I have a dream of living in a house in a cool climate. I have a big kitchen where in my minds eye, a large earthenware bowl of fresh salad sits on an old wooden table before a late lunch. The shelves are lined with jams, pickles and preserves. There is half a loaf of bread bought that morning on a little indulgent trip to the local bakery. It sits on the table next to the salad along with cheese and pate. The scene is very provincial in a French kind of way.
The house is on a large property, bordered by woods and a lake. A few miles down the road is a village with a huge summer market filled with great produce including locals crops, free range chicken, grass fed beef. In the winter, a covered market takes its place.
The climate is warm - cool by my current standards but pleasant. In the winter the temperature drops but never far below zero. There are seasons. The trees shed their leaves annually waiting naked through winter days sometimes crisp, sometimes grey.
I'd love such a place. It's probably hard coded into my French genes. Or maybe it's a nostalgia for the Quebec countryside visits I enjoyed as a child.
But the reality of this country home in a temperate land, is that the people I love aren't there. That is the problem with having no roots. All you want and all those you love are scattered around the world. Choice of one always means loss of another. So the ideal home, the home where your heart is, can only exist in your imagination.
Labels: travel
After forcing myself to get loads of rest over the weekend, my tinnitus has subsided completely... well as complete as it gets. The very faint high pitched whine is still there at night if I listen carefully. Otherwise I can enjoy total silence.
And as for the horrible little bubble in my mouth, I finally effected a permanent cure by hacking the whole thing off with a pair of nail clippers then dousing it with betadine and adding a glass of wine to my lunch (I'm going with the theory it had antiseptic properties). All in all, it was around for about 3 weeks.
This is not my first, nor most dramatic self-inflicted invasive treatment. The worst was when I got a fish bone stuck in my throat. The doctor in emergency, who tried in vain for 15 minutes to shove a shoe horn down my throat, said there was nothing there. The X-ray came up clean and I was told I'd probably just scratched my throat. I was, however, warned to return immediately if I got a pain in my chest because that would mean the bone had pierced my thorax and I would die.
I went back home but was extremely uncomfortable. There was definitely a bone there and I had no intention of waiting for my thorax to be pierced. So I reached down into the base of my throat (a good 8-9 inches from my lips) and pulled out a triangular bone that was 5mm x 8mm (a fish bone - not mine - and looked like a part of the spinal column). Pretty scary that something that big could go undetected on an x-ray...
Labels: health, personal
Google is my doctor, but for anything of concern, I always get a second opinion because Google is a bit of a quack.
For instance I recently asked Dr. Google about a small mouth ulcer on the inside of my lip. It's been there 3 weeks and appears set to stay. I searched on lump, translucent, purplish, hard, clear, mouth, ulcer, blister, canker... Google's diagnosis? Mouth Cancer. It was pretty clear-cut. For other complaints I've tended to be given a range of diagnoses from terminal to embarrassing but benign. In this case there seemed to be no options. I’d have to have part of my face removed and reconstruction surgery with bits of my arm.
So I went off to my dentist as recommended. He spent less than 30 seconds examining my sore, and then charged me $50 for his diagnosis: blocked saliva gland.
It turns out that if the mouth sore tends to wax and wane in size (as mine does) it's unlikely to be cancer as that's a one-way growth story.
And the cure? It seams the treatment largely involves some form of self-mutilation (you can lance it and if it still doesn't clear up, a deeper incision may do the trick). Of course the dentist is willing to do the dirty work for another $100 or so but there's no guarantees it won't come back.
I've now attacked it with a variety of pins, razors and tweezers to no avail. My efforts tend to result in blood, a small infection, then a remission of about a day before it's back.
I think I need to google for a supplier of special implements for auto-surgery.
Anyway, that's my contribution to Google the quack on the subject of benign mouth conditions (along with suitably gross picture). The moral of the story is, don't panic before you get a second opinion as Google is a bit of an alarmist.
Labels: health, medicine, net, rants
I have tinnitus. It first hit me when I was 30 after I'd not been sleeping enough for a period of about 2 weeks. I was also very unhappy with my job and stressing out over a career move... plus I'd been drinking more than usual (for me that meant going from nothing to getting drunk once a week with friends from work).
My system was under a lot of stress.
Previously I had suffered from TMJ Syndrome (from grinding my teeth in my sleep), which had caused me face, and head aches. I was getting that under control although my physio had warned me: if you don't deal with the stress, it will find another way to come out. It did.
The first bought hit me hard: I had strong ringing in one ear (left or right? I don't remember now) and light ringing in the other. It affected my hearing. I was tested and in the bad ear I was slightly deaf at low registers.
I got an MRI to be sure there was no tumour and the doctor gave me some gingko then told me to learn to live with it. I asked him if there was a connection with my TMJ. He said no. He was wrong of course. Later research on the net showed there's a strong link.
This doc also tested me for allergies (totally unrelated) and then sent me to buy a bunch of anti-allergy products from a company I later learned he had shares in. There are doctors like this in Singapore so beware. I won't name him but watch out for any ENT docs at Gleneagles who give you random allergy tests and generally seem totally uninterested in your actual condition.
I wasn't satisfied with his "live with it" prescription. So, I hunted around the net and came up with what promised to be a potential cure:
- ginko
- lecithin
- vitamin B complex
and... - no more caffeine
- no more alcohol
- lot of exercise
- plenty of rest
I exercised like a maniac for 2 weeks and followed my dietary prescription strictly then ... poof! I had a complete cure.
Actually I had a complete remission. About a year later it came back, though not so strongly. Again I was tired and this combined with a few glasses of red wine seemed to trigger the tinnitus.
I took wine permanently off my drink list and returned to the regime. It worked again.
Over the next 6 years, I would get very minor boughts every 6-9 months which would last a day or two. Eventually, however, I grew to have a constant hum in my head. It wasn't loud - I could only hear it at night before sleeping when everything was silent. And I'm conscious of it at classical music concerts during very quiet passages. For the most part, however, I'm completely unaware of it.
I exercise regularly now, drink almost no caffeine, rarely drink alcohol and take vities every day. I also believe my teeth grinding is long gone. I do however, often fail to get enough sleep.
It's Back!That’s been my problem this past week: not enough sleep. Because of it, I've been drinking tea at the office to keep me awake. It's not a good combo for me: fatigue and caffeine. The amount I drink (2-3 cups) probably isn't a problem: it's just that relative to what I usually drink, it's way too much.
Two nights ago, as I was going to sleep, I remember thinking that I couldn't hear any tinnitus at all - no ring, hum or whine. Ha! That proved to be the calm before the storm. Often before it comes, I go a little deaf!
In the morning, I woke up with a burgeoning case of the real thing in my left ear. It got worse as the day progressed. Of course timing always sucks: I had tickets to watch Gil Shaham perform with the SSO. Fortunately the noise in my head wasn't too bad during the concert though it would have been nice to enjoy it in silence.
Today it's fairly strong... it feels like one side of my head is living in an airplane cabin at 40,000 feet. That's exactly what the muffled sound and feel is like. It's the worse it's been in several years.
As I'm now living what most would consider a pretty healthy lifestyle, I have little left to tweak besides the amount of rest I get. I had 8 hours last night and I'm still exhausted so that shows I'd really let myself get run down - which is plain stupidity. Still, I'm confident I'll get this thing back under control by the weekend and I'll have a strong reminder for a while to get enough sleep.
It sucks but I think in a way I'm lucky to have it. I've got a very loud alarm bell to make sure I take care of myself. Because of it, I enjoy great health.
Labels: health, howto, medicine
