Today I went for a bike ride in the beautiful 60 degree weather. I’ve not been outside on my bike in New Mexico since December. It was a beautiful day for a ride. Since I’m only just getting back on the bike I decided that I’d ride to a friend’s house. Since I was heading to see someone if anything were to happen to me someone would know where to look for me as there’s really only one way to her house from my house.

Beautiful, most bright and sunny day.

So, the weather is beautiful, my bike is beautiful, I’m happily in shorts and I’m riding along. I turn out of my residential section and onto a main road that doesn’t have a bike lane but it has a side walk. I opt for the sidewalk because there is a lot of traffic and crazy people on the road. I’m riding along at 20mph on a flat straight way. At least, I thought it was straight.

I see this big electric wire pole and I, like the genius I am, because it’s how I would’ve designed it, think that the sidewalk goes in front of the pole. Going in front of the pole would’ve meant I was on a straight away. This was not the case…no, the sidewalk went around the pole. I was going way to fast by the time I realized that the sidewalk went around the pole to make it around the pole myself…but, I didn’t slow down. No, I kept pedaling along thinking that I could make it around the pole. I didn’t make it around the pole.

At least, I should say that I didn’t make it around the pole still riding my bike. We made it around the pole but half way around the pole the side walk was covered in dirt and I’m deep into my turn around the pole and my rear tire slides out from under me too quickly for me to get my foot unclipped from my pedal and we fall. The bike and I go down. And there were cars coming and they saw and they were probably laughing. But, I got up and looked at my leg since that’s what hit the pavement and was immediately sad that there was no wound. No blood, no bruise. It was a huge disappointment.

I put the chain back on my bike, I get back on my bike, and take a moment to look at my brakes and notice that there is a little blood on 2 of my knuckles. I got slightly excited at the blood. A battle wound…I rode the rest of the way to my friend’s house and washed my hands and was disappointed to see just how minuscule my battle wound was.

See, next to no wounds. Just something small on my middle and ring finger.

As I was telling my friends my story I got told “You’re just like a 12 year old boy, wanting to see blood and have an awesome wound when you fall.”

Yup, that’s me, if I’m going to fall, I want an awesome wound. I have to have something to show for it more than just my bike becoming endangered with all it’s wounds. And no, I don’t fall a lot, it’s just that when I do…the bike is more injured than me…and it’s a huge disappointment.

Dear Ryan’s Mom,

Recently you left a comment on DiabetesMine:

Negativity. Negativity. Negativity. I am truly wanting to find a place that gives us the truth but does not cover it in doom and gloom. I REFUSE to let my diabetic child grow up hating.

I was a child that grew up hating, but it wasn’t the reality of diabetes that caused me to hate. It was everything that everyone else said I couldn’t do because of the perceptions they had of diabetes. I have spent the last couple years trying to release that hatred. It’s been a hard process and the truth is, while there is an incredible decrease in my hatred, there is still hate.

While we can look at diabetes and see the positives (see some of my positives here), the reality is that sometimes, diabetes just straight up sucks. And that’s positively speaking. Diabetes isn’t always a field of flowers; often times it’s a thorn bush. Right now, it’s not going anywhere, it’s something that we’re living with, and it’s something that we have to take care of. What you’re perceiving as doom and gloom is our life, we don’t write about it and smear doom and gloom on it, but we’re also not sugar coating it either. It is what it is. It’s how we’re feeling about an experience that we’ve had with diabetes and not all experiences are positive.

The hope is that through our writings (and I’m generalizing here for everyone who blogs) someone else won’t have to experience some of the pains we experience. The hope is that through sharing our experiences, we can help someone else, even if it’s just a little. The hope is that if someone else is struggling with something that we’ve struggled with that we’ve thrown out something that made it better for us and perhaps it will make it better for them.

These are some of my hates, and I don’t think that there’s any hate here that isn’t standard across the board with people that have diabetes.

I in general hate diabetes.

I hate the roller coaster of the highs and lows.

I hate the constant finger pricks, shot giving, insulin pump site changes.

I hate having to eat because my blood sugar is low.

I hate when I’m high and I want a treat but really shouldn’t have one.

