Idiotic health related things

[ritaxis]

No, not healthcare related things at the moment.


1) My doctor's office called me today to tell me that the FDA has cut the recommended dose for Simvastatin in half, because the old dose was causing muscle deterioration.  I've been on the standard dose for years and years and years. I asked "how would you know if you were getting this muscle deterioration?"

Muscle pain and weakness, she said.

So, I had thought that I was experiencing the various weird muscle cramps and not being as strong as I used to be because of sedentary habits and possibly insufficient potassium (being on diuretics raises your need for potassium).  Of course, I actually still could be, and honestly I've had less of the pain since I started making sure I get more high-potassium foods, and I have had less of the pain since I have been making sure I walk the dogs and work in the garden and stuff.  But, well, it could be part of the picture.  So I'm cutting my pills in half.  The bonus is that I just filled my prescription, so a month's supply of simvastatin will actually be two months' supply this time.  Too bad I can't keep getting the 80s -- next time I buy the drug it will be a 40.

2) Yesterday I had a coughing relapse.  At first I thought it was another wave of the bad cold I had last week.  It probably was, partly, because my nose has never stopped being weird. But I realized part way through the day that I was also having especially bad coughinf fits soon after I ate, and I've been aware that I had drifted into eating way more starchy food and sweets and dairy than I ought to but I was just too lazy to work out what to eat instead (that's why the irreproducible recipes posts last week).  So I figured that at least some of the relapse is due to bad diet.
Then this morning I discovered that (a) I had forgotten and left accessible food on the counter overnight for the first time in a long time and (b) the rat that I thought had left because there was no obvious sign of its presence had not gone, and in fact had gnawed a hole a bit bigger than a ping-pong ball in the hunk of parmesan cheese.  As the day progressed I became convinced that part of my relapse is in fact due to the fact that I have had a rat for two months and I am intensely allergic to rats (and no other thing, though I have some non-allergy sensitivities, obviously).  And I don't know if it's the power of suggestion but my skin is prickling like it always used to when we had pet rats and I keep getting that horrible unsatisfying cough that goes on and on and doesn't dislodge the thickness back there.

Why have I had a rat for two months?  Because I am a wuss.  First I tried to sic the dog and the extra dog on the rat.  Unfortunately, both of them lived in households with pet rodents in their youth, and while Truffle will in fact kill a couple of gophers, voles or wild rats in the field every spring, they both seem to think that a rodent in the house is a scary authority figure they dare not even bark at.  Then I had to go all the way to Capitola to buy a rat trap because where do you buy one in Santa Cruz? (I just thought of a place I will go to tomorrow)  Then I had to work up my courage to set up the rat trap.  And it was even harder because Zack said to put it into a paper bag so I wouldn't have to touch the rat.  And then I got desperate and I finally tried to set the trap and it sprung immediately and then wouldn't reset again for drugs or money.  So no rat trap anymore.

Tomorrow I buy several rat traps of different designs (all in the spring type: no bait, no glue: I want the thing to die as quickly and painlessly as possible.  No catch and release because what would that accomplish?  We're talking about a serious threat to my health here) and I will set them carefully with no extra flourishes but just yummy bait, one at a time.

This condition threatens more than my daily health.  I can't do anything really vigorous while it's in sway because the slightest movement causes a coughing fit and urinary disaster (no, dears, kegels have kept this manageable when I'm not having overwhelming coughing fits, but they don't cure it, and nothing seems to help when I am having these coughing fits except to sit on many layers of folded towels and do lots of laundry).  I can make it through a day of work by spending a lot of time in the bathroom and taking a wide variety of drugs (antihistamine, antacid for the acid reflux component which is there even with the right diet and acid-reducing drugs during the periods when coughing fits are likely to happen, and demulcent/menthol cough drops -- Hall's or Luden's or Ricola, like that).  But I can't dance or run or be embarrassed (yes, dogdamn it, being embarrassed or otherwise emotionally stressed overpowers both my cough control and my bladder when I am in this kind of cycle).

The good thing about this noise is that there appears to be some reason to think I can get back on track, health and activity wise.

(tell me if I managed to get an lj-cut to work?  I had given up on using them because they never seemed to work)

Comments

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Alas, no lj-cut ... or rather, lj-cut exists, but nothing inside; contents presumed to be intended for cut is all in the open.

I hope it is the rat, and it'll all go away with the rat.

I'm all too sympathetic about the urinary disaster scenario. :P

There is a terrific, terroristic rat trap

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

but I haven't been able to find out if it is on the market. It sets like a hair clip, that is, you push it open on the back side (rat snap traps scare the shit out of me too.... broken fingers scare the shit out of me). But it acts the same way, with a killing, crushing bite.

I agree with you, I will not use glue traps. But if you are allergic, its a major problem. (We had mice here, but they got killed by the regular mouse catcher-cat, who also always conveniently killed them on the spot. Which is good, because I am at least allergic to mouse urine--discovered in high school as a biology aide.)

[zeborah]

I can't tell exactly what code you used, but it looks like you put the "end the cut" tag before the start of your content. What you want is:

<lj-cut text="The text you want for the link to open the cut">

All the content to be hidden behind the cut.

</lj-cut>

Any additional content that you don't want to be hidden.

The "end lj-cut" part is actually optional if you don't want any such additional content.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

For lj-cut wordage I'm lazy--just go to the appropriate help page, copy, paste. That way I don't end up with mysterious weird formatting.

As for the rat--sounds like you have a good plan.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

1) Kaiser hasn't decided what to do with the simvastatin 80mg, which is what I take, too. I emailed my primary about taking just the Fish Oil instead because I took the simvastatin for a long time without any change in my lipid panel, and when I got to three fish oil capsules a day, my lipid panel was perfect. I really do think it's the fish oil. Of course, fish oil is more expensive than Medicare simvastatin.