Once again, I kinda wish I could get some Singulair. It really really helped when I was given that before back home. Not just with the asthma, but with the general allergy fuckery driving it.
But, it’s like 3rd line for asthma treatment under the cookbook formulary system here, if adding regular inhaled steroids doesn’t do enough. (Also not nearly as cheap as the steroids ๐) And there are actual reasons that I don’t even want to try daily doses of even inhaled corticosteroids, with diabetes and a history of Cushing’s so my system is extra sensitive. Seems like an unnecessary risk.
Anyway, Singulair is rarely enough used that it’s not even readily available through Dodgy Online Consultation, because I got desperate enough to look into it a while back.
Feeling a little more human after I managed to get a couple of hours of decent sleep a little while ago. (Plus another about an hour of keeping waking up coughing, but it was just about tolerable and I was so not getting up yet if I could avoid it at all.)
That’s probably better than I managed in a stretch after bedtime earlier, with the inhaler and plenty of Robitussin before getting down. And propping myself as close to sitting up as I can. One benefit to already having the ridiculous pillow nest going: a little adjustment, and we’re good to go ๐
So yeah, it’s turned into one of THOSE cold/flu asthma flares. The neighbors probably want to strangle me by now, never mind Mr. C sharing a bed with that hellacious cough. (More an issue with some of the attempts at napping, given our usual sleep schedules.) And it’s still early days, from past experience ๐ฉ
Even if it’s not doing as much as I would like, at least I do have rescue inhalers which are helping some now. And I have a lot better idea of what helps/does the opposite. Unlike with all the bouts of “asthmatic bronchitis” when I was a kid. No blackouts yet, so far! And I’m doing much better at keeping warm food down with inhaler access! *fingers crossed*
The situation right now is still reminding me too much of that.
Though, maybe best of all? I don’t have to look forward to sitting in a classroom all day–on maybe a few hours of bad sleep, with what feels like broken ribs. And likely with the teacher acting like I keep having coughing fits on purpose to be disruptive* ๐
(I did end up staying out a lot with that every winter, but when each episode hangs on for weeks? Really can’t stay home until it stops. Even without abusive attendance policies then.)
Really wishing this crud would hurry up and finish, but it could definitely be a lot worse.
* Unlike this one professor late on,, who got very concerned at the sound of it and kept trying to get me to go to the ER. A more reasonable response to someone having breathing problems in front of you, but kind of funny in another way.
Light boxes are bad enough for triggering migraines for me that I have just had to give up on them.
At least things should be better again, knowing that I do need plenty of vitamin D supplementation. Even before moving this far north, February was always the worst month–and incidentally when people’s vitamin D levels dip the lowest. That hasn’t been as bad since I figured out to start supplements, at least. *fingers crossed*
The time change (a week before the US) really fucked me up as usual, though. Its getting full dark before 5 p.m. was really not what my system needed. With still more than a month–and another hour of afternoon light–to go until the darkest point. Staying cloudy pretty much constantly doesn’t help either.
Tired of having to ride this out every year, but there’s not much else to do ยฏ_(ใ)_/ยฏ
Reminded by clutter blindness (useful term!) coming up in the context of posting notes for yourself not always working.
I know I’ve vented some before about my partner’s pretty extreme version of clutter blindness, and how badly that can interact with my tendencies in the complete opposite direction there: getting easily overwhelmed by clutter. To the point that I can end up way less functional in a number of ways, including ability to try to fix the clutter situation ๐ฆ
Anyway, for a while now I had been getting more irritated at Mr. C, because his clutter generation has increased a decent bit and he has seemed to notice/care even less. To the point of leaving a bunch of just plain trash lying around where he sits in the TV room floor, so it’s in the pathway and causing more problems. (And more clutter elsewhere, but it’s been super noticeable and aggravating there.)
The way my health has been getting worse, I just haven’t had the spoons to do much about it. Though it’s been causing me extra problems, on several levels. I figured at least part of the issue was probably because I haven’t been able to do nearly as much around here, prompting him to notice more and try to pick some of the shit up too.
