Tag: Pain

Categories
Community Culture

Day 1641 and Honor

The good vibes of my weekend have washed out on the tides as I consider a frustrating non-interaction that has grown into anger in my heart as rapidly as a wheatgrass seed grows in an Easter basket.

I am considering the question of honor in the context of closed communities and events. If you go looking, the cat is out of the bag on where I was and with whom, but I don’t yet have personal permission to use a name, so I’ll keep this brief.

I’m in my Worf era

I’ve been called many names in my time and plenty of them have not been laudatory. Dirty shiksa, stupid cunt, and mostly recently, demonic. Everyone being entitled to their opinion, I don’t generally ask for apologies. I do ask that you say it to my face though.

I am a shiksa, certainly “see you next Tuesday” from time to time, but I remain skeptical that I am possessed by anything from Hades or other Lovecraftian horror from the beyond.

But so long as you use my name in the process of insulting my honor, I only request you look me in the eyes while you do it. I can take it. I stand by who I am and what I say.

So I can’t shake the feeling that I was deliberately dishonored by the speaker. And I am actually angry now. I am used to the insult throwing and name calling of Internet living, indeed I thrive in it. I am not accustomed to aspersions by celebrities as I don’t matter all that much. And I certainly didn’t expect it in a small private group.

I fight in that arena under my own banner. I take those punches under my own name. I won’t lie, someone of stature being so upset as to call me evil without felt good at first (how nice to be noticed) and slowly curdled into a fury over the disrespect.

Maybe it’s because I was one of the few women speaking. It was only after much effort he agreed to speak with my male co-speaker and not me (I’d already left). Maybe it was because after multiple attempts at engagement I was refused time and again. Maybe it’s because his gaze remained staunchly averted. Whatever triggered it has now turned to fiery anger.

I think it’s a bitch move to drop bombs and then runaway like a kicked cur when the beast stirs. And I am quite wide awake now.

I’m the alien in this scenario
Categories
Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 1636 and Bounce Your Boobies

Somewhere along the way I leaned into my hippie heritage and stopped wearing bras. Don’t fret, I didn’t burn them. Nor do I view it as any sort of political or fashion statement. It was the pain that did me in.

Sure, the pandemic’s homebound nature gave me the freedom to let loose. But it was the pain in my middle thoracic spine that sealed the deal. It’s at its worst right at my bra line.

I simply could not tolerate the pain from the pressure of even the most forgiving fabric bralette. No bra fitter in the world (not even the famed Orchard Corset of the lower east side) could get around the physics of an inflamed spinal and intercostal condition. My breasts would have go free.

I do have some sense of propriety about the situation. I lock the girls up firmly for business and conservative occasions, but even then if I can find a way to style myself such that I can hide the lack of brazier I do it.

It’s long been hippie lore that the pressure of the straps and clasps of lingerie prevent lymphatic drainage, which can lead to any number of problems. The most feared outcome was breast cancer. Though I do not have any family history of the disease, I did not care to increase my chances as my health waned.

And as I pack for a summer camp out in which I will be socializing with some very conservative people indeed, I found myself humming a crass tune from my maternal grandmother’s third husband’s family.

It was a 4th of July tradition in the raucous La Flair clan (a flavor of French Canadians who oddly settled on Long Island) to host a talent show. The well endowed Boomer women of the clan, who wonderfully possess no shame, had a chorus line dance they called “Bounce Your Boobies!”

I won’t be dressing or dancing in the manner of this fantastic clan but it’s quite likely my boobs will be doing a bit of bouncing for the rest of my life.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1629 and IL-17 Changeover Results

I need to do a better job at tying up loose ends. I’ll bring up a change and then forget to do updates until I’ve concluded the experiment.

My January health reboot included changing my IL-17 biologic injection (moving from Cosentyx to Bimzlex) in the hopes of reducing my soaring inflammation markers has its last loading dose today. I take it for my psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis.

I got a fresh round of bloodwork done last week and am pleased to have seen my CRP & my sed rate at the best point in some years. Subjective metrics like pain and energy are usually leading indicators for my erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein coming down. And that is my priority with pharmaceutical choices and holistic ones.

I have had a lot of negative side effects that were new to me that did show up during my Bimzelx transition. I got a meiborn gland infection on my eyelid twice. I had to get it sliced and lanced TWICE! And I took two rounds of antibiotics (which I love as I feel terrific when I’m on doxycycline or amoxicillin).

You’d think needing that down while in Istanbul would have been scary but no it was informative and fun. And I was able to learn more about hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy which is the next big adventure coming up.

So it’s looking good for Bimzelx even though I’m not wild about how my immune system has reacted. The eyelid stuff is scary. I’ve had folliculitis in odd places so I’ll need more topic antibiotic washes presumably. My scalp has not taken it well.

