UNDER PRESSURE
A Dumb Tale of Dryness, Wetness, & Hooky
ANOTHER LONG WINDED BLOG POST…IT'S THE TERROR OF KNOWING WHAT THIS WORLD IS ABOUT…LESSONS LEARNED, HAIRBRAINED OR OTHERWISE…ANXIETY AND LIQUIDS IN THE BAY…WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, YOU CAN ALWAYS SAY “F*CK IT”…SOMETIMES LIFE FIGHTS GROSSE AND HITS YOU POINTE BLANK…ALL LOST IN THE SUPERMARKET…HOW STUPID AM I?
2ND WEEK OF APRIL
On April 9th, 2025, I was on the phone with an old friend from my baseball days when I noticed an odd feeling in my throat, like something was stuck. Chalking it up to one of those weird things that goes away with some sleep, I thought nothing of it. But a week later, it was still bothering me and getting worse; my throat felt dry and weird, my mouth tasted and felt strange, and the inside of my mouth felt raw, even after having ignored it like any stubborn man would do. Eventually my mother insisted I make a doctor’s appointment, which I could not deny the necessity of, especially after I had eaten a sandwich that made the insides of my mouth raw and swell for no apparent reason.
LESSON: Appreciate the now because life can always change real quick and simply eating a sandwich might become quite the task.
3RD WEEK OF APRIL
Now, with my ongoing mouth issue, a couple funnily unfortunate things happened to me concurrently. First, I happened by a local business that piqued my interest and found they were hiring for a role that would fit me perfectly. I spent a couple days crafting the perfect cover letter, even sending it to my pops for his professional review.
During the few days it took to perfect that cover letter, I went on a second date with a gal; she was really cute and fun, especially when I overlooked the numerous red flags right in front of my face. But near the end of the date, I got a healthy dose of rejection. While I’m no stranger to rejection and can shrug it off just as good as the next young man, this one came with interesting reasons. The first was ‘not having much in common’, which is a fair enough reason as any to ditch me, although I do wonder how much you actually need in common these days; my mom doesn’t love getting drunk at Raiders games and my dad couldn’t knit a scarf if his life depended on it, but they have made it work for awhile. Anyways, the second and more notable reason was, “I don’t want a white baby”, which baffled me beyond comprehension, rendering me speechless for a solid minute. While there is much I could say about that statement, I’ll just go with: it was…interesting.
The next day I was back at work and sent my application for that job with a carefully worded email expressing my interest. I then called the business to see if I could stop by and introduce myself, to which I was told they actually aren’t hiring; another interesting form of rejection.
Figuring I would debrief my old man on the current state of affairs, considering his help and consideration, I sent him an email:
I sent this application and called them yesterday. They said they're not hiring. I said, "You have two jobs posted on your website." She said, "Yeah we just leave those up but aren't hiring. We have your info if we need it."....wonderful
Also I went on a date Tuesday night and was rejected because "I don't want a white baby".
What is this world?
Have a good day!
To which he responded:
Both of those absolutely suck. Hang in there.
Before saying some fatherly words of affirmation and telling me to move.
LESSON: Rejection comes in all forms and it sucks; the sun will still rise tomorrow… and the job market is a dumpster fire right now.
So with a couple new forms of rejection under my belt and a weird thing happening to my mouth, I figured I would try the panacea of washing it down with alcohol. While this seems pretty stupid, and is stupid, I have to admit that this tactic worked in Europe when my multi-week long bout of Turkish food poisoning was cured by one vicious night of drinking in Spain…
Alas, Dr. Anheuser-Busch’s cure-all did not heal my wounds this time, though I had a fun night. Tallyho!
LESSON: Next time, maybe I need to drink more beer?
4TH WEEK OF APRIL
While it has almost nothing to do with the idea of this article, the next day, thoroughly hungover, my roommate and I went to Kabuki Theater in Japantown to watch the newly released Warfare. I mention this only because it was a common talking point for my latter half of April and also one of the worst movies possible to watch when hungover; regardless, I highly recommend you go watch it.
LESSON: War is stupid.
Alright, here’s where the story gets real.
