Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: sickness

Shots are my nemeses

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I got my Covid booster yesterday. I knew that I would have a bad reaction because I always do. When I got my first shot, I was still on Twitter. I tweeted about how terrible I felt for a week after, and how the welt lasted until my next shot which was three weeks later.

I had someone push back on me tweeting that. He said that it would discourage people from getting their shot. I said I would rather go in knowing I would reactt badly to it than thinking it was going to be fine and then be surprised. The reason why I tweeted that was because there were several big influencers who were pooh-poohing the side effects of the shot and implying that if you didn’t get it, you were a big old baby.

The guy I remember tweeting about it said how easy it was for him. In and out in fifteen minutes, and that was that. Which, good for you, dude. But not everyone is you. This was a liberal guy, but a white cis het dude. In other words, the default norm. He was not wrong about people needing to get the vax. I had no problem with him and other people saying that. Yes, urge people to get the Covid shot, but don’t call them babies at the same time.

I had a few people tweet at me in support. They agreed that they would want to be prepared for a negative reaction. One woman mentioned that like me, she always had a bad reaction to these kinds of shot–incnluding flu shots. I don’t usually get the flu shot because the times I do, I end up getting the flu. I know that’s not how that works, but I also know that they pick the six or so strains that they think are most likely to be prominent that year and vax against them.

My doctor at the time scolded me when I said that I did not get the flu shot. I said I had a bad reaction to it, and she said that it was better than dying from the flu. Which, I can’t argue with that, but it’s also hyperbole. What’s the chance of my getting the flu? Minimal. What’s the chance of me dying from it? Even more minimal.  It left a bad taste in my mouth in the same way another doctor told me that smoking two cigarettes a day was just as bad as smoking a pack a day.

Come on. You don’t need to be a doctor to see that this is just not true. I lost a lot of respect for that particular doctor. Had she said that it was still bad for me, I would haev accepted that. But that statement was utter shit.

The doctor I had many years before that was my favorite. She was frank and honest with me. She said smoking two cigarettes a day wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I asked why doctors didn’t say that more often and that frankly. She said because if doctors told patients that they could smoke two cigarettes a day, they would smoke a pack. That makes sense, but I wished there was a way for doctors to be more honest with their patients.


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Micromanaging my cat

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We are on Day 6 of my cat being sick. Well, kind of. I mean, it’s the sixth day after he got sick, but we can quibble as to whether he still is or not. He’s mostly back to normal. He’s got the pep in his step and he’s meowing when he wants something once again. he’s fighting me when I try to squirt his meds (with a syringe) in his mouth.

Side note: I hate having to give him meds. The look of betrayal in his eyes breaks my heart. Plus the horking sounds he makes as he tries to spit it out is…not pleasant. Sometimes, he’ll eat the treats I give him afterwards and sometimes he won’t. I learned to give him his food before I dose him and not after. I have to do it twice a day, 12 hours apart, BTW. I also learned that doing it while he’s asleep is good because I can get it in him quickly, but it’s bad because it disoriented him. I don’t like doing that.

I only have to dose him four more times. That’s not bad. And, honestly, he has dealt with it fairly well. Yes, he gives me a look of betrayal when it happens, but he will let me pet him a minute or two after. He won’t come into the bathroom where the syringe/vial are, but that could be because K was here this weekend and he was discombobulated about that. He did let her pet him, though, which was good to see.

I’ve been watching him like a hawk for the past six days. The first day was terrible. He was so lethargic and I was moping around, waiting for the next day so I  could hear from my vet. Shadow was so lethargic. It’s hard to explain how I know that when cats sleep so much on the daily, but there is a difference.

The last few days, he’s been chatting away and his voice, while still high and squeaky (as usual), is stronk. Demanding, even, which makes me happy. I would rather him be feisty and full of fettle than limp and lethargic.

He strides with determination rather than walking listlessly. He is talking to me again rather than just remaining silent. Best of all, he is interested in food which he wasn’t for two days. That was the scariest of all as he’s very food-driven. I mean, I know most cats are, but he does NOT skip a meal. In fact, he will let me know precisely when it was time to be fed.

That’s how I know he’s really sick, by the way. When he won’t eat. I was freaking out because the last time this happened, it was really serious. That’s why I did the whole slate of tests because I wanted to rule out everything serious. It was such a load off my shoulders when I was told it wasn’t the big three we were fearing (diabetes, hyperthyroidism, renal failure). It turned out to be a bug or something like that.

He’s been getting better little by little every day. (Warning, graphic). He hadn’t been pooping much since then. Part of the original issue was that he was spurting diarrhea dots everywhere. He was peeing fine, but his back end was having blockage/leakage.

