10:53 AM 2/11/11
I have had a bad month and I think I know why now. I have been tired the past few weeks and have been using TONS of caffeine.
The landlady distibutes a monthly newsletter telling us about things that are going to happen and about other things that she thinks are worth knowing about. She mentioned in this month's newsletter that there would be a pest control treatment February 10th. So I knew that on February 10th I would probably have a fatigue attack. I am, actually, extremely tired today, but I don't know if it's just a coincidence. If it goes on and on and on for days, I will know. I don't know WHERE they do the pest control or what kind of pest control they are doing. I know that I have always gotten sick when pesticides were sprayed in my apartment in the past, but I don't know if they are actually entering the apartments - I had the impression that they only sprayed outside somewhere. She didn't say anything about getting the apartments ready for people to come inside.
Anyway I happened to pick up last month's newsletter and saw that there was another pest control treatment on January 13th, which I had not known about. That would explain why I have been using so much caffeine and have been so totally exhausted the last few weeks. Pesticides have ruined my attempts to quit caffeine several times in the past.
What kind of pest control could they possibly do in the middle of winter? There are no bugs, nothing at all.
It doesn't matter. I have no control over this. I was lucky with my previous landlord - he agreed not to spray anything inside my apartment, but he still had to spray around the outside of the house and in other people's apartments. The only way I can control this is by buying my own trailer or house, or moving someplace where they explicitly agree never to spray pesticides. I also need to make sure that I am not next to a farm that sprays pesticides or other chemicals on the fields. I also need to think about neighbors who might spray herbicides on their lawns. I need to find a safe place to live before I get married and start having children.
I am looking for friends right now. I need moral support, people who believe me. Being believed by someone is something I need very badly. I want to be able to tell someone why I do things, tell them about the problems I have, and be believed. I want them to enter my world without getting trapped there - this means, I want them to see the way I see the world, but not feel as hopeless, helpless, overwhelmed, and miserable as I feel about it. They can turn off the movie and go home to their own life.
I have a few 'interest clusters' and I need to find people who share those interests or at least respect them and believe them.
self-reliance, survival, living off the grid
nutrition
raising a family
chemical sensitivity, chemical dangers
an anti-government attitude
electronic harassment and electromagnetic pollution
intentional communities
I'm sure I could think of a few more things but I am getting ready to go to work and I don't have a lot of time.
I mentioned 'nudism' a few weeks ago and got a comment from someone who had a link to a good site about naturism. I read it and it made me believe even more strongly something that I already believed halfheartedly. Now I believe in it wholeheartedly. So I'm grateful for that. That's included in my 'intentional communities' interest, because many intentional communities want to live in a place that allows nudism. I've gotten the impression that tolerance for nudity is actually much more common than I used to imagine. Poll results show that people are more offended by the violence on television than they are by the nudity, but violence is allowed and nudity is forbidden on TV.
Anyway... not much time today.
I have been so exhausted and miserable that I haven't even been able to bring myself to write on the forum. There are these unfinished questions hanging there and I feel anxious when I think about them. I am glad that spring is on the way - I always feel better when it gets warm outside.
Showing posts with label chronic fatigue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chronic fatigue. Show all posts
Friday, February 11, 2011
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Monday is my official day of rest. No coffee.
(warning... some 'female problems' talk in this blog. menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, etc. so, watch out.)
I enforced the 'day of rest' rule yesterday. Officially, I'm supposed to withdraw from caffeine, cold turkey, every Monday. That started back during the time period when I was working three twelve-hour days in a row at McDonald's (while using Vivarin pill fragments as my caffeine source) and then taking four days off. On Monday, I was supposed to recover from a weekend of work.
I did it yesterday, but I had a splitting headache by mid-afternoon. And all I did was lie in bed, and I got more achy, restless, and uncomfortable as time went by. The rule says that I can drink a cup of coffee at midnight ('when the moment is not right') on Monday-Tuesday if I've made it through the whole day without coffee. But I didn't - I made it till this morning.
