Intolerance....The Gastro-Intestinal Story

Soooo... I have discovered that I am intolerant.  I have been having for lack of a more artful term, intestinal issues for the last 5 years.  I blamed the onset of these to a law firm I worked for that was very stressful.  Then I blamed it on the next law firm I worked at that was very stressful.  They were both defense firms.  They are stressful dysfunctional places but...perhaps it was not their fault.  After colonoscopy and endoscopy they diagnosed me with ulcerative colitis.  This is only a slightly more definitive diagnosis than “irritable bowel syndrome”.  After the colonoscopy I was told that there was “minor irritation” in my intestine.

Everyone has advice about this.  Eat this yogurt. Drink this shake.  Eat fiber.  Avoid fiber.  More fruit.  Fruit will kill you.  And all along my doctors telling me that my diet has nothing to do with my stomach problems.  They put me on medication that costs several hundred dollars a month.  4 pills a day.  Along with 6 Juice Plus, Iron and Folic Acid I was taking 10 minutes to gag down a handful of pills every morning.  And I did not get better.  Prior to leaving the other guy I had a pill cam which i got to swallow and they got to watch go through my stomach.  I also had an upper and lower GI and I still don't know what that means.  All of them came back with the Doctor telling me I had “minor irritation”.

I got frustrated and changed doctors.  The new doctor said “I need my own tests” and we did another endoscopy and colonoscopy.  Surprisingly the doctor got the results and told me that they showed I had minor irritation in my lower intestine but now I was prepared.  I had an iPhone and had taken a picture of my “normal” stool and said “Does that look like minor irritation?  It doesn't FEEL like minor irritation”.  He was...troubled.  I was angry.  I explained to him that I needed to fire him because I was not getting better and he was no quarterbacking my treatment but was just doing procedures that were not changing anyone’s thought process.  I suggested that every time I came back from the doc my wife (who is really tired of my shit...literally)and she has all kinds of questions.  Have they tested you for Crones? Have they tested you for ciliac?  Have they tested you for lactose intolerance? have they tested you for syphillis?  LOTS of questions.  And I come back from the doc with no answers.  So we embarked on a series of tests to rule things out.

Oh... somewhere along the line I also got swollen lymph nodes in my stomach meaning I get to have CT scans every 3-4 months to see if they grow.  My internist suggested that it was natural after 5 years of inflammation that I would of course had inflammation.  My gastro-enterologist of course expressed to me that I should be much more concerned about that without being able to advise me on any other course of action I should take other than “monitoring them”.

So now I go in and get three hydrogen breath tests.  One for bacterial overgrowth, one for fructose intolerance and one for lactose intolerance.  Bacterial overgrowth means you have too much bacteria in your small intestine.  Evidently this is bad.  For these tests you eat a little bland food the day before the test and then fast for twelve hours.  I always go in as early as possible but it is a pain and an inconvenience getting ready for these tests and it is more than anything else annoying and time consuming.  You come in and the take you back and you blow into something and they take a baseline reading and then you drink something.  Then they send you back out and you come back every half hour and they take another reading.  For the bacterial over growth test I was there for three hours, blew 6 times and came up with....nothing.  For the fructose test it was the same drill but you drink a super corn syrup fructose powder mixed with water.  I blew the first time and had nothing and blew the second time and was told “we are done, you are highly fructose intolerant and you are going to have a very bad day”.  Fortunately with the nature of my problem it was not even that bad of a day.  I was happy to finally have a diagnosis, that was something I could conceivably figure out how to deal with.  I had the lactose test next week and came back again but I have eaten cheese and butter all my life and I was pretty certain this was not an issue.  

I came in like the other tests.  Took my baseline reading and blew.  I cam back a ½ hour later and blew a .02... then I cam back a half hour later and blew an .06.  Evidently it takes the stomach a while to start processing and creating the chemical reactions and gasses.  I was feeling a lot of things going on in my tummy.  I then came back and blew a .56 and she said “WHOA.  We are done and you know what I said last week about you feeling bad...you are going to feel REAL bad today”.  And you know what, she was right.  I guess when your intolerant it is almost like a full body allergic reaction.  Wow.  She advised that I go home but of course I missed a mornings work and really needed to catch up so I went into work and I sweated, and I ached and I evacuated the poison from my system for about four hours.

