Muscle Memory

I had my first workout with Marlon on Thursday, my first with him since late 2004 or maybe 2005. I walked in feeling very confident, knowing what I needed and having asked for it. I was clear about my goals, and Marlon is very goal-oriented, for himself and for his clients. I was already warmed up when I arrived, since I'd walked on the elliptical for 30 minutes back at my "home gym." Marlon was finishing up with his previous client so he said I should use the foam roller, a torture device by lying on which you can "massage" your own muscles.


I laid the side of my right leg on it and rolled and it hurt. I expected that and grit my teeth for a few rolls back and forth, then did the left side, which hurt even more. I expected that too - the left side is the damaged side from the wreck. I rolled that only a couple times. Then I did my usual stretches to kill the next few minutes until Marlon got to me.


Marlon placed the roller against my buttocks and had me lean back onto it to roll up and down my back. I rolled up (toward my shoulders) and then down, and Marlon said, "You look excited about working out." I said, "I feel scared" and burst into tears. Marlon sat in front of me, looked me in the eyes, and instead of saying "Everything is going to be okay," he said, "I'm scared too. It's been a long time since we worked together, and you've had this really traumatic thing happen to your body." Indeed, how I felt was that this burst of emotion was about the car wreck, unleashed first by the pressure on my IT band (the muscle that runs over the hip and down the outside of the leg), then on my low back, the parts of my body most impacted, in both senses of the word, by the car accident.


I thought about whether my outburst was due to outside reasons, like being tired, or being frustrated that my body isn't as strong now as it has been in the past. But I really think that it is because the body holds emotions of which we are not aware, and holds onto memory in a physical way. We say "muscle memory" to describe the unconscious way that once we've learned something, we just know how to do it without thinking about it - like swimming, or balancing on a bicycle, or the footwork in a dance step. I think that my left leg and low back hold the memory of the accident and fear about getting injured, and the pressure brought all that to the forefront suddenly and overwhelmingly.


Separate from that, the tears made me realize that when I see someone doing something stupid in a car, like cutting through lanes or merging aggressively or thoughtlessly, I do not immediately feel annoyance. My first feeling is fear and my first thought is, "You do not have my permission to hurt me." I often assume that they will merge into me, or that they can't or won't see the car I'm driving. It is why I am a much more cautious driver than I used to be: I do not believe that drivers are always conscious that their cars cannot be in the same place as my car.


Anyway, Marlon and I got through it. He reassured me that he would not let me hurt myself, and would teach me how not to hurt myself when we are not together. He knows me well enough to know that I have a tendency to run with what he teaches me with a little too much, how to put it?, enthusiasm.

Starting Again

I have gone back to the personal trainer I worked with after the car wreck. There is a long backstory behind this, but it's not very interesting. Suffice to say that between not dancing and not going to the gym, my mind has been pretty disconnected from my body. I haven't been going to the gym not because I didn't want to, but because the last two times I did I threw my back out to some degree or another, even with low weights. My body knew I needed to get back to my trainer, but my mind didn't make the time to do it. A couple weeks ago I contacted him and asked if he would take me back. He, of course, said, "Yes, baby. When?"


What made me really examine the state my body is in was a massage I got at the chiropractor's office. I'd attended a two-hour lunch meeting and sat at a table with my arms folded. My shoulder was sore afterwards, but when it continued to hurt the next day I decided to actually get it massaged. My shoulder hurt during most of the holidays, and I figured it was stress exacerbated by the way I hold books, and I read a lot of books in November, December, and January. I started working on holding books in a different way, and then spent many hours watching the Olympics rather than reading. And then my shoulder was right back where it was after a two hour meeting!


I got a 30-minute deep tissue massage and I must admit that it really hurt at times. I could hear the muscle "crackle" at the MT was pushing it around with her elbow, could feel the huge mass wrapped around the shoulder blade. When I left, I felt really, really sad. I had spent so much time ignoring what I needed! Telling myself that I was paying attention now didn't make me feel much better - even though that's what I always say to people when they remark that they wished they'd known or done something earlier. I called Marlon a few days later.


