Category: Life

Subsumed in last week’s flurry of dumb health crap was a hidden gem: the weekend right before my surprise colonoscopy was marked by another victory in my steps toward being a comfortable flyer. A sudden opportunity presented itself on Friday–tickets to the Seattle Sounders/Chelsea FC game that Christie had–so I immediately bought an early-morning commuter [...]

In Which I go to Iceland When I think of yesterday morning in the manila-yellowed basement of the Portland Clinic, I keep thinking comedy of errors, comedy of errors over and over again, but don’t worry, in the end, it was a benevolent Keystone Kops kind of thing, not a they-took-out-the-wrong-kidney kind of deal. I [...]

“Pretty sure “surprise colonoscopy” is the worst way ever to begin a week.” — Aileen Jeffries, my Facebook wall Via a spectacular collapse in communication management (theirs, not mine), I have come to a situation wherein I didn’t know that I was less than 24 hours away from being knocked out and probed with cameras [...]

Jim’s comment on my last post reminded me of something I haven’t covered here–and I like to cover the crap out of things. That is, what I eat and drink. And the whole interaction with my little Crohn’s problem. We’ll start here. Curiously and counter-intuitively, there has not ever been any direct or observable correlation [...]

There is something like a coup in my insides, pouncing only when unexpected and I have blearily wiped it from my recollection; only when I am blithe and reporting “I feel fine now, it’s gone now” does everything in my geographical center suddenly grind to a halt and then there is squeezing almost like my [...]

In my previous post, I talked about some online resources that I used when working on overcoming my fear of flying. This post looks at some of the books and audiobooks I read, as well as some I saw reference to (but didn’t read). Flying without Fear by Duane Brown This book, brought to you [...]

This is the first in what I hope to be a short series of posts explaining how I was able to conquer some of my core life fears and anxieties. I am publishing these in the hope that this might be of some assistance to someone else on the same journey as I have been [...]

Satellite views like this one are what make conspiracy folks and lovers of the mysterious have “squee” moments. View Larger Map In Oregon’s remote Christmas Valley, coming upon this military installation of debated purpose is certainly eerie. The Internetty consensus is that the establishment has something to do with Over-the-Horizon radar or some such–at least [...]

The first thing in my life that I both recall and can put a date to are two vignettes from May of 1980. One is scouring a closet with my mother for a red bandanna to tie around my face, the other is a dim, gray moment-memory of an ashen street scene. So, I can [...]

A HIDA scan, which stands for hepatobiliary iminodiacetic acid scan, creates pictures of your liver, gallbladder, biliary tract and small intestine. A HIDA scan can also be called cholescintigraphy, hepatobiliary scintigraphy or hepatobiliary scan. A HIDA scan is a type of imaging study called a nuclear medicine scan. This means the HIDA scan uses a [...]