Once he started the antibiotics, the diarrhea dried up, but he wasn’t pooping , either. He was still peeing fine. The last two days, I found small nuggets of  poop (one a day). Small, but firm. And no diarrhea. Peeing fine. Today, he had a proper poop, and I was so relieved. I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to see a piece of his poop.


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Not feeling…well, much of anything

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I’ve been feeling shitty the last few days. I’ve mentioned that my sleep has been all over the map and I think I’m getting sick. Why? Because I only sleep more than seven hours when I’m feeling punk. Last night I slept…almost ten hours on and off. I’ve fallen asleep before midnight for the last three nights. That’s unheard of! And I’m exhausted in the morning. I mean, I’m usually exhausted, but this is very different. So, yeah, I’m probably getting sick.

Or, it could be because I gave up coffee again. I am drinking one mug of pomegranate green tea after I get up, but who knows if the caffeine content is the same as a mug of coffee? I don’t know what’s going on except I have trigger thumb with my left thumb which is fucking annoying. I don’t mind the pain in the base of the thumb so much, but the clicking is driving me crazy. I’m doing exercises for it and I ordered a heat/ice brace from Amazon, but it’s really frustrating. When it first started happening about a week ago, it was minimal and only happened once or twice a day for maybe five minutes. Now, it’s more often, harder, and for longer. It doesn’t really get in the way if I’m doing something, but any time I try to straighten or bend it and it’s wonky, it clicks. The click itself doesn’t hurt, but it’s annoying as fuck.

I know part of getting older is having things fall apart. I just didn’t realize how fucking annoying it would be. I’ve been able to stave off body aches and pains through taiji, but this is something that taiji isn’t helping. To be fair, it’s only been a week or so, but I’m used to taiji being on top of things.

Anyway, part of my sleep being so fucked up means that I’m in no mood to play games most of the time. I do a Hades run now and again–

Side note: For whatever reason, I cannot leave Hades on a completed run. I don’t know why, but it’s been like that for ages. I have to at least do a few rooms on Tartarus if not run through the boss of Asphodel.

Hades is comfort gaming to me at the moment because I’m still trying for that goddamn legendary fish, which means zero heat. But even that I haven’t played every day because I’m just so tired.

I still love Tales of the Neon Sea, though I haven’t played it in a couple days. I got to play a lot as William, talking to the other street cats in order to get information. As with many games of this type, I’m not enamored by the platforming sections, but it’s bearable. I adore the cats and their whole ecosystem. I would be perfectly happy if the game was just cats.


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Shying away from the ‘D’ word

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My sleep has gone to shit again. This is not surprising, though it is disheartening. It happened once early in the lockdown and I managed to get it mostly under control–going to bed by 2 a.m. at the latest. In the past week or so, however, my body has just said to fuck with all that. I just had the revelation that it might be because I’m drinking caffeine every day again, although that has been longer than the sleep bullshit, I think. Back when I used to drink caffeine on the regular, it didn’t affect my sleep at all. But I gave it up for two years so maybe I’m a newb again when it comes to caffeine. Or it could just be my body being stupid. Bodies are stupid sometimes.

Bedtime has been creeping back again bit by bit. I hit the peak of 6 a.m. two nights again and decided I needed to rein it in. The problem is that I fall asleep/nap around nine or ten at night for an hour or so and then I can’t properly fall asleep for hours. Last night, I went to bet at 5:30 a.m. Sigh. Oh, and I think I have some kind of bug because I’m sleeping more than seven hours a pop. I would like to get it back on track, but a small part of mind says, “Who the fuck cares in this year of our lord, the pandemic?” It doesn’t matter, really, when I go to sleep, but it’s a point of honor now to see if I can actually sleep like a normal person. If I can move my bedtime to 1 a.m. and keep it there, I’d be satisfied.

Let’s talk about the staff/spear. I write it that way every time because it’s a staff, but I’m doing spear drills. It’s made of waxwood and it’s smooth as butter in my hands. It feels like supple plastic (in a good way) as it slides effortlessly in my hands without the fear of getting splinters. I love it like I’ve loved no other weapon save the sword and I want to learn ALL THE THINGS.

This segues into the title of my post, however. D is for disability. I don’t use the word because I don’t feel like I have the right but also because I don’t want to put that label on myself for the usual litany of reasons. Internalized ableism; feared ableism; thinking of myself as lazy rather than disabled; and more. In addition, it’s hard to think of myself as disabled because as I’ve said before, each individual thing is not huge in and of itself.