This isn’t hate that the negativity that comes across in our blog posts is going to breed…this hate that is a general side effect of having diabetes. It’s not necessarily hate we can stop.

The hate we can stop and prevent in people with diabetes is the hate towards people that misunderstand us and the hate that builds in us as people with diabetes when we’re told we can’t do things.

One of the things we do as bloggers is help educate people, but we also need a space to express ourselves and whine a little about how diabetes and the things we go through to take care of it make us feel.

I respect you not wanting your son to hate… I think the best way to do that is to make sure that the people around him are educated and that they understand diabetes and to encourage him to educate people and to get out there and do everything he wants and to make sure that diabetes is never used as an excuse to prevent him from reaching his goals and dreams. Had people done this for me as I was growing up with diabetes…I’d have had a whole lot less hate in my life.

Soup is always a remedy to illness. Every child knows that when they get sick mom is going to come asking “what kind of soup would you like today?” Or perhaps mom doesn’t come asking but shows up with a bowl of chicken noodle.

When the doctor’s were testing me for gastroparesis and told me that a liquid diet was best, one of their suggestions was soup. Around the same time as I was told that soup was on the good list, Progresso through MyBlogSpark blessed me with an assortment of soup. There was everything ranging from Progresso’s traditional soups to their new light soup. While I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of being on a liquid diet, I was excited that I had an opportunity to try many flavors of Progresso Soup.

My excitement towards the light soups was enhanced when I saw that they are low carb. We all know that as a diabetic I count carbs for my meals. I could have an entire can of the Progresso light soup for less than 30 carbs. This is a great thing for me. If I was still counting calories instead of carbs I’d be well off too as these soups are low calorie soups (100 calories or less per serving with 2 servings in a can).

With my stomach issues it was very easy for me to just grab a can of soup and be satisfied. There are many flavors to choose from, my favorites being Southwestern Style Vegetable, Chicken and Dumpling, Chicken and Wild Rice, and Italian Style Meatball.

To celebrate the new 100 calorie soups and their awesome flavors you can head over to www.Progresso.com/SouperYou to enter the Progresso “Souper You Debut” contest for the chance to win a full makeover trip to New York City!

Entering is easy and the prize is great!

Three grand prize winners will be awarded a trip for two to New York City from May 21st-23rd. The prize includes roundtrip airfare, a two-night stay in a NYC hotel, a full makeover, a $1,000 wardrobe shopping spree and personal consultation at a New York department store.

To enter, you´ll need to do the following:

* Go to www.Progresso.com/SouperYou to learn more and enter the contest

* Submit your essay (200 characters or less) telling Progresso why you love Progresso Light or 100 Calorie Soups and why you would like a makeover

* In addition, please submit a photo of yourself that visually reinforces the theme of your essay

Once you enter, you´ll have the chance for your photo and/or an excerpt from your essay to appear on www.Progresso.com/SouperYou, so be sure to check back frequently! Once the 10 finalists are announced, you can visit www.Progresso.com/SouperYou from March 29 through April 12 to vote for your favorite.

The contest closes on March 15th (I know, I’m late to the notification game) but, I do have something to give away.

Progresso has provided me with a “Souper You Debut” gift pack that contains a soup mug (as seen in the picture above, it’s a nice ceramic mug), a jump rope (that counts your jumps) and two cans of Progresso Soup.

Entering my contest is easy and it’s open till Wednesday the 17th and I’ll announce the winner on Friday the 19th.

There are several ways to enter, but one way is mandatory.

In order for all entries to count, you must tell me what your favorite sick time soup is. What kind of soup is it that you wish people would bring you when you’re ill. Leave a comment and let me know (this is mandatory and will get you 1 entry).

For additional entries you can:
-follow me on twitter @ridetoremedy
-tweet about the contest
-link back to this give away on your blog.

Leave me comments for each additional entry you submit. You can earn up to 4 entries total this way. The winner will be chosen at random on Friday the 19th. I will contact the winner via email for their mailing address so please use a valid email address.

Also, please note that this contest is only open to US and Canadian residents only.

I look forward to seeing what your favorite soup is when you’re sick.

FTC Disclosure: Progresso provided me with free product, information, and the gift pack through MyBlogSpark. No further compensation was provided. Although Progresso provided the soup for free, all opinions are my own.

