How to Neglect a Blog, Part 3: Have your health fall apart

Not the best of news today -- which is why I'm blogging it. This blog is solely for me; no one else looks at it, and I do need something to jog my memory in time to come. My health is plummeting again. The doctor's appointment was made this morning, but the earliest time we could get was 13 days from now, and I actually doubt I'll make it that long. I rather think I'll be at the ER long before I get to that point. 

The problem is essentially identical to the drama in 2017, not long after Mom passed away, when I landed in hospital for two surgeries. I have the same pain I had when the gallstones were giving me a massively inflamed liver, which triggered pancreatitis. But since they took out the gallbladder, how is it possible to have the same trouble?! 

So I looked it up -- let Ma Google be your friend. And imagine my surprise.

It turns out that 15% -- yes, one in seven! -- people who have their gallbladder removed continue to get stones. The stones just form in the bile ducts instead, and find their way into the liver and into the ducts to the pancreas; and when they block those ducts -- well, this explains much. It certainly explains why I can't digest worth a damn; why I have pain right through the middle; and so on.

For the last week, I've been treating this thing as if it were gastritis (caused by Ibuprofen ... I don't drink, never did, but I've taken loads of Ibuprofen for 35 years. I wouldn't have been surprised to find out the stuff had given me gastritis, and the symptoms are the same). But it it were gastritis, it should have healed itself and settled down by now, right? 

No joy. If fact, the pain is worse than ever. So the phone call was made, and the rotten news is that "See your GP promptly" is a meaningless phrase. You can't get an appointment for almost two weeks. See a GP promptly --?? That might work, but there's very few I trust, and trusting strangers isn't in my nature. So I've decided to wait, and just not eat, and see the one I do trust, when I can. Hmmm.

Two weeks. Who knows? The situation might have calmed down, given that much longer of resting the whole system. I doubt it, but we can do this. I'm not going to fall dead for want of a few dozen meals! God knows, I might even lose a few pounds (though I doubt that, too: weight loss does not happen for me). So, what nutrition can we get, when we can't eat?

This is a puzzle, especially when you remember to strike off the list all the migraine triggers. I've just completed one of the biggest, nastiest migraines I've ever had, probably triggered by a small amount of orange juice (I though I could get away with it, and was wrong), and the wild, whackadoodle camera work of J.J. Abrams, which is -- for me -- sudden death. It was Mission Impossible 3, and even closing my eyes didn't help. Maybe I didn't get them closed in time? Whatever. The last movie that did this to me was another Tom Cruise film, Edge of Tomorrow, which is a fantastic movie and -- for me -- sudden death. So ... food???

Fruit juices, unsweetened almond milk, acai powder, vegetable greens powder, beetroot powder, turmeric; an occasional dry, plain cracker; a half-serve of rice bubbles with stevia; a spoonful of low-fat yogurt; lots of rooibos tea. And that's about it --

Needless to say, the next two weeks are looking like two years, and my brain will barely be functioning. Your brain needs feeding, it won't run without fuel any more than the rest of your body will run without fuel. But I'm going to have to find a way to run on next to nothing until I get a diagnosis, and see what I dare eat, without risking blowing up pancreas right up!

And before we get to any such diagnosis, it's going to mean a lot of tests. Blood work, for a start; ultrasound and/or CT scan? Okay. That should show the problem. 

If it's not more stones, what is it? And what's to be done about it?

These are different questions, and at this moment I'm not going to speculate. Suffice to say, I feel very weird, with my brain starving and my body trying to tumble into sleep for want of fuel. I'm also getting over one of the worst migraines in my personal history -- the full on deal, complete with hypothermia, shaking, tingling extremities, vomiting, and the skull tearing itself apart. And remember to add to this lumbago, hip bursitis, probable arthritis in my left ankle bone, scoliosis in the top of the spine. 

How to neglect a blog royally? Have your health fall apart. 

So, more and more, this is becoming a photo blog as this wretched year, 2020, wears away, and you wonder what else it can do! And it's "over and out" from me, for a while, unless something significant happens. Such as, a spontaneous recovery (ha!), or a diagnosis of something easy to fix, or a really good sale of a story to a terrific marketplace. One lives in hopes. 

Playing by the rules

Rules are rules ... and the idea is that if everyone plays by them, the pandemic can be controlled to the point where we can have COVID-free communities. It's sensible, yet for over seven months it's also been a vague kind of idea, lurking out there in the shadowed corners one one's mind. Till Thursday.

What a time to come down sick with all the symptoms of 'flu -- with Victoria under a Stage Four lockdown, with a State of Disaster declared there; and, at the same time, South Australia quarantining and isolating over a thousand people, to contain a cluster of our very own. And with anything up from 25% of travelers returning from interstate and overseas showing themselves to be complete idiots who somehow can't understand what the words "GO home, stay there" mean. 

