Good morning...Fall is in the air, even here in Florida. The days are getting shorter, the mornings are cooler and even though the days are still hot, the leaves are beginning to change colors and some trees are beginning to shed leaves already. It seems like this summer has been such a chaotic round of illness and death in the family, there really hasn't been much enjoyment, but that's the way it goes sometimes. I'm definitely not ready for fall, and certainly not winter which will be here before we know it, but I guess it's inevitable, isn't it?
I am happy to report that there hasn't been anything drastic going on in my life this past week, as far as family illness/death (as far as I know), so that's a plus. You may (or may not) remember that, for the past few months, I've been dealing with some digestive issues, as well as a newly formed bulge near my navel that nobody seems to be willing to deal with. I've had an abdominal ultrasound and CT scan and neither were conclusive in regards to the bulge though they do rule out some possibilities. No one seems to want to go further regarding a diagnosis on that, so it came to a dead end. My pcp's office simply said: "You'll have to talk to gastroenterology about it because we don't know..." That was after they'd diagnosed it as a Lipoma (benign fatty tumor), which I pointed out, was contrary to both the ultrasound and CT.
An endoscopy only showed that I don't have H Pylori anymore and that I do have gastritis... the only resolution so far has been that I should remain on high doses of Pantoprazole for the gastritis. Hmmm - I'm having a hard time with that since 1) the pantoprazole doesn't completely resolve my acid reflux issues and 2) there's just been a multitude of news articles about Zantac and its generic, ranitidine, containing NDMA, which is the same substance that was contained in the blood pressure medication, Losartan, a while back. As luck would have it, I've taken, both, Losartan and ranitidine in the past... I can't help wonder how many more medications will turn out to contain this same substance. Considering that I've been on a number of blood pressure meds, as well as acid reducers, I'm quite reluctant to stay on high doses of anything indefinitely unless there is no alternative... As it turns out, even though there has been no FDA recall, one manufacturer of generic ranitidine has taken their medication off the market... I wonder how long before others follow suit.
Anyway, I had a couple of conversations with the assistant at my gastroenterologist's office and after much "him-hawing" around on her part, I finally have an appointment scheduled for October 9... I'm not sure why it took almost 2 weeks and several phone conversations to get to that point, but it did. Her biggest issue was that I'm past due for a colonoscopy and she seemed to think I should simply go ahead and schedule that since my brother that recently passed away had had colon cancer and I've had polyps removed in the past, which puts me at considerable risk.
My first impulse was to go ahead and do that, but if I haven't seen the doctor first and made him aware of all my symptoms, will he do the colonoscopy with a one-track mind - looking only for cancer and nothing else? Although I know he's trained to look for whatever might be there, I do think sometimes doctors tend to have blinders on and look for what the preconceived notion says the diagnosis should/could be. Maybe that's just me, but the recent experience with my brother and his passing sort of bears this out with doctors insisting he had pneumonia for months before ever considering that he might have lung cancer or the fungal infection that turned up at the very end.
Anyway, the appointment is scheduled and there's nothing I can do to make it get here faster, so I'll just deal with the symptoms while time passes.
In the meantime, I've joined a calligraphy guild and signed up for a couple of courses. This is something that I've wanted to learn for a long time, but never did anything about it. I had the first course, yesterday and have to admit that I really didn't do as well as I'd thought I would. People have always complimented my handwriting and I've always taken pride in it, so I really didn't think calligraphy would be that difficult... haha - think again. Calligraphy is an art form and I'm not very artistic. lol
Of course, there are many different styles of calligraphy - the class I took yesterday was Foundational calligraphy, which is very basic and most of the letters are based on the letters "o" and "n". Of course, there's a certain type of pen to be used, special paper/spacing, etc and the letters are drawn more so than written. Although I loved the class and the chance to interact with other people, etc, some of the letters really gave me fits. It takes lots of practice to get it right and admittedly, I have lots of practice ahead of me. :-)
I've signed up for a couple more classes for different styles of calligraphy and am looking forward to them both, but might have to cancel one of them because my husband might want to go somewhere else on one of the days. We'll see how that works out.
So - weight- wise, I'm up by 0.6 lbs from last week, but if history is any lesson, that will be down again later in the day, as it usually is. Last week, within an hour of posting my thread, I was down by a pound and that's usually what happens most days. I've been trying to watch what I eat, but I haven't been doing well with exercise, as I've spent too much time on the computer and not enough time cleaning, doing yard work or actually "exercising". My intention was to start my evening walks again, but I only did that one evening this past week. I guess once is better than not all - maybe this week, I'll do better...
So - that's my story. Things are definitely looking up since I have an appointment with my gastroenterologist and I've joined the calligraphy guild and signed up for classes, plus I have some possible sales for my ink pens... all positive things.
How about you? I hope you had a good week and were successful in whatever you undertook.
~~Wishing everyone a wonderful, successful week!!