We met on Monday for an assessment appointment - which consisted of me telling Marlon why I was there, and then doing many squats with my arms over my head. I told him that I am done throwing my back out, and I can't seem to complete workouts without doing it. The assessment told him that the muscles that support my back are weak and that most of the muscles in my body are really tight, and that we could work on all of that. My attitude about training has always been "Bring it on"; I recognize that there's a macho thing at work in my head, but it gets the job done. It's really different for me having someone who acts like they really want me to succeed at things I think I'm not good at.


Tuesday night I came up with my own list of goals. Here they are in order of importance:

Strengthen core and glute muscles
-core strength
- support my back
- improve one-legged balance

Lift up to 40 pounds
- increase muscle strength in arms, chest, and upper back
- increase leg strength

Super-long term goals
- not throw my back out anymore
- grace and strength in dancing
- strong bones when elderly


I really like Marlon, and I think it's always good to have a friend or two who isn't much like me. We make each other laugh a lot, which makes it easier to work with him. And like I said, the macho thing helps with my attitude. I feel like I walked in to his gym with confidence, and making this list makes me feel even more confident: I have clear goals, which makes me feel more confident about reaching them.

Dark Fantasies

November 10, 2008

Kaiser started harassing me to get a mammogram at the beginning of the summer. For some reason my birthday had defaulted to 1/1/68 so as soon as I joined I was late to get it done. When the birthday thing was finally straightened out, they left me alone for about six weeks, and then they started again. I made the appointment for the second Thursday of October, and I tried to approach the day with a "rite of passage" attitude.


I was given the most elaborate hospital gown I've ever seen, a cloth one that wrapped all the way around like a monk's cassock, held closed by the second sleeve. Despite the elaborate garb, I wound up not feeling like I'd experienced a rite of passage, but feeling just that virtuous "preventative care" feeling I get after leaving the dentist. They sent me on my way with the promise of a postcard with the results.

[Note for those of you who wonder what it's like: It didn't hurt. I've had men squeeze my breasts harder. For the record, though, the radiology tech said that it's different for everyone, depending on breast size and time in your cycle, as well as - though she didn't say this - pain tolerance levels].


The postcard came, dated October 15:
I did not wait seven days to be contacted. I called after four days to make the return visit, which was scheduled for Nov. 6. I barely spoke to anyone about the return visit, because I was trying not to think about it. That was easier than it would have been otherwise, because of the Presidential campaigns and the Prop. 8 campaigns winding up to fever pitch (and the no on 8 campaign winding up at all). Everyone I knew was absorbed in politics talk, as was I.


When I thought about the return visit to Mammography, I found myself thinking, against my will and against my superstitions, about what I was going to say about what was happening. Telling Zirpu, who's already got a lot going on. Imagining telling my brother and my mother, who already lost someone to cancer. How much and when I would tell the volunteers at work. Whether the Bi Women's Group was even going to apply to my life during this. Telling myself I would "beat this thing," imagining the faces and names of women I know who have. Then I would quickly veer away, and force myself to think about something else.


I was really annoyed with myself for indulging in these dark fantasies. I knew that these were the first mammograms I've had and that Kaiser, having nothing to compare these pictures to, was being as cautious as they've been with Zirpu's heart. So I would repeat all this to myself when I was imagining the bad stuff.


I went back to Kaiser, and this time bypassed the fancy gown. I told the woman who offered it to me that I would decline it to save resources, though the real reason why I did was because Shmeen told me I could. "You don't have to look like a patient just because it makes them feel better, " she said, "Besides, it's stupid. You wear it for five minutes and then they put it in the wash. Stupid!"


