Tag: Illness

Categories
Aesthetics Medical

Day 1547 and Fragrance Free

Going to a spa or a hair appointment has an added layer of stress when you’ve got skin allergies.

I don’t need clean or organic beauty (though I do prefer it). It’s not about being fancy so much as I need it to be free of synthetic fragrances like Limonene.

Limonene is a naturally occurring, colorless liquid terpene hydrocarbon (C10H16) found in citrus fruits and other plants, known for its citrus scent and used as a flavoring agent, solvent, and in various products like cleaning products, cosmetics, and supplements

Somehow I became allergic over the years to a number of fragrances both natural and synthetic. A clean beauty list of “no no”ingredients has become common as everyone from Sephora’s to BeautyPie agreed on things like keeping products free of paraben, sulphate and Methylisothiazol.

It’s a little harder to justify not including citrus or lavender unless you are trying to cater to the most sensitive skin. Both are quite popular for all kinds of personal care. I have to be careful of almost all soaps.

Some of my interest in preparedness (and in travel size cosmetics) surely comes from having to carry around basics from shampoo to shea butter. It’s a pain to have to consider but also a pleasure to always be prepared for any scenario.

Categories
Medical Politics

Day 1544 and Ownership

Americans are big fans of private property; or so our reputation says. But we’ve got a lot of exceptions, rules and regulations how we exercise our rights in that regard.

From zoning laws to bodily sovereignty, restrictions on what you can do with your “stuff” really runs the gamut in America.

I refused to join security clearance service Clear or take part in genetic testing at 23andMe because I simply didn’t trust that my genetic and biometric data wouldn’t end up being sold to a private equity shop in the event of bankruptcy. Which alas is exactly what is happening to 23andMe.

I don’t care for the state having my biometrics but at least it’s possible to advocate medical rights and personal privacy. The TSA and the State Department have me cleared for TSAPre and Trusted Traveler.

I don’t love it but I’ve got some rights that leviathan is meant to abide by. I don’t believe we’ve yet found a way to bind a corporation to a similar term of service. But the cyperpunk future seems more likely to give us less control not more.

Between the law of the low road and our current tendency toward “the idiot plot” in all areas of life it seems like ownership of our bodies and its data is a pipe dream. Hell you can’t even keep a Signal group chat secure anymore as any old idiot (or savvy Machiavellian) can drop in a journalist.

Categories
Medical

Day 1541 and Mycotoxins

One of the more exhausting problems that arose over the winter was mold contamination in our master bedroom and adjacent rooms.

It’s taken six weeks to get in the right folks for testing and assessment. We’ve not been able to start remediation as the best option for the job isn’t available.

Alex has been able to negotiate access to the various necessary tools to begin but it’s quite a bit of work to DIY during which I’ll need to be out of the house.

Working through cleaning all of the clothing and other sundries in the closet is also a massive project. Our dry cleaner is going to make out like a bandit.

However the worst bit of this has been the anti-fungal course of antibiotics my physician recommended prophylactically as during all of this we’ve been suppressing my immune system (with some negative side effects) as part of a medication protocol change.

I swear I can feel whatever mycotoxins may exist in my biome fighting the drugs. I’ve had an astonishing array of negative intrusive thoughts that don’t feel like my own. You have to wonder if my ride-along mycelium simply don’t want to lose their host.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1535 and Telogen Effluvium

In what has become a real persistent mood this winter, I have another dumb problem. I am losing my hair. Literally.

As it turns out stress can trigger hair into mistakenly going into what is called a rest phase. Perplexity tells me this is a temporary condition where significant stress pushes large numbers of hair follicles into a resting phase, causing shedding within weeks to months.

I have a lot of hair so it’s only really noticeable to me but I am tired of unexpected problems this winter. Obviously I have been under some stress and it feels like punishment.

Thankfully virtually all people diagnosed with it recover once the underlying stress has passed. It’s commonly associated with giving birth but it seems any significant or stressful event can trigger it.

Hair regrowth typically begins within 3–6 months. In most cases, up to 95% of acute TE resolves completely without long-term effects on hair density.

My vanity is pleased this temporary. I can certainly take it easy and pull back from unnecessary stress. Plus it’s a great reason to overspend at Sephora on new haircare. There is a bright side to everything.

Categories
Medical

Day 1531 and Dumb Novel Problems

I personally find I’ve got an adequate number of problems in my life. I’d rather not go searching for new ones. And yet they keep cropping up no matter one’s hopes.

I’m at the eye clinic at the hospital for a two week checkup on an infection that felt like it literally ballooned my right eyelid. It was either a cyst or a chalazion, the doctor was like eh treatment is the same.

Not to upset those with weak stomachs but the treat is slice open your eyelid and squeeze out the pus, blood and scar tissue. It isn’t as painful as it sounds.

After two weeks of diligent hot washcloths, antibiotic eye drops and doxycycline my eye has reduce the lump to a small pea or large lentil. My body was trying to move it out but it needed a bit more help.

So she sliced it open again seeing if we could get anything else out. Alas the tissue scaring was most of the volume so there was less ooze to be pushed out.

She said I could wait it out but it takes months to move it naturally or we can do a steroid injection and reduce the swelling so it clears more easily.

I’m not a big fan of prednisone when I’m taking it internally but a little localized dexamethasone shot into the eyelid seemed like a good plan to me.

I’ll say that it’s a bit scary trying to stay perfectly still while someone holds a scalpel to your eyelid. Having someone inject a needful of steroids is much worse from a base animal terror perspective for me.

