Bye Bye Cysty

And just like that, it's gone. Just a few days after the outboard motor ultrasound and claustrophobic MRI, I was in the hospital bright & early, ready for the extraction.

One thing I've learned from all this, it's probably easier to go through surgery if you've lived a life of hard drinking and drug use. The tolerance has to help when it comes to shaking off the anesthesia. 

Surgery began at 9am and finished at 1:30pm when I was wheeled into post-op to sober up. I was the last one to leave post-op at 7pm that evening. The nausea - oh sweet baby jesus wrapped in a barf bag - thankfully they have *another* drug for that. I really didn't want to dry heave with a 4" abdominal incision that had just been glued together.

But I made it home, not just upstairs. There really is no sleeping in a hospital. Had to get home to my own bed. Just being home was a huge help in speeding recovery. That, and many many grams of vitamin C and a heating pad.

But, all went well - pathology came back totally normal - just your run-of-the-mill extra large softball sized tentacled mass of yuck. My friend Steph thinks it had probably been growing in there for a year or so. Hard to know, as they don't have rings we could count, but she might be right.

It really did turn out to have some tentacles - it had "adhesed" itself to several areas around my pelvis, as had my left ovary and tube. Not sure why that happened, but that was all taken care of as well. A lady parts spring cleaning, of sorts.

Definitely happy to have it gone - feels much better in there. Had them yank the stupid ovary too - that bitch's antics are done forever. But the stabbing pain in my right side every now & then is obviously her ghost, still kicking me.

If any ladies out there might be experiencing lady parts problems, I found these forums useful in learning what to expect before & after surgery. Enjoy.

• Recovery after ovarian cyst removal
• Recovery after ovary removal
• Recovery from laparoscopic surgery
• Top 10 Things Someone Learned from Laparoscopic Surgery

FWIW, my surgery started out as laparoscopic but they couldn't suck a 10cm cyst out of a .5cm incision, so they unzipped me at the bikini line.

They gave me the option of removing the cyst and ovary and sending that to pathology for a full workup, which takes a few days, or doing "quick pathology" during the surgery, which isn't as thorough, and if something seems awry, they'll yank ALL your lady parts at that time. To that I said FUCK NO - you take only what I've asked you to take and you leave the rest. If something seems fishy (get it? I'm hilarious), we'll deal with that one thing at a time.

Why are doctors so happy to eviscerate all our lady parts? Why is that even an option without really knowing what the fuck is going on? Thankfully I have a good doctor who totally understands, but was simply doing her job of informing me of all my options. If you need a good lady parts doctor in SF at UCSF, let me know. I love, love, love her.

So, here are the Top 10 Things I Learned from Open Surgery.  

