How the World Changed in a Month

Roughly a month ago I restarted my cleanse diet. I didn’t have the miraculous return to health like the first time I tried it, as I established in the last post. I did, however, have a few weird and disappointing discoveries.

After abstaining for a while, I decided to have a bit of coffee. I rely on caffeine to get through a day awake, and I don’t have a problem with the caffeine in tea, so I thought this would be no big deal. I had a cup of an unidentified flavored coffee in my fridge, and it gave me a stomach ache. I gave it a few days, then tried again with organic, plain coffee and seemed to not react. I added cocoa powder (soy and corn free) and had the stomach aches like I had with gluten. I tried chocolate almond milk (again, soy and corn free) and had the same bad reaction. A friend suggested I try raw cocoa nibs, and again, the same. So far, I know I have a problem with cocoa and possibly coffee (unlikely, but still possible. I should test more once I am completely healed). On the bright side, I told this to the acupuncturist, and she did a treatment that should correct that problem. I have to wait until my gut has completely healed to try again, so we’ll just see.

I added rice and potatoes back, too, and the jury’s out as to whether they are a problem. These, too, will be retested after abstaining for awhile. How does a person get so many devastating food allergies/intolerances?

Near the end of the cleanse, something even weirder happened. I woke up one morning and, while putting in my contacts, noticed that the whites of my eyes had turned yellow. I went to a doctor and she confirmed that my eyes were still yellow. She ran blood tests to check liver function, and since I hadn’t had a thyroid panel in a long time, ran that, too.

I was able to follow-up with my regular Nurse Practitioner, C, a week later. “Your tests are perfectly normal,” she tells me. “Every value you have is in the center of the range. Good job with the self-regulation of your thyroid hormone dosage, by the way – that’s perfectly in the center of the range, too.” I should point out, if I haven’t already, that C told me to dose my thyroid meds based on my heart symptoms rather than worrying about the lab values. Better to be hypothyroid than in heart failure as far as I’m concerned.

She then asked, “Were you vaccinated for Hepatitis B?” I told her I was, right before college. “Well, that’s odd – you have no antibodies, no immunity to Hepatitis B. I think you’re a non-responder as far as vaccines are concerned.” Makes sense – I’ve contracted diseases I’ve been vaccinated against (like pertussis) or already contracted and should have subsequent immunity to (like chicken pox – I got it twice). This explains a lot, though. My immune system is perfectly happy to attack tissues that belong in my body, but send in a foreign body and the immune system fails to respond. This, to me, is clear proof that something is wrong with my immune system. More confirmation for the ME/CFS diagnosis.

A few days later, I started to feel ill, My lymph nodes swelled up, I got a little congested… I (foolishly) thought I just caught a cold. Heh. I wish. It turned into the full-on flu. I suffered from that for most of a week, and have spent the last week recovering. The acupuncturist offered her theory about the situation. She said that maybe the jaundice was the first sign of the flu. Maybe it got stuck in the most vulnerable organ I had and then replicated there. I could buy that. Nothing about me is normal.

Luckily, I recovered in time to attend a conference on autoimmune disease at a local hospital today. I will devote a full post to that in the future (I’m no longer going to try to predict when, as my illnesses keep getting in the way). I am glad I made it to that conference – it seems that the research is going in the right direction.

In the midst of all this, I made a career move. Dr B has been telling me that I should get into patient advocacy. He thinks that I have some really good life experience, and I have a lot to add to that field. After dealing with a situation in which a friend was being bullied into seeing what other people thought was “the right doctor” for her condition, I realized Dr B was right. I have had to deal with so many health care choices, doctors who don’t listen (or are just plain wrong), other people who think they have THE answer, and other trials and tribulations of being chronically and mysteriously ill that I have a special insight into the whole process. An insight that I can use to help others get what they want and need out of health care.

I looked up information on how to become a patient advocate and learned that really, there is no process. You can just decide to do the job. There are no certifications or degree programs. There are classes and certificate programs, but they don’t actually certify you to do anything – they’re just educational. I might take some of those classes at some point (especially the HIPAA classes), but yeah, I’m ready now.

My plan is to make educational material and do talks about how to get what you want out of health care. Medicine is an uncertain science, and there is rarely only one right way to treat yourself, especially with a chronic condition. I want to point out that patients have rights to refuse treatment if they so choose. I want people to realize the doctor works for them, and that if he/she isn’t working out, they don’t have to stay with that particular practitioner. I want to teach people how to take control of the situation by doing their own research and getting a doctor to listen. I want people to understand that they, not the doctor, make the healing happen. I want them to really think about how they want to care for their health (i.e. natural vs. pharmaceutical, preventative vs. reactive) and go get that. So, I’ve started by attending the autoimmune diseases conference. I’ve also got a nebulous outline for my first talk.

I’ve already had to put my patient advocacy skills to work with our fluffy friend, Duck. For the last few years, Duck has been plagued with diarrhea. I could usually make it go away with lots of probiotics, but this time, it stopped working. I took Duck into the vet and learned he lost roughly half a pound (this is a lot for a twelve pound cat). The vet did an ultrasound, and showed me that Duck has inflammatory bowel disease. His intestinal walls had thickened in some areas, indicating that immune cells are coalescing. The doctor then informed me that Duck would need to be on corticosteroids and chemotherapy for the rest of his life.

I reminded the vet that I foster, and suppressing Duck’s immune system long-term seemed like a poor choice, given that I invite cat disease into my home with every litter I take. “You’ll just have to cross your fingers with that, I guess,” he told me. I asked what long-term effects the chemo might have, and he said that there was an office cat who had been on chemo for seven years and he was just fine. The vet then gave Duck a steroid shot and sent me home with the prednisone and chemo meds.

I left with the medication, and burst into tears on the way home. The vet nurses told me that I would have to give Duck the chemo meds while wearing gloves – that the medicine wasn’t safe for me to touch. I thought about the idea that, if the medicine isn’t safe for me to touch, how could it be safe for my two-year-old baby to take? I always knew he could die young, but to die of the effects of chemo? I then realized that the principles I wanted to convey in my patient advocacy practice apply here. I sought a second opinion with a holistic vet.

This vet, along with several of my cat harboring friends, thought the suggested protocol was extreme. The holistic vet offered me supplements, along with a vaccine detox (unlike in human medicine, veterinary medicine recognizes adverse reactions to vaccines) to try first. Luckily, Duck likes the supplements, and started eating as soon as the steroids wore off.

He hasn’t had any recurrence of the diarrhea yet. I’m not taking steroids off the table entirely, but I am never going to do the chemo. I decided (after reading about how the outcomes of most cancers do not improve despite treatment) that I wouldn’t treat cancer in myself or my cats (save for easily treated versions like early stage melanoma). No, I cannot justify the use of chemo in any circumstance.

In other news, I picked up a foster kitten about a week ago. Meet Mozzie:

When he sits, Mozzie has a heart on his left flank and a broken heart on his right flank. When he stands up, the markings are less obvious – they’re more roundish blobs.

Mozzie was shy and ill when I first got him. He hid behind the toilet and hissed when we went in to visit. It a matter of days, Mozzie cracked – he loves us now, and turns out to be the most affectionate kitten. Mozzie loves to be held, he loves to purr, and he loves to simply be near his people.

In addition to all the above events, this month I got wind that yet another of my friends is expecting. I’ll reveal who in a few months – she wasn’t telling anyone at first, but decided a few days later that maybe she did want to tell. I’ve informed a few close friends, but I somehow don’t feel right announcing it here just yet. I am knitting and crocheting baby stuff like crazy now. I am squeezing in a few other things, but not a whole lot. I fear Michael may never get his socks!

Well, maybe I’ll work on them when we go on the Caribbean cruise we also planned this month. More details about that in the future.

Told you the world changed this month!

The only thing that didn’t change is that I’ve kept knitting. I finished K’s winter garments:

But I forgot to photograph the mittens before I mailed them! Oops. I’m going to visit her and Dr B in May, so I’ll try to get a shot then. Maybe I can a picture of the socks I made her for Christmas as well.

I’m also almost done with Dr R’s giant socks. I’ll see if I can get a shot if him wearing them on Monday (because I should totally have them finished – they are worsted weight socks, after all…). I’m also making progress on Jen’s crayon blanket. Her little girl is due in June, so I don’t have a whole lot of time left.

