Cramp :(

This morning, I was taking volunteers for either killing me or cutting off my leg.

I had a BIZARRE dream last night that consisted of Nick, Doug, Dave, Jason, and some other guys from my fisheries classes and I on a boat on the Mississippi. I was supposed to take a turn as pilot, but my leg had seized up in a cramp from ankle to hip, so Nick stepped in and took my place (he was always a helpful person like that).

When I woke up, the cramp was real. Brian tried to massage it out, but it honestly just was too tight. As I limped around on it, I realized that it was actually up to my lower back and down to my entire FOOT. So I used what Brian calls "The Jackhammer", which is the powerful massager thingy that has been my saving grace for quite a while:

Amazon has it for thirty bucks, but I think we picked it up cheaper in a store somewhere. I've bought a lot of crappy massagers that were pretty much useless, but this was one of the best purchases I've ever made.

I dug that sucker into the key areas, mainly the tendons of the tenaciously tight muscles, and I had to work for a good 20 minutes. I've gotten the worst of it worked out, and hopefully that will talk the rest into letting go.

One thing that the jackhammer does that helps me out immensely is loosening up lower back muscles. I have Brian use it around my coccyx, then I wiggle my hips a bit, and there's a satisfying little "pop" that is followed by nearly instant relief. I had to figure out a way to do that on myself this morning, because my dearest was getting ready for work. So I set it on the bed, lay on my side, and leaned back onto it. That worked! I also used the same tactic for my calf, which was the tightest, crampiest muscle of the bunch. Hopefully as the day goes on, and I do some stretching, I will work the rest out.

I think yesterday's extremely busy day (I had the weirdest job interview of my life, and I had to run a ton of errands) somehow overloaded that leg, which has been a bit sore lately anyway. The ankle's been a bit inflamed, and if that gets too tight, it just cascades all the way up to my lower back. Meh.

What really sucks for me when I get these muscle cramps is that muscle relaxers don't work for me. I have tried every brand, and they don't even make me drowsy. It's like taking a sugar pill. A lot of medications are like that on me; they either have no effect, or they have an opposite effect. Benadryl doesn't make me tired, but at least it has the antihistamine effect. Valium doesn't seem to do anything. Hydrocodone acts as a stimulant. I don't get this effect with every drug, but it can be frustrating when trying out something new.

Fibromyalgia: My personal history

Is it going to rain? My ankle's kept me up all night. Both of my ankles have a bit of arthritis going on, which I've had since before the fibro hit mein my ankles and wrists--and they were quite weather-predictive. There's a pretty strong family history of arthritis on my mother's side, so I wasn't terribly surprised when it started happening. So far, tests have indicated that it's maybe not rheumatoid arthritis, but the tests aren't always perfect. Time will tell.

Anyway, after turning my life over in my head for a while, I've sort of decided that the fibro really came on strong after my surgery in 2004, leading me to believe the surgery may be the trauma that triggered it. It was the third surgery* in my life, so maybe the other two did a little bit, and #3 was the final straw? I don't know.

All I know is, before surgery #3, which was a fairly major one, I could work a 12+ hour day and be begging for more at the end of the shift. I was a Type A+ personality, perfectionist to the extreme, and strong as hell. I went through the fisheries program at Cobleskill without too much trouble (my height was the only major problem I had; being a foot shorter than most of my classmates put me at a disadvantage), and I could lift, walk, and exercise without trouble. I went to Curves for a while, and I did great there. I took a couple months of karate before moving to NY, and I did okay with that, too.

I went through a period of fatigue about five years ago. Part of it was undermanaged asthma, part of it was severe depression, and part of it was untreated allergies. Once I got those things worked out, I seemed able to function better. Once my relationship woes were resolved, I was a LOT better.

