Author Archives: dlhitzeman

When no news is bad news

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but that’s mostly because there really hasn’t been anything new to post. Frankly, I’ve been waiting for the doctor’s appointment I had this morning in the hopes it would answer some questions about the lingering effects I’m experiencing.

No such luck.

It turns out that, all things considered, my test results came back great. My blood serum numbers are fine. My triglycerides and lipids are improving. My cholesterol is better than it’s been in years. My thyroid numbers are a-okay.

That seems like good news, and it is, but it doesn’t explain why I’m suffering such significant fatigue that I can’t even walk to the end of my driveway and back without being done for the rest of the day.

Frankly, I think doctor’s tend to ignore the fatigue complaint because everybody has it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real and not affecting someone’s quality of life. I’m not complaining about my specific medical care so much as I am identifying something I think is endemic to modern medicine.

So, as things stand, I’m improving but also not. It’s all well and good for my numbers to have improved, but the fact is that, until I’m not so easily fatigued, I’m not better. How that improvement might come about remains to be seen.

DLH

Are we awake?

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Unfortunately, sometimes we’re awake when we don’t want to be. Insomnia has many and various causes, but for some people the problem is both chronic and enduring.

I’ve struggled with sleep as long as I can remember. For whatever reason, I’m more awake late at night and I tend to hit my stride just about the time everyone else is ready for bed. Being a night owl makes living what most people call a normal life difficult at best.

But the problem is that it’s not just staying up late. My body seems to have an awake switch that, once its turned on, no matter how tired I might otherwise be, I’m awake. There is no real rhyme or reason to that switch. It can stay on for one day, wake me up in the middle of the night, or in my worst circumstances, keep me awake for weeks.

I’ve learned to cope with that kind of insomnia for the most part, but I’ve discovered that it makes recovering from an illness a challenge I did not anticipate facing. Now, in addition to the challenge of being awake at appropriate times, I have to make sure that I am not so fatigued I cause myself further harm.

That said, it is a problem that can be managed. I have to be careful with when and how much caffeine I consume, and I’m discovering that how much, when, and what kind of calories I consume can contribute as well. As with most things, this is a learning experience, and as I learn, I will continue to share what I know with you.

DLH

Stimming

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I don’t tend to talk about this much because it’s hard to describe to anyone who doesn’t deal with it, but I have long had trouble keeping my mind on task. This problem is more than simple distractedness or absentmindedness, but I am not making a to claim to any kind of condition to describe it. It’s just always been a part of me, and over the years, I’ve learned various ways to cope with it when it gets bad enough.

One of the ways I’ve learned is a process I call “stimming”. Basically described, when my brain gets most chaotic, sometimes intense investment in focused, mentally taxing activities coupled with liberal use of stimulants helps tame the noise. Yes, I realize this is likely a form of self-medication, but it works and helps things from getting worse (trust me, we don’t want worse than chaos).

The downside of this process is that it can sometimes develop its own destructiveness. Stimming was the reason I started smoking once upon a time (I’ve long since stopped), for example, and counteracting the effects of the stimulants can have its own cost (I was a functional drunk for a while, but that too is now in the past). Then again, in the balance, those sorts of things aren’t much worse than the side effects of the drugs commonly prescribed for conditions like mine, so there’s that.

I’m not bringing this subject up as a recommendation, because I would not wish this sort of thing on anyone. Rather, I bring it up because it can be mastered, and if you’re struggling with similar, I’m someone who understands.

DLH

Finally feeling human again

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It’s become something of a broken record, I know, but as if trying to recover from a major illness isn’t enough, I managed to pick up a nasty upper respiratory virus last week that laid me low for the week. Today, I can finally say I am back to feeling at least as healthy as I was before the virus, so it’s time to get back to the grind. More will follow.

DLH

Discipline

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Yesterday, I wrote about being discontented and how that state drives me in so many areas, now including health. Today, I want to write about my bane: discipline.

It’s surprising that discipline is a shortcoming of mine given my natural inclination to plan, but having lived with that reality for a long time, I can tell you without any doubt that I am inclined to be easily distracted and to be lazy when it comes to executing those plans.

Yet, most things in life require some degree of discipline to get done. Even stuff I really enjoy doing has parts to them that I don’t, and that’s where the discipline comes in.

I’m learning that notion now in spades. I’m not in a position anymore to get distracted or get lazy or give up. I have to see this through.

And in realizing that fact, I’m also realizing discipline can be learned in ways I’d never given consideration to. Learning discipline, I’m discovering, is like learning to ride a bike. It takes time and practice, but the more I do it and the longer I do it, the easier it becomes.

In the end, for me, the biggest motivator for discipline is the goal I am trying to reach. In the case of health, I don’t want to always feel this way, so wanting that goal badly enough becomes its own kind of motivation. Motivation breeds discipline.

So, in the end, for me, it’s a matter of settling on a goal I want and pursuing it. Sure, there will be bumps along the way, but I know I can do it. So can you.

DLH

Discontentedness

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It’s no secret to those who know me that I am a discontented person. As far back as I can remember, I never recall a time where I was satisfied with anything I’ve done, known, or been involved in. That discontent is what has driven me to pursue education, experiences, and even entire careers.

