On Thursday, January 9th, I was administered antibiotics for an infection that was originally thought to be in the prostate, then the bladder, but in the meantime actually moved to one of my kidneys. Every day since then I have gone back for another daily round of IV therapy, the first five at Burnaby Hospital, the last six at Royal Columbian, which is literally a five-minute walk from home, so that part was at least convenient.
On Day 5 they removed the IV from my left arm, because the apparatus had bent, and switched to my right arm. This was better since I’m left-handed. But it still meant doing a lot of things was cumbersome and awkward, and I had to be careful not to damage the IV while sleeping and whatnot. A shower or bath was weird and vaguely unpleasant.
But now both arms are free and treatment has ended. I wait to see what happens next. Did the infection sneak into my prostate, and will I start showing symptoms in a week? I don’t know. I am not a pessimist (I swear), but am resigned to a 50/50 chance of more infection to come. But that also means I think it’s possible I’ll be good.
I’ll wait a few more days, then start thinking about running (not on a sidewalk) again.
Here’s hoping the rest of 2025 is kind of dull and boring for me. If there’s excitement, I request that it be of a pleasant variety, without any Twilight Zone-style twists.
I started my IV therapy at Royal Columbian Hospital on Tuesday, so today was my fourth day (I double-checked the math, I think I got it right). On each of the three previous days, every other person getting an IV had a foot issue. Usually the left foot. Left feet seem kind of unlucky.
But today was a new dawn: Someone in the chair ahead of me was getting an IV for the first time (I both did and didn’t want to look) and lo, he had two regular feet. His therapy ended first and as he left, he turned and waved at me, as if we were brothers-in-arms feet. The guy that came in as I was leaving also seemed to have two ordinary feet. Seeing these guys made me feel less odd.
I have had nine (technically 10) treatments, with two more to go. The desire for everything to be OK after that is something I cannot yet put into words.
And now, straight from Discord, a cat reacting to a foot:
Not his month, anyway. I’ts like my brain refuses to focus long enough to get out more than a few sentences.
But perhaps I will bloviate again and at length soon.
Also, the IV has been making my right arm itchy the last few days and I can’t scratch it. I must use sheer force of will to convince myself it does not itch.
Three more days and I am hopefully done on this particular journey.
And I love lists! So here’s a list highlighting various random things on my Health Adventure 2025 (which technically began in 2024):
Having never had an IV before, I’ve now had, as of today, seven IV treatments, with at least four more to go. I can’t say I enjoy them, but I am pretty much used to them now.
The first four were in my left arm, the last three switched to my right.
The switch to the right was a bit bumpy. The nurse tried twice closer to my wrist (more flexible for the time between visits) but thanks to my tiny, impervious veins, she settled on a third closer to the crook of my elbow.
While I had the IV in my left arm, I tried brushing my teeth with my right hand (I am left-handed). This was actually kind of hilarious. I could hold the toothbrush just fine in my right hand, but once it went in my mouth, my brain went haywire and didn’t know what to do. I am glad my left hand is available again.
If you had asked me if having an IV needle stuck in my arm 24/7 and swaddled in medical wrap to protect it between treatments was kind of grossbuckets before this became my reality, I would have said yes. And I still say yes. But you get used to things.
It always kind of hurts a little, though. I once did a full stretch and the arm with the IV needle in it sent me a reminder, something like DO NOT EVER DO THAT AGAIN.
Yesterday, the treatments transferred from Burnaby Hospital to the next-door Royal Columbian Hospital. It’s nice that it now only takes five minutes to go to or exit from treatments.
Every other person getting IV therapy in the same room has had a foot issue, so I’m now thinking of this as The Foot Room where people are sent when they need antibiotics. My foot is fine, but maybe they just don’t have any other rooms.
I have had two prostate exams, which are kind of like someone goosing you, but being extremely serious about it.
I have had blood taken three times. I have gone from being traumatized over getting blood taken to, “Yeah, whatever.”
The beep the machine makes when the IV bag is empty is a sound I will associate with IVs for pretty much forever now.
The staff at both hospitals have been very nice.
My partner Jeff was a veritable angel through the worst parts of it, staying with me for all four hours of my first ER visit last Thursday. Horribly, I have actually had longer ER visits in the past.
I was told today that inflammation is pretty close to back to normal. I was not told what was inflamed. My kidney, I’m guessing, since that’s what they are targeting.
Mentally, I find myself up and down like the proverbial roller coaster. I am a bit down today, but can’t pinpoint exactly why. It could just be a cumulative effect.
It will be very nice to sleep without an IV needle in my arm.
It will be very nice to be healthy again.
It will be very nice to resume running again while avoiding nasty sidewalks that try to trip me.
This story begins with an upset tummy, which does not seem particularly ominous.