1. Since it started with laparoscopic, I had all the CO2 pumped into me that had to be processed, post-op. Lots of belching. Lots. That lasted about a week. Super sexy. You'll be super bloated but it dissipates in time - at three weeks, it seems mostly gone, but there's still a lot of healing to go.
2. Hydrate yourself like a mo-fo. I didn't eat the day before surgery - no appetite - and you can't eat or drink anything after midnight the night before, so you're going to be incredibly dehydrated. That, paired with the narcotics = horrendous constipation (and more bloating! Bonus!)
3. Suppositories are your friends. With abdominal surgery, the last thing you want to be doing is, uh, straining. If it's just not happening, take the plunge, so-to-speak. My dear husband went to Walgreen's and bought me Dulcolax ass plugs and prunes and didn't balk. That's a good man. I opted for the suppository over a laxative, fearing painful cramping and panicky peristalsis, when really I just needed to gently start the process. It worked - fast and fairly comfortable - and I only needed the one dose to get on the road back to regularity.
4. Keep hydrating - you have to flush the anesthesia out of your system. For me, Low Tolerance Lucy, it felt like it took a few days. Jasmine green tea was very soothing and hydrating - am now addicted.
5. Peeing and pooping will hurt, before, during and after you go, but that's what the narcotics are for. Just breathe through it and then take a nap.
6. Speaking of narcotics, see if you can get something better than vicodin. Vicodin must be the scrapple of pain killers. I felt awful when I took it. Within a few days I started using codeine fizzies - effervescent codiene/acetaminophen tablets from the U.K. A milder pain killer, but isn't nauseating and doesn't make me feel icky.
7. If you have a recliner chair, you'll probably sleep better in that the first few days or so - getting into and out of bed will be difficult, and you'll be up a couple of times a night to pee. With all the swelling, your bladder feels full fairly often, and that hurts, which wakes you up. Your spouse won't get any sleep either. The chair is easier.
8. If you're like me, you may not have much of an appetite and may also have lingering nausea. I no longer drink soda, but Coke Zero was a huge help. Oatmeal & cream of wheat with a little honey (honey is a natural laxative, btw), mild chicken soup w/ busted up cappellini noodles or orzo (the protein in the pasta is helpful), whole wheat toast (yay fiber!)... you get the idea.
9. Move as much as you can, but listen to your body and nap, nap, nap, nap, nap. Moving around often helps your body process the drugs and helps minimize scar tissue. The sooner you're up & about, the sooner you're fully recovered. But don't overdo it... obviously. Baby steps. I was in pretty good shape before all this happened, and I felt like I was starting over from scratch. I got winded just shuffling through the house. But I felt 100% better in a week, then another 100% better the following week, and now three weeks later, I'm walking around the neighborhood, grocery shopping, doing light household chores - and also still napping. Still not back to normal, but pretty close. 
10. Vitamin C. As soon as you're eating anything, pop the vitamin C supplements. Vitamin C is the foundational building block of all connective tissue - skin, tendons, collagen - all that stuff. And it speeds healing. I took two 1000mg tablets with each meal - 6-8 grams a day. It can also help with the constipation - magnesium, too. I didn't take any of my other usual supplements - thought there was enough going on - just the C and magnesium. The supplements + the heating pad = fairly fast recovery. The heating pad increases circulation to the important parts - good stuff. And wonderfully soothing/relaxing.
11. Quick update - one more thing... as I'm finding out now, just over three weeks after having this done, the scar is now sensitive and a bit painful. The nerves down there must be upset - feels like that painful skin sensation you can sometimes get when coming down with a flu bug. Not sure arnica gel is any help with that, but trying that and Mederma. The fun never ends!

BTW, if you ask your post-op nurse about supplements, don't be surprised if she knows nothing about them or thinks 5-6 vitamin/mineral supplements a day is "a lot!" In my drunken post-op haze, I was chatting up the nurse and told her what I take every day (multi, C, magnesium, co-q10, b-complex, and D) and she said "That's a lot!" Um, no, no it isn't. It's hardly any, and I don't remember the last time I had a bad cold or flu or any cold or flu for that matter, but, you know, I'm not a doctor.

You're on your own as far as alternative healing/health information goes, but Dr. Mercola & Dr. Weil's websites have lots of good info. Also helpful, the book Ascorbate (easily found on Amazon) and Linus Pauling's book Live Longer & Feel Better (all about the benefits of vitamin C).

It gets better every day, that's for sure. Stay positive & laugh a lot - that's good physical therapy. Good luck, ladies.

10 x 14

Centimeters. That's the size of this cyst inside me. How many "large oranges" have you seen that are close to that size? I'm no fruit expert, but I'd say we're now in mango territory. This mango - not this mango.

Had another ultrasound this morning. Again, I'm no fruit expert, but I'm pretty sure the technician's brain consists of fruit salad. With the amount of pressure she applied to all the sensitive areas of my abdomen, she must have very clear images of the downstairs floor. I suspect she's also an avid sailor on boats with outboard motors, the way she was confidently directing the vag cam into even more sensitive areas.

She was very attentive though, telling me about her upcoming trip to Hawaii and how this time she's not doing any binge eating! Because she's pregnant. She did tell me to bring chapstick to the hospital and good hand lotion, cause the hospital lotion sucks.

They have signs posted in the ultrasound rooms explaining that you cannot ask the technician for any information about the results of your exam, as they are not physicians and cannot provide diagnostic information... Thanks for your cooperation!

The first thing she asked me when I arrived was, "Were you taking anything that may have caused this?"  Yes, it's a new supplement, I believe it's called CystMORE. I was skeptical of its claims to increase cyst growth by 400%, but I'm stoked it's working!

Later I had my first MRI - doctor wants to see this thing in 3D and check to see if any lymph nodes are enlarged. They shouldn't be, as I've not been taking my LymphMORE.

