Well gosh golly it's actually Meteorological Fall I think? I can't recall, and it sure doesn't feel that way with the highs in the mid-eighties and a fresh crop of smoke burbling up, but here we are. The trees know... The animals know...
Did you know that squirrels yell? They do! Rather loudly. This squirrel had something to say, but I didn't gather it all. I think maybe it was warning me about the cat lingering down in the bushes.
The flowers know... Every day, we go on a little venture to the Bee Garden. Allan likes to sit and watch the bees and butterflies. And I am really enjoying watching how quickly the flowers are adjusting to the reduced daily light. Yeah, they're basically shriveling up, but in a whole Lion King Circle of Life kind of way, instead of a "didn't get enough watering" kind of thing.
And meanwhile, the honeybees and the bumblebees just keep up diligently building their stores. According to the bee garden plaque, a healthy bee hive can have 60,0000 bees! I would want to venture out of the hive and do my own thing for a spell too!
School has begun! DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN
We started on Labor Day because why not? But gently. A lot of school-type activities will be gradually added over the next few weeks. The actual home-home part of homeschooling is pretty 'lax. After all, there are also co-op classes, in school services, in school art class, horse therapy, and some other things I can't remember because I can't even begin to keep track without my calendar and my Finch yelling at my constantly.
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| Lil unschooling in the mix |
So far, I can remember that on Monday there's a homeschool co-op class (comics!). Tuesday has a couple of Outschool classes. Wednesday has an art class at the public school and then some additional school and home services, and an Outschool class. Thursday is horses (and only horses: we agreed no additional academic work except for Night Zookeeper or Math Makers). Friday, so far, is actually mellow, but we need to add a few things somewhere so it will likely absorb the extra soon enough.
Remembering what day it is becomes crucial. Don't want to show up to the South Seattle Co-op Community Center when I was supposed to be at the stables in Redmond! Got to bring the AAC device on Wednesday, and have to dress for side walking on Thursday (when I also need to have the new playlist set up). We have time to go slow and listen to our crow book before waking up on Friday but Wednesday is a rush. Which is ... interesting.
Inside me are two wolves. The autistic wolf prefers having the exact same predictable schedule every single day so that I know I'll be eating my popcorn at 3:30 p.m. and taking my Bee Garden walk every day at 1:00 p.m. Etc. The ADHD wolf enjoys the variety but gets sent into total executive dysfunction by little tiny things and has a hard time keeping up with it all.
Thank god for Finch! I realized I was forgetting to do a ton of things because when I had to reinstall it, it eliminated all of my little reminders. Not that I can't dismiss a reminder or just check off something I haven't actually done (me and my pill/toothbrushing reminders all the flipping time) but I feel like it's a layer.
You know how back in the care-about-COVID days they would talk about having multiple layers of protection? That's pretty much my necessary approach to remembering anything.
I need a calendar reminder. A finch checklist. A white board list. A time specific ritual. And as many physical reminders as possible.
Putting things on top of other things or where I would otherwise trip over them has its risks but also helps.
A checklist on the door helps, with a ritual to go over it and see if things actually made it from upstairs to "walking out the door". I'm told that we ADHDers have difficulty envisioning the end goal and that we do better with pictures of "me ready to go to school" so I might try that as well.
Anyways, it's not all Allan All the All-time. I also have my own little ventures!
On Tuesday I went in for my five year pap. It turned out to be coded as a full on yearly checkup due to however I scheduled it several months ago. I was wondering why my gyno was talking to me about getting oral health checkups and talking about ordering lab work (she decided my regular doctor could do it if I already had a place)!
Apparently, my nether areas are "normal", "well estrogenized" and "structurally sound." Which does a fat lot to actually address my personal experience of having constantly enflamed ladybits, but I'm glad they look nice anyways. Because every time I try to make that better it usually just means six months of spiraling disaster! And, honestly, 2 labial biopsies in five years are plenty!
Spoiler alert: my pap smear also came back as "NEGATIVE FOR INTRAEPITHELIAL LESION OR MALIGNANCY (NILM)." I have to admit it took me about five to ten minutes to figure this out, despite that being in all caps and in bold. In fairness, there were a lot of other notes about sample size and previous tests, and just generally a lot of text. But the rest of it was neither in caps nor in bold so... well... I got there in the end.
Just generally I seem to be fairly "normal" (har har).