Well, I have a lot of work to do. My next priority is talking about the autoimmune diseases conference, so be on the lookout!

Good Enough

I flew out to Indiana for Gen Con yesterday. It’s a silly thing, but having a context in which to put all the weird phenomena I experience just makes it all more bearable for me. I’ve noticed before that I sleep very well on planes. Even when I’ve had a relatively good night’s rest before traveling, I pass out shortly after takeoff. Well, now I have an idea why. Two things happen when I fly – first, the reduced atmospheric pressure causes my blood pressure to rise so I can breathe better, and second, the oxygen concentration is lower, so less is being forced into my cells. I think that I just become hypoxic (low on oxygen, like when you’re drowning) when I fly and I actually can’t stay awake. I wonder if this will improve when I start hyperbaric therapy?

I cannot begin to describe how much knowing that I have a real physical problem has changed the world for me. Until I had a real answer, I truly thought that a lot of my symptoms were character flaws. I slept a lot – that must have meant I was lazy. I had random emotional breakdowns – that must have meant I was a spoiled baby. I stopped working when I was 23 – that must have meant I had no ambition. I went to doctors a lot, yet none had been able to find anything medically wrong with me – that must have meant I was just looking for attention and I was a spoiled suburban housewife. I know this seems harsh, but this is how I saw myself. While I might have come to this conclusion without any outside influence, everyday interactions with other people reinforced my negative self-image.

The absolute worst comment I heard (and I heard it frequently) is “You don’t look sick.” Like I was making it up. I think I understand why well-meaning people say this. I mentioned before that a friend told me that most people get their self-esteem from their looks. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I realized that the well-meaning crowd was just trying to boost my self-esteem from the source that most people derive theirs from. That kind of comment did nothing for me, as my interpretation of self-worth is achievement based. The thing is, there is another crowd who tried to insist that my problems were psychosomatic. They didn’t believe I was really sick, and they thought that if I would just get off my lazy ass and get a job, or if I would just take an antidepressant, I’d feel a sense of purpose and maybe I wouldn’t be so sick anymore. Even some well-meaning people who believed my illness was real were operating under the notion that if I just had a positive attitude, I’d get better. I blame to woman who wrote “The Secret.” That book has to be one of the most damaging things you can inflict on a sick person, and it’s been very popular. I see why – I mean, if you can convince yourself that you are making up your illness, then it’s within your control to get rid of it by simply disbelieving it when you are ready to be well. I was given this book by a well-meaning person. What that book said to me is that I am to blame for my illness, that I was drawing illness to myself, and if I would just think positively I would draw health to myself. That is a load of crap. I suspect she would argue that magical/positive thinking is what brought me to my answer, but I’m telling you, I was not thinking positively at all when it finally came to me. I am asking anyone who reads this, please, please be careful about telling someone who is chronically ill with no medical explanation that they look good. At best, it offers no comfort, and at worst, it makes the person feel like you don’t believe her.

It was also the medical establishment that wrecked my self-image. Any doctor I saw more than just a few times had a file for me the size of an encyclopedia by the time we had to part ways. When something came up that seemed unusual, the doctors would run blood tests or take x-rays, and when they came back “normal” or only moderately off, the doctors would brush off my symptoms. They’d say things like “some people just have a lower energy level and need more sleep than others” or “your chest pain is probably muscular, nothing to worry about” or “how about I give you a prescription for an anti-depressant”. They seemed to miss the fact that these symptoms were new, not normal for me. The doctors who understood that the symptoms were new often attributed them to aging. I’m thirty now, and I was in my early to mid twenties when I was given this line. Aging was not the appropriate cause of my problems. The most painful was the offer for antidepressants. I felt like the doctors were telling me it was all in my head. Dr B was able to give me a better perspective on that approach. He said that antidepressants are often a doctor’s way of saying that he can’t handle your pain – the doctor wants to numb you and move on. This kind of treatment led me to believe that the doctors also thought I was making all this up. It is this type of experience that drives the chronically ill to suicide. I felt like I was a bad person, just trying to get attention, and the doctors seemed to agree with me. I felt like I didn’t deserve to live.

Another issue with the medical field was misinterpretation of my symptoms. Doctors seemed to get carried away with their own sense of superior medical knowledge, and they could not comprehend when something didn’t go as they expected. When I originally presented with breathing trouble, doctors went first to the most common cause: asthma. When I told them the drugs weren’t working, they tried to tell me that I wasn’t giving the drugs enough time. I figure if I’ve had enough time to develop bad side effects, I’ve had enough time to start getting the benefits of the drugs. The doctors hung on to the asthma diagnosis like their lives depended on it. There is a similar problem with my thyroid medication – when the dose is too high, it exacerbates my heart condition. I tried to argue that I don’t like how I feel when my dose is too high, and the numbers weren’t indicative of that. Since I have concurrent autoimmune disease and I present with fatigue, C and even my wonderful Dr B insisted that I needed to take enough of the hormone to make my numbers look good. C suggested that I wasn’t giving it enough time to improve my energy. I guess it did serve to prove that my thyroid is not the cause of my fatigue. One more interesting misinterpretation came from Dr B himself. He pays way more attention to me than I realized at first (a good thing, in the end, but it was unnerving when he revealed this fact). He would constantly talk to me about how I need to manage my stress because he saw physical signs that I hadn’t even noticed, like the fact that I often breathed heavily and sat in a hunched position. I eventually snapped and told him that I didn’t want to hear anymore about stress, that I handled stress just fine, thankyouverymuch. Rather than being signs of stress, these were actually signs of distress.

So the question becomes, “How on earth did I manage to persevere and actually get to a diagnosis in the face of the obstacles in front of me?” This is going to sound incredibly sappy, sentimental, and all sorts of other things I normally react to with nausea, but it was simply that someone believed me. More than one someone believed me, and these people saved my life. I’m not aiming to embarrass anyone here, but I’m going to call you out publicly. Vickie, whom I’ve known since high school, sent me to the practice where Dr B works when she realized what sort of distress I was in. My father, with whom I have had a very rough relationship, heard and recognized my symptoms from his own experience and pressed to me to have my heart looked at. Harriett, Lane, Bree and my therapist, J, regularly talked me through the rough patches when I really wanted to give up. Both of my Julies weren’t put off by my illness and made an effort to include me and make me feel like they still wanted to be around me. My husband Michael recognized that my illness was real and was supportive of my need to take care of myself, even when I was frustrated that I had to focus so much on my own health. Dr R (who does my adjustments) tattled on me when I wasn’t telling Dr B enough about when things started to go wrong (I was cranky about it at first, but now I’m grateful). Many of my other friends were able to supply other minor support roles throughout my life. Most important, though, is Dr B. He believed all of my symptoms were real, even when I stopped believing so myself. He was willing to admit when he didn’t know something, and he would call on others for help. He treated me as if I were intelligent, discussing his thought process and why we were trying each treatment in great detail. When the treatments had unexpected results, he didn’t assume that I was at fault. By recognizing my abilities and including me in the process, he helped me find my own answer, and he’s currently working on helping me prove it.

I realize as I write this that I have been guilty of some of the same sorts of interpretation errors that my doctors have succumbed to. In particular, I have misinterpreted my behavior, leading to a misdiagnosis of my character quality. In light of my new information, it’s a little harder to adhere to the definition of an attention-seeking, babyish, spoiled suburban housewife. By no means am I perfect, but I do want to write a more positive definition of myself. I’ll start with what I know:

1. I am generous. If I see an opportunity to help someone else, I will do it without hesitation. At the same time, I am not so foolish as to enable someone who will not help himself.
2. I am reliable. I have demonstrated more than once that I am the friend to call in the middle of the night when something bad has happened. What’s more, I am happy to be available for such times.
3. I am (at least to some degree) selfless. I actually enjoy taking care of others (credit to Dr B for pointing this out), whether it’s feeding friends at a dinner party or spending time with a friend who is dying of cancer. And we can’t forget the kittens.
4. I’m pretty intelligent. I don’t claim to be a rocket scientist, but come on, that medical diagnosis was not an easy catch.

