Scattered Thoughts . . .

I have already written about my health crashing due to hot, humid weather over the past week but I haven't really written about the early part of the weekend. On the positive side, I think I am finally beyond this latest bout of poor health. Time will tell. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were rather lousy. Well, actually, the whole week was rather lousy but Thursday, Friday and Saturday were quite rough with some dangerously lousy health. I was overwhelmingly exhausted. I could have fallen asleep only a moment after deciding to allow myself to fall asleep at any time during the day. I was fighting staying awake all week long. This should have been my first clue that I was teetering on the brink of anaphylaxis with very low blood pressure... I didn't realize it yet though. I was having difficulty breathing at times. I often have difficulty breathing especially when the weather is hot like it was this past week so I was not associating this symptom with the fatigue. I should

My health often resembles a see-saw... my health swings upward and I experience relatively good days... then swings down and I experience rather miserable days... back up... back down... sometimes it balances in the middle for a relatively short period if I managed my health effectively and luck was on my side but, more often than not, it seems to move up and down like a pendulum moves side to side. Yesterday afternoon the see-saw started moving downward... after a little bit of dinner (I didn't eat much because I was feeling poorly), I had hoped that my health had leveled out in this short period before bedtime though... no such luck... Apparently, this see-saw continued on its downward swing through the night.  I was quite sick and in the bathroom for far too much of the night when I preferred to be and needed to be sleeping. Actually, I was overwhelmingly exhausted and struggling to keep my eyes open even while I was sick as a dog.  I really hate these nights. It takes a

I am back into recovery mode.  It is funny...  well... maybe "funny" isn't really the most accurate adjective... but, even after having Systemic Mastocytosis for more than 10 years, I still forget how much down time my body and health requires. It isn't until I have tasks and projects stacked up like aircraft in a holding pattern waiting to land at a crippled airfield that I clearly hear that voice... "Hey... hey you, there... you are sick! What makes you think you could make plans to get things accomplished like a healthy person? Do you need another reminder of just how sick you are?"  Then I suddenly get whacked with crappy health. Last night we trekked up to Lowes to pick up a few more patio blocks (I learned long ago that I need to break all projects down into small tasks... we need more than a "few" patio blocks but I can only handle a few at a time) for our kitchen grilling area project in the backyard. We had no problems with that other

Yesterday... it was brutal for a couple of hours. I was in and out of the bathroom, terribly sick and nauseated, and teetering on complete anaphylaxis. It was not a pleasant few hours. Systemic Mastocytosis is a rare illness in which the body's mast cells will indiscriminately 'attack' the body rather than their usual enemies such as wounds, pathogens and allergy. During this process, the mast cells will release a bunch of mediators which causes countless symptoms including anaphylaxis.  Typically, I do well at handling most of the resulting symptoms but anaphylaxis is a tough one to handle. When all these mediators are dumped into the body by my mast cells, my body responds by going into anaphylactic shock or at least bordering on anaphylactic shock or anaphylaxis. Yesterday, after breakfast, I started feeling rather poorly. My stomach was bothering me. I was a bit nauseated. Before long, I knew I would be sick and in the bathroom. I checked for my pulse... I had a

This entire week has been one health problem after another. I honestly was fighting back tears as my health crashed into anaphylaxis last night. The tears weren't because of pain nor simply because I was feeling miserable. The tears were because I have been so unproductive this week and I now had to accept the fact that the next few days would be, at best, a recovery period of more nonproductivity. This weighs so heavily on me, I suppose, because I want to do so many things around the house but can't... because each day I lose due to this debilitating illness, is one less day I will have in my life. Now, once again, I didn't just lose another day, I just lost a full work-week and this downtime of nothingness promises to be longer. We were doing some light shopping in Williston and South Burlington last night... the first store we visited was all it took. As we were walking into Bed, Bath & Beyond (we hadn't even entered the store yet), I was experiencing breathing

Shortly after publishing my last post here last night, my health crashed. I had been feeling 'uncomfortable' all night long. Actually, I had been feeling uncomfortable and a little bit 'off' for the past few days so I knew something was amiss and my health would be crashing before long. What I knew was coming hit me in the wee hours of the morning last night. My stomach had been gurgling and making all sorts of noises all day long. This typically is an indication that gastro-intestinal problems are forecast. This held true last night. For those of us struggling with Systemic Mastocytosis, our mast cells indiscriminately choose an organ to attack (for lack of a better medical term... clinically speaking, "attack" is an appropriate description though). Mast cells control many bodily functions and are very important defensive cells in immunology, allergy, and infection. The problem is that my mast cells will respond/attack anywhere in my body for no known r

Last night wasn't one of the best nights of my life.  It certainly wasn't the worst, but it was lousy nevertheless. Once again, my Systemic Mastocytosis negatively impacted my health.  This illness affects my health negatively every day, but that is my "new normal" so I don't really think much about my limitations when my health stays in this "new normal" range. How any transient symptoms manifest can vary greatly so, each time I have any problem of failing, debilitating health, it can be a relatively new experience.  Last night was a little strange... Earlier in the night, I felt 'okay'.  I was feeling a little full or bloated but nothing that would arouse suspicion.  (In hindsight, it should have.)  I had some moderate joint pain, but with the drastic change in weather today, I attributed this pain to the weather.  I was wrong, however, and these couple of things should have aroused some suspicion! In the middle of the night I ended up