Sort of.
One of the things I love about doctors' offices is that they will take all those finicky measurements and an elaborate history and then ignore them completely.
What, you have a blood pressure of 30/5 and a pulse of 200? Well, you're still standing so I'm sure that's ok.
Temperature at 115 on a forehead swab? Zero blood oxygen level? Well, you aren't dead.
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| Fine. Totally fine. |
At random, a medical professional will actually show significant concern that my blood pressure is 90/59 or something much closer to average than my typical. They'll ask if I can even stand and knit their brow like I'm on death's door. Most however, give not a whit!
The degree to which doctors care or don't care about anything is always a curveball. I think my BP was like 80/45 or something, but whatever. I feel "normal" and from what I read nobody actually measures correctly anyways.
Also, is it just me or does everyone's height fluctuate as chaotically as their weight? Ok, maybe not quite as drastically, but several years ago I had a huge panic because I was measured at a clean 5'9 after living my life describing myself as 5'10. As somebody with aero candy bones and a grandmother who literally did lose about a foot of height due to severe osteoporosis, this raised some alarm bells.
To be fair, I have never actually been 5'10 minus heels. Until my plantar fasciitis moved in, I pretty much lived in three inch heels, so I was a bit misguided about my height in general. As a twentysomething I rounded up to 5'10 so much I actually believed it. But still. I was definitely more than 5'9! Since then, I've been 5'9 1/4, 5'9 1/2, and 5'9 3/4 and every variation around that at seeming random.
This isn't totally nuts as it turns out. People's height tends to diminish 1 - 2 centimeters over the course of a day. I don't think my shorter doctor's appointments have been happening with the dinner rush. Still, if it's that big of a daily fluctuation, I imagine there are other elements at play and it isn't simply how beautiful my posture was at any moment.
As for weight. I've always had a pretty wide band that I fluctuate through, between inflammation and water and dietary restrictions and which medications I'm taking at any given time. I'd say I travel through about twenty pounds throughout an average year without it being a thang.
I've been up and down this year a lot due to conflicting stress responses - four months of stress-eating followed by never wanting to eat again for another two and a half - that first caused a ton of gain and then shut all that shit back down for an equal ton of loss which left me (1) where I started at the beginning of the year, (2) at a net of maybe ten pounds down from last year's random weigh-in probably due to wearing lighter clothing and taking off my boots.
I get self -conscious about it sometimes, but I have a weird body where I kind of almost always look the same. And I wear pretty clothing so it really is mostly a trade off of "do I actually have some T&A or do I have a waist?" A fairly neutral trade off.
Google wanted to emphasize this for me by making me this handy dandy photo collage the other day. And I'm oddly tickled by it, so here you go:
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Ok technically I actually weigh the same in both pictures, but people also always say that I haven't changed
and... I mean maybe I've unmasked a little in the past twenty years??
Haha ok the first was a photo shoot I did back in my twenties. I didn't usually look like that. But I like the contrast.
At the appointment, my gyno asked me what my secret was losing the weight. I kind of hate this, because honestly both my previous weight and my current weight are squarely in the band of "healthy weight" and the bias towards "lower normal is better normal," is absolutely how I ended up wrecking my body without any strong intervention from medical professionals for a flipping decade until a cardiologist just told me to gain thirty pounds and drink more salt. I was never technically "underweight," but my body didn't want to be "low normal" and wasn't built for it.
But I digress. She asked me my secret.
I said, "well... my mom had cancer." Not gonna lie, it was more complicated than that, but nobody needs the grizzles of my life story (well, anyone reading this here, then sorry but I've started typing and there is no end in sight until I get bored and distracted and cut off randomly with a cute cat picture)
She said that wasn't really ideal and she had hoped it was more like joining a running club.
I shrugged cuz, yeah, I am allergic to my own sweat and always injure myself running, but on whole that probably still would have been better.
Then she said I should know that my hair was going to fall out in clumps in six months.
I said "bummer." And she commenced poking about my "perfectly normal" private areas.
Hair loss? NOOOOOOOO!
A little internet search indicates she was probably referring to telegen effluvium, which sounds a lot fancier than "coming out in clumps," but seems to be hair loss that happens 2-4 months (but as many as 6 I guess?) after rapid weight loss or a stressful event (or high fever or pregnancy, but... focus here!)