If you have anything else you’d like to add, by all means, let me know. I’d welcome feedback about character flaws I need to work on as well.

Remember the book I decided to write? Well, now I have more direction and I know what I am going to do with it. It is the psychosocial aspect of chronic invisible diseases (especially those with no known cause or diagnosis) that I want to address. I want other people with chronic disease to know they aren’t alone. I want the general public to know how the things they say and do affect these sick people. Finally, I want doctors to take a lesson in trusting their patients.

Right now, I have a gaming convention to return to. As soon as I get home, though, I’ll get on that book thing.

A Weekend Vacation

Michael and I are in San Francisco again. It’s a relatively short trip (3 nights) because I wasn’t sure how I’d be feeling by this point. I’ll just start with the punchline – I’m feeling good again. I’m still looking at this with cautious optimism because I’ve had so many false starts before, but I think it might be different this time.

When I went to Burbank last week, I learned that I had a massive infection. I’ll quantify it for you, like H did for me. The non-cognitive biofeedback machine gives a measure of your response to certain stressors in arbitrary units – an index. A healthy person will respond with a reading of about 1000, and a person who has an acute condition (in this case we’ll refer to viral stressors, since that is my exact problem) will read about 2000. H said that she will see a reading of about 6000 in someone who has had a long-term infection. H sees big infections all the time, so when she told me mine was big, it meant something – I measured at 15,000 on the viral stress response. Here’s the kicker – I had blood tests drawn just two weeks before seeing H, and they showed barely any immune response to the viral stressor.

I brought this information to Dr B, and I did some thinking about this on my own. I mean, why did no one catch it if I had such a massive infection? Not even the allopathic physicians caught this one. H told me that my immune system was just ignoring the infection. I guess it was so overwhelmed that it didn’t even try. If that’s the case, then no matter what virus I have, I’m not making antibodies, so none would show up on a blood test (doctors test for the presence of a virus by measuring the antibodies to that virus in your blood stream). I can buy that. The reason I buy that is this: H gave me a homeopathic medicine to support the immune system’s response to a viral load (Dr B also has a similar product, but without the diagnostic, there was no way he could have known to give it to me).  After I started taking the medicine, I started to feel worse. I know this seems bad, but it’s actually good – my body is finally responding to the infection, trying to fight it off. My throat has been an angry shade of purple for about a week now, and it’s been swollen to the point where I can barely swallow. I’ve had sinus congestion and fevers like no one’s business. As of yesterday, it seems to be clearing up a bit. That may, however, be deceptive – I had to take pseudoephedrine to make it through the flight because the congestion in my ears got downright unbearable when the plane took off and landed, so it may just be the drug making the congestion go away. I plan to continue taking it through my weekend in SF, since there are things I want to get done here, and I don’t have the time to just rest (although I am making sure to pay attention to my limits).

We still have to deal with the hypoglycemia, but I think that the virus can account for the worst of it. Still, this is major progress.

Before I left for the trip, I had to drop the kittens off at the shelter. I am getting them back when I come home on Monday, but I made sure to photograph them just in case. Alas, I cannot post the pictures because the wireless internet connection at the hotel is poor. I should be able to connect a wired connection, but the computer doesn’t recognize it. This sucks.

In any case, I will blog about the trip and post my pictures when I get home. I guess what matters now is that for the first time in a long time, I am up for this. What a relief!

A Little Faith

This week has been brutal, no doubt about it. I have a lot more going on than I normally do, and a little bit of Murphy’s law kicked in while I’ve been trying to juggle it all.

On Monday I went out to run errands, despite the fact that I had been up since 2:30 in the morning. I had appointments to make later in the week, and since I was traveling on Thursday, I needed to get out at the first opportunity.  The day went as well as could be expected, and when I got home around 3:00, I wanted to collapse. Of course, since I had babies at home, it wasn’t an option – I had to feed the babies first. Inky (the little black one), Misti (the grey one) and Muffin (the black and white one) all came out for their bottle. After feeding the first three kittens I found Bear (the bigger black one) sleeping in his carrier. That’s pretty common for a kitten to sleep so hard he misses the fact that everyone else is screaming for the bottle. I woke Bear up, and he nursed for a moment before giving up. I re-fed everyone else, then realized that Bear was sleeping in my lap. Concerned, I placed him on the floor and tried to get him to walk – he was ataxic (medical for “walking like he’s drunk”). I immediately put Bear in the car and rushed him to the shelter.

The shelter staff took Bear into the back to begin rescue procedures. As I was waiting for them to update me, my cell phone rang. Normally I don’t take phone calls from anyone other than Michael when I’m busy, but an instinct told me to pick up the phone this time. The caller was a casual friend of mine who happened to adopt Donald from the last litter of foster kittens. I didn’t blog about these kittens, I realized. It was in November or December, and mostly Michael was caring for them since I really couldn’t.

These are Donald, Goofy, Ariel, and Jasmine. Poor Donald was really sick, but he pulled through and became the sweetest little guy! Goofy died, though. He had a case of megacolon – his intestines stopped working and he got so constipated that he couldn’t be unblocked and they had to put him down. It was incredibly sad.

Back to the present: My friend had just moved into a new place over the weekend, so Donald was already a little scared. When the pizza guy came by to deliver dinner, Donald snuck out of the house. On Monday, a little girl brought Donald back to his home, but Donald was in bad shape. The little girl witnessed one of the neighborhood boys stomping on Donald. My friend was in a panic, not sure what to do. I instructed her to take him to the emergency vet. When a cat is injured like that, even if you can’t find broken bones, it’s important to make sure there’s no internal bleeding or something. I also advised her to call the police – that kind of animal abuse is a crime. Since I was at the shelter, I had an animal control officer set up a case for her. The bottom line is that Donald is ok now, but the little girl’s mother made her change her story to protect the boy who hurt the cat, so it appears there will be nothing done about the abuse. Great, that mother just taught her daughter several very bad lessons – it’s ok to hurt animals, don’t report crimes, and lie when questioned by the authorities. I hate people.

As for Bear: the shelter kept him overnight on IV fluids. They returned him to me the next day, telling me I just hadn’t fed him often enough. I try not to take comments like that personally. First of all, I’ve been doing this for a long time – I know how often to feed kittens. It was his regularly scheduled feeding time, and the other kittens were just fine. Second, when I told the vet how many kittens I’ve fostered (almost 250 now), she said I’d seen far more of them than she had. The vet was young, probably fresh from vet school. She really had no idea what she was talking about. I decided that I would just monitor him more closely for awhile. He’s been fine since the incident, so I just chalked it up to the fact that sometimes kittens crash and even die for completely unknown reasons.

As of right now, the kittens are great! They have started eating just a little bit of wet food mixed with milk. They are still eating the dry food as well. They use the litter box, and play just as I expect. Misti even made friends with Duck.

Duck was afraid of the kittens when they couldn’t really get around, but now that they are no longer infants, Duck thinks they make great playmates.

I’m plugging along on my knitting WIPs. I finished one of Robert’s boot socks with the intention of sending it off to him to be fitted. I later decided that I would like to have the socks together so I can just make them match, and if I have to rip them back and re-knit them I’ll count it as another project for my goal of finishing up the WIPs.

I’m pretty happy with the way the first one turned out.

I know a lot of people have been waiting for the health update, so here it is:

On Thursday, I got on a plane for Burbank to see a woman (we’ll call her H – she isn’t a doctor, but she has a bachelor’s degree in biology) who specializes in non-cognitive biofeedback. I’ll be the first to admit, this diagnostic method seems a little… exotic. In theory, this machine can read meridians in the body and tell where your body is stressed. I went into it with a healthy dose of skepticism, but I thought that since no other diagnostics were really telling me anything (the antibody tests Dr B ordered came back negative, but there were other things I’ll get to in a minute), well, I had nothing to lose.