I'm getting tired of everyone else getting to ogle at my cyst while I haven't even gotten a peek. Can't wait to see the photos after they carve it out of me. It feels like it might have tentacles.

Gestating

That's right - I have a little something inside me...A little bundle of... well, not joy - fluid? Taffy? What's inside an ovarian cyst, anyway? Whatever it is, I don't think it will have my eyes and David's hair. David's mom wanted a granbaby, but she's getting a grancyst. It's the best I can do.

I wonder how long it's been in there, growing to the size of a "large orange," as my gyno described it. When does a "large orange" become a pomelo? How much longer could I keep growing this thing to make something really impressive?

Will it have its own teeth and hair? Will it have teeny tiny hands so it can drag itself around the house? I'm not gonna keep carrying it around everywhere. It's gonna have to become self-sufficient at some point.

I want a photo of it when they take it out - they can do that, right? I asked for a copy of an ultrasound photo, but they wouldn't give me one. You can get one of your fetus, but not when you grow something all by yourself? Isn't that discrimination?

Will I miss it when it's gone? Will I regret having it sucked out of me by a tiny Dyson? Maybe I should keep it and give it up for adoption. You know there's someone out there who loves collecting odd growths. eBay.

If I don't make it through the extraction, you know, in case they get my liver instead of this citrusy cyst, David will auction off my worldly possessions to the highest bidders and use the money to adopt more cats.

Can't Eat Home Again

Had a lovely visit at the parents' house a couple of weeks ago, but next time I'll have to bring along a travel pantry of steel cut oats, Organic Frog greens powder, ground flax seed, brown rice protein powder and a truck load of vegetables.

Once was, we were not allowed to eat white bread, sugared cereals or anything that wasn't healthy. Hated that dry, crumbly bread back then, but now whole wheat/mulitgrain is the only bread we keep in the house.

Nowadays, Mom loves the buttermilk white bread, mass market cereals with carcinogenic BHT preservatives and even pork rinds - a lovely birthday gift from a friend. Thoughtful friend, eh?

We had ribs for dinner a couple of nights & one night Dad made delicious BBQ corn. Our last night in town, we had amazing salmon and a great salad. Certainly not a bad menu, but some of us need a little more fiber in our lives. Consistent like.

Other than the salad, I don't think I saw a single vegetable. (Corn is a grain - wah wah!) On top of that, Mom made a decadent "coke cake" - a chocolate cake made with cola and frosted with an entire box of powdered sugar. Just one piece can cause diabetes.

Dad made his amazing lemon pancakes & sausage one morning which lasted me all day, but for lunch, Mom offered homemade potato onion soup. It smelled wonderful, but after the pancakes & sausage, I wasn't hungry! If I had been, what I needed was some sort of high-fiber colon blow buffet.

There was fruit - peaches, bananas, melon & berries. I found instant oatmeal in the pantry and had that with fresh fruit for breakfast. I also found the Costco mixed nuts - that was handy - and the dry scrub growing behind the house really packs a fiber whallop.

I don't know how they do it. They're in excellent health, enjoying cocktails every evening at 5pm, wine or beer with delicious low-fiber dinners followed by Box O Sugar cake and coffee. I would be in rehab with life-threatening intestinal blockage. They really are the stronger generation, in so many ways. Time to take my Metamucil.

Fugging Hormones

Boy, is it fun being a woman in her early forties. All that's missing is the funnel cake and the Main Street Electrical Parade.

Every month something else changes - nothing is stable anymore. Just when I think I've adjusted to the new routine, it changes again.

There used to be a predictable schedule - recognizable events, which now are a jumble and occur at seemingly random times of the month.

No longer can I expect my face to asplode with fantastic zits a week before The Bleed - now it happens throughout the month, whenever it feels like it.

The Bleed starts, stops, then - Surprise! - returns for a day or so just in case I was starting to miss it.

No longer am I moody and depressed for just a few days before my period - now it's pretty much throughout the month. Most days, if I didn't have to leave the house for work or other critical reasons, like for coffee, I'd never change out of my fleece robe.

Now, in just the last couple of months, I'm having trouble falling asleep at night. Me. The one my family was certain had narcolepsy, the one who could sleep anywhere (and most of the time still can).

