To kill a coughing fit

Half of the people I know are sick right now, mostly with Strep Throat, sinus infections, and chest colds. I know of at least two cases of Pneumonia, and one Bronchitis. This seems like a good time to write about my favorite home remedies for respiratory illnesses.

First, we'll deal with the throat and sinuses.

For this, I use a saline rinse and a saline gargle.
The formula for this is lukewarm water (105 degrees F) and salt. The saline rinse is 1/2 teaspoon of salt to a cup of water. The gargle is 1 whole teaspoon salt to a cup of water. Do not overdo the salt, or using the rinse will hurt.

The saline rinse is used like nose drops. I don't like neti pots, because the amount of fluid dispensed kind of forces it through instead of letting it go where it may.

Instead, the drops should be administered 2-4 drops into each nostril while the patient is laying on his or her back. The patient should remain laying down for at least 30 seconds, then may get up and blow the drops out. This can be repeated if necessary.

When using the gargle, the patient should use it in a similar manner to gargling mouthwash. It should not be swallowed. It won't cause any serious immediate harm if it is, but that's a lot of salt to add to your diet.

Both the nose drops and the gargle can be used 2 to 3 times a day. I would avoid doing more than that as too much salt will dry out the area similar to being burned, causing pain rather than relief.

The second remedy for the throat and nose is peppermint. Peppermint has menthol in it, and can help temporarily clear the sinuses and numb the throat. A good peppermint tea, or peppermint altoids will achieve this. Do not attempt to use straight peppermint oil (used for flavoring candies.) It is way too strong, and the smell and sensation and will cause choking.

For a very sore throat, temporarily pain relief can be achieved by drinking clove tea. If clove tea is not available near you, a clove infusion can be made at home by boiling a half to one teaspoon of whole cloves in water a small saucepan until the water takes on a light amber color. The water should then be cooled before drinking. For me, the numbness usually lasts for about the amount of time it takes to digest a couple of over the counter painkiller/fever reducers.

Also helpful for sore throat is a mix of whiskey, honey, and lemon. When mixed in equal parts, the concoction makes a good homespun cough syrup. For more of a therapeutic beverage, mix a quarter cup of 40 proof (available at the grocery store) whiskey with two teaspoons each of honey and lemon. This is close to the basic recipe for a hot toddy. This will offer some relief to the throat, help cut mucus, and hopefully make the patient feel relaxed and sleepy.

A good beverage for dealing with post nasal drip is heated honey lemonade. Use real lemon juice or lemon juice concentrate mixed with water as directed on the package. Sweeten to taste with honey and heat as you would tea or hot chocolate. The warmth and the lemon will help to thin and eliminate the mucus. Honey will help soothe the throat to reduce coughing and sneezing, unlike sugar, which can be an irritant.

For a cough and chest congestion, the hot toddy recipe will also help. In addition, I like to use a Traditional Medicinals brand tea called Breathe Easy. This tea helps to calm the respiratory system and reduce coughing. Between doses of this, peppermint tea can also aid in temporarily reducing sinus congestion.

There is one really good over the counter drug for expelling phlegm from the chest and sinuses. Guaifenesin comes in several name brand OTC medicines, in doses varying from about 100mg to about 12oomg. I have found that my system does not handle the larger doses well at all, but I can take low-dose liquid guaifenesin without much trouble.

However, I can't always get my hands on that right away when I'm sick. When that happens, my second choice is a teaspoon of grated horse radish. If you can't swallow that straight, try eating it with toast or on a chicken or beef sandwich.

Horse radish irritates the mucus membranes, so you will find yourself coughing and/or sneezing more instead of less. However, the cough will also be much more productive than prior to consumption, making it a decent substitute for chemical expectorants.

To avoid too much coughing, use of horse radish can be followed up with the 1-1-1 whiskey remedy mentioned above.

Another remedy for chest congestion involves turning your bathroom into a temporary sauna.

With the door closed, run your shower on hot only so that it will steam the room. Do not run the exhaust fan while steaming the room. Stay in the room with the door closed for 20 minutes, or until the shower runs out of steam. Be sure to sit close to the shower, and up off of the floor. It'll be really warm in there, so "dress" as for a sauna.

I also recommend using Vicks VapoRub on your chest while in the steam room, or using a SudaCare Shower Soother. The steam will help to get the medicine deep into the lungs where it will have the most needed effect. After exiting the steam room, dress warmly to remain comfortable. Be sure to leave the bathroom door open and the fan on for at least half an hour to allow everything to dry.

At night, you'll want to keep the chest warm, but the air cool. Turn the heat down in your bedroom to a few degrees lower than you usually prefer. Warm air will irritate rather than soothe, and can make breathing more difficult. Cool air can help to keep inflammation down.

Night is also a good a good time to apply soothing vapors.
A plug-in, waterless vaporizer which contains menthol works well, and there are a couple of brands available in most stores. Vicks makes one, and so do the makers of Sudafed and Pedia Care. Your local pharmacy may even have a store brand. Look for one that at least has Menthol or Eucalyptus. Better ones will also include Camphor, and the best ones will have Rosemary, which helps to destroy bacteria.

Before these were available, my family had a home remedy which my Mom used on me as a child. It was unchanged for generations, until Vicks began producing VapoRub, after which that was added by my Grandma. It's a gross remedy, but it works really well. Make a mix of about 1 1/2 teaspoon of bacon grease with a dollop (about a half teaspoon) of Vicks VapoRub, and a quarter teaspoon of salt. This is spread on the chest as a plaster. The plaster should be covered with a folded up cloth which you don't mind having permanent grease stains. Over that, the patient should wear a tight fitting (but still comfortable) shirt to hold it in place. The plaster should be used at bedtime and worn all night. The mix warms the chest, and acts as both a decongestant and expectorant without adding chemicals to the body, and can therefore be used in addition to medicine.

While the patient is sick, food will likely be largely unappealing, but soup and broth generally goes down well even when the appetite is gone. When someone in my family is that sick, I use a simple recipe. In a large soup pot, start two quarts of chicken broth. Add 1 tablespoon garlic powder, a teaspoon onion powder, a pinch of celery seed, and a bag of 30 minute egg noodles. Bring to a boil, and cook for 30 minutes.
Substitutes for powdered spices would be one clove of garlic, one half onion, and one stalk of celery, all finely chopped (small as you can.) Cooking time would be the same.
If the patient has enough appetite to tolerate meat, add one cooked, diced chicken breast or one can pre-cooked chicken. If not, the broth and noodles will be fortifying enough, since the patient should also be resting as much as possible.

Once the patient is feeling well enough to have more of an appetite, I use an inexpensive but delicious recipe my family always just called What'cha Got Stew. It wasn't the same every time, because Mom used whatever "red" meat scraps and matching (mostly) broth we had in the freezer, and a variety of veggies in it (whatever we needed to use up; hence the name,) but a good basic version is this:
2 quarts beef broth or beef stock
1/2 to 3/4 pound cooked stew scraps, chopped up roast beef, or ground hamburger
1 small or half large head green cabbage, chopped into 1 inch chunks
1 large or 2 small to medium carrot(s), diced
1/2 onion, diced
3 or 4 potatoes, chopped
1 bag of frozen mixed vegetables
1/2 C rice or barley
Boil until potatoes and carrots are fully cooked and (if used) barley is soft. Corn starch can be added to thicken broth to make stew.
This is one of those things that Mom could get me to eat even when I felt like death warmed over, and to this day is one of my favorite recipes. I used to also add mushrooms to this, but can't any more, due to allergies in my household. However, I can attest to the fact that chopped portabella mushrooms go very well with this recipe.

To get the germs and chemicals out of your system, you'll want (as your doctor says) to consume lots of fluids. This works nicely with drinking tea and hot lemonade for your throat. In addition to that, it's good to have an 8 ounce glass of 100% cranberry juice or a can of non-alcoholic beer each day to act as a mild diuretic. For beer drinkers, I recommend getting a darker beer (like Odools Amber) to slightly increase the sulfur intake, since that will also help fight the infection. Regular beer would also work (again, the darker the better), but if using a whiskey remedy, it's best to not also consume alcoholic beer, as too much alcohol during an illness can cause dehydration, and will give the body one more substance to filter out when it is all ready trying to deal with germs and drugs.

This might not sound like a remedy, but laughing it up will also help banish a cold. As a powerful antidote to stress and depression caused by feeling under the weather, laughter gives the immune system a little (but much needed) kick. Watch a funny movie, listen to silly songs, or read a humorous book. Visit a whimsical website like icanhascheezburger.com, or a funny blog like damnyouautocorrect.com or regretsy.com.
The increase in humor, and resulting decrease in stress is sure to also help with the next and most important home remedy for any illness.

