Dr. Oz

So I got a little more pro-active with my whole Deep Vein Thrombosis /Kidney Stone/ Passive-Aggressive diverticular Ovary yesterday.

The one nice thing about having taken care of my parents during their multitude of death-defying diagnoses over the last few years, is that I have amassed years and years of relationships with the best specialists in town (starting at Markey Cancer Center and working over to St. Joe for the heart surgeries).

Surprising all my relatives (who cringe a lot and beg me to be quiet), I've discovered that all of our good doctors have been very happy to answer the lists of questions I prepare beforehand as they relate to before/during/and aftercare. (I've fired all the bad doctors. I am not rude. I am specific.) They know I'm there as an advocate, and to help take care of my family. I'm not there to second-guess them, or play doctor; I just do my homework quietly and want them to give me the most thorough answers they can. (For good measure, I take along a copy of Dr. Oz's The Good Patient, and I conspicuously flip through it.) As directed by Dr. Oz, I make sure we regularly bring pizza and donuts to the nurses, and they all get cards from us every Christmas.

My parents are accustomed to small-town care where the doctors are never to be questioned, and where even the most routine appointment will mean an 8-hour wait in a room-full of sick people. Left to their own devices, they would put up with it too. Regardless of their protestations to the contrary, I fully believe they would be dead had I not dragged them out of there and relocated their health care here. (At least my Dad -- who had his triple-bypass here -- agrees with me.)

Seeing as how they all pour so much well-insured money into the Lexington Health Care system, I do consider us good customers.

And seeing as how I can't seem to get any of my own health-care providers to pay attention to me these days, I didn't see anything wrong with piggy-backing a few questions onto my stepdad's post-op follow-up yesterday with his GI/surgeon. A. He's one of my favorite doctors ever; B. He saved my stepdad's life (though it really was touch and go there for awhile, no kidding); and C. He didn't mind that I blogged and twittered the whole thing. Transparency didn't seem to scare him one bit.

Yes, I realize it was a little unorthodox to BOTHER him. And yes, I realize it's the equivalent of a rude guest who pulls up their shirt at a cocktail party and says, "hey Doc, would you mind looking at this place on my back?"... but y'know, I'd just gone beyond good manners.

So I slipped him my cell number with a note that said I needed some medical advice. It's not like I was hitting on him. And I figure, he's a GI surgeon; this is the anatomical neighborhood he works in (it's not like I asked their dentist).

My parents are horrified... Beyond embarrassed.

But hey, it worked. He called me at 6 o'clock this morning. I asked him if he could give me a good referral based on the pain I was explaining (the whole Deep Vein Thrombosis/Kidney Stone/Passive-Aggressive diverticular ovary), and he went one better and said he'd do my test himself. And he's figuring out some new ways that don't involve me drinking two liters of liquified sulfur-Pez.

Sigh. He's like my own Dr. Oz.

He just works a little further South.

FB vs Twitter

I haven't seen the new Facebook layout yet. It doesn't show up on the BlackBerry so I'll probably wait and see it Monday on the big screen.

If it's as bad as they say, it may cement my incipient suspicion that I'm more of a Twitter gal than a Facebook gal.

Don't get me wrong - I'm as addicted as the next person - but I noticed a long time ago, I don't use FB the way most of my friends do.

As my buddy Ian and I discussed over the Christmas Eve dinner table - we don't play Scrabulous; we don't send each other electronic cups of coffee; we don't tend your virtual garden; and if you send us a seahorse to put back in the ocean, it'll just die. Ian and I don't have any pieces of Flair. Whenever I get a L'il Green Patch request, my response is that I gave at the Office. And I really did. (Even if I did get flamed on Facebook the other night for blowing the tops off mountains because I subsidized KU by turning on the air conditioning. I remain certain that I do more than average to keep the tops of mountains intact.) My new old friends @AliThinks and @AllanThinks suggested by Facebook standards, it meant I'd "arrived." I felt a little better, but in truth, it always hurts my feelings a little when someone hates me. For days, I found myself defensively explaining to everyone I could get stopped just how eco-friendly I am.

But blood feuds and enemy-making aside, I really just use Facebook to look in on my friends -- see what they're doing, and let them know what I'm up to.

That is, in essence, Twitter. Without all the flair. Without the Scrabulous. Without the Big Blue Waves that I don't know how to catch, much less pass on.I wish there was a little bit more of the FB style profiling info on Twitter -- but name, politics, religion, and marital status all become fairly quickly apparent anyway.

It isn't, as Brian Williams suggested to Jon Stewart, about always having an interesting answer to the question "what are you doing right now?" As with real-life civilized discourse, it's perfectly permissible to sit quietly and shut up.

While I was very late to the facebook party (and was dragged there kicking and screaming by my pals Elle and Kimmy- and I love them for it), I was actually a fairly early adopter of Twitter. By Local standards. (I was on there way after my friends @AustinChronicle, for example, but way before the local Daily Paper).

