|
Tuesday, 09/13/2005 Entry: "Ketchup 1/6/2005 - The 2004 Virtual Roundup"
Ketchup 1/6/2005 - The 2004 Virtual Roundup
When I started the year, I was resigned to the prospects of dying by 50. By the middle of the year I decided to fight back. I've lost 30 lbs so far, with over three times that to go by goal. Before then in September 2005 I may attend a Cybertown reunion in Atlanta. Health permitting. It would certainly be interesting to see how that affects my life in cyberspace...The predatory women would despise me if they carried any unprovoked notions. The ones who treated me like crap and rejected proposals automatically because I was male would have their own reckoning. The community lotharios will be dumb enough to throw me lines. Who are they kidding? There would be casualties. There always are. Someone who from out of the blue once confided in me about a prostate condition... a buddy from the UK would be no less thrown. As friendly as he is to anyone on an equal basis, I know the latter's culture dictates a buddy bond which simply would not otherwise exist. Violating the buddy bond is beyond a secret social offence. Running afoul of the buddy bond is that which I fear the most. I've been through both scenarios before; I know. This factor is just as important as my physical condition by that time in determining whether I attend. But I digress... In August after an apparently deadly mix of Diet Sprite and honeydew melon I developed symptoms each time I ate anything with fruit and many raw vegetables. In time I've been able to reintroduce 99% of lost vegetables, but fruit remains on my forbidden list. A recent visit to a throat specialist revealed unusual symptoms during the onset of bronchitis - and a definite decline in my singing ability - were evidence of reflux. I had plenty of it in early 2001 after having gotten off a 7-month stint of Naprosyn, as well as any time I failed to refill certain supplements. It came back in full force in August for a few weeks with the onset of fruit problems. But this doctor - who's majorly handsome (which got me through his exam of numbing my pharynx to slip a little tube into my throat by way of a nostril) - suggests that reflux during sleep might be the culprit here. As one of my CT friends would say: "Eck!" More about that and an ominous lump at the base of my thumb in a future entry.
  
| 