Finally, sleep, sleep, sleep! It takes a huge amount of energy for your body to battle an infection, and it is able to do that better when energy is not being used for other work. Patients should get as much rest as possible when feeling under the weather, to shorten the duration of any illness.

Cinnamon Roll Recipe, uses bread machine for dough

I didn't have all of the ingredients for my usual cinnamon roll recipe, but really wanted cinnamon rolls, so I decided to wing it. I based what I did on a basic bread recipe. Then, I switched from water to milk to compensate for not having sour cream. I increased the amount of oil, added eggs, sugar, and cinnamon, and compensated for the extra liquid with more flower. The filling is just cinnamon, sugar, and butter.

Wet stuff
1c milk
2 Lg eggs
1/4 c oil
5 T sugar
1/4 t cinnamon
1 t vanilla

Dry stuff
3 1/2 to 4 c flour
1 t baking powder
2 t yeast

Also,
3 T butter, melted
1 T cinnamon
1/4 to 1/2 C brown sugar

Mix wet stuff in bread machine mixer. Mix Flour and baking powder in bowl. Top wet stuff with most of flour mix. Make a well for the yeast and add it. Place in bread maker and mix on Dough setting. Check after about 2 minutes, and add more flour mix as needed, then allow mixing to finish. Allow to rise until timer goes off.

Remove from bread maker and roll dough out on flat surface to about a centimeter thick in a rectangular shape. Spread about 1 1/2 T butter over dough. Sprinkle evenly with cinnamon, then cover evenly with brown sugar. Roll the dough up into a log shape. Spread the remaining butter over outside of log. Slice into individual rolls about an inch to an inch and a half thick. Place rolls on a greased cookie sheet and let rise until double in size, about 45 minutes, in a warm room.

Bake at 400 degrees, 12 minutes or until golden brown.
Makes 12 to 16 rolls, depending on thickness.

You know it must be morning

You know it must be morning because a stranger in scrubs comes into your room with a wheeled toilet-looking chair and turns on the light. It's still dark outside. They usually don't wake you until after the sun comes up. What's wrong with this person?

The stranger approaches your bed and says something you can barely hear. You don't even bother to respond. You've been here long enough for all of them to know you don't hear as well as you used to. Your hearing aid is in the drawer next to the bed. The good ones know to give it to you before they try to talk in a normal voice.

This one looks as if she has escaped from the sanctuary for the terminally patient, standing there in ill-fitting yellow scrubs with huge, glaring, brightly colored flowers all over them. She repeats her statement just a bit louder. "Morning, Martha," you hear, "I mere to tape you to getta sour."

Ah. They have sent in a nutcase to torment you. You finally figure it out - you have died in your sleep, and this is hell.

"Go 'way."

The girl brings the wheeled toilet-looking chair up to your bed and lets down the bed rail. "I mug it chew up, Martha."

What? Is she threatening to bite you? No, she's threatening to get you out of bed all ready. For crying out loud. "Why? I don't want to get up." What is wrong with this person? It's not morning yet. If you had your teeth in, you'd bite her.

The girl, ignoring your protests, puts one arm under your knees and the other under your shoulders and counts to three, and then suddenly you are spinning and screaming and maybe even falling, and then you are sitting on the edge of the bed, hanging on for dear life and panting like a dog. It feels as though you are sliding off of the edge. Your legs don't support you any more, and neither does your tummy. Why has she put you in this terrible position with no back support? "Lord help us!" you gasp, but your protests are ignored.

"There now, that wasn't so bad," the girl says just as loudly right into your ear as she wraps something binding around your waist. Well, that's her opinion, you think. In your opinion, it was quite bad indeed. What the hell is she doing to your waist? It's really uncomfortable.

"I mug it chew into the sour hair."

Chew into the sour hair? What the hell is this twit trying to tell you? Why can't she just talk like a normal person? Think of what rhymes... oh, yes. That thing sitting over there is the shower chair.

Shower chair! She's going to put you in the shower chair. She's going to give you a shower. Great. It's still dark out. You don't want a shower. You want to sleep. What is wrong with this person?

"…gay bell to lit you. Sis gonna fee ya bit tie."

Thank God you have learned to translate gibberish, or you'd never understand what this kid is muttering.
You figure out the thing around your waste is the gate belt, a narrow strap of strong fabric the aides use to assist in lifting people. It's just awful. That thing cuts you in half, or at least it feels like it!

"No! You're no' s'posed t'use zat on me. Go Look. 'Sin my shart." It's so hard to talk without your teeth. You know you aren't enunciating well. You just can't without your teeth, and your mouth is dry, too. You guess if she expects you to understand her, this girl ought to at least try to understand you.

She doesn't.

She tightens the horrible strap around your waist like a misplaced noose, seemingly oblivious to your protests. Working her fingers under it, she begins speaking again, "One, two, THREE!" and you realize this waif, who you outweigh, is going to lift you by herself! You grab her arms.

"Hey, don' do dat!" you shout as she hefts you like a sack of fruit. "You can'treat me like dis."
She's speaking again. You can't hear well enough to understand the words, but the tone sounds terribly condescending, and strained at the same time. She is probably trying to reassure you. It isn't working.

You decide to speak more slowly in the hope that she will listen better.

"I'm not an animal," you remind her as you cling to her arms, "I'm ninety one years old." Your bones are fragile. If she drops you...

and then she sets you down on that shower chair. It is as uncomfortable as it looks. It feels as if you are going to fall through it onto the floor, butt first. The girl continues to chatter witlessly at you as she proceeds to remove the flimsy excuse for a night gown the other girls dressed you in last night. Now, in addition to being half asleep, irritated, nervous, and upset, you are naked and cold.

You bark at the young idiot, "I'm freezin'!" and she puts a very thin blanket over you, tucking it in under your arms. She pulls you foreword and wraps the blanket around your back. It hangs over the edges of the chair. You can feel it overlapping against the back of your butt, though it doesn't feel like much coverage. The draft from below takes away all sense of being covered.

You ask for your teeth. Displaying the ignorance of the young and healthy, the idiot reminds you that you are going to the sour (shower), not bed fat (breakfast), as if the only thing teeth are good for is chewing your food. She doesn't care a thing about your dignity.

While you sit there squirming uncomfortably on the shower chair, she puts a pillow case over your feet, then without asking, roots around in your dresser to find your soap and shampoo. You have to remind her to get your powder. Good God, was she going to dress you without it? Your skin would rub itself raw in an hour. She digs in the drawer again, and pulls out the bottle. She puts your toiletries, along with two towels and washcloths, in a bowl in your lap.

This is when you realize that you are going to be wheeled down the hallway to the shower room in this getup.

"Is this thing closed in the back? I feel a draft."

You are patiently assured that you have full coverage. It doesn't feel like it, but that is probably because of the hole in the bottom of the chair. What the heck kind of stupid chair is this, anyway? Whose idea was this? Whoever it is, that person should be shot.

Without warning, the girl pushes the back of the chair, wheeling you forward. You let go of the bowl and grab the arms of the chair to keep from falling out. She continues until your feet are almost up against the door. She leans over you, pushes it open, and wheels you out into the hallway. In the hall, another resident is being wheeled back to his room.

Dear God, there's some poor guy who gets this treatment even earlier? You hear his protest as you move down the hall. "Uuuuuuunnnnnnghhhhh." From this, you realize why they get him up so early. If he can't tell them how he feels about it, then he's not complaining, is he? Then, you remember that you're naked under that blanket, being wheeled down the hallway next to a man who is also naked under his blanket. Horrified, you turn your face away from him.

The twit wheels you right up to another door. Then, she has to back up because this one opens out into the hall, just like it does every other time it is approached.

Idiot! But she doesn't see you shaking your head.

She parks you in the middle of a small, tiled room with a drain in the middle and a shower on the wall. It has one of those nice attachments with a hose so the shower head can be operated by hand. Those are wonderful when you're using it on yourself, and you can direct the warm water over your back when you get cold, and keep it out of your eyes. They're not so great when someone else is doing it. You can operate the shower yourself, if the aid would just turn your chair so that you could face the handles and give you the shower head. Instead, she has your back to everything.

You sit there for a few moments in silence, then you hear the sound of something being placed under your chair. A moment later, there is the sensation of hot water hitting your skin.

"OW!" You give the twit an indignant look. "Hot!"

She adjusts the temperature. The water is now uncomfortably warm, but you're afraid if you ask her to adjust it again, you'll get a cold shower. You endure the heat as she runs the water over your shoulders, down your back and chest, and over your arms so that your whole body is wet. The air on your wet skin makes you feel cold, which makes the water feel even hotter.

