Blame Facebook

The duties of this blog have basically been usurped by FB for the past six months, and will probably remain that way. So for any of you that have actually read this, come look me up on FB; I’m much more active there, and I can say so much more by the status usually than I can sit down and think to write paragraphs on any given subject.

A Bladder’s Tale, Part Deux

I had my post-op consult with the urologist late last week. Here are some fun facts about interstitial cystitis:

• In all cases of interstitial cystitis, only 10 percent are diagnosed in men.
• 5 to 10 percent of all cases of interstitial cystitis are accompanied by Hunner’s Ulcers.

I found that I am a member of both demographics. So I am part of a very special group. There’s no cure, per se; there is only alleviation of the symptoms, which includes mostly dietary changes.

Again, it could have been much worse.

A Bladder’s Tale

I’ve been putting up with some serious pain intermittently for the past two years in my bladder/prostate area.  Accompanying this pain were trip to the bathroom that got as frequent as 10 minutes apart. I’ve had various diagnoses and ran through various courses of treatment, from anti-bacterial to anti-fungal to anti-inflammatory. I was even put on a few prostate medications, one being Avodart which I quickly found gave me an allergic reaction. But still there was pain.

It started back in May of 2006. I started noticing myself going to the bathroom more often, and then not only was there frequency but pain as well. The initial diagnosis from a doc-in-a-box was to take some antibiotics and hope for the best. I took a 10-day dosage of the AB’s, and a week later I was feeling miserable all over again. So I went to my then-new PCP and he put me on Cipro. I was on Cipro for a good two months, and the day after stopping the medication it was back to square one with the excruciating pain.

The PCP referred me to a urologist, Dr. Dray. I gave him the low-down on what I had been doing thus far to try and remedy the problem. He then recommended trying an anti-fungal rememdy. It appears that males can get yeast infections in the prostate and that there is a balance of beneficial bacteria and yeast in the prostate, and when one decreases the other can take over. So the thought was that bombarding me with a heavy AB may have triggered a yeast infection. Ow. So I took Diflucan, and in 4 days I felt awesome. Case closed!

…or was it? In May of 2007 I got the same thing all over again. Frequency. Pain. I was miserable all over again. So my PCP gave me a round of antifungals.. hey, it did the trick last time, right? Well, this time it didn’t. His summation was that there may be a resistance to that same AF, so he gave me a different, low-level AF to take for 2-3 weeks. That seemed to calm the situation down again.

February of this year: Started feeling the urge to go more again and some dull pain. I know what this is. I had some ketoconazole left over from the last battle, so I took it for a couple of weeks, and that seemed to work ok.

May 2008: What is it with May? Here it comes again. So again, more AFs. Eh, still a dull ache, but not going as much.

Two weeks ago, I get up during lunch to go to the bathroom. As I’m going I feel a sharp pain in my lower abdomen. I get back to the office and then schedule myself an appointment with the PCP. He takes some blood and urine and then recommends another trip to the urologist to figure this out. I’m exasperated with the whole thing by this point.

Last week, I go visit the urologist. He has an ultrasound taken of my bladder and kidneys, and those came up clean. He stated, however, that my bladder wall was thicker than usual which typically indicates inflammation. I guess he took this as a good reason to recommend a same-day surgery.

Today,  I went in and had a cystoscopy done, and the diagnosis was interstitial cystitis. According to the Wiki article, IC has a quality-of-life equivalent to that of renal failure. And that doesn’t sound fun either.

I’m quite thankful that I now know what is going on, because having this for two years and neither me nor my doctors having a clea idea what was going on was quite taxing on the brain. The diagnosis could have been much worse. My urologist was highly recommended and rightfully so. I now have a treatment plan that I will probably have from now on.

To The Rockies!

I had to travel to Colorado for work, so I suggested to Abby that she go with. It was the closest thing to a vacation we would see this year. As an added bonus, she got to see her friend Ginger who moved back this way a couple years ago.

We flew into Denver Friday afternoon and booked it to the hotel. Denver weather was pretty yuck — foggy and rainy. Which made mountain-viewing nigh impossible. Ah well, there’s still plenty of time to see if the weather improves, right? We popped down to Black Hawk that evening to see the casinos. Can’t say it was all that exciting, as we left after an hour or so. It was late and still foggy and wet, so not a lot of mountains to see to and from the casinos.

