*does a happy dance*
Looks like we’re back to my husband having a sinus infection, NOT cluster headaches, which is awesome. A really bad sinus headache requiring a second course of antibiotics, and a somewhat deviated septum, but that’s a hell of a lot better than cluster headaches. I’m so glad the ER doc was wrong, and just amazed that a sinus infection could cause that much pain!
Lined up all the doctors’ appointments for one day so my husband would have to take the least amount of time possible off of work. First, the dentists’ appointments had to be rescheduled due to the hygienist being out sick (hope she feels better soon). Then, the doc wasn’t sure if my husband has sinus or cluster headaches or what, so he had to schedule a CT scan for tomorrow. And I still have an ultrasound this afternoon. One day of appointments turned into three so far.
For many years my husband has suffered from really bad headaches. When we lived in New Hampshire they were diagnosed as sinus headaches even though decongestants didn’t really help, and certainly they seemed like particularly bad sinus headaches from many of the symptoms. When we moved to Maryland they went away for a few years; about a week or so ago they came back in full force.
Friday night one of them hit while we were out to dinner, and it was so bad we ended up taking him to the ER. His right eye was bloodshot and looked swollen, his hands were shaking, and he could barely stand upright. I’m still amazed he could drive, and speak coherently. Two hours later, while we were still in the waiting room, the symptoms disappeared just as quickly as they had come on.
As it turns out, that quick and sudden disappearance was the key that clued the ER doc in to what was probably going on. If he’d still been in as much pain when she saw him as when he’d arrived, he would have ended up getting a CAT scan looking for an abscess, or she might have thought he had meningitis. But the pain wouldn’t have just vanished. Instead, she read off the list of symptoms for cluster headaches, and they all fit perfectly. Every last one.
The huge relief is that this isn’t something critical that could result in disability or death, and frankly with the amount of pain he was in, that was a scary possibility. But the still-frightening part is that this is an incurable neurological disorder that is believed to cause “the most severe pain known to medical science.” Women have been known to say it’s worse than childbirth. It’s been compared to having a hot poker shoved in one’s eye, or having a limb amputated without anaesthetic. Cluster headaches have also been called “suicide headaches.”
Did I mention how amazed I am that he managed to drive, remain upright, and speak coherently while in that much pain?
We’ll be taking him to our regular doc tomorrow, who can hopefully give him an official diagnosis and some meds. This weekend he unfortunately had to miss some fun events since he had to stick close to the hospital—he’d been advised that if he had a repeat experience that was longer or more severe(!) he should go back and get that CAT scan.
Anyway. That was our Friday night. We were at the ER until about midnight. Thankfully I’d brought what turned out to be a really good book, Leslie Parrish’s Fade to Black. Speaking of which, here are the other books I’ve reviewed recently:
Paul Levine, Illegal
Fiona Patton, The Silver Lake
Keri Smith, Wreck This Journal
Christine Feehan, Dark Curse
Dakota Cassidy, Kiss & Hell
Anton Strout, Deader Still
Rob Thurman, Deathwish
Elizabeth Vaughan, White Star
Vaughan’s book is the tenth in that “recommended reading” series, and Thurman’s book ended up being an unexpected book 11. I also adore Patton’s series, and Parrish’s book was fantastic!
I spent most of last night vomiting violently and repeatedly, possibly as a reaction to an antibiotic. I was so sore by the time there was nothing left in my stomach, from all the spasming, but Cahlash pressed himself against my back in bed, stretched out against it like a perfectly-warmed and furry heating pad. It was awesome, and definitely helped me to get a couple precious hours of sleep. The cats didn’t even fight for once. And when we got up, Cahlash kept trying to lead my husband out to the living room where I was while he was getting dressed. Selene also spent much of the night cuddled against my shin. They get so concerned when their people are sick. It’s precious. 
Anyway, I’d just like to say…WE WERE RIGHT.
*ahem* Now that I have that out of my system…
Several people kept saying that Selene’s new-found viciousness was most likely a behavioral problem. We kept insisting there was more to it than that and that something seemed wrong. Turns out both cats have an infection of some kind. As soon as we know what kind, we can treat it and hopefully the violence will end and they’ll feel better!