I think I've experienced this before, albeit on a far less drastic level than "clumps". Then again, I'm on several medications that cause hair loss and MCAS can itself cause hair loss and it's been nonstop stress since February last year until maybe last month, but really since I dunno since I was born really... so it's shocking I have any hair left at all.
Anyways, "coming out in clumps" would be a bummer, given I was just saying how much I loved my hair at the moment.
But what can you do? I do still have plenty of nice scarves I suppose.
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| But on my head! |
This itty bitty baldie rabbit hole revived a suppressed memory: three or four years ago I did talk to a dermatologist about suspected hair thinning that was likely related to either telegen flotsamandjetsom, MCAS, xolair, or maybe my hair just being greasier due to using a lot of grapeseed oil on everything. The derm was kind of equivocal about whether it was anything, but said sure your hair isn't overwhelmingly thick so... could be. I decided minoxidil seemed a little too likely to cause a reaction, and it did resolve itself eventually. Or I stopped caring. Or I got a new shampoo. Hard to say definitively.
But also - how did I forget this? - he did order some blood tests and my ferritin was "a little low." As I recall, it was above what is classified as "normal," but lower than some much higher threshold that's optimal for your hair? Something like that. Like - and I'm making these numbers up mostly - normal goes down to 30 or maybe even 15, but below 70 can cause symptoms? Or something like that. Anyways, the dermatologist was singularly unconcerned about this, but did recommend I take iron bisglycinate every other day.
Every other day because for some magic reason that is actually a bit fascinating. After you take iron supplements, your body releases a hormone that makes you absorb less iron. And it stays in your system for 24 hours or so. So because the absorption goes down so significantly, you actually end up absorbing pretty much the same amount of iron whether you take dose x every day or every other day. Which is finger waiving weird!
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| Little Pica should fix this right up! |
So, I've been taking this iron supplement for four or so years as initially instructed. This is good, since a food tracker indicates I never get nearly the recommended level of iron in my diet and it's all the wussy "non-heme" type that bunny rabbits get.
But the dermatologist never told me to get a follow up test, and I have no idea if I'm taking too much or too little. And honestly, I fully forgot to ever mention it to any other doctor because I take a ton of pills, and I never remember all of them!
I did a remarkable amount of intense research into it for an afternoon, and it sounds like anemic people (which I'm not) mainline INSANE quantities of iron, so I doubt I'm killing myself with my every other day RDA amount. But also, after supplementing you're supposed to order a follow up test three months after and... that never happened.
So, darn it, I think I have to go back to my regular doctor now and get more blood work ordered? Sigh. I was thinking the silver lining of accidentally scheduling my yearly check up with my gyno was that I wouldn't have to also do my yearly check up with my regular doc. Maybe it can be a video appointment since I never want to get blood work the same day as a doctor's visit (I find the stress of all those fluorescent lights at once tends to result in shriveled veins and a lot of misery versus going to the magical blood draw depot in Burien all hydrated and relaxed)
I was putting off seeing my doctor until 2026. The annual checkup is when she usually orders all the annual labs, and I ended up putting off getting any of my levels checked until a couple of months ago (needed a finch reminder for that apparently!) I suppose I could just put off getting my labs for several months again, too, but I'm every optimistic I'll do better next time!
At any rate, not much to be done, but since all that came up my scalp has been sore and I keep waiting for the clumps to start shedding! Which is stressful because I shed an inordinate amount of hair on the regs, so it's easy to imagine!
Ah well. Cute scarves. Cute scarves. "100% real silk feel" scarves even! Thanks amazon!
The internet says the doctor is totally off and usually it would happen somewhere between a month to three after a stressful event so of course I'm calculating in my head when I was can't-eat-stressed and I think I'm about 2 or 3 months out. So, I guess it's time to start styling with elmer's glue! I kid, I kid.
I also get a little physical therapy to start the weekend in appropriate pain levels. Which were... extensive. I am now within the last 5 degrees of 180 range of motion in most directions. Apparently, the last little bit is the hardest and Eric the PT is getting impatient so he was pretty much in the "buckle in, bitch" mood today. A ton of tearful pulsing and a large smattering of resistance and weight training! Ufff! It feels really good to be able to push it like that, though.
But ah well. Autum is almost upon us.
May the smoke stay aloft and make the moon orange without tainting the air!
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