It’s also hard because I feel like a lazy bitch all the time. Part of that is depression, but part is because my body tires out so quickly. Then I think it’s because I’m fat and lazy and not in good shape, not because of my various issues.

I can’t. Sorry. I’m just not in the mood. Some days, it’s just too much effort. Here’s Apocalyptica doing O Holy Night.

In sickness and in sickness

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It’s time for my annual check up on my thyroid, and I should probably get a physical as well. I need to get another doctor because my old one left the network, so I’m not looking forward to that. I’ve had my issues with doctors, and I have a string of problems that have seem to stump the best of them. It’s one thing I want to figure out by my 50th birthday–what the fuck is wrong with me. Physically, I mean. I already know what the fuck is wrong with me emotionally, even if I haven’t fixed it yet.

Side Note: I’ve realized that I will not be able to fix everything that’s wrong with me (emotionally in this case) by the time I died, and what’s more to the point, there were things that I considered flaws in myself that I didn’t care to change. What, how can that be? Because they’re either not worth the effort to change or I’ve learned to live with them. One example is that I work to the back of a deadline. This use to cause trouble between my mother and me because she would send me something she wanted me to edit and give me a timeline, say, a month from the time she sent it to me. Cool, fine, I think to myself. I’ll start it in three weeks, and it’ll be fine.

Except. She’ll start emailing me a week later or maybe two to ask about it. I would say I hadn’t started, and I could feel the disapproval and stress radiating through the ether. I finally had to bring it up with her because it was driving me crazy, and I’m sure it wasn’t doing anything good for her, either. It turned out that she was giving me a deadline that was the last possible time she could get it back–and with agony. In my mind, she was giving me the reasonable deadline. I told her that if she wanted it comfortably in two weeks, she had to tell me so. She thought she was being thoughtful by giving me two extra weeks. I took her at her word that I had the whole month.

It actually worked out because I did move up my own schedule a bit and she gave me something closer to an actual deadline. I know there are people who do the things the second they get the assignment, and while I admire them, it’s not me. I do my best work with my back to the wall, and I’ve actually figured out a way to do it with a small amount of comfort. Once I let go of the idea that I would be the kind of person to do it from the start, I was able to manage my time better. In other words, I wasn’t blowing sunshine up my ass and was better able to assess my actual ability.

I’m really tired of being sick. And exhausted. And feeling like my physical health is out of control. My thyroid has been stable for the past few years, so I don’t expect that to be the issue. It might have something to do with my digestive problems and the FODMAP elimination diet. Which, by the way, I’m still stalled on the adding things back part of the diet. After going two months being 90% better, the idea of willingly poisoning myself again is repulsive to me. The first time I added garlic to something, I had a middling response. It wasn’t running to the bathroom, but it was a bloated uncomfortable feeling. I haven’t tried it again, but I don’t want to lose garlic. It’s in almost everything I eat for one thing, and it’s just goddamn tasty on the other.


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Facing half a century with bewilderment

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I’m turning fifty in a year and a few months.

Let me repeat. I’m turning 50 in a year and a few months.

Sorry, but my brain won’t get past that.

Where the hell did my late thirties and forties go? I know it’s trite to say that time flies and bemoan the loss of years, but it’s hard to believe that I’ve been on this earth for nearly half a century.

Honestly, I thought I would be dead by this age. I didn’t think I would make it out of my thirties, and for a while, I was fixated on the idea that I would die at age 55. My mom was 55 at the time, and it just seemed like that would be my time to go. I was…26 at the time? I think that’s right. Anyway, 55 seemed like a lifetime away, and now, of course, it seems disturbingly close.

I rarely look in the mirror, and when I do, I’m like, “Who the hell is this?” I’ve already had one person ask me with great trepidation if I were a senior (at a co-op on the day they gave senior discounts), but I’ve also had someone who thought I was at least ten years younger than I was. And, with my hair reversing the gray, maybe I’m a weird version of Benjamin Button.

It’s weird when I look back on my life and what I thought it would be like. Well, to be honest, I didn’t think it’d be like anything because I could not imagine a future. When I was a teen, I assumed I’d get married and have kids because that’s what you were supposed to do. I also assumed I’d have some kind of office job because that, too, was what I was supposed to do. Furthermore, I would go to church every Sunday even though I didn’t believe, and I would live a quiet and desperate life.


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I. am. done.

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I have been feeling feisty and fine* for the past several days. I managed to go to taiji on both Friday and Saturday (which I already talked about), and I’ve accepted the consequences because I pushed myself too hard. Yes, I was sore and achy, but not unbearably so. I was feeling cautiously optimistic, and then…I slept nine hours a few nights ago. What the fuck was that? I don’t sleep nine hours a night unless….

