Foot glove!
The doctor said I had an infected "bite." He did not specify the type of bite nor did he seem unduly concerned though he was impressed with how big and nasty it was. He gave me mega-antibiotics and told me to take one three times a day.
Last night, I had tickets to the John Vanderslice concert. Tony was supposed to go with me but we totally forgot about it until like two hours beforehand and he couldn't make it into the city in time. :( Gant ended up coercing me to go (I was sort of in a funk when we met up) and overall it was a pretty good concert. The opening act sucked but, whatever. You can't get lucky with opening acts every time.
I'm just going to throw this out there: Do. Not. stand up for three hours when your ankle has an infection and hurting. When I came home, I chide you not, my foot looked like when you blow up a latex glove. A foot glove. It was crazy swollen.
It's still all swollen. I think I'm going to be taking cabs for a day or two. Ow.
This is a spider on crack.
I have a spider bite. I think I got it on Monday when I ate lunch in the park. It's been slowly getting bigger and bigger and is starting to take over the outside of my ankle. It hurts. I need to go to the doctor.
In my spider bite research, I found this. Hilarious.
Beth's Cardiac Adventure
About a month ago, I went to the doctor. It was my first visit and he gave me a bit of a physical. Took my pulse, listened to my heart, blood pressure, ordered blood tests, history, etc. etc. It was a new doctor, after all, and he did all that new doctor stuff.
When the checkup was over, he asked me to wait in the waiting room because he wanted to give me an ECG before I left. I was... surprised. I've never had an ECG before. He didn't indicate that anything was wrong, though, so I suspected it was probably just routine these days. Or something. After all I have been dealing with the NHS the last six years. I have no idea how things work in the USA these days.
I went in. The put stickies all over my chest. They gave me a quick ECG. The technician thanked me and told me I could go. So I went out to pay, and was pretty much just about out the door when the doctor came out into the waiting room to talk to me. He said: It's probably nothing, but you need to come back for a 24-hour holter monitor test.
Because that's exactly what you want to hear from your doctor: something in your ECG wasn't right. Come back so we can monitor your heart for 24 hours. :P Rationally, I knew it was nothing. I'm 29. Though I'm not in the best shape of my life, I was as recently as last summer. There's nothing wrong with me. Still, there was a little freaking out.
So Tuesday was the day. I went in and got five sensors taped to my poor chest. Which hated the tape. And got all irritated and red and Jesus did that stuff itch. And I walked around for a day with this walkman-looking thing hooked to my jeans. Sleeping with it was totally unpleasant. And yesterday I went to go get it taken off.
Now, being used to the NHS (once again), I was completely expecting to get it taken off and then be called in a week only if something horrible was wrong with me. Much to my delight, they had me wait in the waiting room for like ten minutes and then go see the doctor right away. Wow!
We sat down together. He looked at me. Smiled. Said: Well, Beth, you have a perfectly healthy heart. No blockages, strong. You had eleven extra beats in 24 hours, which is very normal.
Good. Good.
Then: So I can give you medication for this, if you want, but you probably don't need it yet.
Huh?
He reached over, and put a blood pressure cuff on me again. Then the penny dropped. And I was impressed with him. Why of course. I have had really low blood pressure forever - complete with blacking out and getting ill and all that. He is the first person who actually made sure there wasn't any underlying cause, there. He went on to tell me my low bp was something I should just stay aware of. That I needed to make sure I got enough salt - soy sauce or Ritz crackers or the like everyday. Drink lots of liquids: water or Diet Coke were fine (caffeine is good for raising your blood pressure). Make sure I didn't spend a lot of time in too extreme heat.
If I started fainting, come back. He'd prescribe me something. And that was it.
So yeah. No heart problems, but I should make sure to eat salt and my Starbucks habit is actually healthy.
That's my kind of medical advice.
Go Spain!
Madrid bans waifs from catwalks
Madrid fashion week, one of Spain's most prestigious shows, is banning underweight models on the basis of their body mass index (BMI).
UN health experts recommend a BMI of between 18.5 and about 25, and some models may fall well below the minimum.
