the_rck

Thursday did not go well, over all. I had a weird and abrupt allergic reaction without any clear cause. I started coughing and having trouble breathing. I used Primatene mist for the first time (the allergist I saw a few months back recommended it. He suspected that I was having laryngeospasms from the rosemary and thought that might help and that the Primatene might be a decent option for a rescue inhaler in case of asthma since I can't take albuterol). That got me breathing again, but my face and my hands itched, and so did the roof of my mouth. At that point, I took Benadryl and naproxen which helped.

The only thing that had happened right before was that Scott reheated some turkey bacon in the microwave. We're both dubious about that as the cause since he cooked in on Sunday without me having issues. I even ate some of it then. We just couldn't come up with anything else that happened or that changed right then. The previous thing in the microwave was me preparing my lunch earlier that day.

I retreated to the bedroom, and Scott opened the living room windows. Every time I went into the living room after the Primatene, breathing got harder again, so fresh air was necessary. After 15-20 minutes, I was able to go back to the living room again.

The whole thing was terrifying. The fact that we really don't know what caused it makes it more so.

The Primatene left me utterly exhausted even before I took the Benadryl. Every part of my body just slowed down. I have the impression that that's not the typical reaction. The warnings are more about anxiety, tremors, and racing heart.

I felt fine 2-3 hours later.

My breathing was fine all day yesterday and then abruptly got bad again just before Scott got home (so shortly before midnight). It remained bad for a little more than an hour and then abruptly resolved itself. It feels like an allergic reaction to something, but there isn't anything new. I had avocado with lime juice and salt just before, but all three are things I consume regularly. Also, the avocado is generally a once a week thing and can't have had anything to do with Monday's issues.

I've had a headache all day. Nothing I've hit it with has helped. I'm hoping that a night of good sleep will help.

I haven't been wearing my thumb splints because, while they're semi-washable, they're not that washable. My hands are unhappy about this choice, but I haven't been able to think of a workable alternative.

I'm pretty sure we'll be out of toilet paper before the end of the weekend. I'm not looking forward to that, but I don't really see what we can do about it. Scott looked every day for a week, and now, the stores all close before he gets off work. He's reluctant to go out before work just for that, partly because he can't predict how long a stop would take and partly because he can't pick up other things (perishables) before work. They'd go bad, sitting in the car for 10 hours.

Also, I think he's convinced that there's no way he'll find any even if he looks in every store in town.

Scott's employer is encouraging people to eat their lunches in their cars. Scott didn't mention if breaks in cars were suggested, too, but it wouldn't surprise me. I think the concern is that the break room can't be reliably kept as clean as it needs to be. Probably also that there's not enough space for social distancing otherwise.

I've been making biscuits with mashed squash, Bisquick, and shredded cheese. I can't give amounts because I just mix the squash and Bisquick to the right texture and then add cheese. My best guess is two parts squash, two parts Bisquick, and one part shredded cheese, but that may be more than a little off.

I'm the only one in the family who really loves squash, and I can't eat all of a standard sized butternut or acorn squash, so this is a good way to get Scott and Cordelia to eat some, too. I baked an acorn squash, uncut, on Sunday, and put away the pulp. I used half of that today. Probably I'll make biscuits again on Thursday or Friday.

I have a story in the All the Nice Things flash exchange archive. Author reveals won't happen for a couple of days yet, and I'm curious as to whether or not the story is identifiable as mine. I suspect it might be, but I'm also not sure how many people who read here also read in that fandom. I'm not necessarily good at the follow through, but if anyone (bar my beta reader) guesses which story it is, I'll at least try to write something for them.

The exchange was entirely about having nice things happen to the requested characters, so the stories in the archive ought to skew toward being happy for those characters. Revenge was one of the 'nice things' a person could request, though.

Scott had an asthma attack last night which he doesn't want to call an asthma attack. It was triggered by him swallowing wrong while eating dinner an didn't stop until he finally used his inhaler a bit after 11:00. Then his work called at 5:00, half an hour before his alarm would have gone off. He was up and out the door in about ten minutes.