Then, just a few short months after Brian and I moved in together, I felt a twisting pain in my abdomen. It grew progressively worse, and, because I was in Schenectady at the time, I drove myself to the St. Clare's ER, where a CAT scan determined that I had an enormous ovarian cyst that was causing twisting. The cyst encapsulated the entire right ovar, another took over my whole fallopian tube, and a third, smaller one was stuck to the right uterine horn. The pain I was experiencing was the cysts causing torsion, twisting the ovary and fallopian tube. They scheduled me for surgery that day and stuffed me full of Demerol and phenergan. Dr. A. gave me a c-section-type scar because the cyst was big enough to warrant it. Brian took excellent care of me during recovery, even volunteering at my non-profit job so that I wouldn't have to be replaced and be out of a job.

After that, I progressively grew more fatigued, with the widespread body pain of fibromyalgia. I developed ALL the telltale tender points. I cannot stand to have someone touch my upper arms or sides, and if I bump certain areas of my hip, it's excruciating. Brian has to be very careful about where he touches me, especially when he's giving me a massage, because pressure on a tender point will cause me to yelp and jerk away. Even if he's just put a little pressure on it, the pain lingers for a period after he's stopped touching it, like a bruise that lasts for a couple of minutes.

I was once able to sleep adequately. Now, I wake up and it feels like I've actually gotten worse than before I went to bed, like I ran a marathon in my sleep. After I've been awake for a little while, the hit-by-truck feeling eases up a bit, and I actually feel my best starting around 11am or so. Also, if I wake up, feel crappy, and get a drink/go to restroom/check email, then go back to bed for about half an hour, THAT actually helps me feel more rested. A midday nap is also helpful. But a full night of sleep seems to just kick my ass like nothing else.

I also want to note that I was fat for many years before developing fibro. I was skinny up until I was 20 years old, and I was about 23 when I became as fat as I am now. So that's about 7 years of being my current fatness where I was very able, energetic, and strong. Seven years where my doctor didn't tell me to lose weight, because I was healthy by all of the usual parameters. Seven years of working 12-hour shifts like they were nothing. One damned surgery, and my life was changed completely.

When I do finally get some health insurance, I will be asking my doctor to see about testing to determine if I have c-spine stenosis. That can happen if the neck is improperly supported during surgery, and I'd like to at least rule it out. Other than that, doc and I are trying things one by one to see if we can find something that makes a difference. I'm still hanging on to hope that we'll make me at least able to pull an 8-hour shift without agony and lortabs. We'll see.

*The first surgery was to remove my gallbladder, which all of a sudden went acute with no prior attacks. Number two was a breast reduction, from G/H down to a D.

WLS sidebar

I've added a box to my sidebar ------ >

These links contain information about the negative side of bariatric surgery. Many of the online support groups are run by those who profit from WLS, so you don't always get the complete story.

If you've had WLS, and your experience has been unproblematic, and you're happy with your decision, then good for you. Most people in my life that HAVE done it dealt with complications and a lot of pain, with only one person that had a relatively trouble-free outcome. I would personally not get this done on myself, even if it were guaranteed to work without problems; and it certainly is not safe or unproblematic.

If you've had this done, had a good outcome, and somehow think that it makes you better than people who chose not to take the risk, well, you're not. I'm sorry that you had to have your stomach amputated in order to gain some self-acceptance, but that's your problem, not mine. I'll be keeping my stomach, thank you, unless there is a real issue that necessitates its removal (cancer, massive ulcers, that kind of thing). Being fat is NOT a disease, and it's especially not a medical problem that requires amputation of healthy internal organs.

My menagerie

In case anyone was wondering, these are the creatures currently in my household. If you have any questions about them, please let me know--I love talking about them. Also, if you want to see what they look like, I'll be happy to snap a recent photo.

male.female.unsexed
0.1 Baird's rat snake (Elanor)
3.1 yellow rat snake (Julian, Lucius, Marcus, Cornelia)
1.1 Everglades rat snake (Gregor, Claudia)
1.0 Honduran milk snake (Tezcatlipoca)
2.1 ball python (Prowler, Renenet, Jerry)
0.1 Central American boa constrictor (Luna)
1.0 Jurassic milk snake (Hobbes--Cali king/Honduran milk hybrid)
0.1 Chinese smooth green snake (Yu-Mei)
0.0.1 rough green snake (Olive)
0.1 speckled kingsnake (Sophia)
0.1 rubber boa (Hecuba)
0.1 eastern milk snake (Seska)
1.0 Malayan box turtle (Fig)
1.1 diamondback terrapin (Toby, Nate)
0.0.1 house gecko
0.0.2 Argentine horned frog (Blinky, Inky)
1.0 human (Brian)
1.2 domestic shorthair cat (Teya, Morgan, Dom)
1.0 ocicat (Aakhu)
0.0.lots Lobster roach colony (want some? I give them away for free!)

