On matters health

Tuesday 3/11/25

I'll give it a bit more time to see if there's any improvement, but pain--which began in the second half of last week--in right testicle, right side, and right side of back--persists and I may need to go to urgent care--which I believe is synonymous with "walk-in"--or a CVS Minute Clinic. Hopefully not cancer but may need antibiotics. Have hoped it was in relation to some form of strain from my workouts. A week ago at this time, I had no symptoms.

What I've read online advises rest and no strenuous activity, but that's hard for me and brings with it it's own set of problems. Things are very difficult for me now presently, obviously, and it makes it harder to go on if I do not work out.

I am also worried about diabetes. How I could have diabetes with the way I live, what I eat and drink, and my now nearly nine years of stair-running I don't know, but I am up frequently at night to go to the bathroom--it can be five times--and this is a classic symptom.

It is likely that I do drink a lot when all is said and done--the water, the teas, the coffee.

I have made a lifestyle change--I'm cutting my coffee intake by 2/3. I instigated this new policy on Sunday. Often I would get up in the morning at some ungodly hour, drink a liter of ice coffee, and then, while drinking that, make a pot of twelve cuts of coffee, and transition to hot coffee while working at the desk. I wouldn't drink all of the pot, but I'd make a good dent in it.

Coffee--black coffee, which is all I drink--helps with heart health, but I've been educating myself on what is tantamount to a tipping point, after which it can be bad for you and your heart. I want the benefits and not the risk--or if I was causing myself harm I want to cease doing so and make sure my intake is solely beneficial.

An amount of 32 ounces is considered okay each day. I will not go over that. On Sunday, I got up, went out to run stairs and do my push-ups, having no coffee at all because I wanted to make sure I didn't need the caffeine. I did not. I don't really get addicted to substances--I can give them up without effect. I drank heavily for nearly twenty years and when I gave up alcohol for good--or when I gave it up on occasion for a few days or a week and a half or whatever--I never had the shakes or anything like that. Later on Sunday I went to Starbucks to read and had a Grande coffee which is fourteen ounces. The Venti is twenty and the Tall is twelve. Those fourteen ounces constituted my coffee intake for that day.

Yesterday I bought a tall coffee at Starbucks and brought it home so I could so I could check the size of the big Rockport mug that I used for my hot coffee. It contains the same amount of liquid as the Starbucks tall cup, so twelve ounces then.

I have also adopted the mindset that I do have diabetes and now wish to reverse it. A couple people have told me I am being ridiculous and there is no way, but even if this is so, the attitude can't hurt. I should be eating more grains anyway.

I want to be very clear that I consume very little sugar. There are no cakes, cookies, desserts, trips to Mike's or Modern. No ice cream. No candy. I don't drink anything with any sugar in it, save the small amount in my unsweetened, from-the-bog cranberry juice. I drink that, black tea, green tea, peppermint tea, hibiscus tea (which is a diuretic I've learned), black coffee, fat free milk, water. Sometimes I will have another kind of tea or two. Also, cider. That is it. And has been for years.

I read up on foods that cause diabetes. Among them: red meat, foods high in sugar as I've said, white bread, white pasta, pastries. I eat no pasta, no bread, no red meat. When I say none, I don't mean kinda/sorta none--I mean not at all. In the past, I would get seasonal candies--like for Halloween or Easter--at CVS--a bag of M&Ms or jellybeans--but I don't do this anymore.

I eat a lot of kale. I'd estimate that I eat 400 bell peppers a year. I feel like not many people would wish to eat what I eat as all that they eat. It's very repetitive. I'm not a foodie and my tastes in food are simple and can be met easily. I'm fastidious and when I commit to something--whatever it is--I commit fully.

It has now been a year since I gave up pizza, bread, my reduced fat hot chocolates, red meat, pork, chips, which was all determined on a single day and stuck to without exception.

All of which is to say, I can't really think of anything I'm doing too wrong in terms of diet, fluid intake--save for possible volume issues--and workout regimen. I'm cataloging things right now just to have a record in case things are somehow wrong or I am diabetic, and also because most of these things are choices I've made and put into practice for my writing and my art and also the war I am in against the mechanized forces of an evil system for the greater good of humanity now and in the future. My dedication is total and someone could not be as dedicated to anything as I am to this.