Now, she hangs up the shower head and you sit there wet, cold, and shivering. Yay.
You hear her say, "Tipper Ed bat."
Huh?

In the moment it takes you to understand what she's asking you to do, she decides to prompt you by putting the edge of the palm of her hand on your forehead, near the hairline, and applying a bit of pressure.

"OW!" Does she not realize that you're old? What kind of an idiot puts pressure on an old person's neck? You push her hand away.

"Now Martha, let's not get combative, ok?" This time she speaks well enough to be understood.

Combative. The label sends shivers up your spine. If the aide decides you're being combative, she'll call in one of the male orderlies to hold you down while she finishes your shower. You glance at the call button on the wall. Unnoticed moments ago, it takes on a menacing appearance.

"You're hurting me," you point out, speaking slowly and struggling for clarity. "Don't push on my head. And you're not speaking clearly. I can't hear you enough to do what you say. And I can wash myself if you just give me the handle."

The aide is standing with her arms crossed, looking at you. You sigh, and tip your head back, as she apparently intended. She washes your hair with rough movements.

She picks up your arm by the wrist instead of asking you to raise your hand. With the other hand, she scrubs your armpits vigorously, as if you were a sweaty teen instead of an old woman. You hardly even wear deodorant any more. The experience is repeated on the other side, and then the girl unceremoniously lifts each breast and scrubs under those as if the skin there represented a second set of armpits. You feel pushed around and dehumanized as she scrubs you like a thanksgiving turkey instead of treating you as a live woman. The indignity is further visited upon your nether regions as this girl you don't even know soaps you underneath with a washcloth, which she wrings out after, and tosses across the room, out the door, and into a laundry hamper. This whole time, she hasn't rinsed your hair. You can feel the suds working their way down your forehead, and you have to close your eyes to avoid getting soap in them.

There is a sharpness to her voice now, but at least she's loud enough for you to hear, "Ok, Martha, I need you to tip your head back for me again."

Your neck feels sore, but you tip your head back anyway. The hot water cascades over your forehead, running back through your hair and over your eyes. You hope she doesn't get it in your nose. The last thing you need is water up your nose. You'll have a sinus infection by tomorrow.

You lift your head so that the water won't go up your nose, and she rinses the back of your head. The water feels burning hot on your skin as she runs it down your back and over your body, once again manually lifting your arms and your breasts as though you can't do anything for yourself. Then, she sticks the shower head under the chair and sprays your butt and your sensitive parts with hot water. You can't help yourself this time.

"OOOOWWWW!"

You grab both arms of the chair and lift yourself up in discomfort. It rolls a little because the aide forgot to apply the break. She yells at you.

"Martha, don't! You can't get up. You'll fall!"

You reply, "I'm not getting up, you nit-wit! You're burning me!"

"Now, Martha, it just feels hot because your skin is wet. It's not even red. You're fine." And with that, she totally dismisses your discomfort and irritation. It doesn't matter to her. Why should it? She can't feel it.

She grabs the object from under your chair. You see that it's a bucket. Why the hell would she put a bucket under your chair?

She steps into the little bathroom attached to the shower and dumps the contents of the bucket down the toilet. You hear something solid fall with the water, and you realize that while she was showering you, you must have moved your bowels. You're not normally incontinent, as long as you get regular trips to the toilet. This must have happened because she didn't take you to the toilet before dragging you in here and dousing you. Still, you're embarrassed. And cold. Why hasn't she wrapped you back up again?

The aide notices you shivering, and pats you down with one of the towels. She uses the other one to wrap over your thin, short hair. Then, she wraps you up in the same blanket and pillow case as before, and wheels you back out into the hallway, where it's much chillier than you remember. A gasp of surprise escapes you. Worse, she rushes back to your room so fast there's a breeze on you. You tense up, trying to keep warm.

The twit has the same problem outside your door as she did outside the shower door. What are they teaching these kids in school now? Act before you think? Sheesh.

Finally, you're back in your room. There's a split second of relief before you remember that she has to lift you again. Fortunately, this time there's another aide there. She is just finishing helping your roommate get dressed. She offers to help lift you back on the bed. When your aide says, "No, I can do it," the other aide reminds her that you are a two person lift. "Look," she says. "It's in her chart."

Again, you can't help it. "Toll you!" you crow.

It's much easier this time. The two girls lift you together, one on each side, onto the bed, still under the blanket. Then, one supports your shoulders as the other lifts your legs onto the mattress. Your aide thanks the other girl, who says, "You're welcome! Any time. Call me when you're ready to get her into her chair." Then she leaves. You know she won't be back.

You realize... oh, dear God. Now this twit is going to dress me. It's going to be quite a day.

* * * * * * * * * *

I worked with that twit (and the helpful girl) for six months at a crappy, poorly run home in a small town. When I talked to the head nurse about the bad aide's poor treatment of the residents, I was told to mind my own business. There were a lot of other concerns with the home. Management didn't make sure we were properly staffed, and we were often illegally shorthanded. Care was neglected, and residents suffered. I contacted management, and got no assistance with the problem. The same occurred with corporate.

Eventually, after trying the company's chain of command, I went to the Ombudsman for the Elderly. The state took over the home. I was retaliated against, but the job didn't pay enough to fight for, and I was able to get another within days. The state straightened out that particular site, but for every facility, there's at least one twit, and there's at least one Martha.

Martha isn't the memory of a real person. She's a conglomeration of memories of different residents. Her health problems (hearing difficulty, weak legs, sensitivity to heat and cold, false teeth, and not so flexible muscles) are pretty normal with the aging process in most people. They're also not well understood by the young. It's tough for a twenty year old to understand that a woman's teeth can be a key to her dignity, that simply nudging the forehead can give an elderly person whiplash, and that it's not just volume, but enunciation, and even the tone and timbre of your voice that determine whether a person hears and understands what you've said. It's too easy for people in health care, in the rush of trying to squeeze too many tasks into one shift, to forget about the needs and the humanity of the patient.

It's important to remember that aging doesn't eliminate human rights, human experiences, human perceptions, and human emotion. The elderly are not lifeless shells that can be treated without deference to their personhood. They deserve the same consideration as those of us who are still able to fully stick up for ourselves.

One way to help in achieving this is the use of home health care. By changing the setting and style of care-giving, the health industry can also change the perception of the patient. In her own home with her own family, Martha is not just patient number 3 of 14. She is seen as someone's wife, mother, sister, or grandmother, and maybe as several or even all of these. Even without other family present, in her own home, Martha's story will be told by her decor, her possessions. Her home will reflect her style.

In addition, the home health care system is not as hectic and fast paced as the nursing home system. Laws in my state say one aide can care for 14 people simultaneously. Under a system like that, an aide gets little time with each patient, and none of them receive the full focus of her care.
In a home health care setting, the aide gets a smaller number of patients to care for, and is at each patient's house for a set time frame.

At a nursing home, assigned tasks are the focus of the job. The patient is almost like a product. In a home health care setting, the patient (or the family) is the client. There is a whole different relationship there. If the client is not satisfied with her care, she can ask for a different aide. She does not have to put up with the lack of care and dignity. She has a choice.

Increasing the home health care system, and reducing the size and scope of the residential nursing home care system, would allow for a more focused effort to monitor and manage the bedside manner of nursing home personnel, to improve the rate of prevention of abuse and neglect in nursing care facilities.

Beyond the human aspect, home health care is also a money-saver. Martha can live on her own or with her family. She can eat with at home, and sleep in her own bed. She may only need an aide for a few hours a day, maybe even only a few days a week, depending on the level of her family's participation in her care.

Choosing home health care over residential nursing care could reduce spending thousands of dollars into spending hundreds. At the same time, the industry also creates jobs, as elderly folks who have a tough time at home, but who just aren't ready to give up their independence, hire home health aides to visit their homes a few times a week to help with tasks that have become too much of a challenge, like bathroom cleaning, or to act as a "spotter" during self-care processes that become dangerous with age, like showering.

... just some things to remember when you read or hear about officials in your state either considering or taking action to allow Medicare coverage for home health care.

The wages of internet debate

Internet debate is one of those aspects of modern life with which I have something akin to a love-hate relationship. By that I do not mean that there is some aspect of internet debate that I love. I hate the way people get during these debates. People are childish and rude when their opinions are questioned, put to the tests of logic, reason, and evidence, and found wanting. They don't want you to provide them with an ironclad case for your argument. They want to feel like they said something clever and witty that you can't trump. When you prove that you can, they become angry and belligerent. It happens every time. The next step the other side takes is personal attack or some other kind of frustrating non-debate behavior.

Why do I even bother?

