Fitness Challenge Update #8

Another week, another post about losing weight. Although these updates have become an update about completely different things now.

We'll start with the weight. I got on the scale each day this week (because, although I know I shouldn't, I can't help it, call it OCD), and things changed drastically day by day. Tuesday morning: 253 (Woohoo!). Wednesday 254.8 (Aww). Thursday 256 (Dammit!). Friday 251.8 (Woah! Really?). Saturday 251.6 (Still?). Sunday 251.0 (Yes! This is real!). And this morning, despite eating pizza (Pizza!) for dinner on Sunday, I still weighed 251.6. That's what? Five pounds down from last week? That's really good. I didn't expect to reach this level until perhaps two weeks from now. So, I'm pretty stoked. I wanted to be able to get to 245 before the June 1st deadline of the contest, and now it's starting to seem like a possibility.

What could stand in the way of that is my overall health. I got the chest X-ray results back last week. The doctor said my heart is normal, not enlarged. So, Dilated Cardiomyopathy is not what I have after all.

They did say that I have a granuloma in my left lung, however. Granulomas, according to Wikipedia, is when there is some foreign contaminant in your body that your immune system can't eliminate, so it instead walls it off completely, quarantining it instead. People get granulomas in their lungs when they have tuberculosis fairly often, so I was ordered to get a TB test. As I suspected, due to the lack of coughing and the like, the TB test came up negative. The doctor thinks that what is actually walled off in there is something called Valley Fever, which is common to people who have spent time in Central Valley, California, where my home town of Sacramento is. It's a fungal thing, and my immune system has sealed it off. The doctor says it will always be there. Just in case, I'm supposed to get another X-ray in six months, to be sure it's not growing, because then it might be something else.

So, what the crap do I have? Who friggin' knows. The doctor I've been seeing seems to have lost sight of the end goal here, like he's been distracted by the test results. I went in to see the doctor in the first place because my legs suddenly became insufferably painful and fatigued. I was working out five days a week, and suddenly, I couldn't even work out one day a week.

We did some blood tests, and the one for C-Reactive Protein came up really high. That got us on the trail of Cardiomyopathy. Which got us on the trail of a granuloma. Now that they're all eliminated, he seems to think we're done. BUT I'M STILL IN PAIN ALL THE TIME!!! We're not done, Mr. Doctor. What's next?

Well, he says we should run the C-Reactive Protein test again in two months to see if it's come down or not. But the CRP is not why we started this whole thing!

This ordeal makes me think of my mother's experience with the medical profession. She had various health problems, and went in to see doctors enough that they thought she was some kind of kook. They ignored her, wrote her complaints of as psychosomatic bullshit, and she died of cancer that tore her insides apart when I was fourteen years old.

Needless to say, I don't want to be like my mom. I don't want to suffer my way to an early death while being ignored or mistreated by doctors. I worry about my liver. I'm getting by right now by taking two extra-strength Tylenols in the morning and two more at night. But how long can my liver keep processing that stuff without damage? And even with that, I still don't feel good enough to exercise, so I can't get more healthy.

What suggestions do those of you in the readership have for me? I'm pretty irritated, but I'm at a loss. Do I go see a different doctor? Wait the two months while taking Tylenol every day? Take my own life now to save me the trouble? I'm open for suggestions.