So tired

I was absolutely exhausted last night and crashed. Because it was Sabbath, we ate early, right after nightfall. I'd gone to get some Captain D's and then my friend lit the Chanukah lights (the eight-armed menorah used at Chanukah is called a Chanukiyah, plural Chanukiyot) and then the Sabbath candles. We ate our meal and talked and then I couldn't stand it anymore, the constriction of day clothes. I went and changed out of my jeans and shirt into my sleep shorts and tank top, took out my contacts, came back to the table for all of 10 minutes, and then announced I had to lie down. It was a little after 7:30 PM. My back was hurting and I'd just had a long (albeit not particularly busy day; we mostly worked in queues). So I fed the animals, let the dogs out and in, and put my nebula projector on and a Bluetooth speaker that cycles through lights, and I was gone within 10 minutes, dead to the music and the world. I got up briefly at 11:30 to take my meds, and then slept till about 6 AM. It's just 8 AM now and I have gotten dressed, made my bed, sat in front of the SAD light for a bit, taken my thyroid medicine (I can't eat for an hour after that, so it gets taken first), driven to Kroger and made them give me a deal off a digital coupon that wasn't scanning, got ice from the Kroger Starbucks (it's free, and we don't keep it in the house; I don't know what they think of me, I'm the little older lady who asks for ice each week), came back, have almost finished making coffee for my roommate, have started caffeinating with soda, and moved the dryer against the wall so it wasn't blocking my chair or the utility room, and I think that's good. In about half an hour I'll wake him up for services (he's reading a passage) and start making my to-do list, like most Saturdays. I'm feeling pretty darn productive. It's amazing what rest can do for you.

Twenty-seven

H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness for Beginning Readers by RJ Ivankovic
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I spent two years in real time playing weekly sessions of Beyond the Mountains of Madness, Chaosium's campaign based on HP Lovecraft's story 'At the Mountains of Madness'. I got this for myself and each remaining player who made it through that grueling adventure as a holiday present/badge of honour.

Its rhymes are sometimes a bit contrived, but they hit all the highlights of Lovecraft's story while referencing the later expedition of their campaign.

It is a delightful book, with lovely Seussian illustrations, and it still conveys the horror of Lovecraft's story although it is simplified in verse. I would highly recommend it, especially after reading Lovecraft's story or playing the Chaosium campaign. I will say as a group we were scarred by that adventure, and this brought back memories of what happened and beyond, particularly the musical tones heard in the distance...but I should not speak of such horrors.

View all my reviews

Full citation: H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness for Beginning Readers by RJ Ivankovic, 2024, Chaosium, 142 pp. ISBN: 978-1568824956

I love this. And despite the fact that it's set up as a children's picture book, it was 142 pages, so not just a tiny book.

Love this song

If you need to speak to someone and are having problems that seem overwhelming, call or text 988. It is our national mental health crisis line, and it's 24/7 and confidential.

I think this will be the next movie we're going to watch

We did finally get to see Barbie on Netflix today, and this came up as a new release. It looks really good, particularly if you're a fan of historical dramas, especially along the lines of The Help or Hidden Figures.

HAPPY YULE!!!!!!!!!

 I wish you a blessed Solstice. May your holidays be full of light, laughter, and love.

X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Clow, M.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand

Via NASA:

In addition to this cosmic wreath, a new version of the “Christmas tree cluster” is also now available. Like NGC 602, NGC 2264 is a cluster of young stars between one and five million years old. (For comparison, the Sun is a middle-aged star about 5 billion years old — about 1,000 times older.) In this image of NGC 2264, which is much closer than NGC 602 at a distance of about 2,500 light-years from Earth, Chandra data (red, purple, blue, and white) has been combined with optical data (green and violet) captured from by astrophotographer Michael Clow from his telescope in Arizona in November 2024. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Twenty-six

Citation:

26. The Autism and Neurodiversity Self Advocacy Handbook: Developing the Skills to Determine Your Own Future by Barb Cook and Yenn Purkis, 2022, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 167 pp. ISBN: 978-1787755765.

I didn't care for this one. It was too general and really didn't give me what a sought, which was ideas for advocacy and requesting accommodations if needed.

Oh, well...I gave it 2 stars on Goodreads.

Twenty-five

Citation:

25. Asperger's on the Job: Must-have Advice for People with Asperger's or High Functioning Autism, and their Employers, Educators, and Advocates by Rudy Simone (with a forward by Temple Grandin), 2011, Future Horizons, 159 pp. ISBN: 978-1935274285

I liked this one pretty well. I'm having difficulties with management at work and I'm trying to get ideas for helping myself do a great job and navigate some of the issues I'm having.

Beautiful but sad

Not the most cheerful of poems, but I accidentally came across this today and it really spoke to me. I'll have to read more by the author.

