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Showing posts with the label poor health

Trading Health

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

On the Mend with Good Food

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My health has been deteriorating consistently since my last doctor visit a month ago. My new specialist (for a little more than a year now) decided to attempt to simplify my myriad of medications. Some medications were eliminated while others were increased. He sort of consolidated similar medications while eliminating one or two he felt might be unnecessary and added one medication that he felt might help.  These changes did slightly simplify my four daily doses of medications but, unfortunately, my health has been in serious decline since my last visit a month ago. I was getting more and more groggy, exhausted and weakened with each passing day. I was spending more and more time in the bathroom sick (no more needs to be said about that here). I was dizzy and I wasn't thinking clearly. Oddly, even though I was overwhelmingly groggy, I was feeling exceptionally restless. I was groggy, exhausted and restless all at the same time. I slept... a lot... and still couldn't get ne

A Miserable Couple of Days

I've been down for the count the past couple of days. My health has taken a serious nosedive which affects everything  in my life.  I'm experiencing difficulty breathing... my bones are aching (mostly long bones... ie, legs)... my joints are extremely painful (mostly my hips, knees, ankles and my spine)... I'm having cognitive difficulties... and the fatigue is completely overwhelming. Oh...  and I simply feel lousy at times, even miserable the rest of the time.  I've thrown a bunch of extra medications at this problem in the hope of stabilizing my body again as quickly as possible. We'll see how that pans out... I'm hoping to stabilize my health today so I can get back to 'Christmas stuff' tomorrow... 

Persistent Poor Health

Last week, for the most part, I experienced a lot of lousy health which interfered with getting anything accomplished on the house. We're pretty antsy to get this other bedroom finished but my health is making that seem like an insurmountable task. I don't even remember what the health problems were last week... some combination of typical Systemic Mastocytosis symptoms... but I spent most of the week sleeping. I felt halfway decent on Saturday but only managed to accomplish about an hour of work before the overwhelming fatigue took over and rendered me useless.  On Sunday, I felt great! It was Sheila's last day of a usual short weekend and it was Mother's Day too so I decided to use my new energy by spending time with Sheila rather than working on the house. I figured I could put this time aside for Sheila and then work on the house the following day.... Wrong again. My health crashed again. At some point this week, I did manage to squeeze in an hour or two of

Poor Health Preempted Plans Again

For days, we had planned to head to Lowes and Home Depot on Thursday night. We need some building supplies so I can begin renovating another bedroom. This particular renovation project was down fairly low on my "to-do" list but was recently moved to the top. I bumped five or six other projects so I could start renovating this bedroom. Heading up toward Burlington on Thursday night fit into our schedules without having to change anything and the weather was forecast to be beautiful. The building supplies would be on the roof of the car, exposed to the weather, so we need good weather for this particular purpose. Actually, for an activity such as this one, we need good weather to coincide with good health. Last night, some miserable health changed everything. My health had been teetering on that fine line between "okay" and "poor" all week. In hindsight, I should have been more aggressive at adding extra medications to my daily medications. I did add som

Watching Out Over Me

It was a rough, uneventful and rather boring morning with my health problems (see my previous blog posts). Times like this always feel like periods of 'nothingness'.  I took some extra medications around lunchtime and then I ended up sleeping through the afternoon. When Sheila arrived home at 5pm, she noticed our resident cat sitting on our deck outside our front 15-lite glass door...  sitting in the rain...   watching through the glass at me lying on the couch...keeping a close eye on me through the glass. Whenever I get this type of attention from any cat, particularly this cat, it is a sign of exceptionally poor health... dangerously low levels of health.  Fortunately, I had medicated myself as best as I could...  well, I suppose I could have added a bit more medications... but, I'm awake now and feeling 'okay'. I'm not feeling 'good', but well enough to find something to eat for dinner.   I guess we had better do something about dinner befo

I KNEW to Stick Close to Home Today

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I wrote earlier this morning that I was thinking I would need to keep from wandering from the house. I just wasn't feeling "right" at the time. I was exhausted from lack of sleep. I was in pain from the effects of Systemic Mastocytosis and extensive spinal injuries. Common sense was telling me I needed to stick close to home. Well, when Sheila arrived home from work she reminded me that I needed to drop my car off at the mechanic's garage this evening. Unfortunately, my health had already begun to crash. Rather than getting a much needed nap this afternoon, I spent much of the afternoon in and out of the bathroom. Ooooo... fun time, let me tell you! Now I definitely needed to wander from the house to drop off the car. Regardless of my health, I really needed to drop my car off for this appointment. I haven't driven my car at all in about two months because it needs some work and even before that I had only driven less than 3000 miles in the past year. The car

Still Practicing Photo Development

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My health crashed again last night due to some typical Systemic Mastocytosis issues affecting my blood pressure and gastrointestinal tract so I had to take some emergency medications to help stabilize my body.  Today I am recovering. One of the emergency medications I had to take makes me extremely drowsy so I must recover from this drowsiness and avoid all potentially dangerous activities such as using power tools and driving because this drowsiness also affects my cognitive abilities (of course, my mast cell issues also affect my cognitive abilites). I also need some time for the medication to balance out my body allowing my health to recover. On days such as today (and I have far too many of them which is why you are seeing a flurry of blog entries lately) , I try to indulge in some art therapy by working on photos... sometimes painting... sometimes working on model railroading models. Today, I chose to work on some photos. As I mentioned yesterday in a blog post, I am trying

A Decent Response from La Quinta

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As most of you already know, I am still trying to recover from an overly busy December as well as from our recent trip to Springfield, Massachusetts for the Amherst Railway Society's annual train show.  I am still so exhausted that I am having great difficulty thinking clearly.  Trying to focus on any one thing has proven to be impossible.  There are a lot of things which I would love to be doing but simply can't find the energy to even think straight. In the meantime, I spent a few days writing a review for Trip Advisor about our stay at La Quinta Inn & Suites during our train show weekend.  I was just notified that the manager of the hotel wrote a response to my review.   A partial view of one of four buildings housing the train show... Overall, I feel the manager's response to my review is acceptable and nice. That alone may indicate something positive about this hotel. He didn't give me any lame excuses as we have seen from other hotels. He didn't g

Recovering from Train Show

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I think I can safely say that everyone enjoyed themselves at the Amherst Railway Society Train Show this year. Of everyone in the group, I probably had the most problems and even I enjoyed myself. I've been quietly recovering at home this week.  My week has involved sleeping, showering and cooking meals for myself and dinners for Sheila and Adam.  I'm still not 'myself' but I am slowly recovering. This will be a tougher recovery than usual because I had such serious health issues over our long weekend. We arrived at the hotel Friday evening and we gathered in the bar/lounge of the hotel for dinner and a few drinks. That was a nice little party and I do believe everyone had a lot of fun!   Later in the evening, shortly after going to bed, I had some sudden health issues related to my mast cell disease, Systemic Mastocytosis.  I'm not going to get into the disgusting details, but I will say it was not pleasant and it kept me awake most of the night.  Needles