Category: Rant

Categories Blog Health Personal Rant

Health Update + Server Upgrade Reminder

Reminder that my host Webhostpython upgrades the server my account is on today! There should be only minimal downtime, and everything will be back up ASAP!

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Not dealing well with the heat since my last post :/

Yesterday was a bad, I felt really poorly around midday – I think my body just got overwhelmed what with the heat, migraine attack, bowels stuff and my period beginning all going on at the same moment. I felt restless, sweaty even though I wasn’t hot and like I must lay down, I felt so bad and out of sorts. So stripped down naked, pointed the floor fan towards my bed, drink more salt/baking soda water to hydrate and went to lie down and just rested. It felt good right away, but especially once the fan had cooled my back down – then I was able to relax. I rested for about three hours but I don’t think I dozed off, and then felt mostly okay and got up. Even my migraine attack was gone, even though I still had twinges if I moved too abruptly.

I was also able to sleep most of the night which makes such a huge difference 😀 I did take some melatonin to help falling asleep, but that doesn’t always do anything for me so I don’t know if it really did anything or not. Main thing is I got some sleep! 😀

I’ve already been to the grocery store today (it’s 7.23AM as I write this) to avoid the worst heat of the day, as it’s only 22C outside still I don’t have to have to have the fan on yet 😀 Right now it’s good! Today and tomorrow should be the only two heat wave days left, and then starting with Sunday, it’s should go down to 25 and lower then on 😀 Maybe I’ll survive yet!

Categories Blog Health Personal Rant

Summer’s First Heat Wave + Question About Terms

Picture from Pixabay. Because this is where I long to be right now.

Today is the fourth day of this summer’s first heat wave. I’m doing… not okay, but surviving and taking measures to keep hydrated and as cool as I can. Sleep is suffering a lot: I haven’t truly slept for five days… instead I’m just sort of hibernating – not asleep, but not really wake/conscious either at night. So far migraine is dealing with the lack of sleep and heat well, even though I have a hard pressure in my head almost all the time and have to take a lot of pills. Fingers crossed!

I’m very happy and relieved though that the first proper heat wave happened only the last week of June and not earlier. The first three weeks were lovely, pretty much what I like in the summer as far as weather goes – warm enough to be out in a t-shirt and thin, summery loose pants/skirt and sandals. It could’ve been a little more cloudy because that what my eyes and migraine like, but when the sun was out, it wasn’t too hot even for me as long as shade was available for any longer duration. And May was cold, so me being me, I loved that.

I really, truly was scared of the summer this year, after last year’s monster from hell. I never think about the upcoming summer during the in-between months, but I did several times this time, fearing that this summer would be another three month long monster. But so far it doesn’t look like it – last year this time, we’d already had been having the heat wave for more than a month, so this summer’s already winning!! Today’s weather forecast shows that Sunday should be only 25 degrees again (Celcius), instead of the 30-31 we’ve had now for four days and looks like will have for other four days.

Even if disaster strikes there will be a prolonged heat wave, there’s really only July left of “real summer”. Because evenings and nights in August start to get colder, even if days are still hot, so it simply can’t be as unbearable as it is now because you can cool everything down in the evening. So no bloody heat wave three month summer monster from hell this year! Yay! :mrgreen: 

BTW – is there an English term for a heat wave that is no longer a wave? When it stays abnormally hot for an unusual number of weeks or even months?

Because in Finnish what we’re having right now is called “helle”, which is the word the “really fucking hot” and has nothing to do how long it lasts – helle just describes that the weather has passed from “kuuma” (normal hot weather, to be expected in the summer normally) to really fucking hot (to be expected of only a handful of days during summer).

So when it’s 23 degrees out we say it’s “kuuma” (hot), and when it’s above 25 degrees, we say it’s “helle” “really fucking hot”.  When “helle” lasts only for about a week at the most, we can also call it “helleaalto” (heat wave), but when it goes on and one, it’s just “helle”, no “aalto” (wave) about it.

The last several years the number of consecutive “helle” and just “helle” days in general have been increasing in number, so I’ve been wondering it’s there’s a one word term for really fucking hot in English like we do 😀 

PS. Sorry using profanity to describe in the above paragraphs- I just feel like that particular word describes my feelings about and the nature of “helle” perfectly!

Health Update + Hot Weather + Jeri Ryan Site
Categories Blog Health Personal Rant

Health Update + Hot Weather + Jeri Ryan Site

God I miss winter! Hence the picture. It’s from Pixabay.

Heat wave

Heat wave is not much of a  wave anymore – something that comes and goes like in summers of the past. More and more they just come and stay 😕 Summer’s barely started and we’ve already had 21 heat wave days this year 😐  Today’s going to be the hottest day so far in my city, 31 Celcius. It’s not yet 10am, I’ve already had the fan on for hour and I’m already so done with today, it’s already much too  hot… how the hell am I going to make it through the day? I’m on the very edge of a migraine attack and my head feels nasty, and there’s noise outside in the distance and sometimes closer that sounds like maybe the grass cutters will come around. Hopefully not today, those drivable machines make a horrible noise and my head really, really can’t take it today, and I’d have to close my back door and windows to make the noise bearable which would make my apartment feel like that there is no air because it’s so hot inside.

Health

In the Finnish Crohn’s Disease Facebook group there are people there whose symptoms worsen a lot during hot weather. I haven’t noticed this myself before, but the last few weeks it’s been a tiny bit worse. But my symptoms vary enough, come and go, that I can’t be sure. Just that this latest while of a little bit more active symptoms happened simultanously with the hot weather.

