Bittersweet

I swear I’m not NOT blogging again. As is the story of my sad little life, the moment I tell you how great I feel something goes wonky on me.

I’ve been battling a serious case of systemic poison ivy. Yes Sir it seems I did inhale. This is kicking my butt and proving difficult to get rid of. For those of you who do not know what makes systemic poison ivy different than regular poison ivy, it’s in my bloodstream and lungs. Best guess scenario is that 2 weeks ago we had some hellacious wind here and of course I was out in it. Somewhere there was poison waiting to catch flight and find itself a home within me.

I did not know this and maybe you don’t either but when you see a Dr for such a thing NEVER NEVER NEVER allow them to put you on a six day steroid pack. tell your Dr as Jerry Lee Lewis says in Walk The Line "don’t do it, don’t think about doing it, don’t think about thinking about doing it" or something to that effect. All it does is suppress it until you finish the course then it roars back with a vengeance. It actually takes a 3 week course to kill it. My Dr didn’t know this, she does now.

On a lighter note this song was played for me by a giggling lunatic yesterday. I missed the recurring rash and Highlander lines, it took me until the "someday I’ll learn to play guitar " line to realize I was being made fun of.

ok fine I can handle it. I was getting tired of being told my theme song was Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong. And I AM learning to play guitar!

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Every once in awhile I get an email asking where I’m at and why aren’t I blogging? Aren’t you angry, don’t you care? Yeah I’m angry and it gets worse every single day. Basically I’m a rather zen laid back, live and let live kinda girl, and I didn’t want to allow the anger to take control of me. There’s not a lot I can do to change things, other than let my feelings be known by writing a few letters, making some phone calls and donating to causes I strongly support. We do what we can.

I don’t like my loved ones sticking their noses in my business so I hardly like our government doing so. Yesterday I had a major WTF moment when I got home from the gym. In my email I had a link letting me know that Congressman Henry Waxman was taking this government intrusion to a very personal level for me. Seems he is seeking to put the vitamin and herbal supplement industry under FTC control, pardon my language but this a a complete dick move sneaking this amendment into the wall street reform bill.

Now if you are like me you might have understood although still not be happy about it, if it were the FDA. After all some safety standards wouldn’t be a bad idea. But this isn’t about that. Nope this isn’t about insuring the quality and safety of the industry, it’s about extorting money from the companies involved who will then have to pass this cost down to people like me who use these products.

So now they’ve got me mad. You see I spent almost the entire winter being incredibly ill. I saw I think 5 or 6 different doctors who could not figure out what was going on with me. So they prescribed me medication after medication. This caused me to get much worse. At one point there was worry that my heart was failing, then I started to lose use of my legs due to an extreme neuropathy, and the muscles in my arms became so weak I couldn’t lift a baking sheet. I was tested for just about everything you can imagine from diabetes to lyme disease. I even had to undergo a heart catheterization “just in case”.

I should not fail to mention waking up Thanksgiving morning to find that I once again had Bells Palsy, thankfully this time it didn’t take 18 months to go away, it was gone in a few days.
The turning point came for me in late March when I saw my new primary care physician and she could not touch me without causing me pain. She reviewed my medical history and said enough was enough and took me off all medications. Within 3 days I was pain free but in a very weakened condition. I decided to take matters into my own hands. I researched what my body was lacking and I began a vitamin and supplement program.

I’m actually in better health today than I was before this all began at the end of last summer. What started out as a simple intestinal infection became a living nightmare for me that came close to costing me my life. Due to over medication that created new problems which gave birth to even more medications that my body couldn’t handle.

I didn’t jump into this whole vitamin and supplement thing uneducated and I did check with both my primary care physician and my gynecologist to make sure I was taking nothing that could harm me or interact adversely with each other. I’ve been completely released from the cardiologists care and he is the one who informed me that I have an extreme sensitivity to pharmaceuticals, and from now on whatever Dr I see will have to excersise caution if I require any medication at all.

Maybe you can see where this is my I’ve had enough moment. I want this government out of my business and yes Jeff that even applies to the growing and use of marijuana although I do neither. Come on explain to me why the government should have the right to say whether we can grow a plant or not. Think about that, its a plant for heavens sake and as long as its not processed and mixed with anything then how is it anyone’s business if a person chooses to grow it and use it. You’re all into whole foods and organics. How can you get more natural than this?