Posts tagged with "health"

Father-Son Bonding

I called my dad on his birth­day this week. After the divorce I would nev­er call him, spe­cial occa­sion or not, sim­ply because I need­ed to dis­tance myself from the sit­u­a­tion. He did call me on mine last year though, which reestab­lish­es a sort of prece­dence and rit­u­al, and he actu­al­ly thanked me for the call.

We made the usu­al small talk, about work and home.

Mercedes Benz SLK 55 AMG 2006

He told me he bought a car: a 2006 Mercedes Benz SLK 55 AMG hard-top con­vert­ible with 18″ rims and 7‑speed-auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion. He’s going to keep the Beemer for win­ter dri­ving. It filled my heart with qui­et joy when he said I could dri­ve it the next time I vis­it­ed him. Not so much because he was let­ting me (for I was always allowed to dri­ve the Sportline 300CE while liv­ing at home), but because I could tell in his voice that he want­ed me to try it.

I asked him if there’s any his­to­ry of col­orec­tal can­cer in the fam­i­ly, which the doc­tor want­ed to know at my last appoint­ment, to which my dad answered, thank­ful­ly, no. He shared with me his own health con­cerns, the med­ical terms of which he only knows in Chinese. These are things I avoid ask­ing about when I vis­it him, as he pops some pills from a bot­tle kept with the dish­es in the kitchen, and I real­ize that I’m learn­ing more about my dad than ever. It’s not so much out of a need for pri­va­cy or avoid­ance of embar­rass­ment, but sim­ply out of con­ve­nience, as these top­ics would nev­er get brought up.

It’s strange to bond with him in this way, only after so many years of leav­ing home.

I remem­ber him try­ing to teach me pho­tog­ra­phy when I was younger, but he soon lost inter­est, in both pho­tog­ra­phy and me1. Maybe it’s the dis­tance that makes us appre­ci­ate each oth­er more, and it would­n’t be the same if we lived in the same city.

In a way, I’m glad to have the rela­tion­ship now, and I’m able to for­get that I’ve nev­er had it for most of my life.

  1. As such, all my pho­tog­ra­phy is self-taught, aside from one trick used to zoom a lens towards the sub­ject so that the edges are blurred that he showed me at the Statue of Liberty. []

On Isotretinoin

I recent­ly start­ed a course of Isotretinoin, a strong med­ica­tion used to cure severe acne by alter­ing DNA tran­scrip­tion. For some rea­son, my acne has real­ly flared up in my late twen­ties. I would get huge cysts on my face that would last for weeks, not to men­tion the hyper-pig­men­ta­tion that would last even longer after the cyst went away. Needless to say, it was mak­ing me very anti-social when I was talk­ing to peo­ple and felt like there was a huge dis­trac­tion on my face.

I was referred to a der­ma­tol­o­gist, who gave me a pre­scrip­tion for “full strength” (accord­ing to my body weight) to see if I could han­dle the side effects. The phar­ma­cist asked me if she made a mis­take because they don’t offer a dosage that strong, so now I take a com­bi­na­tion of two dosages.

Due to the poten­cy of the med­ica­tion, there’s a huge list of side effects. The scari­est is the mood changes. I’m sup­posed to stop the dose if I start expe­ri­enc­ing:

  • changes in my mood such as becom­ing depressed, feel­ing sad, or hav­ing cry­ing spells
  • los­ing inter­est in my usu­al activ­i­ties
  • changes in my nor­mal sleep pat­terns
  • becom­ing more irri­ta­ble or aggres­sive than usu­al
  • los­ing my appetite
  • becom­ing unusu­al­ly tired
  • hav­ing trou­ble con­cen­trat­ing
  • with­draw­ing from fam­i­ly and friends
  • hav­ing thoughts about tak­ing my own life

As a per­son who’s suf­fered from sui­ci­dal thoughts in the past, this was quite a fright­en­ing propo­si­tion. I asked my friends to be aware, just in case I don’t notice any changes in myself.

So far though, the only side effect has been extreme­ly dry skin, espe­cial­ly on the face. The lips have been the worst; I can’t eat or drink any­thing with­out apply­ing a thick lay­er of mois­tur­iz­er on them, oth­er­wise they peel like mad.

There’s also a dry­ing of mucous mem­branes. To relieve the chap­ping, I’ve start­ed smear­ing Vaseline in my nose.

Prior to this, the only time I used Vaseline was as a sex­u­al lubri­cant.

Now I get aroused every time I breathe in.

The Weight Issue

With a tone of gen­uine con­cern, as if I was being con­sumed by some dis­ease, Abdallah told me he noticed I was get­ting thin­ner. Perhaps this is true. I was recov­er­ing from an episode of IBS, and con­trol­ling my food intake. Maybe its my sets of nar­row, flared pants I’ve been wear­ing late­ly on Julie’s sug­ges­tion1.

Louise tells peo­ple I don’t eat a lot, which is true only when we’re out 2, and is also the only time she’s seen me eat. It makes me even more ill at ease when I’m already feel­ing unat­trac­tive, as if it was my fault and I was­n’t doing enough about it. Others will com­ment about the size of my waist, or make a pass­ing remark about how they wish they had my metab­o­lism.

I try to take it all in stride, but it’s not easy when the sub­ject is con­stant­ly brought up.

According to my doc­tor, I’m aver­age weight — the aver­age being a range, with me being near the bot­tom. I know this, but it does­n’t make it eas­i­er. Bronwen once told me that I have a weight issue, and after think­ing about it for a while, I real­ized that it was true. Even though it’s some­thing I can joke about, it’s still a source of self-con­scious­ness, lead­ing back to mem­o­ries of my par­ents telling me that no one will love me if I’m this size for­ev­er.

Sometimes I won­der if I’ll ever get over it.

  1. Her the­o­ry is that bag­gy pants do noth­ing to hide thin limbs and make skin­ny peo­ple look even skin­nier. []
  2. Usually because I don’t like to be too full when I’m out. []

I Hate My Doctor

He does­n’t lis­ten to me. He’ll ask me a ques­tion, then cut me off. He triv­i­al­izes my symp­toms.

Next thing I know, I’m rushed out of office.

He’s a nice guy, but nice does­n’t get you healthy.

Unsuprising Inevitable

Somehow, Aaron talked me into a doc­tors appoint­ment for a gen­er­al phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tion, some­thing I’ve been avoid­ing for years now. Turns out noth­ing is wrong, as far as the doc­tor can tell, and I opt­ed to skip the blood test. I brought up some issues I thought I might have, but he waved them off as being fair­ly nor­mal. I was­n’t too ner­vous because every­thing in my life seems to be going fine, so some bad news would­n’t have hurt (as opposed to before, where it would have been anoth­er prob­lem added to my list). I was look­ing for­ward to some bad news actu­al­ly, as if con­ve­nient­ly hav­ing it now would mean that I’d be free for anoth­er few years.