Spelunking the Universe
Posts tagged stress
The Nature of Stress
3 months ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
So I haven’t updated in a while. Some of you know why, others do not, but I have a potentially fascinating tale. It involves regurgitation so I suppose if you have vivid visualizations of what you read you might want to skip this post.
About two weeks ago I started getting nauseous. It started off simple enough, felt a bit like I had eaten too much. Everything I had had prior to this event had also been eaten by my wife and so I thought that food poisoning was unlikely. Each day it got a little worse until about day 3 when I found myself uncontrollably vomiting in the morning. First the food, then a bit of bile, and eventually it was just dry heaving.
As a kid I thought that nothing was worse than vomiting, the build up is terrible and the final event tended to be highly acidic (thanks to my childhood love of Soda and other sugary treats). But I have since been proven wrong, day after day I started the morning with intense dry heaves. My stomach would tense to the point where I thought I was going to tear something internally, it was the strongest and least pleasant torsion of my innards I’ve ever experienced. This is coming from someone who nearly snapped their neck once.
Day after day passed and I realized something, I had greatly passed the “after 48 hours consult your doctor” warning on the Pepto Bismal. I tried to get an actual doctor, but living in America you don’t have the ease of any other civilized country. I had to find one that would accept my insurance or I was going to get rammed so hard in the ass with charges that I’d be leaving the hospital potentially better physically but very unhappy fiscally.
Conversely what good is money if you are dead. With that in mind I found a local urgent care and got checked. They ran a battery of tests, I was stethoscope, given a very bitter “lemonade” drink, breathed into two separate bags that they tested, and had a couple vials of blood taken. The first doctor I had was new and my symptoms stumped her, they didn’t match anything but food poisoning which was unlikely.
The next doctor I met was an older man, probably 6’4’’ or so. He was one of those men you assume was a farmer in their early life, big hands and a very Heston-like demeanor. He sat back and asked me if I had ever had an incident of this kind of nausea before. I told him yes, near the end of my tenure in college. He was swishing a mystery liquid in a Styrofoam cup. With a grin he took one of those wooden sticks they place on your tongue and stirred it further.
“Did you drink in college?” He asked. I said no, his eyebrows lifted and he said surprised “Not even beer?” Now these questions were coming after I couldn’t even tell him what year I was in college, a week of minimal food intake had left me exhausted and dreary. It may have come across to him as drunk or signs of alcoholism.
He looked back and the drink and shrugged. “Well basically you are going to want to chug this, because if you don’t it is going to completely paralyze your mouth.” He handed me the drink and I did my best to chug it (which I now know I’m good at). He told me after “This will paralyze your stomach, if I’m right you have an ulcer. Basically your stomach is trying to scratch and itch and in doing so it is just making it worse, so we need to stop the scratch and then confirm the cause of the itch.”
After drinking my stomach was utterly numb, I couldn’t feel it at all. I realize that 99% of the day I cannot feel my stomach, but this was different, it was like there was negative space exactly where it should be. I also found myself belching like there was no tomorrow.
I later told him I was belching when he came back in (about 10 minutes later) and he told me that further supported his theory.
I was told I’d be contacted within 48 hours by the first doctor, as I was her patient it was her job to call me. She did call me, 8 days later. During this time I slowly got better, but what would come back from them was interesting.
The data didn’t support an ulcer, but they told me to get a family doctor and get further checkups. I also did not have a virus, nor any other disease. My kidneys and liver were functioning properly. What she did say was that it could have been stress.
I find myself in an odd place with that news. That the stress in my life, at 25, could put me in such a bind that I spend 7 days vomiting and barely able to recall past life events. Stress is a powerful thing, an alarming thing, I had at at least two points thought I might be dying. It is when you gather knowledge like this that you realize you should rethink your life and perhaps your career.
Every second in my personal life is quite pleasant, I have no real desire to change it greatly (minus a larger source of income). But if you are someone living a highly stressful life I would urge you to reconsider your path, had I not gone to a doctor by the time I did I could be much worse off and I suspect that this sort of thing does hell to your life expectancy.
As a final thought I am seriously considering taking up meditation. Though I think my writing serves as that for now. Writing something I lost for almost two weeks and will finally return to…or I suppose by posting this have already returned to.
Additionally Batman: Arkham City is a beautiful game that I’ve almost played through completely twice (working on Riddler as well). I’ll write a better review later but if you have any interest in Batman or quality game design this is a good title to catch.
Common Courtesy: A dying art.
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Three daily college realities have seemingly overlooked the age old idea of Common Courtesy, do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you (albeit flawed that logic works pretty well most times).
