My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…
Olympic Mountains today
“Trump has reminded us that misogyny is a feature not a bug in the Republican Party”
“Pompeo hates Nikki Haley”
Paraphrasing “Nikki Haley is just a Kevin McCarthy“
So I told my adult trans kid I’d like to take them and their trans spouse out for that kid's birthday next weekend. I said pick a place and we'll go there. Thinking that’s part of a gift. And their response was, "Oh so I choose?" Yeah. Sure. In part because of their dietary requirements being hard for me to track. And thinking about that, as many do (with a roll of the eyes, and I’m not saying I’m doing that, but people do), it occurs to me...Why do so many seem so attuned to their physiology regarding diet? That’s annoying to many who are not. But here’s the thing. As we’ve become more educated and knowledgeable about diet and an awareness of things, why would we not become more attuned to ourselves, internally? And how is that a bad thing? One might argue even that it’s bullshit. But if you’re eating healthier because of it, then how is that bad? It’s annoying to others, sure. But what if it’s not imaginary? When I was a kid, and this is how I’m viewing this whole issue… I was fifth or sixth grade, my mom took me over to a friend's house. Some woman who had a couple of Siamese cats (that's another story). While I was talking to this woman when we first got there, I felt my body invaded. It was a weird kind of rush. I could see her breathing down on me, standing a few feet from my mom and I inside the front door. I couldn’t put my finger on the feeling I was having until later. But I started not feeling well later that day. The next day I felt worse and my mom said the woman was talking to her on the phone and said she thinks she came down with something. By the next day I was feeling so bad my mom took me to the doctor. And he said, "You’ve got the flu or something." I told him I knew it, and then about the woman, realizing I felt I was catching something from her, apparently a virus. I felt something invading my body while talking to her, probably my immune system over responding. Years later, a doctor told me that my allergies were my immune system overreacting too rapidly to invading elements. And if it was slower, my body could adjust and I wouldn’t have all these allergy issues. This was back in the early 70s by that time. So the doctor when I was a kid, in his office, said, "I’m sorry but it’s impossible that you’re feeling ill or could have felt her give you the flu as you stood in front of her. It takes about two weeks for you to feel the symptoms." I didn’t know what to do with that. He’s a doctor. I was a kid. But the thing was, he’s right about a week or two to feel the symptoms. But I wasn’t feeling the symptoms the day I met that woman. I was feeling an invasion and my immune system reacting. I’ve always been very tuned into my physiology. And I’ve always been discredited on that. But it’s been proven to be accurate over my 67 years. By time I hit my teens, it wasn’t quite as accurate, as you get older, it diminishes. But still seems to be more awareness than other people I've known. Getting back to my original premise… I do also believe that
food is medicine, or can be. Sure, some take things to extremes. Some always do. But there is logic, and science in it. Eat healthier, you're healthier. Eat poorly, your health will suffer for it, though you may not notice it at first or until you're old, and some can handle that better than others. At least some of these people, with our better education and knowledge today than we had so long ago when I was a kid, if they're more tuned into their bodies now and trying to eat better… other than being annoying to some of us, what the hell is the problem with that? Don’t get me wrong. I like eating meat. But ethically and morally, I realized once a society gets to a place where they don’t have to hunt and kill for their food, why are we still killing other species for food? Not to mention, eating a lot of meat in a diet is unhealthy and can kill you over time. Granted not everybody, but we’re not all the same, biologically speaking. That’s why one person can smoke as much as another, yet one gets lung, cancer and dies and the other lives to 100 and is healthy. But it doesn’t mean everybody’s wrong. And that doesn’t mean we’re always correctly righteous in our annoyed beliefs.
It occurs to me that with some people, probably younger than me, who are doing what they're doing today about their diets and stuff, as I was discussing above, people traditionally did pay attention only once they had health problems. When they were told to log their health statistics, day by day. Which I’ve been doing since I got long Covid back in April, almost a year ago. So if they don’t need to log it all to figure things out, and can simple tell, more power to them. I’ve been getting a lot of migraine visuals lately. I used to get maybe a migraine every year or two, or every so many years. I would go a little blind, start to see visuals, start seeing bright colors at about a half an hour before the pain hit. Which could last for three days. I read somewhere that as you get older you don’t necessarily get the pain, but the visuals. So I counted in my log today and found I had migraine visuals, seven times in the past 30 days. Which I assume has got to be because of long Covid. It's disturbing.
Speaking of which, I read somewhere else that long Covid can thicken your vagus nerve. Is that good or bad? Probably bad, right? Which are the issues I’ve been having, vagus nerve issues. Since this is the second time, I am sure, as I had long Covid the first time lasting 8 to 14 months long, I have to wonder if repeated long Covid physically changes/damages something? And if one's vagus nerve gets thickened? Does that mean you’re not having permanent issues while things being magnified? Like when I first got it, that was really bad and I had to go into the ER with couple paramedic visits due to my pulse/BP shooting up and I became hyper sensitive to certain foods. As this has is faded, will it never go completely away because I may now have a thicker vagus nerve? Does thicker mean it's more functional or less, and if more that seems to be over reacting to things. Just great.
