BAN #441: So, about my health issue last week...

Subscribers soothe my sore tummy. 

Blog Jam

What I’ve recently written on the blog, ICYMI

Monday 27 June, 2022: Unseen planets kick a ring of debris off-kilter around a nearby star

Tuesday 28 June, 2022: New method significantly speeds up the search for dangerous asteroids

Wednesday 29 June, 2022: Ryugu was born an asteroid, became a comet, and died an asteroid

Thursday 30 June, 2022: The best shielding against small meteorite impacts? Cover yourself in rubble

Friday 1 July, 2022: We're getting a clearer view of the interior of the Sun

Personal Stuff

In this case, yeah, it’s pretty personal

Warning, and I’m serious: In this issue I’m talking about a personal health issue, and there will be frank talk of some gooey stuff and a photo of one of my internal organs that might make some folks queasy, especially if the sight of any blood at all exacerbates that feeling. If this is the sort of thing that makes you feel ooky you might want to skip this, but please then read these first four paragraphs. I write this in an attempt to raise awareness of this in other folks, as I’ve done before, but in this case it’s not just important but crucial.

You should know the conclusion. <tl;dr> version: I had a bunch of stomach ulcers that caused me to lose a lot of blood. I’m OK now — well, better at least — but the doctors are quite sure these were caused by my use of ibuprofen/naproxen sodium. If you take NSAIDS, even or especially over-the-counter ones, have a very, very big care. In our case we have discarded all of these pills that were in our house and will never use them again.

I’m improving well, and expect to be back up to speed in a few weeks. I know some folks will want to send me well wishes, and I appreciate that, but if you want to make me feel better take care of yourselves, read up on NSAIDs and ulcers, and spread the word about this. Please.

Also, I’ve opened up commenting for all subscribers, paid and free. If you have questions feel free to ask ‘em, and I’ll try my best to answer.

So, in a better world, as this issue of the BAN is sent out I’d be in Paris drinking delicious red wine and eating fancy cheese to celebrate the 30th anniversary of my wife Marcella agreeing to go on a first date with me.

Instead, we’re at home, and I’m napping every few hours and struggling to stay warm after losing a significant amount of blood last week.

As I mentioned in a previous issue, in late June I’d been prepping to go to Luxembourg to host a series of live science panels and give talks about asteroids for Asteroid Day on June 30. The Asteroid Day folks graciously invited both me and my wife to come, so we were going to turn it into a vacation, something we haven’t had in many, many years. Neither of us has been to Luxembourg, and Paris is a short train ride away. We were very excited.

But then on Thursday June 23 things went south. I woke up that morning with cramps. They got worse rapidly, and I found myself needing to use the bathroom urgently.

[Here’s where it gets gross, folks, but I will be straightforward because, as I pointed out above, I want a lot more people to be aware of this issue.]

I had a rather large bout of diarrhea. But… it was black. Like, really black. Oh, I thought. That ain’t right.

I looked it up online, and not a single thing about black diarrhea is good. It could just be some bad food or medicine making it that dark, but I hadn’t eaten or taken anything out of the ordinary for some time. The other causes were more extreme, and the bottom line on every page was call a doctor.

I held off, because the symptoms actually cleared up pretty quickly, and I felt better, if tired — typical after such an experience. But unlike usual I didn’t get a lot better, and as the day wore on I was really fatigued. Just standing up caused me to get really light-headed. Later that day I started going up the stairs and after literally two steps I got so winded I needed to sit. My wife brought me a popsicle to get my blood sugar up.

Here’s where it got serious. I was sitting there on the staircase eating the popsicle and the next thing I knew my wife was in front of me with an extremely concerned look on her face while she held my head in her hands and shouted at me. After a moment I became lucid, and it turns out I had passed out while sitting on the steps and was completely unresponsive (weirdly, my eyes were open, which really freaked her out; she thought I was having a seizure).

At that point a trip to the emergency room was necessary. It took a while for me to rally enough to feel like I could get up and go to the car despite Marcella’s fervent urging; I was so woozy and nauseated I thought I was too ill to move. I regret that decision, which was foolish. If I yakked I yakked, but I should’ve gotten my ass in gear and let Marcella haul it to the hospital.

