I took a very long time before writing this blog post because I wanted to be sure about what I’ve experienced. But I believe it to be correct, so I’m now sharing it here.
In short, I believe that collagen products like these help to significantly diverticula/diverticulosis pain:
And when I say significantly, I mean like an 80% reduction in diverticula/diverticulosis pain.
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Caution: If you’ve had an angiogram and now have an Angio-Seal device in your leg (or arm), and you have medical concerns about that device, don’t waste your time reading this article. Call your doctor, or call 911 if you think it’s an emergency situation.
After having what I call a “fake heart attack” — something that was really Kounis Syndrome, also known as allergic angina — I had an angiogram in May, 2016, at which time an Angio-Seal device was used to help seal the hole that was put in my femoral artery after the angiogram.
Update: In 2019 I would have to have a second angiogram procedure with a different cardiologist after having chest pain due to pericarditis. The following text is a summary of my notes about the angiogram recovery process from these two events.
As I understand it, the Angio-Seal device is used to place a collagen seal around the artery. The collagen is shown in this image, which comes from the link in the previous paragraph:
I think the collagen material is most of the lump that you feel in your leg/groin. (Part of the lump may also be due to swelling.) In my case the cardiologist performed my angiogram by going into my body through the upper-right part of my right leg (the groin area). Unfortunately he went in right in the area where the leg joins the torso (the groin), so any time I bent my leg upwards I had pain/discomfort.
From my own experience, I can tell you that the pain and discomfort lasts several weeks. I document this in the sections below, but event today — more than three weeks after the angiogram — I still prefer to sit in a recliner rather than a normal chair.
The initial pain isn’t bad at all; it’s more long a strong, dull ache, though it also often feels like someone is stabbing me in the thigh with an old plastic Bic pen. What’s worse is that it feels like it’s easy to tweak the AngioSeal, which is very discomforting.
Therefore, during the first three days I laid in bed 18-21 hours a day. This is because of three things:
My AngioSeal was in the right side of my groin, just above the point where the upper leg joins the hip. Because of this I could only lay on my back or my left side.
When I walked, I walked very, very slow, as the doctors advised. I didn’t wear slippers because (a) it doesn’t feel comfortable to reach down and touch your toes, and (b) I don’t want to trip or slip with my slippers on. During this time I never tried to sit in a chair, and I could only sleep on my back or on my left side.
I also had several periods where I have felt light-headed and/or wanted to vomit. I don’t know if this is a side effect of the angiogram, the pericarditis, or the medicine for the pericarditis.
Late on Day 3 and then on Day 4 I finally started to feel a little better. By the morning of Day 4 I was so well-rested that it became hard to stay in bed. I was probably upright about 6-8 hours today, compared to being upright only 3-4 hours per day for the first three days. I was also able to sit up in bed for a little while, though it eventually made the Angio-Seal area sore. I could not find a comfortable way to sit in a recliner.
On the morning of Day 5 I initially felt very energetic and had little discomfort, but then I ran out of gas and became sore after standing up and walking during the morning.
After those first five days I was able to walk a little more — or maybe I should say that I pushed myself to walk a little more, in part because I needed groceries. When I went to the grocery store I moved very slow, and wore sweatpants (so that the blue jeans that I normally wear wouldn’t rub against my leg/groin).
That was the only time I sat in a normal seated position. I often stood up while working on my computer, or I sat in my recliner, with it open to a pretty wide angle to keep pressure off of the Angio-Seal area.
During this time I continued to sleep only on my back and left side. I tried to sleep on my right side, but I immediately felt pain from the Angio-Seal, so I stopped trying to do that.
Some time after the first two weeks the pain/discomfort improved quite a bit, and I was eventually able to sleep on my right side. At first I only slept for short stretches before I could feel some pain from the Angio-Seal, but now, after three weeks, I am able to sleep normally in any position.
As I write this (after my first angiogram), it’s now 23 days after my angiogram, and while I can still feel discomfort in the Angio-Seal area, it no longer hurts. It’s more like I can feel it, and if anything it’s a very mild pain. The page I linked to states that it can take 60-90 days before the collagen seal goes away completely, but since I can walk at a normal pace and also sleep on my right side, I’m much happier these days.
