Posts Tagged ‘health’

28
Jan
2020

I knew this side effect would reveal itself…

categories: personal; word count: 341 words

Setting the FitBit up was a breeze, especially syncing it to the app that I have for it.

On the other hand, what hasn’t been a breeze has been the fact that my immune system is back to what it normally likes to do when it gets bored… so the feeling of the strap on my wrist, even though I tried to place it as comfortably as possible, is bothering me because all it seems to do is itch. I need to find some way to get over this or, at the very least, ameliorate this symptom. But should I really be surprised? This post is, after all, being written out by the very same person who has chronically rejected all piercing attempts made (three earlobe piercings), who had to have a medical implant moved because her body chronically rejected that to the tune of an emergency room visit. It’s still annoying that my immune system, as with my disabilities, limits my life in the manner that it does. The least that some people can do is actually take it seriously when I say that it does that. Because I am bound and determined to make this Inspire HR function in my life, damn it…

One of the things that I have tried doing is to move it around on my wrist as best as I am able to without making it so that it can’t read vital signs, and on occasion, taking it off of my wrist for short periods. There’s also the fact that I take it off of my wrist anyway when it needs to be charged. But based on the use that I’ve gotten so far out of it, the Inspire HR does hold a decent charge… the only functional limitation as far as actually using it goes is the itchiness that persists when it is worn “too long”, but that’s not the fault of the FitBit itself as much as it is the fault of my immune system being like a bored, petulant, small child. Seriously.

27
Jan
2020

I am the proud owner of a FitBit Inspire HR!

categories: personal; word count: 249 words

I am proud to say that I received one of these as an early birthday present!

Not only do I have the app on my phone for it, which makes… using the whole thing a lot easier (as well as, well, Googling everything that has to do with it), but I am pleased as punch because this thing actually attempts to track which stage in your sleep cycle you are in, as well as how long you spend in that stage, and I’ve been wanting to know more about my sleep stages for awhile now. Years ago, I was gifted a more basic FitBit that I used until it barely held a charge, but that one was a lot more basic, and it only tracked how long you slept and when you woke up. This one tracks your heart rate, more metrics in general, and the stages of sleep you’re actually in when as well as how long you sleep and when you actually rouse during your sleep… things that you might not consciously be aware of or remember because you went back to sleep.

I also look forward to seeing how much exercise it actually logs taking Bub on Pokewalks and to the park.

As time goes on, I intend to take pictures of it and screenshots of the app, and post them up here as well. I should actually do that with my Ancestry and 23andMe results, come to think of it… have I done that yet?

18
Jan
2020

I never thought I would say this, but…

categories: personal; word count: 498 words

My asthma is actually somewhat better now than it was several years ago.

Comparatively, that is. For me. I’m aware that my asthma is also worse than other people’s.

Probably many other people’s if you want to get down to brass tacks and be honest about it.

A few years ago, I was at a place where I needed to take prednisone roughly every month and a half without fail… and there were some stints when I needed to take it every three weeks. It was my primary disabling diagnosis. I got short of breath doing simple things around the house, and any real form of exercise was out of the question. Friends of mine used to joke, with my permission, that I would be lucky to make it to forty… except that wasn’t entirely a joke as much as it was all of us honestly hoping that something would not trigger a fatal asthma attack in me before I actually turned forty years old, let alone anytime soon — in, say, the next several months. I had to have conversations with people that knew me in person about what I would want done if I were to be found unconscious as a result of a severe asthma attack, how far they would want medical professionals to go to attempt to save me (did I want to be ventilated? how long did I want to be left on the ventilator?) if the absolute worst were to happen. It was no big deal that I frequently had coughing attacks and coughed up at least a handful of mucus as a result of them and then could breathe better for a time. But sometime between then and now, something gradually changed. Just a bit.

As my migraines progressively got more frequent, and more severe, my asthma dialed it back. Just a bit.

Almost in lockstep.

Exercise still leaves me absolutely winded, and exerting myself too much is still something that I have to pay for in spades if I actually do it, and I still do have to nebulize fairly frequently, but for some reason, I am not quite where I was at a few years ago. I am still not quite sure why that is. With the black humor that I like to use to cope with just about everything, I like to joke around and say that enough people prayed for me not to die of a fatal asthma attack that now, instead, I have severe migraines to deal with. I managed to live long enough to have another problem to deal with. (And maybe that’s actually the truth.) I’m not at an actual place where I have to worry about whether or not I will need to be intubated as a result of an asthma attack.

It’s still really annoying to have to deal with, but we’re not quite there any more.

Readers who have severe asthma, or any severe, disabling diagnosis will understand what I mean here.

17
Jan
2020

I’ve fallen off of the wagon, folks. See?

categories: personal; word count: 394 words

Monster was this manies when I fell off of the wagon of borderline veganism. This manies, folks!

Prior to my first pregnancy, my diet had… evolved through absolutely no conscious thought of my own to something that was borderline vegan, all through personal taste preferences. Knowing where the various things on my plate had originated from was enough to make me not want to eat some of them, particularly those in the dairy food group. But when I found out that I was pregnant for the first time, I knew that I needed to eat a more diversified diet to meet my body’s increased demand for more calories, minerals, and nutrients, as well as to meet the needs of my growing unborn child’s… and surprisingly, it was not that difficult to find various ways to do so. But after he was born, I never picked my previous diet back up, and by the time that I found out that I was pregnant with Bub, there was no diet to change, as my diet continued to be omnivorous. But when I decided that I was done having children, I began to give modifying my diet back to what it had been prior to either pregnancy some thought. And that’s something that I continue to give some thought to, balancing the need to model eating a diversified diet for my autistic children against eating the things that I want to eat, as I could honestly go without consuming food with cow’s milk in it and eating meat for the rest of my life and not miss either one of those things. The only thing that I think I might miss is eating eggs, but I’ve heard that there are great egg substitutes… so I might be able to enjoyably eat those.

On top of that, being someone who needs steroids for her asthma almost at whim, being able to eat less foods that tend to “go bad” quicker (dairy and meat tend to do this, but especially meat) is appealing to me for that reason as well. These are also foods that tend to cause me the most gastrointestinal upset when I am ping-ponging off of prednisone, especially in combination with other migraine medications I may need.

That said, I suppose that it wouldn’t hurt to begin looking back into various substitutes for things out there…

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