Ongoing Maintenance

In my body, that is.

So as I mentioned a while ago, I’ve been dealing with various medical issues on the part of my wife, Helen, and my mother. Tomorrow we’ll be helping my mom move into assisted living, something she’s resisted for a while but has finally admitted is necessary. She doesn’t like being with “a bunch of old people” — her words, ignoring the fact that she’s 86 herself — but I actually think it’ll be good for her to be around more people. Helen is doing better, with new drugs helping enough that the fear of a heart transplant has faded.

So now I’m doing some deferred maintenance of my own. Oh, I’ve kept up the exercise, yoga, and supplements, but I’m finally addressing some nagging issues of mine. I’ve had recurrent sinus infections, and just a general feeling of being not quite right.

The sinus stuff can be dismissed as the result of living in one of America’s allergy capitals, as Knoxville is consistently rated. But it still shouldn’t be that bad. I went to an allergist, and an ENT, and while I may be a candidate for balloon sinus surgery, we’re managing things medically at the moment. They switched me from Allegra to Singulair, and gave me a new steroid spray formula, and the results have been striking: I was using decongestants more or less daily, but since starting the new meds haven’t done so once. That’s been a big boost.

As for the dragginess, people told me it was just the product of being over sixty, but routine bloodwork led my doctor to suggest a visit to a hematologist. My hemoglobin and hematocrit were in range, but had fallen significantly. It’s usually hard to get in to see a hematologist, but the gym mafia hooked me up with a guy I know from the gym, and he texted me almost right away, and saw me in less than a week. It turns out I’m severely iron deficient, a product of taking Nexium (which blocks iron absorption) and frequent blood donation. So today I went for the first of two iron infusions.

The paperwork looked a bit scary, since it spoke of “chemo” and sent me to the cancer center at UT, but that’s just where they do infusions. I was afraid it would be grim, but honestly the people there, both nurses and patients, were surprisingly cheery. (The banter between the guy across from me and his nurse was hilarious, and obviously well-practiced.)

I was told that I have “beautiful veins” — something I’ve actually heard from nurses before — and the stick was certainly painless and easy. A few hours later there’s not even a visible mark where it went in, which is the benefit of being stuck by someone who sticks people all day every day, I guess.

My beautiful veins, visible in these pics of me pondering a student comment in class.

It’s probably just a placebo effect, but I feel more energetic already today, which I hope will carry over tomorrow when I’m helping move my mom’s stuff. (It may just be because I had an hour and a half in a recliner in the middle of the day, reading my book without being disturbed. They even brought me a sandwich.)

At any rate, the biggest lesson here is just that you shouldn’t explain away symptoms. In particular, blaming things on “old age,” though undoubtedly right sometimes, is something you should do after ruling out other problems, not as an excuse not to go to the doctor. And something as simple as changing one allergy pill for another can make a huge difference in quality of life.

And as a friend of mine once said, the quality of your life is pretty important, given that you’ve only got one of them. Indeed.