It didn’t take long for the on-call doctor to know what this was: A bleeding stomach ulcer, or at least one. That’s by far the most common reason for black, sticky diarrhea and my other symptoms. I was admitted, and the next day got an upper endoscopy. They knocked me out and put a camera down my esophagus to take a look-see.

Welp. I had five ulcers in my stomach, called peptic ulcers. An ulcer is a tear in the lining of the stomach, an open sore, so as you can imagine — in an environment with hydrochloric acid at a pH of 2 — this is a problem. One of the ulcers happened to open onto a blood vessel, and that was the bad one.

As my GI doctor said, blood is a great laxative. Get enough in your gut and out it comes. The amount of blood I lost isn’t clear, but my hemoglobin count dropped by nearly half in this incident. Half. If I had lost just a bit more they would’ve given me a transfusion.

During the endoscopy they cauterized the bad one and left the others alone to heal. Happily my duodenum (the upper part of the small intestine that meets the stomach at the pyloric valve) was free of ulcers. I was in the hospital for another day and then some, taking a lot of medication that reduces stomach acidity and helps line the stomach better, giving the ulcers a chance to heal. It’s been over a week now and I’m still on them; I’ll be taking meds for a few weeks yet. Happily I tend to heal weirdly quickly so I expect at my follow-up endoscopy in early September I’ll be fine. We’ll see.

I have to count myself lucky. Had this happened when we were in Europe it would’ve been hugely more difficult; their health care may be better and less expensive but we would’ve been stuck in a hotel room for a long time. To prep for the big trip I prewrote articles for the blog and newsletter, so at least I haven’t been forced to write stuff while feeling awful. I couldn’t write this article you’re reading until a full week after the initial events, and it still took a long time. In the glass-half-full department: If this had happened two weeks earlier we still couldn’t have traveled and I wouldn’t have been written up so far ahead. So, yay for that.

My bar for “yay” has lowered significantly recently.

So what caused all this? The bacterium Helicobacter pylori (generally called H pylori) is a known common cause of ulcers (and how that was discovered not long ago is a good story; stress can aggravate an ulcer but doesn’t cause them — and what a week for this to happen vis-à-vis stress, eh?), but in my case I’ve tested negative for the bacterium. So yay again.

Here’s where things get interesting. The other major cause of gastric ulcers?

Ibuprofen. Yes, Advil, as well as other NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) like naproxen sodium (Aleve and other brand names). I had no idea. But they are a huge factor in getting ulcers. They can erode the mucus lining of your stomach and duodenum, allowing the acid to eat away at the actual tissue there.

I have a bad back and some other spine issues so I take NSAIDs often, though at low dose. But dose is relative, and it was enough to cause me a serious health crisis. Maybe not life-threatening in my specific case, but given the circumstances it’s not hard to imagine how this could’ve been a hell of a lot worse. If the ulcer gets bad enough to eat all the way through the stomach tissue, perforating it, this does indeed become life-threatening. This is what happened in 2021 to Michigan Congressperson Debbie Dingell, and again the culprit was ibuprofen.

In fact, I had two GI doctors tell me that if ibuprofen were to be introduced today there’s no way it would get FDA approval. Take that as you will, but my wife and I decided to dispose of all of it that we had. Every last pill, and I’ll never take it again.

The good news is that I will heal, if slowly, and I can eat what I want; the antacids help there too. I get winded easily and tire out quickly, but I’m on the mend and already doing a lot better than a few days ago. It took me a while to write this with lots of breaks, but it shows I can start writing again, which is good. There’s been lots of cool astronomy news, with more to come (JWST PIX ON JULY 12!), and I want to be there to show you all these wonders. I’m glad I’ll be able to.

The lesson here, generalized, is that if something happens health-wise that’s out of the ordinary, check the googles and see what reliable sites (like the Mayo or Cleveland clinics) say, and if they say you need urgent care, GO GET IT. Also talk to your doctor about NSAIDs.

So thank you for reading this and for caring. Please take care of yourselves. And my thanks to all the doctors and nurses and health care providers who kept this from being a lot worse.

And also to my wife. Marcella, happy 30th. And it is happy, because I’m here with you, and we’re still able to celebrate. That’s in no small part because you took care of me when I needed it.

Et alia

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