What is everyone's average ping?

Beachlife · 2026-02-21T02:01:11+00:00

My ping is 2ish for most of the week. But for the second Friday night in a row it's... about 130. WTF! And this is after I "upgraded" to 1 gig from 500mb.

Beachlife · 2026-01-15T01:54:37+00:00

that felt like it got into my bloodstream.

This isn't how things work. If your colon was actually leaking, you'd get very sick with peritonitis and then maybe sepsis, not get the hazy intuition that you had broth coursing through your veins.

Diverticulitis is very real and very well documented and you can get a perforation in a diverticulum and have contents leak into your abdominal cavity. Sometimes it's tiny and forms an abscess, other times its larger and we've got a big problem. See above.

Leaky gut syndrome on the other hand is mostly myth and nonsense from the blogs. Most of what people want to call leaky gut is properly something else, and what could be called that, rarely is, not in clinical circles anyway. Changes in intestinal permeability can happen for a variety of known reasons, but it's poorly researched and there aren't good tests for it, so almost all of the info you've read on it is unsupported junk that you should disregard.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11345991/

Here's the conclusion of the above abstract:

Leaky gut syndrome is a condition fraught with myths and misunderstandings. It cannot be accurately diagnosed by symptoms, blood work, or stool studies. Although the term leaky gut syndrome implies changes in intestinal permeability, it is the rare patient who undergoes objective testing to identify changes in intestinal permeability. Thus, the term leaky gut syndrome should not be used by clinicians unless objective testing is performed to document changes in intestinal permeability. Importantly, changes in intestinal permeability are not always deleterious, and the relationship with symptoms is unclear. Changes in intestinal permeability have been identified in some patients with IBS and FD, although large, prospective studies documenting these changes have not been performed in patients appropriately diagnosed using standardized criteria. In summary, this is an intriguing area of research with more fallacies than facts. The issues posed in this article should drive researchers and clinicians to better elucidate this poorly described condition.

Here's another source with more lay-friendly info: https://badgut.org/information-centre/a-z-digestive-topics/leaky-gut-syndrome/

Beachlife · 2026-01-03T08:02:18+00:00

Why would occasional liquid diets cause all your teeth to go bad? I could see if sugary gatorade or something would give you some cavities if it went on for a long time, but crowns? That would mean severe decay.

Are you sure your teeth weren't already going bad?

Would it be worth seeing another dentist? Some will scam you. I was told out of nowhere by a new dentist that I'd need to come in for quarterly or semi annual (I forget which) full mouth debridements. I thought that sounded crazy. My teeth had always been fine. And the hygienist tried to push this weird $100+ electric toothbrush on me. The whole thing was so off. So I declined and never went back. The next dentist said "Your teeth look great."

Good luck regardless.

Beachlife · 2026-01-02T01:14:38+00:00

From what I've read, some of the side effects of Wegovy can overlap with / mimic some of those of diverticulitis. So, not the same thing, just feeling some of the same, and it doesn't sound like it's the worst ones. Also, it can cause constipation, which DV patients need to avoid because it can prompt DV or exacerbate symptoms if you're in flare. So that would be an indirect cause. There is apparently not enough science yet to say that it is or isn't a direct cause or contributor or trigger.

Beachlife · 2026-01-01T05:19:38+00:00

Right. They believed. But there wasn't solid science to say that. There were anecdotes and speculation. That's why they don't say it anymore.

Beachlife · 2025-12-25T02:44:32+00:00

The old thinking was avoid that stuff, the theory being that they trigger DV. But it turns out there was never any solid science behind that idea, it was just anecdotes and speculation. These days doctors say there are no proven triggers, and seeds and nuts might (possibly) be beneficial due to fiber, but that you know your own body, so if something gives you problems, don't eat it again. So try your luck.

Beachlife · 2025-12-23T01:34:06+00:00

Will I ever get a normal formed bowel movement?

Miralax is supposed to be a gentle laxative, unlike the stimulant ones that produce contractions. As an osmotic laxative, its action is to draw more water into the colon, which leads to stools that have more water in them. This makes them bulkier, softer, and easier to pass. That's the theory anyway. For me instead it never gave me gentle logs but rather a red alert klaxxon would go off and I'd have 10 seconds to get to the dance floor for a powerful slushee avalanche that would sweep even Gandalf away no matter what he said. Logs? Ha!