When I get into bed at night, tired and sleepy and happy to indulge in 7 hours on the Tempurpedic, I lie there wide awake. Thinking about nothing. Just awake. Not asleep. Not even close. Sometimes for over an hour.

And the newest event I'm not at all pleased with - one morning a few weeks ago I woke up soaking wet. That was neat. I'd been swimming laps in bed. Or maybe I'd just peed myself. A lot. All over. What a lovely way to start the day.

This is just straight up bullshit. All of it. I don't want any part of it.

I am not Suzanne Somers with limitless access to personal physicians who can administer delicious bioidentical hormones in the perfect amounts to stave this off for however long. That would be nice... I wonder if Blue Shield covers that.

For now, I stand in the vitamin aisle at Trader Joe's reading the back of the Estroven package unwilling to put it in the basket, thinking Not yet... I'm only 43... I can't need this... yet...

New Phobias

I've developed an exciting new phobia. One thing to enjoy about getting older, every day brings a whole new adventure - a new fear, a new ache, a new thing I can't eat.

While visiting the parents in Bend (Oree-gone), we had thunder storms roll through one afternoon. I was driving back from the store watching ginormous bolts of lightning shoot down from the sky and my first thought was, That's going to come right through my car, into my face, and they'll find me crashed into a tree with most of my face charred off.

I drove the rest of the way hunched down in my seat as if that would prevent the murderous bolts from finding their way to my face.

When I got to the house, I slowly opened the car door to get out, then ran toward the garage thinking that at any moment that bolt would shoot down into my face - always into my face - and my parents would find me in the driveway with most of my face charred off.

Where this came from I can't begin to tell you, but I think it's probably a good thing. One should have a healthy respect for lightning. One shouldn't feel emboldened and confident about standing out in a thunderstorm holding a nine iron into the sky.

Climate change is a real issue, and maybe lightning is much more aggressive and dangerous than it once was. Tough to know for sure, until it shoots down into your face to confirm it, but why not just expect that along with heavier snow storms, more ferocious hurricanes and increasingly torrential rain storms, lightning is more sinister than it was in years past?

Adrenals Adrainals

So... I've been reading about adrenal fatigue. Why? I have that sort of free time. And I'm wondering why I don't have enough energy to make a maple syrup & bread sandwich, but if I did, I'd make and eat fourteen of them in one sitting.

A few weeks ago all sorts of shit started hitting a big frickin fan. I'll bore you with those details another day, but it was a giant stress shot in the ass.

It was a rough few days, but then things mellowed out somewhat. Now I'm dealing with its aftermath. It's like having a mild case of mono, which if you've ever had mono, even "mild mono" makes you want to sleep for a year.

Even when I get to bed on time or early, I wake up tired. After feeling OK for about an hour, I'm ready to collapse back into bed. When I get in bed at night, I lie awake trying to shut off my brain and it takes forever to get to sleep.

I spend all day dragging my ass wherever I have to drag it, and if I don't have to drag it anywhere, I park it in a chair or on the couch. I feel OK again for about an hour in the evening, then I can't wait to crawl into bed.

Even though the PMS has long since come and gone, I'm craving sweets & carbs like an addict. Way worse than usual. No amount of coffee makes any difference - no jolt whatsoever. And out of nowhere, I'm having trouble with hay fever. I haven't had allergy trouble in years.

The writing project I was excited about a couple of weeks ago is a distant memory. I tried to work on it yesterday and put in maybe half an hour before I had to lie down. I've had headaches - no migraines - but I'd been headache-free for many months. I haven't run in three weeks. Not even to the fridge.

So I Googled "constant fatigue craving sweets" and found a few articles on adrenal fatigue. It makes a lot of sense. After years and years of stress, it seems plausible that at some point the adrenals say Enough! and go on strike.

Then I thought about past stresstivals and how I felt physically in the weeks or months afterward. I remembered at least a few occasions where after dealing with enormously stressful events, there was a time afterward of feeling physically drained and generally unwell. The recovery period seemed to be proportionate to the stressful period - the longer/more stressful the event, the longer it took to recover.

The worst thing I read about adrenal fatigue... you have to avoid sugar and caffeine. How cruel. I'll get back on the Greens Today and keep napping til this passes. I suppose I could see a doctor, but they're full of shit. I bet they'd try to tell me Paxil's been approved for treating doughnut cravings.