In the meantime, we’re trying a product our vet recommended called “feliway”. It’s a feline facial pheremone, the same one cats use to mark you as theirs when they rub their faces on you. It’s supposed to calm them, and you can get it as a spray or as a room diffuser (called “comfort zone”). We’re using the latter. I don’t notice any odor, and it doesn’t bother my many sensitivities & allergies. We’re also cautiously optimistic that it might be starting to have some effect. We trust our vet’s recommendations, and even the lady at the checkout at the pet store enthused over the stuff.
Now I just have to keep the broth down that I had for breakfast, and go see the doctor again in an hour.
Harder to get things done these days. As someone with mental disorders, I find my motivation dramatically reduces during the winter months. I love winter, but the lack of light isn’t good for me. I’m sleeping much better now thanks to Seroquel, but it’s adding to the appetite-increasing effect of the Effexor, which also isn’t good. Particularly when you like to cook things like homemade honey-gingerbread marshmallows:
I plan to take most of the batch to a friend’s this weekend!
Two brief thoughts on politics. As usual, I prefer to stick to process here when I touch on politics at all, not partisanship. So take partisan arguments to other blogs.
First, I read an article this morning that said that young people really aren’t turning out much so far in Florida’s early voting. Guys—VOTE! We all like to complain that past generations have left us with a mess of a world, politically, environmentally, etc. But one of the major ways we have of trying to make a difference is by voting for the candidate we think will best clean things up. So I don’t care who you vote for—just do it! It doesn’t take that much effort!
Second, after Obama put out his ad quoting John McCain as saying he’d need a VP who could advise him on economic matters, and then showing Palin winking, there appeared a fresh wave of complaints of sexism. As a woman I’m calling bullshit. The question of whether Palin is qualified to lead the country in economic matters is a perfectly legitimate question. If she is, she’ll withstand the questioning by proving she has the credentials. If she isn’t, well, it’s important to find that out. We ask these questions of male candidates all the time. Refusing to push a female candidate for her credentials just because she’s female, THAT would be just as sexist as saying that she couldn’t understand economic matters because she’s a woman.
I’ve been making more jewelry, and I’m very pleased with some of the new pieces. Here are two that I particularly like, Ice Queen Jewels:
and Desert Mesa Necklace:
You can click on the images above to look at larger versions at deviantArt. Or, you can click on the text links above them to see 5 different photos of each at Etsy, and to buy them if you wish!
My last customer commented that she was extremely impressed with our packaging. You see, I try to package each piece separately within a little jewelry gift box inside of a padded mailer. I do this for entirely practical reasons. Our mailman has driven me insane with his treatment of packages. He’s shoved things into the mailbox so hard they split open and tore the contents open. He throws things at the house—and I don’t just mean a tiny little lob. So when I package something, I ask myself, “How can I package this so it would survive treatment by someone like him?” If this has a side effect of giving the customer a really nice little box for the jewelry, that’s great!
It’s been two weeks since I skinned my knee and it’s finally scabbing over. I’ve had notoriously weak ankles all my life—I do exercises specifically to strengthen them, but nothing ever seems to work. I was on the last step of the stairs to the sidewalk out front when my ankle gave way. My foot stayed on the step, and my knee hit the concrete below it. I’m really very lucky that all I did was skin my knee. But it took enough layers off that the center refused to scab over for two weeks. Once or twice a day I had to clean out my knee and make sure it wasn’t getting infected. It’s great to finally be able to wear long pants without having to tape gauze over my knee!
Anyway, between the fact that I was in constant knee-pain until a day or two ago, and the days getting darker, and my husband having been out of town on a trip, I’ve been incredibly unproductive. But I’ve made some jewelry, and I’m looking forward anxiously to this election being over. I hope you all have a great weekend!
Oh yeah, Here’s that review I had to re-write, of Michele Bardsley’s Wait till Your Vampire Gets Home, as well as a non-review of Allyson James’s The Dragon Master.
Edited to add: Check out the funniest campaign sign ever! Well okay, the funniest one I’ve ever seen, which is good enough for me.
The agave nectar baking book is coming along well. I look forward to telling tales of cupcakes when I write my review. Meanwhile, since I received a gorgeous pie plate to review, clearly I’ll have to make a pie from the book!
Feeling somewhat inspired by the superfood cookbook, I tried adding several spoonfuls of pureed cooked pumpkin to my morning meusli, along with a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon and some agave nectar. Nothing like feeling almost as though you’ve had pumpkin pie for breakfast, knowing that you’ve just tricked yourself into adding a healthy vegetable to another meal. All healthy things should be so easy.
