C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 16

Doing better—on average.

The high bloodpressure is dropping back into the pre-hypertensive and the ‘normal’ range. Which is good. But it’s not all that—I was dizzy yesterday. So it’s that AND the ears, for which I have an appointment — in June. Sigh. But I’m feeling a lot better. Jane’s been doing a huge amount of yard work, in which I show up and snip a few judicious snips, and wash a pond filter, big deal. She’s moving basalt chips and rebuilding the lotus pond edge. WHich is looking great.

I can however do the cooking and kitchen and such, so I am. Cooking with both sodium and carb restriction is entertaining, but we had an experimental substitute last night—sometimes I’ll put several weird things into a potentially bland dish to see which ‘surfaces’ as a good taste, which is neutral, and which you would’t want.

So I tried, on pork, caraway seed, celery seed, cooking sherry, black pepper, coriander, sage, and very little salt, and came to the conclusion that caraway and possibly sage and black pepper were the best tastes in the lot, celery seed and sherry the worst combined with the others, and so I’m going to try making my own caraway-heavy pork sausage.

Work on the books is going well, however: this is our first time working in sequence, Jane in total control of Alliance Rising now, myself in the rough stage of the new Foreigner book, with discussion and input from Jane, and we are thus getting quite a bit of work done. Todd is working on the new Foreigner cover, for the book I turned in last fall, and I like his sketch, so things are buzzing along.

Seems logical, given a blood pressure incident…

to take a look at salt content.

I spent a while yesterday going over our recipes and figuring out, well, yes, we could do better.

Discoveries. Your intake should be around 1500 mg a day, up to 2300.

Soy sauce is 920 a tablespoon. Wah! I’m going for the green label ‘low’ salt.

PF Chang’s doublefried noodles are over 7000.

I’m pretty sure the hamburger double no bun we had twice right before this incident (which tasted really salty, and was accompanied by fries) had no little to do with the problem. Probably in the 7000 range.

But things we now know: Mountain Dew is not a sodium offender. Coke is around 60 per can. Bacon is about 200 a slice, depending. Ham, any cured meat, is a problem. Corned beef (refers to the ‘corns’ or kernels of salt, well yes). Veggies generally are not. Potatoes are ok if not salted to death. And salad dressing is often right up there with a slice of bacon. Sauces in general tend to be high. Chicken broth is reasonable; chicken stock is not. Smoked sausage? We’re going to buy pork sausage and add our own spices.

I think it’ll be a good change, in general. Nobody needs 7000 mg of salt in a dish.

More trivia.

What address does Machigi accord Ilisidi and have they ever met face to face?

Has Machigi ever met Tabini?

What is the name of the current lord of the Senjin Marid?

What is his capital? I’VE FOUND THIS ONE: It’s Koperna, and his seaport, a distance away is Lusi’ei. Also within Senjin is the home of the troublesome Farai, at Morigi-dar.

What is the name of the capital of the Dojisigin Marid? This one is Amarja.

What is the name of Tiajo’s father? Her uncle is Comari, her mother Mujito, d. of Tori, sister of the infamous Cosadi. Badissuni was Tiajo’s great-grandfather: he is deceased. Is her father alive?

And Mada, a Farai, was mother to Machigi. His father is Cosadi son of Sarini, a ruler of the Dojisigi. And the DOjisigi hate Machigi and vice versa.

And be aware, some of these things may never have been given. I am particularly dubious of the questions on the Senjin Marid.

Well, cipro and coffee do not mix.

The saga:

1. extensive dental work with 5 courses of Clindamycin, which can just trash your defense against aggressive bugs.

2. by Christmas—ear complaints. Ignored, as, well, it’s winter.

3. late February–worse ear complaints. Ignored, as, well, I’m real busy.

4. March—I nearly fall over when getting up in the morning. I go to the Urgent Care. They say probably it’s age, crystals in my ears, or a virus. Be patient. Wait a month.

5. April. I’m waiting a month. It’s better but not that much better.

6. May—all right, I’m going to the doc. I start looking up my thyroid med as the only ‘what’s unusual’ in my intake. Hmmn, generic began around Christmas. So did the ears, leading to the dizziness. I want my Brand Name back.

May part 2: yes, I have an ear infection, outer ear. Double med: Cipro and something else for fungal infection, faithfully given. Dizziness gets worse. Now I’m hypertensive on both numbers, feeling rotten. More research for drug actions down in the fine print. Brand name thyroid med can cause dizziness. Maybe taking it before the morning blood pressure surge which nature gives us might be better, since blood pressure surge is part of this. Reading further—tra la! Cipro can give you dizziness. Is there ANYTHING that doesn’t give you dizziness? But also—blood pressure out of whack can give you dizziness, and my pulse rate is through the roof. Ciproflocasin is NOT to be taken with coffee. Well, la! I am a 2 pot a day coffee drinker, and nobody mentioned this? It takes 22 hours for the last dose of Cipro to leave your system (I looked that up, too.)

So I was friggin’ worthless yesterday, and my pulse rate and blood pressure were dancing above the roof, and yes, I was dizzy, too.

I drank a shipload of water. I stayed inactive and didn’t push it. I waited. I had five pounds of water weight (overnight acquisition) to shed, which would help the blood pressure situation.