Si I am lactose and fructose intolerant.  What do I do?  Well, I don’t know.  Information is all over the board.  Everyone thinks you can just cut things out but both of them are in a lot of things so I have suddenly become a label reader.  I have never read ingredients on anything in my life.  Over the last couple of weeks I have tried to do this on my own and consulted numerous sources on the Internet and am ore confused than ever.  The process of intentional avoidance has offered some immediate benefits regarding general gassiness but my inflammation (diarrhea) is still sporadic.  As a person who formerly enjoyed sitting on the toilet for 20 minutes and getting some reading done, the last few years of 45 second shits has been very odd so transitioning back could be odd as well. One thing I am is very pissed off at a system that misdiagnosed and mis-treated me for 5 years. It is a portrait of our current health care system where docs get paid to perform procedures rather than try and treat the patient and the illness. I do not think they do this because they are stupid or because they with us poorly, I think it is just "the system". It sucks and it makes me think that tearing it down might be the only way to save it.

As I said the information on the Internet is all over the place beer is good, beer is bad, blackberries are good, blackberries are bad.  high fructose corn syrup is definitely the enemy but how this is listed as an ingredient is all over the map.  Almost any lays product has lactose powder in it. Cranberry juice cocktail is bad, or it is OK.  regular cane sugar is fine, or it is poison.  It all appears to be highly specialized to individuals and what their tolerances are.  I am keeping a diary of everything that I eat and what my symptoms are and that seems like a very self involved thing but the internet is universal in telling me that this is a requirement of my...."conditions". So I will see an a dietitian and talk with my doctor next week and try and figure out what this really means.  What it seems to mean is that my intolerance is going to make my life a like more bland.  When I think about what i see politically from our countries intolerance, that sounds about right.

Jeff Mangum at The Sheldon

Sooooo... it all comes down to guns, the guy from Notre Dame, Lance Armstrong and the budget, and Newtown and getting your own AR-15 to live in this dangerous, DANGEROUS country we live in...except it does not have to be.  There is always live music.

The other night I had the opportunity to go to a show at the Sheldon with my son Jon.  It is a blessing to do something you really like and when you can do it with your son it is even more better.  The show we went to see was Jeff Mangum who was the genius behind the seminal indie band Neutral Milk Hotel.  Magnum and the band were working the scene when they broke in 1998 with the seminal “Aeroplane Over The See” and it’s creepy beautiful “King of carrot Flowers”.  This kind of reminds me that radio was already dead even before the millenium.  Anyway the album was huge for indy rock and garnered critical acclaim when Mangum broke up the band and if lore is correct had a nervous breakdown.

If you listen to his music you would not be surprised.  He has a wailing voice with a sustain that is creepy when he carries the notes out.  It is just all angst and suffering and everything that made that brief, beutiful advent of indie such a heartnreaking thing... anyway... The Sheldon is a beautiful venue.  I think I have been there three or four times.  I saw garrison Keilor read poetry there and I saw someone do a Billie Holliday revue there which was cool and I think my son Patrick must have sang there or auditioned there or we went to see a play there or something.  Anyway, very cool venue.  Bathrooms are far from where you watch the show but comfortable seat and great site lines.  I do not know how many it seats but it cannot be more than 300.  It has a full bar attached next door in the gallery which is nice but again, a little walk for an old man.

And I am an old man.  the crowd for this show was trying as hard as anyone in St. louis can try to be hipster chic and cool.  It was interesting for an old man but ⅔ of the men had beards and when I say “beards” I dont mean david Ducovny “oh I forgot to shave have sex with me” beards but real beards.  Grizzly Adams (oops dating myself) bee hive type beards.  Seriously ⅔ of the crowd.  I had never seen such a thing.  I would say average age was about 32 and the crowd was pleasant and excited to see a hero.  The opening band was “The Tall Firs” and they were pretty cool.  two guys with electric guitars and it was kind of melodic.  they both sang like “The Crash test Dummies” with these deep mumbling lines but the songs and the guitars were excellent and I will check them out further on Spottify.

