I seem to be 90% over whatever I had/have. My mom is still feeling pretty lousy, though. She's got the sinus symptoms on top of everything else. A few odd things that I've noticed. With most illnesses, when my blood sugar drops below some threshold, I suddenly feel 10 times worse. This one started off that way, but since Tuesday, it's been the opposite. If my blood sugar rises too quickly (say from drinking something sugary, like juice), I become light-headed. I didn't realize that was what was happening on Tuesday, or I might have had a more pleasant day. Yesterday, I had some juice and shortly after that felt dizzy. Later I started on another serving of juice, but felt the same thing start, and stopped before I'd had more than a sip. So...no juice, or massively sugary snacks, until this thing is well and truly gone.
Caffeine helps, but I know better than to subject myself to large doses of caffeine too often. If I get too much, when it wears off it triggers a much worse case of dizziness than anything I've had from the flu. Think seasickness, where it feels like the floor is moving, but on dry land. I try to limit things containing large quantities of caffeine to once or twice a week because of that.
I did finally develop a very mild fever, but it was so mild that I don't know if it even counts. This was certainly not the worst illness I've ever had, but I may have just been lucky. And the more I think about it, the more I think it actually hit last Wednesday, not Saturday. Wednesday my head was feeling odd and somewhat painful, to the point that I debated not going to my philosophy classes after I was done teaching. I did go, and made it through them. Thursday I felt somewhat better, Friday somewhat worse again, then Saturday I felt like death warmed over. Lacking a fever, I assumed it was allergies...until I talked to my mom Monday and found out her diagnosis.
So the progression for me looked like:
(1) Sudden sharp back pain (about a week before the rest hit)
(2) Oddness in the head with headache.
(3) Fatigue, lethargy (felt fine so long as I didn't move much)
(4) Very mild fever
(5) Milder fatigue, occasional head twinges
(6) Subsidence
I have no idea if that's typical, though I have read that swine flu does not consistently produce the high fevers seen with most cases of flu. On the plus side, I've just caught and gotten over the worst disease known to be going around this year, so I should be scot-free the rest of the year. Hopefully. ^!^
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I had to rescue Jilly from the roof of the garage this morning. I'm not entirely sure how she got up there, but when I went out to get the cats in, there she was. My best guess is that she climbed up the neighbor's fence and jumped from there. She was meowing plaintively, like she didn't know how to get down, so I went into the garage and got the ladder. I don't like ladders, but I can use them so long as I feel stable enough on them. I got her down, found Princess hiding between the garage and the fence, and took off for work with the wrong set of keys. Thankfully, the secretaries get here before 8:00 am and have keys.
My first real indication that I have a minor problem with heights came when I was seven or eight and at my grandma and grandad's house in Akron, Colorado. There was something we had to climb up onto the garage for, and I got nominated because I was the smallest and lightest. I hated it. Give me handholds and rocks and ledges, and I'm perfectly happy. Put me on a ladder and I'm miserable. I think it's the same issue as with the stairs: all the open space makes me feel unstable. On a ledge, I feel more secure because I have the rock-face/building/whatever right next to me.
Interestingly, having the cold and medication nullify the effect for a day seems to have resulted in it mostly abating. Or, it might be more accurate to say that I've found a way to feel stable despite the open air of the staircase, and I think that I would not have done so without that moment of drug-induced clarity. That let me know that it was possible for me not to feel the effects, so I went looking for a way to duplicate the "cure" without the drugs in my system. Essentially, it's a mental image of dropping my root into the structure of the stairs, rather like the sensation I get whilst rooting against a taiji push. I wonder if that would work on the catwalk at the Minidome?
In rock-climbing, we climbed up the catwalk, which runs across the very center of a large stadium. It's probably a 100-150 foot drop. Climbing up the catwalk was much harder for me than rappelling down from it. Okay, the first time I said something like, "I'm a little bit terrified here," to the person who was helping me secure my harness, but, seriously, the rappel down was fun. The climb up...not so much. Incidentally, part of the reason I took rock-climbing was to work on my fear of heights.
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This has me wondering about my reactions to high, unenclosed spaces. The linked article discusses cases where the sight of stairs triggered seizures in some people. Now, it's not the sight of the stairs themselves that triggers my reaction; rather, it's the sense of being unanchored when I'm up high with no support structures in my field of vision. At least, I think that's what's going on.
But it has me wondering. Is vertigo itself a kind of seizure, triggered by a visual cue? Apparently there are cases of epilepsy where the form of the seizure is an intense sensation of vertigo, but that doesn't mean that all vertigo is connected to seizures. The thing that really puzzles me is the way it just disappeared last Friday when I had the cold coming on and was full of cold medication. If it were nothing more than a fear of heights, why would a physical change affect it? Also, I'm much less likely to experience vertigo if I'm up high on a naturally occuring structure, like a rock, or mountainside, or even a cliff face.