'The world is a beautiful place' from A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright © 1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

 The world is a beautiful place 
                                                           to be born into 
if you don’t mind happiness 
                                             not always being 
                                                                        so very much fun 
       if you don’t mind a touch of hell
                                                       now and then
                just when everything is fine
                                                             because even in heaven
                                they don’t sing 
                                                        all the time

             The world is a beautiful place
                                                           to be born into
       if you don’t mind some people dying
                                                                  all the time
                        or maybe only starving
                                                           some of the time
                 which isn’t half so bad
                                                      if it isn’t you

      Oh the world is a beautiful place
                                                          to be born into
               if you don’t much mind
                                                   a few dead minds
                    in the higher places
                                                    or a bomb or two
                            now and then
                                                  in your upturned faces
         or such other improprieties
                                                    as our Name Brand society
                                  is prey to
                                              with its men of distinction
             and its men of extinction
                                                   and its priests
                         and other patrolmen
                                                         and its various segregations
         and congressional investigations
                                                             and other constipations
                        that our fool flesh
                                                     is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
                                                           for a lot of such things as
         making the fun scene
                                                and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
                                         and singing low songs of having 
                                                                                      inspirations
and walking around 
                                looking at everything
                                                                  and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
                              and even thinking 
                                                         and kissing people and
     making babies and wearing pants
                                                         and waving hats and
                                     dancing
                                                and going swimming in rivers
                              on picnics
                                       in the middle of the summer
and just generally
                            ‘living it up’

Yes
   but then right in the middle of it
                                                    comes the smiling
                                                                                 mortician

I stayed home today to get some rest

I just woke up after sleeping three-and-a-half-hours. I needed it. I'd hoped to follow up with my primary care provider, but he didn't have anything till Thursday afternoon.

Long day in the emergency room

So I had to go to the University of Kentucky emergency department today.

I felt fine this morning, drove to work with no problem, blood sugar was normal, everything was fine. I got to the stadium lot and felt fuzzy in my head, and when I tried walking I was uncoordinated and listed to the side. I was carrying a small orchid and nearly dropped it repeatedly, even jerking at one point without meaning too, like those jerks you have when you're falling asleep, but I wasn't.

It continued when I went into work, and I nearly fell over, even with the cane, several times. Once I got to work I dropped an open drink twice on my keyboard (good I have an overlay), I was still fuzzy, and really slow in making the computer work. I went down to the employee health nurse. My blood pressure has been all over the place today, first high with her, then at one point really low. She got me in a wheelchair and she and my supervisor took me over to UK's ED, because some of my symptoms matched a TIA like I had in July.

So after the CT and EKG and other tests, there was no sign of a TIA (although they don't necessarily do that, being transient, after all). I spent a lot of time sitting and lying in bed and the fuzziness finally cleared for the most part. I'm dehydrated, but I wasn't enough to get fluids. I have orthostatic hypotension, but I'd figured that out some time ago (I am a medical librarian, after all, and I once knew someone who had it and they were the same symptoms, such as getting dizzy when standing up). But this wasn't really that...I was a little dizzy in the beginning but it was more unsteady, groggy, disoriented, that sort of thing.

Last night between 9 and 10 PM I'd taken a small dose, smaller than usual, of a muscle relaxant, tinzanidine. I've used it occasionally for years for neck and back spasms. I usually take 14 mg, again, PRN, just as needed, but I just took 8, thank goodness. It was over 12 hours by the time I went to the ED since I'd taken the medicine, which usually is short-lived.

I was still having unsteadiness almost 24 hours afterwards. My brain's just not in the same fuzzy mode it was before. Now (11:30 PM) I feel tired and overly-wrung out.

The doctor thinks I may have a hypersensitivity or allergy to tizanidine and I shouldn't take it, but she never said it definitely caused the symptoms today. I also found in my own research that despite having a relatively short half-life, it is heavily metabolised by the liver, and since I have fatty liver disease, I wonder if that affected things.

The nurse brought me home (thank you Kathryn) just before 5 PM, and I went straight to bed for a rest. She's going to come get me in the morning as my car is at the stadium.

So it was a big maybe on what all happened, but I'm just hoping I'm back to my normal self tomorrow.

UPDATE: Thinking back through things, I find it interesting that I didn't have symptoms for about two hours when I woke up, before I to to work. If it were some strange carryover from the tizanidine, you would expect me to be impaired from the moment I woke up. The only reason I even thought of the tizanidine was before I also had some, and the last time I had some, the night before my TIA in July, (and none of them thought it should be it either time, as it does clear fairly quickly out of the body, but it seemed oddly beyond coincidental not to mention). All the symptoms I had today were symptoms I had that morning in July as well.

It also reminded me of a time I went to another hospital for weakness on one side, headache, and chest pains. They decided it was a hemiplegic migraine with a panic attack because nothing showed up on the scans. But I'm beginning to wonder if that was also a transient ischemic issue as well. The chest pains may have been a panic attack, I do get them. I rarely get migraines, but I have not had a hemiplegic migraine, either before or since.

I think I'm going to talk to my PCP. In addition to being an expert with decades of experience in internal medicine, he has worked in both neurology and emergency medicine. He's also Canadian, and so maybe the training he received might give him another perspective.