Category: Rant


May 29, 2024
0
intothisshadow

New Glasses!

New Glasses!

Got my new glasses today! My very first varifocal ones! ✨ I was very nervous about them because I’ve heard that some people have troubles getting used to them, although my Mom, who has been wearing varifocals for like a couple of decades if not longer, said she had no problems at all. Just a few days of getting used to just because they’re different, but no real problems at all. 

So far so good! I put the new glasses on right away in the shop, and been wearing them for about 3,5 hours now, in the big shopping centre, in my local grocery store and here at home so pretty much doing my most usual stuff. No problems so far, just have noticed some minor differences to the old ones that mean I have a turn my head a little bit more than before just turning my eyes was enough. And that when I walk and look downwards close to in front of me, the tiles/ground is a little blurry because that’s the reading area but it not a problem – I don’t think it’ll affect things like going up or down the stairs or something like that. Didn’t need to do that today so I have no experience about that yet though!

Reading my smart phones screen is much for comfortable now though! I am actually a little surprised about that! I knew it used to be better before and that now I only could do it for a short while such as checking bus schedules and WhatsApp/text messages while out and about to see if there’s changes to where/when to we’ll meet, but I hadn’t realized how uncomfortable it in reality was. I just knew I couldn’t read longer stuff like news or fiction because my right eye would start to water after a while of that and my sight would go blurry. But now it feels like normal, I guess! 

I haven’t read a book yet, or written using pen and paper and I can’t wait to find out about those things! Being unable to read for a long time was the reason why I got these – my far sight was almost unchanged but reading/near sight had become so much poorer that I was practically forced to get new glasses because of that.

I hope my eye sight stays unchanged now for years and years and years. These are I think the 5th new glasses in the last 9 years? My eye sight remained unchanged for about 18 years, but suddenly it started to go worse quickly. A couple of times the new glasses were only good for a year before I couldn’t see again, and a couple of times they’re good for about 3 years. The optician said that it’s normal to start to have that happen when turning 40. And also my illnesses and meds can have an effect on my eyes and eyesight, although there are no current outward signs of that. Whatever the case, I’m fed up having to buy glasses every few years!

I had arranged to meet up with my Mom in the shopping centre while fetching my new glasses; she was also getting fitted for new glasses but in an another shop (there are at least 2 optician/eye glasses shops in that shopping centre). My Mom isn’t allowed to have her glasses prescribed by an optician and she always needs to see an eye doctor. She did that last week, and because she always gets eye drops put in her eyes that blur her vision for many hours, she can never see the eye doctor and select new glasses on the same trip. So she came out today to select new ones. My new glasses cost 509 euros and included prescription sun-glasses for free, but my Mom’s even more expensive – hers cost just over 1000 euros and she also got prescription sun-glasses for free. She always curses that she can’t get glasses cheaply or for a moderate price – even when she was specifically told by the eye doctor to buy cheap classes because she might not be able to use them for even a year before the cataract became so bad it needed to operated on, the cheapest glasses she was able to get still cost 400 euros. While it seems like everyone around us buy glasses and they only cost 200 euros at most in the same shops. It sucks to had such a bad eye sight! Mine’s not as bad hers, but apparently still worse than a lot of other peoples. My cheapest glasses as an adult cost 300 euros and I purposely left out one of the comfort modifications – that would have hiked the price by another 100. And now that I need varifocals it’s always going to be even more expensive from now on. Next time I’m lucky if I can’t get new varifocals even for 509 euros, considering prices going up all the time.

Mom and I talked about prices of glasses and we’re convinced that there must be a lot air in the regular prices when the shops are able to sell a 1000 euros for glasses + another pair of the same price for free when the real price would be 2000 for both. Why not sell with sensible/moderate prices??

But in any case – very excited to have my first varifocals! 💖 And very excited and curious to see how reading  a book goes as well as writing with a pen and paper! ✨



Apr 3, 2023
2
intothisshadow

Random Thoughts – Finnish Politics

Random Thoughts – Finnish Politics

Finland becomes a Member of NATO tomorrow, Tuesday April 4, 2023.

I was against joining NATO my entire life, life most Finns, until Russia invaded Ukraine. That changed my mind in a single week. But, I appreciate being a peace builder and unallied country – which we won’t be anymore starting tomorrow – and so now I’m feeling conflicted. I’m glad we’re joining NATO, but kinda not.

So many things have happened in the last three years that I never thought I’d see in my life time.

I’m won’t be making more posts about Finnish politics and this won’t turn into a political blog, never fear… but I have to say this.

Finland had general election yesterday, and two right-wing parties won and centre-left social-democratic party became third. (More behind the cut). Continue reading



Jul 1, 2022
0
intothisshadow

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!

——

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!



Jun 28, 2022
0
intothisshadow

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!



Jun 22, 2021
0
intothisshadow

Health Update + Hot Weather + Jeri Ryan Site

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 😀