When I had the first cup of coffee, I could feel it actually working. Usually it seems like the coffee is hardly having any effect at all.
Coffee is a medicinal herb. It doesn't just contain caffeine. It contains many other chemicals and drugs that are somewhat less important, but still have effects.
I won't be drinking coffee while pregnant - I'll stop. That means that I will probably notice a lot of chronic fatigue, and might not accomplish as much - and that worries me. I can't accomplish very much while using coffee, either, but at least I don't stay in bed all day. Anytime I've had roommates (in college), housemates, or family (when I lived with my parents), people have always gotten angry at me for staying in bed all day. I've had fights and arguments over it, and have even been sprayed in the face with a spray bottle filled with water (yes, that was very rude - it was a college roommate who was angry because, lucky me, I had the 'privilege' of sleeping all day long, while she had to study and do real work). So I'm not sure how my future husband will react to my having chronic fatigue.
Unfortunately, coffee is one of the things associated with menstrual cramps. This is important to know, because I want to have a natural childbirth without drugs. It isn't supposed to be excruciatingly painful. Anything that increases the pain of uterine contractions will make natural childbirth difficult.
While I'm at it, I will mention that natural childbirth in a hospital IS agonizingly painful, but if you do it at home, it's much easier. This is because in the hospital, they still expect you to lie on your back while giving birth. You can say, 'Don't give me any drugs,' but then you're still giving birth in an unnatural position. There's not much point in going to the hospital if you plan on doing a natural childbirth. There might be some hospitals that allow the woman to stand up and give birth in the standing or crouching position, but not all of them. I could be wrong about that, but that's the impression I get from reading.
Hospitals are shockingly clueless about pregnancy. I still can't believe it, every time I read about all the myths, all the mistaken beliefs they have, all the unnecessary drugging and caesarean sections and surgeries and other harmful practices.
CPD, Cephalopelvic disproportion, means that the baby's head is too big to fit through the pelvis. I want to say this is a myth, but I should say instead: it could happen, but it's very rare, and people are using this as an excuse to give caesarean sections ALL THE TIME, instead of very rarely. They don't even bother letting the mother stand up to see whether she can comfortably give birth in a better position. Sometimes they give this diagnosis weeks before the birth, and plan a caesarean ahead of time, to prevent any problems. But, as I said, it's a very common diagnosis, when in reality it should hardly ever happen. So if anyone ever tells you that you have CPD and you must get a caesarean, you should google 'cpd myth' or 'cephalopelvic disproportion myth' (no quotes) and read about it.
The pelvis is not just a solid piece of bone. It has flexible joints that allow it to open wider during the birthing process so that the child is able to go through. But this cannot happen if the woman is lying on her back with her feet in the stirrups the way they have been doing it in the hospitals over the past century.
Well, that all had to do with drinking coffee. I'm thinking about what will happen in the future, when I will go months and months without any coffee, and wondering how my husband will respond to a wife who has chronic fatigue and spends a lot of time lying around not doing much of anything. I worry about that a lot - it's the familiar situation that I hear about, where the husband is angry because his wife sits at home watching soap operas all day, while he works and brings in the money. I'm worried about divorce. I want a stable family that won't be broken apart a couple years after the first child is born.
Moving out of this apartment... going someplace where it won't be moldy... hoping that I will get better, instead of going someplace that makes me even sicker... I'd sleep in a tent, if I could, if I knew someplace that would let me do it, somewhere close enough to still drive to work. I'm not sure what I will be doing. The most important thing is to avoid going someplace that's just as unhealthy as this place. I will still probably have chronic fatigue, or a tendency to be less active than other people, but there are things like mold which can make that much, much worse.
I enforced the 'day of rest' rule yesterday. Officially, I'm supposed to withdraw from caffeine, cold turkey, every Monday. That started back during the time period when I was working three twelve-hour days in a row at McDonald's (while using Vivarin pill fragments as my caffeine source) and then taking four days off. On Monday, I was supposed to recover from a weekend of work.
