The NaBloPo­Mo prompt for today:
How do you feel when you return home at the end of the day?

I’m not sure I should have answered this one, as I doubt that my answer will be in sync with the intent of the ques­tion. I don’t leave home every day to go to work, or leave home every day, peri­od.

How­ev­er, when I do leave home, how I feel when I return depends on many fac­tors. How did I feel before leav­ing? How long was I gone, and how much phys­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al, and emo­tion­al ener­gy did I have to expend while I was out? Did I have to deal with any­thing unex­pect­ed, good or bad? How many peo­ple was I around? Were they strangers or peo­ple known to me? Did I encounter them all at once, or in small groups of one or two at a time? Was Sam with me as a buffer? fHow’s my blood sug­ar? Am I well hydrat­ed? What was the weath­er like? Did I remem­ber to take my reg­u­lar med­ica­tions? What about tak­ing break­through pain med­ica­tion, anx­i­ety med­ica­tion, or a mus­cle relax­ant before I found myself in a state where they would­n’t work very well? Did I use my scoot­er if there was much walk­ing? How noisy was the envi­ron­ment? Was it drafty, or over­ly hot or cold? Did I have to dri­ve? Was I out to do some­thing I want­ed to do, or was I doing some­thing I had to do?

Fre­quent­ly, I’m so dog-tired that I can bare­ly drag myself in the door. I have actu­al­ly fall­en asleep sit­ting in the car, in the dri­ver’s seat, more than once. (There are plen­ty of rea­sons that I do not dri­ve much any more.) Deal­ing with the secu­ri­ty sys­tem seems an intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenge designed for Ein­stein. I’m eas­i­ly con­fused and my mem­o­ry is beyond poor. Even if I am dehy­drat­ed or I need to eat, I’m too tired to be inter­est­ed in food or even water. If I was out for too long, or if it was a par­tic­u­lar­ly stress­ful peri­od, I get a fever and my body reacts as if I’m in shock. I feel like I’m freez­ing, no mat­ter what the actu­al tem­per­a­ture around me is, and I start shak­ing bad­ly.

So that’s how I feel most days when I return home at the end of the day, if I’ve had to leave home. I think that should go a long way towards explain­ing why I’m such a home­body these days! I am for­tu­nate in that I have Sam, Katie, and oth­ers in my life, so I am able to have a ful­fill­ing life with­out being very adven­tur­ous.

The fol­low­ing was post­ed to a mail­ing list I’m on. Of course, it was sur­round­ed with the usu­al “send it to every­body you know!” admo­ni­tions. I don’t do that, and I usu­al­ly delete any­thing so marked. But I did find the infor­ma­tion use­ful, so (after edit­ing a bit, I admit), I am repost­ing it. I made no mate­r­i­al changes, and take no cred­it for the infor­ma­tion there­in. I’d be hap­py to give cred­it to the orig­i­nal author if I can find any cred­itable attri­bu­tion.

I looked back at my recent entries and real­ized that it’s been a real­ly long time since I post­ed much of any­thing sub­stan­tive. I’m com­ing out of a long peri­od of being near­ly zom­biefied thanks to one of my med­ica­tions. I did­n’t real­ize that was hap­pen­ing, as I’d been on that drug for years with­out that prob­lem. Appar­ent­ly, the prob­lem was a com­bi­na­tion of my dosage being increased last fall and inter­ac­tion with oth­er meds. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I found this out because of an irre­spon­si­ble doc­tor who refused to see me as sched­uled when I was due for refills, and would­n’t give me refills with­out see­ing me. Crash­ing off the max­i­mum dose caused insom­nia and seizures.

Yes, seizures. Some­thing I have nev­er expe­ri­enced before, and I real­ly did­n’t need to add yet anoth­er square to my per­son­al Symp­toms Bin­go Card. I fell right out of the bed dur­ing one bad seizure last week. We have a cap­tain’s bed designed for a water mat­tress, but have a reg­u­lar mat­tress and box springs on top, so the whole thing is much high­er than most beds. I have to use a step­stool to get in and out of bed. So falling out was much more painful than falling out of most beds. Hit­ting my fore­heard on the wheel­chair and whacked my chin but good on the lapdesk did­n’t help. I have no idea what I hit with my right fore­arm, but it still looks like a per­son bit me. My left arm has funky bruis­ing and a cut, both knees are bruised and car­pet burned, and my tor­so is also bruised and sore. Lots of fun! Now my chin is actu­al­ly black, mak­ing me want to wash my face every time I see a mir­ror. I’ve nev­er been able to feel the swelling in a bruise as dis­tinct­ly as this one, either.

