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Friday, March 23, 2001
21:20 
I'm having to look at my FMS management programme again.
A few months ago I started going to the gym seriously, I changed my diet to cut out high glycaemic index carbohydrates and reduce my fat intake. I have a pretty healthy diet now, very low in refined carbs and saturated fats. For about 3 months I have been going to the gym at least twice and more generally three times a week, for between an hour and a half and two hours.
I was feeling pretty good and I was starting to feel that I was getting on top of it. There was still pain, but the pain isn't really so hard to deal with as a general rule. It's a bit like background noise - after a while you develop a higher tolerance for higher levels of it.
But recently I've started finding odd signs of things getting worse again. I've been getting lumps and patches of skin falling off over slight swellings that looks a little like eczema. The welts across my torso look like I've been rolled around on sharp gravel. I'm not seeing much of an improvement in my cardiovascular capacity. I'm finding myself getting more ill after eating peppers - they make me dehydrated and my lips go dry and feel puffy. But I've cut down on my wheat intake, I've increased my protein, I'm exercising regularly. I just don't know what else to do now, short of getting really drastic like cousin Wyrd and cutting out caffeine, dairy, solenaceous plants, turning practically vegan and maybe becoming a Breatharian.
Been getting very dehydrated too, although that might be more to do with not drinking enough water. Even so. I'm really struggling to work out where I might be going wrong. The flaking skin thing is relatively new. It's quite frustrating.
The best idea I have come up with for this is being cooped up in the house due to a mixture of foot and mouth and bad weather. What I want to do is get out walking, whether it's pissing down or not, but I'm really stuck as to where I can go. I'm not one of these people who enjoy walking around on tarmac, and I suppose the alternative is to start leisure cycling seriously again. But I want to get away from tarmac, not just get out on quiet tarmac. What I want to do is have a few days by the sea, with plenty of walks in the fresh air and bracing sea breeze. That would do me a power of good. My skin has always got bad if I'm cooped up indoors for too long. Of course, that's impossible now.
I am starting to wonder how sensible the slaughter policy is now, as well. I heard figures today that suggest that the UK might lose 50 per cent of its national herd. Surely that means that the slaughter policy isn't worth it? If we are killing all these animals just to protect our export capabilities to the rest of the world, then maybe it is time to look at just how important that export capability is. If we had a policy of domestic sales, even local sales, surely then we'd be better off and the animals would be better off. There are a lot of myths being spouted in all sorts of places about how the entire slaughter policy is completely unjustified. Much of it is hyperbole, but there is some truth to it, as with all myths. I could see the point of the slaughter policy when it looked like it might do something, but at the moment all the restrictions and the killing seem to have been for nothing. Are they going to re-examine their policies or are they going to stubbornly continue for fear of losing face?
From a selfish point of view, how long am I going to be cooped up in the house with only the treadmill in the gym to walk on?
Monday, March 19, 2001
11:58
Things are not good right now. The pain is bad. That's bad as in "definitely an understatement" bad. The sort of bad where you say "bad" because although there is all sorts of hyperbole and many more extreme terms one could use, none of them actually does it justice and confining oneself to "bad" almost emphasises the point that there aren't any words for it. I'm sick a lot of the time, nauseous. I've been constantly at least queasy for about a week, maybe more. I've been having trouble with loss of sensation (but not loss of pain) in my legs. They turn reddish purple sometimes. At the moment I am having trouble with mobility in my fingers. Emotionally I am depressed, and again that's rather an understatement. A week of incessant, constant, grinding, intense pain can make a person depressed. Andy tells me "Remember, the troughs don't last, there is always an up afterwards" but I have now got to the stage where I have seen so many ups and downs I can't cheer myself up with the thought of the next up any more. If I think of the next up I think of the next down, ad infinitum.
For the record, the pain is everywhere, it feels as though my bones are being crushed without them being removed first (I can feel each individual bone when it is really bad, including my heel bone, which is weird), my head is stuck in a vice that has nails sticking out of it, and my skin is being pelted with those cotton balls soaked in acid again. On top of that, I am developing patches of raw skin, my knees and lower thighs turn deep purple and blotchy when I get in the bath, when I get out of the bath I notice welts all across my abdomen, and my skin condition is deteriorating. I also have lumps springing up all over the place. There's one on my head, I've had two on my face (although those ones, at least, are subcutaneous cysts), I found one on my hip yesterday as well. If I have minor nicks or cuts when I go to bed, they bleed during the night, even if they didn't bleed in the first place.
I'm feeling very lonely also. Discovered last night that these days I feel lonely even when Frood is home, and that's no state to be in.
Dreams are intense and difficult, hard work, upsetting. Not nightmares as such, I guess, although I describe them that way sometimes. They are rarely terrifying, but usually distressing. When I dream these days I am ill in my dreams. I remember in one dream a couple of nights go I caught sight of myself in a mirror and my face was a white oval with massive dark shadows under the eyes. I looked like something out of an Edward Munsch painting.
Tried to cheer myself up over the weekend by writing a story about Uncle Coyote. Coyote makes me smile. He makes me laugh sometimes. And I suppose he might have noticed because yesterday there was, coincidentally, a natural history programme all about how coyotes are doing well despite persecution in the States. I also went to a largely mediaeval re-enactment fair yesterday. I really wanted to go, and I wanted to go with Frood on Friday, but he didn't want to go (he told me yesterday that mainly he didn't want to go because he knew we'd be tempted to spend money that we don't have). I went yesterday because Andy wanted a penannular brooch for Tam, and I wanted to see if there was a local Saxon group in the area who would be willing to come up and do something at Rollright later on in the year. I got the brooch, but I couldn't find a local Saxon group.
It did give me a bit of impetus to seriously look into doing something I have had a hankering to do for a few years - join an Iron Age re-enactment group. There is one in Basingstoke that looks really good, but Basingstoke is a long way to go once a week. There is also one out Bristol way that looks good too, and that one has a narrower range of periods that it does, which is always a good thing. Again, Bristol is a long way to go once a week. It's not the distance that bothers me. If I want to do something, I don't mind travelling a couple of hours once a week. It's the cost that's problematic. We really are very broke. I really do need to get a job, but at times like this, when the pain is so bad it's a fight not to spend the whole day sitting next to the toilet vomiting, I despair.
And it's gym day. And I have to go. And the thought of going with all this pain and shaking and sickness actually scares me. But what can you do? Sit around on your arse all day and think "woe is me, my life is so dreadful"? Not my style. Not my style at all.
I want another tattoo. And I want to get my nose pierced.
I wish I wasn't so lonely. I wish I didn't feel stupid and pathetic for feeling lonely. I wish I could do something constructive with the anger and frustration and I wish there was no such thing as despair.
If wishes were horses....
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