Update: After my second angiogram and Angio-Seal, the recovery is going much slower. I tweaked something in my leg around Day #20, so now on Day 25 after the angiogram I’m still spending the majority of my time either laying in bed or standing up. I can sit down to drive back and forth to the grocery store, but other than that I’m generally laying down or standing up.
Update 2: Finally on Days 28 and 29 the pain subsided enough that I can generally stand, walk, and lay down on my back and left side without much pain or discomfort. I still get pain when sitting down for more than 10-15 minutes, but hopefully I’ve finally cleared this hurdle.
On Day 35 of the second procedure I was finally able to sit down for 90-120 minutes during the day.
I’ve always wondered about the meaning of the song Levon, as performed by Elton John, with lyrics written by Bernie Taupin. After a little research, this is what I’ve been able to find out about the meaning of Levon.
The best information I’ve found comes from the songfacts website. There, one contributor states the following:
In Susan Black’s book, Elton John in His Own Words, Elton says of Levon: “It’s about a guy who just gets bored doing the same thing. It’s just somebody who gets bored with blowing up balloons and he just wants to get away from it but he can’t because it’s the family ritual.” (thanks, Alexander - London, England)
Two notes about that quote:
Since Bernie Taupin wrote the song, I thought he would be a better source of information about the meaning of Levon. On that same page someone else added this:
When Rolling Stone asked Taupin about the song in 2013, he insisted that he has no idea what he intended as the meaning. “It was a free-form writing,” he said. “It was just lines that came out that were interesting.”
The Wikipedia entry for Levon adds:
According to Gus Dudgeon, Bernie Taupin, who wrote the lyrics for Levon, was inspired by The Band’s co-founder, drummer, and singer Levon Helm to name the title character after him. The Band was apparently John’s and Taupin’s favorite group in those days. However, in 2013, Bernie Taupin said that the song is unrelated to Levon Helm.
They also state this:
The “Alvin Tostig” mentioned in the song (Levon’s father) is, according to Taupin, merely fictional.
An Elton John fan website adds some speculation regarding the name “Alvin Tostig”:
Tracing the name “Alvin Tostig” is fairly straightforward, but with a bit of a twist. Taupin has said the name was fictitious. There was a historical “Tostig,” who was the Earl of Wessex back in the 1040s, perhaps Taupin pulled the name out of history without realizing it. Also, some have speculated that Levon contains veiled references to a popular book of the time, “Future Shock,” by Alvin Toffler.
(Note that some of this text may be copied verbatim from straightdope.com, or vice-versa.)
Personally, if you want to speculate on the name “Tostig,” I’d add that it’s close enough to “Taupin” that you might speculate that Taupin was potentially writing about himself.
I’m spending my weekend moving the HTML version of my book, How I Sold My Business: A Personal Diary, over to this website. I had it on a separate website, but I’m trying to simplify my life, and I also like the idea of having all of my content searchable on this site.
(If you’d like to read the paperback version of the book, you can find it here on Amazon.com.)
In December, 2022, in Winchester, Kentucky, the Clark County Public Library Board of Trustees took up the matter to potentially ban a book in the library they oversee. The book is an award-winning LGBTQ+ memoir that was already located in the Adult section of the library, but that wasn’t enough for the “conservative” trustees. While the library has many other sexually-explicit books (think Fifty Shades of Grey), the trustees singled out this one book, eventually voting that this award-winning book “is restricted to individuals over 18 unless a parent or guardian gives written consent.”
I was going to share my opinion on censorship when I saw the quote in the image I shared (from this article): “Censorship is like a forest fire. It begins with a single ember, and if it is not extinguished at the outset, it becomes a raging conflagration that consumes everything in its path.”
This is a poem titled, “If I Had My Life to Live Over,” by Nadine Stair. I found this poem in the book, Polishing the Mirror, by Ram Dass.
IMHO, the song, Anchorage, by Marian Call, is a great song, probably one of my Top-100 songs of all time, maybe Top-50. Of all time.
Last night I had a dream in which a woman picked up a stone, turned it over, and showed it to me. A burning image of Jesus on the cross was on this other side. Skipping over some stuff, it eventually reminded me of this Gospel of Thomas quote: “Jesus said, ‘The Kingdom of God is inside you, and all around you, not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me.’”
