How about two weekends ago?
I've been watching the Dr. Kildare TV series via DVD over the past year and I marvel at just how good this show was. And realistic. They didn't save the patient all the time. It made me more envious of the medical profession. If you find yourself with a good doctor, make sure you hold onto them. If you live your doctor, please try and keep your doctor, regardless of what your health plan says.
I'm blessed with a great internist who would fit very well alongside the likes of Dr. James Kildare and Dr. Leonard Gillespie. So much of what they do is detective work. Taking the clues at hand and solving somebody's health mystery.
And, thinking again of the blog title today, that mystery was...well...me.
Let's flip the calendar pages to early February. I even wrote about it here. Super Bowl Sunday. Two bouts of fifteen-minute-long chest and upper back pains followed by about five hours the next day of wild fever with temperatures all over the FM dial. Teeth chattering like when Stymie saw a ghost.
Given the season, my doctor wrote it off as the flu, even though I hadn't gotten the flu since New Year's Eve of freshman year in college. Okay, a five-day course of Tamiflu knocks its all out and I go about my crazy business.
A couple of weeks back, I head to New York for some work and even more play. Three Broadway shows, to boot. On the plane home (in coach, thank you very much), I know that I am feeling more dehydrated than usual. I chalk that up to the sandwich I brought on board---proscuitto and provolone from my favorite Yonkers Italian deli. I get home and ingest every container of liquid in the house, stopping before I swig the Tide detergent.
The next day, I proceed to my regular office for Thursdays. No issue.
On Friday, I work from home. My stereo guy comes and finally figures why my back speaker keeps cutting out. An errant nail. A good day so far. I head to the gym to see my trainer for the first time in a week. All stretching and massages. No weights.
As she and I are walking out of the facility, I could feel it come like the 6:02 express from Croton-Harmon. I get into my car and I am immediately consumed by upper back pain. Hello, Super Bowl Sunday all over again.
What the fudge?
Just like last month, it goes away in a quarter-hour. I'm pain-free the rest of the night.
On Saturday, I head to the super market for grocery shopping. By the time I get home, I am abdomen-deep in round two. The same exact pain as yesterday. The same exact pain as early February. In fifteen minutes, it's gone.
What the fudge again?
So, now like a trusted "I Love Lucy" rerun, I start waiting for the funny line that's going to come next. After this all transpired last month, the fever should come like clockwork. I decided not to wait. Knowing that my doctor's office is part of a cooperative in the same building, I am aware that there is always one physician on duty every weekend. I hit the digits.
The nurse on the other end dutifully heard everything I said and then asked the obvious question.
"Did the fever start yet?"
No. But it's expected here sooner than Easter. She tells me to play it by ear and assured that it would be wise for me to make an in-person the next day.
Of course, the fever was delayed a little bit. Its arrival came at 5PM. This time it's worse than the month before. I take my temperature so much that I feel like the Thanksgiving turkey. I hit degree heights that aren't even on the FM dial yet.
And my mind begins to wander to places all over the medical map. So is this the flu again? Or is it something else and I really didn't have the flu in February?
I crawled my way to the doctor on Sunday morning. My guy wasn't on duty and the one who was....well, he was a nice guy but certainly not the one I have trusted with my health for over a decade. He asked all the usual, annoying questions.
"Have you been out of the country lately?"
No.
"Have you been working in Africa recently?"
I don't have Ebola. No.
"Have there been any weird sexual partners?"
Seriously? No.
After he asked every question except the ones James Lipton asks at the end of every Actor's Studio interviews, he drew the requisite blood and promised to have the results that night. Oh, would I also provide a urine sample?
Sure.
And, as I did so, something happened that only occurred one other time in my life. That was after a kidney stone. And, just as I did then, I peed...well...what you see a lot of in a Vincent Price movie.
I walked out of the bathroom and told Dr. Sherlock Holmes I had just given him his first clue.
So, if you have to expend liquid that looks like the opening of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, you might as well do it in a doctor's office. Had this happened at home, I would have freaked out. As it was, I already was spending way too much time typing my symptoms into Google. Rule of thumb? When you have something wrong with you, don't spend too much time typing your symptoms into Google. You'll discover that even a clogged sinus will take you straight to cancer.
But I will admit that my mind was already in race mode. And thinking about what the hell was going with my body that had a perfect blood test during my annual physical in December.
As promised, the substitute doctor called me that night with the blood test results. My bilirubins were spiked. That's part of the blood attached to your gall bladder and liver. Or so I learned that night. I was told to follow up with my regular internist on Monday. Meanwhile, I was happy to announce that the color of urine had moved to a dull orange. Yep, those are the bilirubins. Or so I learned that night.
Waiting for the next day and trying to sleep that Sunday night, I tried to put it all aside. Let the doctor do what he's got to do. But there was one action I could take.
I stopped taking my Celebrex. That's medication for arthritis and I had been on the stuff since my knee surgery three years ago. And I just had a feeling that, when all was said and pronounced, those side effects they rattle through during TV commercials would be part of my problem.
Luckily, I had a consult with my own physician on Monday morning. He wanted to systematically rule things out. And the only way to do that would be a series of tests personally designed to address my health and simultaneously help me hit my 2015 deductible of $ 5,000 in the course of one March week.
Ultrasound of gall bladder to see if I had stones? Negative.
CAT scan of abdomen complete with lots of nasty stuff to drink that hardly qualifies as a smoothie at Jamba Juice? Negative.
MRI of liver just to be sure? Coming soon, but nothing expected wrong with the liver. Or the bacon or the onions.
So, at the end of the week, I had essentially bought a new diagnostic machine for St. John's Tower Imaging. And I was no closer to finding out just what had made me so sick. Twice.
As my doctor told me, it's all about body chemistry. Mine had gotten out of whack. Of course, I decided once and for all that I wouldn't let that balance be upset again.
I decided to reboot myself. As far as my life was concerned, I was hitting control-alt-delete.
Lots and lots and lots more hydration.
Frequently ditching diet soda for fruit juices and lemonade.
Changing ever so slightly my healthy diet and making it even healthier. Although I would still eat sausage and peppers if pressed to do so.
Heck, that last dish is still a lot healthier than ingesting Celebrex. Those, by the way, have gone the way of my memory toilet.
Flush.
Dinner last night: French dip panini at the Arclight.
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