The first thing I asked the radiology tech was if I would know anything before I left that day because I did not want to get bad results off a postcard. She said a doctor would look at the x-rays right away and meet with me within about ten minutes. She took the pictures and I went to wait for results. In those eight minutes I coached myself to not freak out if the doc told me they wanted to take a biopsy. I reminded myself to go into crisis management mode to take care of business, get the appointment made for as soon as possible, and freak out later.


The rad tech came out and told me the pictures showed nothing, and everything is fine. She noted that I have dense breast tissue, which once she mentioned it I realized I'd heard that before during breast exams at an annual physical or two. She said I should tell the rad techs at future mammograms so they could compensate for that when posing my breasts for the mammogram machine.


"Everything is fine." Great words to hear. That's why I start this story with those words.

Amoebas of Doom

Saturday night, Dibu, Rouzi, and I went to hear the Amoebas of Doom play at a bar in San Francisco. The Amoebas include the Trained Killer (in bleach-blond wig) and sing a bunch of late 70s and 80s songs, with a few more recent mixed in. Kind of like listening to KFOG about ten years ago, actually.


I used to say that the Amoebas sang "classic rock" but I started paying attention to what they were playing, and the songs were ones on the radio when I was in high school. That's not classic rock - that's the soundtrack of my adolescence. So besides the Amoebas being my friends, I always have fun at their gigs - I like all the songs they play, and they play them well.


When they played "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" by The Clash, of course I started to pogo. That's what we did at my high school - jump up and down bouncing our heads on the slow parts, and on the fast parts, spin and stomp in place. The place was mostly filled with people who were very young when that song came out, and Rouzi and Dibu don't pogo, I guess. So I was on my own, but when the music moves ya. . .


I snapped something in my neck because I was hurting by the time I got home. I figured that heat would help - it didn't. Yesterday my left shoulder and neck were hurting, and dipping my head forward (like to read small print on a monitor screen, for example) sent shooting pain down my back.


This afternoon I went to the chiropractor and told him I'd hurt myself pogo-ing. He looked at me blankly, so I said, "C'mon, you're not that much older than I am, you must know how to pogo!" He shook his head, so I described it to him.


It turns out that the chiro is a big Prince fan, and has been listening to Prince's records since the first one came out in 1978. He said he'd just purchased the DVD of Purple Rain to watch with his kids. Then he told me the story of when his niece got married a few years ago, she had him called up on to the dance floor. She explained that she remembered dancing The Bird with her uncle, and had him lead the guests in the dance. The chiro used to play basketball in college and is over six feet tall; with his long arms, it must have been quite the spectacle.


My pogo-ing days may be over, but not hearing the Amoebas!

Was Too Busy, Now Too Much Pain

During the weeks between New Mexico and Portland everything was full tilt boogie, with little time to write a post even if my head had been in the game, which it wasn't.


This week my head was in the game, and I threw my back out on Tuesday... The serious pain kicked in Friday night and I'm sitting as little as possible. I've been watching the Olympics while rocking side to side on my hips, or lying on the couch reading. I've also been working, which sucks. I went to the chiropractor today and now I'm hoping on the way up out of this pain.


So I've come to the end of this post as I've come to the end of my wanting to sit anymore. I'm sorry, as I have had some ideas to write about (finally!) and I just can't do it. But I am thinking about the blog... I haven't given up on it yet. So I've come to the end of this post as I've come to the end of my wanting to sit anymore. But I'll leave a photo for your viewing pleasure. Extra points if you recognize the quote on the cake.

Oil on the Water

I can barely think about this oil spill. I do not want to go to a beach, though I'm happy other people are helping clean up the spill even when they are told to stay away.


Yesterday I saw a picture of an oil-coated bird at SFGate's Day In Pictures and that was the first I heard of the spill in Russia, which is much, much larger.


I can't think about that, either. It's tied too closely to my feelings about the apocalypse, environmental degradation, and the end of the world. I just feel hopeless about it.

Beef. It's What's For Dinner.

