The health and fitness thread about random things

[chrisbainbridge]

I cut them as chunky chips and then shook them with slat and sunflower oil before cooking in the oven.  Came out very nice.

The Rosti was good as well.  Needs to be really dried out so I put the grated celeriac into a tea towel and wring it out for a few minutes, then an egg, spoonful of flour and fry in the frying pan with a bit of oil to brown and then into the oven.

[Kim]

Laying off the chips is no real hardship; I don't like them much!

Since having my gallbladder removed, my tolerance for chips is greatly reduced.  I tend to work on the principle that if I'm going to risk getting the poo, then the chips need to be worth it.  On that basis oven chips are firmly in the "fuel, if there's nothing better" category.

If they're really nice proper chips, then I'll either suffer the next day, or eat a small enough portion that I can get away with it.

[hellymedic]

Well quite! Most chips are best avoided. Little pleasure for the calories...

[barakta]

Managed via various NHS comms stupid to get hold of my migraine nurse by email. She agrees that topiramate should not be basically making my flicker and photo sensitivity and visual weird about 200% worse + stupid memory, language, cognitive and other effects... Taper down 25mg/week so three weeks to get clear.  Good fucking riddance.

Alternative medication options seem to be SSRIs, more anti epileptics, blood pressure meds or if I fail on three meds AND meet criteria for chronic headache then I could be offered botulinium injections (really rather not thanks).  Really not getting a sense any of those are going to do damn all for the kind of "migraine" I have. I do not have headache unless triggered by evil lighting. I am sensitive to flickering fucking lights which I wasn't sensitive to 2 years ago before evil-office and I'd like it to stop kthxbai!

Nurse seems very keen for me to try the Cefaly V transcutaneous nerve stimulator system. Basically stick a weird thing to my forehead and zap it for 20 mins a day. Ostensibly fewer side effects than meds (wouldn't be hard). But because NICE haven't said the NHS have to provide funding, my trust won't fund it and I have to buy it myself at a couple of hundred quid    I'm more than a bit pissed off about this, cos it's Yet Another Thing this clinic have suggested which they don't fund. They did the same about Migralens, FL41 lenses and indeed the kind of prescription blue lens I already have (which is the only thing which helps the migraine).  My next blue lenses (reusing frames) are costing £400 and will need replacing in 12 months ... Don't be poor if you need stuff the NHS decides it doesn't cover.

[rogerzilla]

My immune system decided to reject the corneal graft in my right eye on Tuesday.  Woke up and the eye was useless - waterlogged (fog and rainbows) and unable to focus on anything.  It really happens quickly and you have to do something in the first 24 hours.  Pedalled down to A&E and was sent up to the eye department where they prescribed a shedload of dexamethasone drops.  It was still shite all day yesterday but started to clear and sharpen this morning...by lunchtime I could read car numberplates at 50m when I couldn't read them at 10m yesterday.  Back to clinic tomorrow but I imagine I'll be on drops for a few months.    Scary!

[hellymedic]

Scary indeed!

Hope improvement endures!

[T42]

Yikes!  Eye stuff is indeed scary. Hope it goes on getting better.

I ought to get back to the ophthalmo myself - >2 yrs since my last visit, but with cardiac shenanigans in between I've had a surfeit of white coats.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Blimey roger, that's scary.

Doc this morning said "It is good that you have been getting pain because it makes prostate cancer unlikely. You probably have a kidney infection. We will start with a urine sample and antibiotics to try to clear things up."

I was fairly sure I had/have a kidney infection but it is never a good conversation when the doctor is starting by assuming there is a possibility of cancer. Age+symptoms did make it a possibility

[simonp]

I hurt my wrist lifting the motorbike off its side stand outside Bristol Royal Infirmary last week. Comes from the council liking to put motorcycle parking in the most awkward places. It's an ulnar side injury.

Rowing coach wanted me to make sure it was assessed, saw GP yesterday, and he agreed that though I'd likely return to normal day to function without treatment, for rowing I would likely need physio and could be out for some time. It possibly helped that he used to row himself.

I have a physio appointment for next week, hopefully I won't be out too long. I can at least get back on the turbo soon (once I stop coughing up horrible gunk from the lurgy I got at the same time) and I'll be able to hopefully do some core strength and bodyweight stuff.