Okay, I've been habituating myself to the open staircases, but you expect gradual change from that, not a sudden reversal. It's come back somewhat since then, but not as bad as before. The cold is mostly gone now. I'm sort of wondering if the vertigo will come back full strength when the cold is completely gone.
Hmmm... one other possibility comes to mind. Vertigo can be linked to inner ear problems. Possibly I have these constantly but only notice when I feel unsteady due to external circumstances, and the cold medicine cleared out the inner ears enough that I no longer had problems. I don't know enough to know how plausible that is. *shrugs*
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By here, I mean, in Pocatello. More specifically, at ISU:
POCATELLO - Idaho State University announced a student has contracted the school's first reported case of the H1N1 Virus, or Swine Flu.
A worker at the Student Health Center said it is a mild to moderate case. The results took about five days to return. Since then, the student has recovered.
The student does not live in university housing. LocalNews8
I can't remember what prompted it, but somehow the topic of being sick came up while I was going over some review material for a class, and one of my students commented that ISU now had a confirmed case of swine flu, so I went looking. Based on the information at
Effect Measure, I would consider it worthwhile to get the vaccine when it becomes available, largely because having asthma puts me at greater risk for complications should I contract swine flu. I'm going from memory, so my figures may be off, but about 1% of people who get swine flu have it infect something deep inside the lungs, and at that point there's about a 50% survival rate. If you
don't have it get deep inside the lungs, it seems to be no worse than regular seasonal flu.
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Today I finally had allergies bad enough to try the Claritin "ready-tabs" I bought after giving up on the Zyrtec. I never had major side effects with Claritin ... it just tended to work only one time in three. I'm hoping the ready-tabs (which dissolve in the mouth) will be more likely to work. It took about 15 minutes from trying the ready-tab to feeling my head suddenly clear. So... now I get to see what new and exciting terrifying unexpected side effect come from this antihistamine! (You try giving a lecture when your nose won't stop running, your eyes itch, and your head feels like someone's slowly tightening a noose around it. Doesn't sound good? That's why I tried the Claritin.)
UPDATE: About all the Claritin did was help clear my head. It didn't stop the runny nose and sneezing at all. I was seriously tempted to reach for the Zyrtec, but I had to keep reminding myself: "one day's relief = two weeks of itching and acid reflux, followed by a histamine backlash." Symptoms are somewhat improved today, and I discovered that activity actually reduced the symptoms yesterday. I'd actually been wondering if I'd have to cancel my last review lecture halfway through, but as soon as I got up to the chalkboard and was moving around and talking, the symptoms nearly disappeared. As soon as I sat down and relaxed afterwards, they started coming back. So I think I'll go do some yardwork, and see if that will continue to help them today. No taiji, as I don't want to drive up there and I'm not sure what effect Don's cigarette smoke will have on my allergies ... plus if the symptoms do hit full force again, Don wouldn't want me up there.
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My breathing is much improved from what it was last fall, particularly when that doctor put me on prednisone. I think I'm back to what I was right after graduating from CSU. Part of the improvement I'm pretty sure is due to walking to campus three days a week now that the weather is decent enough for it. Partly I think it's that I'm back on bromelain and quercetin, which usually do better at keeping my allergies under control than antihistamines, though the Nasalcrom does its part as well. And partly I think it's because I'm off the Zyrtec.
Today I had a rather unnerving test of how much it had improved, as I managed not to put my inhaler in my backpack before walking to campus. My breathing was stressed at the end of the walk, to the point that I wished I had the inhaler with me, but it never got to the level of an asthma attack, and cleared up on its own after a few minutes of rest. That's actually major progress at this point. It means that I can own cats and still be able to breath and function normally. I'd been starting to wonder if, so long as I had the cats, I was going to be stuck with near-constant asthma attacks. Thankfully, the answer is no.
As far as the Zyrtec goes, when I first started taking it, it did seem to help the breathing, rather than making it worse. Unfortunately, it was a very temporary effect, and after being on it for a while, it didn't seem to help any at all. In fact, I strongly suspect it was making my breathing worse, as I've come to suspect it was responsible for my acid reflux problems last fall. They'd been mostly gone since December, when I first got off of the Zyrtec, but, during the four week period when I had Zyrtec in my system, the acid reflux started to come back. Not proof, but certainly suggestive.
I'm thinking that what caused my breathing to get worse in the first place, though, was not so much the cats as that I had stopped taking bromelain. The brand I'd been taking suddenly started being labeled as "Not Gluten Free." It was, and is, the only brand of bromelain that Fred Meyer carried, and it took me a while to track down another brand that was gluten free (at GNC). One caution about bromelain, however: taken on an empty stomach, it can cause cramping.
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I hadn't given up on Zyrtec, despite the side effects, because it was the only antihistamine I'd ever found that actually worked for me. I figured that so long as I didn't take it continuously, and had anti-itch stuff around for when it wore off, I'd be fine. Well, sort of. If it was only the itching, I think I wouldn't be writing it off. Unfortunately, it's a bit more insidious than that.