I used to love James Garner's voice. I would sit through the ads (this was before DVRs and TiVo) just to listen. He stopped doing voiceover work for the Beef Council or whoever it is who sponsors those ads when he had heart bypass surgery. Because of DVR I never hear ads, so I never hear him extolling the virtues - or rather, American value - of Chevy trucks.


I'm not opposed to prepared food from time to time. I'm not one of those people who builds my own barbecue sauces and avoids things that come in packages at all costs. I do cook, and do so often, but I build in a night a week when I don't have to come in and chop and all that stuff. That's why crockpot meals show up so often in my menu planning.


This evening however we had quinoa (of which I cooked much too much, as usual), a packaged salad that really needed to be eaten, and "Maui Beef" from Trader Joe's. It's rather teriyaki-ish, but this is the thing: We eat very little beef here, and you know, it just tastes good. I was brought up on hamburgers and steaks (hey, it was the '70's) and now I eat beef less than once a month. We're all about chicken, pork, fish, and ground turkey around here.


I managed to do something I knew I would do this evening. The pot of quinoa boiled over a little and when I moved the pot off the flame I saw that some quinoa grains and water had spilled under it. As I decided to wipe up the spill under the pot frame (the thing that you put the pot on, with the flame underneath), I thought, "It is likely that I will burn myself unless I am very careful."


I went ahead and wasn't careful, and I did burn myself - three times. My left thumb is definitely worse for it, but I don't think it will blister. I'm not sure why I went ahead and chose to clean it up the way I did. I tend to be rather cavalier with my fingers. I did use a fork for the hot food, though.

Headache

This is a word a consistently mispronounce inside my head when I'm reading: The "ch" sound always comes through (this happens with "chaos" also).


The charms of English.


However, I have a terrible one that landed on me this morning and never totally went away. Zirpu and I went to The Turf Club to attend a fundraising brunch for the Lighthouse Community Center. We wound up eating breakfast much later than we would have otherwise, and I had a small mimosa. The headache came on on the way home, and we went to see The Bourne Ultimatum as planned. The hand-held camera work throughout the film did not help my headache. Drinking a bunch of water and eating lunch around 3pm didn't relieve it, though I felt fine when I was working out at the gym this evening. I came home and the headache came back while I checking my email.


All this is to say that this is where this post is going to end, because reading is making the headache worse. I'm going to lie down in the dark (good thing it's close to bedtime).

Parting Out

When I'm dead, I won't need my body anymore. While I have greater appreciation for this machine now than I did before the car accident, I don't consider my body to be the total, or even the main part, of who I am. I plan to use my body for a long time, to use it up and wear it out. If any of it is still usable when I'm done with it, I want whatever organs to be used by someone else. As many as fifty people can be helped by one person's organ donation.


Today I caught the end of Heart and Soul on BBC World Service which was also about organ transplants. It's apparently a religious program (oh, I resist spelling it "programme") but I came in so late I missed any religious overtones. One of the speakers was the mother of a 19 year old British Jew who was killed by a suicide bomber on a bus. His heart went to a 7 year old Palestinian, and the mother says, "I was overwhelmed by the feeling of gratitude I got from [the recipient's family]... I realized my loss was her gain. Their miracle was my tragedy, and their greatest happiness was my greatest sadness. And there's nothing you can do about that... And when I saw that little girl, I just felt good that something good was able to come out of such a terrible waste, such a terrible tragedy."


It's known that the best way to make sure that your organs get donated is to tell everyone you know that you want your organs given away when you're done with them. I know Zirpu knows this, and I have a Do Not Resuscitate order with my will, should that ever come up. I know that my friends will remember me, and while I don't need this, anyone using my body parts will remember me too. I'll live on, in more ways than one.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go avert the evil eye.

My Body Remembers

It was a year ago Tuesday that I left my last (paid) job.


I told myself at the time that things would turn out for the best, and they have, now. It is not easy to take the long view when I can't see the road ahead, let alone whether it is rocky and steep. I had times when I just had to tell myself to believe "Everything will be okay" even when I felt really awful.


