not funny, but at least informative

Today I learned that an EI friend of mine has been able to replicate my results with the fight-or-flight reflex. She has chronic Lyme and electromagnetic sensitivities on top of mold exposure, but she's detoxing hard, just like I am. She was able to talk on the phone with me longer than she expected to, so as I expected, it appears to work on ES, too.

She called before, about a week or so ago, asking about Annie Hopper's workshop, thinking I had attended. I told her I hadn't, but I sent her specifically to the article on 'naming the feeling.' I know I said that getting the feeling named correctly was key for me, but she said that separating thought and feeling for her really helped. There's something to it no matter what you take away from it, and I am really, really pleased that it's working for someone else.

Now I have higher hopes for the really, really sick lady. She has something that if it isn't chronic Lyme, is darned similar, and really bad ES. I just gotta keep working on her.

Something else I learned is that the really successful bloggers share their pain, but they have more common kinds of pain, so I bet it's easier for other people to relate. But in the spirit of sharing the pain, stuff is coming out of my system fast enough that if I don't sweat it out in time, my armpits ache, and then they start to sting and ache. To avoid that, I exercise and sauna, which sends irritants out through your skin and out into your excretory system, which sometimes makes my guts hurt until I can get the stuff all the way out. I weigh an extra three pounds, some of which could be new muscle mass. I'm losing pudge consistently, and I was not all that pudgy to start with.

things that'll kill you

Today I learned that a common insecticide will make your children stupid. But since diet soda and energy drinks will kill them off when they get to be teenagers, it probably won't be a problem. In the unlikely event they survive to adulthood, they'll probably end up on a commute train at some point, which will definitely finish them off.

Another thing that could kill you? A husband who rode on an airplane. His bag smells better than he does, and it didn't even take a shower.

working on the backlog

Today I learned that I can tolerate the infrared backrest thingies in the sauna again, so I'm assuming that means I'm getting somewhere on the backlog of stuff I didn't detox when I should have. And I know that sentence won't make any sense to the people who visit this blog looking for information on shoplifting tools*, but I'm busy detoxing stuff, so I'm tired.

In related news, two nights ago I reacted to fireplace smoke again at 3:30 am. It took a while to figure that out -- I was worried that I'd gotten in trouble with the 10-day-old latex mattress part we added to the bed. Even after I figured out the problem, I didn't want to tempt fate, so I finished the night on the couch.

Last night, I reacted at 2:45, but I knew it was smoke, so I turned off the reaction and went back to sleep. I ended up sleeping lightly because I had to keep turning it off, but I know I'll learn to do it totally unconsciously if it keeps up. I learned to tuck in my dog in my sleep, so I don't see how untensing could be harder.


*I still get more hits from that than anything else, despite the fact I never did report anything useful.

switch flipping and complications of surgery

Today I learned that other people besides the ones I mentioned can flip people's brain switches. In particular, there's a -- and to mainstream America this sounds doubly awful -- French shaman who comes to town sometimes who can do it. He's done it for two people I know, and the reason I hadn't heard about it before is that one had moved out of town beforehand, and the grapevine was having a really hard time processing what the other one was saying. I'm sure the 'French shaman' thing was a big part of it, but also the grapevine is (rightly) extremely skeptical when it comes to miracle cures.

The post I wrote on Dec. 29 got into the southern Arizona sick-people newsletter (which has a much wider audience than my little blog), so I got a call directly from the local lady who saw the shaman. She acknowledged that it had taken pretty direct arm-twisting by someone she knew to get her to see the shaman initially, and that when she went, with a 'what the heck' attitude, she had no expectation of getting better. She said it was a bunch of 'woo-woo' stuff, but now she is very hopeful that since I described a mechanism for the switch, the grapevine will get past the 'French shaman' part, and maybe some other people can feel better.

I don't actually expect very many people to try it because people have a knack for knowing what's going to work for them. Sometimes they're just pessimistic and paranoid, but I knew the Christian-faith-based approach -- which is horribly controversial, and sometimes really fixes people up -- wouldn't work for me. In that approach, you have to get right with God by forgiving everybody and yourself for everything, then God forgives you, and you're healed. Which sounds suspiciously like you get God to flip your switch, so it's the same thing.

I'd bet I get hate mail over this, but not very many people read it. Moving on to the surgery part.

I have to have abdominal surgery if I want one part of my anatomy to stop pushing on another part, and there's a kidney involved, so all the doctors agree that I should have surgery. I found the right doctor, I scheduled the surgery, I called the hospital to bug the anesthesiologists to talk to me, but they didn't call back before my pre-op appointment.

Today I had my pre-op testing appointment, where they expect to draw blood, ask some easy questions, and send you on your way. The coordinating nurse ended up calling in not only a stray anesthesiologist, but also the pharmacy director because at the start, it looked like it would be impossible to get glass bottles for the IVs, even though I had the name and number of a pharmacy that provides them. (I got to sniff an IV bottle. It was very, very obviously vinyl, and pretty death-defying.) So tomorrow the pharmacy guy is going to call my doctor, the God of EIs, in Dallas and the pharmacy with the glass bottles. I, too, will be talking to my doctor to find out if an OR stocked almost entirely with PVC stuff is the best I can do, or if I have to go to Dallas and have surgery there, which will cost a freaking s***load because you have to rent a room you may or may not tolerate.

The poor anesthesiologist thought that vinyl was stable, so he wasn't clear on how anyone could have a problem with it. I've been sick long enough that I was a little surprised, and I said that I got heart palpitations if I inhaled near it, very likely in a tone of voice that implied that I didn't care if he thought vinyl was stable. He seemed ok with that.