Brrrr!

                                                      

From time to time, I have strange symptoms. I don't ever seem to know what causes them. For a while, my sense of smell was wacked. Was it related to my cancer or my congestive heart failure or the Salmonella I had? Everyone shook their heads in mystification.

During the duration my entire house smelled urine soaked although I knew it wasn't. It was strong enough to gag me at times. All food smelled and tasted as if it was spoiled. I opened a can of peaches and had to throw them out because of the odor. Milk all smelled soured. Cooking chicken gave off an odor of rot.

You don't usually think much about smell. Things simply smell like they are supposed to but let me tell you, when your fragrance detector goes crazy, it is very disconcerting.

In time, my sense of smell returned to normal. I was very grateful for that.

Now that I'm totally over the Salmonella, I feel well. My lone symptom is being constantly cold, not just cold but freezing. It can be 90 degrees outside and I'm wearing my heaviest pants and sweatshirts. (Velour, I've found, is the warmest material you can wear.) I haven't brought any of my summer blouses down from upstairs this summer. 

I have the temperature in the house set at 74 and that's how warm the thermostat says it is but it feels more like 34 to me. My primary reason for taking naps isn't because I'm tired but as an excuse to get under the covers to get warm. My primary reason for taking baths isn't to get clean but to get in hot water and get warm.

My nose is like an ice cube perched on my face. My feet and hands are numb from cold. It feel as if someone is blowing cold air across my shoulders and down my backbone.

Being cold doesn't make you sick and it's not exactly painful but it can be surprisingly incapacitating. You don't feel like doing anything except finding a way to get warm. Sometimes, I sit in the car and let the heater run.

I checked out Google to see what might cause always being cold and found out it might be anemia (I've had a transfusion for anemia but my last labs showed it to be under control.) It could be hypothyroidism but none of the other symptoms are consistent with me. It could be diabetes but my diabetes hasn't been a problem for a long time. It could be anorexia but I know that isn't it.

Of course, WebMD recommends that you see your doctor for tests but I'm pretty well doctored and tested out so I guess I'll just go on being cold. I can't wait for the temperatures to drop enough for the furnace to run. Then I can stand on a heat register.

Cheerleading for Heart Failure

                                                       

You have to have a somewhat morbid sense of humor to cope with illness. When I went to the emergency room, the doctor said - "I have bad news. The spot on your lung is cancer." Then he went on to say: "And...."

"Wait," I asked, "you mean there's more?"

"Yep," he told me, "you also have some congestive heart failure going on."

When I left, I had to chuckle a little at the irony of having two diseases and having to root for one or the other.

"Come on, heart failure!"

After all, who wouldn't rather die in their own bed of a massive heart attack than to linger painfully on while cancer drags you down and down? If that's the way it happened, of course, quickly and suddenly. But no strokes that propel you into a nursing home, please.

Because that is my biggest fear. I'm not afraid to die but I'm terrified of helplessness. I have the best friends in the world but I don't want to have to depend on them anymore than I already do.

And hospice? Oh, God, I have an absolute horror of hospice. I don't want strangers coming to my house to feed or bathe me or even just to pat me on the hand in an effort to comfort me. My prayer has always been - "go away and let me do this on my own."

So that's why I root for heart failure to prevail over cancer in the end.

It's strange too because sometimes the different things you need collide with one another.  I'm anemic and so I take iron pills, iron deficiency being the main cause of anemia. Iron pills lead to constipation. When I read up on anemia, the website said to be sure to take a Probiotic because keeping your colon healthy is very important. Probiotics work in the opposite direction as iron. So you take these two pills and you have to wonder if your body is saying, "make up your damn mind." To go or not to go?

Plenty of food, the anemia website says, is essential.  I hate most of what you're supposed to eat - chard, spinach, beets, liver. Yuck! But one of my two diseases has taken my appetite. I don't know which one to blame. I eat but it is now more of a chore than a pleasure. So, on the one hand your metabolism says, "food, I need food!" and on the other hand, it says, "nothing really sounds good." I remember when I would have given anything to voluntarily curb my appetite. Another irony.

Just for my own curiosity, I'd like to know how many of a certain kind of pill you'd have to take to end things yourself but how do you Google that question? Would anyone answer? Would you get turned and have Adult Protective Services make an emergency welfare check? I have two loaded guns but I'm pretty sure I'd never have guts enough to pull the trigger.

If all this makes me sound depressed, I'm not. I have a rather black sense of humor and if anything, I find the oddnesses life puts in front of you amusing.