And one of those quarantine jumpers was in Christies Beach, which is altogether too close for comfort. Sooo ... when I felt unwell on Wednesday night I was watching for the symptoms; and sure enough, I woke up feeling weird, with the scratchy throat, the cough, the exhaustion, the headache --

Yep, time to get tested. 

Luckily, our own surgery ("clinic," for family and friends in the US) has a testing station working every afternoon in the car park behind their building, and Dave took me there for a 3:40pm appointment on Thursday. Which of course effectively isolates the whole house, pending getting results. No problem there. Dave has plenty of sick leave, and the whole thing was arranged with phone calls.

But we're up to four in the afternoon on Saturday, and there's still no results, which probably indicates the backlog, the sheer volume of tests being performed in SA, where most people are doing the right thing. All we can do is sit tight and be patient ... watch the news from interstate and overseas, and wonder how and why people are doing what they're doing...

How to put this? There is a great deal of "silliness" going on in the world (and you may substitute any more caustic word of your choosing there), which is most odd, when one remembers that of of today 278 people have perished in Australia, at one end of the scale, and way over 161,000 in America, at the other end of the scale. SA is still one of the safest places, with just 4 fatalities, all of whom were so dangerously ill before the arrived home here, nothing could be done to stave off the inevitable. 

So -- we wait, (patience, Grasshopper), and we try to be calm and think peaceful thoughts. Hence the images accompanying this post: dawn, about ten days ago, at Bayards Wetlands. 

The worst aspect of this at the moment (three days into the lurgy) is the bloody headache, which only quits for a short time if I take pills by the handful. Ach. It's not migraine, but close to it ... such fun. Not.

The 4:00am perspective

Migraine at 4:00am changes your perspective on ... everything. The world seems to change shape and color; nothing looks the same. It can be very surreal indeed, and the strangest thoughts flitter through your malfunctioning brain. I don't often write poetry these days (used to!) but this came to me:

Hmm. That's not bad. I also popped it onto facebook...

Note to self: write more poetry. Not necessarily after migraine.

Apologies to any who might be following this blog: we took a few weeks out in October for a long-awaited and much-needed vacation. A lot less has been posted here lately than would normally have been, since you tend to arrive home late, tired out and just wanting an easy meal and an hour or two's drool in front of the tv.  (And I still have to sort the photos from that vacation!)

But one at least I'd like to share here:

The lens flare is gorgeous in this ... and the shot was captured after the lens was thoroughly cleaned. I love the colors this flare has adopted. (Am signing off on any images I upload to facebook every time I remember to, since I was told facebook can actually heist your pictures for their own use. O...kay. If they're going to do that, let's make sure there's a credit on the pictures, right? Right.)

Wipeout +7, back on the wheels ... and Spring has Sprung

A week after Dave wiped out on the road and it was blood, busted shoes and bent bits on the bike, he's back on two wheels and out for a looong ride in the McLaren Vale area with the local group of Cyloholocs. He must have inherited some gene for indestructibility ... he's found a way to bounce. Maybe he has a trick of turning off 90% of gravity in the split second after the back wheel drifts away and before the kneecaps impact the asphalt ... hmph. He could at least have the common decency to be creaky for a few weeks! But noooo...

Dave's Garmin Tracker app, running in real-time. Yup. He's back on the bike

...there's livin' proof of this particular pudd'n: the Garmin tracker app, running in realtime on my phone. Phablet. Whatchamacallit. (Difficult to call it a 'phone,' because virtually the only thing it never does is make a telephone phone call. Ahhh. Anybody remember what a telephone was...?)

Meanwhile, Spring has sprung with a vengeance:

Yup. Spring is here ... kerchoo! Pear blossom and silver rain -- front garden yesterday.

Truth is, it's been spring for about three weeks now, which also means we can expect summer to come in early and fast. In the last couple of years we've seen our first hot weather in October and the first very hot weather in November -- hundred degrees in "the old money." Sigh. Means we can expect to see the really hot weather in December, and the catastrophically hot weather in January and February. Now ... will the autumn/fall come in early too? With summer starting early, we'll be very, very ready for autumn by February!

Spring! Enjoy it while it lasts --

Waterfall Creek on the Coastal Trail, at Hallett Cove

It was so lovely yesterday we couldn't stay inside while we had the chance to get out. Leaving Mike to hold down the fort (since he has bronchitis, Mom has bronchitis, and they're having coughing contests; Mom is winning, hands down), we went over to Hallett Cove and hiked the boardwalk from the Hallett Cove Conservation Park to Marino. It really was beautiful.

Above is Waterfall Creek at the bottom of its gully ... yellow soursobs in the foreground tell you exactly what time of year this is; and if you notice the stairs/guardrail at top-right of this shot, you'll see how you climb down into the gully and back out again. There's no disabled access, but if you still have your feet under you, it's great. (If you'd like to see more of Hallett Cove -- and the Conservation Park -- I posted a photo essay to Meander to the Max ... find it here.) It's also a photographer's paradise: ocean, clifftop views, windy skies, the works. Don't forget the cameras.

