Category: In Which We Mock Our Illness

I am lucky in that I’ve never even had polyps, even after three colonoscopies, so three years ago I got to opt for Cologuard at-home tests instead of being fully sedated, live and on-camera. The one at-home Cologuard exam I took in 2022 was a cakewalk. I see that I was all blasé about whether…

After I had that recent visitation of the colorless optic paperclip migraine, the neurologist recommended I go see an ophthalmologist. I put that off. Because really, what happened? My weird visual thing visited me again, just in black and white. The same thing happened with my weird green spinny thing I had for years. I…

This liver number kerfuffle is keeping me busy. The lab at the nearby hospital is remarkably quiet, and I’ve got the whole thing organized so it only takes 45 minutes from when I leave to when I return. At the end of the three blood draws in the last week, and one the week before,…

Remember when I was in that Supernova clinical trial to help make the next generation of monoclonal Covid antibodies? It sounded good at first, but now this article in The Lancet suggests it’s going to fail just the same way as the previous generation failed: the virus is mutating faster than we can make antibodies.…

Good news came in the morning. Liver is unremarkable, just as a liver should be. No stones or lumps or anything. There is a wee gall bladder polyp: o.5 centimeters. I understand that to be the equivalent of one ladybug. Pancreas could not be seen in the ultrasound due to — and this is embarrassing…

I still remember when my parents went to Hawaii in the 1970s. My Dad wasn’t feeling great. Figured he needed a rest. Went to see the doctor a few weeks before. The morning before they left, Mom asked, “Did you ever hear from the doctor about what you talked about at that visit?” “Nope,” Dad…

We had our physicals yesterday, so of course that means today was all about the text alerts. Boop. “You have new test results. Click here to go to MyChart.” It really should say, “Click here to go to ChatGPT with a brief layover in MyChart where you copy any abnormal high or low numbers, then…

Well! Who knew that if a person dutifully fills out a survey for twenty years, she will eventually get a summary consisting of three line charts? All are self-assessed. One shows Mental Quality of Life. (High numbers are good.) One shows Physical Quality of Life. (High numbers are good. Yes! I know! I see it…

Well, I had a novel experience yesterday. I was getting ready to run Gary to the hospital for a blood test. (An aside: He passed the blood test. My personal friend the Prostate is in peak form again.) While I was getting ready I got an optic migraine. (An aside: My first one (reported here)…

I feel like I’m always at one doctor’s office or another. Urologist every three months, GP every year, neurologist every year, it’s a lot. “I need you to see a dermatologist once a year,” the neurologist said last week. “Oh, come ON.” “You’ve been on this medicine since 2007, when the clinical trial began, and…