One of the first things the machine told her was that I was severely hypoglycemic. I already knew that – the tests that Dr B ran showed that my hemoglobin A1c levels (a measure of your average blood sugar over the long-term) were too low. Also, when I got out of the car at the airport, I wasn’t feeling right. Although I didn’t have the right symptoms for hypoglycemia (sweating, dizziness, trembling – all adrenal responses), I immediately got out the blood glucose meter and checked my blood sugar. The meter read 45, and it reads 15-20% high, which means that my real blood sugar was between 36-39. That fits the clinical definition of hypoglycemia. This was the most severe hypoglycemic event I’ve ever had, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to correct it well enough to fly. Fortunately, I had the foresight to bring candy canes left over from Christmas with me, and they worked. Crisis averted. The scary part is, other than just a vague sense that something was wrong, I had no symptoms. If my blood sugar gets too low and I am unaware, I could have seizures or even go into shock or a coma. That’s just such bad news.

The question is not whether I am hypoglycemic or not, it’s why am I hypoglycemic? The first thing the machine told H is that I have a massive infection. I’ll go more into detail about it later this week, after I speak with Dr B about the results. Overwhelming infection can most definitely cause hypoglycemia – in fact, that’s the most common cause I’ve seen for the death in my foster kittens (infection culminating in irreversible hypoglycemia). The next thing that came up is that I’ve had a large pesticide exposure. That one baffles me – mostly, I eat organic food now, and I wash my fruits and veggies before eating. Maybe it’s the flea medication I’ve used on foster kittens when I lived in San Francisco? She also noted that I had a high insulin load, but she attributes it to insulin resistance (which I am still not sure about – I have been on a diet that should reduce the resistance, and a lot of the supplements I am on also have that effect). There were other things that came up, but we aren’t dealing with them right now. H says that if we change too many things at once, we could do more harm than good.

I’ve invested in books about treating hypoglycemia, and after reading them, I’m sure that this is the cause of my fatigue. I’m still not sure of all of the reasons for the hypoglycemia, and there may be many. Still, this is MAJOR progress, and I’m feeling optimistic that it can be sorted out now. There is a very real risk that I might not survive long enough to get better, but if I’ve lived this long with an infection of the magnitude H describes, well, I must be a sturdy sort.

I also learned from reading the books (Hypoglycemia for Dummies and a textbook written in the UK called Hypoglycaemia in Clinical Diabetes (Practical Diabetes)) that not all doctors believe that hypoglycemia can exist in patients who are not taking insulin. Really? The textbook repeatedly states that hypoglycemia in non-diabetics is rare and practically dismisses the possibility, but I attribute that to the fact that the book specifically explores the condition in diabetic patients (I got the book because I wanted to understand the mechanisms of hypoglycemia, and it does do that). According to Hypoglycemia for Dummies, even the doctors who believe hypoglycemia can exist in non-diabetic patients don’t believe that diet has an effect on the condition. Again, really? I guess it explains why no one ever talked to me about low blood sugar before. Every doctor I’ve ever seen has been focused on my family history of diabetes (both types) and has consequently been worried about high blood sugar (which I have never demonstrated, but I do have signs of high insulin). It’s the same as the blood pressure – they get all over my husband for being mildly hypertensive, but no one ever bats an eye at the fact that my blood pressure is too low. I’m just going to put this out there for medical professionals to ponder: “There is a functional range out there, people. With a high and a low. Both ends need to be attended to.”

This week, in addition to preparing to travel to San Francisco, I am going to read as much as I can about hypoglycemia and I’m going to discuss what I’ve learned from the books and from H with my doctors. By Wednesday I should have the information I need to discuss what I’ve learned with you in much better detail. No matter what, I’ll check in so those of you following the health crisis know what’s happening.

The Big Apple

I have started traveling again. Not that I am in top form for traveling, but I went to New York City this week because Michael went for business (click here to see him on CNBC), and I didn’t want to pass up to opportunity to go again. He went earlier this year when I first fell ill, and I was just so sad that I couldn’t be there. I was determined not to miss this chance, even if it meant paying a price.

It has occurred to me that I like traveling to big cities to eat. Yes, there are other things to do in these big cities, but in general a restaurant cannot survive in a big city if it is not good. It’s also relatively easy to find things that I can eat. I am supposed to be on a diet consisting of protein and veggies only, but I’ve had to add carbs in to deal with the repeated bouts of hypoglycemia. It’s also harder to eat out when you live in the suburbs because you mostly run into chain restaurants that feature carbs as their primary dishes, with limited selection of food that isn’t in that category. In the cities though, no problem.

The first night we went to a Brazilian restaurant called Ipanema. I was saving myself for dinner that day, eating only what I needed to control my blood sugar before my arrival in NYC. I had their chicken sautee (their spelling) with tropical fruits, french fries, and mashed potatoes. The latter two were not part of my list, but I had been walking a lot and the carbs were very helpful in my recovery. The food was just so good! I went to bed early and happy.

View from the hotel. It’s so high up that the scene looks unreal.

The next day I had trouble waking up at a decent hour. I woke up in the middle of the night, unable to return to sleep, and so the end result was about a 2:00pm wake-up time. Still, we managed to get a few things done. First, Michael and I went to the Carnegie Deli. The place has been there forever. We visited the deli on our last trip to New York, back when I lived in San Francisco. I remembered that they had ginormous sandwiches, stuffed with more meat than a reasonable person could handle. This time, I ordered just the contents of the sandwich, no bread. This fit perfectly in my diet:

(click to enlarge)

I had the meat and the pickles in the middle pictures. The Melo Sandwich (the really tall one) was ordered by someone else seated at our table. The deli is just so crowded all the time that customers are squeezed in at cafeteria style tables spaced no farther apart than airline seats. It made for the opportunity to meet some other tourists who came in from Los Angeles. They gave us recommendations about which plays were good to see right now. What luck!

After lunch, Michael and I headed to Times Square to buy theater tickets and just be tourists. The thing that struck me when we arrived in Times Square was the massive volume of advertising. I mean, look at this:

At night, there are so many lights in Times Square that it looks like daylight. It’s just incredible how much advertising surrounds you.

Michael and I chose to see “How to Succeed at Business Without Really Trying” starring Daniel Radcliffe. The play also featured John Laroquette and a voiceover by Anderson Cooper. It was nice not to have a preconceived notion of what we wanted to see when we went out, and I’m glad we saw this particular play – I’m not sure I would have chosen it on my own without knowing who was starring in it and without the recommendation from the other tourist at lunch. I will say that it took Daniel Radcliffe a while to warm up, but as the play went on he got a lot better. In the end, there was a large dance number, and I’ll tell you, the guy can dance! He’s a technically good singer as well, but there was something missing from his voice – perhaps some experience or maturity. He’ll get there, I think. All-in-all, I liked the play. Oh, and to the knitters: this play contains knitting!

Michael filmed the segment I linked to in the first paragraph on Wednesday. I thought I’d take some time to find a yarn shop, maybe visit a chocolate shop I had seen on a previous night, and take a gander at a store whose display window was filled with duckies (my new obsession, since I got my kitten) while he was working. Instead, I was startled when my cell phone rang at 3:30pm and Michael said he was coming back to the hotel. I had slept through the day. What’s more, when I woke up, I was sore everywhere. I think I managed to forget for a while that I am still sick.

I loaded up on caffeine and supplements while Michael made his way back to the hotel. Since I was feeling at least able to leave the room, we went to a Spanish restaurant and ate artichokes with garlic and tomatoes in a vinaigrette sauce, a potato casserole, and paella (not exactly good for my diet, but definitely good since we were doing all that walking). Our late arrival at the TKTS office made it impossible for us to see any of the other plays we had considered the day before, so Michael and I opted to go to a comedy club instead. I had a great time there. We were seated front and center, and most of the comedians made fun of my cloak. I was called a high priestess, a wizard, and a Jedi. One guy made reference to rolling dice… if only he knew. I liked one of the comedians – he asked if Michael and I were married. Yes. He then asked how long. Eight years. “How old are you?” he demanded of me. Thirty. “There is no way you’re thirty. I figured nineteen or twenty at the most.” Nice guy.

I had trouble sleeping for more than a few hours that night, even though I fell asleep at 11:30pm. I ended up waking up at 2:30 in the morning and staying awake until I got on the plane. I slept the entire flight home, at least. When we got home, I ate something and laid down on the sofa until about 6:00pm. I’ve been up since.