The sore stomach began three days ago. I was puzzled when it struck partway through the night, disrupting my sleep. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I had an inkling in the back of my mind that took the form of the word: Infection.
And here we rewind to early December, or possibly even late November, when in true guy fashion1Spoiler: Guys can be kinda dumb, I began to feel something (an abdominal ache) that I knew from previous experience was likely to be something specific (a bacteria infection centred around my plumbing) and did nothing about it. “I’ll just wait a bit and if it goes away, it’s nothing!” (And if it doesn’t, I’ve given the infection time to grow and spread. You can probably guess how this played out.) By the end of the first week of December, I began experiencing symptoms that were bad and could not be ignored:
High fever
Chills (not the cool kind of chills)
Body aches
Headache
The sweats (not the cool kind of sweat)
I saw my doctor and he ordered blood work. This is where the story takes its next dumb turn. DO NOT BE LIKE ME. HEED MY WARNING.
I dragged my feet on the blood test because the last two times I’d had blood taken, the experience was awful. The second was especially bad, with the tech approaching my arm like it was a dart board, and she was on her fifth beer. So I kept trying to steel myself to just go in. What are the odds I’d have three terrible experiences in a row, years apart?
My doctor prescribed me the “best guess” antibiotics in the meantime, for a prostate infection. At first, the drugs worked. Yay drugs! But over the two-week dosage, the effectiveness waned, until at the end they just plain stopped and all the aforementioned symptoms came back, as strong as ever. Just prior to this, I did muster up the nerve to get the blood work done. And it was fine. Painless, really.
The work revealed that this was more likely a bladder infection, so a week of new antibiotics were prescribed. Again, as if my magicke, the drugs worked. Yay drugs again!
Everything seemed good. I felt normal, healthy. I even went on my first run in four weeks, which may have been an omen, in retrospect. After a week, my hands were healing nicely from my spectacular trip on the sidewalk, but I was otherwise still OK.
We catch up now to three night ago, when midway through my sleep I awoke with a stomach ache, or at least what I took to be a stomach ache (this was almost certainly incorrect, but I’m no anatomy expert). I thought it couldn’t be the infection, because it feels different. Then the smart guy in the back of my brain said, “But what if the infection has spread and moved? It might feel different as it settles into a fresh, new organ.” I made a doctor appointment on Wednesday. Wednesday was bad. My doctor confirmed the infection might have spread. He ordered more blood work, then to see him on Friday.
Thursday (yesterday) felt like an extended and unpleasant dream. Per my Garmin Forerunner 255, I walked 190 steps. All of them to and from the bed. I ate about 500 calories of food, most of it soup. I burned, then froze, then sometimes did both at the same time, which is both unique and maddening. I felt horrible. I no longer wanted to feel horrible. I had met my quota, I felt.
My partner had been insisting I go to the ER instead of the lab for the blood work. My doctor also said I should go to the ER if the symptoms got worse. So we did, after I peeled myself out of the (unsexy) sweat-soaked sheets this morning.
We went to Burnaby Hospital, rather than Royal Columbian, which is literally next door to us. I did not know this in advance, so I felt a bit like I was kidnapped. But apparently RC is a trauma hospital and prioritzes people who are, like dying, so you can wait a very long time if you are not facing imminent death (the very long waits have been true for me in the past).
The visit took about four hours, but it was actually more efficient than it sounds, because a lot of that time was waiting for test results.
They took two vials of blood. It was pain-free again. They made me pee into a bottle. They had me lay on a bed and periodically someone would come by and inform me of various steps and things. I was feeling a little less gray, but very thirsty. They would not let me drink yet.
I had my first CT scan. It wasn’t as intimidating as I thought. A male robotic voice would tell me to breathe in, then hold my breath and exhale. The bed slid me under the scanner about three times. It took a few minutes. The one freaky part–which they warned about in advance–is when they inject dye into your IV. This makes your entire body go weirdly warm for a few seconds, and also makes it feel like you’ve just loosed your bladder big time (this does not actually happen).
Oh, I should mention–they started to administer antibiotics by IV before the CT scan. Because the handy machine attached to the IV drip had not reached INFUSION COMPLETE yet, they chose to have me wheel the whole thing down the hall for the CT scan. Also, I had to put on a gown, with the IV attached. It took three of us to get it on without having IV medicine spray everywhere.
Fun fact: The doctor who attended me called me James, which happens a lot. All of my names are interchangeable, and I guess James is the most popular.
After the scan, the IV concluded, but wait, there was a second bag. I’d never had an IV before, but the experience was not horrible as I’d expected, even when they turned on the pump to get the drip moving along.