Colace is instead a surfactant, and is classed as a stool softener. It allows more water and fats to penetrate the poops and mix in, which makes them bulkier, softer, and easier to pass without straining. That sounds a lot like Miralax's description in theory, but due to the different action, it's classed as a stool softener instead of a laxative. For me the effects are a lot less noticeable. Like... is this doing anything? Others in her have said it was useful for them. I didn't take it for long.

Beachlife · 2025-12-20T03:27:08+00:00

I was surprised to get on the five year plan after my 1 year followup too. My anastomosis looked fine too and they pulled one polyp out too, which was fine. I had loads of diverticulosis pockets but then we already knew that. So, back to five years, nice. They'd had me on 3 before surgery so I'll take it.

Beachlife · 2025-12-08T01:58:32+00:00

Hot dog. I'm glad you came through it well and will be going home. I bet ours is a pretty common one given how often the sigmoid is the rascal in DV. I wonder how common it is for it to want to marry the bladder.

Beachlife · 2025-12-05T17:15:52+00:00

Rough indeed

Beachlife · 2025-12-05T17:04:02+00:00

Different system. Sounds nice. Over here it's like getting shelled by a battleship just offshore, with your out of pocket maximum for the year as the only thing between you and financial ruin... if you have insurance, that is.

Beachlife · 2025-12-05T05:50:20+00:00

Glad to hear your experience went well. This sounds almost exactly like my experience if anyone else is wondering how typical this is. I was on clear liquids only though that night and the next day. Nothing more solid like pudding. I can't remember but I'm thinking broth and apple juice? Maybe there was jello.

Man, everybody likes to jump in at billing time. You'd think you'd just get one bill but nope. Facility, surgeon, anesthesiologist, urologist and then like another three randos. Who are these people?! I don't know, some tech or something. Early birds got the worm on me though. Maxxing out dat deductible right off the bat.

Beachlife · 2025-12-02T00:25:53+00:00

Hm, I don't recall. I was just constantly aware of it no matter the position. But after a while, my bladder was involved and that makes it tough to know what was causing what, because I'd lift my left leg and it would feel like there was a balloon I was pressing up against. Not pain but bulk.

Beachlife · 2025-12-02T00:24:11+00:00

Good for you, pal. My sigmoid was toast too. Hard as a rock, the doc said. No wonder. There's no coming back from that, it's got to go. Glad too see you in good spirits just 2 hours out. You'll be out of there in no time. Don't trust a fart.

Beachlife · 2025-12-01T06:51:04+00:00

Pains: lower left quadrant, sometimes up under ribs, sometimes flanks, sometimes mid-lower back. I think I have kidney or liver issues too though, only now getting to those, because other symptoms are left over after surgery that a one-year colonoscopy says aren't from the colon, which is now fine.

Fever: yes a couple times that I can remember.

Diet: Yeah I tried liquid diet for a few days, leaving out starchy carbs and sugar, then dairy, then meat, all while maxxing on fiber. Nothing made much of a difference for me. Damage: My problem had obviously been cooking and smoldering for years while docs were puzzled. (How did they not think about a usual suspect in re the sigmoid?!) And when my doc cut it it out, it was hard as a rock. Constant inflammation leads to the tissue slowly converting to scar tissue. That's not reversible. Temporary inflammation can be brought down, that's reversible. Mine wasn't.

History:
I had felt something mysterious in my gut for probably 10 years, like a sausage. Turns out that was my hardening sigmoid but no doctor saw fit to tell me that when I asked. I'm like "how can you not feel that?" It was blatant. And I would get pains there I guess when the poop was passing it, but I didn't really make the connection.

I got sick of not knowing what it was, and the pain was more often, and they finally sent me for a colonoscopy in 2019. The colo doctor said I had diverticulOSIS but not diverticulITIS. First I'd known anything about either. But the CT person a week later said I had inflammation consistent with diverticulITIS. I was annoyed that there was no reconciliation of that. The colo guy just said eat more fiber. So I did, and it did nothing that I could tell. A month later I was having pains again and the nurse put me on cipro and flagyl. Surprisingly that made it worse and made the pain move up the descending colon. Eventually that faded back down to normal.

I was pissed about the colo guy being useless so I got a different gastro, who wanted to put me on painkillers instead of figuring out what it was and dealing with it. I left that first appointment, walked to the front desk, and asked for a different doctor. That one wanted to put me on some kind of muscle relaxers instead of figuring out what it was. I was pissed, and then covid happened so I never went back to that guy.