No. Fuck no. I refuse.

I told myself it was because of going to taiji two days in a row and overexerting myself. Hell, it might have even been true to a certain extent. However. The next day I felt a tickle in the back of my throat, and I was hawking up loogies. And I slept for eight hours that night. and now, I have the chills. The chills! I don’t get the chills unless it’s -10 outside or I’m sick. As I’m inside and the heat is on, it’s not the temp.

I still have gunk in my throat, and I’m so fucking tired. Do you see where I’m getting  at? If I’m sick again, I’m quitting the earth. I am just done with this.

 

 

*For me. Which is several levels less than most other people.

It’s just a fantasy

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I am mostly better from the cold I had, but I feel as if I’m on the cusp of something else. I know it’s a vicious cycle, but any time I go out, I get something that makes me feel worse than before. It’s one of the problems with not interacting with people on a regular basis. I have a shitty immune system, and it has no chance to improve because I don’t allow it to interact with bad things on the regular. On the other hand, I am allergic to everything under the sun, so my instinct is to wrap myself in a bubble so I won’t get hurt. The reason I got my cats in the first place was because I decided since I was allergic to everything and miserable all the time, I might as well get cats. Yes, I was allergic to them, but they would make me less miserable. I’m actually not that allergic to my cat now unless he decides to sit on my face, which he does from time to time when I have a pillow over my face.

I’m really frustrated right now. I’ll be real with you. Why? Well, I’m going to tell you. One, depression. It’s low grade, but persistent, and it saps much of my energy to do anything. Two, my physical health. I’ve been sick more than healthy it seems in the past year, and it’s just draining as well. Three, the intersection of the two and how it makes me not want to do anything. I’m trying to push past it and change the way I think, but it’s not easy. It takes a tremendous amount of willpower to even get me out the door, not to mention driving to the place I need to be. I haven’t even gone to the co-op since I got sick, for example, because it’s too much effort. It’s fifteen minutes away, but I can’t make myself do it.

I have a hard time not castigating myself for doing more, which is not the best motivation. The taiji demo showed me so many things I want to do, but I just don’t have the capacity to do them all. I set the goal of learning the Sabre Form this year. I am at the end of the fourth row (there are six), and this is where I stopped the last time I was learning the Sabre Form. Two years ago. The end two postures of the fourth row are insane, but in a good way. Part of the problem the first time I learned the Sabre Form was because I was fully expecting it to be like the Sword Form. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea that it wasn’t, and it made the whole experience sour for me. This time going in, I fully realized it was a very different beast, and I fell in love with it immediately. I had to have that extra experience under my belt before I could really get the Sabre Form.


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Adjusting expectations and dealing with an emergency

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Yesterday was the taiji lunar new year demo at my teacher’s teacher’s studio. I didn’t hear about it until last Saturday because I hadn’t been in class due to my sickness. I was caught off-guard because I like to plan things well ahead of time and because I was still feeling iffy. I had missed the last few demos, though, due to health reasons, and I really wanted to go this time. I just didn’t know if I could endure, and I didn’t want to embarrass my teacher in front of her teacher. In addition, we had a snowstorm on Friday that lingered into Saturday (the day of the demo), and the winds were up to 45 mph. I was talking myself out of it, but I really felt I should go. Not only to represent my teacher, but because there was going to be a ton of weapon forms. I had to set some ‘rules’ for myself so that I would feel ok going.

The first was that I could go at any time. One of my issues is that if i go to something, I feel  have to stay for the whole thing. I have to deliberately give myself permission to leave, and weirdly, that makes me enjoy it more. I don’t have to be uptight and agonizing about how I’ll make it to the end. I can stay ten minutes or half an hour, or I can stay until the end if I’m up to  it. That way, I don’t feel trapped, and I’ve used it to a good effect for the past couple events I’ve gone to.

Secondly, I had to tell myself that I didn’t have to do anything. There were three things I knew well enough to participate in, the Solo Form, the Sword Form, and the first section of the Fast Form. Funnily enough, they were the first three performances of the afternoon, one right after the other. The thing is, I really wanted to do the Sword Form. I had not participated in it before even though I’ve known it for years, and I wanted to show my teacher’s teacher that she was a damn good teacher in her own right. As my classmate said, we have to represent the Seven Stars. The problem was that the Solo Form was first, and I knew if I did that, I would not be able to do the Sword Form. I did not have the energy for both of them.

