On January 15th, I headed up to the Berkshires for a snowboarding weekend at Jiminy Peak. Driving up, I felt a knot below my right ribcage. It was a dull pain – It wasn’t sharp or sudden, it was just something there was there and I just ignored it. Dinner came around  — by the way, BBQ’ing in the winter is fun!

I really wanted to BBQ

Anyways, as I was saying…Dinner came around and the dull pain was more noticeable. So I did what any doctor would prescribe, I drank…wine. A lot of it.

That did the trick, numbed it up real good. After eating a full plate of steak, salad, pasta, and bread…I still felt hungry like I haven’t eaten for days. So I ate another plate.

I went to bed around 10 pm and woke up at 1 AM. I was super bloated, constipated, and tried to “go” but couldn’t. Tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t sleep through the pain.

2 AM, 3 AM, 4 AM….three hours felt like years and finally dozed off and woke up at 7 AM.

The pain was still there. We planned to go snowboarding but I told everyone I couldn’t. So while Katie and my friends went out to breakfast, I stayed inside drinking delicious prune juice and had a laxative. Took about 1 hour for the effects to hit and I felt much much better by noon. (Don’t visualize it)

Anyways, took it easy for the rest of the extended weekend. Came home on Monday night, and I got the pain again. Tried to go back to sleep, and found myself incredibly thirsty, urinating often, mouth tasted like copper, and hyperventilating. I was so worried that I ended up researching the symptoms online and found it was similar to either diabetes or an ulcer. My family has a history of high blood pressure, diabetes, and gout.

Anyways, that morning was my birthday. January 18th and I’m deciding whether or not I need to go to the hospital. I never get sick, hardly ever see a doctor, and yet I’m in a position where my body is freaking out but don’t know what to do. I had a really complicated matter with health insurance which I’m not going to get into, but ultimately decided to go to the ER.

Checking in to the ER on my birthday is also fun

They took my blood test and vitals came back good. As far as they can tell, I was healthy. Makes me look like I’m a hypochondriac but I really am not. They simply told me I have high blood pressure with high propensity for diabetes but sugar levels were indicating it’s not diabetes (phew!)

They prescribed me Famotidine, which is supposed to treat stomach ulcers and acid indigestion. Long story short, it didn’t work. I’m pretty sure it was misdiagnosed.

Since January 18th, I’ve been keeping a log of what I’m eating and how my body reacts to it. As of now, all I know is I’m not able to process carbs like cereal, oatmeal, and bread. I’m also not able to process meat (steaks). So I’ve been on a strict vegetarian/juice/nuts/fruits diet and lost about 10-12 lbs. I’ve given up coffee, alcohol (i miss you), spicy food, fried food, meat (steaks/burgers) — pretty much everything I love.  I’ll go into how this diet affected my mood and energy levels as it kicked my ass in the first week but I’ll get into that in another post.

I’m hoping to see a doctor by mid-February and hopefully he can tell me why my body is acting up.

Training? Not even a priority. I’m cycling about 20-30 mins a day just to get my blood pressure in order but other than that, my priority right now is being healthy.