katallison

Today's boring chapter in the Saga of the Aging Body:

So for the past few weeks I'd been experiencing chronic medium-grade distress in the digestive regions, which delicacy and kindness to readers forbid me from elucidating further. At first I just assumed I'd eaten something funky (entirely plausible, given the state of everything in my refrigerator); then I thought maybe I'd picked up a transient stomach bug. When it persisted, my inner Deranged Hypochondriac sprung to life, telling me that this was definitely colon cancer, which the gods were smiting me with as recompense for having chickened out on the Really Unpleasant Check-Up Procedure last year. (My inner D.H. is all about the guilt-tripping.)

And then, over the weekend, some vestige of a clue drifted into my brain, and I thought to myself, Self, I thought, this sounds exactly like the accounts and descriptions I've seen of lactose intolerance (which apparently can crop up suddenly in later life). So I immediately ceased all consumption of dairy products, and -- within 24 hours, le crud digestif had completely abated.

It could be, of course, that there was something else entirely going on with the innards, and it just happened to subside at the same time I stopped eating dairy products. So the final step will be to re-introduce the independent variable (I *knew* all those research methodology classes would come in handy someday) by picking a low-activity day and slamming down a couple of glasses of milk, and seeing if I experience a recrudescence, as it were (and boy, were it ever) of the Inner Distress. If so -- well, *dammit.* I've always loved milk and cheese, they're two of my foundational comfort foods, and I would be very sad to lose them. I'll have to investigate those Lactaid pills, I guess...

(Footnote to previous rant: This would all be much simpler if I were not simultaneously and concurrently experiencing Bronchitis: The Special Remix Edition, Now! With Extra Hacking!) (OK, </self-pity>.)

Accomplishments of the weekend thus far:

Nose blown approximately 87257682 times.
Fever of 102.5 attained at 1:35 a.m. last night.
Roughly 3000-word lyrical and poetic description of the strange marvels of fever-state written in head, between 1:35 and 6 a.m., now forgotten.
Two episodes of Farscape viewed yesterday afternoon with Deb, Carol and Jackie.
Knee sprained due to slipping on snow while returning home from Farscape viewing. (Not a bad sprain, just hellishly annoying.)
Lower back wrenched from gimping around lopsidedly due to sprained knee.
Many hours of dreadful TV watched, including VH1's 50 Most Awesomely Bad Dirty Songs Of All Time, or whatever that thing was called, the emotional scars from which may lead me to never even want to *contemplate* sex again.
Amount of writing done: zilch-o.
Current number of functioning brain cells: perhaps five.

I shall now gimp myself back to bed for some more feverish slumber.