Most of the time, it isn't because I'm looking for debate. Sometimes, it's because someone stated something in a forum where I'm active, and I've found the statement to be incorrect, and sometimes even deliberately misleading. More often, it's because a third party has entered a discussion between myself and another, arguing against whatever statements I've made. On more than a few occasions, the latter has included a tone of personal offense at my opinion, not because my opinion is socially offensive, but because the individual does not agree with me.

This recently occurred in a discussion on the difference between Mifepristone, the Morning After pill (previously know as RU-486,) and the Birth Control Pill.

The discussion was initiated by a mother whose daughter is in college. The daughter had informed the mother that her school's clinic had given her a pamphlet on Mifepristone, calling it an emergency birth control pill that prevents pregnancy. The terminology in the pamphlet was phrased in half-truths, carefully leaving out the fact that the pill is an abortifacient rather than a pill that prevents conception. The mother was concerned that the daughter was misunderstanding the drug's function, and posted a query about it online. I happened across that, and replied with a description of what the drug is, what it does, and links to a few sites with more information.

The question was on a pro-life site, but not a high traffic site, so I answered it from a pro-life point of view. I did receive notification of a reply once, but it was mostly unrelated. I did contribute to that line of discussion, but did not receive a reply from the writer. Then, months later, I received a notice of reply, and I checked it out. A new commenter replied to my last comment, and asserted that "in a large percentage of cases" modern birth control pills are also abortifacients.

The statement was ridiculous and the writer offered no evidence to back it up. I replied with a description of the mechanism by which modern birth control pills work. The basic summary of this is that these pills work by preventing ovulation. Preventing ovulation prevents pregnancy. As a secondary effect, the pills also thickens the cervical mucus, creating somewhat of a barrier that deters fertilization. By preventing conception, hormonal birth control pills are not acting as an abortifacient, but as a preventative.

I really thought that would clear up the issue. Instead, the guy got offended and began spouting crap about possibilities and people being informed. He basically offered "this is what everyone would think if they knew what I know" as a debate point.

I replied with a request for any information he had that would back up his statement, as I had been unable to find anything credible. He linked to a religious site which stated ethical concerns related to using birth control pills based on hypothetical circumstances for which there is no proof. According to these folks, it's a regular thing for ovulation to occur despite correct use of hormonal birth control, and the pill relies on the same mechanism as Mifepristone to prevent implantation of the fertilized egg into the uterine wall.

Though medical sites which describe the pill state that the drug creates changes in the uterine wall which would impair implantation should conception occur, a study published in the American Journal of Gynocology in 1999 found that there is no evidence to support the claim that the hormones that make up the pill have that abortifacient action. It has been found that conception with failed implantation does not occur more in women using birth control pills than it does in women who are not using them. If the pill were a cause for failed implantation, then there would be a larger percentage of women on the pill experiencing that kind of miscarriage when compared to women who are not on the pill.

I found several other articles discussing the same issue, all of which concluded that data just did not support the idea that hormonal birth control (the pill and the Depo shot) allows ovulation and fertilization to take place and then acts as an abortifacient. I gave him a summary and links. I did not dumb down what I was writing, because in the past I've been "yelled" (typed at in all caps) at for that. However, I don't think my debate opponent understood what I wrote, because he didn't address it at all, and it took him several minutes to reply, where his replies had previously been fast and furious.

This is where the discussion became fun.

I cited information from medical and scientific sources, and my debater cited his bible. GOD KNEW YOU IN THE WOMB really isn't an effective counterargument when discussing whether or not the thinning of the uterine tissue has been conclusively proved to prevent implantation in a naturally occurring pregnancy. It doesn't address the basic issue at hand, and is therefore not really a relevant point in the discussion.

However, explaining that to a confused evangelical debater is kind of like explaining to a toddler that he can't have the big candy bar because it's too much candy all at once and it'll make him sick. He doesn't care about the evidence. He's just going to repeat with more force and animation that he wants the candy bar.

The discussion continued with his assertion that people who chose to inform themselves would know what he was talking about. I've encountered this tactic before. It implies that you don't know what you're talking about without backing up the implication. It's designed to be an insult but it makes the user look stupid. I pointed out that he was 1) still not offering me any evidence, and 2) repeating himself.

My debate opponent decided to pretend to go the scientific route, and offered me the Billings method of Rhythm birth control as a serious counterpoint to the question of frequent ovulation during use of birth control pills.

By this time, the man had clicked on my name and was messaging me privately, apparently to avoid embarrassing himself in public. I could have blocked him, but I momentarily lost my mind and decided to humor him.

I pointed out that the rhythm method produces parents, and that measuring the thickness of one's cervical mucus is an ineffective way to test for ovulation if one is taking medication which thickens the cervical mucus. I further pointed out that none of the arguments he's made so far back up his initial assertion of common occurrence. As a counterpoint to these things, he offered the incredibly emphatic statement that THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH!

I can no longer take this man seriously. I have decided to reply in kind. To that end, I've sent back a message with the following picture in it.



That was followed by the statement that I do not tolerate childish tantrums, and that he has a better chance of persuading me to continue the debate if he relies on logic and reason rather than unrelated quotes, which do nothing to persuade the reader. I stated that if he wasn't going to stick to the subject at least in respect to offering a counterpoint, I wasn't going to take him seriously.

I hadn't heard back from him, but I've noticed that I now cannot see his arguments on the thread. I'm guessing that the fellow couldn't handle the conversation, and has blocked me rather than face the discrepancies in his logic, and continues to be deeply offended that I do not think taking birth control pills equals having an abortion every month. Regardless, it's yet another individual who started an argument with me, got mad at me for knowing what I was talking about, and then took the discussion into the realm of the ridiculous, turning the debate into an argument... which is why I hate internet debate. That seems to be how it always ends up.

Amber Alert scam still circulating around social networking sites

Over the last couple of days, I've noticed the same "amber alert" posted in the status updates of many of my female facebook friends, and even a few of the guys. There are a few variations of it, but the main body is basically the same.


"Little girl, 3 yrs. old picked up by a man driving a gray car, license plate: Quebec 72B 381. Canada. PLEASE RE-BROADCAST ASAP. It could save her. The Kidnapping is recent so do it, 3 seconds will not kill you. If it were your child u would want the same support"

I'm in Ohio, but that's beside the point. A moment of thinking on the part of the reader can highlight a few important flaws in this message.

First of all, if this were your child, or the child of a loved one, would you waste some of your 500 update characters on statements about how recent the kidnapping is, and an admonition to guilt trip others into posting? Would you leave out her name and description? Why type "little girl, 3 yrs old" when you can say "Jane smith, age 3" or "The Kidnapping is recent so do it, 3 seconds will not kill you. If it were your child u would want the same support" when you can offer details of the child's height, weight, hair and eye color, and what she was wearing at the time? A parent or friend searching for a child would give those details to help in the search. How is the general public supposed to identify the child in this message? That's a definite clue that the message is fake.

Second, there's nothing about the car except the color. Even if the witness saw very little, whether the car was big or small, newer or older (rounded or boxy) and probably whether there were two doors or four would have at least been noticed. With a license plate to identify the vehicle, police would have been able to tell the family what make, model, and year it was registered to. An actual Amber alert should have contained that information. Without it, it's tough to look for the vehicle, as license plates are much more difficult to spot than larger details like what kind of car it is. Again, the lack of detail points to a fake message.

Third, recent is not a date, and as readers continue to re-post, "recent" becomes a lie. For instance, this particular alert scam began in February of 2009, not recently, and not as an Amber alert. An early version of it stated that the missing girl was 7 years old, and the vehicle was a newer sliver truck. The "alert" crisscrossed the country over a two day period, and enough people actually contacted police that there were news stories debunking it. More information on this specific hoax can be found at About.com's Urban Legends site, in the story FAKE AMBER ALERT '72B 381' Spreads Far and Wide (and Fast). This is a third example of lack of detail which indicates a hoax.

What makes this such a big deal? After all, it's just one of many hoax tweets and status updates out there. At least this one doesn't give some third party access to your personal information. It's just an immature, but harmless prank, right?

Well, no. It's not harmless, any more than the missing kid email pranks were harmless. Think about it. Now that you know there is one going around, aren't you going to hesitate every time you see a status update, tweet, or text about a missing kid? You'll want to check the facts so that you don't re-post/text/tweet and look gullible to your friends, especially if the only place you're seeing coming from is those friends who re-post/text/tweet everything.

With each new hoax, we become a bit more cynical with respect to anything we see online. It's all ready happened with photos... who believes picture evidence on the internet? Everything remarkable has at least one comment under it in which the commenter stated simply "photoshopped." A lot of people won't even believe photographic evidence in person, and some even disbelieve polaroids, despite the difficulty involved in faking them. It isn't too far fetched to say that the same thing could apply to Amber alerts and other requests put out online. Cry wolf too many times, and folks will start ignoring genuine alerts on the basis that they are all "probably just another hoax."

