Fit and ready for the annual review? Maybe!
Just after my interview, I was talking to someone about different ways of working. My parents - my father especially - are very much sloggers, that is they just keep working until something interrupts them. Me, I am very much a burst-of-energy person. It can take me a while to get going, but once I'm there I can plough fairly quickly through a bunch of stuff (this post being a good example). Part of that is a reaction to having low energy, partly a reaction to having to watch how much activity I do and a lot, I suspect, is just me.
About a week after last month's interview, I started pulling my old Masters folders off the wall and sorting them. I had plenty of things I needed to do, but this was visually very significant which was probably good considering how I was feeling. With a bit of help clearing up the vast swathe of scrap paper I left cluttering up the floor I managed to clear the shelf space and find homes for all the empty folders and other bits I was keeping. Success here gave motivation there and slowly I have got through my major outstanding tasks, as well some less important but still outstanding ones like putting Rage playtesting cards onto Lackey. I reckon about 2 people understood that last part.
The two are related, because it's all about fits and starts. Over the years, it's taken longer and longer to recover between each burst of energy (which was one of the problems with my Masters degree). As I recover from last year's dissertation-drive I have been struggling to sustain periods where I could even struggle through non-vital activities, but for now that seems to be passing.
Part of that seems to be two new formulas from my Chinese herbalist (and acupuncturist). No. 22, which I think I mentioned before, is a chi-expander. It's hard to explain that in physical terms since it's at best it's a metaphysical concept (and one which, if I'm honest, I only vaguely understand). It's a weak force that affect everything (much like gravity in some ways). And it really does work - I feel like my lungs have more space after taking it. Unfortunately it wasn't actually clearing my lungs as I needed it to, so we came up with No. 23.
Previously, we cleared the lungs by cooling them down, but my lungs are full of heat, just cold phlegm. Cooling my lungs just at the moment would just tip the balance far too far the wrong way (and I would, as I have done previously, be filled with lungs of thick brown ugly stuff; sorry if you were eating just then.) Talking about this, I reminded my acupuncturist of how hypertonic saline it works - it add salt to the sputum it finds, drawing water out of the cells (as they would do if they working properly) and so making it easier to excrete. He said that he knew a herb which would do that - we just needed to balance it. So we now have a formula that works in this manner, with some other tonics and lung herbs, all balanced so to not drag me off-balance when I take it. No. 23 is in theory a rehydrator.
And it works. I have actually found that 22 and 23 work best in tandem. One formula opens up the chi (and thus, in many ways, the lungs) while the other gets the sputum in a condition to take advantage of the additional movement.
Unfortunately, my diabetes has been unstable. The changing weather doesn't help (I can need half 'normal' insulin levels on hot, dry days), nor has a tight diaphragm. I've missed out on my normal osteopath quite a lot in the last couple of months due to mischance, and nobody quite gets it sorted the way he does, so I'm hoping after today's appointment it will be a lot less random. Random means hypers, which means small amounts of thick sputum build up, making me more tired and more prone to misjudging insulin etc etc. It also means hypos which means Kendall Mint Cake, which I often 'overdose' on leading to another hyper. It also means an annoying curve, where it goes too high after a meal and falls away to a hypo later in the afternoon. I would prefer not to have that.
So despite the long gap, I'm now mostly up-to-date on my health (tick!). My annual review is on Monday so, providing I walk to work tomorrow or Friday I hope that nothing too nasty shows on my tests. Here's hoping.
About a week after last month's interview, I started pulling my old Masters folders off the wall and sorting them. I had plenty of things I needed to do, but this was visually very significant which was probably good considering how I was feeling. With a bit of help clearing up the vast swathe of scrap paper I left cluttering up the floor I managed to clear the shelf space and find homes for all the empty folders and other bits I was keeping. Success here gave motivation there and slowly I have got through my major outstanding tasks, as well some less important but still outstanding ones like putting Rage playtesting cards onto Lackey. I reckon about 2 people understood that last part.
The two are related, because it's all about fits and starts. Over the years, it's taken longer and longer to recover between each burst of energy (which was one of the problems with my Masters degree). As I recover from last year's dissertation-drive I have been struggling to sustain periods where I could even struggle through non-vital activities, but for now that seems to be passing.
Part of that seems to be two new formulas from my Chinese herbalist (and acupuncturist). No. 22, which I think I mentioned before, is a chi-expander. It's hard to explain that in physical terms since it's at best it's a metaphysical concept (and one which, if I'm honest, I only vaguely understand). It's a weak force that affect everything (much like gravity in some ways). And it really does work - I feel like my lungs have more space after taking it. Unfortunately it wasn't actually clearing my lungs as I needed it to, so we came up with No. 23.
Previously, we cleared the lungs by cooling them down, but my lungs are full of heat, just cold phlegm. Cooling my lungs just at the moment would just tip the balance far too far the wrong way (and I would, as I have done previously, be filled with lungs of thick brown ugly stuff; sorry if you were eating just then.) Talking about this, I reminded my acupuncturist of how hypertonic saline it works - it add salt to the sputum it finds, drawing water out of the cells (as they would do if they working properly) and so making it easier to excrete. He said that he knew a herb which would do that - we just needed to balance it. So we now have a formula that works in this manner, with some other tonics and lung herbs, all balanced so to not drag me off-balance when I take it. No. 23 is in theory a rehydrator.
And it works. I have actually found that 22 and 23 work best in tandem. One formula opens up the chi (and thus, in many ways, the lungs) while the other gets the sputum in a condition to take advantage of the additional movement.
Unfortunately, my diabetes has been unstable. The changing weather doesn't help (I can need half 'normal' insulin levels on hot, dry days), nor has a tight diaphragm. I've missed out on my normal osteopath quite a lot in the last couple of months due to mischance, and nobody quite gets it sorted the way he does, so I'm hoping after today's appointment it will be a lot less random. Random means hypers, which means small amounts of thick sputum build up, making me more tired and more prone to misjudging insulin etc etc. It also means hypos which means Kendall Mint Cake, which I often 'overdose' on leading to another hyper. It also means an annoying curve, where it goes too high after a meal and falls away to a hypo later in the afternoon. I would prefer not to have that.
So despite the long gap, I'm now mostly up-to-date on my health (tick!). My annual review is on Monday so, providing I walk to work tomorrow or Friday I hope that nothing too nasty shows on my tests. Here's hoping.