(Not too surprisingly, I’ve also been working through a lot of trained reluctance to even say much. Especially when I “won’t” even do the thing myself. Yeah, that OCD loop programming sucks, but it can be frustratingly hard to work around with very limited mental energy.)
Another place where better communication earlier might have helped, though. After that little talk about a week ago? A number of other things started making more sense. Including the apparently increased executive function problems and clutter blindness.
With it likely coming from depression/burnout of some type? I’m a lot less aggravated at his behavior, and more concerned.
How to try to support/encourage him in dealing with that is another matter, but yeah. Complicated by the fact that he does hesitate to talk about things, to the point that I really didn’t pick up a lot of clues there might even be a problem earlier. I feel kind of bad about that, but here we are now.
One of my recent purchases:
Meanwhile, back home:
I mostly did a quick comparison out of curiosity, because I remembered it being like 2-3 pint bottles for $1 when I was last buying any. About the same price still. Figured it couldn’t be much more now, and definitely not around 20x as expensive ๐จ
This time I was specifically wanting some for a skin problem, and to dilute for a mouth rinse. Best thing I’ve found for some uses. (And it’s not going to turn your teeth brown like the chlorhexidine they push for any kind of gum problems here… ๐ฆ)
And I would rather avoid unnecessary additional ingredients which might cause more irritation. (There is one Peroxyl mouthwash formulation available, but yeah. It’s more expensive, besides the extra crap I don’t want.)
I may have been able to find some plain peroxide a little cheaper somewhere else, but possibly not by that much. It’s barely used as an antiseptic here, and IME really is not worth the hassle of trying to buy in person. Which really surprised me the first time I tried.
Maybe my favorite comment I ran across on another site, though:
There are some very dangerous uses for hydrogen peroxide, using it to clean a cut is a very strange idea. I would not like to be the one helping OP to obtain it.
That would be in reference to another American looking for the 3% stuff to treat a cut. It would be very difficult indeed to do anything nefarious with that weak a solution, even if someone wanted to try.
Reminds me of when my first GP here was appalled to hear that I’d regularly been taking Benadryl, because it is “a powerful sedative” ๐ค Including with the attitude. (No joke. Turned out they only sell diphenhydramine as a Nytol/Sominex here, in small boxes behind the pharmacy counter.)
Oh yeah, I also had no trouble buying the 40-volume hair kind at Sally’s before. No questions whatsoever. Shame that’s not something I would want to use except for hair.
Impressive differences sometimes, yeah. And it’s definitely not just the US that’s prone to weird panics. Unfortunately.
I canโt even find one earlier post complaining about one ridiculous thing: fighting falling sleep whenever I mostly lie back with my legs propped up in the bed. Which I should be doing much more often trying to heal something, but not if it means a nap every time ๐ช
Sitting down for very long is bad enough that way these days, but lean back and get comfortable at all and itโs honestly kind of worrying.
Anyway, reading is a definite no-go. Watching something Iโm engaged with is sometimes better for staying conscious, sometimes not so much.
But, I just discovered new depths of ridiculousness with it a little while ago. Caught myself dozing off while trying to go through a dungeon in Skyrim!
Didnโt even want to try anything but sitting totally up last night, but I figured actively playing a game should be enough to keep me awake. Tonight I could tell I really needed to elevate that leg (after not doing so all day), andโฆnot so much. Trying to go out like a light anyway.
Taking a break and fortifying myself with caffeine right now, but yeah I donโt think Iโll try that again tonight.
Looks like this post is 5 months old, but yeah that’s still a problem. I just haven’t been getting down and propping that leg up much at all except to sleep, which is probably one of the reasons it’s still an issue.
I know I really need to stay off it more, but honestly I manage to get little enough accomplished around here anyway without fighting zonking out whenever I do. Probably a good indication that my system does need more rest, but hey.
Anyway, I do actually feel a little better about it now. I mentioned being frustrated with that tonight after supper, when I really needed to get down for a while.
Mr. C’s response? “Sleep more!”
I am aware that I do worry excessively about coming across as lazy when that’s not what’s going on. (And no wonder. That was a repeating theme, just extra jarring under those circumstances.) It can be hard to work past, though.