I’m tired, sore, sleepless, and I have a long day tomorrow. I have to pick up lab work requests from my doctors (there are new theories about autoimmune diseases given that my eyes have been burning for a month and I got a “sunburn” despite not seeing the sun), I’m getting an adjustment, and then I have an appointment for an MRI in the afternoon. I was hoping that I was getting better, but I think this trip just reminded me that I’m still not well. I sincerely hope to recover quickly because my friend Vickie is driving down from Wyoming to see “Avenue Q” with us, and she will be staying through the weekend. She knows what I’ve been through, though, and I know she will understand. Regardless, I want to be able to function.

I have more travel scheduled this month. In two weeks I am going to Los Angeles on a day trip so I can try a new diagnostic procedure. I can’t wait to share what I come out of that with – who knows, maybe it will be that missing answer. I’m also going to San Francisco about a week and a half, maybe two weeks after that. I really need to get better so that these trips don’t kill me. Wish me luck.

San Francisco as a Tourist

Visiting San Francisco is a bit like coming home to me – I did live here for five years, after all. I like that when I come visit, I know where to get things I want, how to get around (I was not paying attention when they handed out direction sense, so I didn’t get any – a problem when I travel) and that many of my friends are here. While walking around, I realized that I have actually failed to see the place from a tourist’s point of view before. The first time I came here, Michael was interviewing for a job, and we knew we were going to live here soon. The city never had a chance to be a novelty for me.

On this trip we are staying in a different hotel than we normally do. It’s on the Embarcadero, which runs along the north side of the city. It’s where you will find the Ferry Building, Fisherman’s Wharf, etc.

View Larger Map

I looked out the back door of the hotel a few days ago and noticed that we had a view of San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge. I don’t live anywhere near water anymore, and somehow the sight of the Bay made me regret that fact. The stiff breeze (it’s always cold here in SF, especially in the summer) made me feel thankful that I no longer live near the water. It’s funny what a little perspective can do for me.

I know this scene somehow looks warm, but don’t let it fool you – it was maybe in the mid-50s (and this in in the middle of July!) when I went out.

There are places in San Francisco that I miss. I love the Ferry Building. Inside, it’s mostly a farmer’s market, with shops selling artisan cheeses, olive oil, and other food items. There are also a few chain stores, but mostly the chains are coffee shops. There is also a kitchen gadget chain store inside. Right inside the door nearest to my hotel is a small kiosk for Mariposa, a gluten-free bakery! In the plaza right outside of the Ferry Building, there’s a local art market in the summer and an ice skating rink in the winter.

Another place I used to love? Mitchell’s Ice Cream. They have the most wonderful ice cream I’ve ever eaten. The secret is that they have the highest butter fat content you can get without turning the ice cream into… well… I don’t know what it would be, but there is a fine line between amazing ice cream and just a lump of fat. I confess that I went there last night. I hadn’t eaten any significant amount of sugar in a while, and I figured that it’s been a few weeks since I last tested the dairy allergy, so no big deal. I have good news and bad news about that – my throat didn’t swell this time, but I did have to sleep two more hours last night than I normally need. It’s progress.

And finally, I went to Imagiknit. It’s my favorite yarn shop ever. Imagiknit has more yarn than I do than any other shop I’ve ever been to. I can easily spend a fortune in there – as a matter of fact, I have spent a small fortune in there on multiple occasions (not that I engaged in that practice today…) . Maybe it’s best that I no longer live close enough to go every day. A few months ago, I bought the cashmere for the christening gown at Imagiknit. The store owner, Alison, asked me to show her pictures of the finished product, so I did one better – I brought it with me to show her in person. She was pretty excited, and she took pictures to put on her blog (so look for me, I’ll be famous one day!).

I took time to notice more than just the places I miss. There are small details about the city that surprise me, exasperate me, or just intrigue me.

It’s a nice surprise to see actual foliage in the urban landscape that is San Francisco.

It exasperates me the way that every place, no matter where you are going is uphill. The cold, dreary weather also made me miserable on a regular basis when I lived here. I should mention that there are micro-climates in San Francisco, and some neighborhoods(like the Mission) can actually be warm in the summer. Look carefully at the picture on the right, though, and you’ll see that on most days, everyone is bundled up for mild winter weather, even in July.

The random art that dots the streets of San Francisco intrigues me. I admit, I’m not into sculpture and paintings and such, but I do appreciate that you won’t find these things anywhere else. I hope to get a shot of some of the murals in the Mission before I go home this time. I did get a few things I haven’t seen before, though.

I kind of like the monster! He had friends, but I was in a hurry to get food and only caught this one.

It’s been fun to see San Francisco as a tourist. I didn’t realize just how much I could see, even given that I spend my days here flitting from one social engagement to the next.

On Wednesday, I replaced all the things I forgot to bring with me and then went to knit night. On Thursday, I took the day off and mostly stayed in the hotel so I could have the energy to make it through Scottish Country Dance class (my picture is still on the fliers – I’ll have to scan it for you!). I forgot to go to the Animal Welfare Commission meeting – oops. On Friday, I did something that I can’t tell you about until some people at home see it in person, then I went out to get my nails done with Naomi (knitting Naomi). In the evening, Michael and I met up with our friend Ryan for dinner and then a board game at another friend’s (Tim’s) house. Today, we started the afternoon by meeting an old co-worker of Michael’s, Vicki. I made her a blanket for her new baby last year, and they still use it – she even said it was the nicest baby gift they got! Michael went rock climbing while I went to Imagiknit. After coming home and taking a short nap (I’m very sore and wiped out from all the walking and from dance class), we met Harriett for dinner. Tomorrow, I am going to pick up a copy of Dragon Quest 9, then I am meeting a new friend in Union Square while Michael goes off to watch the World Cup game with Naomi’s husband. I am hoping to meet the other Naomi (kitten foster mom Naomi) after my lunch date. In the evening, I am hoping to catch my old friends Brendan and Bethany (we met them on a cruise to Mexico shortly after we moved to San Francisco) for dinner and maybe some theater. On Monday I plan to spend the day volunteering at the city shelter, then I am meeting Michael and Judie (whom we met on our first cruise to Hawai’i for our 5th anniversary) for dinner. I can’t remember if I have anything on Tuesday yet. Still, as you can see, the schedule is full – I am burning the candle at both ends while I’m here. I will attempt to put up another post before I go home, and I will continue to try to see the city from a tourist’s point of view. It should be interesting!

P.S. – I stole the emoticon from this site.

Sweet Relief

I’ll start with the good news – I actually slept a full night last night! I’m thinking that the sheer exhaustion of the day (or maybe the weekend) just caught up to me. Or maybe it was something else. I have some suspicions.

Yesterday was an extraordinarily stressful day. After the sleepless holiday weekend, I had to wake up early to get a chiropractic adjustment. I really don’t mind doing that, especially because the adjustments make me feel better and improve my mood a bit. I was actually looking forward to it, in fact, because sleeping upright made my back hurt a lot. So, I went to my appointment and described my weekend to the doctor. “We are going to learn a lot from you,” he told me. It was such a poignant comment to me because my friend Lane told me just days before, as I was sobbing to her about just how awful it is to have these odd medical issues keep cropping up, that I am “making better doctors.” In any case, that adjustment was amazing – there was a lot of scary cracking and popping, but when I sat up, I knew something was very different. Good different.

I went back home afterward and handled a few business items. I checked Wesley’s gums (he’s had an infection for a little while now), and since they were no better after 2 weeks on antibiotics, I called the vet. They asked me to bring him in – great, another task for the day. Because Wesley needed to go to the doctor, that meant Michael would need me to take him to work so I could have the car. As a side note, I really wanted to avoid buying a second car, but I think it’s becoming apparent that we have to <sigh>. I tried to nap before I took them guys to their respective destinations, but no dice. I tried to pack for the trip, but for some reason I had a hard time making myself do it. I just really didn’t want to travel again.

After Michael and Wesley made their respective appointments, I again tried to pack. Again, I just couldn’t focus on the task. I had some green tea (it seems to have some some good effect on the congestion) and sat in front of the computer. I dawdled forever, and only managed to finish packing when it was becoming imminent that we had to leave. For the record, I don’t recommend this method of packing. I managed to forget a whole lot of things, including my tennis shoes. I was wearing heels that I can easily slip on and off at the airport, and just forgot. It’s not a good thing when you’re going to a city where the best mode of transportation is generally walking. Schiesse.

