Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ast night was pretty brutal.   Sheila and I were watching a Dayton basketball game on television and I started to experience breathing problems.  I grabbed my inhaler and just assumed that a couple of uses of that would take care of the problem.  It didn't.  I used my inhaler again.  That still didn't help and my health continued to spiral downward. I was feeling slightly dizzy and lightheaded very quickly.  Then I started getting hot so I knew things were worsening and getting bad.  My health deteriorated so quickly and severely that I moved to the living room floor right in front of the Christmas tree for two reasons...  first, I was feeling like I might lose consciousness and I didn't want to fall over and hit something on the way down.  I also felt like the thing to do was to counter the anaphylaxis by raising my feet higher than my head, keeping as much blood as possible in my head.  I was hoping that between using epinephrine and raising my feet, that my body would

W ell, the stomach virus that is one of the things running rampant through society over the past few weeks has finally found its way to our house.   All day yesterday, I had twinges of odd intestinal problems...  sudden pains...  a short lived cramp...  then I started feeling like someone had knocked the wind out of me.  Within minutes, I was in the bathroom with diarrhea.  I'd come out for a bit, then would need to get back to the bathroom.  This continued through most of the night.  Even when I was in bed, I couldn't lay down.   Honestly though, what I experienced through the night was far less severe than one of my typical Systemic Mastocytosis episodes that involves my gastrointestinal tract.  Although, when this first started, I couldn't tell if it was viral or my illness.   While I was sitting at the piano last night before attempting to lay down in bed, I started to get lightheaded like I was going to pass out.  I did some epinephrine and that problem was quickly res