November 22, 2015 by Elizabeth Milo

Update… Aborted. Again.

I’ve been trying to write an update for so long. It’s been 5 months since my last one. There’s been so much that I wanted to document, that it started to feel like a Herculean task to catch up and my symptoms have been such a rollercoaster, that I never seem to find an opportunity. When I have some respite, I cook, bathe, deal with insurance and appointments, tackle laundry, play with my dogs, sort through finances etc. Aaannd… I just hit a wall. Just like that. As I typed, I could feel my brain clogging up. I picture all the little ATP molecules grimacing, gasping and dragging their feet like the characters at the end of Stephen King’s story, The Long Walk, dragging themselves along until collapse is inevitable. It’s a shocking feeling. Mentally, I was really clear for about an hour this morning. Felt like I could write. Dreamed up grand plans for my day (make granola! call a family member! blog post!). I answered a few emails, talked to my husband a bit and then wrote this… And it’s gone.

My neurological symptoms are horrific. “Brain fog” is the best of it. I’d take lack of concentration, not being able to find words, memory problems any day over what I’ve been experiencing this year. It feels like physically–physiologically–my brain grinds to a halt. My eyelids get heavy, my vision gets blurry, my ears roar, I start slurring. As I’m writing this, it’s getting worse and there’s no pushing through. My body feels okay, my stiffness, weakness and pain levels are manageable this morning, but I can’t push through this neuro stuff. Even if my body feels capable of going to the park, my brain insists on being in bed with ear plugs and eye shades. I can’t even watch dull tv or listen to a meditation. It’s incredibly frustrating and quite alarming. And, in a clinical way, I am fascinated by the trajectory of my symptoms over the past four years.

Year 1 was horrific viral, malarial, drenching sweat, nighttime hell and constant chills. That ended for the most part in Year 2 and became predominately “nightly flu” and pain, pain and more pain. Year 3 was the best of times and the worst of times: a bedbound, suicidal winter (when I finally got the permanent ME/CFS sore throat) turned into a much more stable spring and summer after my pain eased up. Year 4 started in a deep, reactive crash and became the year of crippling neurological symptoms. Year 5 (which started at the beginning of this month) so far is all over the place. My main focus is to work on the symptoms that have been with me throughout all of these years: sleep dysfunction, headaches, hypotension and infections. Plus, social contact would be good.

I have to power down now. The long-awaited update will come soon, I hope. I have so much to say.

June 20, 2015 by Elizabeth Milo

June Update

It’s been a while since I’ve had the energy to write an update. As usual, I have a lot to document in terms of doctors and tests, but, overall, not much to report on my life and illness. My mother was here from Ireland this past week and that was, by far, the highlight of the last 4 months. 6 days seemed like 6 hours, though, and I’m left feeling a bit barren after her departure, like there are tumbleweeds blowing around inside my chest and hollow silence echoing against the inside of my skull.

I’m still housebound besides healthcare appointments and the odd dog walk on the scooter. I do think I’m marginally better than this time last year, though, which is heartening considering the horrendous ordeal of last autumn. Mostly, I think this because I’m walking more steps than I have since 2012. I regularly hit 2,000 on my pedometer, which does wonders for my mental well-being to think there is forward momentum. However, the flip-side is I have had more severe muscle pain and out-of-character joint aches. I am stiff in the morning and try to make myself put on compression stockings and a back brace if I’m going to stand in the kitchen for any length of time. I know I should scale back movement because, when I do, the muscle pain is better, but I’m really grasping onto that measurable progress for dear life.

There are other slight improvements. My sleep is still better than it was the first 3 years I was sick (although, I still don’t get much and it is plagued with fitfulness, nightmares and pain). My headaches, although they have resurfaced somewhat in the last month, were gone for a few months earlier this year, which is utterly life-changing. My resting face goes from this to this .

There are still, always, a lot of daily debilitating symptoms. For 3 full weeks after my birthday outing, I was not doing well. My flu symptoms came back and that always alarms me — chills, sore throat, extremely heavy muscles, pain. I also had a few bouts of the worst vertigo I’ve experienced since my tilt table test payback. One night it came on so quickly and viciously, I fell over and hit the floor on my way to the loo from bed. I was moaning out loud from the queasy out-of-bodiness, which is unlike me, and I was reminded again of Laura Hillenbrand and how unrelenting vertigo could possibly be the worst imaginable symptom.

