Pressure Cooker

I am not dying.

Not a big surprise to most people who have put up with my theatrics for the past week, but I did, FINALLY, get the results of my "inconclusive" and "conclusive" blood tests and I am going to be OK. Everything awful, terminal, debilitating, came back "negative." The thing that had kicked off the "you must call me immediately" phone call from the doctor was simply that I had decided to stop eating (nerves) enough about ten days ago while supplementing myself with equal doses of everything in vitamin supplements that I determined food should be doing for my body (OK, and some beer too), and my digestive enzymes were all out of whack. Because everything else was normal (no auto-immune or other diseases) she wanted to know if I was inflicted this upon myself or whether I needed a bone marrow test.

I fully owned up to inflicting it upon myself.

Bone marrow test? Hell no.

"So your stomach is in knots, you can't eat regularly, you are taking probably two to three times the amount of supplements that you need because you are not eating, which is throwing your enzymes all off course, and then, you have decided, when you feel the need, that 'beer is food?' Am I correct?"

Yep. She was dead-on. That was about the story.

Luckily, she is a trained Navy doctor and none of this came with a particular reprimand or "scare the shit out of you" lecture.

"OK," she said, "Start eating again...I don't care if it is pancakes or hot dogs, don't drink excessively, get away somewhere and relax for a few days, and just calm the hell down...it's not like you're going to Iraq."

Put that way, I was ashamed.

No, not ashamed because I was freaking out...who the hell wouldn't be? But that I had spent the past week pacing my apartment like some Dickensonian character scaring my closest friends and family with my my musings on my imminent demise when, intuitively, I knew what was the cause of my "inconclusive" blood results.

So I booked a flight to Tampa to see S. and my family. I know I have a ton of things to do, a ton of matters to clean up and legal affairs to take care of, a ton of...well, just a ton.

But the minute my flight landed in Newark (where one naturally goes to get from DC to Florida...due north to go due south), I felt the decompression begin to happen. By the time I got to Newark, I was ravenous. I only had time for a bag of Oriental rice crackers and a handful of cheese popcorn (alright, we all have our things when it comes to preferred snacks) and then, waiting for S. to get off of work to pick me up at the airport in Florida, a chicken salad (and, OK, a beer too) at the TGI Fridays at the airport, but I was out of the pressure cooker. I was out of DC long enough to leave the rattlings behind and feel human again. And hungry.

Last night we all had a great Lebanese dinner and, today, to my surprise, I was starving by 11AM and went to the local market to buy ingredients to make pasta e fagioli for us for dinner so we could watch the Presidential debates...and also pick myself up a very tasty tuna hoagie which I ate more than half of (it was a big one) in ten minutes. I also found that, sitting on a porch overlooking the water, I could think and work again.

I need to leave DC. I have loved (and appreciated) my time and opportunities there...but I need a break. Yeah, OK, that break is Uganda and a whole new set of challenges...but it is a much-needed break.

Tomorrow I will spend the morning on the balcony looking at the bay and finishing my work. And probably eating breakfast while he is at work.

I think my enzymes are OK now...and I also know what I need to do to make sure they stay OK in the future.

I hear the goat is good in Uganda....