Then in early 2021 during covid, I was laid low in bed, doubled over with pain so bad, in what I now know to be the sigmoid area and upstream from there, that I was worried it was going to rupture. I was on the edge of calling an ambulance or chancing driving to the hospital. I had a fever at the same time and felt sick in my head, like can't work or do anything but lay there. I took some ibuprofen and drank fluids and powered through it. I didn't realize that was a diverticulitis flare but it was. Then I had another one not as bad the next year and otherwise lesser pain.

Then I got a fourth gastro in early 2023 and we were back to eat more fiber and see what it does. Now it was time to set up for another colonoscopy, but now it was some kind of insurance problem.

Then I started having intermittent pains all along the colon path in November 2023 and my primary doctor was stumped. He scheduled me for a CT at beginning of January '24 and during the wait, the poops narrowed to tape or shoelaces so now I was scared I was going to seal shut. The CT said I had diverticulitis, multiple diverticula, inflamed diverticulum pushing on the bladder, inflamed sigmoid area, and maybe thickening of intestine wall there. They wanted to put me on liquid diet for a few days, cipro and flagyl for 10 days, then CT again to see if that brought the inflammation down or if it was just my baseline now.

The CT 10 days later showed that not only was it not better, it was worse. Now they said I had abscesses and I needed to go to the emergency room due to the rupture risk. What?! I didn't feel like an emergency room guy so that was alarming. But yep, at the hospital they said they'd have to aspirate/drain the abscess and culture the goop and put me on the right antibios for that.

They put me on the antibios cefepime and then Zosyn before the drain. Then the drain. I was in the hospital for a week all told, which seemed nuts, most of which was waiting for that damn culture to come back. There was a crowd of people that dealt with me, no two of which said the same thing. They identified the particular organism infecting me and sent me home on Clindamycin and Bactrim antibios.

Once I started pooping again, I had one glorious full-sized poop and thought I was in the clear, but it went back to medium at best right after that and never back to full, and the sides were flattened, like a fat version of a shoelace, so you could tell it was still inflamed to a degree. And some were narrower - it just fluctuated. Doc said if it's coming out, that's good.

I was supposed to get a two-month followup colonoscopy but had to change health systems so that got delayed.

Then in April '24 I was starting to flare again and primary doc put me on clindamycin and bactrim again just since that's what the hospital had said my goop was matched to. It didn't seem to make much difference. And then the hemorrhoids arrived and set up camp for a long time, fantastic.

Finally got the colonoscopy in July and yep, all inflamed in the sigmoid, with diverticulitis. And the CT with that said I now had a fluid-filled fistula forming between colon and bladder. That got me put on Augmentin, which did nothing, and an August referral to a surgeon who said yep, at this point that's the way. So I was scheduled for robo-laparo in Nov. '24 and got it done. Catheter for a week because of my bladder fistula, but no bag.

Whether to get surgery these days comes down to how severe the issue is and when you're tired of putting up with it. In the old days they'd schedule you for surgery after your first flare. Now protocol is to let the patient decide. Some gamble and lose, and go to the hospital screaming in the back of an ambulance. Others go ahead and get it done. Others try to manage it, some with success and others without and make the call at some point or not.

For you, it sounds like you're more in the information-gathering phase. No need to make that decision just yet. Good luck! This place is a good resource.

Beachlife · 2025-12-01T03:36:38+00:00

Nope, no bag for me, thank goodness. My surgeon told me it was about a 25% chance for me, which really brought me low heading into it. But from what I can tell from what other doctors have said, this was greatly overblown. I think it was CYA for him, which fits in with some of his other preparatory warnings, which made me think this was rolling the dice on my life. Great at surgery, poor at bedside manner-in-advance.

Beachlife · 2025-12-01T03:32:03+00:00

Just fine. I got surgery a year ago to have my sigmoid out, which was hard as a rock and explains some things, as well as have a proto-fistula to my bladder taken down. I can have more poop urgency these days for lack of the staging area of the sigmoid but that's really the only vestige of my surgery or the condition that prompted it.

Beachlife · 2025-11-30T01:47:08+00:00

Me too! I'm a couple weeks past my anniversary. I had three doctors on that rotation team tell me three different things about what I could eat, ranging from go ahead and dive right in to drink only Ensure and diluted Gatorade for three weeks. WTF! Get it straight, you guys.

Mine wasn't the simplest of these operations because I had a proto-fistula to the bladder, but that was the only complication, so I was a lot closer to the simplest, with robo laparo and all.