Mangum came on after a brief intermission and the crowd literally (for such a subdued venue) went wild.  One of the nice things about the Sheldon for an old man is the seating for everyone and the site lines, and the cocktails which you can bring in.  It is very much classy theatre with a nice stage with wooden panelling looking like a church (which I believe it was).  he walked out and sat down.  People hollered songs and he was pleasant and dismissive.  The cool thing about a show like this is that it is a guy with a limited but brilliant body of work, just coming out and playing to his fans.  He could sell more tickets at a bigger place (this was sold out) but the idea is just to deliver product, an event, a personal connection, and he does.  He started out right away with songs from “Aeroplane” and the crowd sang with him.  he apologized for being in bad voice and was taking hits from an inhaler and water bottle. He played “King of Carrot Flowers Part I” and had the crowd singing and then invited folks to come up closer.  No one (it being St. Louis) really wants to be dick and block other peoples view but when people did not move he chided them... and then they came.  We were in the balcony but about 40 people came up and either sat right in front or actually sat on the stage with him.  it was cool.  And all of them knew the words... to every song.  I remember being a fan like that and having a passion like that.  but barely.

This is the new model.  People of a certain age who have put out some quality music have the opportunity to continue to give their fans something of value, at a decent price and continue to make a living.  I don’t know whether Mangum is still writing anything but what he did is so famous and so meaningful to their audience that the opportunity to sit 5 feet away from his while he plays and sings, and they sing along.  It is creating these type of experiences that is the future survival.  Finding ways to connect that have nothing to do with record companies, or radio or selling albums or, god forbid, coming to play the local casino.  Mangum and the Tall Firs, with the help of a great local venue made memories.  Sometimes life is not about the 24 hour news cycle, and the stupidest athletes and guns and the budget.  Sometimes is can be about music and... pure joy.

Book Review: Richard Russo "Elsewhere"

Soooo... maybe I will read this year.  Or maybe not.  Seems like at best an even money bet if you could get someone to take it.  I have some optimism if I can find books like Richard Russo’s new memoir by one of my favorites Richard Russo.  I love this guy.  I have read everyone of his books and some of them twice.  He has a nice conversational style and his stories never go anywhere which is just...perfect.  Most of his books are set around dying New England towns and largely rely on family to provide the drama and it tends to show that family drama is the most compellingdrama and it is one of the constants in your life.  I also take from his books that heartbreak and regret are a constant of life... if your lucky.

His newest book is a memoir and it largely follows his life but if tracks his life through what is apparently the most important character in it, his mother.  Which seems like it would make for a boring sad story and though there is a somewhat momotonous repetition to the story it is not boring but it is pretty relentlessly sad.  He was raised by a single working mother who took pride in her “independance” from her alcoholic, gambling WWII vet of a husband who was never around and could never be counted on.  She read to Russo (an only child) and made sure he did his home work no matter how tired she was.  They barely made it by and did so as their home town died around them, with the help of her parents who lived downstairs.

it seemed heartening and problematic until he left for college in Arizona and... she came along.  From that point till the end the tables solidly turn.  Somewhere in college he comes to grips with what his father and grandparents had known but could never voice and that is that his mother is mentally ill.  The rest of the book is a catalogue of his (and his wife and daughter) coping with her mental illness as she traveled with them along as his career processed.  It is painful but riveting as you read occasionally and briefly of his long suffering wife and wonder why she tolerated her husbands devotion to this woman with so many problems who despite her proud independance was always a burden.  

You kind of feel that Russo himself he had to write this book.  The cathartic feeling of it resembles a huge toilet bowl full of the dump of his psyche as he recounts the damage caused by his mother and his love of her.  He realizes as a 50 year old that he is a lot like her and that is probably the most painful revelation as he realizes that his wife and family suffer his less acute mental illness just as he has suffered his mothers and just as she was constantly hobbling herself with poor decisions, he was doing it as well, just with different decisions.  

