Chronically ill people & hope

Image by o5com via FlickrThe best a chronically ill person (I am talking about the kind of illness that CHRONICALLY TORTURES a person physically) can do is keeping hope. As long as these people do not give up hope, they are the bravest.

To expect a chronic ill person to be happy, to be cheerful, to have a "positive" attitude, is not only an action of lacking sympathy, but also of senseless ignorance .

Allergy

Just right after I posted that "magic honey" couple of days ago, I got severe allergy! Sneezing and running nose, just like what I had it before. However, I believe the reason was not pollen (it rained that afternoon), but my weakened immune system. My increased physical activities drove me tired that day. So all I need was again, to slow down a bit.

Again, I still hold the belief, that pollen is not the cause for our allergy, but the weakened immune system is.

Physical health is like mother's love

Image by ithinkchaos via Flickrwhen we had it, we took it for grated, only when we lost it, we realized how important it was.

If mother's love is a foundation of our self-esteem, physical health is a foundation of our BEING - without it, our whole existence will simply collapse.

The Magic Honey

Image via WikipediaI heard "local honey" can cure allergy all the time but never get chance to local farmers' markets. Early of this year, I bought a bottle of organic honey from Food Lion. It was produced somewhere about 100 miles away from where I live. So I gathered it might do some good for me. Having been taking this honey for over two months (mostly I put it into drink) pretty fine during Spring. I even walked outside like I never did in past years.

So I think it really worked!

P.S. I must point out that my overall diet changes also helped my immune system.

I found a way to rest my brain

To be specifically: to rest my left side of brain.

As a person who enjoy thinking, I found I could not think as much during these years of chronic illness, as my body did not support hard brain work. Somehow about over a year ago, I tried a way that partially "inspired" by my Yoga instructor long time ago, and it worked very well to me. I almost use it daily, mainly when I took lap after lunch. Most of time I found myself refreshed after doing this, even though I did not really fall into sleep.

I figured that all this technique did was nothing more than numbing left side of brain. This makes total sense to me, because by my understanding about brain function , when we sleep, it was left side brain who takes off from its daily duty, our right side of brain never stop working. That's why doing meditation can let us feeling refreshed simply by stopping "thinking", or stopping using left side of brain, not by actual sleep.

Here is how I practice this "ritual": lie on bed face up without pillow. Take a towel, roll it up like a small ball shaped piece, about a tennis ball size (or smaller), and put it underneath somewhere at back of skull, just a little above the neck (as picture shows by red circle). Make sure it is slightly toward left side. Since lying down face up, the gravity will naturally drag head down and let the towel ball produce some pressure on that part of head. If the location of the towel ball is right, I would feel some strong nervous stimulation around that area followed by some sense of numbness in my left side of brain. Then I just let it go, feeling relaxed and dreamy. After anywhere about 20 to 40 minutes, I could feel refreshed and recharged.

Of course, it doesn't have to be towel, but I found it works the best.

A Support to Dominique, A Support to "CFS"/ME

Image by sweethardt via Flickr

I like to post this for Dominique - a "CFS"/ME patient who struggling with this illness by her own, like most of other patients. This blog particularly described one of her "bad" days. I suppose any one with a decent sense about "fatigue" can understand, that this is far beyond just "fatigue".

Dominique has been in this illness for over 20 years. She used to run 7 miles a day before she got ill! Now, after 20 years living with this illness, most time bedridden, she was not tired, not sad, but ANGRY. And I am on her side, whole heartedly, sending the anger to medical institutes who dismiss this illness just because this illness doesn't fit their "scientific" theory, also sending the anger to the society and the people who refuse to give any sympathy to CFS/ME sufferers just because their suffering is "strange" to their life experience, or "strange" to their understanding of "illness". In other words, I am helping her to send anger to the "ignorance", the ignorance that kills lives.

Here is Dominique's blog:
A Glimpse of Severe ME: Opening the Door

Fish Head Soup

I was terribly tired yesterday and realized that I had not been eating well for over just ONE day. During afternoon I suddenly felt the need of fish soup. So I pulled up a tilapia head from refrigerator and made my favorite fish tomato soup. It really restored my energy instantly!

I did not mean that this soup can work on any fatigue condition but it indeed worked for me at the moment.

Here is the recipe:

Fish head (I used one piece of Tilapia which was big enough), ginger root shreds, green onion, tomato, mushroom, tofu (optional)

1. Stir fry fish head with veg oil, until the color changes;

2. Add water and wait until boiled, then add ginger shreds, rice wine(optional), green onion; turn stove from high to medium;

3, About 5 - 10 minutes add sliced tomato, mushroom,

4. Boil the soup for another 20 - 30 minutes then it's ready to serve!

4 phases of my recovering

Image by Cornell University Library via Flickr

I figured, my recovering from the worse relapse to the normal health condition (by normal standard or normal people, not the "norm" of my own - which was virtually not normal at all) consists of 4 phases:

1, get rid of the worst symptoms. Since my worst symptoms are heart and breath problems, this phase required complete rest, and good diet. Any kind of exercises (even walk) is dangerous.

With good rest and good diet, I could get rid of symptoms from anywhere like a few days to a month.

2, energy restore. This, is a long term job. It requires lots of rest and good diet. Exercise is still dangerous. Depend on how serious my relapse was, it takes from anytime like a few weeks to several months.

3, continuing energy restore and strengthening immune system. In this phase, I do need to continue to save my energy, and be very careful not overdraw. Also it's the time to start some light exercise to help metabolism and immune system. This phase is also a long term, takes about several months.

And this phase is also the trickiest period of my recovery, because, if I don't do any exercise, my heart would suffer from slow blood circulation and causes symptoms like palpitation; but on the other hand, if I do exercise, which seems no problem at all, I have to be extra careful not overdo, otherwise I would suffer serious relapse which draw me straight back to phase 1..

In fact, this phase triggered my worst symptoms countless times during my past years, and was most responsible for my endless circles of up and down. The tough part of this phase is, that my energy limit is very hard to foresee, because the symptom doesn't show up during my exercises (or any other physical activities), but usually after. So when I exercise, if I felt tired, it usually meant it's too late.

4, back to "norm", in need of maintenance and improve to real norm. This means my condition finally back to my normal health condition (I did in 2005-2006), which is the "normal" condition before I got serious trouble (over 10 years ago). It is still "sub-health" condition (because at the time when I was younger, I was never healthy). So when I reached this stage, I will need to fully engage in a healthy life style, which contains lots of physical activities, in order to boost me up to reach a real normal health condition.