The morning was more beautiful than anyone in Tucson expected. It was warm, not rainy and only slightly windy. It was a good start to what the weather people had predicted to be a not so great day. It was a great day for the Tucson Tour de Cure (at least it looked that way when I woke up.)

My blood sugars had been steady throughout the night so I was in prime position for a wonderful ride. I was very excited. I hadn’t been outside on a bike since December, this ride was long overdue and it was my first Tour de Cure of 2010. It also happened to be a ride that I missed out on in 2009 due to illness. I had a date with this ride.

But then I broke my ride, before I even started it…by eating a CarbBoom (as was planned) but not taking any insulin for (NOT as planned). When the ride started my blood sugar was almost 400. This is not where anyone wants to start a ride, in fact, it is HIGHLY (heh, get it, highly) not recommended. But I wasn’t gonna fix it and ride later, I was gonna fix it and ride now. Which I did, and that made for other problems down the road. I took a nice bolus of insulin (slightly reduced from my normal correction to account for the riding I was about to do) 5 minutes before the ride started.

At The Start

The ride started and I fell in line with several women I had been talking to earlier. I stayed with them cycling at a beautiful pace of 20mph for the first 10 miles. I had to stop at the 1st rest station that most people bypassed. I stopped because at about mile 7 things just didn’t feel right. I was fighting to breath and was feeling like I was going to vomit. I knew my blood sugar was catching up to me.

At the first rest stop my blood sugar (30 minutes after the almost 400 blood sugar) I had dropped to the mid 100s. It had dropped dangerously fast and I was feeling the effects of that drop. The peeps at the rest stop could tell to, and I love them for jumping to help me even though I didn’t take the help (I’m overly independent sometimes.) It was at this rest stop that I met this awesome woman that I didn’t get the name of (failure to fully communicate on my part). She has had diabetes 47 years. This is completely impressive to me because I always hear about how the goal is to make it 50 years with diabetes. And here she is, coming from a time where they couldn’t test their blood and had to boil their one needle, and she’s made it 47 years and she’s still on injections. If I can’t make it 47 years with all the technology we have, something is severely wrong. I asked her about the needle situation, I asked if she had to use it till it was completely horrible to use and she didn’t remember how the needle situation worked back then. I always like hearing the stories of people that have had diabetes since the time when next to nothing was known about this disease. They have awesome stories.

When I was done socializing, I ate another CarbBoom, washed it down with some water and waited for a few other cyclists to come in before I started on my way again. I don’t like riding solo. There is comfort in being with people that actually know the area we’re riding in. It turns out that I had dropped to the front of the back of the pack because the Tour de Cure Marshalls pulled in with a couple of cyclists. Now, this was new to me, Tour de Cure Marshalls, because I’ve never seen them before on any other of the Tours that I’ve done. They were following the last riders on the route, which is awesome because that meant that people knew where the last riders were and that the back of the pack didn’t have to fear being the back of that pack. That made me more comfortable. It also made me give the Tucson Tour de Cure a big thumbs up, but I’ll blog later about all I loved about the Tour and the stuff that I wasn’t so impressed with, this right now is all about me and the ride Of course, when is it not all about me, I digress.

So, I’m riding this next leg to the next rest stop, which I think is 15 miles away based on what the peeps at the first rest stop told me. But they weren’t quite sure. And there’s one person in front of me that I can see (we left the rest stop together but I couldn’t keep up with her) and there are no people behind me that I can see (but they’re back there). I’m still not feeling well, but I kept going. Lucky for me, the next rest stop was only 5 miles away and as I’m riding up to it, Penny, a person I had met the night before, she’s turning around. Which is awesome because I knew I wasn’t going to make it 60 miles at this point and I would have someone to ride back with.

Penny and I

So, I holler at her and she waits for me. I get my blood tested and I'm now 99. I'm still dropping. I take another CarbBoom and I join her and 2 others (Colleen and guy, but I can't remember guy's name). And we start our 15 miles back. This is where the ride was just mostly lovely, we had a tail wind...did I mention that I had a head wind for the first part of the ride, because I did, and now it was a tail wind. Good stuff, and it was kind of down hill. So we don't stop at any rest stops which was fine and we had a couple things happen to us that put a smile on my face.