Hair loss hasn’t stopped, but is better than last year. Or the short, choppy cut disguises it more. My eyes are their usual nightmare of blurriness and sore extraocular muscles, even though I am regimented about (gently) scrubbing the lashes and using preservative-free tears throughout the day. Tinnitus and skin are still bad, my neck is still banjaxed. I am still spending about 14-17 hours in bed each day. I guess that’s a bit better than last year.

Finally, there is no real change in my worst symptom: Brain Drain. Which doesn’t describe it. I’ve been trying to articulate this symptom for years — to doctors, to my husband, my mother. It’s not brain fog. What I call brain fog feels tired and cloudy, causes effort to recall and calculate things. My Buzzy Brain is like Stephen King’s The Long Walk: if you can imagine being made to walk until you physically drop, but then transfer that body feeling to the brain. The same way muscle exhaustion is physical, my brain exhaustion feels physical. My brain can’t take one more step to do anything. Can’t read, write, speak, hear. It comes on gradually, so I usually find myself wading through the quicksand of a conversation or article, slurring or rereading the same thing over and over. I get testy, dizzy, weighted down by head pain and then realise, Oh, duh, time to go to bed and stop everything. Not being able to push through the brain problems (just finish this sentence, this tv show, this meal) is much more depressing than not being able to push through the physical limitations. Take my body, just, please, leave my mind.

The outcome of this is nothing ever gets done. I never finish tasks and months slip by. I also never seem to get going on any plan of attack to conquer the myriad of abnormal test findings: candida, low immunoglobulins, high cholesterol, reactivations of viruses, methylation problems, high mycotoxins. There’s always a bigger fire to put out — the poisoned nocturnal reactions, the crashing blood pressure, the death of my bowel — before I can carefully address less acute problems, while tip-toeing through the minefield of menstruation mast cell instability. Although, given my track record, maybe the best treatment for my body is no invasive treatment at all, just lots of pacing, meditation, good food and the pursuit of laughter.

The few things on which I am actively working are my hormone deficiencies and my tanked thyroid (as per usual). Since last September, I have now quintupled my levothyroxine (T4) and tripled my liothyronine (T3) and nothing has changed. I’m spending an absolute fortune on compounded meds, hoping my body will absorb them better than the generic, affordable ones, but, so far, no dice. I will update soon about my new, wonderful endocrinologist and her thoughts (as well as my other doctor visits).

So, almost 3 years and 8 months sick and that’s where I’m at. If I could find relief from the social isolation and financial instability, there could be some sort of life here.

But, as it stands, I take my joy from the incredibly beautiful spring we’ve had here in Seattle and every opportunity to lie outside in the garden oasis my husband has created and see my dogs run in the park.

November 25, 2014 by Elizabeth Milo

November Update

[Written Sunday morning:] Every morning I get up and vow to write some of the things crawling around my head and gnawing at my brain and then every day disappears into other things: cooking, feeling like crap, interacting with friends in my facebook group, reading, researching, tv… Today, I’m sequestered in one room while the cleaning lady tackles the rest of the house and I want to do a wee catch up.

Two months after the horrific Cromolyn-induced crash, I’m feeling much better. Not as good as I was beforehand, but so much better than I anticipated I would. If it takes 3 or 4 months to get back to where I was, that will be great–much better than the years I thought it would take (or the never I feared might happen). When I got home from the AirBnB rentals, my husband had cleaned out my bedroom: no furniture besides the bed and bedside table, no more clothes or books, everything hoovered and wiped down with ammonia. He put a vapor barrier up at the top of the stairs–one of those plastic doorways used in construction sites or the house in the film E.T.–and the upstairs is strictly a dog-free zone. Oh, it breaks my heart not to be able to snuggle with my kids and it crushes me when they hear me moving around and whine at the gate we have across the stairs. Another downside is, I’m doing far fewer preemptive rests and meditations because I don’t want to leave them and go upstairs. It used to be our routine to head upstairs a few times a day and lie down. My Little Guy had the times programmed in his brain and would bark to come in from outside and look at me like, “Let’s go, Mama! You need to meditate.” That doesn’t happen anymore and my brain and body are feeling the effects. However, I will begrudgingly admit that it is really reassuring to know that I am spending 12 to 15 hours a day in minimal dander and dog hair. I wake up feeling cleaner internally. That has got to help my poor struggling body, so I’m very grateful for all the hard work my husband put into dedogifying the upstairs.

