Health &Television Eugene Fischer | 13 Jul 2009
For the last few days I’ve been playing DVDs of House M.D. as background noise while I work, and just heard the following, from the season 3 episode “Top Secret.” HOUSE: I haven’t peed in three days! WILSON: You’d be dead. HOUSE: I’m not counting intermittent drips. WILSON: You’d be in agony. HOUSE: I passed [...]
Amusing &Health Eugene Fischer | 09 Apr 2009
I’m still getting over my respiratory infection, trying to take it easy and hasten being able to start on my Humira. I’m on Levaquin now, which will hopefully help. But content may be light here for a little while, as my energy levels are low and my activities not particularly varied. For now, here’s a [...]
Health Eugene Fischer | 07 Apr 2009
I spent much of yesterday insane. I mean this quite literally. The highest that I actually measured my temperature was 102.6, but I suspect that there was some selection bias there, in that to measure my temperature I had to be competent to operate a thermometer. An easier to fact-check set of statistics is items [...]
Health Eugene Fischer | 03 Apr 2009
I’ve been waiting for a fourth of a year to be able to take this picture: At long last, I have some medication that has a chance of being effective. As I alluded to in my silliness yesterday, Humira is an injectable antibody for a cytokine called tumor necrosis factor alpha. TNF-alpha is used by [...]
Fiction &Health Eugene Fischer | 02 Apr 2009
The following is a classified communique, smuggled across the blood/brain barrier from counter-insurgency leaders in the cortex. ————— *URGENT MESSAGE FOR PARTISANS OF THE DEFENDERS OF THE DIGESTIVE TISSUES* It’s been a long battle. No one knows better than we do how entrenched and seemingly unstoppable are the rogue forces within the immune system that [...]
Health &Writing Eugene Fischer | 01 Apr 2009
Yesterday I had a tickle in my throat that metamorphosed in the night into something more akin to a forest fire. And I’m on day 2 of a weird, intermittent nose bleed. And as I mentioned a little while back, I’ve lately been suffering from an increase in the severity of my Crohn’s symptoms. But [...]
Amusing &Health Eugene Fischer | 27 Mar 2009
Meanwhile, on Twitter…. glorioushubris Confession: When sick earlier this week, I impulse-bought a gold and black polyester robe embroidered with dragons to make me feel better. glorioushubris Further confession: it totally worked. I am a medical genius. mkazoo @glorioushubris Picture? I think such a robe should be documented for posterity. KatWithSword @glorioushubris totally agree w/ [...]
Health &Writing Eugene Fischer | 25 Mar 2009
Crohn’s patients, I have come to learn, frequently experience what are known as “flare ups”: sudden spikes in the severity of their symptoms, often requiring agressive medicinal intervention to combat. I had a flare up yesterday, and it had me–during my more lucid moments–reflecting again that “flare up” is a far less evocative phrase for [...]
Health &Tech Eugene Fischer | 19 Mar 2009
Check out the “signs and symptoms ” section of the Wikipedia article on Cushing’s syndrome. I am experiencing most of these; not because I actually have Cushing’s, but because I have Crohn’s disease, which is currently being treated with prednisone, which ups my cortisol levels–functionally giving me an artificial case of Cushing’s. One of the [...]
Health &Writing Eugene Fischer | 05 Mar 2009
In Roger Zelazny’s Hugo award winning story “Home is the Hangman” there is a line that, in one sentence, captures what has been the primary theme of my life for the last seven months as I have been scrabbling my way out of the pit of Crohn’s disease. “Even the most heartening of philosophical vistas [...]
