Since moving and starting my real job, with much more time off, the ability to know in advance when that time off is going to be, and improved cash flow, I've been working on taking care of myself a little better.
I've got the braces on, which are already showing significant improvement in the alignment of the teeth, I've been able to exercise more, and I've been getting laser hair removal (love those hairy beast genes).
Now I am getting bariatric surgery, the gastric sleeve specifically. Here is a picture of what is involved.
It's a fairly simple surgery, done laparoscopically so all you have are a few incisions from port holes, and they just staple along the line between the esophagus and the pylorus (the sphincter at the end of the stomach), and remove the remainder of the stomach. Done and done. There's no horsing around in the intestines, so there is minimal chance of scar tissue forming (which leads to small bowel obstructions, even 20 years down the road).
My surgery is scheduled for later this month, in about two weeks, and at this point I am a combination of excited and scared of surgical complications, a "knowing too much" situation. That said, the two surgeons who do the bariatric surgeries together are very careful, contentious guys, and the fact that I haven't had to deal with a bunch of their surgical complications as a hospitalist is a very good sign. There are one or two surgeons working down here where that is not the case; them I would not allow to touch me with a ten foot pole, even if the only other option would be to go ahead and die of my ruptured appendix...
Anyway, I am hopeful that there will be multiple positive effect from this; first and foremost, weight loss, but also improvement in heartburn, improvement in PCOS, especially the ongoing facial hair growth (even though its been lasered a bazillion times now), improvement in sleep apnea, and blood pressure, which is starting to get high. Maybe I'll get lucky and the migraines will go away too.
It'll be a little weird being a patient at the hospital where I work, where I know the nurses who will be taking care of me, and there is a decent chance that the anesthesiologist will be someone from my ward. Ah, living in a small town...
On a different note, I've been having trouble with ingrown nails, including one on my finger, and developed a paronychia this last week at work, which was quite painful and annoying.
This is what a paronychia looks like, and though this is not my finger, it looks similar to what my finger looked like. Yuck. This inspired an internet search on how to make this not happen, as I've had one before on the same finger.
What I came across was something called CurveCorrect, which had excellent reviews on Amazon. Its a simple idea, where you glue this strip of plastic to the affected nail, and it acts as a splint and lifts the edges of the nail so it flattens out instead of having an aggressive curve which lends itself to ingrown nails. Since I have four toes with similar issues, I decided to give this product a try, and so far am very optimistic.
I applied strips last night to the first and second toe on both feet, and the finger with the paronychia, which started to feel better almost immediately. The toes I did not notice any sensation right away, but definitely noticed something in the morning. Both big toes are quite sore, which I expected from reading the reviews, and the ridges of skin that usually surround the toes are significantly retracted, which makes me think we are on the right track. You are supposed to leave the strip on and re-apply as needed through an entire growth cycle of the nail, with the expectation that you shouldn't have any more troubles after that. I am definitely hopeful that this will do the trick with both the ingrowns and the paronychias. (In case Jared reads this, I already cut my nails straight across and wear shoes with a roomy toe box)
In summary, I've been working on my house, getting it nicely arranged and organized, my finances, getting debt paid off, especially credit cards, and on myself, trying to improve my health. It feels good to be able to move towards having things where I want them to be, especially after so long having no control over most of these things. That said, I remembered my deep thought from the other day; at work, having a routine and a set, structured way of doing things is soothing to my OCD side and helps keep anxiety in check. At home, having to be too structured makes me more anxious and irritable, possibly because I don't feel like I should have to be structured at home. Not so deep, eh?
;)
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