The Golf Cart
We're riding along, going straight, no intentions of going any direction but straight and Penny almost gets taken out by a golf cart. It was as though the guy was trying to race us to the bike lane because he didn't want to get behind us. It was an old guy (that's no excuse for anything) and he wouldn't look at us, and he was trying to speed, and we're yelling at him, but he never responds. We passed him.

The Honking Truck Driver
About the time we're on a road and we lose our bike lane, we're still riding double, but we're tight. This truck comes up fast behind us and just lays into his horn. No bueno. It was uncool. But he got talked to by the cop that was just up the road directing traffic for the ride and when I passed him the cop was telling him about how at minimum if drivers honk at cyclists they get a citation. That excited me, you never see that happen.

So, we finished the ride as the winds were getting real evil. Which was awesome because I wasn't riding in evil winds.

After the ride I got an awesome massage, before last year at the NC Tour de Cure I never got massages because I'm ticklish and now I'm a fan. I'll try not to giggle as they're massaging my shoulders and neck. I'm a fan because it really helps loosen up my cramping or near cramped muscles.

While I was getting my massage I thought I heard the words “tortilla soup” so I popped my head up and said “did i just hear the words tortilla soup” and I got told that I was hallucinating and that no one had said anything about tortilla soup. It became the joke during the remainder of my massage. But then! There really was tortilla soup and I wasn’t hallucinating after all.

mmmmm…tortilla soup

And, I actually stuck around and ate, which is rare for me because my stomach is always jacked up real good at the end of a ride and I never want to eat. But this time, my stomach was golden since my blood sugars had leveled out and I didn’t put anything other than CarbBoom in there. So I ate, and I enjoyed it, and the company at the table and I had a great time socializing. I made my rounds, talked to just about everyone in a Red Rider jersey and then some of the people I had met the night before. Oh! And I got a gift, but that’s a story for another post because it’s so awesome.

And so I leave you with this accidental but cool pic.

P.S. If you’re wondering about the logistics of the ride: how the route was, the aid station, support, etc…don’t worry, you’ll get that soon enough, it was just too much to group it in with my story

would I make diabetes go away?

Let us ponder this for a moment.

There’s always great stipulations to wand waving. The magic fairy waved a wand and sang a song over Cinderella and she had to be home by midnight or her carriage was going to turn back into a pumpkin. The fairies waved a wand over Aurora to weaken a curse that was put on her by an evil fairy so that she’d fall asleep instead of die at the age of 16 and only loves true kiss could wake her up. Pinocchio’s blue fairy brings him to life and tells him that if he wants to be a real boy he has to be brave, truthful, unselfish and able to tell the difference between right and wrong and there was also the part about his nose growing if he lied. The receivers of the wand waving all experienced a downside.

It’s like Newton’s third law of motion: with every action is an equal and opposite reaction. (Before I bury myself here let me clarify that I understand that Newton’s laws of motion had to do with physics but follow me here and you’ll see that it really does apply.)

Everything has an opposite. With good came evil. With light came darkness. With magic wands come huge stipulations, understandings and fine print that we never get to see. It’s just a matter of when it will hit. How badly do you really want what is being offered because you’re about to make a huge sacrifice of some sort is basically what it boils down to.

And so we return to the original question: If we could make diabetes go away by waving a wand, would we?

The general population would see two answers. Yes and No. Most would probably say yes without a second thought and in the event that waving the wand was all there is to it, I most likely 100%-ly would say yes, please take this disease away from me because I vehemently hate it

But I return to Newton’s law. Nothing is ever as easy as waving a wand and so what would my end of the bargain be. What is the reaction to the action?

I see it as this: diabetes can be taken away but so would everything else that came with it, good and bad.

I’m not willing to lose the good in return for a wave of a wand, so I’ll settle for the bad.

I’m not willing to lose my friends, and I’ll tell you what, I’ve got some awesome friends thanks to this horrible disease.

I’m not willing to lose the athlete that diabetes has made me. I cannot say with any kind of surety that had I not been diagnosed with diabetes and been through the trials and tribulations that I’ve experienced that I would’ve started cycling. I probably would’ve never glanced at a marathon or a triathlon. I’d most definitely not have daily thoughts of doing an Ironman.