I did it yesterday, but I had a splitting headache by mid-afternoon. And all I did was lie in bed, and I got more achy, restless, and uncomfortable as time went by. The rule says that I can drink a cup of coffee at midnight ('when the moment is not right') on Monday-Tuesday if I've made it through the whole day without coffee. But I didn't - I made it till this morning.
When I had the first cup of coffee, I could feel it actually working. Usually it seems like the coffee is hardly having any effect at all.
Coffee is a medicinal herb. It doesn't just contain caffeine. It contains many other chemicals and drugs that are somewhat less important, but still have effects.
I won't be drinking coffee while pregnant - I'll stop. That means that I will probably notice a lot of chronic fatigue, and might not accomplish as much - and that worries me. I can't accomplish very much while using coffee, either, but at least I don't stay in bed all day. Anytime I've had roommates (in college), housemates, or family (when I lived with my parents), people have always gotten angry at me for staying in bed all day. I've had fights and arguments over it, and have even been sprayed in the face with a spray bottle filled with water (yes, that was very rude - it was a college roommate who was angry because, lucky me, I had the 'privilege' of sleeping all day long, while she had to study and do real work). So I'm not sure how my future husband will react to my having chronic fatigue.
Unfortunately, coffee is one of the things associated with menstrual cramps. This is important to know, because I want to have a natural childbirth without drugs. It isn't supposed to be excruciatingly painful. Anything that increases the pain of uterine contractions will make natural childbirth difficult.
While I'm at it, I will mention that natural childbirth in a hospital IS agonizingly painful, but if you do it at home, it's much easier. This is because in the hospital, they still expect you to lie on your back while giving birth. You can say, 'Don't give me any drugs,' but then you're still giving birth in an unnatural position. There's not much point in going to the hospital if you plan on doing a natural childbirth. There might be some hospitals that allow the woman to stand up and give birth in the standing or crouching position, but not all of them. I could be wrong about that, but that's the impression I get from reading.
Hospitals are shockingly clueless about pregnancy. I still can't believe it, every time I read about all the myths, all the mistaken beliefs they have, all the unnecessary drugging and caesarean sections and surgeries and other harmful practices.
CPD, Cephalopelvic disproportion, means that the baby's head is too big to fit through the pelvis. I want to say this is a myth, but I should say instead: it could happen, but it's very rare, and people are using this as an excuse to give caesarean sections ALL THE TIME, instead of very rarely. They don't even bother letting the mother stand up to see whether she can comfortably give birth in a better position. Sometimes they give this diagnosis weeks before the birth, and plan a caesarean ahead of time, to prevent any problems. But, as I said, it's a very common diagnosis, when in reality it should hardly ever happen. So if anyone ever tells you that you have CPD and you must get a caesarean, you should google 'cpd myth' or 'cephalopelvic disproportion myth' (no quotes) and read about it.
The pelvis is not just a solid piece of bone. It has flexible joints that allow it to open wider during the birthing process so that the child is able to go through. But this cannot happen if the woman is lying on her back with her feet in the stirrups the way they have been doing it in the hospitals over the past century.
Well, that all had to do with drinking coffee. I'm thinking about what will happen in the future, when I will go months and months without any coffee, and wondering how my husband will respond to a wife who has chronic fatigue and spends a lot of time lying around not doing much of anything. I worry about that a lot - it's the familiar situation that I hear about, where the husband is angry because his wife sits at home watching soap operas all day, while he works and brings in the money. I'm worried about divorce. I want a stable family that won't be broken apart a couple years after the first child is born.
Moving out of this apartment... going someplace where it won't be moldy... hoping that I will get better, instead of going someplace that makes me even sicker... I'd sleep in a tent, if I could, if I knew someplace that would let me do it, somewhere close enough to still drive to work. I'm not sure what I will be doing. The most important thing is to avoid going someplace that's just as unhealthy as this place. I will still probably have chronic fatigue, or a tendency to be less active than other people, but there are things like mold which can make that much, much worse.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Moldy Shelf Makes Me Sick!
