3368 Two mysteries solved!

Saturday, October 15, 2011

A good thought provoking question: What painting would you like to step into?

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I'm one of those people who doesn't take aspirin when I have a headache, not because I have anything against medication, but because when I have a headache, my head isn't working right! And so I never even think of aspirin. Same with colds and antihistamines, and so on. When I'm sick, I need a nurse. I'm an excellent nurse to others, but not myself.

So when I had the fibro attack Wednesday and Thursday, I was in so much pain everywhere it didn't occur to me to ask why until I realized on Thursday night that I hadn't been drinking my usual three quarts of water per day. In fact, since like Saturday I had been down to maybe one quart per day, if that, plus all the physical exertion.

I had been distracted by Daughter's back problems.

Thursday night between 8 and 11 pm I drank about two quarts, and almost immediately felt better.

Sometimes I'm a complete idiot.

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I've been feeling a little rejected lately. I admit that being busy the past few weeks, and not taking the laptop with me when I go upriver, I haven't been commenting on others' blogs much. But what hurt a little was that often when I did comment, my comment never showed up. Like it had been rejected or blocked or something.

This morning I discovered something weird in Blogger. I'll type my comment and the verification word, and the ID part says "~~Silk", like usual, I hit "post", and then I get a small (new) popup screen that invites me to create a blog. I'd been just closing that screen.

This morning, I noticed that there was more text to the right in that popup, so I widened the screen, and POW!, there's a login section. I had assumed that since Blogger knew it was me, that I was logged in. I guess not. I guess my comments have been disappearing because Blogger considered me not logged in.

I don't understand.

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This is cute. I hope you don't need a Facebook id to see it, but I can't figure out how to copy it over. If you do have a Facebook id, you'll probably have to log in. It's Nugget's first time in her highchair (5 months old), and an early taste of rice cereal. That's Daughter feeding her, but I seriously didn't recognize Daughter's voice. Do catch Nugget's comment at the end. I don't know where she learned that (Gramma is looking away, digging her toe into the dirt, and whistling).

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2287617148820

(No, I don't have an indoor pool. Just a bathtub. All they have is a shower.)
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3367 Keeping Track

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Definition: Apophasis - mentioning something you won't mention, such as
"I won't even mention his arrogance!"

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Just a note so I can keep track. I seem to be having a flareup of fibro. I hurt everywhere, badly. And a few minutes ago an ocular migraine started. I can barely see.

These things seem to happen when I'm physically stressed.
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3202 Don't give me codeine

Saturday, December 18, 2010

"I'm not sure I want popular opinion on my side -- I've noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts."
-- Bethania McKenstry --

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Back in the dawn of time, in my 20s, I had frequent kidney infections. We never knew why, and I haven't had one since, but anyway - the doctors used to give me codeine for the pain. That's what was used back then.

It never worked. Didn't do a damn thing for the pain. And the doctors didn't believe me. They just patted me on the head and said of course it's working. Like they could somehow tell what I was feeling?

In later years, when doctors tried to give me codeine for back pain, I learned to tell them that I couldn't take codeine because it nauseated me horribly (it doesn't). They accepted that, where they wouldn't accept "It doesn't do anything for me" and they'd give me something else.

This morning I accidentally found this on Wikipedia, in the entry for co-proxamol:

...codeine is, in essence, a prodrug that requires in vivo metabolism to the more active opioid morphine for maximum efficacy, it is ineffective for some individuals with the "poor metabolizer" genotype of the liver cytochrome P450 enzyme CYP2D6.

I am vindicated! There's a reason it DOESN'T WORK FOR ME! It's not all in my head.

(I wounder if it's related to the asparagus piddle, cilantro soap, dropped colon, and skunk appreciation genes. I've got all those.)

So now I'm wondering - is it possible that people with fibromyalgia (it's "all in your head", "oh, you're overreacting to ordinary twinges", "you're an attention seeker") actually have one or another defective enzyme, and the pain is actual and real pain signals that would normally be moderated by these enzymes, but aren't, because they're defective? I mean, it's not like the medical community always knows exactly what's going on....
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1723 Freak

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I have fibromyalgia. It's not formally diagnosed because it's not something that can be cured or treated, so there's no point in having it on my record, but I do have eight of the sensitive points, and I have pain somewhere all the time. I also have a very high pain threshold - that "knuckle the sternum" thing to check for consciousness doesn't work on me, for example, and when my gall bladder went west, I didn't know there was anything wrong until I started throwing up coffee grounds. (Translation: blood.)

Anyway, I have something a little weird, and I don't know if it's common or not. If it's not common, I wonder if it's related to the fibro.

I found an ingrown hair on the outside of my left thigh this morning, and I was poking and pinching at it, and I didn't feel the pinch in my thigh. I felt it on the outside of my left bicep. I often sense a surface pain on my lower body as on the upper body, and vice versa. Like the nerves are messed up. The brain interprets a surface pain on the thigh as coming from the arm, and then I semi-consciously remap it to the proper place on the thigh. This is normal for me, and I've never really questioned it.

