Scattered Thoughts . . .

A nice night out with friends for Christmas... Even when my health is relatively well, I am always a bit concerned about the timing of my poor health. I don't actually worry about it because, after all, I can't control my health, but it does concern me enough to wonder about rescheduling and contingency plans. Realistically speaking, just because my health is relatively well at any given moment does not mean my health will continue to be relatively well. If anything, Mastocytosis has taught me to accept and expect unpredictability. Although, to be honest, long before Mastocytosis reared its ugly head, I had already come to terms with unpredictability due to my spinal injuries. "Unpredictability... accept it, expect it, embrace it!" From November until the end of January, we have been quite busy physically and our schedules quite hectic. There were a number of events we were looking forward to and we, as always, were hoping my health would cooperate with this he

It seems that most people think that no news is good news. Well, that is not the case for me. Actually, that never has been the case with me. I can tell you with absolute certainty that if I go quiet for a while, something is not quite "good". I am still struggling with my health (since Christmas) and I have had a few relatively minor incidents and episodes over the past couple of weeks. That being said, I think that if I look at how lousy my health has been over the past four months, my health has actually been relatively stable in the past couple of weeks. It is still worse than I feel it should be and I feel rates as quite lousy and debilitating. I've struggled with some mast cell-related issues, as always, as well as some spinal injury-related issues over the past couple of weeks. As one would expect, struggles with both of these issues still seem to grind my life to a halt. This grinding wears me out too! I never celebrate Easter so never really have anything t

As I opened my eyes first thing this morning, I was having difficulty breathing.  I couldn't catch my breath.  I would suck in lungfuls of air but it may as well have been water. I felt as though I was trying to breath oxygenless air in the vacuum of deep space.  I sucked air deep into my lungs... nothing... the air just went in and out and I still needed air. It was like the air had no oxygen in it... or like I had the wind knocked out of me after being slammed to the ground while playing hockey or basketball.     I also was having difficulty finding the energy to wake myself up enough to get up out of bed. I felt as though I went to bed completely exhausted, fell asleep, and now someone was trying to awaken me just a few minutes after falling asleep. This wasn't just trying to wake up. No, this was weakness like I had no control over my own body. This is something with which I am far too familiar... I quickly realized that this is bad news... bad, bad, bad news.  As I