The Spanish Association of Fashion Designers has decided to ban models who have a BMI of less than 18....
NHS Dentist
On the downside, you have to hold your own suction for part of the time because they're understaffed on the assistant/hygenist front.
On the upside, a checkup, full x-rays and two fillings cost you £43. With which, really, you just can't argue.
Page three, baby
Probably not, actually, but wouldn't it be cool? Do they even do page three girls in the Sunday papers? Hmm.
If you're in the UK, you should pick up a copy of the Sunday Mirror wherein you can read about weight loss centres, Durham North Carolina, and me. Well, probably other things, too. I worry vaguely that they're going to tell the entire country how much I weigh, but if they do, they'll surely tell everyone where I started from (fifty pounds ago) so I guess that won't be so bad. Yes, I am an after. As in 'before' and 'after.'
It's pretty cool, actually. As someone who's struggled with weight all her life, I can say that being an 'after' is something you sometimes dream about in the way that you sometimes dream about having, like, a yacht. Or becoming a famous opera singer. Or winning a Nobel Prize.
It would be cool, but realistically it's not likely to happen.
Except it sort of did.
I'm not thin. I've never been thin. But I'm one hell of a long way from where I started. I went on holiday for two and a half weeks last month. I gained one pound. One.
In my life, that's the stuff of fairy tales.
I'm slightly worried about sounding like a bubblehead in this interview, but, well, whatever. Anyone who reads this blog probably knows better. (Or not! HA!) It's funny, in the interview I had last night, the guy asked me what my typical day of food looked like: umm... Starbucks croissant for breakfast, sandwich from sandwich shop for lunch, low cal ready meal for dinner.
In retrospect, that doesn't sound very impressive in terms of healthy eating. But then... I'm not a big cook (though I've been doing it more lately) and it sort of goes to show: you don't have to be on Atkins to lose weight. Nor do you really have to be on a 'diet' per se. Just... watch it. It's not rocket science.
Anyway, the photographer for the story just left and took a billion photos of yours truly then a bunch of pictures of my wedding photos. Wow. :) We'll see if any of them make it into the paper.
Stuff!
I've been quiet, yes, but I've been sort of tired and bleh, too, so that's my excuse. Deal with it! :)
It's been a busy week, though. Monday saw the first London Metblog blogger meetup. One of the bloggers from the LA Metblog was in town, and that sort of sparked us all into action (or should that be sparkled us into motion?). We have tried to do a meetup before, but it's just not worked out.
Tuesday saw my doctor's appointment post blood tests. She confirmed that everything was fine - the liver one is a test they often see high and mine wasn't even that high. Anyway, it didn't signify anything. The ESR test (inflammation) was high, but that's completely to be expected in me because I have psoriasis and arthritis and all that jazz. Woo. She told me that I don't have anything nasty like lymphoma or leukaemia which is definitely positive and that it didn't seem to be much of anything. She predicted it would get small in a few weeks and said if it was still big in three months, I should come back. My fears have been allayed.
Then, in the afternoon, I got to meet Max, Steffen & Tina's new baby. He's just adorable. Only 10 weeks old with huge amounts of black hair and (I think) Steffen's nose. He was really sweet... I even got two smiles out of him. It was great.
Wednesday I did coffee with Evan and then hiked on up to Leighton Buzzard to spend the night with Sandi & David and partake of their fabulous company and a really yummy stir-fry. It was nice to get out of the city into a place more green, especially with all the stuff that's been going on lately.
Tonight, Matt's going to come over and we're going to install our identical 1GB of memory into our identical 12" PowerBooks. It's going to be a Mac geekfest. But we're nerdy that way, so that's okay.
Completely unrelated, the vocals in the acoustic version of The Killers' "All These Things That I've Done" are very slightly flat. It's a good version otherwise and that is driving me absolutely mad. Absolutely. Mad.
Blood Test Results
So.
Of all the blood tests I took, the liver profile was slightly high and the ESR was slightly high. Only slightly, though. I was told I should retake the first in six months and the second in three.
I'm not really so concerned about the ESR one. ESR tells you if you have any inflammation. I do. I did last year around this time, too, when the arthritis thing cropped up. I'm going to guess the ESR being slightly high is related to the arthritis.