Here’s a nightmare scenario. My poor son and his girlfriend have been dealing with her heart issues for a year now. Something she’s perhaps been ignoring for years, as we tend to do when it's not obvious what the problem is. She’s been having seizures and things that she didn’t recognize until the doctors figured it out and gave her meds. They couldn’t get the meds figured out. They'd get them "figured out" and then they'd fail before she could go home from the hospital stay. "Hello again, hi, bye!" Sorry. That was a like, cute one year old I just walked by with his mom… Anyway she left their city to go to Seattle and then back home and then back again and then back home but didn’t make it. Had to stop at another hospital in another city and on and on for a year. So I said to my son, at least once, did she have Covid? And he said, "Yes." I told him then that she may have had long Covid and not even known it. And if that’s the case, it magnifies things. I wrote a book about it, "
Suffering Long Covid" And I published it. He gave her a copy but he doesn’t think she read it. Which may be good because there’s some hard realities in that book. Anyway, as of yesterday they finally think they’ve got things worked out and she can come home. But we’ve heard this so many times. "Hi". This time it was my postal woman delivering mail a few blocks from my house. I'm headed onto my 3rd mile now [I jumped back up from below, later on, so that explains my mileage being out of sequence, shit happens...]. So anyway, all the medication they tried on her has reacted in ways they didn’t expect and... that’s what long Covid does to you. So, as time passes, a long Covid phase for her fading, it could be that meds will start to work correctly, as they seem to be. Finally. But I don’t know. She’s got some good doctors, at some good hospitals, who know what they’re talking about, and they think Covid is definitely a factor. Now that could mean the initial week or so of Covid damaged her heart. Or that the long Covid issues were screwing with her results. There’s also a study that says it can kill off some of the muscle cells inside your heart which cannot grow back and that’s a serious concern. So you could end up with a heart transplant. But here’s hoping next week they’re both finally having dinner together and this nightmare can finally be, if not over, better controlled. I think they’re giving her a pacemaker now. Which is sad because no one needs a pacemaker in their 30s, although sometimes you do.
I think I walked a mile last walk and the time before that, or at least the last time anyway. I’m just starting my 2nd mile and at the end of that I’ll see if I can walk a third. I’d like to at least do that today. So far my right knee is holding out…
Regarding this bullshit about Medicare and Social Security with Republicans. There’s a news clip of one of them saying that those things are very important but so is military spending. But we review military spending every year. Well, dumb ass. The obvious difference there, which only a disingenuous fool couldn’t see, is that we don’t know from year to year how much military spending we will need with a current forecast. But we know that American citizens, our human beings still need to live and survive, to have healthcare and money to live on they expected, some for over 50 years. Kind of not an ever-changing thing like a military budget. That is so simple to understand and obvious that it’s offensive that a professional adult politician would speak such dumb words in public. But then, his voters probably won't notice. He's a Republican. (No, not all Republicans are dumb, but MAGA has altered the stats on that) So...
That was centered around comparing thing as "citizens need" to "military budget". Ron Johnson said that about those, I wanna call them "entitlements", because we should be entitled to them and we funded them ourselves as citizens, he says it’s a Ponzi scheme. Well, if you look at it critically, it’s not. Unless you’re a Republican, apparently. But let’s say it is. Well, then? Fix it! Something Republicans hate to do. Fix things. Because it opens them up to criticism and hard work. And compromise. They love breaking things and shutting things down and defunding things and crippling government. You know it’s a lot easier to take a sledgehammer and destroy a house then it is to build one that’s viable and functional that you can live in.
By the way, Rick Scott in Congress ,who is so against Medicare and Social Security? We need to recognize the company he used to work for, who was fined over $1 billion for
fraud in those areas. Makes you wonder why he hates social security and medicare so much.
By the way, even
Mitch McConnell can’t stand Rick Scott.
Thinking about this for a second. When you see news clips of some Republican, talking to a group of senior citizens about how we need to kill Medicare and Social Security, and they don’t say anything. Or maybe even applaud? Those are not people who need Social Security, or Medicare. Those are wealthy seniors who just see it as taking their tax money. First of all, fuck them. If you got that much money, you should be taxed. Get these Republicans in a room with a good deal of America who need help. The middle class, not the upper class, not the upper middle class. As I understand it, there’s wealthy people who actually use Medicare, while some refuse to rightly indicating it's kind of immoral. Yes, ethically if you paid into it, you deserve it. But if you don't need it and other do and you are after all a part of a nation, a society, yeah, like I don't know...help others? And I would bet they take Social Security, too.
I don’t know what the stats are on this, but if wealthy Americans are paying into Social Security all their lives? And they don’t need it at all in any way, shape or form? How about we don’t give it to them? Wouldn't that help? I mean, if I were a wealthy person, that would be my attitude about it? I have plenty, give it to those who need it. It's charity, it's partiotism.
OK, on the issue of privatizing Social Security, or for that matter, Medicare… or most things...No! Time and again we have seen Republicans push for the privatization of things, at times even convincing Democrats, as it has so often turned out to be a complete disaster. One that they keep trying to keep alive. Ideology over reality, as usual. You don’t privatize prisons! It’s ethically and morally wrong. Just as the State, with a capital "S", should not kill its own citizens, so I'm against capital punishment (except for maybe people like Trump, who have massively harmed massive amounts of people). When the State takes away a person's, freedom, and imprisons them, that should be the government, not a for profit business picking up that responsibility. That is the government shirking ITS responsibility. That should be an alternate motto of the Republican Party: Shirk Responsibility!