Still, what can we do? It isn't like you can stop your friends from forwarding hoaxes, and if you don't re-post, you look like the bad guy. There isn't any way to verify an Amber alert, is there?

Well, yes, there is. You can check the website for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The site has a page for Active Amber Alerts, but you can also search by country, state or province, by how long the child has been missing, and by name once you enter the area and time period.

Another trick for weeding out a hoax is to do a google search on a sizable chunk of the text. I found the story on this one by googling "Little girl, 3 yrs. old picked up by a man." The About.com page on it was at the top of the list. I also googled the format for Canadian license plates, and what I found in the wikipedia entries on that subject led me to conclude that the plates listed in the alert couldn't be Canadian.

My next step was to, instead of re-posting the alert, post a link to the article about it so that my facebook friends could see that there is no alert. That gives those of my friends who have not yet been hit with the post a chance to avoid feeling obligated to pass it on. You can also post that link as a reply or comment to status updates and tweets containing the fake alert. That will help others seeing those updates and tweets to know they don't need to pass it on.

Next time you see a tweet, text, or status update that just doesn't look right to you, remember that you may be onto something. Take a few moments to do a little research before passing it on. It won't save anyone's life, bit it will save you and maybe some of your friends from the embarrassment of having publicly fallen for yet another hoax.

Dragon vs Troll

Okay. I have religious tolerance. I do. I have no problem with people having a different set of beliefs than I have. That they have a different set of beliefs has no impact on my life.

Further, it's interesting to learn about the variety of different beliefs held by various people. It's really cool that folks have found so many ways to relate to each other, the world around us, the universe, and for the believer, deity.

All of that said, I also have my own personal set of beliefs and my own philosophy. It's my way of relating. I don't expect the rest of the world to adopt it, because you're all not me. I'm me. There is only one me in the entire world, and there will never be another me. That's probably a good thing.

The problem is that not everyone feels that way. There are folks in my neighborhood who, for whatever reason, feel compelled to "sell" their beliefs to the rest of us, visiting door-to-door. Even after being told, "no thanks, I'm not interested..." they just keep coming back.

I was nice the last several times. I promise, I gave her all of the chances in the world. Last time, I told her that I'd like her to stop visiting my apartment and attempting to convert me. I'm done.

Today, I saw her coming.

I happened to look out the window after a cloud had passed over the sun, temporarily darkening the room. There she was, across the way, bothering my neighbors. I say bothering, because my neighbor looked agitated. Also, he dropped a huge, steaming f-bomb on her for disturbing his sleep in the middle of the day, as he works nights and cannot sleep at that time. This is something I've heard him explain nicely to her before, only to be told that it's a sin to work at night because it keeps you from going to church. That went over kind of badly, as you might imagine, but it's a good thing, I think. I mean, everyone should try to maintain an expanded vocabulary, and hers expanded quite a bit before his wife came outside, ordered him back to bed, and shut the door in her face. I've already heard everything she has to say, and it's not interesting any more. Now, it's just repetitious and annoying. I decided I wasn't going to answer when she came to my door.

I've been kind of busy today. Not extremely busy, mind you... just busy. I didn't really want to talk to the J-walker. Unfortunately, she decided that when there's a vehicle in front of the apartment, there's someone home, and she banged repeatedly on the door like a pro for over a minute. This, I do not tolerate. Even if you KNOW I'm home, if I do not answer the door, you should go away. You know, sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I shower, too, and sometimes I cook things you have to keep actively stirring for several minutes. Then again, sometimes, I just don't want to answer the damned door, and those are the times when it is most advisable to not hang around and keep knocking.

I was nice. I didn't dress her down. Instead, I opted to match ridiculousness in kind.
Steve the dragon answered the door.

Steve the dragon is a 6 foot long bright green plushie with embroidered "googly" eyes and pointy felt teeth. I decided to give him my worst impression of a Yoda voice, which sounds something like Sesame Street's Grover on crack. I watched her through the spy hole in the door as she stared at the six foot dragon. The conversation went something like this:

Steve the Dragon: Greetings, church-y person of doom.

Church Lady: Um... uh... O_Ծ

Steve the Dragon: *tilts head sideways* Why do you look so confused? Is there something on my face? *shakes vigorously*

Church Lady: I uh, wanted to talk to you about... uh, am I on camera? *looks around*

Steve the Dragon: *looks down, then looks back at lady* No, ma'am. You are on cement.

Church Lady: Wha- *looks down* -oh. Well, that is to say, yes, but I mean... *tapers off to silence*

Steve the Dragon: Cat got your tongue?

At this point, I had a bit of good luck. The neighbor's overly friendly escape-artist of a cat decided to join into the conversation. She unwittingly sort of crept up behind the woman, snuggled up to the backs of her ankles, and said



Church Lady: AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGH! *sets new record for high jump in heels and a skirt*

Cat: *runs off into the bushes, terrified*

Steve the Dragon: *unable to stifle laughter* Apparently not...

Now, she seems to have accepted the reality of Steve the dragon, because this was when she got all wild-eyed and began lecturing him and shaking her finger.

Church Lady: Oh, you think that's funny? You are so rude! I have better things to do than stand around talking to a stuffed... whatever you are. You can just... you can just... go to hell!

And with that, she turned on her miraculously unbroken heel and flounced off down the stairs just as fast as someone in an a-line skirt and mid-heeled pumps can flounce.

So, there you have it. Steve the Dragon's immortal soul has been verbally damned for all eternity by an angry door-to-door evangelist. Poor guy. Guess I'll have to baptize him. He kind of needs washed, anyway.

I don't think I'll be seeing her again, but in case I do, I'm keeping our Mr. Bill plushie near the door for next time. Every time you squeeze it, it plays a recording of Mr. Bill's voice: "Oh, nooooooooooooooo!"

Nawtmai Fault

The recent East Coast earthquake brings to light a previously little known and less understood geographical feature that is rooted directly under Washington D.C. It branches out in a spiderweb-like pattern, running under every state capital, every county seat, and even under each municipality's city council chambers in each city hall. The fault appears to also stretch across the ocean, showing up in areas of political power all over the world.

While most of the general public has been unaware of its existence, politicians have been citing the Nawtmai Fault as the cause for every major shake-up that has occurred in the U.S. for generations, and possibly similar events in other locations, as well.

In addition to being the cause of the recent quake, the Nawtmai Fault has also been identified by scientists as the force behind the recession, the agitator which has caused recent animosity between state governments and unions, the actual cause of the war in Afghanistan, and the real killer of Nicole Brown Simpson.

Though scientists have only recently begun studying the Nawtmai Fault, archeologists claim to have identified possible references to it in ancient writings. In a cave high in the Appalachian mountains, a series of drawings indicate that a member of one of the eastern Native American tribes attempted to warn the western tribes about sneaky, thieving invaders from another continent. Unfortunately, his route took him along the edge of the Nawtmai Fault, and he was lost. His last drawing shows a man, apparently himself, wandering aimlessly among the caves as the menacing invaders take over nearly the entire continent.

Attributed to the Nawtmai Fault are a number of natural disasters, including a worldwide cataclysmic flood, and a series of bizarre events in Egypt culminating in what looks like a mysterious mass exodus of residents. Other images show the fiery destruction of two advanced cities, and the sinking of an entire nation into the sea. Stories have been found which appear to show gasses escaping from the fault and enveloping an authority figure speaking before a crowd, after which he appears to forget himself and become lost in the mundane task of washing his hands while the people form a mob and execute an impoverished nomad. Some of the oldest cave drawings show a couple of men, apparently brothers, arguing above a section of the fault. A minor quake causes rocks to fall from a high cliff above them into the hands of one of two arguing brothers. The recipient is shown in the next drawing pummeling his brother with the rock, a sure sign of the dangers of the Nawtmai Fault. Further along the wall upon which that was found, an even earlier drawing depicts a quake along the fault, which causes fruit from a spectacularly rendered tree to fall into a nude couple's mouths, after which they seem to feel compelled to adorn themselves with vegetation and hide in the bushes. Though these events appear to be more odd than important, popular opinion among Nawtmai Fault enthusiasts is that both may in fact be highly significant events in human history.

Scientists are eager to continue studying the fault. Current opinion is that Natwmai may be the key to understanding every disaster ever experienced by humanity. Although there isn't much likelihood that learning about the fault will help to prevent future problems, scientists say they are hoping for concrete evidence which will act as a guide for future generations as they struggle in the wake of hardship and tragedy, to identify the manner in which the cause can be traced back to Nawtmai Fault. To this end, congress has recently passed a multi-trillion dollar grant to fund the study and publicize the results.

