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  • More Medical Fun

    Time for a bit of a health update. I’m coming up on my one year birthday on April 14th. Just to keep me from going too nuts celebrating, I’m going to be having stomach surgery sometime soon. The doctors think that I have continuing issues with acid reflux and are going to tie off my esophagus in my stomach. When they tie it off, it prevents the acid from coming back up. Though it doesn’t keep food from going in (though at first I’ll be limited to soft foods). While they are in there they will also open up the base of my stomach to help food flow a little bit better.

    I’m actually not that nervous about it. Maybe having surgery as major as a transplant makes one a little jaded. I was more bothered by the other options. One was do nothing and hope for the best, no reason to tempt fate there. The other was one where I’d have a drainage tube from my stomach and a feeding tube into my intestines. With an added bonus of just not eating food.

    No word on when exactly it will be, but I’m having a handful of tests next week in preparation for it. Including my favorite test, an endoscopy.

    It will all be worth it though. The reflux is something that may have been the source of a bunch of health issues, including possibly my initial lung problems. I’ll still probably never know for sure, but just having a possible cause is kinda nice. And I’d rather the reflux not cause issues with my new lung.

  • Are you a Grup?

    New York magazine has an article talking about Grups*. It’s the new thirtysomething. Or something like that.

    He owns eleven pairs of sneakers, hasn’t worn anything but jeans in a year, and won’t shut up about the latest Death Cab for Cutie CD. But he is no kid. He is among the ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood as we once knew it and killed off the generation gap.

    *Also known as yupster (yuppie + hipster), yindie (yuppie + indie), and alterna-yuppie. Our preferred term, grup, is taken from an episode of Star Trek (keep reading) in which Captain Kirk et al. land on a planet of children who rule the world, with no adults in sight. The kids call Kirk and the crew “grups,” which they eventually figure out is a contraction of “grown-ups.” It turns out that all the grown-ups had died from a virus that greatly slows the aging process and kills anybody who grows up.

    Thankfully I only seem to partially fall into this classification. I hate being labeled too easily.

  • Escape from the Hospital

    Thursday morning, I went up to Brigham & Womens for a bronchoscopy. They like to do them on me now and then to make sure that everything is all fine with my new lung (one of my breathing tests was a little bit off last time I went into the office). For lung transplant recipients it a fairly regular occurance. In the past year I’ve had 4 or 5 (already losing count).

    This time around my oxygen levels weren’t so great after the bronch. It is one of the list of possible side effects of the procedure (along with fun things like them collapsing your lung). So, that combined with a wacky heartbeat (got up to 200 yesterday) earned me a stay in the hospital for a night. At first I thought the worst thing was having to do those three day hospital stays for a steroid pulse. I’ve now learned that the worst thing is not being prepared to suddenly have to stay in the hospital overnight. Crappy TV, only got CBS (which wasn’t all bad, got to watch CSI), felt kinda grumpy, didn’t sleep well, etc.

    I’m home now, and the good news is: no signs of rejection. Of course that probably means some more strange tests to make sure nothing else is going wrong.

  • Happy New Year

    Happy New Years to all my friends. 2005 has been quite a rollercoaster and I survived it relatively intact (well, as intact as one can be when gaining a new lung). I’m also glad it is over because I’m ready to start fresh again now.

    2005 was all about healing. 2006 will hopefully be about rebuilding. I’m actively pursuing a new job. If I get it, it will mean moving back up to Boston and living on my own. It will really be almost starting out from square one again. It’s all kind of scary and exciting.

    I don’t do resolutions because I never seem to actually get around to them. So instead I’m just saying I’ll just keep working to grow stronger and stay healthy.

  • It’s the little things

    Earlier today I paused midstep as I was jogging up the stairs and thought “Holy Fuck, I just jogged up the stairs. Cool!

  • Skipping Days

    For the first three hours I was awake today I thought it was monday. I most probably confused a few people that I was talking to this morning.

  • Another Year

    Another year has come and gone. I’m spending a relaxing day watching movies and stuff. Then the parental units are taking me out to dinner someplace. Should be nice and relaxing. Also, working on some goals for this year. Seems like a good year for big things to happen.

  • Fortune of the Day

    Found in my fortune cookie tonight:

    You won’t be bored for long! New adventures are on the way.

    I think I like the sound of that.

  • Holy Crap!

    It’s raining cats and dogs and penguins and armadillos outside! When will it end!?

  • Cranky

    I just want to take a moment to whine about the weather. I need sun, just a little every day. I love that nice warm feeling. But we’ve had overcast/rainy weather for days now (with more days of it ahead) and I’m sick of it. Mom and I have been talking about getting a light box this year, since we both felt the benefit of it when we borrowed one from a friend of hers last year.

    I also have to drive up to Boston tomorrow, I hate driving in overcast weather. I like to be able to have the windows down, wind whipping around inside the car, and the music playing loud.

    On the plus side I might be meeting up with someone from my LJ Friends list for lunch, so that may make the trip more fun than the typical drive up, buy things, drive home. I’m also thinking this may be a good trip to make a stop to do some record shopping, since I haven’t in ages.

    Maybe it is about time to do a new mix, that tends to put me in a more positive mood usually.