Unless it's followed by flogging

2003-06-20 - 7:42 a.m.

Oh man, I have such a tummy ache this morning, I'm thinking maybe someday I should see a doctor about my near constant abdominal pain. Have I ever mentioned that I'm a bit of a hypochondriac? Yeah, well, I've been pondering for years what this pain could be. My first thought is Crohn's because my dad has it and his grandmother had it too, but if it was that I would be a lot worse off than I am. My second thought is colon cancer. But I've been having this pain since at least sophomore year in high school (nine years) so if it was that I'd be dead by now. Besides, that's generally not a young person's disease. So I'm thinking maybe it's just some mild form of IBD. I don't know. Yesterday after work I stopped by the local blood center to donate some blood. And for the first time in my life I was rejected. You know how they do the finger stick and put a drop of your blood into that blue copper solution? The iron in your blood is supposed to bind to the copper in the solution and the drop should sink like a rock. Mine floated there. They took a bit of my blood and put it in a centrifuge and determined that my hematocrit is only 35%. 35%! Hematocrit, also known as the "crit" in doctor speak, is the percentage of your whole blood that is actually red blood cells. So what can cause a low crit? Well, anemia can. It can also be caused by malnutrition. I don't think I have either of these issues. Maybe I could've when I was living on my own and preparing my own meals, but not here at home. I take a multivitamin every day and my mom is a very conscientious cook, making sure that our meals contain foods from all the food groups. So I don't think I have iron deficiency anemia, anyway. I could possibly have another form. Another cause of a low hematocrit is bleeding. Obviously I'm not doing that externally much, so that leaves internally. Am I bleeding internally? Is that what my abdominal pain is from? Well, other than pain I have no symptoms to support that theory, so probably not. So what's the matter with me then?

The night before last I played in a volleyball game. We won. I don't know, recently I've really been sucking. The only thing I seem to be consistently good at is serving. I usually serve about five to eight points and usually they're aces so my team just stands around while I run up the score a bit. I've been getting frustrated recently because Kevin and Dave have been stealing balls that should be mine. Even if I'm sucking, I still want to play. So I made an effort to be more aggressive. One time there was a loose ball popped up and I called it. Then Kevin called it. But I wasn't going to back down. They need to respect my space, dammit! I hit the ball nicely over the net and received an elbow to the head for my efforts. Ow. I was knocked a little coocoo. I was having trouble focusing my eyes and keeping my balance. Had I been a cartoon there would have been birds tweeting as they flew in circles around my head. But that cleared up in a minute or two. And we won. Plus there's a guy on the other team who is pretty cute and I think might be interested in me. He's a little small for me, but not too small.

Tonight is the residents' roast. I'm so not looking forward to it. In fact, I've been dreading it since I first heard about it nearly a year ago. It's just not my sort of thing. What's fun about public humiliation? In my mind the word public is not associated with fun. Besides, I don't have any funny stories to tell about anybody here. Seriously, why do you think I'm leaving? Gah! And what are they going to say about me? If they come up with something besides the fact that I'm quiet, I will be very surprised. I wouldn't mind if this was something where we got up and said nice stories about each other, but a roast? Ergh. And I've already been asked several times if I'm excited about it. Uh...yeah.