Home Remedies for Nasal/Respiratory Allergies

I have Spring and Fall nasal allergies. I'm also uninsured, and immune to most OTC antihistamines. Even when I've had insurance, I have a habit of building up a tolerance to allergy medications, so I've had to learn to use, and to be careful to maintain, a repertoire of non-drug remedies to soothe and support my system.

PEPPERMINT - I use peppermint for a few things.
First, I like it as a decongestant. A drop or two of peppermint oil in hot water will do. You just breathe in the steam occasionally, and it will temporarily clear your sinuses. Sucking on peppermint candy can also do this. I like altoids, but if you're sensitive to strong smells, it can also make you sneeze a bit first, and the sugar can be irritating, too. Peppermint tea is also available, and works nicely, and unless you're the type to sweeten your tea, it's a good sugar-free source of the peppermint effect.
Second, I like it as a tummy tonic. It helps release trapped gas, and it helps relieve nausea, including the ill effects of sinus drainage going down the throat.

GINGER - Ginger is a natural antihistamine, anti-inflammatory, and anti-nausea medicine. In none of those areas does it have the dramatic effect that drugs used for the same purposes have, but it can be helpful in maintaining a balance in the body's immune responses. Also, if you're like me, and your sinuses drain down your throat while you are sleeping, ginger can be a life-saver in the morning, when your tummy reacts to the load. Ginger tea is good for this, as is real ginger ale. Altoids do come in ginger, but they are hard to find. If you live near a place that carries them, you are lucky! When I can't get those, I use Vernor's Ginger Ale or Traditional Medicinals Ginger tea.

LICORICE ROOT - Real licorice (not anise) helps to open up the smaller airways in the lungs. It's not the kind of effect that would totally counteract symptoms of severe asthma, but it will help a bit if you are feeling deflated because you are too stuffy to breathe. Look for licorice candy that lists licorice root in the ingredients, or states on the front that it is real black licorice. Items which are "naturally flavored" may be flavored with anise, which tastes very similar.
Another benefit: Licorice is a natural sweetener, so no sugar needs to be added to the candy, but it will still satisfy the sweet tooth, so it makes a good sugar free treat!

CAFFEINE - A moderate amount of caffeine can help stimulate your body into taking in more air (opening your airways) and getting oxygen to your brain faster (slightly speeding up your heartbeat.) Even if you do not regularly consume caffeine, a little bit on a bad asthma day can be a life-saver.
Black, unsweetened coffee or unsweetened black tea will give you the best results, depending on your caffeine tolerance. If you aren't a regular coffee drinker, I'd go with a cup of tea, which has less, or a cup of decaf, which has the same amount of caffeine as regular tea.
This is not an excuse to binge on an over-sized 500 calorie latte or those nasty energy sodas! If you are having allergies, you want to avoid too much sugar, and milk can thicken existing mucus. Too much caffeine at once can damage your heart.

SALT AND VINEGAR - I prefer to get mine on potatoes, as in chips or fries, but you can make a gargle/rinse with a tablespoon of white vinegar, a teaspoon of salt, and a cup of warm (105 degree) water. This will help clear allergens out of your mouth and throat. The vinegar will help cut through the mucus build-up to better rinse them out. Add a teaspoon of honey for a more soothing effect. Do not swallow this mix. It can be rough on the tummy and bowels.

CUT DOWN ON MILK AND SUGAR - Normally, I'm a heavy milk drinker. It's my favorite beverage. However, milk thickens mucus. If you have drainage going on, you'll only make it worse by drinking milk. Switch to eating more solid dairy (cheese) for a while and drink water-based beverages instead.
Sugar can cause irritation in the sinuses and mouth, especially if allergies have all ready begun that job. It's best to keep sweet treats, including sodas and juices with sugar added, to a minimum while suffering an allergy flare-up. I have found that some things are worse than others. While you may be able to get away with putting honey in your tea, candy, and especially chocolate, will generally exacerbate an existing nasal allergy flare-up, especially in your throat.

EYE DROPS - On returning home from anywhere outside, if my eyes are irritated, I use a brand of the same kind of eye-wetting "tears" drops which are recommended for contact lens users. I do not have contacts - only glasses - but this helps to eliminate allergens which have come into contact with the conjunctiva (skin of the eye.) This helps to prevent further irritation from those allergens.

COOL COMPRESSES - When my allergies are at their worst, my face gets a fever. I'm not kidding. you could test my internal temperature, and it would be normal... but if you test my eyes, they would absolutely be two or more degrees higher. I get red patches all around them, and across my nose. My eyes itch, burn, and run with tears, and I can't stop sneezing to save my life. If it gets really bad, visible swelling occurs, sometimes to the point at which I cannot open one or both eyes.
When the discomfort becomes so bad that it prevents other activity, I make a cold compress, as for a headache, with ice in a bag wrapped in a damp cloth. That is applied to the eyes and surrounding area for fifteen minutes, then removed for fifteen minutes. I continue as needed with the fifteen on, fifteen off pattern until the swelling and irritation are reduced.
Another trick is to use chipped ice internally. In your blender, chip ice until it is the consistency of a slushie-type beverage or a snow cone. Take a small mouthful, about a teaspoon worth, and use your tongue to press it up against the roof of your mouth right behind/above your front teeth. Hold it there for a few moments before swallowing the liquid, and repeat with another bite. Do this for up to fifteen minutes before letting your mouth rest for fifteen more.
In both cases, the cold suppresses the nerves and the histamine response in and around the nose.
Do not do this if you have dental implants that include metal screws in your upper jaw bone. The screws will get really cold, and that could be painful.

REDNECK SAUNA - if congestion gets bad and asthma symptoms flare up, close yourself in your bathroom, turn your shower on hot-only, and let it steam up the room. Sit in the steam for no more than 20 minutes. Breathe as deeply as you can, and try to cough up any loose phlegm. It's gross, but it will at least temporarily clear out your chest so you can sleep.

EUCALYPTUS RUB - I like Vick's, but have found that drug store brands also work as long as they say eucalyptus oil is an ingredient. The fumes from that will cause the air passages in your sinuses and your lungs to open up. It works the same way as peppermint, only stronger. A good tip is, if you do the redneck sauna mentioned above, do it with Vick's on your chest, or peppermint in your mouth. If you are suffering really bad congestion, mix a small dab of eucalyptus rub with your favorite unscented face lotion and rub a small amount the skin above your upper lip. That will keep your sinuses clear for hours. Be ready to wash it off, though, as some people find it too irritating for sensitive skin.

Traditional Medicinals Breathe Easy Tea.
I love this tea. I use it for allergies, and for colds. Not only does it support lung health, it has ingredients which soothe and help clear the sinuses. I get it in the organic/health nut section of my local grocery. Some whole foods stores, health food stores, and herbal shops also carry it. The Traditional Medicinals brand is one I've been using since my teen years, so I know it works for me. Some of the ingredients (peppermint, licorice, chamomile) may be available as stand alone tea in coffee section of your local grocery, and are also good choices during allergy season.

Sometimes I only have to apply a few remedies, but other times I find myself using most or all of these, depending on the level of allergic response I'm having to the particles in my environment. It may take some experimentation on your part to find which of these works best for you against which symptoms, depending on your circumstances. Regardless, it is always nice to have extra tools in your arsinal to fight the frustrating symptoms of nasal allergy flare-ups.

Court tramples ex-husband's free speech rights after ex-wife outs herself as subject of his blog

Yahoo News Article

The judge's ruling in this case is insane. I cannot believe she does not realize what she has done.

The website in question was kept anonymous. The guy hadn't even identified the ex. No one ever would have known who he was, who she was, or anything had she not brought it up. According to the story, she even showed it to the kids... yet the judge blames the man for this. Really? She shoves documentation of her behavior in their faces, and for it being there, he is the abuser? WTF?

I am all for parents being smart and wise about how they refer to each other in front of the kids. I do not bash my husband's ex in front of them. However, there is a huge difference between what is morally and ethically right, and what should be legal. Yes, it's stupid to inflict your feelings toward your ex upon your kids. Yes, it would be immoral and unethical to slam your ex publicly if you identified her in whatever you said. However, it's not illegal to vent. It's not illegal to network, and it's not illegal to document an ordeal you have been through, especially if you keep the participants anonymous.

The only way for people struggling with an unevenly administrated justice system is to band together, share information, and offer each other advice and support. Without the ability to do that, each person would be starting the fight from scratch, unable to learn from the successes and failures of the others, and more importantly, extremely unlikely to be able to learn of and refer to findings in other cases.