What it used to be like:

What I see now from the top of the stairs:

I haven’t been sleeping very well. Much better than when I was horribly sick, of course, but not as well as I was in the last two rentals. My sleep in that last rental was amazing– I would close my eyes at 11pm and open them at 7am. A few nights that I was there, I woke up after 8am! Never, ever, ever have I slept straight through for over 8 hours without waking up from crazy dreams or painful bones and muscles. It was glorious… besides the fact that I felt poisoned by the new Ikea wardrobes. I wonder if the off-gassing from the new furniture was somehow drugging me into a stupour? Also part of the problem is my apnea devices. I continue to avoid the CPAP because it wakes me up constantly, but the new oral appliance has its own issues. I got the Narval by Resmed, made by a 3D printer.

The white one is the bendy, light Narval. The pink one is the heavy, rigid nightmare I was trying to use before.

It is incredibly thin and light and bendy, which is everything I wanted and I’m able to fall asleep while wearing it… BUT. … I have worse TMJ issues than I realised and it causes so much pain. Every day, my jaw hurts, my temples ache, my head hurts and then, about once a week, I have a really rough, tense grinding night and I wake up feeling like my jaw is dislocated. It is painful to move and chew and clicks alarmingly. This can’t be good. So, I keep sleeping with no oral appliance or CPAP and I can definitely feel the difference in how I feel in the morning–less rested, more pain, but my jaw in tact. So, what am I to do?

I’ve started seeing my “physical therapist” again. Aka Magic Fingers. He is so wonderful for me. After a 3-month hiatus, the day I returned happened to be the day after he finished a course on strain-counterstrain for the nervous system. The teacher of whatever magic he does flew out to Seattle from the East Coast and trained a group of 30 practitioners. He said, “I’m one of only 30 in the world that have been trained to do this and you are the number one person I want to work on because your nervous system is a mess.” I keep my appointments with him no matter what. I even went last week when he was getting over a cold.

Speaking of colds, it has been 3 years and 19 weeks since I last had a cold. I’m amazed by that. I still live in fear of the day I catch a cold, especially since Dr. Chia said one virus could wipe me out and set back my recovery significantly, if not permanently. You may remember that he recommended I get IVIG to bolster my immune system and protect myself from all you sickies out there. Well, my MD referred me to University of Washington Immunology and they turned me down because my total IgG wasn’t low enough. So, I talked to my ND, Dr. W, and their clinic isn’t licensed to do it. On a whim, I went to see another ND, Dr. I, at a different clinic–mainly because they take insurance and I wanted to have a back-up doctor if I had to stop seeing Dr. W (who does not take insurance and, even with discounts for being unemployed, costs me too much money). The first thing Dr. I said when I came in was, “I think you need IgG.” Oh, bless her. There is hope for this treatment! But let me back up…

So, this new clinic requested all my test results in advance, they photocopied the entire binder and the doctor had reviewed it before I got there. They asked me to run my 23andMe results through MTHFRsupport.com and send them the results (so far, I’ve had 3 doctors tell me they know about methylation and nutrigenomics, but not a single one actually has addressed it. See some of my MTHFRsupport.com Genetic Variance Report here). The clinic has an IV infusion room, looking all dim and cozy, with plush recliners and blankets. They have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber! Something I have been curious about trying for over a year since I read Dr. Deckoff-Jones’s blog. And the clinic is 4 minutes from my house. Score. Dr. I ordered a load more tests and is willing to consider sub-cutaneous immunoglobulin first since I’m a scardy-cat about jumping right into IVIG (assuming we can get either of them approved by insurance, that is). A few days after our appointment, I went to the lab for a blood draw because she wanted to get updated tests and I see her again next week.

It’d be nice if they left some blood in my body.

Speaking of test results (which can all be found here), I never mentioned the hormone panel and blood test results ordered by Dr. W in the last few months [bold type is for my benefit, so I can access this info easily when I look back). My varicella zoster IgG, IgM and HSV IgM were all positive. All coxsackie A viruses were high and all coxsackie B except for 3 and 4 (although 4 was high in Dr. Chia’s tests). EBV IgG was high indicating a reactivated infection. My total IgG was even lower than when Dr. Chia tested and, as I mentioned before, my thyroid was tanked: TSH, T3 and T4 all low. But the hormone panel was slightly alarming: almost everything was low: DHEA, progesterone, testosterone, estrone, aldosterone, androsterone, pregnanediol, tetrahydrocortisol and on and on. Not sure how concerned I should be, but Dr. W put me on topical DHEA (about 5mg rubbed into my abdomen in the mornings) and supposedly that should help something. It’s been a month now and the only difference that I’ve noticed is my period was 3 weeks late after I started it. My period has pretty much been every 28-29 days for 25 years. I just descovered today that it has MSM in it, which I’m not meant to have because of my sulfur issue. I’ll ask her about it when I see her on Wednesday.

