So I could've sworn I posted like a month ago
No really. Because I actually had news (Tim's sister had her baby at the end of April). But now there is no post. I honestly have no idea what happened.
The news right now is that I have a garden! It's little: we took Tim's dad's old garden cart and painted it and put it up on bricks so I don't have to do a lot of bending, and a couple window boxes of herbs. So really it's a container garden + a 3' x 4' foot raised bed, like square foot gardening but with better dirt, because we just stole Tim's dad's old compost, mwahaha. I've got a couple as-yet empty pots, but I haven't decided if I'm going to expand--I may save them for a month or two and plant a fall crop of Brussel sprouts, since they don't have the same soil preferences as all of the cart stuff.
I've also got a compost tumbler, because Tractor Supply had a small one on sale for pretty cheap and while I'd like to have an actual pile, being in a townhouse development limits a lot of that, so this seemed like a good solution. I'd looked into vermiculture too, but I wasn't sure I was prepared to deal with that many worms just now.
I've been watching what I can of the NHL playoffs, but tracking stuff visually can be weird and hard sometimes, so it doesn't always do me much good when I can't actually follow what's happening. But at least the times are better; during the regular season I don't think I saw an entire non-Eastern time zone game because I fall asleep so early.
I saw my EDS specialist in April too. The working theory of the two from before is, uh, both of them, which I hadn't really anticipated, and craniocervical instability, which is just my skull not being supported or sitting on my neck right because my joints are so loose.
So now I am in fact on a high-fluid, high sodium diet for the dysautonomia, which is helping, but getting extra salt is surprisingly tough when you don't eat all that much processed food. So I'm using athlete hydration tablets which have bonus electrolytes (a good thing when you're drinking a gallon of water a day) and taste way better than eating a spoonful of salt the way Tim keeps joking I should do.
For the possible chiari I'm on a trial of a medicine called Diamox, which is to treat intracranial hypertension (too much fluid building up in the skull and putting pressure on the brain), because the brain shifting into the foramen magnum can block the cerebrospinal fluid flow (I always want to capitalize cerebro there, thanks, X-Men). It's helping a lot with the fuzziness and cognitive issues, which is a clear indicator that there's definitely too much pressure.
I won't find out if it's actually because of a Chiari malformation blocking the flow or something else until I see a super-whoopty neuro guy in July, which is a little nerve-wracking, but at least until then my head feels better most of the time. Annoyingly, I'm on it for ten days and off for four to track body chemistry changes it can cause, which makes the difference between medicated and unmedicated really stark, and means I have to be careful about when I plan and do things, because some days I've got, like, an 80-90% chance of being fully functional--yay!--and some days it's 20-30%.
Also posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/19608.html. Comment where you like.
The news right now is that I have a garden! It's little: we took Tim's dad's old garden cart and painted it and put it up on bricks so I don't have to do a lot of bending, and a couple window boxes of herbs. So really it's a container garden + a 3' x 4' foot raised bed, like square foot gardening but with better dirt, because we just stole Tim's dad's old compost, mwahaha. I've got a couple as-yet empty pots, but I haven't decided if I'm going to expand--I may save them for a month or two and plant a fall crop of Brussel sprouts, since they don't have the same soil preferences as all of the cart stuff.
I've also got a compost tumbler, because Tractor Supply had a small one on sale for pretty cheap and while I'd like to have an actual pile, being in a townhouse development limits a lot of that, so this seemed like a good solution. I'd looked into vermiculture too, but I wasn't sure I was prepared to deal with that many worms just now.
I've been watching what I can of the NHL playoffs, but tracking stuff visually can be weird and hard sometimes, so it doesn't always do me much good when I can't actually follow what's happening. But at least the times are better; during the regular season I don't think I saw an entire non-Eastern time zone game because I fall asleep so early.
I saw my EDS specialist in April too. The working theory of the two from before is, uh, both of them, which I hadn't really anticipated, and craniocervical instability, which is just my skull not being supported or sitting on my neck right because my joints are so loose.
So now I am in fact on a high-fluid, high sodium diet for the dysautonomia, which is helping, but getting extra salt is surprisingly tough when you don't eat all that much processed food. So I'm using athlete hydration tablets which have bonus electrolytes (a good thing when you're drinking a gallon of water a day) and taste way better than eating a spoonful of salt the way Tim keeps joking I should do.
For the possible chiari I'm on a trial of a medicine called Diamox, which is to treat intracranial hypertension (too much fluid building up in the skull and putting pressure on the brain), because the brain shifting into the foramen magnum can block the cerebrospinal fluid flow (I always want to capitalize cerebro there, thanks, X-Men). It's helping a lot with the fuzziness and cognitive issues, which is a clear indicator that there's definitely too much pressure.
I won't find out if it's actually because of a Chiari malformation blocking the flow or something else until I see a super-whoopty neuro guy in July, which is a little nerve-wracking, but at least until then my head feels better most of the time. Annoyingly, I'm on it for ten days and off for four to track body chemistry changes it can cause, which makes the difference between medicated and unmedicated really stark, and means I have to be careful about when I plan and do things, because some days I've got, like, an 80-90% chance of being fully functional--yay!--and some days it's 20-30%.
Also posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/19608.html. Comment where you like.