It is absolutely ludicrous to think that a court should be able to choose a topic, and tell a citizen that he cannot even ever make any reference to it. It's even more so when that topic is the person's own life. He's been told he cannot do what many, many parents do, which they are not barred from doing; talking about his family online. He can't post cute, funny stories about family activities on facebook. He can't mention that his child support payments are making his budget tight. He can't explain that he's in a bad mood because he received a harassing phone call. He can't even preface a statement with, back when I was with (the ex) to denote the difference in himself between two times he is discussing. Technically, can he even call himself a divorcee? That is a reference to his ex, because you can't be divorced if you don't have one.

Here we have a judge giving a man a gag order to not talk about what's going on in his own life in the name of protecting people that the man's speech was never going to directly impact. That is just an excuse - this judge is not trying to protect the children. She's protecting the ex-wife.

I'm sure divorced men can easily see the danger in this ruling. That site was for the same thing as Men's Rights groups are for; networking, educating each other, offering a place to vent, and offering a place to find moral support. An attack on one such site is an attack on the right of any man to defend himself against any mistreatment by his ex.

What this judge basically did is tell this man that no matter what his ex-wife does to him, he just has to shut up and take it. I sure as hell hope he wins his appeal!

thepsychoexwife.com

safethepsychoexwife.com

A Modest Budget Proposal

No one in the U.S. can agree on a spending system. We all have different ideas on a number of factors, including what should be funded, how it should be funded, and who should be responsible for that funding. Our differences of opinion have once again led us to a point at which our politicians could not bring themselves to agree on a national budget. Even now, after a compromise was made and a budget passed, no one is really happy with it.

Being the busybody that I am, I've given this some serous thought. The idea I've come up with would be a lot of work, but I think that in the end it would pay off in savings for the whole country. Sure there would be a few years of instability, during which the general public would have to gain an understanding of the process, and of how it would affect our daily lives, but soon, people would get the hang of it, and in the end we'd all be budgeting like pros.

First, we need to go to a flat tax with no deductions at all. Regardless of income, expenses, how many kids you have, or whether or not your grandma was run over by a senator, the full tax rate is 15% of your total gross income. Nothing gets deducted from your paycheck. At tax time, you do your assessment and send in the money yourself. Also, children are exempt from federal taxation. You don't pay anything until you are eligible to be legally bound to a contract upon which you sign for yourself.

Second, there is only one form for filing. Since the percentage owed is not affected by relationship status, there is no need to file as married or single, and no need for any joint returns. Everyone files separately.

The complicated part is in the the next step. Since the money for the federal budget comes from the public, I think the public should get a vote on it. In fact, I think we should get an itemized vote on it.

Yep, you read that right. Itemized. Every stinkin' little pet project, every department, grant, fund... everything.

Instead of itemizing your expenses, and totaling up a deduction, each of us would itemize what we are individually willing to fund, and total up the individual bill.
It would be quite a read, but I think a lot of people would find it to be worthwhile.

In order to achieve this, we would have to go to a ballot system for taxation. Everyone who is required to pay taxes would be required to participate on some level in the system.

Instead of passing a budget and, after the president signs it, spending the money, legislators would pass their proposed budget in percents of the total, instead of dollars. The budget would then get the president's signature, and would be submitted to the voters for approval.

Certain items would receive funding regardless. The military would always be federally funded, because we cannot have a working national defense without centralized administration of it. The federal government would at least receive operating costs, so that it could continue to exist and operate. A percentage of all that gets taken in would have to go to pay off the existing national debt. That accounts for the up to 5% which is assessed regardless of the vote. Everything else is negotiable. In order to keep the list short, no state-level earmarks would be allowed. In order to qualify as an item for consideration in the federal budget, the characteristics or effects of the item would have to be applicable to every state. All other items would be the responsibility of the states.

Instead of a majority/minority vote, the individual would vote on whether or not he/she was personally willing to help fund each item on the list.

The vote could be set up for two ways of viewing the budget; abbreviated (Department of agriculture budget/ human services budget/ education budget, etc.,) or fully expanded (research, publications, etc./ food stamps,administration,equipment, etc,/curriculum research, building maintenance, administrator pay, etc.) so that people could vote either on departments or on individual things, as the individual chooses. There would be a record of the popular vote for each item, so that various funded entities would know how the money they receive should be divided.

Each person would have a Maximum Assessed Tax (Max AT, 15%), a Minimum Assessed Tax (Min AT, on a sliding scale from 0% to 5%, depending on gross income only), and a Total Assessed Tax (TAT.) Your TAT would depend on how many expenses you approve. In the end, your TAT would be your tax bill.

Items would have their individual percentage of the overall budget listed for the amount of cost. The notation displayed on the page or screen would be #% TAT, allowing the taxpayer to calculate the dollar cost of each item before voting yea or nay. In the case of electronic voting, all of the income-based assessment could be done prior to voting, and you could see your Maximum Assessed Taxes (Max AT) right away. Then, instead of seeing “X% TAT” the voter would see a dollar amount next to each item.

Either way, if the taxpayer votes for that item, he's agreeing to pay that much for it for the current year. If he votes against that dollar amount, it gets subtracted from his Total Assessed Taxes (TAT,) reducing the percentage (and therefore the dollar amount) accordingly. Essentially, within the limitations allowed, each citizen would decide the size of his own tax bill prior to paying it.

Taxpayers would also be given the opportunity to donate to their favorite department by voting to increase their own payment by a percentage of their Max AT. That way, people who feel that the military, education, or any other pet department is underfunded could set the example by putting their money where their mouth is.

In doing this, we could eliminate the issue of people being forced to pay for government funded organizations whose activities violate some citizens moral codes. There would be no more instances of people complaining about where their tax dollars went and “pork barrel spending in Washington,” because nearly every dollar they paid into the system would have been their own choice. Meanwhile, organizations and agencies funded by the government would have to toe the line. Any waste, abuse, or scandal which might be exposed could cost them dearly, as people could elect to not fund them the next year based on their actions.

Funding for the IRS could greatly decrease, as their only function would be to determine whether or not individuals had failed to file taxes in any given year, whether or not they had reported all income, and whether they had paid the amount they voted for, not which deductions claimed were illegal, because that would no longer be possible.

I am sure there are a few of you out there screaming right now. “OH-MIH-GAWWWWD! We can't do that! If people were allowed to see how much their individual share of the federal budget was, and then vote on what gets federally funded, then nothing would ever get funded! Every federal agency and program would disappear, and it would all be up to the states. There would be no grants, no projects, no federal control over or protection of anything. No one would rather pay taxes to support all of those programs if they didn't have to! They'd choose to spend the money on themselves and their own families!”

Well, yes. That's the point. It's a lot easier to crow about how important this issue is, that agency is, those programs are, and so on, if you don't have to write a check for them yourself. It's a lot harder to get people to take responsibility for their spending habits if they don't see the dent that spending makes in their own budget. My point is, the American public has become too lazy, too demanding, and way, way too willing to spend other people's money. That is why our federal spending is out of control, and I think that needs to end.

Right On... write on!

from

A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

Very cool. :)

U.S. Veteran Faces Legal Action for Flying American Flag

The story:
U.S. Veteran Faces Legal Action for Flying American Flag
Retired U.S. Army chaplain Fred Quigley, 77, of Macedonia, Ohio, is being threatened by his homeowner's association with legal action for flying the American flag in his front yard. -Fox News,

Personally, I feel that this man deserves the support of his fellow citizens. He fought for our freedom. We should fight for his, and I am calling for a nationwide protest on behalf of the right to fly the American flag.

I propose to everyone reading this that we all do the following:
Go to your nearest cheap-o dollar store (Dollar tree, Dollar General, Family Dollar, etc.,) and buy one of those little 3' x 5' plastic flags.
Write a short note to the effect that you support Mr. Quigley's right to fly the American flag on his own property. This part is easy. All it has to say is, "To whom it may concern: I fully support the right of Rev. Fred Quigley to fly the American Flag on his own property. I am writing to you to express to your city my outrage over the fact that this U.S. military veteran is facing legal action to force him to take down this great symbol of American patriotism and freedom. I have enclosed a copy of the American flag in protest against this legal action." Or, you can write whatever you choose (though please keep it rated G to maintain our credibility and to show respect for the man whose rights we're defending) to get the message across.
Enclose both the note and the flag in a regular mailing envelope and address it to Macedonia's city council at the following address:

Macedonia City Council
9691 Valley View Road
Macedonia, Ohio 44056

A mass mailing from across the U.S. will definitely get the attention of the city council. While they are not the ones infringing Mr. Quigley's rights, drawing their attention to the issue is important. His neighborhood's ward councilman can contact the president of the overly snooty homeowner's association and point out to him that he and his snobbish attitude are making the entire city of Macedonia look like a bunch of total asses. Also, if enough people mail letters of support, the event might make the area's local news, and Mr. Quigley will know he has support from all over the country. Maybe that will help make Mr. Migliorini understand that there are some things over which homeowner's associations simply do not have jurisdiction!