This morning this makes me think of the song, Minutes to Memories, by John Mellencamp. (I used to link to the video on YouTube, but it has been removed.)
Once upon a time there was a dog named Zeus. Before we met him, Zeus had a very difficult life, having been abused by two different owners. When my wife saw Zeus on a local tv station, and they said the Animal Care Society was going to be extremely careful about who adopted him next, she seemed to know that she had to take care of him.
As you can see from the following pictures, when we first adopted Zeus, he was very sick, with a horrible case of mange.
This is my interpretation of the meaning of the Alanis Morissette song, Thank You (also known as Thank U). I don’t claim any special knowledge about the song; this interpretation of the lyrics is just based on my understanding of Zen and Buddhism, and also my practicing of yoga, specifically Iyengar yoga. If you’ve read some of the personal entries on this website, you know a lot of what I know.
The tv series Becker was one of my favorites back in the day, and I always wondered why it wasn’t available on DVD. I just looked, and it’s now available at Amazon, just released in 2018.
A favorite episode that helped me snap out of a personal funk was when Becker finally got to be with his long-lost love, a woman he pined for for many years. When he finally had a chance to reunite with her it turned out she was wild, crazy, ran up his credit card bill, then took off. In its own way, that episode helped me get over someone I had felt the same way about. (It was like seeing a comedic version of your own life that turned out to be a great slap in the face moment for me.)
I drove through Chicago recently and with my crappy old phone’s camera I got this photo of the pink and orange Moon rising over Greater Chicagoland. It was a clear night and the Moon was visible for the entire drive.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong woman stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.”
“The credit belongs to the woman who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends herself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if she fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
~ “The Man in the Arena” speech by Teddy Roosevelt, with a few minor changes, which I was reminded of by this article
At some point somebody was like, “Let’s get a mast cell — a type of white blood cell — from a bone marrow biopsy, magnify it 1,000 times, piss it off, and see what happens.”
The result? Ka-boom! It looks like a little firework went off when it released its histamine, tryptase, serotonin, superoxide, heparin, thromboxane, PGD2, PAF, and other granules.
That’s pretty much what it feels like, lol. I used to tell doctors that it felt like I had been drugged, and indeed, I was.
“Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.”
~ from the movie, Top Gun
I don’t watch many movies or tv shows, at least not as many as most people. The reason I don’t is because I experience lucid dreams most night that Hollywood can’t compare to. I don’t know why I have these dreams, but I have had them since I was a young child, and that’s just the way things are. This story from May 2, 2022, is just one example.
~~~
There was a bomb in the building.
Somehow I knew that.
I remember walking into a government-style building that had a parking lot directly in front of it. If you walked into the front doors, went down the hallway to the right, and then took your first left, there was a device on the floor that looked like a boxy, 1970s-style tape recorder, but it was really a bomb.
So I began working with a friend to evacuate the building. He went one way, I went the other.
As I ran around the building, Lori — my friend who died last summer — ran up to me and said in a panic, “He knows everything about you. Everything! You have to run.” I looked at her and tried to make sense of how she was here and what she was saying, but she was terrified and screamed, “RUN!” Then she ran away in the direction I had just come from.
From time to time, usually in the winter months, but not always, I like to write little stories of fiction. “Flash fiction,” I’m told they are called.
Here’s a short list of stories I’ve posted here recently:
I don’t agree with everything Nathaniel Hackett has done to start his tenure with the Denver Broncos, but I do agree with this quote about trying to create a good and happy work environment:
“You want them to feel an environment that they want to come into, and they’re excited to come into. That’s all you can do, that’s what you’re trying to create.”
I had the movie Michael on last night while I was preparing dinner, and when it came to this “Battle!” scene it reminded me of my friend, Jim Kimmel. We used to say “Battle!” at work from time to time, sometimes as we were about to do something, and other times for no reason at all.
“Yet when consciousness and the body are brought into union with one another, the energy of consciousness becomes still, and when the energy of consciousness is still, consciousness too is still, and the soul pervades the entire body.”
~ The Tree of Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar
