Tedium and The City
subtitled: Killing time at the Starbucks immediately adjacent to my favorite Big City Hospital
I had an appointment with gastroenterology this morning, and have another coming up with dermatology this afternoon, with four hours to kill in between. It’s too hot to go traipsing around Big Center City, so I locked-in the corner table at Starbucks and am spending my time nursing a $5 coffee and farting around on the internet. For future reference, skinny mocha lattes taste as good when cold as they tasted when hot, so that’s the drink to go with if you want it to last for 3 1/2 hours.
It’s Big City Lunch time, and I’m surprised how empty this Starbucks is. I think the Starbucks back in Smalltown Hometown has more people in it at this very moment than this Starbucks does. Excluding the Big City people waiting in line, of course. Starbucks take-out seems to be big with people wearing ciel scrubs. They even have a ciel scrub express line here, where people in mufti get to shoot laser daggers from their eyes at people sporting important looking plastic ID tags and poofy shoe covers.
Day Two into my attempt to eat according to regulations, and my diabetic guidelines are coming into conflict with my my gastroenterology guidelines. I’m going to have to engage someone with a degree in nutrition to sort this out for me; my go-to safe list of things to eat at the moment is lactose-free milk and tofu. The diabetic diet encourages beans, which are off the menu because of the gastroenterologist. Sugar is cool by the FODMAP listing, but I imagine I don’t need to tell you about how that goes over on a diabetic menu. FODMAP, btw, stands for “Fermentable Oligo, Di and Monosacchariades and Polyols”, which is all I’m going to say on that subject.
On the plus side, at least my dermatologist is unlikely to further restrict my diet. (On re-read, I’ve realized that by putting that in writing I have virtually guaranteed that The Fates will take that as a taunting challenge. Seriously, Fates, I honor and respect all three of you Moirai and it isn’t necessary to prove me wrong every time I write something foolish. Life already does that without further assistance, so just kick back, relax, and enjoy the show.)
I’m to start a food diary. Haven’t decided if I’m going to use this as my base of operations, or if I’m just going to carry around a tacky dog-eared spiral notebook for the purpose. Depends on which one is going to keep me more honest, I guess. I’ve got my doubts about how funny/inspiring/informative this is going to turn out to be, and I really don’t want to be held responsible for boring someone to death or driving them to overdose on chocolate.
For what it’s worth, I’ve had a grande skinny mocha latte and a whole grain toasted bagel with half a 1.5 oz packet of cream cheese so far today. Starbucks doesn’t have the greatest options. This means that I’ve managed to break two diets with one bagel. Kinda like killing two birds with one stone. Especially considering the bagel in question.
geezus. wtf? now diabetes? wow. just wow.
R has been having some of the same dietary issues. Being diabetic and having IBS-D for a year was quite the challenge. Now, with the colostomy, he’s not really supposed to have fiber. Turns out the fiber doesn’t cause him gastric distress BUT there are certain things that you don’t want to see in said colostomy bag. Add in the debilitating 45 pound weight loss and it sucks to be him.
What, no s*x? Your title is sadly lacking.
The last time I went to the dermatologist, he said the dermatitis/folliculitis that flares up on my scalp from time to time could be exacerbated by, among other things, food allergies. So yes, fate could have taken that route at Dr. Skin’s office. :o)
I had the same issue when I got the bleeding ulcer. With a bleeding ulcer you aren’t supposed to eat anything fibrous, but with diabetes you are encouraged to gnaw on blocks of wood. Ok, not quite that bad, but you get my point. After I got home from the hospital with the dietary guidelines for the bleeding ulcer, I felt like there wasn’t anything in the world that was safe for me to eat but sugar-free Jello and eggs. And I ate A LOT of that.
Not eating any fresh fruit all summer about killed me. Luckily, I figured out how to eat tomatoes anyway. I peeled them and de-seeded them and made bacon and tomato sandwiches with the peeled, seeded tomatoes– on white bread, of course. (I couldn’t have the avocado I would normally add because they are too fibrous.) I found that I actually like them that way better! Tomato seeds are surprisingly bitter. So that was good! I missed the avocado, but it was a rather small sacrifice to be able to eat something that actually tasted good to me.
I have somehow not gotten your notifies! I came trolling on the old dd site and saw you have posted… Can you add me again?
I’m so sorry to hear about the latest health saga… but pretty entertained by your account of it. 🙂
Hope you get it sorted out!