The next day, after a short day of subbing (sometimes I feel like the government just gives out money), I picked up my mother from the airport and grabbed some In-N-Out on the way home (don’t worry, the In-N-Out isn’t completely useless to the story). When we pulled up to the house, I noticed some water was flowing out of the yard, over the sidewalk, and into the gutter; I pointed it out to my mom and figured a sprinkler was broken.
When I opened the door to the house, I was immediately met by a very strange noise. I could hear what sounded like a faucet and had an unnerving sense that perhaps a dirty and/or thirsty person had broken in. I told my mom something was off, before creeping into the house towards the source of the strange sound. A few steps in, my shoes were met by water. Realizing the home intruder existed only in my head, I walked through a sizable puddle to the bathroom and discovered the source of the water.
The hose that connects the water line to the faucet had ruptured a tiny hole. Having our night abruptly interrupted, I noticed something wasn’t quite right with the torrent of water shooting out of the cabinet, and tried to turn off the valve below the sink. Despite cranking it as tight as possible, the water kept coming until my mother rushed out and turned off the water main to the house. That one little hole, spewing out water for, most likely, many days, had soaked the bathroom, the hallway, the office, two closets, and ruined the flooring, baseboards, and walls in about half the house. And that water from the “broken sprinkler” was actually water coming out from under the house.
LESSON: For home-owners, maybe turn off your water main when you leave for an extended period of time or get one of those remote water monitors. You could also try checking your pipes on occasion or just getting better luck?
To speed this story along, we spent the rest of the night trying our best to clean up any water we could find and trashing all the ruined stuff. We had a good time wrestling with a couch and water-logged rug, when I learned where I get my deadlifting ability from (my mom lifts with her legs and her back). Eventually, a kind neighborhood friend came over with an industrial shop-vac, which helped greatly; meanwhile I had the joy of laying out the hundreds of family photos to dry that had sat in a soaked cardboard box for God-knows how long.
LESSON: Don’t store anything on the ground unless it’s in a water-proof container.
Amidst all this cleaning chaos, I finally sat down to eat my In-N-Out; and wow, those burgers do not hold up once they get cold. I also had to take the onions out as my oddly ill throat couldn’t handle the burning sensation they caused; the strange mouth thing persisted.
Eventually we got the house cleaned as best as we could, brushed our teeth with San Pellegrino like eccentric Italian royalty of ye ol’ days, and got to bed around 2 a.m. While it was quite the night, and had resulted in the loss of 50 super important $1 records in my room, along with a steady flow of stress and headaches for my parents, as my mom said, “Nobody was hurt.”
The next day, I went to the doctor for my much overdue appointment; I had taken the next available appointment so I wasn’t seeing my regular doctor. Essentially, this guy had no clue what was wrong, told me to drink some water, wrote me a prescription for an acid reflux pill, and ordered me some lab work; oh, and casually mentioned it could be due to diabetes. Because, you know, “you’re never too young to get diabetes.”
I then drove across the Bay to work a few hours, as the fear of having a life altering disease slowly crept into my brain and grew more and more. At work, I spent most of my time just staring out the window into the void of existential angst as my mind slowly convinced myself that my life would never be the same; at least my (lack of) productivity wasn’t affected at all.
When I got back to my apartment, with this new possibility that I would have a chronic disease (yeah, Mom and Dad, that’s why I was acting so weird), I had absolutely no inclination to do anything, let alone go back to work the next day. As my roommate perpetually hates his job and loathes ever going back, we did what any rational young men would do in such a situation; we said, “F*ck it” and vowed to call in “sick” the next day.
LESSON: You have free will, woah.
As we both had lab work to do, we started our day of hooky bright and early with a couple needles in our arms and some urine in some cups. Then, with no real plan, we hopped in the car and headed north. After a stop at a diner in Marin for breakfast, we took Highway 1 up past Bolinas towards Palomarin trailhead. A friend had told me about Bass Lake and I wanted to go check it out; I figured some sun and air would do me good.
As much as I don’t like driving that section of 1, on sea cliffs that punish you with a fall to your death if you make a mistake, I popped in the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack that I’ve had rolling around in my car for awhile, and had a good drive. While I’ve actually never seen the movie, that soundtrack is a core memory from my childhood. I was too young to remember much, but my family took a week-long vacation way back when, and we listened to that CD on loop for the entire trip. Some phenomenal music if you ever want to run away from your life; but it might have stirred up too many memories of when I was a young kid that didn’t have to worry about chronic illness.