More about adrenal fatigue:

• Adrenal Fatigue/Adrenal Exhaustion
• Liz Lipski, PhD on Adrenal Fatigue - Google video (part 1)
• Liz Lipski, PhD on Adrenal Fatigue - Google video (part 2)
• Adrenal Fatigue vs. Low Thyroid symptoms matrix
  
• Project Aware Adrenal Fatigue
• Adrenal Health in Women
  
• Adrenalfatigue.org

Steroids Shmeroids

As I sit here writing this, with an ice pack tied onto my left shoulder with a dish towel, I realize that if I had easy access to drugs that might help stave off age and rebuild muscle & tissue, I'd be scarfing them down like delicious little doughnuts. Chocolate-covered miracle doughnuts...

I read an article a while ago in Elle Magazine about steroids in track & field, how easy it is to get on them and stay on them.

They profiled a sprinter, Kelli White, who resisted for many years until she learned that all the agents treat their sprinters like horses, deciding amongst each other who's strong/fast enough to compete in which races. Some runners won't get the chance to compete, based on an agent's decision.

A talented, successful athlete, she was desperate to make a living and compete in races she knew she could do well in. She agreed to try "supplements" from Balco. She talked about running faster and harder than she'd ever run before, and how quickly she could recover after grueling workouts.

After reading that, I better understood how someone could go down that path. If I could feel that good when training and recover twice as fast, I can't say I wouldn't do the same thing.

Especially now. I've been a distance runner most of my life (off and on) and as I get older, it takes twice as long to get back into shape and twice as long (at least) to recover from harder runs or strenuous workouts.

And during this past weekend I injured my shoulder and aggravated a very old neck/back injury. I feel about 80 years old.

The shoulder will be fine and my neck/back will be fine once I see my chiropractor, but feeling like my active days are numbered is terrifying. I feel old and like it's all downhill from here. I don't really believe that's how it'll be, but it feels like it for the moment.

If I could head down to Shopper's Drug Mart and pick up some growth hormone and whatever else might help, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I don't want to grow testicles or end up with bacne, so that stops me from going that route. I'm having enough trouble with the Portuguese Lady's Mustache.

But you have to wonder - is a small amount of HGH safe? Would just a pinch in my morning coffee stave off problems like this for many years and not cause any harm? Why don't we know the answer to that question?

Why isn't the quest for healthy longevity getting more mainstream research & attention?

What's interesting is yesterday, when the pain was pretty bad, I tried OTC muscle relaxants and Advil. Neither provided relief. Later I tried vitamin C and glucosamine and it seemed like it helped.

Vitamin C is a building block of all our connective tissue - skin, tendons, ligaments - everything. Glucosamine supposedly helps the body to rebuild cartilage. Couldn't hurt to try a truckload of that & see what happens. Lord knows the potato chips in my knees could benefit.

Maybe with the right, natural materials the body can successfully repair itself, it might just take longer than we want to wait. For now, the ice is helping my shoulder so much I don't want to take it off but I'm losing all feeling in my left arm.

Old & Rickety

I'm not talking about the Coaster.

David and I ventured to Vancouver's Playland today. It's a cute little park - it means well - but at $29.95, every ride should come with space-age barf bags and personal attendants to clean you up. As David said, it's one step above a county fair, sans barn critters.

It's about as big as a Costco parking lot, with two tiny coasters, typical midway business and a half dozen puke-makers such as Hell's Gate, Breakdance, and Crazy Beach Party.

I wish I'd gotten photos of the murals in Crazy Beach Party - too much equipment and shadows in the way, but there was Hulk Hogan with a parrot on his shoulder, various muscle men in pose-down positions, babes in bikinis, and Arnold, our governor, in a t-shirt, in a beach shack ready to rent you a surfboard.

Now, why Arnold was working the shack and *not* on Muscle Beach a la Pumping Iron is anyone's guess. I don't remember Arnold being known for renting boards in Venice, but I wasn't there. But still, how is Hulk Hogan a better shirtless character than Arnold? Insanity!

The Coaster is great - a 50-year-old death trap that drops like a rickety little rocket and races down around and up and down its little course throwing you nearly clear out of the car as you crush your seat mate on every turn. That was our first stop and I totally OD'ed on adrenaline.

From there we went directly to the one other coaster, aptly named Corkscrew. Fairly harmless, but the spiraling started the stomach flipping. We tried another ride called Pirate! I'm putting exclamation marks on all the ride titles. Pirate! is that stupid ship that rocks back & forth. Looks harmless. It isn't. I did not feel OK after that.

Maybe I'm a little old for rides like Pirate! or Breakdance! (?), with little cars whipping around on arms that whip around a garishly painted "inner city" backdrop. That was the ride that turned mild nausea to full-blown I'm gonna hurl if this shit doesn't stop immediately. It could have been the murals...


Like an idiot, right after that, we got on another boot-maker, some crap called Enterprise. The cars look benign, like you'll just glide around in a nice, calm circle in your little pod. Nope.

The bitch goes up, sideways, down and the car rocks side-to-side. Jesus, please baby Jesus make it stop. Sitting directly in front of David, I dry-heaved cereal fumes. Had it not been several hours since breakfast, his hair would have been decorated with partially-digested shredded wheat. Delicious.

I thought I was a goner after that. I must have burped/almost-hurled fifty times and felt a flop sweat coming on. We made our way to the snack shack to get a soda. I thought it might help. What I really needed was a valium/dramamine cocktail. Next time.

Once I'd settled down a bit, we rode Corkscrew! and Coaster! a few more times, then tried the climbing wall. I thought it would be a cinch, but I got about halfway up and freaked out.

I kept thinking of the nightmares I've had where I'm climbing a steep rock face and it keeps getting steeper and steeper until I'm about to fall off. It wasn't the looking down that got me, it was the looking up.

After a last ride on the Coaster! I got a big slice of pizza, peeled off all the cheese and chowed that salty, doughy, soothing crust. If only they'd had corn dogs & funnel cake. Never too old for that.

How Do You...

...Forgive the mistakes of the past? Yourself?

I have hindsight. I have regrets. I've made mistakes I cannot undo, oh though I wish so much that I could. I followed the paths I could find. I knew there were others, I just didn't know how to find them.

With the benefit (curse?) of hindsight, I see clearly what might have been different - "if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be a merry Christmas!"

Had This happened and That happened and This NOT happened, maybe That would have turned out like This.

But nobody knows how That will turn out or how This might affect That. Though if we all have the benefit of hindsight (or introspection), you'd expect that those who have gone before would ensure past mistakes aren't repeated.

If you can look back and see clearly the things that should have been done differently, things you had no control over but someone else did, how do you let that go and move past it?

Not sure why this has come up or why it's stuck in my craw, but I've been working on it. What I think is true is that regardless of opportunities (missed or otherwise), people are who they are and will do what they will...

So even if This *had* been That or I'd done That instead of This, it may not have changed anything in the end. I made the choices I did for a reason, good, bad or otherwise. If I had it all do to over again, without the benefit of clairvoyance of course, I'd probably do it all the same.

But if anyone out there would like a list of things NOT to do, I can help with that. Send a self-addressed, stamped catalog-sized envelope to Blunders to Avoid, 673 Fumbler Road, Aimless, NJ, 07508

Mid-Life Diet

Is it just me, or have other people upon reaching their early 40s had to eliminate foods from their diet due to intolerance, allergy or other reasons? Is this normal?

I swear, the list of what I can eat or drink gets shorter every day. It's down to meat or eggs, starch and water. And bananas. And cookies, thank god.

It all started with the headaches. My head is totally broken.

With so many years of experience, you get to know your headaches - the average low-level annoyers, the sinus-related killers, the full-on migraines and others that are unique, brought on only in certain instances.

I've discovered over the years that BHT gives me a particular, skull-crushing head cleaver. It's brought on by any food containing this preservative - a suspected cancer-causing agent, I might add.

All mass-market cereals use BHT. Your Post, Kelloggs and General Mills-type fare - all your favorites, though plain ol' Cheerios is poison-free. It was a sad day when I had to remove Golden Grahams and Honeycomb from my shopping list.

Another BHT source - Potato Buds and other brands of instant potatoes or packaged dry foods. Caint have none of 'em.

MGS is another headache. It's in almost everything that's processed - soups, chips, crackers, sauces, some stocks - anything that tastes better than it should likely has MSG in it, and a lot of restaurants are using it again, though most of them won't offer that info unsolicited. Ask.