I kept reading about it in the Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) and thought "this is just crazy enough to work."

Granted, I was slow to catch on.I thought it was more like a Radio you broadcast on, when it's actually more like a CB where you have conversations (to go back to my 70s roots where I was perfectly happy with my 8 track tapes thank you).

Luckily, my official TwitterTutor, @AliThinks -- who knew me on Facebook -- took me aside and showed me the ropes.

She taught me how to follow BACK, and now I can filter my news exactly the A.D.H.D. way I like it. Most of the time @WSJ feeds right on top of @nprPolitics interrupted by bursts of sanity from @Bittman and @MMFA.

She also taught me how to make new friends -- like @MissKristina who's sending me a Ryan Adams bootleg that I wouldn't even know existed if it were not for Twitter.

Not that giving me stuff is the only way to make friends -- but I highly recommend it.

(@ChefDaveO would STILL be one of my favorite people even if he hadn't shared his stash of Baby Bok Choy.)

And that's really what I love about Twitter -- it's a way to gather all my favorite people in the world together in one place and hear what's on their minds.

I'm sure there's a danger -- as with all things online, it could be isolating rather than uniting: everybody sits in their respective houses while maintaining the illusion of communication and connectivity -- but I find it's opening my world up.

I was a FAN of my friend @BiancaLynne for a long time before I even met her, for example -- but Facebook was where we eventually got together and made a plan to have coffee.

The same was true of my BFF -- who now schools me in all things NewMedia and patiently tolerates my baby steps. I was a fan for years (decades in fact) before we ever had a real-life lunch. Facebook is what facilitated that.

My preferences for Twitter over FB will likely end up being moot -- everyday I get a new Tweet that half the people I know are getting kicked off FB.

But for now, you can find me on twitter http://twitter.com/RealityTrucks
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Leave a Msg. Or a txt. Or a tweet. Or an FB. Or a Skype.

Do I Stutter?

Since I communicate for a living, I usually don't have a hard time making myself understood.

I'm pretty ... plain-spoken. Forthright. Forthcoming.

Which is why I'm so frustrated with my doctor right now -- a great doc and diagnostician, who -- I should say, has taken great care of me for decades.

But now we're at an impasse.

I'm not sick (as far as I know) -- I just have this recurring left side pain. It comes. It goes. Sometimes it's so bad I can't walk. Sometimes it goes away after an Advil.And some days, it doesn't show up at all.

It's not an ache. It's not a strain. It's not normal.

My doc ruled out the usual suspect Girlie parts, and then decided to send me on to the GI guy. Whom I know. He isn't very likeable but he is a VERY good doctor.

I really don't think this pain is GI-related (since I don't have a single GI symptom) -- but I'm trying to be open-minded, making room for the possibility that I did not, in fact, go to Med School.

Unlike many patients, I don't object to the prospect of the recommended colonoscopy. If it's gotta be done, it's gotta be done. I know the TEST isn't nearly as bad as the rap it gets, and I know this guy is good, and that he's a big fan of drugs.

All I keep telling them is: I can't drink the two-liter prep.

And all they keep hearing is: I WON't.

I'm not being difficult. I'm not a two-year old.

When I say I can't, that's what I mean. I can't keep the stuff down.

I had these tests back in college, and I couldn't keep it down then either. They attempted the tests, more than once, and then eventually sent me home to fast. For a long time. Eventually I came back.Eventually they did the tests.And I never was able to drink the prep.I was RIGHT. They were WRONG.

It was a simple procedure made unnecessarily complicated and expensive -- time and money wasted -- just because the Doc at the time refused to believe I'd never lost an argument over what will make me throw up.

My current doc knows all this.

But what I keep being told is, "We can't help you if you won't take the test."

Lots of people WON'T take this test. They refuse to. I get that. But I'm not in that camp.I would. I would (if it was necessary) I just need some slightly customized instructions on getting ready for it.

So, what I got instead of help or a diagnosis, was a referral to my ob-gyn. In two weeks.

(I've dated enough doctors to know the words NON COMPLIANT have probably now been stamped on my chart, which loosely translates as "Let her die.")

And the OB probably won't be able to figure it out either.

And meanwhile, I don't think I can watch any more House.

Or NBC News.

Tonight included a segment on a poor girl who had this mystery-left-side pain for YEARS -- and was mis-diagnosed with everything from bladder infections to lazy ovaries. (Am pretty sure mine are antagonistic.)

What she HAD was Deep Vein Thrombosis.

She didn't die. But the clot got so big and old and hard now they CAN't remove it. (Or I don't know: maybe they WON't).

All I know is, if THAT's what I have, everybody is gonna be really sorry for being so Mean to me.

A Lenten Miracle?

In recent years, I've noticed a trend of parents removing coffee tables from their living rooms -- apparently pediatricians got together and decided they were Death Traps. Kids were bumping their heads on them or something.

