Spring!

[tamaranth]

it must be spring: I am wearing a Frock.

Haven't updated here for a while, so ..

After all the panic, it looks as though my father has successfully pulled through another medical crisis. It's difficult to be sure, as the hospital won't tell me very much over the 'phone, and my sister - who visits most days - has much else on her mind. I'll believe it when I see it, really: and can't help wondering, in a horribly objective way, whether this is really for the best if what survives has so little quality of life.


Last Friday I had my long-awaited hospital appointment, the aim being to solve my ongoing 'acute pain' issue. (Apparently it is acute if it keeps you awake at night). I thought it was a muscle problem: my GP thought it was early-onset arthritis (noooooooooo!). Have been Russian-rouletting on various drugs - most lately Volterol, typical arthritis treatment, at a fairly high dose (3 times what my brother-in-law, who does have arthritis, is on) which still doesn't really work.

The consultant tested my joints (by wiggling them around and hitting me with a hammer) and declared that I was very flexible, considering. (This will amuse my yoga teacher mightily). He doesn't think it's a joint problem, and he recommends I stop taking the Volterol which is an anti-inflammatory, so not really much use if my joints (or whatever) are not inflamed.

He thinks it's calcium deficiency.

Which has the ring of truth about it, because drinking milk makes me sick, and I'm trying to avoid nearly all dairy products on that basis. (Except pizza. Pizza doesn't count).

So: Volterol in the bin, economy-size Absorbable Calcium with Vitamin D ("take as much as you like, you'll just excrete what you don't need") and ...ah.

Turns out the Volterol did work, a bit, after all. At least, everything hurt a lot once I'd cut the dose. But it is amazing what you can get done in those wakeful hours.

Was pretty much crippled for most of Sunday, which I did intially blame on Picocon's cheap Guinness: but persistence of symptoms indicates I should get off the sofa and go find Paracetamol. After which I should be able to write a con report.

Rest of life ticks along. Sun is shining. Hyacinths are blooming. 'To do' list is burgeoning. Shall prune it.

Comments

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Sweetie, I have a friend who had very bad calcium deficiency for years (and lactose intollerance).

Do you want me to make enquiries?

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

yes please! Would be interested to hear about symptoms and treatment of calcium deficiency (and how bloody long before the calcium supplements have an effect).

Someone suggested to me that lactose intolerance is primarily genetic in origin. Does your friend have Oriental genes? (Have 1/8 Japanese from great-grandmother).

I should add that in my experience, the more one avoids a non-tolerated substance, the worse the intolerance gets. Oh, and that I have no problem with coffee-with-milk in the USA. Here, standard Starbucks cappucino will make me nauseous at best. Any clue?

Lactose intolerance?

[maryread.livejournal.com]

This is a puzzling issue to me. In the early stages of going non-dairy I tried the "lactaid" dietary supplement that is supposed to make it possible to digest lactose, and it made me sick. (Like cream sauces and parmesan type cheeses, which were right out as soon as I started paying attention to my diet.) Now I think of it as more of a kind of allergy. Now that I am almost entirely dairy-free it is easy to tell what I react to, without having done one of those cumbersome food-allergy isolation diets. I read all the packages -- bakery products are a particular problem, sneaking milk products into bread or biscuits or whatever (although this was actually easier for me to cope with in the UK where there is a lot more understanding of how to accomodate various kinds of vegetarianism). Anything with whey or caseinates is bad for me. Strangely enough I can tolerate goat cheese, and instead of butter I can use ghee (no milk solids) but not most margarines.

Despite all my frothing in separate message, I don't want you to think I want to plaster my idea of what is wrong with you all over what you are experiencing. But I am intensely interested in this, well, range of physical disorder. You have to follow up on whatever works for you, and study your condition, because believe me you have a lot more at stake than anyone who is treating you.

Hi darling

[pecos.livejournal.com]

regarding the US vs UK milk in your coffee, what we do to our 'milk' is nothing short of criminal. Perhaps your intolerance is to some element of the dairy spectrum, something which is snuffed out and discarded in our Germanically effiecient effort to take the milk out of milk. I can tell you that the first time I drank REAL milk (in the ROL) I nearly orgasmed. Anyhow, don't know it that's helpful. I jsut wish I could make you feel better, darling. Here's a kiss, anyhow *

This sounds sadly familiar

[maryread.livejournal.com]

You have my complete sympathy on the pain syndrome. There are more kinds of arthritis than you would believe, including gout and eczema, but now I think it is a sort of catch-all diagnosis when they don't have a clue and the specific blood tests for rheumatoid arthritis and Lyme disease and whatnot have all come back negative. (Did you know three-quarters of the people diagnosed with arthritis are women?) It's a complicated disorder of a complex (and individual) system. Here in the states there is this controversial epidemic of what we call fibromyalgia (don't know what that might be called over there) covering a huge range of symptoms, which I have bought into, except that since there's no cure for it and no understanding of the physical mechanism, it's not much of an improvement on calling it rheumatism. Hurts all over? general fatigue? localized pain that comes and goes at different places? particular pressure-sensitive points? If you rack up eleven of the eighteen possible pressure points, you win a fibromyalgia diagnosis, good for not much. All the treatments are symptomatic anyhow. Treating the sleep disturbance is very important, to relieve the fatigue contributing to the muscle pain.

I found a massage therapist who specialized in fibromyalgia issues, and she was really a help. Largely autodidact on this particular matter, although she was licensed for deep-tissue massage. She suggested the dairy-free diet. Haven't seen her in months, as going to the gym has made a further improvement in my condition -- no more pain meds on a day-to-day basis, just for crisis fatigue situations when it flares up.

But I've been dealing with this for more than ten years. The first couple of years I pretty much lay around hoping that if I rested enough I would feel better. Instead I got out of condition and felt worse, and couldn't do anything either.

Have I written in Acnestis lately about the non-dairy diet? I've been trying that for just about a year now, and it really has made a huge difference in quality of life (gastrointestinal dept). I am still expecting that they will throw me out of Dairyland any time now, but life goes on even without pizza. Soymilk lattes are not worth the bother to me, I go directly to the espresso (with sugar, cafecitos cubanos). In the summer I'll break out the sorbet recipes again.

Calcium supplements can be really hard on your digestion too. Mileage on that varies, as with many drugs. I was taking so many Tums (calcium carbonate) before I went on the non-dairy diet it seemed pretty ludicrous to worry about my calcium intake. There are some questions about calcium absorption of supplements so having that bit of metabolism screwed up is probably worth looking into.

What can I tell you? Pace your activities.