I spoke at length to someone who had similar symptoms to mine regarding right testicle, right side, and right side of back, and it went on for a long time before they finally went to a walk-in clinic and were prescribed antibiotics. This could be epididymitis. I've been reading up on testicular and prostate cancers. This friend also talked to a physician's assistant yesterday in the course of his day and described my symptoms to her.

She asked if I was very physically active, he said yes, he runs up and down thousands of stairs every day, and she suggested that it could be a result of that. I haven't ran stairs at the Bunker Hill Monument in a bit. Partially because of the hours--with it not opening until one, which I hope changes soon for the spring and goes back to ten in the morning as that is much better for me--and also in part because lately I've been thinking, "You should do what these sites advise and rest for a few days," but then I also think, "Let's just run some City Hall stairs here early in the morning, get them out of the way, then you have the rest of the day for rest."

Here's what I'd say about City Hall stairs: They're worse than Monument stairs. They are less pleasant to do. When you run stairs in the Monument, you get more out of breath than you do on the City Hall stairs. You're giving the lungs a good workout. The stairs are such that you can only take them one at a time. They are the perfect depth. Not too low, not too high, but high enough that they'll shape the calf muscles. The same amount of stairs in the Monument take maybe slightly less time than the same amount of stairs at City Hall. The latter makes for a more tedious workout. 3000 stairs in the Monument is up and down five times. 3000 stairs at City Hall is up and down thirty times. 5000 stairs at City Hall takes close to an hour.

The benefits of each is probably equal. The point is that you're running stairs. What those stairs are isn't so much the issue. The stairs at City Hall, though, are such that the advanced stair runner would likely take them two-at-a-time. There is a bit of lunging aspect when doing so and maybe, as a result, more strain on certain parts. I only take these stairs two-at-a-time now (going up, that is; try to take stairs in this manner going down and you'll break your neck).

When I run the City Hall stairs this way, my boxers, on my right thigh, ride up so that I have to reach into my sweatpants--when no one is looking, of course, so I don't get reported for indecent exposure--and pull them down. It could also be that they've done some testicular pinching. I don't think it's that, though.

There are quite a few people who've seen me run stairs for years and think of me as this exemplar of health and dedication to fitness. In rain, snow, the cold, there I am. Year in, year out. I am the only person who does these workouts. I'm a fixture. So if I was diabetic that would be a huge disappointment for me. We do not know my family's medical history and I worry that certain health fixes are just in, no matter what one does.

I am also a hypochondriac to a debilitating degree. It's something I have a real problem with that I need to manage exponentially better. I am aware of this need to improve and get my fears under control. I also make some of the lifestyle choices I do in part because I am so scared of medical situations and settings. All of my life feels like it is cursed. That none of this could happen to anyone else. It hasn't. Thus, I expect that to continue everywhere else. It is part of the curse and being doomed. I'm not saying that's rational. But given how everything has gone and has been, it's also not some out-of-nowhere way of thinking--or feeling, anyway.

Again, in the name of thoroughness:

On Friday and Sunday I ran 5000 stairs each day at City Hall and did 200 push-ups both days and walked three miles on Sunday. On Saturday I did 100 push-ups and walked five miles. Yesterday, I did 100 push-ups and ran 3000 stairs at City Hall. I would say I'm running these stairs at 3/4 speed because there is jostling--the testicles go all over the place, I have realized, only you don't often notice because one of them doesn't ache.

Yesterday when walking in the afternoon I felt okay, and then last night it was worse and today it also seems to be worse than it had been on other days and similar to how it was last night. I may not run any stairs today. The Monument is open again tomorrow where at least I wouldn't have the lunge issue. There is no blood in the urine or anything like that. No fever, no nausea. But I think eventually I will have to go in to be looked at. I'll have to figure out the logistics of that. This isn't something I ever really do.

Sunday marked 3164 days, or 452 weeks, without any a drink of alcohol.