So here’s what I’m taking currently:
Topical DHEA
Probiotics
Riboflavin-5-phosphate
Trace Minerals
Vitamin C
Vitamin D3
Vitamin K2
Fish oil
1/3 of a capsule of B complex #6
Magnesium
Biotin sporadically
Zinc sporadically
Charcoal sporadically
Quercetin sporadically
Gentian/Wormwood sporadically

I also started oil pulling a few times a week (when I remember) against my better judgement, but my nutritionist thought I should give it a try, so, why not?

I try to use my dry skin brush about once a week.

I am in my third month of Restasis and my eyes are worse than ever. They are never not bothering me. Swollen, itchy, tingly, burning, blurry, gritty. Always.

I have a new pillow, which is a god-send for my bursitits in my shoulders, but I had to let it off-gas outside for over a month. It still slightly concerns me, so I emailed Dr. Bob and here’s what he said: “We do not use flame retardants or any other harmful chemicals. On the Amazon site you can see our product obtained the Oeko-Tex Standard 100 Certification. This is a difficult certification to receive and shows this testing lab certifies the pillow is free of harmful chemicals. Oeko is the best know lab and certification for products to be free of harmful chemicals.” Hmmm… well, this thing stinks and I hope it isn’t off-gassing into my brain.

I love love LOVE having short hair. Can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner. Hair is such a nightmare when you’re sick and the cut disguises all the hair loss in the front.

Grainy photo, but you get the gist.

What else?

I’m still on a modified AIP (autoimmune paleo) plus low-histamine-ish diet. I am not strict on AIP or low-histamine becasue I’m always trying to reintroduce foods back into my diet so I can have as many nutrients as possible and don’t develop even more sesntivities. I constantly warn everyone on my Facebook group not to take an elimination diet lightly and add back as many foods as possible as quickly as possible. It becomes a trap. Eating fewer foods causes a host of new issues (in my case, gastroparesis, worsening constipation and odd reactions that I never had before embarking on AIP). Also, the longer you don’t eat them, the harder they are to get back — both physically and mentally. Hence the reason I never eliminated ice cream, chocolate and packaged chips. God forbid I lose my unhealthy addictions. I need the soul food (although, I do really think one of these days I have to see if I feel better without sugar in my life. It’s just that it was easier to quit gluten, dairy, drinking alcohol and smoking than it seems to be to even contemplate eliminating sugar for a few weeks). One of these days I’ll write a post on what I eat on this diet, but, in the meantime, you can see photos on my Instagram account, if you’re interested (minus all the crap I eat–I’m trying to inspire people, after all, not cause them inflammation).

We ordered a free-range, organic, recently-harvested, fresh (not frozen) turkey for pick up today for Thanksgiving, but, to keep histamines low, we have to roast it right away (and then my husband freezes the leftover meat for me and makes bone broth from the carcass), so we are celebrating Thanksgiving today. We were going to have a get-together with our friends, Z and J, and my sister and her boyfriend (hence the cleaning lady), but it fell through, so the two of us are going to sit down to a 12-pound turkey alone. It’s ok. I’m thankful that I was feeling almost well enough to have some people over for the first time in 2.5 years. I’m thankful that I still have some people in my life to invite over. I’m thankful that I will have a yummy dinner and I don’t even mind that almost every meal I eat looks like Thanksgiving dinner and there really won’t be any different fun stuff. At least I’ll have turkey instead of chicken. And maybe the tryptophan will help me sleep!

Speaking of food, I’m starving and the cleaning lady is in the kitchen. I don’t want to get in her way or have to chat, so I’m trying to think of what else I can tell you all.

I made it to the freezing cold cemetery on the scooter for about 40 minutes a few weeks ago, wearing about 5 layers and carrying a hot water bottle. It was literally my first time spending some time outside in a month. The winter is hard that way. It really feels unhealthy to be trapped inside 24 hours a day. I have to make an effort to put on my coat and hat and go out into the garden. Please remind me!

