Days like this

There are, of course, steps back.

There are days like these in which my whole existence is inexplicably slowed. My head hurts, and I feel nauseous, and I feel like my thoughts are stuffed with cotton. There is no reason that I can ascertain for this, at least not for certain. The truth is, I am still not certain how and why I am recovering, though I have theories that I cling to when I am again adrift in uncertainty. It isn't manly, but it is necessary.

On these days too it becomes, again, increasingly difficult to extricate myself from my emotions. They rule, and it is only with great effort that I navigate through their immediacies. They all want my full attention, and promise to be true. I learned long ago to sit these days out, in terms of response, a truly numbing experience for someone so used to orientation through intuition.

Its days like these that I wish someone could hear my interior struggle and come and save me. Its a fantasy that I lived a lot while ill. That notion that someone would come and take care of me. But I waited, and waited, and no one ever came. Its a scary reality. I think we all believe that in our darkest hour, there will be someone who will help us, take our burden a little, make us smile. There isn't. Or there wasn't for me. I realized at one moment in Brooklyn, that if I gave into the desire to just let my legs buckle, lie down and indulge in illness, that I would still be huddled there alone, when life expired. No one was coming. Is this life? No. Its probably a reflection of how I have lived my life. I take full responsibility for it, but it is still lonely, and kind of depressing, to know that no one is coming for you.

I am here at the office. I am working. Tonight I will go out. I will smile and laugh. But honestly, days like today, I just get through.

WK

PS- I am fine. I am recovered. This is not something I cannot work through. Its just a day when life is heavy and hard and ghosts of illnesses past come to visit and make me wonder if they will ever be forgotten.

Odds and ends

I was requested to write a post about the blood type diet, specifically as articulated by dr. D'atamo, in Eat Right 4 your Type. I shall get to that another day. Right now, I will respond to a couple of questions that have been posed, without context and in no particular order:

1) Supplementation. I jumped in and recommended that a fellow H'penic avoid protein supplementation. specifically I said ..." I might hold on the Whey protein for the following reason: The amino acid profile for Whey proteins are often based on formulas favored by body builders, who occasionally favor huge amounts of l-arginine/arginine. Arginine is counter indicated for people with Sz, for reasons no one can explain. Check the product to make certain _____ is not receiving more than 50 g arginine a day. unlikely, but possible."

I checked up on this research, and boy was I wrong. Amounts of arginine greater than 30 mg are counter indicated for people diagnosed with Sz. 30 seems a little low, and I have seen 50 mg in other sources, but the fact is I was off by an order of 1000. Yikes.

Why is it counter indicated? I have no idea. None. I have searched and never seen this explained.

2) Does dopamine effect movement? Yes. Yes it does. "Movement and coordination in your body are controlled in part by a chemical in your brain called dopamine". www.parkinsonshealth.com/Faqs/ . I am not sure of the pathway, but I think this is why h'penics are so often hyperactive, and h'delics can become frozen. I wonder if anti-psychs which moderate dopamine would interfere with movement?

Lets look in on our good friend Geodon, which is being prescribed to Sz's these days: "Geodon blocks the action of serotonin and dopamine, two mood-regulating chemicals found in the brain". www.centerwatch.com/patient/drugs/dru788.html .

Ok, so that is a yes. what about movement interference?

Well, I found this "In addition, patients treated with Geodon during intramuscular
administration and oral phases of the study showed a significantly lower
incidence of movement disorders than those who received Haldol. "

I found this, which was discussing typical dopamine regulatory anti-psychs in general, but not Geodon in particular:
"Other extrapyramidal symptoms. Other effects are agitation, slow speech, tremor, and retarded movement. It should be noted that sometimes these symptoms mimic schizophrenia itself. In response, the physician may be tempted erroneously to increase the dosage. "


The answer is that I am not a doctor, but there are interesting bits of knowledge floating around out there. Its worth more research.

3) how much do I weigh? I am 6'2, 188 cm, and at last weigh in, 163 lbs. Not exactly huge am I. I assure you, it is a lot more impressive in real life than in numbers. I have been, in recent memory, as heavy as 172, but I usually fluctuate between 163 and 168.

4) do I eat brown rice? yes. A lot of it. Bags. This is out of laziness. When I was really ill, I rotated my grains: Rice, oatmeal, millet, quinoa, and Kasha. This was to avoid building allergies to any one.

5) what do I drink: Water. That's about it. Sometimes mineral water. Occasionally alcohol. I do not like alcohol, but socially it is awkward to avoid drinking it, and there is a group consciousness that is hard to enter without it. Or at least to be welcome with the group. When I say "occasionally" I mean once or twice a month.

Thats about it all.

I have been having my own life scrapes lately. I was last night contemplating how lucky I was to be dealing with career questions, questions of loneliness, and general pondering of life, instead of illness, which was my more or less primary thought for almost 7 years. I am lucky, even if it doesn't feel like it.

I wrote this last night, remembering how it was to be H'penic:

They say that histapenics have a high pain tolerance. One doctor described a child who crushed a light bulb in his small hand without so much as flinching. I suppose I have that high pain threshold too, which is a good thing, because when you are as sick as I was there is no filter, allowing emotions and all life to charge in unrefined and unchecked, leaving me there like that child with blood trickling out of the clenched fingers of my mind, trying not to cry.

That's all for now.