Other oddities of note. Bimzelx also hurts way more than any other injection I’ve ever gotten in my entire life. I’ve done methotrexate, all the hormones for egg retrieval, multiple biologics (Coesyntx and Humira) and nothing comes close to this kind of pain. It’s a big vial and an auto-injector so you have no control so you must muster up the willpower to hurt yourself for 45 seconds of burning pain. Because you can’t restart you’ve got to do it. I scream. It’s bad.

It does appear to be working so we shall see how the change from loading dose to regular every two month maintenance dosing goes. I don’t know if I have multiple weird infections a year in me but I do like being able to exercise and have more work capacity. I’d say on balance it’s worth it for me.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 1627 and 12 Hours

I went to bed yesterday around 3:30 or so. Oops. I could barely write a post as I was struggling to stay awake at all. I did three short paragraphs and tagged it and said good enough.

A long night of poor sleep

My sleep was not peaceful or restorative but at least it was long. The night before I was up late (ok 10:30pm or so) and I struggled to fall asleep.

Alex’s birthday party on Saturday was enough to wipe me out so badly that on Sunday I couldn’t stay up past mid-afternoon. Pathetic yes but not surprising.

I recently did a big round of bloodwork and was thrilled to see my inflammation is down significantly but I have something called inflammatory anemia. So maybe a contributing factor to my exhaustion. There are a number of odd areas that need some attention especially in my endocrine system.

The Bimzelx switch is in its 4th month so almost through the loading dosing. I have had awful side effects but the code biomarkers of CRP and Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) are significantly improved.

I still have all kinds of weird pains and compensatory biomechanical problems but I’m feeling moderately optimistic. The next steps are around the corner. And hopefully I get more deep sleep and REM sleep before I tackle it.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1622 and Pulsed Electromagnetic Field

On a bit of a whim, Alex bought “on the go” PEMF Infrared Mat from HigherDOSE.

This is the year of acquiring mechanical intervention medical equipment for us.

Yes as biohackers we trial a lot and some of it is less woo-woo than others. Treatments like hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy have significantly more clinical data than say pulsed electromagnetic field treatments.

It seems easier to send electromagnetic waves at different frequencies than create a sealed oxygen chamber but consumer is weird and the military and elite athletics tested HBOT whereas mere hippies played around with PEMF.

A temperature setting swaps for 4 separate vibration settings Delta Waves, Theta Waves (Schaumann Reponse, Alpha and Beta Waves

So it’s qualia only here on the good vibrations but I am excited to try it out. I can’t exactly feel the vibrations unlike in other clinical settings where I’ve experienced much more intense (it’s measured in gauss or Tesla) but infrared warmth is a nice experience even if the vibrations don’t do much. But I will report on it.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1619 and What A Headache

It’s a gorgeous breeze June Sunday in Montana. It’s the sort of day where you go to your favorite bakery for an exotic little pastry, maybe get lunch from a favorite restaurant and then go for a hike or a bike ride to marvel at the majesty in wonder.

As I am working through a new physio routine to improve compensatory pain in my trapezius muscles I was a little nervous. I wanted to adequately test that I’d found new corrective instincts without overdoing things.

I walked a favorite two mile circuit with a stead inclined of hills that eases back out into the flat valley. I felt terrific. The sun was shining but the breeze kept it cool. Truly paradise on earth.

And then within an hour or so I got an awful headache. Had I failed at reworking my compensation so badly? I checked fascia and muscle points and found my shoulders relaxed.

Then I checked my upper cervical spike and yelped. I had swapped one compensation for another and gave myself a killer headache in the process. But I didn’t have the same pain pattern or headache type and that is a win.

Categories
Medical

Day 1615 and Ounce of Prevention

I had a preventative care appointment at the doctor today and I came away from the experience wondering why I bothered.

I felt like a fool for checking on something before it had become a problem. It was merely a concern and no answers could be found without a substantial escalation in investment and time. Which I chose not to dod.

I will still get a bill whether it’s 90 seconds or 90 minutes which I do understand. But does it have to be so “escalate to maximum” or “just ignore it” as the poles of preventative care? Can’t it be more of a spectrum of options? And because “fuck you that’s why” I have no more certainty on the problem than when I started.

And that’s not how I want to experience the care and maintenance of anything under my care in my life let alone my body. Our house, our relationships, our business, our car, heck our chickens deserve better than “don’t know why you bother” care. I bother because I care.

We have a home maintenance sheet excel, a seasonal rotation system for disaster supplies, and an inventory management system for key household goods.

Yeah, we are that kind of family. My husband has opinions on label makers. I have strong opinions on sweater brushes and leather are.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Sure that’s a very Mary Poppins kind of approach to life but I think it’s a worthy one. I want to live a life where I am responsible to my own life.

Categories
Internet Culture Media

Day 1605 and No Blackpilling

We get regular reminders of how chaotic things are in our new hypersphere networked world that we have entire memes categories and full influence campaigns dedicated to blackpilling people into nihilism.

