Candor Creek

Oooooh. This is a home water distiller. I got it about a month and a half ago and, after slowly introducing the resulting water into my diet, found my first safe alternative to the only brand of distilled water I could regularly drink. I'm quite proud of it. For over a decade I've only tolerated distilled water for drinking and cooking (and I should be brushing my teeth with it, but I wanted to keep costs down) due to reacting to additives and impurities in tap or normal bottled water. I even struggled with other brands of distilled; my theory on this point was some sort of post-distillation filtration (normal forms of filtration are a known issue for me). Buying all those bottles of water meant that I essentially had a guaranteed monthly bill of around $40/mo for clean, drinkable water. That doesn't sound like a lot unless you have to live on disability and the meager amount of food benefits you do get don't cover the *water* expenses you have due to your dis...

Relaxed (but aware) at my feet. Vaccination day. Did much better than I anticipated given she boarded here a week ago; she didn't tremble once and gave only a single whine. Treats from the doc helped smooth that last bit out. Summer's been on anti-anxiety meds for a week now, long enough for canines to start seeing benefits (in humans is usually closer to two weeks). She never looked outright drugged but a couple times she seemed to be...figuring something out? Somewhat restless? She couldn't find a good spot to rest sometimes on the second and third days. A bit pacey, indicating mild stress, but no panting. On day three or four we ran into friends (including canine) on our walk. We were in the courtyard and mostly standing in her "problem spots" where the sound reverberates differently and sets off her extremely delicate noise sensitivity. This can be very high stress for her. I noticed, however, that while she was still distracted and orienting tow...

Current aesthetic: 2012 Toyota RAV4 (KBB stock photo) Normally on the days that I sleep 15 hours and wake at something like 5PM I spend the day berating myself But since I was out of the apartment for close to six hours (!!!) yesterday with constant social contact, doing something extremely stressful for anyone and with various levels of success and failure, ending with a large purchase - only to come home, completely detox everything that left with me, make a full meal, and then eventually take a planned increased dose of Seroquel (which makes me drugged and stupid, especially in the AM, for a few days as I adjust) to kill the growing mania right before heading to bed - Yeah, I counted waking to and remembering that alarm as a victory and went right the hell back to sleep and feel fully justified in doing so. I do know that I can trigger anaphylaxis if the alarm is too early and, while it should have been ok, I was absolutely a fan of complete physical recovery today. I...

These numbers change so quickly - here's the best I can do to show you where the forest line is. Graphic by Fox 6 Milwaukee. I needed to write into the void today. I live in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Among the people that can remember to name this state we're generally known for either cows, cheese, football, or maybe the occasional serial killer. By longitude we're about as middle America as one can get, so we've had the blessing of the continental cushion where the wiser among us watched COVID-19 land and, predictably, explode on our country's coasts. Some of us took action before even infected coastal states took precautions. Right now we know that we're expecting the same wave of confirmed cases that everyone else is as we hunker down. We have opportunities our coastal brethren- namely, foresight - did not necessarily have. I've been tracking daily case numbers since WI case #1, and I think we were the tenth state infected. Our worst spots are...

Spoon eater. Your friend calls with plans for the night, or you have errands to do, or you've just woken up. Shower, right? First question: *can* you shower? Showering involves three triggers (not including undiscovered reactants in bathing products) that some folks with MCD have to be very careful about: vibration/pressure, temperature, and activity. The physical act of water continually shooting out the shower head and hitting one's skin can be enough pressure to cause trouble. Some people opt for baths or jug showers to avoid this issue. How many minutes would that add to your morning routine if it was the only way you could clean yourself? The next two aren't that easy to resolve. Some folks are reactive to hot, others to cold, others to both extremes. Temperature-sensitive people have poor thermoregulation and are often swung into one extreme upon exposure to an extreme temperature. Imagine stepping out of your shower only to be so frighteningly...

I couldn't get the yogurt to fit in the container. Time for another dose. This batch is actually half MCAS, half bipolar. So right now treatment for mast cell disease (and MCAS in particular) does have a path, but it's hard to see and even harder to walk. We do have a loooong list of medications to try, but there is actually zero means of predicting which ones will work (or may instead cause a reaction) or what will address which symptom. That means that an individual doctor has a very rough guideline of "try these first" and a series of levels of meds based on things like overall cost and safety. Doc and patient will join through the meds one by one and toggle the dose. Now imagine this: you've just had a huge health crisis that has left you extremely ill. You're a single parent who now suddenly goes anaphylactic at the smell of cooking or microwaved food, or the sole wage earner who has developed severe reactions to fluorescent lighting, or a...