Category: Uncategorized

Post migraine

~ susie

Is there anything quite like not having a migraine anymore? It’s hard to explain to non-sufferers just how weird you feel after the acute attack; after all, your brain was just performing some pretty strange tricks:

The effects of migraine may persist for some days after the main headache has ended. Many sufferers report a sore feeling in the area where the migraine was, and some report impaired thinking for a few days after the headache has passed. The patient may feel tired or “hungover” and have head pain, cognitive difficulties, gastrointestinal symptoms, mood changes, and weakness.[18] According to one summary, “Some people feel unusually refreshed or euphoric after an attack, whereas others note depression and malaise.”[19]

Usually (not always) I can minimize the worst symptoms if I stop trying to read (since, you know, you have a pulsating blind spot in your field of vision). But I was trying to look up how to use apple cider vinegar as a remedy, and it just made things worse. Plus, I still had work to do.

My migraines are frequently (but not always) stress related. Yes, I had another job interview yesterday. The immediate trigger, however, seems to be light — usually directed into my weak right eye from its peripheral vision. Certain kinds of patterns – for instance, I once got a migraine while sitting in an office from the way the light reflected off the venetian blinds.

They happen so infrequently (once or twice a year) that I forget about them — until they strike again, and I’m reminded that I’m at the mercy of my own physical wiring. It’s also a reminder of my own mortality:

Women who experience auras have been found to have twice the risk of strokes and heart attacks over nonaura migraine sufferers and women who do not have migraines.[72][73] (Note: Women who experience auras and also take oral contraceptives have an even higher risk of stroke).[74] Migraine sufferers seem to be at risk for both thrombotic and hemorrhagic stroke as well as transient ischemic attacks.[75] Death from cardiovascular causes was higher in people with migraine with aura in a Women’s Health Initiative study, but more research is needed to confirm this.

This was the second in two weeks, so hopefully I’m done for a while.

Thyroidland

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

I’d just like to say how strangely different my life is since I’ve been on the medication. Mostly, I feel that I have more hours in my day. When I wake up, I feel awake. I can concentrate on things. I actually plan several things for one day now, and it’s not a big deal. So hopefully I’ll have a job soon with medical coverage and can continue along this strange new path.

Chris Hayes, heroes, and ‘Catch-22’

~ odd man out ~ 3 Comments

Erik Kain at Mother Jones, defending MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who was bombarded with insults after questioning the wisdom of automatically referring to Americans soldiers who fall in battle as heroes:

In transforming our soldiers or police automatically into “heroes” we ignore the atrocities our own side commits. In doing so we also ignore the real moments of heroism. We give a free pass to anyone with a uniform and a gun regardless of their individual merit, and lend unwitting support to every war, from Iraq and Afghanistan to the War on Drugs, in the process.

I’m with Kain. What we need these days are more anti-heroes — people who rebel against the “my country right or wrong mentality” that allows us to be manipulated by lying politicians who all too often take the country into unnecessary wars to enrich “defense” contractors while dodging serious domestic problems.

We need more people like Yossarian, in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. More here.

Hedging bets

~ susie

Watch how fast this goes away. No way do they want to piss off their Wall St. masters in an election year:

WASHINGTON/BOSTON (Reuters) – Executives at financial firms would no longer be able to buy insurance to protect themselves against compensation clawbacks or civil penalties under legislation introduced on Wednesday by U.S. Representative Barney Frank.


The bill, Frank said, is aimed at protecting the intent of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other laws that let federal regulators recoup compensation or impose fines on individuals who break the law or engage in unsafe conduct.


“The creation of insurance policies to insulate financial executives from clawbacks is one more effort by some in the industry to perpetuate a lack of accountability,” Frank, a Democrat and co-author of Dodd-Frank, said in a statement.


The clawback provision was inserted into the Dodd-Frank law in response to public anger that executives at banks and other Wall Street firms such as AIG were still being paid large salaries and bonuses despite mistakes that fueled the 2007-2009 financial crisis.


Frank’s bill ensures that anyone subject to a clawback is personally liable for any payments, and bans insuring or hedging against that liability.

EPA: Fracking water contamination ‘not unsafe’

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Would that be the same EPA that let BP off the hook for the massive Gulf oil spill? The same EPA that says it’s safe to eat Gulf seafood? Just wondering, since they don’t seem to have a very good track record with “facts”:

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Federal environmental regulators say testing of scores of drinking-water wells in a northeastern Pennsylvania village has failed to turn up unsafe levels of contamination, providing ammunition to a gas driller that denies it polluted the aquifer with hazardous chemicals while prompting accusations the government is distorting the data.


The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released test results for an additional 12 homes on Friday and said they “did not show levels of contaminants that would give EPA reason to take further action.” It was the fourth and final release of data for homes in Dimock, a rural Susquehanna County community that’s found itself in the middle of a passionate debate over the safety of drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in deep rock formations like the Marcellus Shale.


The EPA testing is only a snapshot of the highly changeable aquifer and will not be the final word on the health of the water supply. But pro-industry groups and Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., the Houston-based driller whose faulty gas wells were previously found to have leaked methane into the aquifer, assert the test results justify their position that Dimock’s water is safe.


“Cabot is pleased that EPA has now reached the same conclusion of Cabot and state and local authorities resulting from the collection of more than 10,000 pages of hard data — that the water in Dimock meets all regulatory standards,” spokesman George Stark said Friday.


But residents who are suing Cabot and anti-drilling activists say the EPA has issued a series of misleading statements on what the tests show. They say some of the wells had a combination of chemicals, metals, gases and salts that suggest the influence of drilling and fracking; that drinking-water standards have not been established for some of the toxic substances that turned up in the wells; and that testing also revealed high and sometimes explosive levels of methane in about a third of the wells. Opponents also raised technical concerns about the data.

More stupid right-wing Catholic shit

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

This is just plan silly:

All second baseman Paige Sultzbach wanted to do was play in her school’s state championship baseball game tonight.


But because she is a girl, that won’t happen.


Sultzbach is a freshman at Mesa Preparatory Academy, which had been scheduled to play Our Lady of Sorrows Academy in tonight’s Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship at Phoenix College.


But Our Lady of Sorrows, a fundamentalist Catholic school in Phoenix that lost twice to Mesa Prep during the regular season, chose to forfeit the championship game rather than play a team fielding a female player.


Our Lady of Sorrows school officials would not comment, but Sultzbach’s mother, Pamela Sultzbach, said her daughter and the rest of the team received the news after Wednesday afternoon’s practice.


“This is not a contact sport, it shouldn’t be an issue,” Pamela said. “It wasn’t that they were afraid they were going to hurt or injure her, it’s that (they believe) that a girl’s place is not on a field.”


Paige played softball and volleyball in junior high, but because Mesa Prep does not have a girls softball team, she decided to try out for the boys baseball team, with the coach’s encouragement.


From early on, Paige tried to blend in, her mother said. When the coach referred to the kids as “guys and gals,” Paige spoke up and said that they all wear the same uniform, so the coach should just call them all guys.


Her teammates have stood up for her.


During Mesa Prep’s two previous games with Our Lady of Sorrows, Paige didn’t play out of respect for the opposing team’s beliefs, but that wasn’t going to be an option this time, Pamela said.


“We respected their school rule … but she took it hard,” Pamela said. “She didn’t like it and neither did her teammates. They went out and played the best they could because they wanted to prove a point.”


Our Lady of Sorrows is run by the U.S. branch of the Society of Saint Pius X, a group of conservative, traditionalist priests who disagree with the reforms of the Vatican II Council in the 1960s and broke with the Catholic Church in the 1980s.