We bought a proper comfy dog bed for the kids seeing as they are arthritic and bony (it was on sale, has no fire retardants and is returnable at any time, even if used). It’s the size of a small country. 110-pound Bowie is thrilled when he can actually lie in it and Little Guy doesn’t relegate him to the crappy small bed.

I found ants in my room one morning. They were running in droves all over the floor. It took days and days to kill them and there are still carcasses strewn about. It was pretty gross.

I’m still going to therapy. It’s been great recently. He’s very interested in cultural history as a jumping-off point and that is helpful for someone who mourns the loss of Ireland and regularly starts blubbering over how powerfully I miss it.

I have a lot of issues to work out there– An American by birth who never questioned that I was Irish, but wound up back in America and then felt rejected by the country I love… Marrying a man with an identical upbringing and thinking, “how perfect! We can relocate back home,” but it’s not home to him anymore… staying in America by default, year after year, but always wishing I was in Ireland and planning the eventual return… and then getting a disease that stops me from returning, so I have no choice, anyway. My therapist asked me if I’d be able to manage my illness better if I were living in Dublin and I said yes because my mother, aunt and best friend live there. And so does my heart. But it’s a difficult place to live and we’d have no money, so that’s not the answer.

Ok, I can’t avoid it any longer, I have to eat. And that was really dredging the bottle of the barrel for stuff to tell you about.

I’m thankful for all of you, too, dear readers. You have no idea. Love and thanks and nom nom nom gobble gobble to everyone this week. X

October 15, 2014 by Elizabeth Milo

Nothing Can Be Perfect

Not such a charm, after all. Every day that I’ve been in this rental, I’ve had the doors and windows wide open. It smells new, so I’ve taken precautions to air it out. After three nights, I finally mustered the energy to hang towels in the bedroom window to block the morning light and then didn’t open the window because I didn’t want the towels to fall… This coincided with a weather change and, because of the rain, I kept the other windows closed. It also coincided with my husband discovering a hornet nest under the eaves, so I started keeping the front door closed. This is all to explain what led to my perfect home away from home becoming an off-gassing cesspool.

I lay in bed, breathing the chemical fog, trying to sleep, trying to convince myself I was imagining it. The next day I told my husband, if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was coming down with a cold. My nose was all stuffed up and running at the same time, one ear was clogged, my eyes and throat were sore(er). That night, I couldn’t sleep in the bedroom. Did I reach some sort of chemical threshold? Or was this simply because the windows had been closed? After choking for an hour, I dragged everything to the couch: doubled over duvet on the bottom for my aching bones, pillow, sheets, top blanket and duvet… so much work for me, especially at 2am. An hour later, after being woken up every few seconds by rain hitting what sounded like a metal pail somewhere… Drip drip drip… Like torture every time I drifted off… I got up and put in ear plugs. At 4am, after waking up every time I moved because this couch is basically like concrete, I crawled into the bedroom, got an unwieldy camping mattress and wrestled it under the folded over bottom duvet. At 430am, I stumbled into the kitchenette and put duck tape over the blue clock lights on the oven and the microwave. At 5am, I turned off the porch lights that were keeping me awake. At 7am, I woke up from the morning sun through the window. Dear lord.

I asked the landlord about the IKEA wardrobes in the bedroom, knowing that I had bad reactions to my own IKEA wardrobe for so long and, sure enough, they are brand new a week before I got here.

View from this rental's door

So, I’ve gone a little backwards. Two nights on the couch and a week steeped in chemical off-gas, I don’t quite feel as stable. I’m exhausted, heart palpitations started yesterday and I continue to have the cold symptoms above the neck and the flu symptoms below. I’m still going home today. I’m going to keep a segregated box of stuff separate that I don’t bring into the house in case I crash and burn and need to leave again. But, man oh man, am I excited to see my boys and sleep in my own bed. Fingers crossed that I can climb back up to where I was a month ago.

September 20, 2014 by Elizabeth Milo

Poisoning Myself.

Three days ago, after having Cromolyn Sodium in my cupboard for 19 weeks, I finally decided I was stable enough to add a new drug. Cromolyn was originally used as an inhaled anti-iflammatory to treat allergic- and exercise-induced asthma. The oral version of Cromolyn has been used more recently to treat mastocytosis and mast cell disorders. It is a liquid that comes in ampules and is mixed into water. The doctor who prescribed it for me is the same one that diagnosed me with MCAS, but he didn’t seem to know much about Cromolyn. The pharmacy knew nothing. I had to go online and ask the people in my mast cell Facebook group for details and then call the pharmacist and explain exactly what the drug was. I am so thankful for the knowledge of these groups and Cromolyn seemed to help far more people than it harmed. It also seemed pretty innocuous — I only talked to a few people who had major side effects and they were things I don’t typically experience, like itching and nausea.