[Kim]

I just passed an eye test.  Or at least failed it in exactly the same way that I did two years ago.   That's never happened before 

[Auntie Helen]

I just went for an eye appointment at an opticians in Mülheim (where my GerMan goes). I had all my old prescriptions since 2001with me.

First of all he asked if I wanted glasses for reading or distance. I said that was the point of the eye test, to find out. But I have glasses for driving and the TV.

I then had to look into a machine with my chin on a chinrest. I assumed this was the glaucOma thing so expected the puff of air but no, there was a picture of a boat on a beach which went in and out of focus.

Then he said ‘I will now check your glasses’ and took my old ones away. He came back 2 minutes later ‘your prescription hasn’t changed so we don’t need to do anythung’. I said ‘what about the retina check for cancer and the glaucoma’ and he said ‘we don’t do that, you need an Augenarzt for that’ (eye doctor). Klaus confirmed that what I had was indeed the eye test. None of this ‘do the circles appear clearer in the red or the green’ stuff I am used to.

So I left. I had been planning to buy some new glasses as the coating on the old ones is a bit knackered but as they didn’t suggest I chose some new frames I left. Klaus has never had the glaucoma test or retinal cancer check because he has of course never been to an Augenarzt. He is 50.

I feel really nonplussed by it all. I’m wondering if I can fit in a proper optician visit in the UK at Christmas...

[Kim]

I then had to look into a machine with my chin on a chinrest. I assumed this was the glaucOma thing so expected the puff of air but no, there was a picture of a boat on a beach which went in and out of focus.

I got both of those (I assume the latter is an automated way of measuring your eye shape, which presumably gives them a head start on where to begin in the actual test).  Plus a really annoying visual field test machine thingy which I haven't had before - stare at an LED in a box while wearing your distance glasses over an eye patch and count the LEDs in your peripheral vision without relaxing and focusing at infinity because they then blur too much and you fail the test.

And the usual swapping lenses in front of a Snellen chart stuff.

Klaus has never had the glaucoma test or retinal cancer check because he has of course never been to an Augenarzt. He is 50.

Same goes for Brits who are lucky enough not to need glasses, I suppose.  I know people who've only had their vision tested post-primary-school because they volunteered for SCIENCE.

I feel really nonplussed by it all. I’m wondering if I can fit in a proper optician visit in the UK at Christmas...

Yeah...

[hellymedic]

Our opticians' receptionist does the boat on beach thing before we see the optometrist himself. It's a coarse focus automated thing but the finer details are obtained with the old-fashioned lenses in the frame.

I think getting checked in the UK would be worthwhile though it's unlikely there's anything amiss.

You won't damage your eyes by getting reading specs off the shelf.

If you are finding reading uncomfortable, go back to the optician...

[T42]

I feel really nonplussed by it all. I’m wondering if I can fit in a proper optician visit in the UK at Christmas...

They're just separating the clinical side from the fitting side, some as here, i.e. an ophthalmologist looks for clinical abnormalities and produces an exact spec for glasses, the optician makes and fits them. Opticians can also do eye tests but can't pronounce on retinal condition etc. Demarcation.

[Auntie Helen]

It's also the German obsession with sticking to your narrow field/specialism.

The whole thing was just a bit odd as I went with preconceived ideas about what would happen:
1. Taken into a back room and have a proper sight test, including Glaucoma puffer, light shining in eye to detect retinal cancer, circles clearer in the red or the blue, wearing weird spec frames with lots of little lenses in, 'which line can you read when you hold this near your face' etc etc. Asking me about my Lasik surgery and when was it etc. General chat about my health, whether I do work with computer screens, how I find my sight etc etc
2. Aha, your prescription has changed minutely so let us sell you some expensive glasses
3. Here's some paperwork with your prescription on it
4. Let's clean and adjust your current specs

What I got was
1. Boat on beach
2. You don't need new glasses
3. Here are your glasses cleaned

Mind you, I paid nothing for it, but for a shop trying to sell glasses they could have tried a bit harder as I wanted some new frames anyway...

[DuncanM]

Plus a really annoying visual field test machine thingy which I haven't had before - stare at an LED in a box while wearing your distance glasses over an eye patch and count the LEDs in your peripheral vision without relaxing and focusing at infinity because they then blur too much and you fail the test.

