1 migraine left untreated for a day, 3 Midrin, 1 Rozerem. I went to bed Friday evening, woke up mid-Sunday, and am still in a bit of a fog. Yikes!

Me: Doc, I have a cough that I cannot seem to get rid of.

Medical professionals: Let the games begin!

• Barium swallow (8/05): That ain't it.
• Chest X-Ray (10/05): Hey look, there's something in her lungs.
• Chest CAT scan (10/05): Yep, something's there alright, and what's that on her liver?
• Abdominal CAT scan (10/05): Gosh, I dunno what that is.
• Abdominal ultrasound (11/05): Hey, maybe it's a.... Nah.... Never mind.
• Liver biopsy (12/05): Wait, let's cancel her at the last minute and run another test. She seems like a girl who likes surprises.
• Tagged scan (12/05): Yep, there's... that ... thing... there.... Whoa, check it out, now she's glowing!
• Liver biopsy - We mean it this time (12/05): Oh.... Hepatic Adenoma! Of course! How silly of us.
• Chest CAT scan (1/06): It's been a whole month. We missed you!
• Chest CAT scan (6/06): That lung thing is still there. Cool, we can zap her again in six months!
• Abdominal CAT scan (6/06): So is that liver thing. Awesome! Double zap!

Medical professionals: Wow, what a fun year of testing! But she's still coughing.... Let's see if she has... oh, I dunno.... asthma.

Me: You mean that condition that causes coughing? That condition with which I was diagnosed 8 years ago?

• Methacholine Challenge (tomorrow)

Wish me luck!

UPDATE: Apparently I missed official asthmadom by 4% (you're supposed to score 20%; I got a 16%).

In the you've got to be kidding me department, the pulmonary specialist says I have a heart murmur and need to be referred for, you guessed it, ANOTHER test. I am starting to suspect that St. Joe's is relying upon me as their sole source of funding....

UPDATE 2: They re-declared me asthmatic and put me on Asmanex -- the inhaler recommended to me not by any doctor, but rather by Orca project lead Will Walker. And, ya know, I'm now coughing a lot less. Finally! What have we learned from this experience, boys and girls? That the best source of medical advice comes not from doctors, but from software developers.

And I did yesterday too. Who cares? I know.... The thing is: Now that I have A/C again, I figure I should resume using my treadmill regularly. You see, I get into these workout moods, and I'm good for a few weeks, but then I get out of the habit. I don't know about you, but I find that exercise (or, more accurately, lack thereof) is a slippery slope: Missing a few days justifies missing a few weeks, which in turn justifies missing a few months.... Ideally my desire to live a long and healthy life would be sufficient motivation to exercise regularly, but apparently this is not the case. If I had an "exercise partner," someone who was also committed to staying fit and healthy, someone who could guilt me into exercising because they were exercising and I was not, I'd be more likely to stick with it. But I don't have that either.... So I'm telling you, gentle reader, that I'm doing this in the hopes that making a commitment in writing to exercise regularly will cause me to stick with it for a change.

Any chance of forming an Exercise (Free) or Die blogger group? I think I really need someone to guilt me into this.

Coffee

• wakes you up in the morning
• brings people together
• smells good
• tastes great with dessert
• provides an excuse to take a break
• is the ideal substance in which to dunk your doughnut
• contributes significantly to the economy of Latin America

and, drum roll please:

• protects the liver against damage from cirrhosis

I kid you not:

Researchers reported on Monday that drinking coffee cuts the risk of cirrhosis of the liver from alcohol -- by 22 percent per cup each day....

Dang, I drink a pot of coffee a day! My liver must therefore be invincible!

...Other studies with similar findings have led to speculation that caffeine could play a role. However, the protective effect was not found among tea drinkers....

Is there anything coffee cannot do?

Last week I had a couple of follow-up CAT scans. The results just came in. The good news is that the granuloma and adenoma are both stable. Yea!! The somewhat disappointing news is that adenoma hasn't shrunk, which I had gathered it should do. Oh well, like I told the nurse, I suppose I don't mind them being there if they stay put and stay quiet.

Two more CAT scans in 6 months....

This morning I had what will hopefully be the last two CAT scans I will need. If the nodule and granuloma in my lung have not changed, I should be off the hook with respect to chest CAT scans. I'm not sure what the plan is with the abdominal scan. Doctors seem to like their patients to get multiple follow-up scans, so I might be due for one more. I'll find out next week....

Yesterday I came across an interesting search query that brought a visitor to my site: "Does a lung granuloma hurt?" And while I figured I Take Requests would be a periodic, every other Friday as the spirit moved me kinda thing, something in me decided that this query should be answered sooner rather than later. And, no, the something in me that decided that was not a painful granuloma.

Disclaimer: What I know about medicine could happily do some line dancing with a few thousand of its closest friends on the head of a pin. That said....

What compelled me to answer this query, and to do so now, is my recollection of getting that initial scary phone call: "We've found something in your lungs. You have to have more tests, and you have to have them right away!" And then getting scary follow-up calls after each of those right-away tests. What is it about medical professionals? They tell you just enough to completely freak you out, without fully educating you or giving you a reality check?

When I got my initial call, I scoured the web immediately, and I didn't find much. If I had found a bunch of blog entries that said "Yeah, I have a granuloma and a nodule, and it doesn't hurt, and I'm fine; my doctors were just being cautious...." I would have taken a deep breath and forgotten about it until there was medical evidence to the contrary (which has yet to materialize, by the way). But my searching was nearly for naught.

That's why I'm adding my 2¢ on this topic to the blogosphere: for the person who executed this search, and for others who execute it in the future. My personal experience is that doctors err on the side of conservatism -- as well they should! -- but may lack the finesse to explain what's going on to their patients. You're probably just fine. Do NOT blow off the medical tests your doctor is ordering, but don't worry in the meantime either. My doctor hinted at a number of grim-sounding things, but the CAT scans are showing no change in my lungs. It's probably just a bit of scarring from a bout I had with pneumonia and/or my asthma. Nothing serious.

Be well, and good luck!

I believe that you must learn something new each and every day. If you haven't yet gotten your daily dose, listen up because I have a good one.

On this week's Quirks & Quarks I learned that doctors had successfully grown replacement bladders in a lab using cells from the patients' existing bladders. No need for a lifetime of immunosuppressant drugs; no need for controversial stem cells. Just grab some tissue, do something clever and sciency to grow your bladder, and transplant it. That is amazing!!! And it, of course, has implications for helping patients with failure of other organs. Wow....

Listen to the Building a Bladder segment.

I think the pill pusher and I need to have another talk....

I've been taking my Rozerem faithfully every night for around 3 weeks and sleeping a lot more. But I'm dizzy in the morning and pretty wiped the rest of the day, I still have some headaches, I'm having occasional heart palpitations.... And now I read this:

A six-year study Kripke headed up of more than a million adults ages 30 to 102 showed that people who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep. The risk from taking sleeping pills 30 times or more a month was not much less than the risk of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, he says.

Oh good.... And Kripke "suspects that people who sleep less than average make more money and are more successful."

My vote's for living longer and being rich. Sorry Doc!

Read the rest of the story at Yahoo news.

It's not "healthy yogurt" -- which I really don't want to eat, but will because I want a flatter stomach. Nope. It's "breakfast pudding"!