Well, something happened yesterday which was good in some ways, and bad in some ways. It was bad because it made me really sick. It was good because it was a very definitive result of a test that I was doing. I know for sure now that one of my theories is right.
I noticed mold growing on a wooden shelf underneath the kitchen sink, in the cabinet. There is a small drip from either the faucet, the drain, or both. When I use that sink at all, it leaks, and sets off the moldy smell.
However, in the past, it might have been a different kind of mold. I used to smell the odor, but it didn't make me feel sick. So I thought that the mold couldn't be what was making me sick this winter. (I should say, 'One of several things that made me sick.') It had never been anything but a bad smell in the past.
Well, I went several weeks without using that sink. And yes, the smell went away, and so did a lot of my bad fumes: I was in the house, and didn't get sick.
Yesterday, I used the sink again to run the portable dishwasher for several weeks' worth of piled-up dishes. It had to be done. Afterwards, I opened the cabinet to look in at the mold, and see whether the sink had been dripping while the dishwasher was running.
When I opened the cabinet, a burst of humid, moldy-smelling air came out, and immediately, that instant, I got sick, felt like I was going to throw up, and got dizzy, tingling, faint, and unable to think clearly. My legs and arms got weak and uncoordinated, and I stumbled when I walked. My throat and lungs became a little bit scratchy and burning (but not very badly, just mildly).
So I opened the windows again, put the fan on, put on a new air filter that a friend got at Goodwill, and then I got out of the house. I felt sick for a while, but it gradually got better when I went outside.
The drip needs to be fixed, and the shelf needs to be replaced. As a compromise on replacing the shelf, it could be covered with something that is not permeable to water, such as linoleum, or wallpaper, or even just garbage bags as a temporary fix. That would help keep it from getting extremely wet, but wouldn't help whenever the air is very humid, and the humidity activates the mold even without any dripping. So it needs to be fixed for real, but something could be done to make it less bad for a while.
It helps to know for sure one of the things that was making me sick this winter.
I noticed mold growing on a wooden shelf underneath the kitchen sink, in the cabinet. There is a small drip from either the faucet, the drain, or both. When I use that sink at all, it leaks, and sets off the moldy smell.
However, in the past, it might have been a different kind of mold. I used to smell the odor, but it didn't make me feel sick. So I thought that the mold couldn't be what was making me sick this winter. (I should say, 'One of several things that made me sick.') It had never been anything but a bad smell in the past.
Well, I went several weeks without using that sink. And yes, the smell went away, and so did a lot of my bad fumes: I was in the house, and didn't get sick.
Yesterday, I used the sink again to run the portable dishwasher for several weeks' worth of piled-up dishes. It had to be done. Afterwards, I opened the cabinet to look in at the mold, and see whether the sink had been dripping while the dishwasher was running.
When I opened the cabinet, a burst of humid, moldy-smelling air came out, and immediately, that instant, I got sick, felt like I was going to throw up, and got dizzy, tingling, faint, and unable to think clearly. My legs and arms got weak and uncoordinated, and I stumbled when I walked. My throat and lungs became a little bit scratchy and burning (but not very badly, just mildly).
So I opened the windows again, put the fan on, put on a new air filter that a friend got at Goodwill, and then I got out of the house. I felt sick for a while, but it gradually got better when I went outside.
The drip needs to be fixed, and the shelf needs to be replaced. As a compromise on replacing the shelf, it could be covered with something that is not permeable to water, such as linoleum, or wallpaper, or even just garbage bags as a temporary fix. That would help keep it from getting extremely wet, but wouldn't help whenever the air is very humid, and the humidity activates the mold even without any dripping. So it needs to be fixed for real, but something could be done to make it less bad for a while.
It helps to know for sure one of the things that was making me sick this winter.
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