This week I've been stressed out, sore, and tired. I know I'm tired because I haven't been eating properly (you know what I had for lunch today? Candy!) and I've been working hard at work: We've been short at least one person four days this week and Thursday mornings are brutal when I go to bed so late on Wednesday nights. I'm sore because my left shoulder has a big knot in it, tying up the trapezium all the way to my ear. I don't know why I'm stressed out, though. Not having enough volunteers is nothing in comparison to processing hundreds of loans in a week, or listening for the pager in my sleep, and I get to run around and drive the van to the quiet of the warehouse every day.


I'm not aware that I'm stressed and can't think of what it would be, though Zirpu points out that he is under a lot of pressure so maybe it is rubbing off on me. I've had some experience with Rosen Method bodywork and I believe that my body "holds" difficult situations the same way my mind does. I've known that I have this reaction to anniversaries for years, and I still don't know how to handle what my body does with them. Last June was a tough, tough month, so it could be that last June is backing up on me, even though in this moment everything is okay.

Asking For Help

I used to be really bad at this. In fact, I remember the first time I asked for help in a professional situation, while I was working at Letty Owings. I don't remember what it was that I asked for help with; I know that there were several things that needed to be done at once, and I remember realizing I can't do it all myself and It will be okay if I ask the children's counselor to do part of it. Recently I have been reminded that I have gotten better at it, because I asked for help.


It's summer and we have been getting a lot of produce from the Alameda Farmers' Market. There's a lot of it on Mondays and it has to be gone through pretty closely to pull the stuff that turned overnight. When I went in this morning there was plenty of time to deal with it all, but then I noticed ants all over the bread table. Just dealing with the bread and the ants took the time of four volunteers, the FBD, and I working all at once to get everything cleaned up (and we had to throw out many boxes of bread, unfortunately), which not only took an hour but meant that the things we would have been doing otherwise wasn't getting done.


As it happened, two of our usual Monday morning volunteers didn't come today. We had over a dozen boxes of produce that needed to be sorted and organized and when the Trader Joe's delivery came there was more stuff to display or put away, and bread and pastries to lay out on the table. I was sorting produce and was watching the clock, wondering, as always, whether we were really going to get done for service to start on time. Then I realized that I hadn't done the inventory on the front meat freezer and didn't know what was in the back meat freezer, the one where we store the meat when it comes in, and that the egg cartons still needed to be looked through and broken eggs tossed.


I asked the FBD if he could do the meat freezer for me. It's my job to make sure the program happens, and it wasn't going to happen without another body to tote and haul. Of course he agreed, even though I knew it was pulling him away from director-type stuff. Two other volunteers were helping with the produce already, and another volunteer was stocking up the set bags and boxes. Another volunteer arrived and offered to go through the egg cartons, a job I usually do because I'm not squeamish.


It's really really nice to have so much good fresh produce to offer people, even though it usually overwhelms me for the first few minutes. I just pick something to start with and I do it, with a running list of what else needs to be done in the back of my head. That MO is what has always led me into just handling everything myself. Now I remember that I don't have to.

Once again, not what I was going to write about

I was thinking about posting a couple of things, a long thoughtful post about identity, or another story from my life (it's still hot, and I'm still thinking about ice cream with Mrs. P).

But I slammed my index finger in the front door this morning and I can't really type.


I was heading to the gym and shut the door by pulling it closed from the side rather than the doorknob - and then I didn't pull my hand out of the way in time.


It hurt so much that my whole hand hurt. I almost caused myself to faint from hyperventilating while I tried to think of anything that would make it feel better. I held the finger in a cup of cold water and I took some ibuprofen, which helped, but it still hurts like the dickens. The end of my finger is swollen with the bruise (which has gotten worse over the preceding twelve hours), trapped under the nail. It's taking me a long time to type this because I can only use four fingers. Because I don't use the ten-finger method, I rely a lot upon my right index finger and I can't even bend it without putting pressure on the bruise, so I am stuck using my middle finger for index finger letters and my ring finger(!) for middle finger letters.