The shoe thing really came back to bite me when we got to the airport. The garage was shockingly full and we had to hike a greater distance than we usually do to get inside. I wasn’t happy about that. When we got inside, the airport had closed the security gates nearest to us, so we had to walk all the way across the (really huge) terminal to get to another set of them. My feet were just killing me at this point – I hadn’t anticipated that much walking. It’s never been that way before. Then, we got to security. I think we’ve established how I feel about airport security. I managed to forget that I left my good sewing scissors in my knitting bag, so the TSA confiscated them. They said I could ship them back to myself at an for an exorbitant fee, but I realized it would be cheaper to replace them. That incident really didn’t help my mood.

We trudged to the gate for our flight, only to learn the flight was delayed. There had been weather problems somewhere that delayed earlier flights, so ours was the victim of cascade effects. The plane that was supposed to pick us up landed maybe 5 minutes later than it was supposed to, so I really didn’t think it was a big deal. About  20 minutes later, the gate attendants informed us that they were still deplaning the last group, but we would get to go soon. About another 15 minutes later, the attendants informed us that they were short a flight attendant and had to wait for her to get there. It wasn’t long after that two passengers waiting for the flight we were supposed to be on got into a brawl. There was a lot of yelling and name calling, and because I was in a bad mood, I was secretly wishing they would just punch each other already. (I know, it’s not very nice of me. I haven’t exactly been proud of my thoughts and behavior this past week.) In the meantime, there was a long line of standbys waiting at the gate to be assigned seats on our flight. Fortunately for them, there were quite a few open seats. After getting about half way through the line, a gate attendant made another announcement. “We’re off the clock now, so you’re going to have to wait until someone else gets here.” The gate attendant made one call for help, then just left, not bothering to ensure that someone actually bothered to answer her call. The missing flight attendant arrived, but we couldn’t get moving because there were now no gate attendants. Another passenger flagged down someone who appeared to be a security guard at some point, and asked him for help. He made a few calls for more gate attendants, but it took a long time for anyone to get there. About an hour past our original departure time, we were finally able to start boarding.

Let’s not forget, however, that there was still a long line of people who still wanted to get on our flight. While the attendants boarded those of us with tickets, other attendants were busy assigning seats. We waited in the plane, at the gate, for another hour while they processed displaced passengers. Our original departure time was 9:30pm. I was already tired before we got on the plane, but the delay completely wasted me. We finally took off around 11:30pm.I remember a time when the airlines would compensate passengers for having to deal with that sort of ordeal. Instead, the flight attendants just got on and started making announcements about all the crap you could buy from them. Really? We’re all tired – leave us alone.

At least the flight itself happened without incident. We landed at SFO around 1:30am. I know it wasn’t his fault, but I was vaguely peeved that the captain said he hoped we’d enjoyed the flight and that we’d patronize the airline again.  Bitterly, Michael and I dragged our exhausted bodies to luggage claim. While waiting, I had another “incident”. I was minding my own business, standing near our carry-on bags, when I suddenly found myself in the worst pain I’ve felt in a long time. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat, and the pain in my chest was so intense that I couldn’t move. It wasn’t long before everything started to hurt and I started to sweat. I had gotten nauseated near the end of the flight, and I wasn’t so sure I wasn’t going to vomit right there at baggage claim. I began to fear that I wasn’t going to get to the hotel at all, that we would have to stop at the hospital first. Fortunately, after our bags arrived, the pain subsided to the point where I decided I could just live with it for the night and see what happened when I had some rest.

We got to the hotel around 2:00am. I hadn’t been able to sleep on the plane (a feat that I used to be able to accomplish on a regular basis), and I was still in moderate pain, so all I managed was to collapse into bed. Somehow, I didn’t wake up until 10:30 this morning. I was surprised to realize that I actually feel ok. I wasn’t sitting up, and still managed not to wake up coughing. The full night’s sleep has also affected my mood – I’m not quite as surly as I’ve felt for the last little while (well, reliving yesterday didn’t help, but I’m talking more about the big picture). Maybe I’ll make it through the week. Right now though, I need to go find some lunch and some tennis shoes. One thing at a time.

How I Knew

I’ve been on yet another of our combined business/ friend visiting trips this week. We have one more trip to San Francisco coming up, then we have a break until September when my sister-in-law is expecting to have her (currently unborn) baby’s christening. After that, there are no plans, but I know something will come up. For example, I came to understand that my Aunt Lydia and Uncle Greg are in their last year living in Italy, so I may leave the continent for the first time in my life. Anne-Catherine, if you’re reading this, we plan to come see you, too!

I had a few very odd feelings before this trip. A day or two before, I got the feeling like a big life change was coming. I spoke to my husband about it, but he couldn’t really think of anything momentous that should be coming up. Regardless, I knew. I’ve always had such strong pattern recognition skills combined with a high passive perception score (sorry, I’ve been playing too much Dungeons and Dragons of late!) that I have dreams of events before they transpire. I’ve been informed more than once that I seem to always know how something is going to play out, but not a lot of people believe me until after the fact (Cassandra syndrome). The feelings I had about this upcoming event were so strong that I felt compelled to share them on Facebook, particularly when I was at the airport (we all know by now how I feel about that place) and there were tornado warnings blasting over the intercom. I just felt like everything was as it was meant to be.

Also in the week prior to the trip, I learned of a cruel coincidence. The National Needle Arts Association (TNNA) was going to have their trade show in the hotel right across the street from the hotel we were in for the Ohio portion of Michael’s business presentations. Why might this be cruel, you ask? Well, I am not a member of TNNA, and you have to be in order to get in. I would have to own a business with a business ID number, or since I teach, I’d need a long list of requirements that I simply could not gather in time for the show.

When we got to the hotel, it was very late. The tornadoes delayed our trip by about an hour an a half, so we had to get in and get to sleep right away so Michael could get up in the morning. If I was going to do anything about even trying to get into the trade show, I also needed to be up early. Before we attempted sleep, I looked out the window. My view

was this – the location of the TNNA trade show.

I found myself simply unable to sleep after about 7:20am. All the better since, if I wanted to see the pretty yarn, I had to get it all in before noon when we were scheduled to drive to Michigan. I went to the restaurant attached to the hotel for my breakfast. Almost immediately after I sat down, the waiter asked if I was one of the knitters. Cool – I wasn’t even knitting or wearing a knitted item! A critical (natural 20) on the stealth (or perhaps the disguise or streetwise) check. I informed him that no, I wished to attend the trade show, but I could not. However, at this point I knew that I could blend in if I wanted to attempt to gain access to the show. I belonged there!

On my way out of the restaurant, I noticed a woman with a Eucalan bag. Knowing that she had to be involved with the show, I stepped out of character and started up a conversation with her (I don’t usually talk to strangers unless the approach me first, but I’ve made a concerted effort to be less shy lately). I told her about my situation and asked if she knew of any way to get an “ordinary knitter” into the show. The very kind lady informed me that no, I could not get into the show since they were checking badges at the doors, but if I happened to have the requirements together I could sign up to be a TNNA member on the spot. I told her I didn’t know about the show early enough before my trip to gather the letters and such that I would need, so I was out of luck. “Well, there is a display right before the gates,” the lady informed me. “You could look and touch the yarns, maybe pick up a few samples.” Perfect. I went straight to the convention center.

The walk to the part of the convention center with the trade show was very, very long. I had to climb flights of stairs and walk nearly to the other side of the surprisingly large building. All at once I saw the knitters – and the yarn. Oh, the pretty yarn. I helped myself to one of the books listing the names of some of the vendors and what they had on the sample display. I noticed other knitters taking samples of yarn from beneath the displays and taping them into the books, so after gazing at and fondling some of the samples, I did the same. I noticed another knitter taking pictures, and since no one yelled at him, I did so, too. Here’s what I have:

These two were my favorite displays. The one on the left is Pear Tree Fibres, 100% pure Australian wool. The yarn was so soft that I just couldn’t stop touching it. In fact, they call the yarn “Supersoft.” The one on the right is Knitcellaneous. I particularly liked the “Scrumptious,” a blend of merino wool and silk.

