Unavoidable karma

My doctor called this morning a little after 9:00.  He had results from yesterday's blood test.  Good news - both thyroid and hemoglobin are low.  Good news because both can be addressed with medication, and might be partly responsible for my fatigue and shortness of breath.  Bad news - lipase had risen.  And you didn't even know you had one, right?

The lipase they are measuring is a pancreatic enzyme.  The one to the left is a guinea pig's enzyme, so beautiful these things make me wonder, why make art?  They got it down dramatically in the hospital by starving me - nothing (at all) by mouth at first, then liquid diet, all of that with IV flowing in.  But it has risen since I got out and started pushing the pancreatic diet a little, a few grams of fat here and there.

The doctor is young, but he is learning how to motivate his geriatric population.  I see him next week.  If it doesn't go down, I'll have to go back to the hospital.  I said, "They can't really do anything for me in the hospital."

He said, "They can hydrate you and keep you from eating."  Oh jeez.

Tom and I both really dislike me being in the hospital.  We went to the grocery store and up and down the aisles we went buying everything fat-free we could find.  There isn't much, but on the other hand, it's a lot, and it's crowding a kitchen counter now, out where I can see what I have to pick from.  I made it today with only .5 grams of fat (as opposed to 18 yesterday.)  Delicious fact:  strawberries on angel food cake.  Tomorrow for breakfast I want zucchini and scrambled egg white.  I can even put fat-free cheddar on it.

Believe me, none of these foods taste like "the real thing."  But the cause-and-effect is undeniable.  It's one of those less subtle examples of karma.  Jack Kornfield says he had a student who summarized it like this:  "You don't get away with nothing."  Yesterday's blood tests proved that to me.