Knowing that, it then surprises me that my otherwise discontent never seemed to apply to my physical state. For most of my adult life, I’ve accepted weight gain and the creeping malaise of health that goes along with it for what it seemed to me to be: an inevitable sign of aging and poor luck. I’ve even gone so far as to argue against fitness in some absurd justification of being less than what I could be.

Yet, now that I have been laid low by illness, my discontentedness has come into full effect. I am not satisfied with anything. I want to fix it and fix it the best way possible. The issue now is that I’m not quite in a position to act. Ironic, isn’t it?

Nevertheless, I believe my discontentedness will be the thing that drives me forward. As hard as it is proving to be, I will not be satisfied until I master this thing.

DLH

Talking about the weather

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Sorry for the lack of posting the past few days. It’s been a bad few as it turns out.

The primary culprit is the weather. The things going on with me seem to be sensitive to weather and allergen changes, and the up-and-down-again quality of the last week seems to aggravate almost everything.

Hopefully, in the next few weeks, the weather will moderate a bit and this will be less of a complaint.

DLH

Invisible disease

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For better or worse, it appears I’ve joined the ranks of those suffering from invisible diseases. Invisible does not imply non-existent as so many people imagine; rather, it states that it is a disease that does not manifest itself with outward visible signs others can identify.

“But you look fine,” is one of the worst things you can say to someone fighting the diseases no one can see, because, while that person may look fine, they’re often exhausted, in pain, and dealing with physiological effects hidden from your view.

Being told you don’t look sick makes trying to weather being sick that much harder. What’s worse is that far too many people take their view that no outward signs means no inward disease as an excuse to harangue and ridicule, making life even worse for the one who is sick. This has not happened to me, but I know far too many people for whom that is true.

For me, the greatest manifestation of my invisible illness is fatigue. I simply don’t have any stamina, which means that I have a limited reserve for things like getting out of bed and staying upright throughout the day, let alone exercising or doing the work that I need to. But, I don’t look sick, and that’s frustrating even for me.

I can assure you, however, that I would not be enduring regular visits to doctors complete with blood draws, taking piles of medications, and inflicting daily pricks and injections if I was not sick. Unfortunately, what’s wrong is inside me, and nobody’s quite sure what that is yet.

I’m not saying any of this to get sympathy for myself, but to help anyone who knows other people complaining of invisible illnesses see that they’re telling the truth. They are sick. They are in pain. They are exhausted. They are struggling.

Have compassion. They need it.

DLH

Time calculus

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There was a time when I was that person who claimed I didn’t have time to exercise. To me then, exercise was a waste because the other things I was doing with my life seemed far more important. In fact, I was that person not all that long ago. But today, as I was walking, I came to a sudden epiphany that my view was myopic in a specific sort of way.

The fact is, for the year and a half before I ended up in the hospital, my health was deteriorating whether I was willing to admit it or not. I lost some or all of many days to illness and fatigue to the point I was no longer able to do the things I needed and wanted to be doing.

If we imagine that state resulting in a loss of four hours of productivity a day as an average, I lost something along the lines of 2,190 hours of useful time due to bad health. And that was before I ended up in the hospital.

In that hospital, I lost six full days, an additional 144 hours, and since I have been home, my productivity has been minimal to the tune of a couple of hours a day, meaning for the last 30, I’ve easily lost 240 more hours beyond that.

In total, since the true beginnings of this current episode, I’ve easily lost as many as 2,574 hours of productive time, and that’s probably a conservative estimate.

In contrast, since I have returned to walking again, I’ve spent about an hour each day. If I were to simply stick to that amount of time, it would take me more than seven years to “waste” the time I’ve already wasted walking.

And, as anyone exercising knows, fitness is not a waste. Rather, since I have returned to walking, I am getting stronger, my head is clearer, I am less fatigued, and I am more certain of my recovery than I have yet been.

So, even when I reach my eventual goal of two hours of exercise a day, I will really be gaining hours more of productive time rescued from what once had been the time waste of my poor health.

I get the logical explanation isn’t for everyone, but the nature of this realization makes me even more eager to continue. I will improve because of what I am doing, and that can never be a waste.

DLH

Planned obsolescence

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While opening a new package of glucometer test strips today, I noticed the package emblazoned with an advertisement for a new glucometer from the same company.

This wasn’t just any kind of advertisement. Rather, it was a not-so-subtle hint that the company plans to discontinue their current line of testing supplies in favor of its new line, which means needing a new meter and testing supplies.

Some might see this assumption as an overreaction, but the fact is that this is a common practice. The company in question is already systematically discontinuing the meters that use these test strips, and the new meters us different strips. Third party companies make compatible strips, but there is no guarantee they will continue once the product has been discontinued. Further, third party products are not always of the same quality as those from the manufacturer, especially where testing is concerned.

I wonder when I come across these kinds of things if the companies that do this realize how expensive this gets for the people who depend on their products to maintain a healthy life. Testing supplies are already expensive enough, but being forced into replacing otherwise working equipment simply because its manufacturer declares it obsolete makes the cost more than some can bear.

But then the medical community wonders why so many people are out of compliance. If you’ve ever dealt with them in cases like diabetes, you’d think they think their patients are made of money. I’m fortunate because my current doctor deals with low income patients and so doesn’t think that, but in so many cases they do.

Now, I will figure out a way to make this work for me, but that doesn’t change the problem. There has to be a better way for this to work that inflicting more cost onto an already expensive process. If we’re going to reform healthcare, that’s the kind of reform we actually need.

DLH