I had that test when I was getting migraines (that resulted in a loss of vision) as a teenager.  Had to go the hospital and stuff. I was somewhat surprised when it started appearing in the opticians - I guess the technology behind it got a lot cheaper!
Reasoning here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_field_test

[Kim]

Yeah, batakta had hers tested at the hospital a couple of times using a distinctly more analogue method.

[hellymedic]

My optometrist has tested my visual field in the past but does not do this routinely.
Some treatable insidious causes of blindness result in field loss before other symptoms emerge.

It is useful to ensure drivers are not developing tunnel vision...

[T42]

Optician vs optometrist vs ophthalmologist: https://www.aapos.org/terms/conditions/132

[Ham]

An optometrist is  a person for whom the glasses are always half full.

[simonp]

Saw physio today.

Diagnosis: tenosynovitis of the extensor carpi ulnaris.

Treatment: no rowing. And other stuff. But mainly, no rowing. A few strokes on a rowing machine set it off quite badly.

Also, I have to get a new keyboard for work.

Also can't ride motorbike, or fixed wheel. Or perhaps even outside at all.

I can do turbo.

*sad face*

[mrcharly-YHT]

<waves hello> we are members of the same group, I think

Intermittent, but include: leg weakness (including complete collapse), numbness, 'hollow' pain, burning/itching feeling on skin on leg, spasmodic pains and movements.

I get all of those.

Now, your other symptoms are really interesting. I do get something similar, but mine started to become severe and were eventually diagnosed as a migraine condition (nothing to do with Perthes) and treated with drugs. However, since Perthes tends to affect the spine (for odd complex reasons that nobody seems to understand, in my case exacerbated by the treatment I was given), I do wonder if there is a sensory feedback issue going on here.

[hellymedic]

I didn't have Perthes Disease but do have MS.
Numbness and painful burning episodes of both (but mostly left) thighs have kept me awake on some night this week.
Spasms have woken partner.

[jsabine]

Physio on tues. I'm a member of a Perthes support group. The leader of the group has written the NHS booklet on Perthes.

Seems my troubles are very common in ex-Perthes patients.

Intermittent, but include: leg weakness (including complete collapse), numbness, 'hollow' pain, burning/itching feeling on skin on leg, spasmodic pains and movements.

I also now have 'floating' dizzy spells with muscle tremors over whole body. It's all intermittent (I dug and planted two trees this morning, mowed lawn yesterday without trouble). Only just coped with some supermarket shopping yesterday; floating dizzyness and muscles tremors meant I twice rammed the trolley into innocent immobile objects. No, they weren't slow-moving grannies.

<waves hello> we are members of the same group, I think

Intermittent, but include: leg weakness (including complete collapse), numbness, 'hollow' pain, burning/itching feeling on skin on leg, spasmodic pains and movements.

I get all of those.

Now, your other symptoms are really interesting. I do get something similar, but mine started to become severe and were eventually diagnosed as a migraine condition (nothing to do with Perthes) and treated with drugs. However, since Perthes tends to affect the spine (for odd complex reasons that nobody seems to understand, in my case exacerbated by the treatment I was given), I do wonder if there is a sensory feedback issue going on here.

Dunno what MotifSky's game is, but there's a reason the posted text might have looked familiar ...

Physio on tues. I'm a member of a Perthes support group. The leader of the group has written the NHS booklet on Perthes.

Seems my troubles are very common in ex-Perthes patients.

Intermittent, but include: leg weakness (including complete collapse), numbness, 'hollow' pain, burning/itching feeling on skin on leg, spasmodic pains and movements.

I also now have 'floating' dizzy spells with muscle tremors over whole body. It's all intermittent (I dug and planted two trees this morning, mowed lawn yesterday without trouble). Only just coped with some supermarket shopping yesterday; floating dizzyness and muscles tremors meant I twice rammed the trolley into innocent immobile objects. No, they weren't slow-moving grannies.

(No, I'm not cyber-stalking you - Mrs Pingu noted plagiarism in another thread, so I had a wee look at all MotifSky's posts. All copied.)

[mrcharly-YHT]

I suddenly wondered that, did a search and it didn't come up. So motivsky is looking like a bot. Shame, the Perthes group has a Strava cycling section, would be good if some joined here.