I’m not willing to lose the strength, determination and bullheadedness that having diabetes has instilled in me. It makes me the person that will fight for what she wants (whether I fight in a positive or negative way is another story). That drives me to be passionate about the things I do. That makes me not want to do things that I’m not passionate about. That won’t accept a half ass job surrounding anything I’m connected to (important side note: except for diabetes, I half ass it all the time). Diabetes helped strongly develop these traits that make me who I am today (I was pre-made with them).

I’m not willing to lose the community that I’ve developed relationships with. For as little as I use the access I have to so many resources and people, there are awesome communities out there for diabetes and I know that if I didn’t have diabetes that there is awesome communities out there for whatever I was into or a part of or happened to have, but it’s in the communities that exist that my world has expanded. One such example is how Diabetes365 put me in contact with an Italian that has diabetes and I get to occasionally torture him as I use my not nearly used enough education in speaking Italian.

I’m not willing to sacrifice the impact that me having diabetes has had on the lives of others who had life changing choices to make that would determine if they lived the rest of their lives with this disease.

So, would I make diabetes go away by waving a wand? No, most definitely not. I like the positives of diabetes. the positives I’ve described above. It’s made me a better person and I’m still growing as a person with diabetes and yes I have my struggles, daily, I struggle. But to take away everything that’s positive because I hate this disease wouldn’t be worth it in the least. Like I said, I’m not willing to lose the good so I’ll settle for the bad.

There are times when I think I should’ve been some kind of animal something or other. I would’ve done well as a safari-ist, I think . Being out there in the wild where creatures could easily eat me if they wanted. A wild animal videographer or photographer…I’d probably do well going on a walkabout in Australia . Or an explorer whose goal is to discover new animals or the behaviors of existing animals or what animals are doing that causes weird things. Like why hyenas have white poop. (Yes, I’m going to talk about white poop).

Hyenas are what I thought of this morning. Them and their white poop and how they have white poop because they’re scavengers and they eat everything of what they find: the entire carcass, bones and all, not just the meat. The calcium in the bones they eat turns their poop white.

Today, I had white poop. It was a direct result of a test I had done yesterday and has nothing to do with scavenging for food and eating the bones of the prey that fell to me. Yesterday I had a barium test done to see if we could find anything in my small intestine that might be causing problems with my ability to digest. White poop is one of the after effects of drinking barium.

It might sound weird, in fact, I know it sounds weird, but there was something exciting about seeing white poop. It’s different, not normal. It’s a conversation topic that most would consider TMI but it brings about knowledge of hyenas…did you know that hyenas have white poop?

When January rolled around and I had a choice to start up the Diabetes 365 project again I took a few moments to reflect on why I failed the past 2 years. Failed as in, I didn’t ever get all 365 taken and posted in either 2007/2008 or 2009…

In 2007/2008 I got further than I did in 2009…maybe because it was when the project started and there were a lot of people doing it and there was a community around it…who knows…that first year I took 278 pictures…

In 2009, I started over with the Diabetes 365 Project…I took 148 pictures…many of them got posted to my Flickr account but never made it into the D365 group…

Between the two years I took 426 pictures…

Upon reflecting on doing the project twice, this is what I discovered:

Diabetes is an invisible disease (I actually already knew that, that’s not new news)…it’s invisible because many of us don’t put it out there…I myself go back and forth between putting it out there and keeping it hidden. When I started the project in 2007, it was to find my voice. I wanted people to know what I was going through because people just don’t understand the day to day in and outs of diabetes. I knew people for years and they had no clue that I had diabetes because I never checked my blood or took shots in front of them…it was well hidden.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words but throughout this project, I discovered that only so many pictures are worth a thousand words…many other pictures have to be expounded on. I can only take so many pictures of bleeding fingers, blood glucose numbers, syringes, pump sites, general diabetes waste before the ability for a picture to tell a story and make the disease visible is lost…

Last year I started a series that was absolutely awesome, they were self portraits but it was the words that really told the story of diabetes in various aspects of my life and my behaviors towards diabetes. The pictures were just a beautiful accompanying illustration and without the words you couldn’t tell that they had anything to do with diabetes…

It made me realize that a person who sees pictures of us taking care of our diabetes isn’t going to help them understand what we’re going though. It’s what we have to say about it. My mom has seen me take care of my diabetes for 17 years now and she still doesn’t get. She doesn’t get it until I explain it; and even then, only time will tell whether or not she really truly gets it. I can tell friends or show them what my blood sugar is when we’re getting ready to eat, but to them it’s just a number until I explain it.