Seems like a pretty good indication that the people around you are maybe not tending to think that way if they’re actually suggesting you should rest/sleep more, however. Guess I needed the reminder.
(Then there was that “Seems like the problem is the opposite of laziness!” comment a few years ago. The jerkbrain is stubborn ๐)
My Mamaw grew up in a pretty abusive situation. Between some of the things her younger sister has said and some things she let slip after the dementia set in, it sounds appalling.
Anyway, one of the ways she dealt with that was by concluding that people just didn’t love their children back then, as a matter of course–but things have totally changed since she was a kid. Which is honestly pretty upsetting.
I just saw another post that struck me very much the same way. It sounds like the OP has had some terrible experiences, but I don’t think it’s really a more generalized common thing. Thankfully.
Reminded again by this post, as an adult I am impressed in some different ways by the fact that when I had some horrific GI symptoms as a kid? The go-to explanation was always “stress from school”.
(It really was a pretty stressful experience, what with the bullying and all. The main thing causing those problems was unrecognized celiac, however.)
I mean, doctors were taking it as a given that the educational system is regularly stressful enough for kids that they will develop things like frequent otherwise unexplained vomiting and explosive cases of the runs in response. (Plus migraines, and you name it.) Whether it’s “just” from the direct physical effects of stress, or some weird psychosomatic ploy to try to avoid a stressful environment, and/or best attributed to mental health problems brought on/aggravated by school stress.
This evidently seemed totally reasonable, to the point of being the default assumption whenever they encountered a school-aged kid dealing with health problems which they couldn’t immediately figure out. (Then no further investigation required…)
This seems disturbing enough, on its own.
What really gets me, though, as an adult? The answer to this was never once “Gee, if this stressful environment is making children sick, maybe we should figure out how to change the situation to be less stressful!” Or even trying to make some changes to take pressure off the individual kid who is barfing in their office here and now. No, they apparently need to just get over it, if they are not actively milking it to avoid going to school like they should be doing.
Of course, I understand a lot more about institutions now. It’s still seriously messed up, how accepted and enabled some of the harm coming out of bad ones can be.
More demonstration of the whole “communication can avoid trouble” point.
One of the things that prompted the little talk was the fact that he’s been going around with his phone out of battery a lot lately, and didn’t make any move to put it on charge when I reminded him this evening. That’s a recent change.
Without my directly mentioning that, he assured me that it had absolutely nothing to do with me personally. Which yeah, I had been concerned that he was sick of the frequent requests to pick up stuff that I couldn’t get out to buy, and that sort of thing.
Apparently not. Everything (including “the whole Internet”, in his words) has been too much, to the point of his at least half-deliberately avoiding it by not keeping his phone charged.
And spending basically all his time at home gaming and very little messing around online, now that I think of it.
I mean, I could tell that he was acting more stressed lately. But, I had no idea it was to that point, because he hasn’t been talking about it at all. Probably also not wanting to worry me, though he didn’t explicitly say that. It was obviously uncomfortable enough to talk about at all, though I’m glad he finally did say something about it. Understandable, the way things have been going, but not a good situation at all.
Like I said, we’re both pretty bad about that. And the fucked-up stoicism act is rarely helpful to anyone ๐ฑ
I’m still kind of shaky, but glad I went ahead and brought up something that had been bothering me for a while before Mr. C went to sleep.
On most levels, I know communication is good and can actually help avoid a bunch of problems. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy, especially with enough ingrained training to keep your mouth shut to avoid conflict. Difficult subjects really don’t make it easier. Both of us can be pretty bad about that, and for similar reasons AFAICT.
I also have some extra (carefully instilled) scrupulosity issues around the idea of Causing Problems For Other People. Including by mentioning existing ones ๐ณ
Anyway, he didn’t act like a jerk about any of it. He was listening, and obviously did care how I felt. (Not that I really expected otherwise, but yeah. PTSD.) And I’m feeling better about what was bothering me in the first place. Which was also heavily wrapped up in some of the same scrupulosity BS, since that is apparently just the way I roll ๐
That is indeed kinda how respectful discussions in a relationship are supposed to work. But, even after this many years? I am still pleasantly surprised on some level when they do.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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