He didn't think to turn off his alarm before he left. I was too exhausted to manage it, so Cordelia ended up coming in and doing it. The alarm is a clock radio that gets louder the longer it's left going. After that, it still took me more than five minutes to drag myself out of bed to get coffee and food for Cordelia and to pull together her lunch.

I think that today will actually involve a nap or, at least, an attempt at one. I've got a list of things I wanted to get done, but sleep seems crucial. Maybe I can put laundry in to wash and then sleep. Today will involve at least two loads.

I've got about eight emails and four phone calls to make, but I can't manage the calls without more sleep. Some of the emails, I might manage and may try. We'll see.

We got the absentee ballot mailed. Postage was 71 cents which made me and Scott both wonder about ballots with insufficient postage because nothing in the instructions indicates that the dratted things are too heavy for a single stamp to cover it. That seems like very basic information that would be easy to provide because what goes into the return packet won't vary from election to election. More stuff printed on the ballot won't make a difference between one standard stamp and two.

I did a second trial of primidone yesterday. I took half a tablet at about 5 p.m. I didn't have problems immediately; they kind of crept up on me. By 8 or 9, I was coughing if I laughed or walked from one end of the house to another. It kind of felt like I had something tight and heavy wrapping my ribcage. I didn't wheeze, but I'd say the medication sets off my asthma.

I ended up using an albuterol inhaler at about 10, and the tightness kind of evaporated. Using the inhaler was a gamble because, while it does let me breathe better, it makes me shake more and can send my anxiety sky high. I think I had enough sedation from the primidone to counteract most of the usual side effects, though, as all that happened was that I started breathing easier.

I slept about eight hours. My dreams were all anxiety dreams, pretty standard stuff. We'd moved to a new house, and I didn't know where anything was or how to find food. There was a cafe, but I couldn't find a place to sit and didn't have any money and really had to be somewhere else very soon. Scott kept disappearing, and I needed to figure out the buses, but no one else thought those were important.

I have no idea why we'd have bought a house without me seeing it first, and a house wedged between a Target and a strip mall seems like a terrible choice (but possibly less expensive?). I know that anxiety dreams make even less sense than waking anxiety, but I kind of wish my dreaming brain would have me doing something more interesting and story-like.

I woke about 8 a.m. and then crashed hard about 10 a.m. even though I'd eaten and had caffeine. I'm still groggy after stronger caffeine. Scott got me a Wendy's burger, and I'm hoping that will help as it tends to be my last ditch defense against falling over.

I have two library books due today that I can't renew. I'm not done with either and don't have time to finish even one of them. I can't place new holds on them until after I return them, so I'm going to have to try to remember to do that. I've got two graphic novels that aren't due this week but that I could feasibly finish reading and return today.

My current year to date word count for fiction is 192963. I'm looking at that and wondering if I can write another 7K words in the next 34 hours. It's possible that I could, but... Do I want to put that much effort into it? My monthly word count for December is already higher than that of any other month this year-- July had 26171 and December has 27275.

I went up to Scott's parents' place yesterday with Scott and Cordelia. We pretty much just sat around together with the extended family. There was dinner time drama because Scott's parents decided to serve ham even though Scott can't eat it, I can't eat it, and one of our nieces won't (she doesn't eat mammalian meat by choice). Scott's brother and his wife can/will eat it but don't like it much. Their six year old daughter is unpredictable about it.

I ended up eating an hour before everyone did because of medication scheduling issues. We took some cooked chicken up with us so that I'd have that available when I needed to eat. Scott's mother cooked four stalks of asparagus for me and gave me a baked potato.

As it happened, it was just as well that I ate early because there weren't enough plates for all of us. My plate got washed and reused by someone else. I sat on a loveseat while everyone else was at one of the two tables. I could have sat at a table, but I chose not to because the available space wasn't at the table where Scott and Cordelia were. The loveseat was right next to that table.

We got home very late.

