Illness

It was on August 24th that felt unwell after having breakfast of avocado on toast with a cup of coffee. The symptoms that followed over that day and the next two were identical to those that I'd suffered some months before when I suddenly stopped my consumption of caffeine: aching hip joints, general malaise and acute brain fog.

I can only assume that my symptoms this time were also a product of caffeine withdrawal. Despite giving up caffeine, I had slowly returned to my old ways and by the time of the morning in question I was really back to where I'd started. My body is telling me quite firmly to give caffeine up again and this time forever. 

It's unfortunate but, like alcohol, I know that as my body ages it becomes more sensitive to toxins that I was able to tolerate in my youth and it's saying it can't cope with caffeine anymore. I need to listen. I've also stopped drinking the goat's milk that I was prescribed. I don't think that was helping me either.

So now, instead of tea and coffee, it's just clear water and, fortunately here in Indonesia, it's not fluoridated. My weight is back down in 72.8 kg which is good and hopefully I can shed a couple of more kilograms. I still get fatigued easily and there's no denying that I'm not the man I once was but all I can do is carry on.

Six Weeks of Indolence

After six weeks of holidays, I've eventually returned home and my weight was disappointing but not surprising. In shorts only, I weighed 74.5 kg. I say not surprising because I did very little exercise, even neglecting my leg strengthening exercises with the stretch band. I'm basically back to zero so anything I do from this point on will be of benefit.

Just before heading back home, I had the opportunity to have a brief session with my psychic healer who said that my lungs and heart were not in synch, meaning that my rate of breathing and my heart rate were out of synch. He recommended that I consume three sachets of SuperGoat per day. I was somewhat surprised at this prescription, after all drinking goat's milk sweetened with palm sugar isn't exactly my style. See Figure 1.

However, I have faith in his healing and have been dutifully consuming my three sachets daily for some days now. I can say that I've noticed some definite improvement in my condition since beginning the regime and I'm motivated to continue. My condition, as I've diagnosed it, is a thymoma or thymic cyst but my healer made no mention of kelanjar  or gland this time as he'd done on a previous occasion. 

Figure 1

Meanwhile I need to get my body back into some kind of shape, slowly of course. The goat's milk has provided me with a little more energy to embark on this enterprise. Before I was feeling too lethargic to even begin. At this point in my life, the goal is to simply hold on. Sooner or later, something will carry me off but hopefully it will be quick and, in the interim, I would like to maintain an acceptable level of physical health and cognitive functioning.

HOLD ON

Weight Stasis

Oh dear, it's June 13th and I'm still a little above or a little below 74 kg. There's been no substantial change in over two weeks. I've been diligent in my walking by going for a 30 minute brisk walk each day while trying to avoid snacking between meals. I stopped entering the weights in the spreadsheet because clearly the average was around 74 kg. I would still like to get down to 72 kg but clearly it will be a gradual and lengthy process.

The key is to increase the amount of exercise that I do while eating normally. Apart from the daily walk, I'm largely sedentary. Fortunately, the house that I'm living in has lots of stairs so there's energy spent there just moving around inside. The opportunity for step-up exercises is thus ubiquitous and I really should make more use of this. Every minute of every day is an opportunity to exercise and by exercise I mean something as simple of neck rotations to ward off the ravages of calcification as I age.

Weight Update

Tonight, back in Jakarta, I weighed in at 75.2 kg, wearing shorts. On the 12th May, in Bali, I weighed in at 75.8 kg and two days later at 74.6 kg. That was only a week ago so it’s not surprising that there hasn’t been much change. I caught a cold during my last couple of days in Bali and I’ve only just shaken it off. I was not feeling well at all. Today was the first day I went for a serious walk.

Clearly, if I’m to lose this weight, I need to walk on a daily basis and measure my weight at a fixed time each day. Probably just before breakfast. I’ve created a worksheet in Google Sheets to track my progress. I need this sort of incentive if I’m going to achieve my goal, which is to come in at under 72 kg.

Currently the second column in empty because I plan to begin my record taking tomorrow morning. The weight need only be gradual. Given that I’m around 75 kg at the moment, I have 3 kg to lose. If I were to lose weight at the rate of 0.1 kg per day, then it would take 30 days approximately to reach my goal. This is a realistic time frame I think. By the 22nd June, I will hopefully dip under 72 kg.

Weight Gain

Oh dear. The hotel room in which I'm staying has a set of scales and for the first time in weeks I stepped onto them. Butt naked, I came in at a shocking 75.8 kg, the most I've weighed since my precipitous weight loss in the second half of 2015. Figure 1 does not show my feet, nor the transparent glass scales on which I stood, but it serves as a visual reminder of my slide toward obesity.

