Thursday 10 February 2005

Pic of the day: Do you know how serious this is? Not very, not today, thank Goodness. (Screenshot from the anime Narue no Sekai, now available in the USA as The World of Narue.)

Health update

I should really use these short entries to say something that's not obvious. For instance, how's my health these days? My friends may want to know, and nobody else would want to read an entry named "health update" I guess. Well my enemies, if any. (And if there are any, it's utterly one-sided. There are lots of people I sincerely think ought to be killed for the benefit of the human race, but nobody I know personally, just generic people like "muggers" and "rapists". In real life, of course, generic people are few and far between.)

Anyway, I'm fine. Well, for someone my age and marital status and socioeconomic status, I guess. Both of my shoulders are pretty stiff these days, it is really obvious at work and I go around rolling my shoulders a lot there. I stand up and move around. I take the stairs for no other reason than to get the blood flowing through my muscles. But I'm not in intense pain. I think it is stupid to wait for intense pain if you can avoid it easily. Although intense pain might get me a disability pension ... but I'm not sure it is worth it. And I'm not sure it would work either. The desperate lack of workers here in Norway, especially competent workers, means that it's not easy to get out of the workforce unless you belong to some group that is scorned beyond hope, like long-time drug abusers or drunkards. Just because you're sick doesn't mean you can get away with a drinking straw in the state coffers any longer. Oh, the good old days!

***

My digestion seems to have stabilized, in a manner of speaking. I seem to have some kind of stomach acid problem, whether there is too much of it or it just is in the wrong place or something. I have pretty much stopped cooking dinner even during weekends, because anything that's so much it's worth cooking is too much to eat. Two slices of bread is the upper bounds of what I can eat: Sometimes it's too much, sometimes it passes without any complaint. But I'm not losing a lot of weight, so I guess I'm just eating those small meals more often.

My colon is still irritable, which means it is stop and go but far more go than stop, which frankly is OK except when it interferes with travel. I've experienced constipation, the scourge of civilized people, and it horrifies me. Note to self: Continue to buy the new rye bread. Yummy and seems to agree reasonably well with my intestines. The pain in my lower right side that plagued me for over a year is now just a memory, an unpleasant one at that. Whatever it was, it seems to be gone. Gut pains now occur far more randomly like in other people.

Yeah, I definitely have a human body, whatever may be said about my soul. It irritates me that I am mortal and subject to human frailty like any other beach ape. But that's the hand I was dealt. And I can't think of any species on this planet I would rather be, not really.