I don't really know about the liver thing, but obviously it's not anything to worry about because they wouldn't leave it for six months if it were.
None of this really tells me why I have a huge lymph node in the back of my neck. The person who gives you the results is just a receptionist and can't tell you anything particularly useful except whether your tests are normal or not.
The doctor's office doesn't open again until 2:30, but I'll be on the phone with them as soon as it does. I'll try to make another appointment for next week. I'm not just going to let this go, even if it is nothing to worry about.
I do feel reassured that I'm probably okay, though. So that's something.
Fun is...
...when your doctor feels around the back of your neck for your lymph nodes, finds them, and exclaims, "Oh my goodness! That's HUGE!"
And she knew it was big. She's the one who checked it for me seven weeks ago. Checked it and said, if it doesn't get small again in two to six weeks, come back. Or if it gets bigger. (Which it has. Apparently a lot bigger.)
There are two that are big. One in the back. One right under my chin. It's "probably nothing."
Probably.
Blood tests tomorrow. The results should be in by the end of the weekish. She told me if we found something, I'd get a referral. If we didn't find anything, I'd get a referral too.
Guess the vacation's over, huh?
Edit: It's probably nothing. But the niggling thing is that lymphoma is characterised by painless swollen lymph nodes, often with no other symptoms. Whee.
The doctor's appointment and last night
First, I saw a rheumatologist yesterday. I trekked into London and over to the West End, where I had my first experience with Harley Street. Harley Street is to doctors as Saville Row is to tailors. No kidding. As I've been talking to Sandi about my hand issues, she kept telling me to go see a Harley Street doctor. I didn't understand what this meant at the time; now I do. Harley Street really is just one specialist practice after another. It's very posh, too. My doctor was wearing a pinstripe suit and was very dapper indeed.
Anyway, the rheumatologist, Dr. Bourke, examined me and asked me to explain what had been going on and took all of my history down and stuff like that. He seemed a bit stumped at first, but finally coaxed that I had psoriasis out of me (it's amazing the things you do and don't think of to tell doctors when you're actually at an appointment). I was vaguely aware that a type of arthritis existed that went hand in hand with the skin condition, but it hadn't occurred to me that I might have it. Indeed, Dr. Bourke seemed to think that that might be just the thing. This is a relief because I already knew I had psoriasis. Best not to add something new to this. It doesn't entirely match my symptoms, but he also did a bunch of blood tests so I'll go back and see him again in a week. We'll see.
He also told me that I had a bit of carpal tunnel. This isn't particularly surprising, I suppose. Stupid computer. He thought the reason I was getting sick was my anti-inflammatory, so he prescribed me another kind. We'll see how I do with those.
After that, I met Tina for a quick drink and a little bite to eat. James's team and a couple of people on Steffen's team were going out to drinks and we wanted to make sure we didn't get trapped in that sloshed before dinner yuckiness. We planned on meeting them at the bar (The Light in Shoreditch) but ended up meeting up with them on the way.
The bar itself was a converted warehouse. Cool atmosphere but very very noisy. There was an area outside that had grass, and another gravelly area beside that under a tent roof. We stood out on the grass for a while, drinking and talking. When it started raining, we moved under the tent with everyone else. It rained hard. Like, a downpour. The tent roof was suspended by ropes, the ends of which poked through here and there in little knots. There was a hole for a rope next to where we were standing, but no rope in it. This left, you guessed it, just a hole. It was right over a picnic table. I was particularly impressed with the girls who were sitting at this table and their ingenuity:
You can barely see it from this appalling phone-cam pic, but one of them had a tampon and, yes, that ultra-absorbent and expanding cotton did the trick in plugging up the hole. Very amusing.
We ended up at a restaurant called Cru in Hoxton, which was quite good and only about five minutes away from our future new flat. It's pretty cool hanging out in that area and getting a feel for it. There's a lot going on, and it seems vital and fun - a good change from Cheshunt. Can you tell I'm counting the days until we move?
Continue reading The doctor's appointment and last night.