I have four more daily treatments of this. The best part (?) is they keep the IV in, so you don’t have to get newly-stabbed each time. Problem: The bandaging to keep the IV safe and cozy is a tad bulky. I’m also left-handed.
It’s not muscle.
I may see if they can switch to my right arm, even if it means an additional stabbing. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll become ambidextrous as a result, and a whole new world will open up for me.
During these four hours of fluid removal and insertion, I got the results: the infection had moved up the urinary tract and cozied itself in one of my kidneys. This is not good. The five daily IV treatments are the usual, but they will reassess during the process, so I might need more. At this point I am willing to learn to love country music if it makes me healthy again.
And that was my Thursday morning. Tonight, as I type this, the fever is gone, my tummy feels normal and I have a bit of a residual pressure headache. I’m sure my watch will read my stress as off the charts, but I feel significantly improved from 24 hours ago. I don’t expect to sleep well tonight, but I do expect to sleep decently.
FINAL WARNING TO GUYS (and really, everyone): If your body show signs of something wrong, go to the doctor right away. Do not wait. Do not make excuses. Do not be macho. Do not be me (not that I am macho).
My view for most of the morning. The doctor who attended can be seen in the background.I think you can tell I’m having a good ol’ time here. Also, I look kind of chunky. It’s the posture, I swear.
Specifically, I wear a Garmin Forerunner 255 running watch. I previously had a Series 5 Apple Watch, and it served me well, but I wanted a tool more attuned to my specific needs as a thrice-weekly runner who occasionally also does long walks and other activities, like treadmill workouts.
The Forerunner has been notably better in several respects:
Unlike Apple, Garmin doesn’t hate the web, so I can check all my stats on the web, as well as in an app.
The running stats are more detailed, and easier to suss out.
On the watch itself, because it has no touch display, it works fine regardless of the weather and starting/stopping/pausing a run is all built around pressing a single button, something easily done regardless of the conditions, or if I’m wearing gloves.
The battery life is so good I essentially don’t think about it. I charge when I shower and that’s it.
Because the battery life is so good, I use it for sleep tracking. I’m aware that sleep tracking is a bit dodgy on any smart device and Ray Maker (DC Rainmaker on YouTube) said he thinks they have about 80-85% accuracy, and he uses Garmin watches only to note his start/end times (Duration) for sleep, which it usually does a good job of, then mostly ignores the other things it tracks, namely:
Deep
Light
REM
Stress
Awake/Restlessness
Each category gets assigned a rating. For example, last night my watch said I slept 7 hours and 46 minutes, which is almost exactly what it recommended, so my Duration was rated Excellent. My Deep sleep lasted 48 minutes, which was enough to rate Fair–and so on.
The possible ratings are:
Excellent (90-100%)
Good (80-89%)
Fair (60-79%)
Poor (0-59%)
If you get Fair across the board, you’re looking at an average of around 70%, which is…Fair. But if one category ranks Poor, it can drag down your score either a modest amount, or a lot, depending on the category. One such category is Stress.
Last night, my sleep score was reported thus:
The accompanying text read:
Sleep Score 51/100 Poor Quality
Non-restorative
You slept long enough, but not well enough to bring your stress levels down overnight.
Your very stressful day yesterday may have compromised your sleep. You may feel more tired or irritable today.
Here’s where we get to my point and also that 80-85% accuracy figure Ray Maker notes. As you’ll see, my overall sleep was pretty decent–except for stress. It claims I had a “very stressful day.” My day consisted of chores, sundry tasks and the usual stuff. Nothing particularly stressful–or even stressful at all.
There were texts regarding the strata nonsense in late afternoon, which would be a stress point, but I felt pretty mellow in going through them. A few possible mitigating factors:
I am still a bit sore from my spill last week, particularly the hands and right wrist. This may cause some kind of low-level ongoing stress?
The bladder infection is only recently dealt with, so my body is still likely recovering from that, not quite back to normal.
Still, the previous night reported average (Fair) stress, so there’s no reason to think the above two items would affect my stress score while sleeping. Yet I do not feel the day was stressful. I woke up this morning feeling I had clearly slept better than the previous night–but with a lower score.
And I think of that 80-85% and wonder if my watch is now just kind of freaking out and interpreting everything as STRESS and reflecting it in my stats. The thing is, seeing it always reporting stress is genuinely stressful in itself, especially when I don’t feel I’m being stressed. It’s all very recursive.
I ponder whether to take the watch off at night. I’ll probably leave it on for now, but I will adjust to take the sleep scores with a bigger grain of salt, and adjust upward to giant grain as necessary.
Typing out this post probably affected my stress level, per the Forerunner.
The abrasion on my left elbow is nearly gone, the scrape on my right knee looks more like a playground boo-boo, and my hands have gone from covered in gauze and tape to regular bandages. The left hand will likely go bandage-free in the next day, with the right to follow not long after.