IS this common, normal? Do you ever, often?, feel a pinch far distant from where the pinch really is?

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Gov. Spitzer has been caught in a prostitution scandal. His legal problem is not with the misdemeanor visits, but with the felony act of moving money around to hide the payments.

I'm having some trouble understanding that. It's a felony to move money around? He moved money from his personal accounts to a holding company for the prostitution company, which may have had some "tax implications". That's the part I don't understand. Don't the taxes still get paid, one way or another? I'm going to have to follow this.

The visits to prostitutes is a public relations problem. My opinion on that? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

A lot of the blather is about how so many men in positions of influence and power seem to have sex scandals that take them down. People with

--- break ---

I had to run off mid-sentence. I looked at the clock and it was 5:15 pm. I had to leave the house by 5:30 to meet some friends for dinner, grand opening of a Thai restaurant, and I was sitting here in my PJs, unwashed and uncombed (yeah, at 5 pm, wanna make something of it? Benefits of retirement! I earned it! Shuddup!) Darn daylight savings time. My internal clock is all messed up.

--- end of break, 10 pm ---

So where was I? People with a lot to lose seem to do stupid things they know will hurt them if they're found out, and yet they do it. And the blatherers seem surprised by that.

I'm not, for several reasons.

The neighbor next door might be cheating on his wife with the secretary (or intern), but the big difference is that he doesn't have reporters and everybody else in the world following him around and poking into everything looking for dirt. Nobody cares. Spitzer turned up on a list of clients of the prostitutes. If neighbor John turned up on the list, no one would care, and we'd likely never hear about it. And there are a lot of Johns out there. A lot of men do exactly the same things that have taken down politicians and preachers lately. They escape scrutiny and vilification because, frankly, no one cares.

So that's one reason why. Scrutiny.

A second reason is that you don't acquire power by playing it safe. Powerful people take risks. Risk takers go for it. They did. Some of them took the risk and lost. You can bet your patooty that there are a lot more powerful people out there taking the same risk, and they will often be the loudest in condemning the guy who got caught. (Monicagate springs to mind.) They're not condemning him for what naughty thing he did --- they are condemning him for getting caught.

That's another reason why. Risk taking.

Third, the more powerful men get more women. At least they're supposed to. That's deep in the brain from cave days. More women, more breeding opportunities, more progeny. Otherwise, why work so hard and risk so much? It's animal nature. So a powerful man, deep in the dark recesses of his brain, thinks he deserves the reward. A powerful man also has more temptation thrown at him. That's why so many of them have serial wives, and/or get caught in embarrassing sexual escapades.

That's a third reason. A desire to collect the rewards.

--- Flash! On TV news this very minute, an analyst has said that Ms. Clinton's "as far as I know" (that something was not so) was a slip, and an admission of guilt! Oh, come on! "As far as I know" means that "I don't know that what you said is true, it may be true, but I know nothing about it". She's a lawyer! If she doesn't know that something is not true, then she CAN'T say "It's not true", because she doesn't know that. All she can truthfully say is "As far as I know, it is not true." Good Grief, people! There are very few things any of us know with certainty.

Am I going to have to stop watching the news again? End of flash ---
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1290 Pain

Thursday, June 7, 2007

I've mentioned before that I have fibromyalgia. That combined with old badly healed back injuries means I have a constant low level of muscle grumbling or flashing fiery nerve pain somewhere in my body, every day.

Mostly I ignore it.

Occasionally it gets insistent.

It hasn't been as bad the past ten years, which I sort of attributed to lower levels of estrogen or something, but I noticed that sometimes it would flare up again. Like right now - my left palm is on fire, there's a twisty feeling in my lower right abdomen, the left thigh burns, and my left shoulder feels full of gravel.

I think I may have made a connection.

After Jay and I had been married a while, he gradually got me started with supplements, the same things he was taking (fat lot of good it did him...). I currently take mini-aspirin, calcium + Vit D, Vit C, Vit E, fish oil, magnesium, lecithin, and a multi-vitamin without iron. It seems like ever since I've been taking them, the pain level has been reduced.

Lately I've been traveling a bit more, and sometimes I forget to take the week-long pill container with me and then I neglect to start up again when I get home, or it runs out and I neglect to refill it.

Surprise. I'm beginning to notice that after a week without the supplements, I start to hurt again. Hmmmm.

I'm pretty sure it's not the mini-aspirin, because that's the one that runs out the fastest, and I often don't buy more until something else runs out.

It's not worth experimenting to see which may be controlling the whatever goes wrong. I'll just be more careful about being consistent about the whole program.

One place I've already definitely made a connection - because I take the fish oil and lecithin, henna won't stain my skin (well, it won't stay for more than two days). A guy doing henna tattoos at Rakkasah one year told me he'd noticed that, too, that lecithin and fish oil make the skin too oily (note - not oil glands kind of oily - individual cells kind of oily!) But more significantly, my skin is definitely dryer when I haven't been taking them. I noticed my face was very dry this morning.

Excuse me while I go fill the pill case.
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