So, 2010 came around and I thought I’d give this a go once again, I figure one of these years I might actually get 365 pictures taken. The first month has past and I’ve taken a moment to reflect on it:

31 pictures were taken.

28 actually made it to the Diabetes 365 group. Those same 28 had an accompanying commentary to go with them.

6 actually scream DIABETES (to some extent)…1 more maybe kind of can look like it’s diabetes related but I think it looks more drug related…it could just be personal experience…

4 are food related.

6 are nature-y.

3 are sporty.

1 is really awesome…I mean, how many people can say that they have pictures of their pancreas? For some reason having an ultrasound picture of my pancreas has really excited me.

The rest are…I’m not sure what they are…They’re something…you have to read them to really understand what they have to do with diabetes…

I can remember at some point in the very beginning of January thinking: how do all the people that take a picture a day do it…especially the ones that have done it for several years (like my friend Drew from BenSpark.com). Within a day or so of my mental pondering Drew caught my brain wave and answered my question of how he (as a person who takes a photo a day) takes a photo a day. He never runs out of things to take photos of and he never gets bored of taking a photo a day.

After reading that, it dawned on me, my problem isn’t taking a photo a day. Taking the photo isn’t why the last two times I failed to complete 365 pictures in a year…the problem is trying to explain what that photo means in terms of diabetes when there’s not a photo to take that says “hey, this is diabetes related”. I always have my camera, I’ll pull my car over and take pictures, I’ll hunt out the perfect spot for a perfect view. I’ll see a photo opportunity and immediately think about how it relates to something in my life that is diabetes related. It’s putting those thoughts to the blog that are my problem…because diabetes is complicated and convoluted and sometimes it’s just plain hard to explain…picture or no picture…

So here we are in another month…I’m not making a commitment to another month of pictures because as described on January 1 with my New Years Revelation doing so will automatically put me in line for impending failure…but I do have a lot to write about…if I can get the words out of my brain and onto virtual paper.

It’s tax season and I’m one of those weird people that gets excited for it. I also happen to be one of those stupid people that uses the federal government as a savings account. Hence the excitement when tax season rolls around. I get pretty amounts of money back and it puts a big smile on my face.

It used to be that life was simple and my taxes were done in a heart beat by filling out the 1040ez. Then I graduated from college and started paying back student loans and I also graduated in my tax form to the plain ole 1040 (which has far more on it than I need).

This year I thought that I’d look at graduating to a higher level, itemizing my deductions. I figured that with the change from uber sweet medical insurance to uber horrible medical insurance I’d easily be able to throw my medical expenses into my deductions. It wasn’t easy. I couldn’t come close to even making it easy because I didn’t meet the “medical expenses being 7.5% of my Adjusted Gross Income (AGI)” rule. And then, to make matters worse, it was pointed out that we can only deduct the expenses that were over 7.5% of our AGI.

This is where I take a moment to vent.

I shouldn’t be paying several grand a year to sustain my life medically; and that’s several grand a year after they take a couple grand out of my paycheck as my insurance premium.

If I’m going to have to pay several grand a year to sustain my life medically, the deduction shouldn’t be based on my income. I understand that this was designed to keep people (upper class citizens) from using deductions to decrease the amount of income tax owed, but seriously, it’s injuring some of us (like us middle class citizens). At a minimum, if the deduction is going to be based on income there should be an exception for people with chronic diseases; because, just in case you weren’t aware, rich people are not the only people that have chronic diseases…People with chronic diseases like…oh, I don’t know, diabetes…should be able to deduct all their medical costs…

I’m done venting now.

On a good note:

I did my taxes via the TurboTax website as I’ve been doing the past 6 years. Yesterday morning I went to log in and I got a message about how I couldn’t log in because of a disconnect in the servers. I tweeted it and the TurboTax twitter people sent me a message and told me to DM them the details. I was impressed, that is awesome customer service. They saw a problem and they responded and they were nice. I was already a loyal customer of TurboTax before they tweeted me, but that definitely put a smile on my face and made me happy to know that if I ever had a problem with their product that I would be helped.