Then there's dairy. All cow products give me horrific headaches, a particular type that also comes with big dark circles under my eyes and a bloated face. Super attractive.

Nothing makes it go away. Well, a glass of fizzing codeine dampens it a little, but it hangs on for almost 24 hours every time. Doesn't matter if it's raw, organic, homogenized, pasteurized or has live active cultures. If it comes from a cow - no dice. So far, goat cheese seems to be OK.

Next on the list, and this one really makes me sad - so sad - chocolate and cocoa. Just in the last year or so these kids started making trouble in my head. My favorite Bensdorp Cocoa and Callebaut chocolate chips [sniff]... no more. Even small amounts are too much. Tragic.

Just about any liquor aged in a barrel makes a fine headache, though good red wine usually doesn't. White wine will almost every time and some champagnes and sometimes beer. Silver tequila on the rocks seems to be OK, but no reposado, no anejo, and no mixer/sugar.

Then there's raw veggies or too much fiber in any one dish. Whoa, Betty, that is an unpleasant experience the next day. I used to love carrot and celery sticks. Now, my lower GI says NO to that. That was an uncomfortable discovery to say the least.

What does that leave me? Steak, potatoes & eggs and Don Julio Silver, the breakfast of champions.

It's Already Happening

The craziness. Dementia. It's happening.

While puttering around the house Saturday morning I noticed the front door was unlocked. I asked David if he'd gone outside that morning. He said he hadn't. I said we must have left the door unlocked the night before.

Uh, actually, I'd gone to the store early that morning and had already forgotten all about it. I know it's happening and maybe I should be worried. But I'm not. I'm looking forward to forgetting all sorts of stuff. I imagine it'll be a great relief and the days will get a lot more exciting.

Getting Ready - Then and Now

While getting ready to pick up David at the airport yesterday, I realized my pre-date primping routine has changed somewhat.

Years ago:

• Shower
• Shave
• Tweeze brows
• Spend 30 minutes figuring out what to wear
• Comb out towel-dried hair
• Blow dry hair if being picked up - dry it in the car w/ windows down if meeting somewhere
• Apply mascara

Now:

• Shower
• Exfoliate
• Shave
• Spend 30 minutes checking/tweezing mustache growth, tweezing stray eyebrow hairs, trimming stray nose hairs, plucking unsightly grey hair
• Apply high-powered SPF
  
• Carefully apply tinted moisturizer
• Apply Burt's cover up to unsightly spots if necessary
• Spend 5 minutes figuring out what to wear
• Comb out towel-dried hair
• Apply hair-thickening serum
• Blow dry hair to maximize product effect
• Apply de-frizzy serum as necessary to minimize fly-aways
• Apply mascara
  

I can only imagine that in another 10 years I'll be back to the short list, because by that point, really, who am I kidding?

Dear Age

Dear Age,
I think it's time we had a serious talk. Don't think I haven't noticed what you've been up to. I've noticed, and it's time to call you on it.

I didn't mind so much when you first showed up and decided it would take much longer to recover from a 5K run without any training - that's fair.

But when you showed up again to give me headaches from really good red wine, that was just mean. But maybe you were right and I needed to temper my intake - I deferred and took a "wait and see" approach.

And then the bullshit with the Portuguese mustache started, ever so slightly, one more little black hair at at time. Black hair on my upper lip, as you started replacing the brown hair on my head with pigment-less, wiry grey hair, you tricky bitch.

And all the little things that are just annoying - you clearly have time on your side to come up with crap like this - my knees sound like crunching potato chips when I go up and down stairs; if I stay up too late too often, I'm shredded for days afterward; and one of your cruelest tricks, the ease of which I can be hungover from just two drinks if I haven't eaten enough or drink the wrong thing. An entire morning can be lost while you sit back, laughing at me.

Well, missy, fine. You have your job to do, and I guess I have mine. I'll continue to dress like a 15-year-old boy - I don't care how many years you slap on me. I'll continue to drive a little too fast for road conditions. And I'll keep running 5K races with little or no training, because I still can. I have pain relievers that make you look like an ass.

So what I'm saying is, you need to back the eff off for a while - I get it. I'm not 17 anymore. You've made that painfully clear. Go bother someone else for a few years. So, do we have an understanding? Don't make me get the Jack Lalane juicer and go all aggro on your ass.