Aquarium:
2 Leopard ctenopoma
3 red-tailed chalceus
3 Synodontis eupterus
1 Synodontis angelicus
1 Synodontis alberti
1 Synodontis ocellifer
1 Synodontis longirostris
1 grey leopard/Sultan (L-264) pleco
3 clown botia
5 weather dojo
3 ropefish
3 Neolamprologus brichardi
1 crown jewel cichlid (one-eyed)
1 yellow labidochromis
1 Frontosa (one-eyed)
2 gold gourami
2 opaline gourami
1 festivum cichlid
2 Arulius barb
1 ruby shark
1 spiny eel
1 brown African knife

Some thoughts on the profitabiity of dieting

I'm very skeptical about a lot of things. One of the first questions I ask myself when reading about a subject, especially a medical one, is, "Who financially benefits from this?" About four years ago, I learned that the lower limit for "high" blood pressure had been ratcheted downwards a notch. I was immediately skeptical of this, and did a ton of reading. It turns out, I wasn't the only skeptical one; there were plenty of articles pointing out that, by changing a number, hundreds of thousands of patients were magically created, patients that would be prescribed extremely profitable medication.

It's true that I'm especially wary of the pharmaceutical industry, and with good reason: Just take a look at fen-phen, Vioxx, and other medicines that have been pulled due to the harm they caused the general public. In many cases, the manufacturer's research revealed these problems during testing, but covered them up or fudged the results. This isn't an opinion here, folks, the facts are out there.

So, you'll have to excuse me for looking at the thindustry with a critical eye. Who makes money from fat hysteria?
1. Magazines - What women's magazine doesn't have a weight-loss strategy advertised on every issue's cover? Usually right next to either a thin, airbrushed female model (magazines with sexy men on the cover are generally geared towards gay men) or a rich dessert.

2. The clothing industry - Whether they sell you a new wardrobe after you diet yourself thin, or they're profiting when you regain that weight, the fashion industry in general does NOT like fat women. They express their disdain with limited selection, hideous clothing, and cocaine-addicted skeletal models. Think about it: We're encouraged to "buy clothing a size or two too small" as incentive to diet. So they want us to essentially keep two wardrobes--the one that actually fits, and the one that shames us. Tell me THAT isn't profitable.

3. The diet industry - This is a no-brainer. What other companies can get away with selling a product that either doesn't work, or fails long-term, thus chaining its customers to their programs for life. Best of all, when diets fail, WW or JC do not take the blame--the customers blame themselves for the failure, which makes them go back and try harder!

4. The athletic industry - We're encouraged to buy a gym membership, which tend to be pretty nasty little contracts that are very difficult to get out of. If we go to the gym, we get nasty glares, rude comments, and snide laughs from the "beautiful people" who don't feel we belong there. So, we become afraid to return to the gym, but are still obligated to pay for the year or two or twenty that the contract specifies. What other industry can get away with forcing people to pay a monthly fee for something that they've been shamed out of using?! Of course, the only place I ever felt comfortable getting exercise is a certain women's-only circular workout center--and they've become so diet-oriented these days that many fat & fit women get disgusted and quit (not to mention the political goals of the founder can be difficult for some to justify supporting with their dollars).