I’m safely through it though now my eye is all puffy again. I’m likely to have a black eye for a bit so I’m excited for all the jokes Alex and I will make about how he hit me. Nothing more awkward than a wife with a black eye.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1530 and Pandemic Anniversary

March 11 2020 was the day the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 to be a pandemic. It’s been five years since we had our once in a century pandemic that changed everything. Honestly it feels like it just happened.

You can quibble a bit on the start (right there in the name alluding to its discovery in 2019) but this second of March the week where America finally started changing behaviors. Within two weeks we’d have the infamous “flatten the curve” discussion. What a shitshow those early days were.

The pandemic changed a lot of people’s lives. The New York Times has a feature with 30 charts about how the world is different that I found interesting.

My life changed in a lot of ways that are probably recognizable to other Americans. My already digital life became how business was done. I moved back home. I rethought my relationship with institutional trust.

We lived in New York when we were locked down. Alex and I didn’t leave our one bedroom apartment for three months except to go to the CVS.

Coincidentally we’d been in the middle of our landlord trying to evict us for filing a complaint with the department of buildings over broken elevators. That got stopped. As soon as it seemed safe to leave city we rented an Airbnb in the Hudson Valley. The next week protests broke out. We had lived above City Hall so we got very lucky.

Figuring out where to land and the shape of our lives was a process. The Airbnb phase felt stressful as the summer ended and the urge for permanency felt overwhelming. We signed a lease site unseen for a townhouse in my hometown of Boulder Colorado.

Much of the rest of these past five years have been subsequently documented here on this blog. We found our way to Montana. A lot happened in those intervening years. None of it felt like it happened very fast. And yet here we are.

Categories
Emotional Work Medical

Day 1528 and The Days Go By

My family has had a really difficult winter. In November I felt so much optimism heading into the darker months. As we spring ahead for Daylight Savings I honestly have no idea how we survived.

My husband and I have both had a run of awful luck with our health. Somehow we both got pneumonia in the last year. I hesitate to blame Covid but neither one of us have ever had pneumonia in our lives and now random respiratory illnesses seem to balloon into significant problems.

Now this could have been exacerbated by discovering we have a mold problem in our bedroom. We are so lucky we have another floor in the house to move into but we are looking at the type of mitigation work that evokes “eh fuck it full remodel” in the hearts of men.

Bright side by 2026 we may have a bathtub in the house. Oddly despite living in 4 bedroom 3 bath house we only have showers. Renovated farmhouses have their quirks.

The only thing keeping me from giving into the constant parade of maladies is working with my portfolio companies. Not having been blessed with children I pour my nurturing into my founders. Investing into the future comes in many forms and I try to trust that this is where I’m meant to be.

Categories
Medical Preparedness

Day 1525 and Turbulence

I am doing what I can to hold steady in the turbulence of the moment. Deals are still getting done, founders move companies forward, I do my small part to contribute in the strange dance of rounds coming together.

It has not been easy with both my husband and I seemingly rotating between one health issue to another. It would be nice to have us both healthy at the same time.

Because it is the winter of our discontent I’ve spent more time on Deep Research projects this past month than seems sensible but the urge to find solutions is strong when your health needs mending.

Plus it saves a ton of time when the alternative is calling a bunch of different experts and making progress at best every two weeks with appointments. Scheduling health care of any kind is a mess.

I remember realizing so vividly during Hurricane Sandy that no matter the catastrophe the rest of life went on. Everything will feel turbulent in our new high variance age and all we can do is live through it.

Categories
Chronic Disease Startups

Day 1519 and Steady

I am doing my best to remain steady. The world at large doesn’t make it easy. Every day we have a new crisis, impending doom and looming fascism.

I would be more inclined to reactivity if it didn’t seem much more important to pay attention to the actual problems over which I have some agency.

Some days that agency is used on frustratingly small things and others it’s the most fantastical science fiction come to life in our day to day reality. The indignities of human embodiment and the miracles of applying knowledge to problems exist in the same reality.

There is so much pretending and posturing in the process of pursuing any goal, it’s understandable that people mistake the symbols of things for the thing itself.

Categories
Medical

Day 1517 and Blink Blink

I’m writing this in the waiting room of the new hospital campus in Bozeman. We’ve recently had an outpost of the Billings Clinic go up alongside the highway between Bozeman and Belgrade to keep up with the growth in Southwest Montana.

It’s really nice and absolutely packed with people. The average age looks to be early seventies so it’s not a young crowd in the eye clinic.

The only other mid-life people besides Alex and myself is a prison inmate in a yellow jumpsuit and his two Corrections officers. I had half a mind to go ask him what he was in for while showing off my own deformity m.

I’m unsure if it’s a side effect of changing medication or just plain bad luck, but I have an infection in my right eyelid. It started about a month ago and looked like it was a simple chalazion.

It’s sometimes called an eyelid cyst or a meibomian cyst. It slowly forms when an oil gland (called a meibomian gland) becomes blocked. Cleveland Clinic

But over the last month it went from painless little boba ball sized lump to my entire eyelid being swollen. It got much worse this week especially as I started applying wet washcloths to it regularly.

They were able to perform an incision and curettage (don’t click through if you don’t want to see some gnarly eye stuff) as my discomfort was pretty intense. I desperately wanted it drained and they did not disappoint.

Just wiping up the last of the pus

I hope this heals well and without issues. I fear this was complicated by the changes I’m meant to undergo in my medical protocol from one IL-17 inhibitor to another.

To soften any backlash in symptoms during the change I’m on another immunosuppressant so I’m particularly nervous about infections especially when it comes to sensitive areas like the eyes. I’m glad I was able to get this drained but I’m a bit nervous about how it will heal.