Saturday brought promise. We woke up and tore open the curtains to see… rain. And lots of clouds. Crap. But the breakfast in bed was rather nice. We patiently refreshed the Weather Underground site to see if the doppler radar would bring some good news. Success! There was a break in the rainfall down I-25 toward Colorado Springs. I was wanting to check out Pike’s Peakand the path all the way there looed clear. So we hopped in the car and zoomed off to Pike’s Peak! …only to find it closed. Flash floods. To add insult to injury, we encountered heavy rain all the way back to Denver. Abby had been talking to an online friend of ours that we would meet later, so we decided to go back to the hotel. Only I passed the exit. So we whipped it around and we decided to head straight to the pub since we lost time. Abby got directions to the locale on her phone, so we hit the appropriate exit. This put us right in the middle of traffic heading to Mile High Stadium for the Broncos-Cowboys preseason game. Ouch. At long last, we managed to get to Pint’s Pub to meet up with some friends… what a joint! They have many many varieties of single malt scotch and a few microbrews. We got the scotch sampler from the four main regions of Scotland. I discovered I’m definitely a fan of the Lowlands scotch, so I picked up a shot of Inverleven…goooood stuff. I also had some brews made right in the pub — the Black Ajax Stout and the Gael Force Ale, both excellent brews.

I believe Ginger was quite excited at the news of Abby’s visit. She made us an itinerary for the drive to Grand Junction! Which, by the way, was gorgeous! Clear skies and lots of mountains as far as the eye can see!  I drove as Abby took many pictures. We met Ginger in Silt where her mom, Deb, lives. Deb treated us to a wonderful lunch and some back stories of the area. Ginger then led us in a convoy on to Grand Junction, where we checked into the hotel and then proceeded on to Colorado National Monument…absolutely stunning. Pictures galore. We went on to dinner at Olive Garden with Ginger’s cousin and some of my co-workers.

Monday started around 5:45AM. I got my things together and kissed Abby goodbye, for she was off to Utah with Ginger! Suffice to say, my business visit went well. And what’s the best way to end a successful business day, you ask? Beer, of course! I went with the hospital staff to the Rockslide Brewery & Pub. Had the special of the day — Peach Glazed Pork. Washed it down with a couple of brews made there — Big Bear Stout and the Raspberry Wheat. Both were rather tasty.

Today’s visit went extremely well as the staff got to test what I had been working on since, oh, November of 2006. Much blood, sweat and tears went into these moments, and it definitely paid off. So well, in fact, that we left much earlier than expected. So I carted my co-worker on to Denver, and she decided to book an earlier flight. Knowing policy, I was compelled to do the same. We did not plan on the traffic backed up in the Eisenhower Tunnel area, so we ended up missing the flight. She managed to find another plane, where as I did not. The pisser, though, is that I had to pay $100 to book the earlier flight…whcih I missed, only to end up right back where I started. I had the travel agency rebook the hotel I cancelled earlier and got to the room. Went out to Ruby Tuesday’s and grabbed a burger and had another local brew — Odell Cutthroat Porter, made in Fort Collins. Another good selection.

The original plan was that Abby would fly out of Salt Lake and then we would connect in Denver and fly home. I think heading home with Abby would be the best way to end the trip , and so it shall be tomorrow. Until then, time for more episodes of The Office and Family Guy.

A Cycling We Will Go

Abby and I have committed ourselves to riding the bike of the evenings during the week. We have been putting in around 4.5 miles on the weeknights.

On Friday, we rode the Murfreesboro Greenway and through Stones River Battlefield for about 12.5 miles.

Saturday morning we both got up bright and early for a ride with the Murfreesboro Bicycle Club. Nice bunch of folks. We got in around 17.5 miles on that ride.

Today was supposed to be a light ride. We rode to Abby’s workplace to get a timecheck for the route…around 30 minutes and approximately 5.5 miles. Well, we took the long way back and rode on the Greenway and back through the battlefield to finish up around 13 miles for the whole trip. A little bit of soreness, and a nap was necessary.

Something I highly recommend to everyone — we started using the calorie counter and weight tracker on The Daily Plate. We have been tracking net calories for the past week, and let me tell you accountability is worth its weight in gold. Because we are able to see how many calories are left for daily intake in order to lose n lbs per week, we are much more cautious about what we do eat.