5. Doctors - They're making money by telling us that our adipose tissue is a disease that needs to be cured. We get weight-loss drugs pushed on us, and there are more ads for bariatric surgery every time I turn around. Billboards, spam emails, banner ads on websites, you name it. Bariatric surgery is become a HUGE moneymaker right now, and I'm guessing that its practitioners are trying to cash in on the phenomenon as much as possible before it comes crashing down a la fen-phen or Vioxx. Please note: I am not saying that all doctors are bad people trying to keep us sick for their own profit. There are many, many good doctors out there, mine included--but there are also a lot of hacks out there amputating stomachs when they don't have the experience to do it well, and the complication and death rate for even skilled bariatric surgeons is, in my opinion, unacceptably high.

6. The food industry - Our food supply is controlled by a relatively small number of enormous corporations like ConAgra. Do you think it's a mistake that they put less product in a package, then charge twice as much for it when they slap a "100 calorie pack" label on it? Or when they use cheaper ingredients to make a soy product instead of beef patties, and tell us it's healthy, so we pay more? As a vegetarian (for animal welfare reasons), I'll be honest and say that I like my soy burgers. But, I remember when they used soy protein as filler in school lunch hamburgers to save money. So when I'm paying a lot more money for soy burgers than I would for real dead animal parts, I'm not terribly happy about it. After all, it's cheaper to take the soybeans and make them into a burger than to feed the soybeans to a cow, let the cow process ~10% of it into cowflesh, then make the cow into burgers.

There are many more organizations and people that profit from weight-loss culture, including therapists, thin celebrities, and snake-oil manufacturers. So, you'll have to excuse me if I'm mistrustful of their motives, especially in the face of studies that indicate that being fat is generally not a cause of major illness or premature death.

Allergy free peanuts?! Hooray!

Peanut and tree nut allergies are the most severe of all food allergies, affecting approximately 3 million Americans, and causing 100 -- 150 deaths from anaphylactic shock annually and many more hospitalizations. In industrialized nations, the allergy has been rapidly increasing in children, for causes that are not entirely understood. One study showed that between 1997 and 2002, peanut allergies in children doubled in the United States. Today, an estimated one percent of all children suffer from the allergy.

I developed a peanut allergy a couple of years ago. I didn't figure it out at first--I was having horrible asthma attacks that inhalers were not helping. I would take a Benadryl, and eventually, the attacks would subside. After a few of these in a relatively short period of time, I realized that it was the peanuts. I learned that each exposure makes the next one a little worse, so figuring out before it became life-threatening was very lucky.

I had started off having indigestion after eating peanuts, but didn't really think about it too much. Just when I'd forgotten about the last bout of indigestion, I would eat them again and feel yucky. When I finally sorted out that I was having a much more severe reaction, peanuts were banned from my life--and I haven't had a single asthma attack since, even during allergy season.

So, this article really made me happy. A hypoallergenic peanut? I miss peanut butter. The soy alternatives just don't taste right, and it's a very easy source of protein. I hope that they find a way to grow them inexpensively so that the majority of peanut-based products can be switched over. I'll celebrate with a Butterfinger!

Discrimination against black cats

When we adopted our Dom, Purrfect Companions had this article printed out and posted:

Did you know that black cats have the lowest adoption rate and the highest euthanasia rate?

Whether because of superstition, prejudice, or simply because they blend into the shadows in the back of the cage, black cats are statistically less likely to be adopted than more brightly colored felines.

Most often ignored by many rescues because they are so hard to place, these cats are left waiting in pounds and shelters with hopes of finding a loving home, only to be destroyed once their time is up. Rescues are reluctant to take in black kittens, worried that they will not be placed before they reach adulthood. Once they are over 1yr of age, they are usually left waiting and waiting, taking up much needed foster space etc. Many wait for several months even years.

Many adopters prefer the flashier, more colorful cats, and often overlook these regal looking beauties.

I was stunned by this. Absolutely stunned. I had no idea, and I just wanted to cry. They had several black cats there in cages, including Dom. Most of them were either snoozing or being affectionate through the cage bars. Dom, however, was sitting upright in the exact center of his cage, with an expression on his face that said, "Well, this sucks. I do NOT deserve this."

Indeed he did not, and I could not resist the attitude he exhibited. While he is a rotten little brat, I have never regretted taking him home with us. He's funny, smart, affectionate, and sweet. I love him to bits.