Still, as in his novels there is a beauty here.  The writing style and the semse of pace and timing are always there.  The story reveals a lot about his history and his heart which are fascinating by a fan but interesting for anyone who is a reader because he writes so true.  Over and over again in this book, as in all his books there is an overwhelming love/hate relationship with family and all the baggage that ensues but despite all the pain and disasters there is an appreciation for the loyalties that can only exist in the context of family and it makes for a very good read.  It is relatively short and you can rip through it in a few hours if you are of a mind.  I was blessed with a nice mother who has always kept her problems to herself even now as she makes arrangements for she and my father to move into a retirement facility (so as not to be a burden).  But she likes to read, and she will like this book.  So will you.

Happy New Years! Lucky 13?

Soooooo....January 1, 2013 and the year opens like a book... or perhaps a comic book or perhaps even some kind of shabby pamphlet for a blood thinning drug your doctor prescribed. I am sitting in my chair, in my room watching a “Portlandia” marathon on IFC and it leads to introspection, a little self loathing and of course...abject fear.  We have parties to go to today.  We don’t care.  Sandy is needle pointing something for some child in California’s quilt (why do children in California need quilts?) and hoping to nap.  Our son Jon is in his house apparently watching parades with out of town guests our beautiful grand dog and his bastard cat on telivision.  Our son Pat just left to go back to KU (the shame) after a nice Christmas break.  Laura is driving back from and Arcadia Camp staff at the “apartyment” in Muncie.  What could have possibly gone wrong?

Sooo... January 5th.  What could possibly go wrong I asked?  Work.  Work can go wrong.  I am whine.  A fabulous whiner.  My friends tolerate me but only in small doses which is cool because of my ADD.  I am always complaining about work and I know this makes me sound stupid, ungrateful and lacking basic understanding.  The fact is that good jobs are hard.  I am lucky to have  a difficult job and I am lucky for having to been able to do it for this long.  Good jobs do not stop at 5 and start at 9 with 45 minutes for lunch.  I know this.  I also know that the reason i get paid is because I handle people in crisis very well but this week, the first week of the year they got to me... right away.  I am already behind for 2013.  I have not gotten bills out for November yet.  My “to do” list looks like a small town phone book (remember phone books?).  This week I had a lady meet with me for over 5 hours on various days who is convinced she is being followed, wire tapped, photo’d and burgled by her bank or someone on their behalf.  She in mentally ill and I have to shepherd her through losing her rental property empire.  But his lady broke me.

But now it is Sunday and I am looking to the new week.  It is another short week because I get to go to Hot Springs Arkansas for the opening at Oaklawn and one of my sons is going with the group and it will be fun.  Another short week at work kind of makes my chest constrict slightly but once again it is having a difficult, stressful job which allows me the benefit of being able to do things like this.  I forget that... a lot.  Laura leaves for school today, the ornaments are coming down, my wife’s busy season at work is starting and the holidays are... over.  But it was a good one and perhaps even a great one.  A fire is in the fire place and I look forward to an afternoon of watching football and catching up my time sheets and perhaps making some dinner.  
These can be melancholy times but somewhere, somehow I need to find a way to embrace change.  Especially changes that I don’t chose.  I think this year every blog post will need to have a song or a song lyrics or a song link or maybe all of the above and for today it is “Pick Up The Change” off of Wilco’s brilliant and often maligned first Album/CD (whatever you kids call them now).  Change in life, change in relationships, changes in jobs, friendships, seasons, health... almost all of it seems to suck when it goes down but if we can view it as the constant, and the positive (that it really is) we can set ourselves up for happiness rather than sadness.

"We used to have a lotta things in common,
But you know now we're just the same
“You always had more than I really wanted
Aw honey, help me,
Come on honey, help me pick up,
Aw honey, help me pick up the change

Aw honey, help me,
Come on honey, help me pick up,
Aw honey, help me pick up the change”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV95HBtbGNI


So Jeff Tweedy shares some insight but on the first Sunday of the New Year a little wisdom from Christ probably would not hurt either, from my favorite part of the Bible, the “Sermon on the Mount”.  Matthew 6:25 selected....

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?
34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

True Dat.  Lets have a great 2013 and make it a lucky one.