I’ve seen a new doc­tor, who switched me to a bet­ter med­ica­tion. It’s help­ing to slow down the seizures, but I’m still hav­ing some. I’m still sleep­ing a lot less than I was, which is good. What isn’t good is that I’m hav­ing trou­ble sleep­ing well, peri­od. Hope­ful­ly that will go away soon.

Social Secu­ri­ty is still mess­ing around with my case and has­n’t paid out a dime yet, or sent me a Medicare card. If you ever have trou­ble with the SSA, don’t even both­er try­ing to find any­one to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for straight­en­ing any­thing out. Just go straight to your Sen­a­tor or Rep­re­sen­ta­tive’s office. I’d been try­ing to get a straight answer from some­body, any­body, in the whole orga­ni­za­tion for about a month with­out luck. Less than 48 hours after con­tact­ing a Sen­a­tor’s office, I got a mes­sage that my file is at the Bal­ti­more pay­ment office, that they have all the infor­ma­tion they need to pay out the claim, and that we should see mon­ey very soon now.

I was real­ly hop­ing to get the Medicare thing start­ed in time to maybe have a pow­ered mobil­i­ty device before Drag­on Con, which would let me go and enjoy the con for the first time in years. The last time I went, we rent­ed a scoot­er, so if the mon­ey comes through before the con I sup­pose we might try that again.

In more fun news, we fin­ished watch­ing Torch­wood: Chil­dren of Earth last night. Talk about depress­ing! Gwen and Rhys were the only ones who came out of that as heroes. And now I read that there’s going to be a fourth sea­son? Who the heck will be in it?

I’ve slowed down on read­ing books, par­tial­ly because I can actu­al­ly do some oth­er things for a change. The house is slow­ly improv­ing! I’m hop­ing we can even enter­tain again before long.

I haven’t been keep­ing up with most peo­ple’s Live­Jour­nals or any­thing else, so if there’s some­thing I should have seen, I’d appre­ci­ate a poke in the com­ments here.

You know all those sto­ries and wor­ries about immu­niza­tions con­tribut­ing to autism? For­get them. The doc­tor who wrote the study that start­ed the scare back in 1998 has been charged with “fix­ing” the data. What’s more, the “study” only involved twelve patients!

The sec­ond sto­ry is a very good arti­cle about how the obe­si­ty scare is just lead­ing to more health prob­lems, espe­cial­ly for young girls.

About mod­els and the effects of the media on body image in their pop­u­la­tions, at least. Fol­low­ing Spain’s move last year that banned ultra-thin mod­els from cat­walks, France is act­ing. The “French par­lia­men­t’s low­er house adopt­ed a ground­break­ing bill Tues­day that would make it ille­gal for any­one — includ­ing fash­ion mag­a­zines, adver­tis­ers and Web sites — to pub­licly incite extreme thin­ness.”

British researchers are also rec­om­mend­ing action. “With con­stant images of stick-thin, size-zero mod­els, tiny-waist­ed pop princess­es and actress­es is putting young girls’ health at risk and fuel­ing the rise in eat­ing dis­or­ders, accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Janet Trea­sure of the Eat­ing Dis­or­ders Research Unit at Kings Col­lege Lon­don.”

It’s a relief to know that, some­where in the world, peo­ple are pay­ing atten­tion to this stuff. It’s tire­some to hear the con­stant folderol about the “obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic” here in the U.S., with almost no bal­anc­ing cov­er­age.

Today’s post is at Fibrant Liv­ing.

Kate Hard­ing cre­at­ed this very cool slide show to show just how absurd it is to rely on body mass index to deter­mine whether or not peo­ple are at a healthy weight.

BTW — I did not “miss” blog­ging yes­ter­day. Feb­ru­ary 29 was the only “day of rest” for Blog365, so I took it 🙂 It felt odd, though!

I got through NaBloPo­Mo, as ridicu­lous as it was to com­mit to post­ing at least once a day for a month. So of course that small suc­cess has led me, in a moment of more-than-usu­al-luna­cy, to sign up for Blog365 (oth­er­wise known as “Out of the Fry­ing Pan, Into the Fire”).

The pur­pose is fair­ly clear: to post at least once every day of 2008. Feb­ru­ary 29 is a “rest day.” Posts may be writ­ten on any site, rather than stick­ing to just one blog, so I’ll try to spread them around on mine/ours. If I can’t get some­thing on the actu­al site on a par­tic­u­lar day due to net con­nec­tion issues or what­ev­er, I have to write (yes, write! like, cuneiform or some­thing!) a jour­nal entry and trans­fer it to a blog as that day’s entry.