I'd been off of it completely for almost four months, and had bad allergy symptoms one morning. So I took a Zyrtec, and was curious to see whether I would get any itching after it wore off. On the fifth night after taking it, I woke up with extremely itchy feet, applied Benadryl spray, and went back to sleep. There were a few more minor itches over the next week or so, but nothing bad. Exactly two weeks after taking it, I had another bad allergy attack. Two weeks is also the time that it usually takes for the itching to stop completely after you go cold turkey on Zyrtec after taking it for an extended period of time. I noted this "coincidence" but went ahead and took a Zyrtec that day. The itching was a bit more persistent, and started sooner. Still not too bad.
Two weeks after that? Massive hot and cold chills. Nothing that I could call "allergy symptoms," but I'd noted the two week intervals when I was trying to get off of the stuff last fall as well. I'd just make it through the two week itching period when something would happen that would induce me to take another of the bloody things. So I don't think the two-week nonsense is coincidence. My suspicion is that two weeks is when enough of the Zyrtec and whatever it breaks down into is out of your system. It still seems to protect somewhat against allergies all through those two weeks. Then when the level drops past some threshold, there's something on the order of a histamine rebound, resulting in worse allergy symptoms. Note that this is speculative, but fits my experience. (YAY! Anecdotal Evidence!)
I'm not particularly interested in taking something that both has annoying side effects after the fact and, just after the side effects wear off, induces symptoms to encourage you to take more. Still, since I finally found an antihistamine that does work on me, I may play around and see if there are any others that also work, and what kind of side effects they produce.
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I've been off the prednisone for more than a week, now. As far as breathing, it loosened the tight feeling in my chest, but did not make it go away completely. However, thanks to a suggestion from my taji teacher, Nasalcrom did make it go away completely. I can't say for sure whether it would have done so had the prednisone not first lessened the tightness, but I suspect it would have.
Nasalcrom is supposed to reduce the amount of histamine released (presumably into the nose, since it's a nasal spray), rather than attacking the histamine after it's already been released. Generally, people take a few weeks to start showing results from it. I got near-instantaneous results. The first day I used it, it was like, "Wow! This is what it's like to be able to breath freely!" Unfortunately, that was also the day I came down with probable food poisoning. Minor case, but due to the conjunction in timing, it made me stop using the Nasalcrom for a few days. Once those symptoms went away, I started the Nasalcrom again. My breathing is much more open than it has been all fall. I'm not sure what, exactly, it did, since I'm still having some allergy symptoms, but it certainly improved my breathing.
On the odd side, the recommendation from my taiji teacher came through a friend of his ... who got the recommendation from his "spirit guide." He's been playing around with shamanic meditation (using drum sounds to induce a trance), and his question before one particular session was about making his asthma symptoms go away. The answer came into his mind, "Nasalcrom." He had no idea what it was, and went to look it up, guessing at the spelling. My suspicion is that he'd encountered an advertisement for Nasalcrom somewhere along the way, which probably mentioned asthma, and his subconscious stored it away. Under trance, the name came back to the surface. I consider it possible that there is such a thing as a literal spirit guide, but find it more probable that it was simply subconscious prompting brought to the surface by a trance-state. Whichever it is, I'm grateful either to his spirit guide or his subconscious for the suggestion, as it works beautifully for me. ^/^
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... and breathing better. Okay, a steroid: prednisone. I woke up with a fever this morning, so I elected not to go to taiji and pass it on to everyone else. Instead, I went to Portneuf's Urgent Care Center, as this felt like a repeat of the last cold I'd had less than two weeks ago, which possibly started with some ear pain in August. So I got some antibiotics for that, but I also complained about how much trouble I'd been having with my asthma lately.
First thing the doctor tried was a sort of steam/oxygen/albuterol semi-darth-vader breathing apparatus. It gives a higher dose of the albuterol, but in a more dispersive fashion, presumably to help it be absorbed better. It made me jittery, restless, and cold, but didn't fix the tight spot in my chest which was what was interfering with the breathing. So he decided to give me prednisone, which is really scary stuff if you stay on it for long. One of my mom's friends at choir had an idiot doctor who let him take the stuff constantly for nigh twenty years ... at which point his kidneys gave out. He was lucky, though: they found a matching donor in under a year. I'm supposed to be on the stuff for a total of 8 days, and the last four are step-down doses so that my body doesn't go litig when it stops getting the prednisone.
Today I can't be sure that the difference isn't due to the steam/oxygen/albuterol treatment, but my breathing is better and the tightness in my chest does seem to be a bit better. We'll see if this continues through the treatment. Incidentally, one of the common side effects of prednisone is increased appetite. If anything, I had less of an appetite today...except for fresh vegetables. Any vegetable that I thought of sounded good, especially cauliflower. I didn't have many fresh veggies on hand, though.
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