No blackpilling meme

The fatalism and determinism expressed on the internet is the experiences reality for plenty of people and it’s probably not limited to a few radicals. The presumption that any of these pills are limited to incels misogynists racist cranks is comforting but incorrect.

I’ve written about blackpilling before as it’s a common theme in overcoming the exhaustion of an unsettled era. Chaos is emotionally and physically debilitating because of our biological experience of it.

She thought something had gone wrong with us physically too. “Endocrine systems get fried. There’s too much cortisol, you’ve been running on adrenaline, eventually you tap out. Everyone feels nuts right now,” she said, “because what on earth are we supposed to do with the fact that we’ve had this incredible rate of change for so long. We think we’re keeping up with it, but our bodies are like, ‘Oh, actually no. We have no idea what’s going on.’ ”

Dissident Fringe

I also believe it’s a deliberate strategy by virtually every player in the great games of power and influence to make us feel nuts. Everything is a conspiracy. Everyone is a villain except your in-group. Except it’s not.

It’s always crazy in Philadelphia
Categories
Culture Internet Culture Reading

Day 1600 and Uncertain Milestones

I read some Charles Dickens today. No this isn’t a Great Expectations joke. Rather, I read the first seven paragraphs of his 900 page novel Bleak House.

Why? I wanted to test my literacy as part of social media’s great ongoing debate about humanity’s waning reading and writing abilities.

A Substacker & Twitter personality broke down a 2015 think-aloud reading comprehension study which analyzed the skills of English majors at two Kansas universities.

[They were asked to] read the first seven paragraphs of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House out loud to a facilitator and then translate each sentence into plain English

They Don’t Read Very Well: A Study of the Reading Comprehension Skills of English Majors at Two Midwestern Universities.

The Substacker Beloved Kitten has written about what constitutes mass literacy before using something called the PIAAC which has five levels of literacy.

If you are a knowledge professional you better hope you are a four but social media comments suggest most of us are not.

This methodology doesn’t even try articulate level 5. And as someone who occasionally sees what a real 1% outlier looks like I don’t disagree. Our best are in a league of their own.

So obviously as American funded “college for all” it was clear not all college attendees would on the right side of average. And as it turns out, the English majors at highly subsidized state universities (mostly white girls incidentally) had a lot of trouble understanding Dickens’s British family court tragedy.

I also don’t want to read that many pages of fog metaphors, and I have an entire tag dedicated to forced metaphors.

I took the test (speaking my answer into my phone) and it was harder than you think to simplify but I had the vocabulary.

Amusingly all of the test takers were sure they could easily finish the stupid book after most of them failed to understand even its basic concepts. I would not finish Bleak House.

Like those other white girls I am unlikely to be in the 1% of literacy when it comes 19th century British literature. Surely in my own skill stack (and it’s overlapping areas of expertise) I can approach 2SD on things. I suspect this blog and my general internet presence suggests I can do Level 4 reading. We think around what we can.

That seems adequate given I contribute what I like and communicate what is enjoyable on my own spaces. Here I am plodding along contributing sixteen hundred days of writing to the public discourse which is its own proof of literacy. It’s several novels worth of training data for our artificial intelligences.

I think about how much I do or don’t want to contribute to the maw of publicly indexed Internet because I believe we get better if we all contribute to this public good.

Our future is a shared coordination problem requiring we can comprehend and contribute to our commons. Maybe I understand enough Dickens to get by. He maybe has a dimmer view of legalistic thinking than I do. But I’m sure he’d see plenty of wretches in our times too.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1589 and Disagreeable

I am in a lot of physical pain and I have been cranky about it all day. I just did not have the energy to self censor my discomfort either. I spent a lot of the day in bed popping off.

Because people are polite I only ever get rewarded for being spicy. I’m sure people harbor all kinds of uncharitable opinions about people who are mouthy, especially women. But I mostly find you can say quite a lot. Especially with your ingroup.

In fact being disagreeable is tolerated, and even celebrated, in almost all public forums. Hard truths, straight acts, unpleasant realities tend to be celebrated. Truth telling can become someone’s persona even when nothing is wrong.

But watch out for that dark path. If you care too much about broader opinions of yourself you can easily become what is called audience captured in which your persona gets adapted to what gets a response. Modeling your life as get it can go very wrong for people.

I felt for comedian John Mulaney who got typecast as the affable guy and absolutely hated being the bad guy for his various addictions and personal life complications.

In his special “Baby J,” Mulaney reflects on the burden of his public persona: “Likeability is jaaaaaaaail,” summary via Perplexity of a much better substack piece

In some ways, playing to type is just cognitively easier for everyone. A social contract if you will. Being able to show more than one side of yourself shouldn’t be shrugged off as people pleasing nor is being disagreeable always a sign of bad temperament. Humans contain multitudes even if everyone plays to type.