I wonder how long this is going to take to heal, how much more purple my finger is going to get, and if I will lose the nail (I don't think so, but I've never had this happoen before so what do I know?).

Planning ahead

We finished the "Living Well With Diabetes" course at Kaiser tonight. We attended the first class in February, and then because Zirpu was sick one night and we were in Mexico for another night, we attended the rest of the sessions, two weeks ago and tonight, to finish up. The Registered Dietitian teaching the course even had "graduation certificates" for everyone.


There were only about half the people in the class during tonight's session than there were two weeks ago. I was interested to see who wasn't there. One was a man who asked repeated questions trying to get the RD teaching the class to tell him that he could continue having his customary two scotch-on-the-rocks each night. The RD didn't lay down any hard rule about not drinking, though alcohol can make blood glucose go wacky. She pointed out, several times, that alcohol is made up of carbohydrates and diabetics need to limit their carbohydrate intake (more so than non-diabetics). The visual that came to my mind was similar to the riddle we used to ask each other in elementary school, "Which is heavier? A ton of feathers or a ton of lead?" The lead takes up much less room, just the way that a small butterscotch holds about the same amount of carbohydrates as a piece of bread.


People in the health professions have learned that coming down hard on patients about their lifestyles doesn't inspire much more than guilt, so it's all about presenting choices or possibilities now, like "How about smoking less?" or "Try walking ten more minutes a day." The RD tried hard with this man, but he was either being really obtuse or just resistant. All through the course, the RD took this approach about making choices and said it is no big crime to "mess up" and eat something you shouldn't, or eat more than you should, like at a party or something. You just start over. When someone else in the class said that she had been with a group of friends who wanted to go to a restaurant that didn't have anything she was supposed to eat, the RD suggested that she say she is taking better care of her health now and she won't be able to eat there, and they can go there and she'll go somewhere else and meet up later, if need be.


Another man who was there last week and not this week had clearly showed up because someone had told him he better go. I imagined a family member ordered that he show up. He came late, didn't listen to most of the lecture and discussion, and then left early saying it was time for his beer.


At the end of the class, the RD put up an overhead saying what she had said in the first class: "This is YOUR diabetes, only YOU can manage it. If you don't IT will manage you." I learned a lot about diabetes and how I can support Zirpu in managing it so we avoid all the complications that come with unmanaged diabetes.


The course reinforced my idea that this is the only body I have, and the few replacements parts are expensive and slow to be installed, kind of like those for my mom's old Renault 12. I'm operating with the assumption I am going to be around for a long time, and I want Zirpu to be around at least as long. I want our bodies to last as long as our lives do.

No Big Deal

Last night around 830 Zirpu and I were coming back from Kaiser and the second session of the diabetes class. We were having an animated discussion about the tree pruning and removal that we are planning - he is planning, which is why it was animated, because I wasn't clear on for much work Zirpu was getting the estimate. Both of us had been extremely annoyed by one of the people in the class, which was adding to the "animation" of our conversation.


Anyway, I was driving a little too fast when we turned off the highway and I didn't feel like I was paying close enough attention. People tend to be a little careless about red lights (and about getting out of the way of emergency vehicles) in Hayward, and I ran a yellow light. We were approaching another light and when I saw it was turning yellow I decided I would stop for it, even though it would be a rather sudden stop.


Did you know that I've had to take two defensive driving courses for jobs I've held in the past? I saw that there was a car waiting to turn right from a gas station, but we were in the left-hand lane. I looked out the rearview mirror to see that there were no cars behind us, and I slammed on the brakes and we stopped. Right afterwards, we got bumped.


I was severely startled. Mind you, the last time I was bumped by another car it was when I got t-boned on the highway and she hit me going probably at least 50mph. My first thought was that we had to get out of the road and was momentarily confused about whether to leave the car in "drive" and move it, or just put it in park and turn on the blinkers.