PS.  Currently my NFL Playoff brackets featuring the Bengals and the Seahawks are causing me to wring my hands and worry but... such is life in 2013.  

Book Review: Tom Wolfe, "Back To Blood"

Soooooo....2012 was a shitty year for books... for me.  I do believe that I am getting old and it is just so hard to get any serious reading done.  I get a little done up in Michigan but for the rest of the year I try and read before I go to bed and that dog is no longer hunting.  I read the Post Dispatch every morning (I like to wrap fish in it later), I try and read the Wall Street Journal everyday so I can their reasoned, non agendaized, fair and balanced editorial content (not) and that fucking New Yorker tends to arrive on most weeks and along with what didnt get read earlier from the Journal that day seems to leave me very little time for books.  Which makes me sad.

I love books.  I am prideful of my predigious reading.  I am arrogant and unlikable about it and dismissive of people who don’t read fiction.  I am a bibliophole asshole.  Which is bad, but it is worse now.  This was my first year for a Kindle.  I read “The Hunger Games”, Grishams newest (than it was “The Litigator”, a great book called “The Gun” and the early chapters of an upcoming book by our own David Kowert.  But the Kindle does not satisfy.  The Kindle feels to me like I imagine Methadon feels to a Heroin addict.  It fills a need but it does not satisfy the beast like riding the horse and holding a nice hard back novel in your hands with a dusk jacket and brief author biography.  So i have been buying books again and not reading them because...truth to be told.... I can no longer stay awake.  On the shelf as ladies in waiting I am already dealing with a formidable stack of:
Neil Young: “Waging Heavy Peace”
Will Self:  “Umbrella”
Jonathan Tropper: “One Last Thing Before I go”
Richard Russo: “Elsewhere”
David Foster Wallace: “Both Fless and Not”
David Byrne:  “How Music Works”
And I despair for the future.  I gave up on several books this year including Michael Chabon’s well reviewed “Telegraph Avenue” and this fills me with self loathing (and I don’t need more of that).

Which brings me to Tom Wolfe’s new book.  Wolfe seems like an ass.  His foppish pictures dressed as a white haired dandy make me kind of queasy and the length of his books barks of a self indulgence that we have not seen on display since Clinton’s second term but damn.  The man can write.  This book fits in nicely with his last three, “Binfire of the Vanities”, “A Man In Full” and “I am Charlotte Simmons”.  They are all slices of time and place but honestly the characters never change but they are still fun to read.

His characters are not caricatures, so much as they are caricatures of caricatures.  Every predictable, bigotted, small minded, over generalization about a type of person is drilled down on relentlessly and satisfyingly mercilessly.  Wolfe has a strong eye for our desire as a country to classify, seperate, sterotype and move on.  His characters never surprise, they never shock, they never show much more than a glimmer of self knowledge but they all move their their environments like mindless sharks, reverting to type and devouring and destroying in their way.

The subject this time is Miami and South Beach and from an outsiders perspective he hits it pitch perfect.  A city of immigrants profoundly uncomfortable with itself with every group feeling threatened and victimized now matter how dominant and in control they are.  The stage is set with a Cuban water patrol cop who rescues a guy trying to get a foot on dry land so he can legally emigrate from Cuba.  The recue is heroic and brave and makes him a goat in his community and he becomes immediately ostracized and through most of the novel continues to spin down as fate keeps zeroing in on him again and again.  He loses his beautiful Cuban girlfriend to a sex therapist, social climbing doctor. We get introduced to the Editor of the Miami Herald and Miami Art scene which might or might not have just been mightily swindeled by a Russian oligarch.

What amazes me is how easy it is to read and how fun it is to read.  Lots of heavy handed social commentary but but his narratives and his dialogue keep you turning the page and it just makes for a good read.  Especially in the snow.  So I thank Wolfe for giving me this.  I read a 700 page gook like it was a John Grisham 320 pager and in the end was much more satisfied because unlike Grisham, Wolfe knows how to end a story.  So I recommend this book, and this author, though I think if I met him in a bar I would want to punch him.  read it and get lost for a while.

7 ½ Slingers on the Diner Review 10 Scale.