Speaking of healthy, this is so cool: Wellternatives is a frobby you can access to help you get nutrition info about dishes at restaurants, and healthier menu suggestions as alternatives. I played with it a bit and it seems genuinely useful.
And finally, not at all apropos of healthy things, here are some new reviews for you: while I wasn’t at all fond of Savannah Russe’s Under Darkness, I had a lot of fun with Jasmine Haynes’s Show and Tell!
I know there was something I wanted to post about, but my brain seems to be in a fog and I have no idea what it was. Oh well. I can at least link to the new site stuff.
First, the reviews. There’s yummy stuff in The Superfood Cookbook—how can you resist a combination of delicious, easy, quick, and nutritious??
I’ve also posted reviews of Mathias Freese’s enchanting Down to a Sunless Sea and Robert Cutler’s The Secret Scroll. In case you ever wondered whether all those high-scoring reviews indicated that I was too easy on review copies, worry no more—I don’t pan books very often, but that latter one made me want to tear my hair out.
Next, two more T-shirt designs. There’s a bit of relationship humor called going unsteady and a shirt for the Gnomish Air Force:
If I remember what I was going to say, I’ll just post again later!
It was an odd quirk of timing that I found out that celiac disease runs in my family just when I had a review copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Gluten-Free Eating in my review stack. Naturally I bumped it to the top so I could read all about it. Celiac disease is a condition in which the ingestion of gluten results in damage to your intestines, reducing your ability to absorb nutrients. Most people don’t understand the severity of this illness or just how strict you have to be in your diet to avoid further damage. I was very impressed by the depth of information in the above book, as well as the tone of encouragement and the wide array of helpful suggestions.
By the way, if someone in your family has celiac disease, strongly consider getting tested. If there’s a family history, you’re at greater risk for having it yourself, and you really don’t want to let it go undetected. I expect to find out for myself whether I have it when my biopsy results come back in about a week.
I expect to post a goodly handful of reviews this week, possibly including a second one later today. I’m done cooking with (and almost done reading) the ’superfood cookbook,’ and I’m done with Ronald Cutler’s The Secret Scroll. I’m also in the middle of cooking with an agave nectar baking book. Speaking of which, here’s a photo of some of the interesting ingredients we’ve been cooking with of late:
There’s a bottle of dark agave nectar, and some of the best pasta I’ve ever had (let alone the best whole-grain or gluten-free pasta). You can sort of see a tin of smoked paprika toward the back left; one of the authors of the gluten-free eating book recommended it, so when I saw it I couldn’t help picking it up. The baggie toward the back right is filled with Amaranth seeds, which are quite yummy in baked goods (I like to add a tablespoon to pancakes). As for the big bottle supporting the empty pasta bag… well, that one is homemade vanilla extract! YUM!
Sorry about the lack of reviews. It turned out there’s a gluten-free baking mix recipe in the gluten-free eating book, and I wanted to test it out before reviewing that book. I just made a final recipe from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey, so I hope to review that soon. I also plan to make a final recipe from the superfoods cookbook tonight.
Wednesday was the upper endoscopy. Apart from a killer headache that I couldn’t take anything for (no food, water, etc. for 6 hours before the procedure) it was quick and easy (not to mention I was blessedly unconscious for it). No ulcers; it looks like I just had acid reflux masquerading as gallbladder trouble, etc. A month on an acid-reducing proton-pump inhibitor med plus an improved diet has definitely helped, so, looks like I’ll be taking an acid-reducer for a while. Meanwhile they’re doing biopsies just to make sure there’s no h pylori infection or celiac disease (since the latter runs in the family and the former is often a cause of acid & ulcer problems).
Then I spent yesterday gardening, since my tomato seedlings arrived Tuesday. I planted nine seedlings (three each of three varieties), and six medusa pepper plants that I bought at the last minute (a decorative but edible sweet pepper with a bush growth habit). Some nifty new furniture that we got also arrived yesterday.
Here are a few gardening photos:
The red thing around the tomato seedling reflects red light at the plant, which is supposed to lead to a larger harvest. It acts as a mulch so you don’t have to weed around the tender roots. And if you pour water into the tray, it directs it down toward the roots of the plant, so they grow strong and deep instead of shallow.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve gone crazy with the camera.
