Health
Or the deterioration thereof. I read friends' friends' journals, and some describe health difficulties much worse than mine. Mine are interfering with my life anyway. I've been feeling a little left out.
Like many long-time computer users/professionals, my lifestyle is [what almost?] completely sedentary. Thirty years ago, when this all began, I never felt any bad effects, mostly because I'd been turned off to sports and exercise early on, and sought refuge from the disapproving attitudes of peers and instructors in the computer, and sweets. The die was cast. Being young and ignorant, I didn't know anything was amiss. On that graph depicting the flight envelopes of a Cessna and a Hornet, I was the Cessna, and that was fine with me. (Professional athletes were the Hornet.) (Being a late bloomer, nobody had explained to me, nor had I figured out, why I might want to be more Hornet-like.)
Twenty-plus years later, I was hospitalized with a mild case of a rare, indiscriminate, sometimes-fatal neurological disorder, from which, it seemed at the time, I made a full ("fabulous", to quote the neurologist) recovery.
Four years after that, I was saddled with a particularly bad boss and trying to keep my job in that situation stressed me out so much that, in addition to going on medical leave and having pharmacological treatments for it, I would show up about every six months at Urgent Care complaining of chest pains, hypertension, and other malaise. Each time I was declared not to be having a cardiac event (even at a treadmill test the cardiologist seemed disappointed), and one time they also decided to take a chest Xray (chest pains? Let's xray it. Duh.) at which time they discovered one partially-collapsed lung, and other benign thoracic chaos. Followup CT confirmed. No previous radiology available to compare. Meanwhile the semi-annual visits continued. The bad boss had derailed my career, and I'm only now starting to recover that a bit.
Fast forward to this year. I'm still in a long-distance relationship (to become permanent and local very soon); weekend commuting 400 miles now and then (as well as the together/apart cycle) is taking its toll on me. I discovered that others had encountered the same side effects to some pharmacological assistance I was using that I had thought were just overexertion while out of shape. Bending down/over to deal with equipment on the floor or low in racks wipes me out. Loading up my car last night with stuff for an E-waste event wiped me out, too. (By wiped out I mean short of breath and requiring a few hours rest to recover. No chest pains.) The theory is that my diminished lung capacity coupled with aging and lifestyle are catching up to me. A visit to a pulmonologist, however, leaves only the latter. Technically I'm overweight, but being tall it's not that obvious, and I was thin until my late twenties.
It's hard to escape the notion that I'll end up limited-mobility like Steven Hawking, as unlikely as anyone tries to convince me that that is. Still, it's fairly obvious to me that my medical professionals have not put the whole picture together. It's further obvious to me that I am unable to convince anyone who doesn't spend much time with me that there is anything wrong or treatable (insofar as I seem incapable of the recommended lifestyle changes).
Thus, in a more perfect world, I would have a Health Care Advocate and be in a medically-supervised nutrition and exercise program. (In the most perfect world I would not deteriorate.) This is a chicken-and-egg problem, though. Also in a more perfect world, I would only have to tell one medical professional (or even lay person) this story, and they'd refer me to the right team specialists.
The trouble with my lifestyle is that, not exacerbate the problem and being human, I'd rather be feeling well than reliving problems by inaccurately describing symptoms I'm not having right that minute.
Oh, and other big changes in my life are coming up soon, and I worry about coping with them, even if they are positive.
Sigh. (Often I sound rather worse.)
Jeff
Like many long-time computer users/professionals, my lifestyle is [what almost?] completely sedentary. Thirty years ago, when this all began, I never felt any bad effects, mostly because I'd been turned off to sports and exercise early on, and sought refuge from the disapproving attitudes of peers and instructors in the computer, and sweets. The die was cast. Being young and ignorant, I didn't know anything was amiss. On that graph depicting the flight envelopes of a Cessna and a Hornet, I was the Cessna, and that was fine with me. (Professional athletes were the Hornet.) (Being a late bloomer, nobody had explained to me, nor had I figured out, why I might want to be more Hornet-like.)
Twenty-plus years later, I was hospitalized with a mild case of a rare, indiscriminate, sometimes-fatal neurological disorder, from which, it seemed at the time, I made a full ("fabulous", to quote the neurologist) recovery.
Four years after that, I was saddled with a particularly bad boss and trying to keep my job in that situation stressed me out so much that, in addition to going on medical leave and having pharmacological treatments for it, I would show up about every six months at Urgent Care complaining of chest pains, hypertension, and other malaise. Each time I was declared not to be having a cardiac event (even at a treadmill test the cardiologist seemed disappointed), and one time they also decided to take a chest Xray (chest pains? Let's xray it. Duh.) at which time they discovered one partially-collapsed lung, and other benign thoracic chaos. Followup CT confirmed. No previous radiology available to compare. Meanwhile the semi-annual visits continued. The bad boss had derailed my career, and I'm only now starting to recover that a bit.
Fast forward to this year. I'm still in a long-distance relationship (to become permanent and local very soon); weekend commuting 400 miles now and then (as well as the together/apart cycle) is taking its toll on me. I discovered that others had encountered the same side effects to some pharmacological assistance I was using that I had thought were just overexertion while out of shape. Bending down/over to deal with equipment on the floor or low in racks wipes me out. Loading up my car last night with stuff for an E-waste event wiped me out, too. (By wiped out I mean short of breath and requiring a few hours rest to recover. No chest pains.) The theory is that my diminished lung capacity coupled with aging and lifestyle are catching up to me. A visit to a pulmonologist, however, leaves only the latter. Technically I'm overweight, but being tall it's not that obvious, and I was thin until my late twenties.
It's hard to escape the notion that I'll end up limited-mobility like Steven Hawking, as unlikely as anyone tries to convince me that that is. Still, it's fairly obvious to me that my medical professionals have not put the whole picture together. It's further obvious to me that I am unable to convince anyone who doesn't spend much time with me that there is anything wrong or treatable (insofar as I seem incapable of the recommended lifestyle changes).
Thus, in a more perfect world, I would have a Health Care Advocate and be in a medically-supervised nutrition and exercise program. (In the most perfect world I would not deteriorate.) This is a chicken-and-egg problem, though. Also in a more perfect world, I would only have to tell one medical professional (or even lay person) this story, and they'd refer me to the right team specialists.
The trouble with my lifestyle is that, not exacerbate the problem and being human, I'd rather be feeling well than reliving problems by inaccurately describing symptoms I'm not having right that minute.
Oh, and other big changes in my life are coming up soon, and I worry about coping with them, even if they are positive.
Sigh. (Often I sound rather worse.)
Jeff