This morning, I was holed up in the local hospital getting some routine tests done. I’m getting old, I get aches and pains, so every once in a while I have to go in and get inspected detected injected and selected, just because. If anything unusual is going on in my body, I go in to find out if it’s anything to worry about. The latest unusual thing is that for the last several years I often get arthritic flare-ups in my ankles and knees, but this year, to my surprise, my joint pains are gone. Just completely ache-free. I go for walks and my limbs are moving smoothly with hardly a glitch. This is not right, I am not at all used to this. Maybe my legs have died and are twitching zombie-like with no feeling?
I gave the doctor a small bucket of my blood and they measured all kinds of stuff, and to further my surprise, I am 100% grade-A normal, every indicator smack in the middle of the range. I have no excuses anymore. I am weirdly healthy.
We checked Vitamin D (because Minnesota) and Vitamin B12 (because Vegetarian) and again, boringly average and perfectly normal. My blood pressure is 120/70, like it’s supposed to be.
Oh, one enlightening exception: my %monocytes and %eosinophils were both absurdly high, but the doctor deflated my excitement by telling me that right now, that’s also entirely normal — those cell types are indicators of viral infections, and we’re still seeing symptoms of a recent pandemic. I guess if you’ve been exposed to some mystery virus in the last 4 years, you’re likely to have the proportions of those immune cells elevated.
Just to be sure, I also got my COVID and flu vaccines.
I am not accustomed to this degree of normality. I am not used to this at all. It might mean I’m about to die mysteriously.
“go in and get inspected detected injected and selected”
Excellent Thanksgiving reference.
I finally went to an orthopedist to have the crunchy (and painful) knuckle on my finger looked at. Aside from a normal amount of arthritis for my age, they diagnosed a trigger finger. They gave me a very uncomfortable injection and it aches for a few days, but today I noticed that it’s now more or less in line with the rest of my fingers comfort-wise. I wish I’d gone sooner. Hope it lasts.
At least you weren’t subjected, rejected, and dejected. (One could go on with this.)
A “trigger finger”? Are you a hit man in your spare time?
PZ isn’t your wording: ‘inspected detected injected and selected’ from Arlo’s Alice’s Restaurant?
Also, I’m glad you are ‘within established parameters’ and doing well, but we don’t use the word ‘normal’ anymore, there is no such thing in this society.
Also, a thanksgiving reference: congress is in recess until after thanksgiving because all those turkeys are in hiding.
Congratz! I’m slated to have my gallbladder removed in the next few weeks. Bah humbug!
PZ Myers @ #4 – A part-time hit man with an itchy trigger finger. There could be a movie script in that.
Had my trigger finger operated on about 8 years ago, the finger has been normal since the surgery, can’t even see the scar without a magnifying glass. Also suffer (big time) from OA and RA, yes, the good lord blessed me with both forms of arthritis. This year I started on a mild to moderate immunosuppressive for the RA and have had some moderate relief. Over the years I have had great results from steroid injections, both shoulders, base of both thumbs, both knees and multiple injections in my feet. Hips starting to become a concern and may be headed for more injections. The Orthopod has told me knee replacements are in my future due the bone on bone in both knees. The good news is my labs are within normal range.
Make the most of it my friend, make the most of it!
@pz #4
Trigger finger is essentially a swollen ligament that works the finger (don’t know the anatomical names) that causes it to catch in certain positions or severely reduce range of motion. In my case the middle joint would catch or grind sending shooting pain up my hand. After the injection, that joint is as normal as the rest of them
In preparation for the coming of the antivax regime I got myself some extra doses. I recommend (as a fellow citizen, not medical advice) to all US readers here (unless they have a known counter-indication) to get the MMR vaccine (even if they got it sometimes in the distant past), and make sure your Tdap vaccine is up to date. Even if he doesn’t ban them, just propagandizing against them is going to reduce vaccination rates in the population, and that will lead to outbreaks.
I also got the pneumococcal vaccine, because I read an article saying it was shown to be beneficial for all those aged 50 and above.
Getting your vaccinations done before RFK bans them? Wise move.
#13
RFK also thinks raw milk is fine
https://boingboing.net/2024/11/25/bird-flu-in-raw-milk.html
and heroin is good for you
https://boingboing.net/2024/11/26/rfk-jr-is-against-vaccines-but-praises-the-benefits-of-heroin.html
Your body is preparing for Trump world.
My annual physical (age 61) was yesterday. Blood-work came back pretty normal for everything, and my left-knee arthritis seems to stay in check if I cycle daily, even just a couple of miles.
It’s my last visit to this doctor as I move back to the mid-west from Denver next summer. I like my doctor, but one thing I won’t miss is that for the last four visits he has had a medical student shadowing him. This means I get TWO rectal exams instead of one, as he shows them how to check prostates. Yesterdays student was also a female (for the first time.) I shouldn’t care about that, but pretty young medical students handling my junk isn’t something I enjoy. I’m sure they don’t either! At least she had small hands!
Barring unforeseen issues, I guess I’m good for another year, and hopefully you are as well. Have a good turkey-day PZ!
Yeah, funny thing about viruses, or even other weirder things, like exposure to venoms/stings, etc., in some rare cases they can throw the immune response enough into a loop to kind of “reset” something that isn’t working right, but, also can instead make things worse. Its a crap shoot, in which some people lose big, most people see no effect at all, but some people get damned lucky and it cures, or at least mitigates, something. If it was only predictable, and not so reliant on both individual genetics, never mind the specific glitch, in the case of something like arthritis, which is immune based, and just how and why the immune system became confused in the first place. But, I am sure, if a certain, soon to be head of health in the US, heard about it he would be all super excited, convinced you “held the cure” to arthritis, and probably leap to trying to get everyone bitten by spiders, or something, as a “cure”.
I’ve had trigger finger for the last year (a node on the tendon used for flexing the finger, which irritates the A1 pulley, causing inflammation and a clicking sensation when the finger is straightened). I got a steroid injection (beta methasone), which knocked the inflammation way down. A second steroid injection a few weeks later made no further improvement. If the trigger finger gets painful again, I’ll probably get another steroid injection in about a year, but I don’t want to get surgery (they snip part of the A1 pulley so that the node doesn’t rub on it) unless the finger gets really painful and the steroid doesn’t fix it.
I checked my latest blood tests from a couple of weeks ago: my monocytes were at 10% (well within the normal 2–12% range) and my eosinophils at 2% (the middle of the normal 0–5% range)—despite my having had COVID for the first time back in July. If your numbers are higher than the normal range, you probably have a current (or recent) viral infection.
The only number out of the normal range was chloride, which was slightly high, indicating dehydration—not too surprising as I had not had anything to eat or drink for 12 hours and had bicycled 3.4 miles to the clinic for the blood test. The amount taken for all the blood tests was tiny (a couple of small tubes)—nothing like the 24 large tubes that I used to give for a research study.