elwood Bluffs as pictured below:

Here’s the spot we usually sit looking in the general direction of SF.

 Here can see the path that leads down from the spot we usually sit to get to the sand.

More in the direction of SF; can’t see the path any more.

I started the walk trying to track down a hawk, though this wasn’t the one.

You’d have to know where to look to see the path to the beach now.

We have walked as far as we can go, to the edge of a golf course surrounded by barbed wire.

The End through anise weed. 

Damn but I am all morose and mopey.  I am frequiently morose and mopey but I usually can make a joke or something or get some distance by thinking about stuff.  But this damn cold, that started last Sunday, has been going full bore for almost a week now, and while no worse, shows no signs of remission.

Now my temperature won’t even get up to 98.6 and hovers somewhere around 98.2.  Also I have taken into taking my blood pressure, with this over the counter blood pressure machine I bought at Costco.  That’s always a bad sign. And not very helpful either, since I can’t seem to get the damn thing to work correctly; it shows anywhere on the high side from 137 which is not good to 120 which would be excellent were it the truth.

Also the Nyquil is altering my mood, and I don’t think it mixes all that well with all my other meds, those being primarily Trazadone, Wellbutrin, and Klonapin.  All nasty little items.  Did I say, I am trying to get off the Wellbutrin, and am switching over to the Trazadone because it’s supposed to be beneficial for sleep.  So I am going off one med and unto another.

Among the side effects listed for Trazadone are: nausea, dizziness, insomnia, agitation, tiredness, dry mouth, constipation, lightheadedness, headache, low blood pressure, blurred vision, and confusion.  When you read the stuff, you kind of wonder if the cure is worse than the disease.  And were this not a description of my normal state I might be more worried. 

But this baby does have one side effect that bothers me quite a bit: priapism.  This is the famous four hour erection that you might get if you take Viagra or one of those meds for ED (ED! Can you believe “erectile dysfunction”—another example of the social construction of something otherwise known as impotence.—but hey, that might be too graphic.)  So everything is all screwed up.  What was once a good thing, now becomes fraught with danger.  Should I sense any life in THAT area I become concerned that something untoward might occur.

I could end up in the damn hospital because some times the only cure for this painful condition is surgery.  My god, they must bleed the penis!  And sometimes, after, well, say goodbye to any life down below.

Which reminds me, I have got to call Jay and see how his surgery went for that prostate thing.

Damn! No wonder I am mopey.