It would be far sim­pler to have a sys­tem of some sort. Maybe I’ll cre­ate a rota­tion:

• Fibrant Liv­ing — health, liv­ing with a dis­abil­i­ty, pod­casts
• Acad­e­my Car­i­tas — home­school­ing, edu­ca­tion, col­lege
• House Fire­heart — polyamory, par­tic­u­lar­ly my and Sam’s approach to it
• Heart­song Hand­i­crafts — home of my orig­i­nal needle­work pat­terns, and soon to be home for the rest of my stitch­ing infor­ma­tion
• Cyber­stalked! — inter­net safe­ty and pri­va­cy issues
• Cyn­thia Armis­tead — my pro­fes­sion­al port­fo­lio, where I put the geeky stuff
• Ene­my of Entropy — here, of course, where I put gen­er­al stuff, book reviews, and the like.

Hope­ful­ly there will be new pod­casts up soon. There will def­i­nite­ly be more music, as we have that love­ly con­cert piano we received via freecy­cle all repaired and put togeth­er. It’s beau­ti­ful and sounds great! Not at all bad for one dri­ve to pick it up and less than $200 in repair fees! (Sam want­ed to just take it to the near­est autho­rized repair cen­ter rather than doing it our­selves.)

2007 was­n’t a stel­lar year, but nei­ther was it ter­ri­ble. Sam has a steady, secure job that he enjoys, in an orga­ni­za­tion that’s allow­ing him to advance. , Katie had a lot of health prob­lems, but I’m hop­ing that we’re on the right path to resolv­ing them. Shel­ley passed away a lit­tle shy of her 18th birth­day, but since we’d been told in 1999 that she only had a year (at most) left, we felt that we’d got­ten an “extra” 8 years with her any­way. Kioshi has grown into a nice com­pan­ion, too.

We real­ly kept to our­selves a lot through the past two years. When you’ve been betrayed and hurt as deeply as we were by our for­mer house­mate’s sud­den crazi­ness in 2006, there’s a lot of heal­ing to be done. I don’t know if I’ll ever approach Thanks­giv­ing with­out trep­i­da­tion again, but we had a good one any­way. The stress did con­tribute to the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of my health, and that does make it hard­er to get out. We’re work­ing on it, though. We cer­tain­ly learned who our true friends were, and we’ll nev­er for­get that.

So on to 2008, which we hope to be full of more time with friends, bet­ter health, much more music, Katie spent last night and almost all day today with friends from the school she was attend­ing as well as her new beau. Sam and I spent the day gam­ing, upgrad­ing some web sites, eat­ing good food and watch­ing movies. If it’s true that what­ev­er you do on Jan­u­ary 1 indi­cates how your year will go, we should be just fine.

From Planned Par­ent­hood of Geor­gia:

Free EC! Decem­ber 6, 2006!

We’re cel­e­brat­ing increased access to emer­gency con­tra­cep­tion (EC)!

EC can safe­ly and effec­tive­ly pre­vent preg­nan­cy if start­ed with­in five days of unpro­tect­ed sex. Every­one, regard­less of age, can get EC at Planned Par­ent­hood — and now, for peo­ple 18 and old­er, EC is avail­able over the counter. Stop by one of our five Geor­gia health cen­ters on Decem­ber 6, 2006, and receive FREE EC (one per per­son) to keep at home — just in case.

Planned Par­ent­hood of Geor­gia, Inc.
Atlanta ~ Lil­burn ~ Mari­et­ta ~ Augus­ta ~ Savan­nah

1–800-230-PLAN

————————————————–

Vis­it the web address below to tell your friends about this.

http://www.ppaction.org/join-forward.html?domain=ppga&r=x11er3n1SSQw

If you received this mes­sage from a friend, you can sign up for
Planned Par­ent­hood of Geor­gia Action Cen­ter at:

http://www.ppaction.org/ppga/join.html?r=x11er3n1SSQwE

I just read about it at Sex in the Pub­lic Square. I haven’t thought about it before, but what she says makes sense. If you’re a sex­u­al­ly active adult who could tech­ni­cal­ly con­ceive, but you don’t want to have a child right now, it’s a good thing to keep on hand.

I’d be inter­est­ed in hear­ing about your expe­ri­ences in buy­ing it OTC, if you do so. It isn’t an issue for us, so we don’t have a rea­son to buy any.