Category: The Body Electric

Update

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

So my right arm, shoulder, neck and hand are really shot. (Oh, and I have arthritis in both thumbs.) Constant pain, weakness, getting tests. (It did not help that WordPress “updated” the site again, and I now have to make three additional movements to get the things done I used to do with one movement. Why male techies are so bad with ergonomics, I have no idea. By the way, because I have been such a fanatic about that sort of thing, I have never had carpal tunnel. Most of my problems originate from herniated discs in my neck.)

person using gray laptop computer
Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash

Anyway, I absolutely have to minimize how much I do, and since I get paid to post at the other site, that’s got to be my priority.

What are the things you want and need from this site? What do you look for when you come here? Please, be specific. Do you want the constant doom scrolling, or nah? According to my stats, I average about 300 visitors a day. Also according to my stats, no one clicks on the story links. (The highest amount I’ve seen in weeks is eight clicks on a story.)

What about the music? Do I need to post this many? Should I seek out new music, or just stick to oldies?

Please let me know in the comments.

Another adventure

~ susie

As I write this Sunday morning, my eyes are swollen almost shut and I’m waiting to see if the ozone machine I ordered will actually arrive. (Update: Nope. Won’t be here until Monday, which is today.)

It all started Friday night, when I left a pot of chicken soup on the stove. I turned it off and went to bed. I woke up at 3:30 to an apartment filled with smoke. I didn’t turn the flame off all the way! (Interestingly enough, my wired smoke detectors did not go off.)

I have asthma — mild asthma, but certainly not capable of standing up to smoke inhalation. It sucks.

I wiped down everything in my kitchen, but it didn’t help. It was so bad, I drove to Jersey Saturday night just to have dinner at a local diner, where I could breathe clean air for an hour or so. (Liver and onions, which I love but never think to make for myself. Yum!)

My windows were open, HEPA filters a-humming, and fans blowing when I got back. No improvement at all, so I ordered an ozone generator in desperation. Amazon indicated I would get it overnight. I used one many years ago when I had a similar problem after buying a memory foam mattress, and couldn’t tolerate the off-gassing fumes. It worked pretty well.

This was not a good couple of weeks, not at all. My histamine intolerance is through the roof, and like the last time I had a flareup several years ago, my diet has gotten more and more restrictive. A couple of weeks ago, I had some peanut butter and crackers and holy Moses, that was scary. My throat swelled up and I was having a teensy bit of trouble breathing until the Benadryl kicked in. Same thing with some honey barbeque potato chips. Oh, also when I made some Shake and Bake chicken. I had to rinse off the spices before I could eat it. (My doctor has since ordered me an epi pen.)

Also, anything fermented. I love balsamic vinegar glaze, but right now, it feels like I’m pouring battery acid down my throat. Most cheeses bother me, too. I can eat a little bit of ice cream, but who can live on that?

Histamine is in everything, so unlike people who have plain old food allergies, I can have a surprise reaction to anything. Like tuna fish! A couple of weeks ago, I had something they call scombroid fish poisoning. The histamine levels in tuna go through the roof when it has not been kept cold enough at each step of the supply chain. I filed a complaint with the state, which kicked it back to a city agency.

“What is that? I never heard of it,” the city worker said when he called. “I never heard of it, either,” I told him.

I love tuna salad, it’s one of my favorites. (Yes, I know about the mercury. I only eat it every every ten days or so.) This experience made me very paranoid.

But wait, there’s more! I apparently now have something called “burning mouth syndrome,” also called glossodynia. Just what it sounds like. Pretty much anything I eat hurts. But I can’t see a specialist without a referral, so that goes onto the checklist.

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I assume some of this was triggered by long covid, but the histamine intolerance flared up years before covid. Maybe it’s the Lyme, I dunno. Maybe I just have fucked-up DNA. (My late ex-husband used to tell me I should live in a hermetically-sealed penthouse. But he’s dead and I’m not, so joke’s on you, pal!)

My friend Nicole Belle and I always joked that blogging kills, because almost every blogger we know has some kind of weird autoimmune disease. So maybe that’s it.

Maybe Trump and the fascist takeover is a little bit stressful.

Bitch, bitch, bitch

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

I just have to vent, because I live alone. Two weeks ago, I came down with covid — for the fourth time. I didn’t know it was covid until the second week, when I started getting chills. Until then, it just seemed like a bad allergy week, with a runny nose and lots of sneezing. (I never sneeze. I should have known.) I wear a mask everywhere, I have no idea how I caught it. Maybe at physical therapy, I don’t know.

Anyway, then the long covid symptoms came roaring back.

Now, here’s the thing. After a year of struggling with long covid from the last infection (you might remember last summer when someone ran a red light, totaled my poor car, and the non-mask-wearing tow truck driver gave me me covid), I was finally starting to feel like myself again. I was so damn happy. No more falling asleep all the time, no more crushing fatigue where I can’t even bring myself to load the dishwasher. I was getting shit done.

I felt like I had my life back. That lasted maybe six weeks.

And now, I’m right back where I started. The neurological symptoms aren’t fun; it takes me maybe five minutes now to figure out the name of the familiar politician I’m posting about. (“Let’s see, he’s a Republican, is he a senator? I think he’s a senator…”) And the weird smells that follow losing my sense of taste! I keep smelling something burning in my apartment.

At least my tongue didn’t swell up this time. Because then you keep biting it in your sleep, and it hurts all the time.

But I’m so, so tired. This time, even though I’m sleepy all the time, I CAN’T SLEEP. I go to bed early but the longest I sleep is five hours. I tried several times to take a nap today, and finally gave up.

An estimated 17 million adults currently have long COVID. There are roughly 250 million adults in the U.S. population, 43 million of whom report ever having had long COVID and 27 million of whom report having had it in the past but not having it currently.

I frequent an online chat for people with long covid, and I consider myself relatively lucky. There are young, previously active people who are confined to bed, or a wheelchair. People who have lost their jobs, have no money, and go from couch to couch, just trying to survive.

And always, the desperate search for some magic supplement that will relieve any of the symptoms. (My desk is covered with supplement bottles. I can’t even remember why I take half of them.) Only one supplement was a slam dunk — one of my doctors, who also had long covid, recommended it for the chronic chest pain. I forget the ingredient, but it’s an epithelial plaque stabilizer, and it works. (It’s also $40 a month. Self-treatment adds up.)

Anyway, short version: I’m back in the long covid cave. It makes me angry that no one is paying attention to this.