There were other very nice displays that I liked, but the ones above were my favorites. Here’s just a sample of what they had:

I plan to show my samples to some of my local yarn shop owners and ask that they carry them. Heck, I’ll probably take them to San Francisco and ask my favorite shops out there to carry them as well. I figure the TNNA folks can’t get too mad that I kind of snuck in if I bring the vendors some business. I should also note that I would not be foolish enough to blog about it if I actually did sneak in to the trade show because a) I might like to be a member one day and having a written confession in a public forum would not help my chances and b) had I managed to do it, giving away my secrets would make it impossible to do so again.

That said, I realized something after I left the trade show. I wanted in badly. I wanted in so badly that I contemplated trying to con my way in, maybe trying to sweet talk someone at the front desk into taking pity on me because fate wanted me to be here. I also realized that I’ve been trying to figure out what career path I want to pursue now that I’m feeling better. The last time I had to have blood drawn, I had a moment that I truly believe was predestined. I forgot the paperwork but I didn’t realize it until I had driven all the way to the testing facility. I had to drive all the way home, and I was starving because I was fasting. It made me bitter because when I came back, the waiting room was much fuller and I’d have to wait even longer to get through it. I sat down and took out my knitting. A few moments later, a little girl arrived with her mother. “Oh, look!” she cried, “Mommy, she’s knitting!” The little girl asked her mother to teach her, and the mother was kind of trying to dissuade the little girl, so I wasn’t sure if I should offer my services (in retrospect, I could have slipped the mother a card and let her decide for herself). I wondered then if it was a sign. I think, my friends, that my questions have answered themselves. I have officially decided to pursue an honest-to-goodness career in the needle arts.

I most certainly thought about a career in other fields. I mean, this blog is “Knittin’ and Kittens” – I couldn’t pick just one subject. I seriously contemplated finishing what I started in college, ending up as a veterinarian. I still desperately want the title of “Doctor,” and I want to be just as important as the teachers always told me I’d be when they realized I was a lot smarter than most of the other kids when I was going to school. Alas, life has not led me there. Now that Michael and I travel so much, going to school and having a practice of my own would be impractical. Additionally, I began to realize that I hate it when people come to me for advice about animals, then ignore it in favor of  what their friends and family think. As a vet, I’d have to deal with people not giving the meds I prescibe and then wondering why their pet isn’t getting better. I’d have to kill animals that I believe I could save, just because the owner doesn’t want to pay the bill and won’t surrender the animal. I have to bite my tongue to keep from ripping the back yard breeders a new one for their contribution to the killing of perfectly wonderful shelter animals. I’d fail as a vet because I care too much about the animals themselves – it would be better if I just liked the field of medicine. My contribution to the animal welfare field is best kept to exactly what I am doing right now – fostering. This doesn’t mean I shouldn’t also go to school for the vet tech license I was contemplating. Getting the education would give me a better understanding of how to help my kittens, and give me a way to earn extra cash if I want to. I am writing all this here because I had to admit it to myself first, and that was a hard step to take.

I’m not saying that the yarn-craft career is a second choice option, either. When I really think about it, it’s what I should have been looking into all along. I started to work with yarn when I learned to read, and that was well before I started to attend school. I love yarn. I want to be involved in every aspect of yarn, from making it to dying it to making it into projects. I am good at and enjoy doing the math to make my projects look and fit the way I want them to. I’ve written technical manuals, which aren’t that different from writing a pattern book when you get to the essence of it. As a bonus, a career in yarn craft would absolutely suit the lifestyle I have now. I can knit and design projects when we are traveling (so long as the government doesn’t keep punishing knitters for the acts of terrorists… grr… as if we had something to do with it), and if someone doesn’t like my knitting advice, I am not at all offended because no lives are at stake (and it’s art – there are no hard and fast rules in art). The best part is that I enjoy the work so much that I do it for fun – imagine if I could draw a regular pay check from it!

So the events leading up to and including the trip I am on now have shown me what I should have known all along. I am not a knitter – I’m a Knitter.

It’s a process

I’ve spent this week learning new things, trying to get my garden together, making plans for our upcoming travel, and getting the first steps together for a skirt I am designing. Not a single one of these things has been a quick project. On some level, I like the processes involved in the various tasks I’ve undertaken, but on another level, I just want these things to be done.

Learning:

Since Wesley has to be at the vet so often these days with his heart conditions, I’ve started making Duck tag along so he can get practice being a better traveler. By the time Buttercup and Wesley were Duck’s age, they had traveled with us for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other long vacations, as well as for Michael’s and my wedding. They knew to eat when I offered food, to pee when I offered the box, and to sleep in the car otherwise. Duck has no such discipline. He howls for the entire half hour drive to the vet. After about ten minutes, the boy rolls over onto his back and starts to kick the top of his carrier in a desperate attempt to escape. He’s like a two-year-old having a tantrum.

At Wesley’s vet appointment, I remembered that I wanted the staff at my vet’s office to teach me to express the cats’ anal glands. It seems that every time we visit the vet, Serra and Duck have infected glands, and it costs me $32 per cat each time the vet has to do something about it. It’s a disgusting job, but someone has to do it. It’s no fun to be the learning subject either, but since he was available, Duck got volunteered for the role.

We all know by now that Duck is the most mellow cat around – nothing perturbs him. It turns out that there is one thing Duck won’t tolerate – anal gland expression. The vet tech taught me the proper technique for holding the cat down, then lifted Duck’s tail – and all hell broke loose. In a flash, sweet little Ducky turned around and chomped the crap out of my hand. Fortunately, he only made a few scratches, but it was enough to tell me that when we got around to treating Serra at home, it wouldn’t be pretty.

I taught Michael the proper technique for getting Serra secured, lifted her tail, and began to gently squeeze her swollen glands. Serra shrieked so loudly, so pitifully, that it freaked out the cats on the other side of the door. In moments, she started thrashing and scratched (or bit – we couldn’t tell which because it happened so fast) Michael’s arm. She also got a claw into his chest.

Maybe it’s worth it to pay the vet to express Serra’s glands. I only got a little fluid out, but I know it must still hurt because Serra cries when I touch her tail. Poor thing. I also need more experience with the whole procedure. Maybe I can talk the vet into letting me do an internship. Or maybe the shelter will let me. Or maybe I just need to make the decision to attend vet tech or vet school. In any event, I still have a lot to learn.

Gardening:

Somehow, whenever I work in the garden, I can be out there for hours and have very little to show for it. I guess working in the heat (not that I’m complaining – I love warm weather) can take it out of  a person. For the first part of the growing season, I was patching the holes burned in the lawn by the first owner’s dog. Now bunnies have burned holes in the front yard. I’m kind of tired of that, but I love the bunnies, so I’m at a loss.

Now I’m ripping out grass in a sunny part of the yard so I can put a vegetable garden in. I spent four hours outside a couple of days ago in an attempt to get the tomatoes planted and this rusty metal barrier of some sort removed from the lawn.

This thing is buried completely underground in some places. I just know I’m going to be digging one day and I’ll end up with a tetanus infection, so I thought it would be best to just get it out now. I worked for hours digging it out of some spots, and eventually Michael came along to help. Part of the metal barrier is still in the lawn, but I need a day when we have both the time and energy to finish. Until then, that part of the lawn is going to look terrible. Fortunately, it’s in the back, so the HOA isn’t likely to notice it and fine us. Given the travel schedule we have, I can’t guarantee that the job will even be done in a month. I can hope, but I can’t be certain. Sigh.

I managed to plant the two tomato plants I bought from the grocery store recently. I was hoping to plant my own seedlings, but when I brought them outside, they were so shocked by the sun that they turned white. Unsure if they were going to recover, I bought larger, stronger plants as an insurance policy that I will have garden-fresh tomatoes this year. I think the seedlings have recovered, but they aren’t ready to plant. Instead they live in the peat pots I planted them in, next to the planted tomatoes. When I get home from my next trip, I hope to plant some of the bean seeds and install the trellis. This is all predicated on getting the rest of the grass in my garden area up first. Again, sigh.