I asked Zirpu to hop out and talk to the guy. I needed a minute to catch my breath and pull myself together. A minute was about all it took for Zirpu and the other driver to determine that our bumper was slightly scratched on the right corner and he'd lost a left headlight, and neither were worth exchanging information over. Zirpu got back in the car and advised me that "sometimes it's better just to go through the light."


I was furious.


I took a walk when we got home. I could feel that my lower back was cramping up and my left hip was hurting. I figured that the hip was a psychosomatic reaction, and that walking was probably the right thing to do, plus I had some adrenalin that needed expressing. For the first two years after the big wreck my big fear was that I would be in another car accident before I was recovered from that one. One of the reasons I keep doing weight training and in particular exercises for my back and hips is that I think I was in pretty good health when I was in that wreck and wasn't hurt nearly as badly as I could have been. When I wasn't in the best possible health, when I was still recovering, being re-injured was a huge concern for me. I want to be in the best possible health should something like that happen again.



It was no big deal. But it seemed like my body thought it was.

This isn't what I was going to write about

I got hit with my food allergy today.

I'm allergic to peanuts, always have been, since the first time someone gave me a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup when I was three or four years old. I am, fortunately, not allergic to peanut oil, nor the scent of peanuts (some people are). Until about six or seven years ago, the most obvious manifestation of the allergy was respiratory distress - the feeling of my throat closing up. The more dangerous symptom, however, was that my blood pressure would drop. Now the allergy takes the form of my stomach swelling and nausea. My stomach hurts, too: The time I got hit with the allergy the worst after its manifestation changed, I felt like there was a mace inside my stomach, and I wound up looking four months pregnant.


It is anaphylaxis, a pretty common severe allergy reaction. I wish I could say I carry a bottle of Benadryl and an Epi-Pen all of the time, but I don't. I try to take it with me when I'm going out to dinner at an unknown place or in a hotel, on planes, and when I'm more than twenty minutes from a hospital. But mostly I don't eat stuff that gives me the willies, like cookies baked at home (unless I can talk to the baker) or those from a package of mixed cookies, or label-less candy that I can't cut in half. I read labels and I talk to servers in African, Chinese, and Thai restaurants.


Today, I got hit by a samosa. In fact I'm fairly certain it was the red sauce on the samosa; I bought it from a vendor at the Farmers' Market, and when he asked, I said yes to cilantro/mint sauce. I even asked what was in it, which I usually don't. When he smeared on the sweet red sauce as well, I didn't ask him what was in it, nor did I refuse the red- and green- smeared samosa. I would not be surprised to learn that he uses ground peanuts in the red sauce (of course, I hope he does, or uses them in the samosas themselves, because that's vastly preferable to not knowing what the reaction was for). Usually I can taste peanuts, but not over the spicy heat of this thing today, so the itchy mouth was my only warning. Instead of going back to the dance studio for the afternoon dance party, we came home and I swallowed four teaspoons of Benadryl and brushed my teeth. Then I sat in the blue chair, read, and felt sick and sleepy for four hours.


The strongest emotion I have about my food allergy is annoyance. It screws up the rest of my day, because I feel sick and because the Benadryl makes me groggy. I mostly feel annoyance at myself, because I'm the one who controls what I put in my mouth. I also get annoyed at the food preparer when I'm allergic to foods that shouldn't have peanuts in them, which happened once each with enchilada sauce and pesto (or samosas and associated sauces!). Before I left home, my mom tried to terrify me with the story of the girl who'd died eating chili at the college cafeteria, but I just didn't eat chili - that is, until I met Chili Fritos [see his 01/23/07 post]. I may have walked to the Food Services Office and asked if there was peanut butter in the chili, but I don't remember.