The one thing that all ‘experts’ on health and eating (whether they’re doctors, nutritionists, or just proponents of the latest fad) seem to agree on is this: colorful, non-starchy veggies are healthy. They go back and forth on everything else, but not that. Of course, most of that back-and-forth could be accounted for if people just used a little common sense—everything in moderation, and the farther removed it is from the kind of diet we were designed for and eating over the last few thousand years, the more you should exercise that moderation. Seems to make sense to me, anyway.
So, yeah: vegetables. Whole grains. Good water. Fruits, whole, not juiced, so they have fiber to slow the blood-sugar spike.
I can’t entirely give up meat and it’s one of those things the ‘experts’ go back and forth on. However, I do recognize that it is a lot harder on the environment than eating a similar amount of vegetables (it takes so much more in the way of resources to produce that meat), and vegetables are better to eat in bulk. So over time I’ve gradually slid into a semi-vegetarian diet. Usually we get a freezer pack of meats from our butcher, which we know are good quality, then once a week or so we take a package out of the freezer, thaw it, and make something with it. Occasionally we have a little deli meat as well, although we’re trying to avoid the ones with preservatives these days where possible. We got some natural turkey breast at the Whole Foods market last weekend, and I was really surprised to discover how much more flavor it had than the stuff from the grocery store. We used one slice at a time in whole wheat wraps with plenty of veggies, so it served as a satisfying bit of flavor.
Although I’m not a vegetarian, I do use vegetarian cookbooks, because they’re a wonderful source of delicious and nutritious vegetable recipes. I particularly enjoyed reviewing The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Vegetarian, Third Edition, which contained a whole lot of fascinating information on nutrition and the like.
I also got a kick out of Food 2.0, by Charlie Ayers, the chef who cooked for Google. It’s got some amazing natural foods recipes in it, including a smoothie recipe that knocked my socks clean off.
Lately I have a new morning routine. While the cats eat their breakfast (which takes a good 10-20 minutes since they eat a raw diet), I leave my meusli to soak. It’s a slight variation on a fantastic recipe from the CIG vegetarian book; I just use dried cranberries instead of raisins (I like the tartness) and plain kefir instead of yogurt (I like the consistency), and I add a squeeze of agave nectar. I do my stretching from Stretching Illustrated or some yoga. I have my meusli, which fills me up better than oatmeal, cereal, eggs, or anything else I’ve tried, and I have some V8. (Yeah, it’s got a lot of sodium, but it’s a start, and it’s better than hot chocolate or OJ.)
I should be better about having veggies for lunch, but I’m lame and often have kefir with agave, more meusli, or leftovers. Sometimes we make a bean salad or something similar ahead of time for our lunches (it’s easy for my husband to pack in a cooler), in which case I might have that. Then there’s dinner, which could be just about anything, but these days is likely to be heavy on whatever produce looks good.
I won’t claim I’m suddenly losing a ton of weight or anything. I still need to get more exercise than I do, as well as eat less (I’m a compulsive over-eater with a wicked sweet tooth). My medications also don’t help—when I got switched from one ADD medication to another a couple of years ago, I suddenly gained more weight than I care to think about, and I have to fight just to keep from gaining more. But at least I have more energy when I eat well, and I know by eating less processed foods and less sugar I’m reducing the chance I’ll develop type II diabetes (which does run in the family) or other, related problems.
Then there are articles like the one that discusses a possible link between chemicals in body products and breast cancer tumors. Chemicals are being found in people’s bodies that probably got there through things they apply to their skin, hair, etc., and those products don’t have to abide by the same strict safety guidelines that foods do. You can’t avoid exposure to potentially harmful chemicals, but you can at least reduce it. I use all natural products when possible (it’s a little tough for me because I’m allergic to aloe, which is in almost everything), buy organic when I can afford it, and don’t use most cosmetics.
I never thought of myself as a health nut, but as I hit my mid-30s I’m kind of becoming one. Maybe I’ve just been made more aware of my health by recent changes in it (like the pains that seemed to be gallbladder problems, but might be ulcers instead). Maybe I’ve just started noticing the quality of life that some of my older friends enjoy, and others don’t, and I’m making some decisions about what I want to be capable of in another ten, twenty, or even forty years.
At any rate, it’s the sort of thing you have to think about sometime, and act on eventually. Otherwise you run out of time.
Today’s book review is of Elizabeth Vaughan’s amazing fantasy-romance Dagger-Star.