The left upper thigh has gone from feeling like it was punched by an angry gorilla (repeatedly) to just a bit sore.
The right wrist is still the worst off. While it is much better, there is still a bit of pain when I move it in certain ways, or more specifically, when I am holding something and move it in specific ways. The argument against the bones being sprained/broken are:
I don’t hear any ominous crunching when turning the wrist in any direction
In general there is no pain at all, unless I do a very specific action (eg. holding something in my hand in a particular manner)
Any pain is actually pretty low level
It definitely feels a lot better than it did a week ago, and broken bones do not magically heal themselves (to my knowledge)
I still reserve the right to get an X-ray, but I think the wrist is OK. Probably. Mostly, I know that if I go to the ER to have it checked out, I will be there for long, agonizing hours and that actually seems slightly worse than a bone fracture.
Anyway, I am generally on the mend and feeling much better with a week of recovery behind me, and no more (hopefully) bladder infection. December was a hell month. I am hoping January will at most be a heck month.
My hands, one week later (spoilers again, but they don’t look bad at all):
The best news is I’m down for the month and also down for the year. Hooray!
The not-as-good news is I was close to being down a decent bit more, as three times during the month I hit 165.2 or 165.3 pounds, including just a few days ago. In these past few days, despite no drastic changes in eating, my body weight suddenly started swinging wildly up and down. But even though I gained 0.6 pounds this morning, it couldn’t erase the rest of the month’s weight loss, meaning I am still down 2.2 pounds for the month and 5.7 pounds for the year.
These are pretty small numbers and I remain, as of today, some 16+ pounds short of my goal, but at least I am moving in the right direction.
December complications:
In the first week, I developed a bacteria infection, which kept me from running for four weeks. This is probably why I suffered the slight shrinkage of muscle mass. It did lead to a massive 3.1 pound overnight weight loss in that first week, and by the end of the month, I’d kept about two-thirds of it off, which is pretty good!
That second run–yesterday–resulted in me tripping and hitting the sidewalk hard, so I’m unsure how soon I’ll be running again. We’ll see.
The general lack of activity, associated stress, and discomfort did subdue my appetite for large periods, but once it improved, I came close to using food as comfort again. Bad!
In terms of stats, for the month, they have mostly improved. For the entire year of 2024:
Body fat went from 25.2% to 25.3% (neutral)
Muscle mass went from 30.5% to 29.7% (bad)
BMI went from 24.7 to 23.8 (good)
A mixed bag.
2024 was a mixed bag, indeed. Here’s to 2025 being a nice lean bag.
Stats:
January 1, 2024: 172.3 pounds
Current: 166.6 pounds Year to date: Down 5.7 pounds
December 1: 168.8 pounds December 31: 166.6 pounds (down 2.2 pounds)
Body fat: December 1: 25.9% December 31: 25.3% (down 0.6%)
Skeletal muscle mass: December 1: 30.0% December 31: 29.7% (down 0.3%)
BMI: December 1: 24.2 December 31: 23.8 (down 0.4%)
Last night the antibiotics I have been taking for two weeks just plain stopped working and the infection they’d been holding at bay came roaring back, with attendant fever, body aches and other fun stuff.
I also began taking new (and better-targeted) antibiotics late yesterday, but when I went to bed, I was blazing hot and had yet another terrible night of sleep, as I have had for most of December. I do not recommend this.
On my Garmin Forerunner 255 I have a 212-day streak for walking at least 10,000 steps per day. That’s about seven months, which is pretty good.
This morning, I got up, had breakfast, then went back to bed. I stayed in bed until about 2 p.m. and slept fitfully, as I still had a residual headache. Fortunately, the new antibiotics had begun working by morning and the fever, chills, etc. had passed. I was still very tired and with only 3,000 steps as of 9 p.m. faced a question: Did I want to walk on the treadmill long enough to get 7,000 more steps? It would probably take close to an hour.
I decided it was better to just accept the streak was over, and my immediate health and well-being was more important. It still kind of bugs me that the streak is ending, but sometimes you just have to accept that the best choice is not always the one you want to make.
Although I wasn’t exactly keen on getting on the treadmill for an hour, either. I believe I mentioned I am very tired.
And this concludes Christmas Eve 2024. Enjoy this pixelated snow scene. It’s the best kind of snow–make-believe!
It turns out it takes 11 days for me to overcome my fear of getting a blood test after the last test did…not go well1Think human pincushion (tracking from when my doctor gave me the sheet listing the blood work to me actually going into the lab to get the blood taken).
The good news is this time (today) was perfectly normal as far as that sort of thing goes. Here’s hoping the results aren’t completely horrible, though the way the year has gone, I am…keeping my guard up.