Scott and Cordelia have gone back up to Scott's parents' place. The visiting relatives will be flying out this evening, so this is the last chance. I was just too tired to manage another excursion. I had to take Ativan yesterday.

At this point, I'm about 95% certain that the Flonase was the problem in terms of my asthma acting up. I'm also suspecting that it may have been interfering with my sleep because I've been sleeping a hell of a lot better since stopping it. I suppose I'll see how that goes once school starts again. That will be the real test.

I started yet another fic yesterday. (I feel like I ought to have an abbreviation for that-- YAF? Nobody would know what I meant. Including me.) I know more or less where this one needs to go, but I'm not sure about the mechanism for that to happen or how big it should be. I also could make it semi-tragic in various ways, but I'm not sure I like any of them or like the option of not having a price for the solution.

It was warm for Michigan in December yesterday, but my lungs were still unhappy about the temperature. I managed everything I needed to by breathing through my cotton scarf. I'm worried about this because it will get colder going forward and because I'm not likely to leave Michigan in coming years. I think that, when I see my primary care doctor again, I’ll ask about a referral to an asthma specialist.

My mother and stepfather have cancelled their plans to come to the concert on Thursday. Mom had apparently been trying to text me for several days without getting through, so she sent me an email.

I’ve got a long to do list, and I’m going to have to make myself deal with it over the next few days. I think I’ll start with a shower, then load and run the dishwasher, then make the two necessary phone calls after 8:30 a.m. After that, the most critical thing is an inventory of which ingredients I have for Christmas cooking so that I can give Scott a list of things to pick up. He’s going to have to stop at Kroger tonight for a prescription anyway.

Yesterday’s Chex mix came out tasting odd, IMO. Scott thinks it’s fine, though, so the oddness isn’t a problem. Our theory is that it’s because we had (and I used) smoked almonds instead of plain roasted almonds.

We were out late enough last night, running errands, that we had to pick up food for me while we were out. Cordelia and I got soup from Zoup. I was pretty frustrated by the menu as it relates to what I can eat for dinner-- I wanted to avoid peppers of all sorts, dairy, tomatoes, garlic, and anything spicy. Not one soup met all the criteria. The sandwiches were all of the sort where I’d be paying full price for plain bread and half of the meat. I can have romaine lettuce (or iceberg), so the salads were out. At any rate, I ended up compromising on the dairy to get the chicken potpie soup. I’ve had it before without trouble, but I wasn’t sure about it under current circumstances. As it turned out, I didn’t end up with bedtime reflux, so I guess I’ll get that again if we go back.

One of the calls I need to make is for setting up PT for my left elbow. While I was so sick, the pain from that wasn’t as noticeable. I don’t know that the pain levels changed so much as that I was focused enough on breathing and on sinus pain that those mattered more.

My doctor's nurse emailed me back yesterday and offered an appointment this afternoon. I emailed back to say that I wanted it, but then she called this morning to say it had been taken. Then she heard me cough and got me an appointment with someone else. I took a cab both ways because the bus would have been a really stupid move on my part. I called one person about maybe getting a ride, but she had a sick child who couldn't be left or taken with, and at that point, I really needed to call a cab if I was going to.

It is, congratulations to me, still asthma. We did a chest x-ray just to be sure there wasn't lurking pneumonia, and I almost said no to it because the odds were against me having pneumonia with no other symptoms but post-nasal drip. And I was right; I don't have pneumonia.

But laughing, bending over for more than a couple of seconds, reaching up, cold air, talking, walking far, stairs... All of that makes me feel like I'm going to start coughing.

I found my peak flow meter this morning. I haven't used it in years, so I don't remember what the numbers should be. If the green, yellow, and red markers are where they should be though (and I can't think why they wouldn't be), I'm in the yellow but only barely out of the green. I remember that, all those years ago, I started feeling that something was wrong if I was near the bottom of the green range ( the range there is 430-500. I'm coming in at about 420 now). But I'm a decade older, so I have no idea if my range has changed. When I never had symptoms (so the last more than decade), tracking things fell off my to do list.

