"You're an Unusual Case"

Update on my health

I haven’t written on Substack about my health for almost three months. The news is mixed.

I got sick twice. Over the holidays, I got influenza A for about two weeks. This interrupted my at-home physical therapy. Then in February, after six years of dodging the bullet, my wife and I finally got Covid. It was a mild case, no worse than a head cold, but it came back after going away, and it left me tired and once again interrupted my PT.

Other than that, the PT went very well.

My therapist (mental health, not physical) gave me some good advice, as she usually does. She noticed that I dwell too much on my limitations. She said that I should write some goals down and put them up on the wall. I wrote down six. Here they are:

1. Get up off the floor by myself

2. Walk around the local lake without resting (about 1.5 miles)

3. Resume my share of the chores around the house

4. Lose 50 pounds in 2026

5. Vacation in Philadelphia in 2026

6. Finish essays for my book in 2026

I am happy to report that I can now easily get myself up off the floor, if I use the bed to help myself. I can start from either a supine or prone position and get to a kneeling position, grab onto the bed, and stand up. My next goal will be to get up without grabbing onto any furniture, since that might be necessary if I were to fall down outside.

I have started taking out the garbage again. Stef and I have agreed on what my share of the other chores are, and when I have completed two cycles of them, I can check this goal off the list.

I have lost about ten pounds so far.

We might not make it to Philly this year, but we will probably have some kind of out-of-town vacation at the end of the school year, maybe to Richmond or Frederick.

The essays are coming along. I’ve started writing them again. I am up to 13. I think I will need to write another five to seven. Then I will have to go back and put them in appropriate form for submission. I will write a book update soon.

The problematic goal is the walk around the lake. Don’t get me wrong; I succeeded. I did it two weeks ago. I got sweaty even though it was cool, and I shuffled during the last stretch, but I wasn’t out of breath or terribly wiped out for the rest of the day. The problem is that from the next day on I have been wiped out. Nearly total exercise intolerance. My therapist, who studied PT in college, said a few days after the successful walk that I shouldn’t worry about it. But it’s been over two weeks.

A week after the walk (Friday, March 13, as luck would have it) I went in for my annual physical and blood work. Some of the liver values came back out of normal range, suggesting I might have a mild liver condition that, according to Google, can make a person tired. I will follow up with my health care providers. My Vitamin D is still borderline low, so I’m going to increase my supplements.

On March 18, I had the big appointment with Dr H, the neuro-ophthalmologist who specializes in idiopathic intracranial hypertension, the condition I have of too much cerebrospinal fluid in my skull that presses against my retinas and can cause blindness. She and one her fellows took a look at my retinas. Apparently, there is still a little edema, but not enough to worry about.

But Dr H said she had been studying my chart. “You’re an unusual case,” she said. Most patients with my condition are women in their 20s and 30s, not men in their 60s. I told her that my hormones are screwed up, but she didn’t seem to think that was the explanation. She went on to say that she really didn’t like to use the term “idiopathic,” because that just means that we don’t know the cause of the condition, and there is always a cause.

She went on to say that if I was interested, she would like to look for the cause. It is possible, for example, that it is a malformation in my spine, and if that is the case, it can be fixed. So, she would like me to get some head and torso MRIs.

Now, I am interested in getting this fixed, no matter what we call it, although at the same time I would be OK to stay on the medication that manages it for the rest of my life, because it seems to alleviate my migraines, and Dr H gave me her blessing for this. However, I have two reservations: 1. I don’t like MRIs because I am claustrophobic. I had to take Valium last time I had one, and it caused me to fall on the floor, and we had to call the fire department to get me up, but this was before I could get up by myself. 2. One of my brothers had spinal surgery that didn’t go well. It left him in a great deal of pain, and eventually he killed himself, although we don’t know whether that was his motivation, since he didn’t leave a note.

So, I’ll have to think about it. I suppose I’ll have the MRIs just to see what they show. There might be something seriously wrong in there, since I am an unusual case.

I’m going to try some light exercise again soon to see whether I can build myself back up again. I am also going to modify my diet, because I haven’t been eating very healthily, and that may be contributing to me feeling run down and to my problematic blood work. I’ll report back in a few months.

Oh, and March 19 was my 65th birthday! My wife gave me a lovely day. And flowers.