I stopped the ear med. The good news is, the ears seem to be improved. I’ll have to tell the doc on Monday.

This morning—splitting headache. Yep, no caffeine all day will do that to me. I have, oh, joy! caffeinated, and the headache is going, my balance is ever so much better, and the world has stopped gyrating wildly.

I’ll have to have the doc give a final check on the ears to be sure, but if my pulse rate will just continue calming down, we may have beaten this.

Yesterday was our anniversary, and unlike last year, we remembered!

We went out for dinner last night at the local pub, which partly catered our wedding ‘reception’ aka party…and the head bartender, total surprise, bought us the most expensive dessert on the menu, a giant carrot cake slice which is super good…

We trashed our diet. Back on the horse today: we’re doing a kind of low-carb in which carbs stay around 25 and we get all the carbs from ‘watery’ veggies, like cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumbers, summer squash. Meat, eggs, dairy ok; but most of our intake is veggies. And its slow but healthy. No starchy veggies. We both agree this is more a lifestyle than a diet, and we like the recipes.

It doesn’t mean we can’t go out and have a piece of cake.

Today on FB: If the earth were flat, cats would have pushed everything off it by now…

Thank you, Ready!

Still battling the dizziness…

But I’m still on the course of meds for ear infection, which I do/did definitively have—took three trips to the doc before somebody actually looked at the problem and said, yep, that’s an ear infection. But, oh, well.

On the other front, I take thyroid meds for a nicely manageable condition so long as the meds are right. And around Christmas the drugstore asked me to sub a generic. It was a generic I’ve taken before, during a time when the industry was having a problem with one company, the main one—so, okay, save a hundred dollars out of pocket, yep, I’d do that. The insurance wouldn’t pay for it because they want to go generic on that one.

Well, a slight ear problem dates from that substitution, and went serious in March. Since then I’ve blamed everything but space aliens until I thought to check the med side effects.

So I went back to the endocrinologist to ask him to undo the change, and Walgreens, bless em, having innocently gotten me into this mess, took up the cause and got a doctor’s statement that I had to get OFF the generic immediately, and onto the brand name he wanted. So, upshot of the deal, NOW that I have it on my record that that is the case, the insurance will pay a portion of the new bottle (deducting the pills already taken) and fully pay for subsequent prescriptions. Plus the druggist added a Generics Contraindicated to my permanent account. This is a good thing. I was on Zoloft before we realized it was thyroid, and this is supposed to make you happy-happy and not depressed. They handed me a generic of that once, and in 24 hours it sent me suicidal ideations. Fortunately an education is a life-saving device: I could say to myself, self, it’s the chemistry. Tough it out. Stop the med and call the doc. WHich was of course exactly what you should do.

So generics and I are not good friends. And hopefully since I’m only halfway through the med for infection, I’ll ultimately beat the dizziness.

Pix from Jane’s camera. Fishes!

Ichigo, Wesley, Maddy

Ari II, and the two candidates for Renji.

FREEDOM! Wesley, Maddy, and Ichigo in the pond…

Yard and fishies.

My tiny camera doesn’t take great pix, but Jane has some, and between us we have pix that aren’t hazy. This is, fwiw, the view from my workstation, and the quince is in bloom. THe shiny patch is reflection of light on the water. I have a great window.

This is going on in front: the new crabapple and the cherry tree are doing their thing.

And the new Japanese Maple, an Emperor 1, with the redbud just visible beyond it.

Now to the fishes: these are taken through the bags—it’s never good to open a bag until you’re pretty well ready to put the fish in.

first pix is of the first 3, which include a pale gold shortfin like Ari and a platinum butterfly-fin like Maddy and an orange butterfly-fin with white edges, who is the Wesley type. We have also a couple of orange and white spots: they were both personable, so they came home with us. One is a gin rin type, sparkle scales, the other plain, both vying for the name of Renji, and then we have one like the first one we lost—Ichigo, a fish with a red bonnet. The water is murky, we had a storm last night and the netting collapsed in one place, but we can fix that—soon as I can walk straight. Which may be today.

Jane’s pix are much better. Wiishu helped.

It’s nice knowing the pond is occupied again. We don’t expect to see them until I can get the water clear, and nowhere in the region is that happening very fast. But it’ll get there. The fishes are all about 3″ body size, and they’ve got 5000 gallons and a lot of rocks to hide in, so they’ll be safe. Feeding them is going to be interesting, since we can’t see where they are, but I figure feeding stinky food will help them find it. And any worm that falls in is very likely doomed.

There are fishes!

It’s been a long day—doc’s appt at 8 am, they sent my prescription to the old pharmacy, not the new one, and we are about to track that down—ear problems. Being dizzy for two months is a pita.

But the great news is, we have 6 koi. They’re about 3″ long in the body (finnage varies) and we were able to get both a shortfin gold ogon and a platinum butterfly fin, 2 kohaku (orange spots on white, an orange butterfly-fin with white edges, and a—I forget the name: black and white with a red spot on his head — far from show quality, but already with personality. The little gold ogon and one of the kohakus are escape artists supreme—which is good: self-protective.

They are in the pond. We probably won’t see them for weeks. The water is murky in that early spring mode where the algae is abundant but too small to get caught in the filters—the murky tea stage of ponding.

But it’s nice to know they’re out there.