Feeling that way was consistently a sign that I was near to problems and might yet go either way. Often, it was the first sign that I was coming down with a cold and started two or even three days before I had any other symptoms. This time, I'm already sick and had been for a few days before I started feeling like this, so who knows?

The asthma started being more or less constant mid-afternoon yesterday. Taking an Ativan decreased the intensity by about half, so there's definitely some component of anxiety making it worse. That's not something that's ever been a thing before, so I didn't expect it. I was mostly just thinking that I had to go out with Cordelia for the meeting for her online PE class and that taking Ativan before such things, several hours before, is usually wise because I have more issues with anticipatory anxiety than with anxiety while I'm doing things. Also more issues with the anxiety that's been in abeyance while I do things slamming me afterwards in ways that wreck me physically.

The new writing I did yesterday was more of a spew-things-out-as-I-think-of-them sort of thing than an actual story/potential story. Some of it may be usable, but I suspect that's only bits.

I wasn't able to do the things with Cordelia that I'd planned. It was too cold for me to spend much time outside and still be able to breathe, and I knew I couldn't manage the walk from the library to Community. Scott dropped us off and then went home to rake the last of the leaves and then shower. I sat during the orientation/class meeting and talked to another mother. We think we met, years ago, through evalerie and the La Leche League playgroups. Her daughter is seven or eight months older than Cordelia but in the same grade and is doing the online gym because she does competitive synchronized figure skating (not a thing I had ever heard of). Her mother said sixteen girls on the ice at once which seems like a lot to me in a space the size of an ice rink. Maybe it was six and I'm remembering wrong?

At any rate, with daily classes and weekend trials, tests, and competitions, her daughter didn't feel that she could also handle gym. The online course will let her use her skating classes and practices for the exercise part of the requirement, so she'll just need to document it and do the written work/projects.

I ended up not eating dinner last night. I had some new-to-me chai around 2 p.m. that gave me mild reflux, and we didn't really have anything that I could easily reach that was also easily portable. Most of the bread (two of three partial loafs) had turned out to be moldy on Sunday. I'd used the two pieces in the bag that wasn't moldy to make sandwiches for Scott for Monday and yesterday. He picked up bread on his way home Monday, but he got rye. He loves rye, but Cordelia won't eat it, and I have issues with it. I think that my problem is with caraway rather than with rye, and this is seedless rye, so maybe I can eat it. It just seemed like a thing I didn't want to experiment with while already feeling iffy.

I wasn't all that hungry when we got home after the class, anyway, so I don't feel like it was a big burden.

I slept very badly last night. It was one of those nights when I kept startling awake. It wasn't full adrenaline pumping had-a-nightmare sorts of things, but it felt like there was a rule being enforced that I was only allowed to sleep for so long and then had to wake fully, look at the clock, and try to find a better way to sleep. I tried with the c-PAP on. I tried with it off. I tried with it on again. I had some fairly vivid dreams but have lost most except for the slim, jacketless, powder blue hardcover books with gold print on the covers. They contained Doctor Who stories that Scott and I were, for some reason, reading to Cordelia. There was gold pring on the cover, and I was trying to convince Scott that the next one we read her should contain-- I kept trying to indicated a beating heart with my hands so as not to spoil the story for Cordelia.

I think that dream stuck with me because I woke and boggled. There are so many it-would-never-happen bits of that.

While I was changing for the chest x-ray this morning, just for a tiny additional bit of suck, I got the portal neutralized notice on the Ingress portal I captured when we were at Interlochen in August. I was still more than a month from getting the badge with it, and it looks like the person who took it fully deployed on it, so I don't think it was a guardian hunting thing (for one thing, I don't play enough for anyone to particularly know who I am and have that level of animosity). I had kind of thought that the portal might last once it got through September because it's a gated campus with public access only at certain times of year. 11 a.m. on a Wednesday seems like a weird time for an open to the public concert, but it could have been someone with a local school group concert or a parent with a sick child at the school or... Who knows?