I haven’t slept in about three weeks now. Part of is the hot weather no doubt, but mostly I think it’s my iron levels… namely the lack of them. All I get is about 30 mins of sort of maybe kind of lousy sleep, that doesn’t feel like I slept at all, totalling about 2-3 hours. Mostly I think it’s because my ferritin is still much too low, close to zero, and the last time I slept this badly, the ferritin was about the same as it is now. I slept much better when it got over 30, but when it was 43 the doctor said I can stop taking iron  every day and to only take it during my period. I’ve read that IBD patients should have ferritin the minimum of 100, but the doctors here don’t seem to know/believe that. 43 is the highest mine’s ever been, and that lasted only about year – as soon as I stopped taking it every day, it came down to 9 (and CRP was 14 so it propably was/is closer to zero actually) within the year.

Now I’ve taking iron again since November, but it’s got up only to 21 which is what it was for a decade at least and that’s when I had so many bad sleeping problems. Not to mention terrible tiredness. Tiredness has never gone away, but sleeping was so much better for a while when the ferritin was around 40. I hate that the doctors ignore ferritin so much here, they don’t really know about it or believe that ferritin actually does anything, and that ferriting being 15 for women of childbearing age is totally okay! (Their own Doctor’s Handbook states that ferritin under 30 is empty and needs to be fixed but somehow that doesn’t count) But that it’s bad if men have it so low because their ferritin is apparently supposed to be like 150 or more 😯  Iron infusions are almost impossible to get unless you go to like one of the about five doctors in the entire country (who have private practices) that understand about ferritin and do infusions if oral iron supplements don’t help, or you can’t take them. If you pay out of pocket for everything, of course. Even IBD patients who aren’t supposed to take iron orally by the Doctor’s Handbook are told to take it orally and if they can’t, well too bad! Never mind your quality of life, and never mind if literally the only things you can do is go to work and sleep, because you’re so tired all the fucking time. Only extreme cases iron infusions are used in treating IBD patients. I bet if men had systemic problem with low ferritin it’d be taken seriously in the public health service and by doctors in general  😐 

Jeri Ryan Site

This past week Claudia, the owner of I Heart Jeri Ryan donated her content to my Jeri site, because she closed I Heart Jeri Ryan down due a personal loss. She has some things that I don’t and it’d have been such a shame to lose them. So I’ve been uploading her things (and will continue to do so in the coming days, as I go through Claudia’s things), and I’m happy to see my Jeri gallery now even more complete 😀 

Sometimes I Hate Some Of My Neighbors
Categories Blog Personal Rant

Sometimes I Hate Some Of My Neighbors

It’s 04.00/4 a.m.  and some neighbor of mine has been playing loud music for five hours now :< I guess they have their windows and balcony door open because it’s even louder outside than inside. It’s so loud that I can sing along each song because I can make out the lyrics almost all the time. Echoes through the apartment building and all through the children’s playground and the yard in the middle of the apartment complex :/ They did this at least three times last summer too, which I can sort of understand, it being hot and summer and vacation and stuff. But in the middle of winter, and when people have to go to work in the morning.

Normally this is a quiet apartment complex, with little kids making the most noise and TVs sounding sometimes too loudly in the summer (due to those open windows and balcony doors due to the heat but they’re still at normal noise level), with the occasional party (a few times a year) that’s usually announced beforehand so people know it’s coming. This doesn’t even sound like a party – there’s like two voices, they talk normally and it’s quiet between songs (they skip a lot of songs) and sometimes it sounds like maybe they’re singing karaoke. It’s just that the music is so bloody loud, I can’t sleep or escape it. I don’t think other people can either, because when I went out so see if I can figure out which apartment it’s coming from, most of the windows had lights on in the entire building.

I’m really pitying people who have to go to work in the morning.  At this point I’m just about ready to murder these music blaring assholes with my bare hands while praying the loudness and lack of sleep won’t trigger a bad migraine attack :/ I’m so tired, I just want to sleep!

Categories Blog Health Personal Rant Weather

Hot Weather + Sites May Go On Hiatus

It’s been a miserable summer since May. It’s been hot nearly all the time – both “hot-for-me” and legitimately hot, and it just seems to be getting worse and worse. Yesterday was 32 (Celcius), today it’s promised to be 33 with no cloud. I just barely made it through yesterday, today stretches long and torturous in front of me. It’ll feel like dying.

I can’t even think of tomorrow yet.

It’s promised to stay well above 25 for the next 10 days, but hopefully that gets adjusted downwards to something more normal as the days go by.

My migraine is bad and getting worse, and also I’m feeling just bad overall due the bright sun and the constant heat. I’ve reached the limit of my ability to stand the heat for this year, and now it’s taking all I have to just exist. I don’t know that I’m able to work much on my sites or anything online until the heat is over. So this is your Hiatus warning. It things go well, I’ll be back to normal later this month but it may just as well be end of August or early September before I have energy for anything beyond surviving. Totally depends on the weather now.

I’m writing this at 5.30AM and it feels weird. I’m not a morning person (at all!) but these days mornings are the only time of day I can breathe and feel normal for a couple of hours. That’s when I have to do all the household work and grocery shopping and such right now.

Hey Finnish Summer, I’m ready for you to go back to normal! Cold and gray, rain and all!