Of course, there’s always a part of me that is looking for the magic pill. Imagine I started this drug and my mast cells calmed down and symptoms I didn’t even realise were caused by them disappeared! … But, it still took me almost 5 months to convince myself to take it. It wasn’t until my bowels went into hibernation that I decided to take the plunge. A few weeks ago, motility stopped, gastroparesis reared its ugly, bloated head and everything ceased functioning in my intestines. No movement, not even a fart, and mega doses of magnesium and vitamin C weren’t doing anything. Cromolyn can help these internal inflammation symptoms and I had high hopes.

The dose I was meant to take was eight ampules in a day — two 4 times a day. The doctor never mentioned to work up slowly and some people in my online group were able to start at full dose. I wanted to be careful because we’re talking about my ridiculously hyper-sensitive body, after all, but I was pretty confident that I’d be fine. So, the first day, I took 1/3 of an ampule in the morning. The next day, I took 2/3 of an ampule in the morning. All seemed fine, so, that night before bed, I took 3/4 of an ampule. At 5 in the morning, I woke up sick sick sick. So sick. Sicker than I’ve been in years, maybe. Sick like my original sickness. Malarial. Encephalo-. Shaking all over, chilled, sweating feverishly, head pounding, stiff neck, muscles cramping, throat constricted, barely able to lift my arm or walk to the bathroom. Oh god, the FEAR. I’d rather die than go back to this. I felt like an ex-con in a movie choosing death-by-cop rather than go back to jail. My mind was like a panicked, caged animal, looking for a way out, falling in and out of fever dreams where I was screaming for my mother over and over again. I’d rather the “nightly flu” that I used to get. I’d rather the ME monster that slams me down with massive, pummeling hands, but I now know will release me eventually if I hold very still for a while. I think I’d even rather be back in December, 2013, when I called on all of you angels to get me through what I thought might be permanent bedboundness.

I felt poisoned. There’s no other way to describe it. I took my temperature: 98.4 degrees. My blood pressure was 80/55 (normal for me). My blood sugar was 80. Not much I could do but wait it out. I lay in bed the whole day yesterday, meditating, deep breathing away the fear of permanent relapse to an acceptable distance. I have a painful burn on my hand that is taking a while to heal and I kept falling into dreams where the burn was causing sepsis. That’s what it felt like — a systemic infection — I’d wake up panting and quiet my mind. I’m good at doing that during waking hours, but, in my dreams… I’m always silently screaming.

I feel a bit better today, but still didn’t sleep. I haven’t had a headache in a long time, believe it or not, and the pain is brutal. My muscles are aching and I feel swollen. The fear has dissipated to frustration. I’m frustrated with myself for trying another drug. I was doing so well. I had a lot of firsts the last few weeks (I’ll post about that later, but here’s a teaser: first time in a store, first road trip, first time on a beach in two years!) and then I couldn’t leave well enough alone and trust that my body was slowly, but surely, helping itself. I’m frustrated with myself for not going slower. I could have ramped up the dose over a full month, but I’m always so impatient. I’m frustrated that I’ve lost the potential help of Cromolyn. That was probably the worst reaction I’ve ever had apart from anaphylaxis, so I’ll never touch it again. I’m not even willing to try again going much slower, so I’ll never know if it could have helped. And that makes me frustrated because it was so hard to get it and it’s incredibly expensive and it’s such a waste. I have a friend who can take it off my hands, but, if I ever wanted to try it again, I’m out of luck because I don’t have insurance to cover it anymore.

And, in contrast to how I feel now, I realise how well I was doing. I was managing to do things every day — stand in the kitchen and cook for an hour, have conversations easier, wash and dry my hair without a thought. This weekend we have one last stab at summer — two days of high 70s and low 80s — and I was going to surprise our friends Z and J by going to their house on Vashon Island for the first time in years. I felt strong enough to do it and that was not even an option 6 months ago. Instead, I’ll barely be moving this weekend. But at least I’ll barely be moving in the garden, in the sun.

Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart

E.M. AND M.E. AND M.C.A.S.

Tag Archives: flu