The only good things about my allergy are: 1) I have an early warning symptom, in that my mouth itches immediately after the first bite; and 2) I don't like peanuts or peanut butter, or candy that includes either. In fact, I can't bring myself to eat soy or other nut butters because they look so much like peanut butter. One time I made these almond butter cookies, even pressing them with a fork for the traditional pattern, and felt like I was getting away with something when I ate the first one.


I was going to write about this writing project (is blogging about blogging a meta-post?) but that will have to wait until I have the brains to go with the time.

Heart of my heart

The cover story of February's edition of National Geographic is titled "Healing The Heart." It's appropriate for February, when stylized hearts are everywhere, though I don't think those hearts look as much like hearts as they do the Mound of Venus (if you don't know where that is on a woman's body, the part that looks like a heart really does. It should be obvious to you, if she lets you look at her while she's nude).

The real heart weighs a little over half a pound and pumps a gallon and a half of your blood through your 60,000 miles of arteries. That's two hundred trips from our house in the East Bay to Shmeen and Shman's house in Los Angeles. The arteries that feed the heart look a little like the Mississippi Delta, branching into smaller and smaller arteries. When one of these arteries gets totally blocked, that's when a heart attack happens. The part of the muscle fed by that artery doesn't get oxygen, seizes up, and dies. If too much of the heart goes without oxygen for too long, it won't recover from the damage.

This is an angiogram of Zirpu's heart before he received a stent to open the left anterior descending artery, which serves 40% of the heart with oxygen. If it's not clear, the point of blockage is circled.


The next picture is of the same artery after the stent was inserted. The doctor sends a small tube of tiny chicken wire wrapped around a balloon on the end of a wire through the femoral artery at the groin. When it gets to the right place, she or he inflates the balloon when the stent is in place. Then the balloon is deflated and the balloon and wire are pulled out of the body. These days, they do 5,000 of these procedures at the Kaiser in San Francisco every year, so I felt pretty comfortable that they were going to take care of my husband. Imagine being the first person to agree to this treatment!


I didn't see either of these pictures until after the procedure, of course, and when I saw the "before" picture - which, you have to realize, was after the stent had been put in - I got really scared in retrospect.

Eating in class is allowed - even required

Last night Zirpu and I went to Kaiser for the first session of the "Living Well With Diabetes" class. There were about a dozen people in the class, ranging in age from mid-30s to about 70. One person besides myself was along as a non-diabetic "supportive spouse" and the others were, with the exception of Zirpu, diagnosed between six years and two months ago. I learned a lot about what diabetes actually is, what is going on in the body in Type 1 and in Type 2. The dietitian teaching the class said over and over, "This is YOUR diabetes and YOU can manage it and avoid these problems." I think that she says this in her lectures to get people to understand that they are the only ones who can manage their blood sugar, and the only ones who can track it.

One of the things the dietitian said is that it's important to eat several hours before going to bed. No one at the class had eaten; the class runs from 530 to 8pm, right through dinnertime (in fact, we had come directly from the BART station). I had brought egg-less salad sandwiches, but we didn't eat them until afterwards. It didn't seem to right to break out food when we didn't stop for a break and no one else had any. Next time, the dietitian said, bring something to eat during class. I've already planned to bring sandwiches again next week.

Here's the egg-less salad I made last night:

one block firm tofu, drained and squeezed
low-fat mayonnaise
yellow mustard
turmeric (for color more than anything else)
pepper
sweet pickle relish (more than you think is enough)

Combine all to the consistency you like your egg salad. Allow to rest for at least two hours before eating so flavors can meld.

You can also add the stuff you might usually add to egg salad, like celery, or onions, or curry powder, or whatever herbs and seasonings you like. It won't be exactly like egg salad, but it will be more like egg salad than a Gardenburger is like a hamburger. If you're trying to stay away from cholesterol, or you don't like eggs, or you're trying to think of something to serve Kosher friends, this is the way to go.



A short note: Rest in peace, Molly Ivins. Or rather, give 'em hell!