Travel:

I’m so done with travel now. I used to like it, but then it became an all-the-time thing and we’re only at home three weeks at a time, so now I hate it. I hate airport security, I hate sleeping in a bed that isn’t mine, and most of all, I hate the change in time zones. I’m trying to regulate my circadian rhythms, and it can’t be done so easily if the time zones keep changing.

I managed to pack today, and I have much of the laundry done. I want to get some basic house maintenance like sweeping, mopping and vacuuming done before we go. I especially want to clean out the kitten room tonight so that when I come home, maybe I can get kittens from the shelter on my way back from the airport. I’ll only be home for two weeks before our next trip, so I want to make the most out of my time with whomever I get.

Knitting:

A few weeks ago, before I went to Boston, I had a dream about a skirt. Well, not about the skirt, but I saw someone wearing a skirt that I just loved and I knew I could make it. I won’t describe it in its entirity because I am going to send you through my design process and show you what comes out of it. What I can tell you is that the skirt started with a dark blue at the top, getting lighter in tiers until it became white at the bottom. Later, I got the idea that it was going to look like waves lapping at the shore of a sandy beach, so the bottom became a tan color. I spent weeks looking for a brand of yarn that had at least four shades of an earth tone quality of blue for the water part. For the record – that’s a surprisingly tough thing to come by.

I originally wanted to use a dk weight yarn for the project because I was worried about how much the skirt would weigh. I have a lace skirt made of pure cotton, and I’ll tell you, it grows with wear. My first choice was Dalegarn Stork. They didn’t have four shades of blue at the store, but I had an idea! Sometimes, when you knit double stranded, you can mix one strand of the color you were using in a previous section of the garment with a strand of color you intend you use for the next section and get a nice transition. I chose two shades of blue and the white I had in mind originally and made a swatch.

The effect of knitting in the above manner is admittedly neat, but not what I was going for. It looks more “sailor” to me than “waves at a beach.” I had to keep looking.

After returning the kittens to the shelter today, I went by a yarn shop I haven’t visited in awhile. The woman who owns the shop got a degree in graphic design – she even knitted a tapestry as her thesis! I ran my idea by her, and as I should have suspected, she had a suggestion that I liked. Instead of four shades of blue, I’m using three, and instead of one shade of tan, I’m using two. One shade of tan will represent the wet sand where the water meets up with it, and the other shade will be the dry sand. I still have to work out the proportions and a few other details (like stitch pattern), but I’ve finally made some progress.

The yarn is Berroco Weekend, 75% acrylic and 25% cotton, worsted weight. I was against using acrylic at first, largely because I want this to be my first pattern for sale and I want my reputation to be for higher-end garments. I then came to the conclusion that anyone who wants the pattern will substitute her (or his) preferred yarn anyway, so it hardly matters. Then again, it will probably be just as hard for anyone else to find yarn in just the right shades, so they may have to stick with my choice. Additionally, the acrylic fiber is lighter than pure cotton, so maybe it won’t stretch too much.

Since I’m doing a lot of color changes, I don’t want to change the stitch I use too often. If I do that, the skirt will become too busy and complicated, no fun to make or look at. I searched my stitch dictionaries for a stitch that could represent the undulations of sand on the beach as well as the movement of the ocean water, another tall order. At the moment, without having made a swatch, I’m thinking this:

The edging it makes is uneven, just as I wanted it to be. I do worry that it is too busy, though. I have a vision of some sort of undulating lines created with increases and decreases, but maybe in a more random manner than this?

My plan at the moment is to knit a child-sized version of the skirt and see what happens. If I like it, great, I’ll make it into an adult size and produce a “Mommy and Me” pattern. If not, my niece will have a “yarn skirt” that I have no doubt she’ll treasure, and I’ll start again – but not from scratch this time. I’ll definitely update you as my vision comes together.

The Week in Boston

When I last posted, I mentioned that I was going to Boston for a week. I did hope I’d find some time to blog while I was out, but for some reason (that I figured out later and will get to at the end) it had become increasingly harder for me to focus enough to write a coherent post. I guess it doesn’t matter now, since I’m doing it from home, but I do wish that I was able to get on this sooner.

I’ve been to Boston before. Massachusetts is one of the original colonies, so there is a lot to see in the way of history, particularly relating to the Revolutionary War. Alas, I didn’t do any of the historical touristy stuff this time. I did, however, get around the city enough to photograph some of its character.

Let’s start with the hotel. We stayed in a boutique hotel, paid for by Michael’s work. It’s the same hotel we stayed in on the last trip to Boston, in fact. This hotel has a unique style.

Note the choice in bed covering – bold, no?

This is what they offered in the way of a bathrobe – wild.

The night we landed, Michael and I decided to visit a seafood restaurant we visited the last time we were in town. I still don’t like seafood, but I figured with the diet and all, it made sense to give the place another shot. The food was cooked well, I’m sure, but I still wasn’t able to really like it. I’m trying. Really.

While we were out, I noticed white horses and carriages everywhere. In fact, there were also quite a few younger, adult-like people wearing formal attire. I can only figure that it was prom season.

For the rest of the week I toured the city, but mostly with the search for local yarn shops in mind. I believe that the artistic mood of a yarn crawl helped me notice something I may not have otherwise – the architecture. Some of the buildings that were in use at the time of the Revolutionary War are still maintained and used for tourism purposes. Some of the older buildings are just moss-covered. What struck me the most, though, is the juxtaposition of the old and new buildings.

The reason I really wanted to go to Boston this time had nothing to do with Boston at all. It had everything to do with Sara. She and I met here, through my blog. I learned about nine months ago that she was expecting a new baby, so I set about making a baby blanket from wool I spun myself. The drive from Boston to Sara’s place wasn’t all that long, so we made the side trip to deliver the blanket.

Already, the little guy is wrapped up in my handiwork!

We played Dungeons and Dragons at Sara’s house the first night, then simply hung out with her the next day. I really wish I had her drive – she made efforts to clean her house when we were coming over, even though she just had the baby on the previous Monday. I insisted that she needn’t worry about us, but she did anyway. It was so very cool to meet someone who was a complete stranger to me before I started writing online. She’s just as wonderful as I hoped she would be. Yea, internet friends!

I also finished a little something from my long list of yarn craft WIPs:

The Razor Cami. I used Arucania Ranco Multy, in color 309. I bought the yarn at a point when I felt I needed to broaden the color variety in my yarn stash. I bought 2 skeins of the same dye lot at the same time, and yet they were very different. When you click on the picture, you can see that the top inch of the camisole and the arm straps are a slightly different color than the rest of the body. I can’t decide if this is an artifact of the fact that the yarn is hand-dyed, or if someone maybe switched a label at some point. The pattern called for a contrast color at the top anyway, but I wanted the thing to be a single color. Maybe I’ll get my wish on the next one. For what it’s worth, I chopped my head out of the picture here for the same reason I didn’t post a photograph of me with Sara – I look particularly terrible in all the pictures taken of me that week.

I think the reason I looked terrible is that I felt a little bad, health-wise. At the hotel’s steak restaurant, I told the waiter that I have a dairy allergy, and I assumed the fact that he went through the menu with me to show me what was dairy free meant he understood. I ate my steak and asparagus, and as I got back to my room, I had a swollen throat and an upset stomach. They didn’t take me seriously. It’s the first time this happened since I started the new diet, but honestly I’m shocked that it hasn’t happened more often, given the sheer amount of traveling we’ve been doing.

I also learned one more thing I am allergic to: my birth control pills. The reaction was identical to the reaction I had to dairy. I can directly connect the weeks that I felt bad, even those on the cleanse diet, with the times I was taking the pills. They made me feel inflamed, tired, and sore, and they left me unable to get rest while I slept. Another odd bit – they made it impossible to adapt my circadian rhythms to the  Eastern time zone. I was waking up at 8:00am in Mountain time, and 10:00am Eastern time, without fail. As soon as I got home and realized the pills were making me sick, I stopped taking them. Within three days of discontinuing the pills, all of the symptoms disappeared. I started waking up earlier – this morning I woke up at 5:15am, feeling great. Why couldn’t I have figured this out before I traveled? In a few weeks we’re going back to Eastern time (a long business and family visiting trip, which I will try to blog about now that I am healthy enough to do so), so I’ll see how I fare then. I am willing to bet that I adapt much better this time.