Mostly, I've noticed it leaves the rest of us without a place to put our drinks down. And that's annoying.

We did not grow up in a household where the family revolved around the children. NOTHING was child-proofed. Nothing was moved to high shelves out of our reach.We were just taught to leave stuff alone. And if either of us had gotten a split lip crashing into the coffee table, I'm pretty sure the response woulda been "watch out for the furniture dumbass."

Good or bad, the occasional unobstructed light socket gave me an early appreciation for the value of going outta my way to not hurt myself. Our only visit to the E.R. as children involved my brother (now the chef) slicing his thumb open on a tuna can. (Probably he was going to make us a lovely nicoise or something - I don't remember).

Consequently, I have zero tolerance for pain. I have no experience with it. And that's by design. If something hurts, I just stop doing it.I'm not an athlete.I don't have kids. I'm rarely caught doing anything that might result in injury. I've never broken a bone (unless you count my toe, which I dropped a beer stein on in high school). I've never spent the night in the hospital as a patient.I'm there a lot as a bystander, and they TERRIFY me.

So I was SCARED when I woke up a couple weeks ago in so much pain I couldn't walk. I couldn't move. It was in my lower left side. It was so frightening, I diagnosed myself with kidney stones -- mostly on the basis of people saying it's pain like you've never felt before. This fit.
Because it was deadline, I managed to tough it out for three days of horse-sized, dentist-prescribed ibuprofen and several gallons of cranberry juice.

On the fourth day, I managed to drag myself into my doctor's office. I explained this pain was like, a Seven (on the scale of one to ten I've seen them quiz my parents on in the hospital). Til then, I don't think I'd ever topped a three, so this got my attention.

She was sympathetic, but a couple negative ultra-sounds later, she said a colonoscopy was all that modern medicine had left to offer me.

Seriously? Cause I think that's about as barbaric as leeches.

After a lot of time on WebMD (where I first convinced myself I had prostatitis), I couldn't believe I possibly had diverticulitis (the odds-on favorite) mainly because I eat better than about 90 percent of the American population, notwithstanding the occasional post-Ambien box of Cheese Nips.

I coulda lived with the test itself -- I know from an endoscopy I had several years back that my G.I. guy doesn't believe pain builds character and he doesn't let his patients suffer -- but I also know that the prep for the test involves a gallon of something that tastes like liquid Pez.Forget it.
The nurse clarified that the FDA took the pill-prep off the market in December (so I barely missed the deadline), and now it's only TWO LITERS of stuff to drink.

I didn't schedule the test. I knew Katie Couric would be disappointed in me, but I can't drink two liters of something that tastes GOOD. I wouldn't be able to drink two liters of iced tea if it didn't have the proper tea-to-lemon ratio, or was served at the wrong temperature. I couldn't see the liquid Pez in my future.

I'm always amazed at my Mom-friends NOT because they get thru labor - but because they survive drinking that flat orange sprite type drink that they use to test for gestational diabetes.

So I weaned myself down to Advil, ate a lot of Activia (because Jamie Lee Curtis would never steer us wrong), and prepared to die.

And three days ago, I finally woke up with no pain for the first time in two weeks.

I don't know if I was spontaneously cured, because I still don't know what was wrong with me.

I just filed it under "miracle." Tex says Jesus probably healed me because I gave up swearing for Lent.

Poor Jesus.I hope he's not too busy.

I'm gonna be callin on him a lot, because if the last couple weeks is any indication of how my health future is going to play out, it's made for people who are made of sterner stuff than I am.

This Week's Column: It's a Boy!

Foster care was made for commitment-phobes like me.

Meet Rob. We're just living together for now -- seeing how it goes.

You can find this week's print edition of the column, "It's a Boy," on page 14 of this week's Ace. It is also available at AceWeekly.com (under renovation).

Snow Day

If I hear one more person talk about how pretty the snow is, I will punch them in the face. Yes, snow is preferable to ice, but on top of ice, it just makes for a bigger cluster-fuck.

I'm TRYING to recall some of the snowday magic of my youth, and the best thing I can remember is that my Dad and Uncles were in charge of grocery shopping during any snow emergency. And they could be conned into anything.

My brother and I duly penned our lists for them in great detail:

• Tiger Red Pop. 16 oz glass bottles.
• HubbaBubba: Watermelon.
• BubbleYum: Grape.
• Doritos: Family size. Taco Flavor.
• Assorted cereals: Fruit Brute. BooBerry. FrankenBerry. Count Chocula.

Today I slogged over to Disco Kroger to try to re-capture the magic. Fruity Pebbles was the best I could do.

Flashback 03

Right now, two days into Ice '09, I still have power, but I'm not getting cocky.

In '03, I didn't lose power 'til two days after the storm... and then it was out for five days... And then my dog died...And then I wrote a country song...

It goes a little something like this...
(just kidding).