Scattered Thoughts . . .

Sometimes a lousy night of health like I had last night continues on into the following day. Today is one such day. It is almost 24 hours since my latest transient health problems began last night and I am feeling just as lousy... extreme nausea, gurgling intestines, stomach pain, weakness, overwhelming fatigue (I slept all afternoon), and I am just feeling miserable.  I took some extra medications last night that target the gastrointestinal tract as well as a medication to help minimize the nausea. I added more extra medications today...  some extra mast cell stabilizers, more medications to target the gastrointestinal tract, and I'm about to add more anti-nausea medications.  Systemic Mastocytosis is unpredictable but after using up precious energy as I did during our trip to San Antonio, I know I should expect some lousy health. The problem is that I just cannot predict which problems I will experience...  which symptoms... how many symptoms... the severity of symptoms... 

I've never really been a big fan of poultry even before my illness. In fact, you would often find me in the backyard at the grill with a thick, juicy steak on Thanksgiving Day while my family was inside waiting for some tasteless bird to come out of the oven. Don't get me wrong, I love tasty grilled chicken... deep fried chicken... chicken parmesan...  chicken curry... and even chicken cacciatore... but I'm really someone who loves beef and pork. Poultry is rarely something I would order in a nice restaurant (and never something I order in a less-than-nice restaurant if I feel I may get bad poultry).  Even when I was healthy, before this insidious illness, chicken would make me feel slimey and I would be hungry again within an hour. Fish would affect me the same way. I always just figured that I am more of a hearty meat and potatoes sort of guy. And, let's be honest, I am, always have been, and always will be a meat and potatoes sort of guy. It turns out that perhap

St Louis Gateway Arch One of our many stops on our trek to San Antonio was in St Louis. We approached St Louis after dark and were hoping to catch a glimpse of the iconic Gateway Arch through our sleeper car windows.  This was not the start of our trip but I thought I would start with my most difficult photos from the trip. (I really want to get these problematic photos behind me so I can move on to the much more beautiful photos.) These nighttime photos are so poor that I have been hemming and hawing for the past 24 hours hours trying to decide if I should even share them at all. Needless to say, I decided to show a few of the best of these lousy nighttime photos. As we had hoped, we did see the arch as we entered the city but getting a nice photo of this sight was difficult at best. The arch itself was not illuminated so that posed some problems in the dark of night. The only illumination was ambient and reflected light from surrounding buildings. The city itself is rathe

Sheila celebrated another birthday yesterday albeit a rather subdued, quiet celebration. It was a nice evening though! We're still trying to renew our energy levels since our trip to San Antonio so we had no plans whatsoever for Sheila's birthday. I suppose that if we had a plan, our plan was to watch a little television and sleep as much as possible so we really had no plans for Sheila's birthday.  We did, however, manage to stop at Sheila's parents' house for a small birthday celebration with the grandchildren. Sheila's mom was kind enough to make some brownies... although, she was on the same trip with us so I don't know where she found the energy... so we visited for a couple of hours so we could see the kids and sing Happy Birthday to Sheila. Before we left the house, I had already given Sheila some of her favorite chocolates...  a box coconut and dark chocolate truffles... a Macy's gift card (her favorite gift card), and a Lila Mystique Or

We've been out of town for an extended cross-country vacation by rail and just arrived back home a bit exhausted, a little heavier (great food!), and happy about all our scheduled stops as well as our unscheduled stops. We had a great time in all the cities we visited and we especially enjoyed our five days in San Antonio. Adam graduated from Air Force Basic Military Training and we were fortunate enough to have been a part of this traditional military ceremony. We spent some time on the base and I had an opportunity to re-familiarize myself with this base as well as see many new facilities since my stay more than 30 years ago.  This is one of those bases I vowed to never return to again but I have to say it was an interesting visit. I should point out that all Air Force trainees make this same vow and we all look forward to seeing Lackland in the rear-view mirror. That being said, seeing Adam graduate was worth returning to Lackland and San Antonio.  Adam is happy... he ac

I regularly struggle with vision issues as a result of my Systemic Mastocytosis illness. Actually, not a week goes by which does not include some sort of vision issues which demand a change in plans. This past week I struggled with quite a few symptoms at the whim of angry mast cells some of which made me sick as a dying, mangy dog but I also struggled with vision issues such as blurriness, some double vision and a slight loss of color saturation. For the most part, my vision was rather poor all the time this past week but as my overwhelming fatigue would worsen, my eyesight worsened exponentially. There is no doubt that fatigue plays a role in the severity of my symptoms and these problems with my vision are impacted in the same way. The loss of color isn't too annoying and typically affects reds the most but the blurriness really gets on my nerves. The only time the loss of color saturation is annoying is when one eye is different than the other. Of course, the blurriness is

Whenever we travel, we like to bring some entertainment with us in the form of music, movies, magazines and books. Our Kindles are capable of holding almost all of this media plus they save so much space and weight! Typically, what we can't fit physically on the Kindle's drive, we can access in our Amazon Cloud... if we always have internet/wifi access.  Our next trip, which is a cross-country Amtrak excursion in a sleeper car, promises to have spotty service throughout most of the trip so we needed to prepare. I never know when my miserable health will appear so I like to ensure I always have something to do to keep my mind off of my health. Plus, if my health is so poor that I am stuck behind while everyone is out and about sightseeing and celebrating, I really need something to entertain myself. This is where the HD movies, music, magazines and books come into play. I downloaded music to my Kindle Fire... no problem with that because I have more than enough space for tha

Whenever I have a rough night because of my health, the following day is always a quiet down day. On these down days and perhaps needless to say, I crave some comfort food... Today, my comfort food was some country fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy for lunch. It was delicious but I ate more than my not-so-healthy stomach can handle right now. Nevertheless, it was quite satisfying and delicious!  

I haven't written much about my illness lately and since today is a day of recovery for me, I thought I should write a few words today.  Seeing some of these symptoms in writing might give some important insight to some other patients as well as provide some insight to those in my life who may be wondering how and why I need a "down day" when I use this term. Yesterday morning, I felt fairly good considering my overall health. I classified it as a good day when I awoke and had a long list of things I had hoped to accomplish throughout the morning. I took care of a little bit of laundry and I did my daily physical therapy (mostly for my extensive spinal injuries but this also helps with my Systemic Mastocytosis). I made lunch. Then I was out of energy and needed to lay down to nap for a few hours. This is a typical, run-of-the-mill good day with a debilitating chronic illness. I get quickly and easily worn out just from a few mundane light activities.  When I awoke fro

I go through spurts of trying to get nice crisp shots of the moon and I think I'm nearing the end of one such spurt. (Which means I will soon spare everyone of these rather boring moon photos!) Full moons are the toughest to shoot because the light is so bright and yet flat. By flat, I mean that the sun is shining on the moon so straight-on that there are very few shadows being cast by all the large features on the moon's surface. It is this lack of shadow that makes for a very 'flat' image. For instance, if I hold a tennis ball out in front of me with one hand and hold a flashlight next to my ear shining on that tennis ball, we won't see any shadows on that tennis ball. If we don't see shadows, we don't see depth.  If I hold the flashlight out in front of me, next to the tennis ball which is also in front of me, we will see a big shadow around one side of the ball as well as little shadows showing the texture of the fuzzy tennis ball. There is much mo