(Image from Slate)
Spitting is an activity that I’m quite certain has been around since the very first organisms blessed with the ability to do so. Likewise I feel that in some situations it is a very important activity that may indeed save you from certain death (I’ll let your imagination go wild with that). However I find this incessant equation of spitting = cool to be getting out of hand. I have four classes that I walk between every other day, which equates to 3 walks of roughly 5-10 minutes in duration. On each of these walks I see at least two dozen glossy splatters of mucous on the ground. If the wind catches it you’ll even see people walking with snot slathered on their shoes.
This is ridiculous. If you can’t make a walk between your classes without spitting you need to get help. If you can’t make it through a day without spitting you should acquire medical attention this instant. “But it’s gross to swallow spit.” It’s produced in your mouth and frankly spitting and swallowing cause it to cross nearly the same amount of taste spots on your tongue. It’s bad enough that people can’t make it to a trash can without dropping their gum on the ground we don’t need to add piles of disease everywhere.
Oh you didn’t realize that? Whenever you spit you aren’t simply safely discarding of germs from your system. When other people step on it they carry that disease into their home, into classrooms, dining areas, and even into hospitals (yeah thanks). Tuberculosis and similar diseases are spread quite consistently by spitting, whenever the spit dries the germs are carried through the air, so next time you see a beautiful windy day take a gander at all the dried flem on the ground. What used to be camping out on it is likely dancing around in your lungs.
This is one of the three activities that I’m forced to examine with each school day that is disgusting in every meaning of the word.
(Image from winston.hoyhouse (Site not linked because of virus attempt))
Smoking while you walk in a crowded area. I have nothing against smoking as a personal activity, frankly I’m in full support of any drug habit you feel isn’t destroying your life (someday I’ll write an article on that view to help flesh it out) but this is different. There are a few common courtesies that I give to all people that are anywhere in my vicinity, I don’t press their face up against my ass and fart, I don’t pee on anyone, and I don’t carry a campfire with me to blanket all those around me with smoke.
It doesn’t matter what you smoke, be it tobacco, weed, or a chimpanzee, if it’s smoking it’s not good for your lungs. In almost all cases your lungs hate when solid particles are caking inside of them, regardless of it those particles are literally Costco cake particles or crystallized chunks of toxins. Likewise standing a foot away from me doesn’t magically make the smoke not come my way, many times while waiting at bus stops there is a small group of people chain smoking about three to five feet away from the stop that has a prominent “No Smoking” sign on it. I find it an odd paradigm that you can’t drink alcohol in public yet you can smoke. Of the two I prefer the obnoxious drunks behavior to the coal train walking in front of me.
I know in the same breath most people can say its not addictive and ignore the fact they can’t make it through a school day without smoking and frankly that’s not what this post is about. If you can find a way to smoke without me having to inhale your leftovers we have no conflict. Otherwise stop smoking when you are in public, even propaganda aside that is not in the slightest way courteous. Unless we can agree that I can fart directly in your face without recourse. Then I think we have a deal (keep in mind when I have pot stickers you may not survive the incident).
(Image from yorkblog)
This falls back to the last conversation of smoking. I really don’t feel there is anything wrong with texting, it’s a form of communication and I feel that’s a wonderful thing. But much like smoking it has its place. That place is not in a classroom. I am driven to a near homicidal rage when I find the student behind me, the student two kids to the left of me, and the student directly to the right of me all texting. The clicking becomes this haunting orchestra that distracts me and leaves much of the class discussion collapsing beneath its weight.
You are not that important, people CAN survive without you for 50 minutes (much like I feel you can survive without a cigarette when in crowded areas). I don’t have my cell phone on when I am in class, because I understand two major things. I don’t NEED to be available at all times of the day, I’m not the president nor am I the pope. Secondly I am not the only person in the classroom. Much like smoking in the middle of 100 non-smokers is an obvious dick move you should not be clicking away at a tiny keyboard in a course that cost everyone in the class hundreds of dollars.
If you don’t feel the lectures are worth your attention then stop coming to class. If you can’t survive without discussing things with your BFF then start taking all the same courses. This is unacceptable in almost all situations. The only time I feel that you should be texting in class involves situations that warrant you not being there in the first place. This problem is absolutely out of control at my university and one of the major players in my inability to suggest anyone ever attend this place.
There are likely other things but in my daily life these three are rampant. In the last year I have never had a day where I wasn’t dodging smoke clouds, mucous mounds, or attempting to ignore the endless clicking of gossipy texters. If these situations had been played out in a book I’d feel they were exaggerative but this is everyday life at Western.
I have no plans to have rants all the time, these are just some things that are going to cause me to lose years off my life (from stress and disease which each feed off one another) or cause me to end someone elses life early 
.