Yesterday before I ate my radioactive eggs and toast I got pictures taken from one kidney to the other…I was ultrasounded for an hour. A total of 83 pictures were taken.

The main goal was to see anything in my stomach and to make sure that my gallbladder was normal. I of course failed to ask any questions about my stomach, gallbladder or whatever look they got at my intestines. I figured that if something was horribly out of place that they might GASP!

They didn’t ever GASP!

But I did hear things like “wow” and “you’ve got beautiful anatomy”.

When they said I have beautiful anatomy I knew that my organs looked great. They’re in there all perfectly organized and perfectly sized and perfectly located and that lends to beautiful anatomy. At least, that’s my thought; and that thought put a big smile on my face.

I know the spots where they pushed extra hard, maneuvered the probe (the transducer probe makes the sound waves and receives the echoes) this way and that way to get a better view, had me hold my breath to make the organs “pop”; but at the end, the stomach wasn’t on my high list of priorities.

I asked for a picture of my pancreas and the tech said “I send people home with pictures of babies all the time, I see no problem in sending you home with a picture of your pancreas.” That put a big smile on my face.

My pancreas looks like many things. The first thing that popped into my head was a sperm. Next was a snake. A friend said a salamander. I liked the idea of having a legless salamander in me, so my pancreas is now a legless salamander named Gaston (Gaston fit him perfectly because it’s like in Beauty and the Beast were Gaston is beautiful but he’s a bad man; my pancreas is beautiful but he’s bad and doesn’t do his job.)

If you’re thinkin’ I’m crazy that’s okay. Throwing a little imagination into the doldrums of life makes it more interesting…Just the other day I wasn’t even thinking about a legless salamander of a pancreas named Gaston living in me, it was a slimy featherless angry green chicken that I was thinking of. *smiles*

Their glow was egglishly yellow. The tech had salted and peppered the eggs for me and the toast was buttered. I was given a little bit of water. I had 5 minutes to eat my “breakfast” before I had to go lay on the table and watch the food move from my stomach to my small intestine.

It was a good experience. I didn’t know what to expect exactly other than I got to eat radioactive eggs and toast and if I was lucky I might walk away glowing and have superpowers that I didn’t enter the building with. Sadly I didn’t get either. Alan, the tech, he did tell me that under the right conditions I might glow, but that there was probably more radioactivity in his watch than there was in my eggs. I didn’t ask what the right conditions were in order to see myself glow.

So, I ate my eggs and toast, took a moment to take a picture, and then I got to go lay on the thing…the table…So I lay on the table and Alan put a blanket over me since it’s always so cold in the xray rooms and he tucked it under my sides. Then he slide the table under the machine and lowered the machine. I imagine that it was like a sunning bed with my head sticking out.

For 90 minutes I got to watch the radioactivity in my gut. I could tell the shape of my stomach and it started to thin out and you could tell when the eggs were moving to my small intestine because the radioactive dots moved down below my stomach. It was cool.

While I was laying on the table watching the radioactive particles move I got to listen to Enders Game (I had no clue that xm radio had a story channel).

It was fun. I had fun just laying there on a table, LOL. Who would’ve thought. I will admit that at one point I did freak out a little. I’m not normally claustrophobic but I decided to see just how close the lid of the machine was to me and it was close and I panicked. But it wasn’t anything that a little time with God couldn’t fix.

So, when my 90 minutes was up, Alan showed me the video. They take video from my frontside and my backside. Alan said that they’d merge the videos together, come up with a mean (of some kind, I don’t exactly remember) and it would be analyzed by a radiologist and the information would be sent to my doctor. I told him, “sweet” and thanked him for his time and went on my way.

I didn’t ask if it looked like the eggs digested in a normal fashion or anything. I did make a comment about how my stomach wasn’t empty and he said I’d be on that table for 4 hours if we waited for it to completely empty.

Whatever the results are, whatever they tell us about my stomach issues, it was cool to watch. Plus, how many people do you know that have eaten radioactive eggs?