Anyways, we spent the majority of the day on a 13 mile hike through some beautiful land along the Coast Trail. With no real direction, we meandered by multiple lakes, barely stopping at Bass Lake, and ended up getting to Alamere Falls with the guidance of another hiker on the trail. We made a sketchy descent of the rock face and walked along the beach for about a mile before making a loop and heading back. While it was quite a bit longer than I had hoped for, it was a lovely area and I would highly recommend it to anyone that likes the variety of California’s nature.
After the hike, we took the long way back to SF and stopped in San Geronimo to grab dinner at Giaco's Valley Roadhouse. A lovely restaurant tucked away off of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, we had a delicious meal of homemade soup and pizza. Another place I would highly recommend to anyone passing through the area, I have added it to my list of places to go on fictional dates that will never happen… Thoroughly exhausted (boys, this is why I couldn’t make it to watch the Warriors game), we got back to the apartment, ate more food, watched TV, and went straight to bed.
The next few days were work as usual, albeit with way too much internet searching and stressing over my health. I had been receiving my test results, with some tests coming back labeled as “abnormal” and absolutely no doctor’s analysis or notes, and couldn’t help trying to decipher them myself. I was looking up leukocyte levels and creatinine and trying to piece together some hairbrained diagnosis.
LESSON: Never ever ever start searching the internet for your symptoms; it is always the worst diagnosis possible.
Just to add to the stress, my roommate and I had a dwindling number of days to find a new housemate before we would be footing a much larger bill for May's rent; but I found it hard to really care as my days blurred together and everything had a tinge of despair to it. The world looked different and I had trouble getting out of my own head; I felt a bit like I was drifting through life… well more than usual. Just like having my car breakdown, so much seems so less important when your health is in jeopardy.
5TH WEEK OF APRIL
With my health crisis in full tilt, I was informed by my parents that I had to come home soon to pack up my childhood room. The cleanup people couldn’t run the fans in my room because of the posters I had covering every inch of my walls and they didn’t want to touch anything in my room. So Saturday night, after watching the Warriors game with a good friend, I went home to spend the night and pack my room; when I walked into the house, it sounded like a wind tunnel. There were about five industrial fans running 24/7 throughout the house creating a “white noise” that sounded like an airport in our hallway.
The packing of my room took all of Sunday and half of Monday as I had 20 full size posters, not to mention the 40 smaller posters and so much random stuff I could open a museum of oddities.
LESSON: Throw your crap out or you’ll get emotionally attached to a ripped-out page of a magazine for 10 years.
There was also the obligatory walk down memory lane; at one point my mom was tearing up in the office over a memory she had unearthed, when my dad walked in, also tearing up, and reminded me of my grandfather’s PTSD story, which I then read and also teared up over; time, life, and family is an interesting thing. Eventually, with my flintlock pistol, dulcimer guitar, complete history of the US Army, and homemade record shelf all packed away, I was back to SF.
Sidenote: When the movers finally came days later, they refused to pack away my drawer of explosives. I understand the bottle rockets and M-98’s, but not even the musket balls? Weaksauce…
With my room in SF jammed full of even more stuff, I remember walking back home after parking my car and seeing a penny on the street. It was heads up so I snagged it for good luck, and put it in my pocket, adding it to the other lucky penny I had grabbed earlier in the week. I know a penny is just a penny, but I figured I could use all the luck I could get in light of recent events.
LESSON: Only using the third belt hole for every baseball game for a decade and doing the same number of arm circles before every at bat will make you quite the superstitious person for life.
The next day I worked a half day before my follow-up doctor's appointment; I’m known for not taking my job too seriously but wow, I don’t think I’ll ever care as little as I did that morning. My impending doom was looming too large to even pretend that my job mattered. I left work at noon, with my stress levels increasing like the speedometer on my dash, stopped at home to see my mother and help move a box, and went to the doc’s office.