Right now I have my fingers crossed. I tried Chinese massage for the head-neck-shoulders on Thursday ... looking for a way to get out from under the headache that's been bugging me every single day since December 4. For a while the GP has been saying he thinks the pain is very likely coming from the neck, and ... last week I actually heard/felt something go twang!!! in the neck a few seconds before migraine broadsided me. So ... remedial massage? Got a local one? Any chance of getting acupressure massage? Turns out yes. There's a place at Colonnades which, in traditional Chinese fashion doesn't advertise. They live and thrive on word of mouth. Right.

Well, it's coming up to 48 hours since I had the neck/head/shoulder massage, and so far I've had either no pain at all, or only the most slender tendrils which don't develop into full-blown headaches. Have no idea how long the effects will last, but if they were to wear off over a couple of weeks ... it's actually rather a pleasant way to spend 30 minutes. I can do that again. Fingers crossed.

AWOL ... and I didn't go fishing!

I've been gone from this blog for a few days, and I wish I could relate that I've been on a fantastic holiday ... Dave and I went to Fiji, lay on the beach drinking coconut punch, chartered a sailboat and cruised the outer islands, worked on our tan while we took an indescribable bus into the hills and fossicked through the local markets, trying their traditional food and listening to bands nobody ever heard of...

Well, I could write all that. It would certainly make for a great post -- and people would be wondering why I didn't share the pictures.

And the reason would be, because we didn't go to Fiji. I had a Very Major Migraine. People too often dismiss migraine as just a really bad headache, but the fact is, it's a lot more. It is a really bad headache ...  plus nausea, and the shivers of hypothermia while sweat pours out of you; plus dizziness, tachycardia, disorientation, light- and sound- sensitivity. Basically, you sit in the dark for twelve hours, eyes closed, nursing a whole suite of symptoms and wondering if you're even going to survive. The next day, you contend with the after-effects of the pills, which have some nasty side effects.

On the positive side, I think I might have tracked down at least one of the triggers -- and it's not as simple as saying, "Coffee gives me a migraine," or "chocolate gives me migraine." Both of those statements would be untrue: I can drink a cup of coffee once a week and get no hint of migraine. I can eat a little chocolate now and then and, again, get no hint of migraine...

But what happens when you hitch up a fantastic cup of coffee and some fabulous chocolate cake, eaten at the same time? Uh huh.

And it was fantastic coffee, and fabulous chocolate cake...

...as Dave's phone pic, from his facebook page, demonstrates. We shared the cake, about 70/30, and mine was the small, regular cappuccino; we shared the neat little caramel slice sitting behind the cake there. Dave never has a problem with migraine or even indigestion, but me?

Well, I'd be lying if I didn't admit, I had wondered about the combination -- but I don't remember ever having the chance to put this to the test. So: call this the test, right? Right.

Uh huh. The rest is history. So I guess the best thing to do from here on is to NOT have chocolate and coffee at the same time.

People report all kinds of things as migraine triggers: blue cheese, oranges, jalapeños, balsamic, alcohol, peanuts, onions ... even apples. One could live happily without the majority of items on that list, but, well -- coffee and chocolate is where it starts to smart. Sob.

Or, maybe it was also about the increasing barometric pressure plus coffee and chocolate. So the rule would be: don't eat coffee and chocolate when there's a storm coming in! 

Guess I'll have to experiment a little more.

Monday, right no cue, the screen door was fixed and is now rolling smoothly and silently. Wonderful. The company is Sliderfix, from Panorama, and that's all they do -- fix aberrant sliding glass doors. The job took about 90mins and cost under A$300, all up. Fantastic. So I can't grumble about the door anymore.

Meanwhile, Mom is slowly recovering. I think she's just about over the pneumonia now, and we just have to get her up and moving, get some mobility back, strength in the legs and so on. And get her switched to this liquid codeine we were told about at the pharmacy. Hmm. Turns out, you don't have to choke on horse pills after all -- which is a mercy, because she has swallowing problems, and choking many times per day on pills is how she got the aspirant pneumonia in the first place.

Life trundles on, while the next bank of rainy weather comes up out of the southwest. This morning's blue sky is gone, alas. Dave posted a phone pic from the Onkaparinga River mouth about an hour ago, but when I look out the front windows it's GRAY. It looks like RAIN.

Looks like an afternoon for curling up with a good book (or any kind of book), and wondering when this winter will end. Two warm days last week had us speculating about the probability of an early spring and a hot summer, but all that seems to have gone by --

What we need is a prognosticating groundhog. But, since this is Australia, of course it would have to be a marsupial groundhog, and he'd have to come out of his burrow on August 2nd, look around and see if he can see his shadow. Then he can tell us we're in for four more weeks of crap till spring actually gets here on September 1.