Figure 1

How did it come to this? Well, two weeks in Bali marked a decisive break from my normal routine at home. Meals become irregular and there's a tendency to eat more than one should. I have been walking but clearly not enough. The time has come of course to embrace some dietary discipline, reverse the weight gain and head back toward an ideal weight of between 71 kg. and 72 kg.

As for my thymoma, I've discovered in the process of palpation that I have a small area of my sternum that is sensitive to pressure. I hadn't noticed this before. There is a general feeling of discomfort when I move about while lying down but it's hardly debilitating. I've did bring my "elastic band" for leg exercises but haven't used it much at all. Whenever I have lengthy lapses like this, I find that the affected muscles lose their tone quite quickly and it takes some time to bring them back to full strength. The moral is to not allow such lapses. However, sometimes I feel quite weary and use that as an excuse.

My eyes have been giving some trouble and there is a growth on my left eye that is somewhat annoying. It's benign and has been around for a while but has slowly increased in size over the years. See Figure 2.

Figure 2

It shouldn't be too big a deal to have it removed, by laser surgery I would suppose. It's disturbing to see how far my eyes have sunk into their sockets, the inevitable consequences of old age. Along with diminishing eyesight, my mental acuity seems to be in decline although its hard to quantify to what degree. I try to keep mentally active.

Thymoma Update

There's nowhere to hide with a thymoma inside you. Yes, I'm back with another of my infrequent posts to this blog. I try to avoid thinking about my inner companion, hoping that it will just go away or at least stop growing. But growing it is and the pressure on my inner organs is being felt. Figure 1 shows an image from Wikipedia of a typical thymoma.

Figure 1

I hasten to add that this is my own diagnosis but there's not anything else that it could be really. The Wikipedia article adds that:

A third of all people with a thymoma have symptoms caused by compression of the surrounding organs by an expansive mass ... Once diagnosed, thymomas may be removed surgically. 

There are various stages described by the Masaoka Staging System:

I: Completely encapsulated

IIA: Microscopic invasion through the capsule into surrounding fatty tissue

IIB: Macroscopic invasion into capsule

III: Macroscopic invasion into adjacent organs

IVA: Pleural or pericardial implants

IVB: Lymphogenous or hematogenous metastasis to distant (extrathoracic) sites 

One hopes of course that the thymoma is completely encapsulated. I can't really ignore the reality anymore as it's starting to effect my daily functioning. Sneezes really hurt and I have to careful when I move about not to induce discomfort. Deep breathing is also met with discomfort. I need to seek medical help sooner rather than later.

Figure 2 shows how large these thymomas can grow:

Figure 2

My thymoma is a little on the right side of my sternum as shown in Figure 3 (marked with a red circle).

Figure 3

Barnacles of Old Age

Figure 1: source

One of the downsides of getting old is that various "barnacles of old age" appear on ones skin. These are technically known as seborrheic keratoses (see Figure 1) and are described as follows:

A benign skin disorder due to excessive growth of the top layer of skin cells, usually found in persons over 30 years old. They may appear as just one growth or in clusters. They are most often brown but can differ in colour and range anywhere from light tan to black. They come in different sizes, anywhere from a fraction of an inch (or centimetre) to an inch (2.5 cm) in diameter. 

The telltale feature of seborrheic keratoses is that they look like they have been pasted on the skin or just stuck on it. They may look like a dab of warm brown candle wax that dropped on the skin. Almost everybody eventually develops at least a few seborrheic keratoses since they tend to become more common and more numerous with age. They are sometimes referred to as "barnacles of old age."

Seborrheic keratoses are most often found on the chest or back but can be found on the scalp, face, or neck or almost anywhere on the body. When they first appear, the growths usually begin one at a time as small rough bumps. Eventually they thicken and develop a rough, warty surface. Although seborrheic keratoses may first appear in one spot and seem to spread to another, they are not catching. As people age they may simply develop a few more. These growths may be unsightly, especially if they begin to appear on the face. Source.

What works for me are body scrubs, especially the one shown in Figure 2, that when applied daily keep the growths in check, without entirely removing them.

Figure 2

I'm more than happy with the results but one must remember that not all body scrubs are equal. The ones that work for me have palpable grains of sand (I'm supposing) embedded in the paste and it is these grains that provide the abrasion that controls the growth of the "barnacles". It is a gentle process but applied on a daily basis it works just fine.