Scattered Thoughts . . .

I missed a dose of medications at dinnertime last night and, before bedtime, my health was crashing.  By 10pm, I was sick and in the bathroom.  I finally made it to bed by 4am after taking some extra medications and emergency medications.  I still couldn't sleep until around 5:30am because of nausea and I was still feeling as though I might need to get the bathroom quickly. This hot, humid weather is not helping my health at all.  My health does not do well in consistent temperatures above about 79° or so and we have been well above that lately.  I'm finding that humidity about 60% or more along with temperatures in the 70s also negatively impacts my health and breathing.  The humidity hasn't been as bad as it typically is in coastal areas but it has been high enough to trigger some significant health issues for me.  I'm actually a bit surprised by how only mild humidity negatively affects my health. Anyway, my health is struggling in this climate...  a frustrating unse

Sheila and I are still quarantined at home as Sheila continues to work from home and the numbers of people infected around us multiplies.   Even before this virus, we very rarely wandered from the house for social things anyway so this new quarantine and 'shelter in place' order hasn't changed our daily life much at all.  By early to mid-January, it became abundantly clear to us that the virus was gaining a foothold in the US so we immediately stopped visiting restaurants, canceled all future travel plans for the foreseeable future and began cutting out our weekly shopping trips.  (This is when the Federal government should have began a serious attempt at containing and minimizing the effects of this virus.  We knew it was coming at this point so we immediately changed our behavior...   the White House, well, this White House only helps the wealthy so it would have been silly for anyone to seriously believe they would come up with an effective plan to minimize and contain

I have one of those illnesses that is actually quite consistent.  The symptoms are transient through time, space and frequency but the illness itself is quite consistent.  In order to get a few good days, I must pay the price with a few bad days.  Unfortunately, it is not an even trade-off...  I pay the price of a few good days by having to endure many, many days of bad days.  I'm in that low part of the trade-off cycle now.   On the last two days of our cross country train journey (Monday and Tuesday), I had an annoying sore throat.  I've had worse sore throats but it was consistent and wouldn't go away.  I was hoping that I was just a bit dehydrated since I was avoiding an excess of fluids due to availability of bathrooms.  Unfortunately, I would quickly realize that the sore throat was not due to slight dehydration.  Although dehydration can bring on other problems, that would have been a more simple problem to resolve...  pump fluids either orally or through IV. O

Two of my doctors have been advising me and even pressuring me to get a colonoscopy for quite some time. I attempted this a few years ago but, after discussing my health issues with the doctor who would be doing the procedure, we decided the risk was too high so we didn't even attempt it.  Now, I have a new mast cell specialist and he had referred me to a doctor to give a colonoscopy another shot. I was scheduled for late this afternoon.   In the meantime while waiting for this appointment date to arrive, I had another visit with my mast cell specialist. We briefly discussed how to manage my medications in the week leading up to the colonoscopy and we had a tentative plan in place. To be honest, I wasn't too optimistic about my health holding up through this procedure but I agreed to give it a try. The last thing I want to do is come across as non-compliant because I do need continued treatment. That being said, I also emphatically told Sheila that if this procedure was a pro

As anyone would expect, after months of cancer treatment, Sheila is exhausted. To make the expected exhaustion from treatment worse, we've had at least two busy, absolutely hectic days each week since her radiation treatment ended... Thanksgiving, Liza's wedding out of town, Christmas dinner with friends, a few days in Manhattan, Christmas, and our New Year's Eve anniversary celebration with some friends (our 10th anniversary, actually). It has been an exceptionally busy month. After months of cancer treatment and then an exceptionally busy month socially, it comes as no surprise that Sheila is so exhausted that, at times, she needs to be off her feet because she feels as though she doesn't have the strength to keep her body upright. She is definitely overwhelmingly fatigued. Unfortunately, I'm not fairing much better. We're quite the pair right now. My health has been barely balancing on the side of stability over the past six months as we managed Sheila&

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

Oh boy was yesterday a lousy day!  Earlier in the morning, I was feeling quite well. I was looking forward to some exercise and my daily physical therapy. I never got that far though... First, around lunchtime, I began to feel something wasn't right. I couldn't put my finger on the problem but I knew some lousy health to some degree was approaching. I ate lunch and then it started... As I was trying to walk my dishes to the sink, my legs would not cooperate. At first, I wondered if they had just started to fall asleep... and hoped it wasn't a mastocytosis issue... or, was this a result of my spinal injuries? My legs not cooperating to such a debilitating level was a bad sign though... my legs really were not cooperating at all...  I could barely move them. I made my way back to the couch. My bones and joints had been hurting since around Christmastime so that was nothing new and they were still hurting but the hurt was pushed to the background as some new symptoms e