By now I was almost fully convinced that this would be one of the worst days of my life and expected my doctor to walk in with some sort of standardized, serious talk ready. But instead he walked in and said, “So what brings you in today.” Ummmm I don’t know, maybe the dry mouth, burning throat, recent lab work with zero explanation, and suggestion of a chronic disease? Upon my insistence, he took a look at my lab work and said everything looked normal. Most of those “abnormal” levels were due to my fasting before the labs, a fast done at the behest of the first doctor.
Eventually I asked about my HbA1c test, the test for diabetes, to which he said, “Yeah, looks fine.” Fine?!? I pressed him for a real answer, telling him about the week of stress I had just endured, and he said, “Yeah, you definitely don’t have diabetes.”
LESSON: If you ever become a doctor, never toss around diagnoses on flimsy evidence before any tests have been done and then just send the patient on their way; it’s a cruel form of torture.
With my shoulders relieved of that burden, I asked what was wrong with me, considering my mouth was still messed up and the acid reflux pill had done next to nothing. His official diagnosis was, “I don’t know”.
With such an academic analysis of my condition underway, I inquired about the high “creatinine” levels in my blood, to which he had no answer. I suggested it could be due to my ingestion of creatine on a daily basis, which creates creatinine as a byproduct. He said that could be the case and, I swear to God, he pulled up a doctor’s form of Google and looked it up… He found a research paper that said I was most likely right and it’s nothing to worry about. Dude, I knew creatinine was a byproduct of creatine because I too have access to search engines! I mean, I’m no doctor but apparently my doctor isn’t either.
As with the previous guy, I was informed to drink water, live clean, and do follow up labs in an indefinite amount of time. Despite no actual diagnosis, and my health just back to where I had started three weeks before, I still left happy and cranked “I Just Want To Celebrate” by Rare Earth as soon as I got in my car.
LESSON: Sometimes you just need to take 3 minutes and 46 seconds to enjoy the wins when they come, even if that win is a return to square one.
I called a friend to tell him the result of my appointment, as I had been filling him in on my status for the past few weeks, and cruised back to SF. With my mental health much better than my physical health, I knew it was time to figure this out on my own and do some experimenting. I figured I would cut out any food, drinks, or supplements that were not essential to my survival, and see what happens.
That night, I weighed myself at 146 lbs. The next day at work, I started chugging water. And by chugging water, I mean absolutely crushing water. Honestly, I didn’t know I could drink so much water; I was downing a quarter liter per drink. That night, I weighed myself again; now, this might be TMI, but that day I also made five “trips to the restroom”, so I figured I would definitely be down a few pounds. Nope; the scale read 155 lbs… I had gained nine pounds in 24 hours! Upon further analysis, I drank five liters of water in a day, which at 2.2 pounds per liter, was 11 pounds of water! And unsurprisingly, my mouth felt way better; turns out, I was just chronically dehydrated. Maybe five coffees, 10 zyns, 5mg of creatine, and two huge glasses of milk a day while drinking less than a third of the recommended water intake for a year straight is not the best idea…
I told you this was a dumb tale! Did you not read the subtitle?
CODA
I have waited to post this, as my superstition runs so deep I didn’t want to jinx myself. But I just took those follow up labs, received some weak answers from my doctor along the lines of “you’re fine”, and decided that unless there’s radioactive waste in my room or I’m literally dead, people in lab coats are to be taken with a healthy pinch of salt. So I guess my chances of getting a chronic illness are back down to the same level as anyone else and posting this won’t change that.
Now, while my parents have a long road ahead, in the time since writing this, I chugged lots of water, felt much better, and then tweaked my neck lifting weights. I tried to lift more than I should have, given my fatigue level, and the Iron taught me a lesson in ego and self-restraint… I’ve since recovered from my neck thing, been sleep deprived, had changes in my work life, had some good times, and continued to live life. It all just goes to show that, if it ain’t one thing… but hey, that’s life. At least that's what all the people say; you're riding high in April, shot down in May. But I know I'm gonna change that tune, when I'm back on top, back on top in June.
Great one! Raiders game quote is funny. Yes, we do have a long way ahead and (just in case insurance reads this) we were only gone for three days. As I said on New Year’s, there may be some ups and downs but I am convinced this will be a great year .