So yesterday I went in for a CT scan of my neck. I arrived at the hospital about 20 minutes early and sat in the waiting room reading a magazine. At some point I noticed someone come out as if looking for a patient, then go back away. I went to the receptionist and asked what’s up. She said the person was looking for me. I guess she wasn’t looking that hard. The waiting room had about 15 seats. Anyway, the nurse or whatever she was came back and got me. She said that they’d be giving me an IV to inject me with some iodine for contrast right before the scan.
She first tried to get my left arm set up for the procedure, but failed after poking me a couple times to get a vein. Then she switched to my right arm. She got a vein, but didn’t seem that confident. I go into the CT scan room and lie down. They all walk away and while the scanner is revving up I notice my arm start to hurt and keep getting worse. I say something, but nobody does anything. After a few minutes, they come back in and say, "So your arm hurts?" "Yes," I say. And then they say, "Hmm…" and walk out of the room again.
Back comes a doctor and he says that it appears the IV came out of my vein and so they ended up injecting the iodine contrast agent into the tissue of my arm. I finally look at my arm and it’s freaking huge (100cc bigger than normal in fact). The doctor says, "So what you need to do is keep your arm raised up over your body for the next 24 hours or so. You should also keep it iced as much as possible." And now the best part. "And if your skin starts to break apart, go to the emergency room immediately and you’ll need to see a plastic surgeon." WTF!! My skin break apart? "The contrast agent is slightly toxic and you just received a concentrated dose to your arm, so it may cause the tissues to break apart. Your skin might slough or fall off."
Great. So I spent the rest of the night with my arm raised up and iced. What a pain. It’s still not back to normal size, but it’s close. And because I didn’t have the contrast agent in my vein the CT scan didn’t get a good picture.
So I went back tonight and the procedure went much better. And the guy there said that someone should have monitored the contrast agent being injected. Nobody did. Man, I would have had a killer malpractice case if my skin had fallen off… But it didn’t.
I’ve been spending a fair bit of time with doctors recently and it looks like it’s going to increase for a while. I went in today to see a guy about some masses in the right side of my neck. They’re probably enlarged lymph nodes. The first thing that springs to mind, of course, is cancer. Hopefully it’s not that. Bleh. But in any case, I’ll start a course of antibiotics today. If these antibiotics cause the nodes to decrease in size, great! I’ll also have a CT scan of my neck on Thursday evening to get a better picture of what’s going on. If not, then I’ll have one of them removed next Monday under general anaesthetic and stay to recover overnight. Risk factors of general anaesthetic, they tell me, include stroke, heart attack, and death. Terrific. I’m really more worried about the possibility of lymphoma. That would suck. Oh well. At least UW is a great hospital.
Well, I’m almost done with 20/20. I’m in the middle of the maintenance phase. I now weigh 179 pounds, 64 less than when I began. 15.4% of me is fat, down from 36.3%. I’ve got 152 pounds of lean muscle by the latest measurement, so if I keep that I figure 167-170 is about what I should weigh to be at my body fat goal. But those machines are pretty inaccurate. I’ll see how I look after losing another 10 pounds and take it from there. My doctor says that medically I don’t really need to lose any more weight, so now it’s just to put the finishing touches on cosmetically.
Anyway, good stuff! Blood pressure is down to 116/66 last they checked (from 134/90) and everything else is great. The one annoying thing is that this time my hips went down a bunch in size, so my waist/hip ratio actually increased to 0.92. I figure the next 10 pounds will help that out as well.
I’m going to reward myself for going under 180 with a trip to Daniel’s Broiler. I’ve been told they have a really great chocolate souffle, which is my favorite food, so I’ll be having that after a caesar salad, filet, and lobster tail. I’ll get some asparagus on the side. All in all it promises to be quite tasty.
The sad news is that today I aggrivated my already sore left hamstring playing ultimate frisbee. Hopefully it’ll get better soon and I won’t have to slack on my workouts.
I saw the dentist yesterday for the first time in about 10 years. I finally had too many dreams about my teeth rotting out of my head to ignore.
Result: I have 1 baby tooth left and it has a cavity. Otherwise I’m just fine. 28 years and still no permanent teeth with cavities. The dentist said I have "genetically lucky teeth". Fantastic. I’m going to go back in in a few days for a cleaning and a filling in that baby tooth.
Not bad numbers. At the start of the program they said I had the BodyAge of a 53 year old. Now I apparently have the BodyAge of a 30 year old. Definitely a great improvement. I’m still aiming for more, though. They say if I improve flexibility a bit more, I’ll get 2 years. If I get my body fat down to 13%, I get another 5 years. And improving my strength will give my 1 year. So getting down to a BodyAge of 23 seems reasonable.
They also showed me a before picture of myself (and a recent one). There’s definitely a notcable difference.
Definitely have more to go, though. I remember ages ago when I first got to 180 and thought I was fat. I’m almost back down to that level. I think once I get under 170 I’ll be pretty happy. I’m aiming for 165 and a body fat of less than 13%.
In related news, my size 34 pants fit great now. Next stop: 32.
Well, down to 194.8 pounds as of today. That’s about 50 pounds gone. Not too bad.
Still another 25 to go though. In another week or two I’ll get my 20 week assessment and find out my cholesterol, body fat, etc. That’ll be fun. I’ll post more infoz then.
As of this past Monday, I weighed in at 204.6, which is down 40 pounds from where I started. Not bad. Not bad. Still have 25-35 more pounds to go, though.
When I get under 200, I’ll be pleased. And I’m going to eat a bacon cheeseburger with french fries. You’ve got to have goals.