Odd maladies

Besides all my traveling and blogging summer, this fall I tried to add fall election campaigns, the presbytery racial-ethnic task force, and the Brown School Parent-Teacher-Student-Association to my already full schedule. Vincent going AWOL was both a cause and effect of that - and something else that has been time-consuming and stressful. Not getting enough sleep and all of this stress and activity can cause health problems. Earlier this fall I suffered a relapse of athlete's foot (see "Chronic malady"). In the wake of Ike and AWOL Vincent, three other unusual health problems appeared. During the Ike aftermath/Vincent AWOL week, I reached down to kiss Stephanie who was lying in bed when Frisco - who had laid down next to her - both jealous and fearful I was going to squash him - scratched and bit me harder than usual. Of everyone in the family, Frisco only bites me (ostensibly because - unlike the other two - I let him decide which walking circuit we'll go on - and the like - Stephanie is the alpha dog - Vincent and Frisco are equals - and I am the low person on the totem pole). You can see the result, this time, above and below.

As you might imagine, this took a while to heal. I believe it was one evening a week or two later when I was doing something I ought to do more - floss my teeth - when I knocked off center one of my two molar crowns. A couple of years ago - after going for two years without going to the dentist - I had to get two root canals and get those teeth crowned. Our dentist seems quite good, but - less than two years ago - one of the crowns was loose. I've been flossing less and less -but somehow I lost my mind the next morning and - as you used to do more soon after the root canals - I started flossing in the car. In this case, my crown came off altogether and went flying through the car. Luckily, I was able to find it on the car floor and I finally put it in the box below (I'll write about its contents later). My dentist took me that morning and she glued and notched the crown back in. She said I was lucky I didn't do what some other people do: swallow it or lose it altogether. Since the crowns cost several hundred dollars, you don't want to lose them outright.

Two years ago after a particularly tough early spring, I went to an allergist - after not having been to one for nearly 30 years (last in Tallahassee and Gainesville when I was a kid). We adopted a three-prong strategy: environmental changes, oral medication, and old-fashioned allergy shots. I don't always make it in there every week. But late in September I got in there on Saturday morning and got a shot that turned out to be 10 or 100 times more potent than the ones I'd been getting. Allergy shots are essentially like immunizations - they expose you to a small concentration of what your body is allergic to - in my case, grasses, trees, dust, ragweed, cats, dogs, horses, and feathers - and build up your body's resistance. Over time they increase the strength of the shots. In my case, however, we may (with increasing the strength) have to go more slowly or stop sooner, because I may be so allergic that I can't take the shots in the concentrations that some other people can. My arm swelled and got very itchy. I didn't go back for a couple of weeks. By that time, me having called them, they prmised to go back to the old concentration/strength.

In the mean time, I put cream (below) on the arm where I got the shot (above), but I don't think this really helped much.

We'll see what additional odd maladies can beset me this fall.

-- Perry