Oooohhh, Good Drugs!

Yes, I’m much bet­ter now. I man­aged to con­vince the pain man­age­ment clin­ic that I’m not a junkie who took all her pills ear­ly, so I got a new RX for MS Con­tin and Robax­in. I fig­ure it’ll take me a few days to get past the flare, but I already feel bet­ter and know that I’ll con­tin­ue to improve.

I had the aller­gy tests today, too. I react­ed to every aller­gen for which they test­ed me, so much so that all the weals just ran togeth­er into a big, red, swollen (and par­tic­u­lar­ly unat­trac­tive) mass on my back and arm. The ones on the arm, in fact, near­ly con­nect­ed to the ones on my back. Love­ly. So I got a shot of anti­his­t­a­mine in addi­tion to being slathered with steroid cream, and every­body came to look at the odd­i­ty. Thank you. That kind of atten­tion I do not need.

I’d tak­en the stuff from my pre­vi­ous skin tests back around, um, 1997 or 98. I’m aller­gic to more things now, includ­ing cat AND dog dan­der. Whee!

The ven­om test (for beestings) will be done next month.

I left there with lots of infor­ma­tion and orders about putting aller­gen bar­ri­ers every­where, keep­ing ani­mals out of the bed­rooms, not groom­ing the crit­ters myself, hav­ing all of them bathed and brushed at least week­ly, and wear­ing a mask and gloves if I real­ly must gar­den (molds in the dirt, you know). 

I fig­ure that if we comb the cats reg­u­lar­ly and wipe them down with some of the tan­nin-based anti-dan­der stuff week­ly that should be as effi­ca­cious and less dan­ger­ous than try­ing to bathe them. 

I’m won­der­ing just how well the mul­ti­tude of anti-aller­gen uphol­stery, car­pet, and laun­dry treat­ments work. I mean, do they actu­al­ly help enough to jus­ti­fy their cost? As much as I like to make our home a healthy haven, I’m not cer­tain that our lives would real­ly improve that much by buy­ing and using all this stuff. And it would have to be every­where, because Katie’s every bit as aller­gic to the world as I am, and Sam was pre-aller­gy-shots (in childhood).

Oh—I have my very own peak flow meter, too. I’m sup­posed to use it once or twice a day and record the results on a pho­to­copied graph that’s been reduced to utter illegibility.

And ear­ly this morn­ing, I went in for blood tests that required fast­ing, so I could­n’t even pre­pare for this day of med­ical atten­tion by hav­ing a com­fort food break­fast at home. 

On the hap­py side, that first vis­it did result in the refer­ral to an ENT (ear-nose-throat spe­cial­ist) that my chi­ro­prac­tor has been going on about for so long.

I did have time to read all of one book (Tanya Huf­f’s lat­est, Smoke and Shad­ows) and more than half of anoth­er (Charles de Lin­t’s Mulen­gro). Both were good. Both were pret­ty dark. Oh—I’ve also been read­ing Tony Buzan’s Mind Map betwixt and between, but it’s much slow­er going. Non-fic­tion always is for me, as I wor­ry more about absorb­ing it. Well-writ­ten fic­tion is more holis­tic or something.

Over­all a good, if tir­ing, day. I’m try­ing to find a com­fy way to sit that does­n’t require con­tact with any­thing on my back or arm and it seems impossible.