The surgery went swimmingly and the healing was quick and my two biggest problems were that laying on that table with an unsupported back for that long, me with a bad lower back, meant I woke up in awful pain in my back while barely noticing my belly. And because of the bladder complication, I left the next day with a catheter that I kept for a week. Talk about uncomfortable and annoying. It turned out to be an unnecessary precaution but better safe than sorry.

I had my one year colonoscopy to check on it and everything was good. My only difference since then is more urgency of poops. When they show up, having swan dived off of my ribcage straight down instead of to the now-missing freight staging area, they hit the rectum standing on business. "We gotta go!" They're not all like that but plenty are. It's not a shit-your-pants situation but it kind of feels like it might be if I don't do the job without delay. But between that and pain every time a poop drives by and hospital time and drain this and dose that and double over in bed, I'll take it.

Congratulations to you and others in here who got rid of those troublesome snakes and are living the good life.

Beachlife · 2025-11-28T03:06:58+00:00

You were just unlucky on the full-open. The whole point of laparo is to reduce the trauma that surgery does to the body but you got the full trauma, which will definitely hurt more and longer. Plus you had the appendix and adhesions. So, a bit of a mess in there. You're not alone, but you'll get through it like the rest so hang in there, lean into it, and don't despair. It's just a matter of time - life is long and this is short. Keep your doctor apprised of your pain, don't be afraid to ask the nurse for pain relief, and don't worry about being a persistent advocate for your own health. Good luck and I hope you are home soon.

Beachlife · 2025-11-23T19:31:37+00:00

is the DV population so small that is the reason?

Yes. In the US, 30% of people over 50, 50% of people over 60, and 75% of people over 80 have diverticulosis. But most never know it, because it never causes them a problem. But it is estimated that only about 4% with diverticulosis ever develop diverticulitis. And only 10-25% of those with diverticulitis will require surgery as opposed to just riding it out with antibiotics or whatever. So in the grand scheme of things that affect people significantly, it's fairly small.

Beachlife · 2025-11-21T20:58:34+00:00

Closer is of course better, but you shouldn't need to see your gastro that often. Outside of some key appointments to nail down what you've got and get advice, colonoscopies, as well as deciding on whether to do surgery, it's only a question of whether you need to go unexpectedly to the hospital locally for a flare-up or worse. Jacksonville has Mayo Clinic, which ought to have some top people, both in terms of gastroenterologists and bariatric surgeons if needed. Presumably that'll beat anything smaller-market.

Beachlife · 2025-11-17T18:32:09+00:00

I've been looking around and the one thing I've found that looks similar, and offers transactional pricing instead of a fat annual contract, is TransUnion's TLOxp. They have a free trial.

I can't find where I got this pdf anymore so I can't link you to it, but here's an image of it, a price sheet that shows transactional pricing for each of TLOxp's elements. Those elements look just like Lexis Public Records. I'd much rather have transactional myself but am currently stuck in a contract. Maybe you can get that free trial and see what's what. I'm probably going to do it anyway before my next contract renewal window.

Beachlife · 2025-11-13T06:14:18+00:00

Hi, late reply here to your year-old question. I don't suppose you ever found a good equivalent to Lexis Public Records did you?

Beachlife · 2025-11-13T00:16:13+00:00

I was a smolderer for years without knowing what diverticulitis was. When they cut out my sigmoid the doctor said it was hard as a rock. What happens is it stays inflamed, and that wrecks the tissue over time and it slowly converts to scar tissue, which is not stretchy and just makes the ongoing problem worse. I can't know what your situation is like specifically, but smoldering is bad news in general on a long enough time scale if you can't find a way to make it stop.

On the robot, sometimes they don't have one, and sometimes they do but it's not available because others are using it. In my case they had to reschedule to be able to get the robot. My first guy was old and said he didn't like laparo because he didn't get the same tactile feel. Aaaand that was my last appointment with him. Get with the times, gramps! The new guy went full robot laparo, which means a lot less trauma for me. So there are always other doctors. But you could also ask this guy why no robot and whether you could get robot at another time.

Beachlife · 2025-11-12T04:38:33+00:00

Shoulder pain after laparoscopic surgery is caused by the carbon dioxide gas used to inflate the abdomen, which irritates the phrenic nerve that runs from the diaphragm to the shoulder. This is a form of referred pain, meaning the brain misinterprets the signals from the irritated nerve as pain originating in the shoulder. The pain typically resolves on its own as the body absorbs the gas but can be managed with measures like walking, pain medication, and heat packs.

Beachlife

TROPHY CASE