Let me be real with you. I felt the need to show what I could do. Why? I don’t  know. No one cared but me, but it was in the back of my mind. I don’t take any classes at my teacher’s home studio even though it’s in the same building and I’m able to take any of the classes, and I am very competitive–though I try to keep it to myself. I had to tell myself that I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. My teacher knew where I was at, and that was really all that needed to happen. Even more to the point, I knew where I was at. I know some of my insecurity is because I’ve missed so many classes in the last two years. Plus, there’s a woman in the home studio who I found out started roughly the same time I did, and she’s so much further. It’s hard for me because I know it’s all on me, but I want to be so much further than I am.

I ended up skipping the Solo Form and the first section of the Fast Form. I did the Sword Form, and I felt good once it was over. I did not make any major mistakes, and I definitely looked like I was one of the crew. I didn’t bring my own sword because it would have been one more thing to make me anxious–keeping track of it and making sure I didn’t leave it behind. There are plenty of practice swords in the studio, so I just grabbed one of them. I will admit a second of feeling embarrassed because I normally practice with my stainless steel sword, but I brushed it to the side. I did the Sword Form to the best of my ability, and I was pleased once we were done. I didn’t hit anyone, though I came close, and I remembered all the movements. I call that a win.

I had a mini panic when I arrived at the studio because I could not find my key fob. It wasn’t in the pocket it was supposed to be, and I couldn’t find it in the other pockets, either. Since I had been at the tire shop on Friday, I thought maybe I left it in the cup holder in the car. Nope. I spent five minutes rootling around in my car, but I could not find it. In desperation, I checked the original pocket again, and I found a hole in the corner. My key had slipped into the hole, and while I was relieved to find it, I also was grumpy about the hassle it caused.


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The more things change…part three

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Last week, I wrote about how there are several things in my life that have changed without me actively trying to enact said change. Most of them I put down to taiji, and there’s one more I want to add to the list. It’s a weird one, but it’s fascinating–at least to me. Let’s talk about my hair for a minute. I don’t like much about the way I look, but my hair is my shining glory. Funnily, I mostly keep it in a bun these days, but I feel badass when I have it down. For at least a decade, it fell to my waist, just above my ass. In the past year or two, it’s grown about eight inches and now it falls past my ass. I thought I was making things up, but, no, my hair is appreciably longer now. I’m excited about it, but also a bit weirded out. I haven’t changed any of my hair regime, so what’s the difference?

At first, I said taiji. Why? Because that’s my go-to for anything positive in my life. It’s true 85% of the time, so it’s not a bad shout. This time, however, I don’t think I can give credit to taiji. Instead, I think it’s beacuse I drastically changed my diet two and a half years ago by cutting out dairy and gluten. I also cut out caffeine almost 100% later, I think six months or so, and maybe that’s part of it. Anyway, I think it’s the diet that has strengthen my hair, and at any rate, I hope it keeps growing.

That’s not the coolest part, though. Well, the next part is half cool, half not-cool. I have a lot of silver/gray in my hair. I’ve been eagerly awaiting for it to turn all gray/silver because I think that would be bad and ass. I want to look like storm, and then I’m going to cut it all off. At least that was the plan. I’ve become really attached to it (no pun intended), so we’ll see. That’s not the cool/not-cool part, though. The gray is reversing. I know it sounds crazy, but it is. I took it down to brush yesterday–

Side note: Part of my depression is that I am not always on point with my daily grooming. It’s one reason I wear my hair up in a bun–so I don’t have to deal with it. That’s fine and dandy, but it means that I sometimes can go a week or longer without brushing my hair. If I just left it in a bun, it might be ok (but probably not), but I have to redo the bun every few days, which means by the time I let it down, there are usually huge tangles in the underneath part of it.

Side note to the side note: I remember reading a series of tweets a while ago about a woman who had severe depression. She did not wash her hair or brush it in something like a year. Her hair was as long as mine, and she went to a hairdresser to deal with it. It was the hairdresser who was tweeting about it. The woman was still downtrodden and self-defeating, and the hairdresser decided she was going to do what had to be done to save the woman’s hair. For the next six hours, she brushed out the woman’s hair until she got rid of all the mats, tangles, and snarls.

Anyway, with the amount of hair I take, when it snarls, it takes a lot of patient coaxing to get them all out. In addition, it’s the worst in the exact back of my head, so it’s difficult to reach. I know the answer is to brush it every day, but that’s simply beyond my ken. It’s one thing that I hate about myself–how much mental and physical energy it takes for me to do simple tasks–and it’s one that I would like to change.


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