April 6

As I said in yesterday’s post, updates on my health vanished into thin air when I downloaded the mobile app for Blogger. So I am going back to the old fashioned way, by updating the blog on a browser. While I intend to replace those posts mostly in chronological order, this one will be about the most recent occurrences since some friends have already read David’s Medical History 2021.

I got the untranslated results of the capsule endoscopy, on April 1. If they had sent me the results and had not scheduled a doctor’s appointment, it would have been a clever April Fools’ Day joke. However, my appointment with the gastroenterologist was on April 5. I wanted to make sure to hear what the doctor had to say before I shared them with the public.

It’s funny, as you are in the geriatric zone, the doctors look like they only recently graduated from high school. Then you realize that indeed they did graduate relatively recently!! So, the very young doctor patiently explained the results . . . rather like a grandchild teaching his grandpa to play an video game.

I had read the endoscopy report, as a homework assignment before the office visit. I interpreted it to mean they found nothing that would explain the iron deficiency or anemia. The doctor gave me an A on my translation. Pretty good for an old guy who never took that foreign language in high school or college!

So I asked, “Does that mean I’ll just be taking iron supplements and Vitamin C ad infinitum?” He seemed reluctant to answer in the affirmative. He decided that I should have blood drawn before I left the medical center. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, my smartphone buzzed me to give me the results of the blood tests before I even arrived home from the office visit. However, my very young doctor sent me a message this morning that read:

Iron deficiency has continued to improve. Your other vitamin levels were normal. You are still mildly anemic but I suspect that this is unrelated to iron and related to other medical problems. (Anemia of chronic disease) I would say stay on your current dose of iron for now.

Since the iron has to be taken on an empty stomach and because it works better in an acidic environment, I wake up each morning and take a 65mg tablet of ferrous sulfate - that sounds much fancier than plain old iron tablet - and a 500mg tablet of ascorbic acid - that sounds more formidable and much more likely to induce pity in my readers – and then I wait for an hour before I take the rest of my morning medications and breakfast and proceed with my day.

Since the anemia is probably related to one of the myriad geriatric ailments that I have ... diabetes and heart disease among them ... maybe the defibrillator implantation coming up in a couple of weeks will help.

The weight management doctor at my last appointment noted two things. First, I hadn’t lost any more weight after the initial twenty or so pounds. And second that my creatinine level was high and suggested that I talk to my PCP about stopping Naproxen which I had been taking for arthritis pains. Naproxen is an NSAID and NSAIDs tend to mess with kidney function and an elevated creatinine level means that one's kidney function has been thrown out of kelter. I did. He agreed. He wrote:

You can safely take Tylenol up to 2 tablets 4 times a day as needed. Also, over the counter Turmeric supplements are also somewhat helpful as an anti-inflammatory that would not affect the kidney function.

So now, I just await the implantation of the defibrillator on April 22. In addition, I also have made an appointment with an orthopedic doctor at KU because the surgeon from Research Medical Center who replaced my right knee in 2019 has retired during the Pandemic. My left knee is beginning to feel like the right one did before it was replaced.