How one mosquito nearly killed me.

*warning... some of this is kind of gross. If you don't like reading about people's medical experiences, don't read this.*

The incident happened in December of 1984, when I was 12 years old and in the 6th grade, but there are many details which remain crystal clear to my memory, as if I were looking back at a recent event instead.
Prior to the encounter, I was sitting in my mother's favorite chair, drinking hot chocolate and doing my math homework.

Math has always been one of my favorite subjects to study. I enjoy solving equations the same way I enjoy doing crossword puzzles, untying knots, and finding my way through mazes.
My grandparents were in the room with me. They were at the house to babysit because my parents were both out working, photographing an event which was going to keep them out beyond my bedtime. Grandma was watching Murder She Wrote on T.V., and my attention was divided between that and my homework.

I was momentarily distracted by an itchy, stinging sensation on my elbow. When I reached to scratch, I was surprised to find a mosquito there. I remember thinking how unusual it was to find a live mosquito in winter, when there was frost on the ground in the mornings. Where could it have come from, I wondered.
Because it struck me as odd, I mentioned the bug to my Grandparents, who said it had probably come from the basement. We thought nothing more of it at that moment.

I finished my homework, and watched most of the rest of Murder She Wrote, but not the end.
As I worked on my assignment, I began to get a headache. I thought maybe it was because I kept looking up at the T.V., so I quit doing that and concentrated on the equations in front of me. The headache continued to worsen, starting at the back of my head, and spreading up and around to settle into my forehead, creating the sensation of wearing a very, very tight helmet. When I finished my homework, I told my grandmother about the headache, took a couple of acetaminophen, and began to get ready for bed.

Once I was on my feet and beginning to move around, however, the next symptom kicked in. If you have ever had really bad motion sickness, you know how I was feeling.
At first, I was just a little dizzy, like one might get after riding a merry-go-round at a kids' playground. I'd all ready had my first migraine, so at the time, I thought that might be what was happening. I went into the kitchen and prepared an ice pack for my head, but before I could use it, the first wave of nausea hit, and I fled to the bathroom to waste two cups of Mom's good hot chocolate and two undigested acetaminophen tablets, dropping the bag of ice in the bathroom sink on the way. The nausea didn't subside until several heaves after my stomach was empty.
Grandma had heard me running, an in-the-house-no-no, and she caught up to me just as the fun started. She brought ginger ale from the kitchen to try to calm my stomach, but it wouldn't stay down. Instead, I found myself in the midst of another round of heaves.

I also felt like I was in an oven. Telling Grandma that I was too hot, I shut the bathroom door and removed my shirt. Grandma grabbed a thermometer, shook it down (anyone else remember mercury thermometers, LOL?) and stuck it in my mouth. A minute later, she read it and told me I would not likely be going to school the next day, and that the nausea was probably from my fever, so I needed to get some of that acetaminophen down and keep it down. Instead of taking tablets, she gave me chewables for kids.
She then got me into my pajamas and into bed with my ice pack, and I tried to go to sleep.
The acetaminophen didn't even begin to touch the headache. The pain continued to deepen, and the fever got worse. Instead of feeling too hot, I began to chill. As the feeling of cold spread through my body, my joints all began to ache. I pulled all of my blankets onto me, thinking my fever was gone and my room was cold. I cracked my knuckles, my toes, and my back, but there was no relief. When Grandma came in to check on me, she found me miserable and in pain, shivering, and huddled under my blankets as if it were freezing in my room. She began to look worried, and went for the thermometer again, only to find that my mother had come home early because, as I heard her tell Grandma outside my door, she'd had a bad feeling.

The two women headed for the bathroom to get the thermometer, with Grandma explaining my symptoms on the way.
When they returned, my teeth were chattering. I couldn't make them stop, and each time they clacked together, a shockwave of pain flashed through my head, feeling as if someone were pounding on me with a big sledge hammer just like in cartoons. At this point the pressure in my head was so bad that I was seeing little sparkles and floaties in my vision. It literally looked like I was seeing the world through a veil of glitter and tiny, tiny bugs. My head felt too heavy to lift. I could picture my head ballooning out and in with each throb of the headache and clack of my teeth.

I didn't cry, though, because I had learned from having migraines that crying increases the pain.

There was no way Mom and Grandma were going to get an oral temperature with the way my teeth were chattering. Mom put the thermometer back in the blue case and went to get the other thermometer, the one in the red case. Knowing where that one was going, I rolled over and was about to remove my bottoms, when yet another wave of nausea hit. This time, nothing came up, but to my humiliation, I wet my bed a little during a heave. At twelve years old, this was a horribly undignified experience. I didn't know why I had lost muscle control in my bladder, only that I was too old to wet the bed. My embarrassment and shame at doing so nearly broke the control I had that kept the tears back. Mom had to shush my apology and assure me that it was because I was sick, and she understood.
She had me move to the bottom bed (I had a trundle) and while Grandma helped me change clothes and took my temperature, Mom changed my sheets. Despite their reassurances, I felt as though I had done something horrible. The tears really wanted to take over, but I had to be tough, because as bad as my head hurt, I didn't think I'd survive I let myself make it worse.

My fever was still very high, higher than it had ever been in my life. I do not know what the number was at that point, but it scared my mother and my grandmother.

A lot of what happened next is kind of fuzzy in my memory, but that is because I was delirious. I think the strangeness of the experience is what has fixed into my mind the details I do remember.
Everything looked and felt weird to me. Lights were blurry, and way too bright. Every single minor sound around me was both amplified and muffled at the same time, as if everything coming to my hears had been smudged so that I couldn't get the details. When I moved or turned my head, whatever I was looking at blurred and trailed along my vision, leaving lines of light and color. The room felt freezing, and so did everyone's hands. Though only my mother and my grandmother were there, I felt crowded and overstimulated, as though I was in a room full of talking people. They tried to cool me with damp cloths, but those felt like ice on my skin, so cold they literally burned, and I was unable to keep myself from crying out and shoving them off of me.
I remember some other strange things. It seemed like my room was really, really small, and my hands were huge. At one point, I was sure I saw someone standing outside my window looking in, and then I remembered that my room was on the second floor, but when I looked again, he was gone. The only thing outside was a tree branch. I remember closing my eyes because the distortion of my vision was making me sick again. My head pounded with pain and pressure, so much that despite my best attempts, tears finally leaked from my eyes. If the headache got worse, I couldn't tell you. It was really past the point of measurement.

To describe the pain as excruciating would still be an understatement. In my lifetime, I have had migraines lasting days, third degree burns, and broken bones, been electrocuted by a power line, been through traumatic labor ending in an emergency c-section, and had surgery. That headache was the worst physical pain I have ever had.

At some point, I was in my family doctor's office. That must have been the next morning, but Mom and Grandma were wearing the same clothes they had been wearing the night before, but I was in different pajamas. I recall realizing that if I was wearing different pajamas that must mean I'd had another accident, then hearing my mother telling the doctor I'd thrown up bile in the night. To this day I do not remember doing that. I later learned that was the reason for the change of clothes, and that if left unwashed, stomach acid and bile can eat through cotton overnight.

My doctor asked my Mom a bunch of questions, most of which are pretty normal for a kid with a cold, but one was really kind of odd. She asked if I had any bug bites.
I showed her the mosquito bite on my elbow, and her face became more serious. She and my grandmother exchanged a look, and she moved toward my feet.
I was laying on the doctor's table. She put her hands on my feet, and asked me to lift my head. I tried really, really hard, but I couldn't do it. It felt like I was trying to lift a truck with just the muscles in my neck.
My always chipper doctor became soft spoken rather quickly, as she turned to my Mom and Grandma. I didn't hear a lot of the discussion, but I picked up the parts they probably least wanted me to hear; something ending in -itis, and the words spinal tap, hospital, and immediately.

I remember everyone being way too chipper and positive with me after that. At the hospital, I was told I they were going to do a test to find out what was wrong so they could make it better. Everyone talked to me like I was five instead of twelve. I figured something must be very wrong, because that is how adults act in dire situations when they don't want the kids to know how bad their things are.
My mother and my grandmother, however, still seemed calm. They were neither overly cheerful, nor overly worried. I realize now that their calm came from Grandma's emergency room experience, the training she gave to Mom, their experiences with the children who brought about the beginning of the Hattie Larlham foundation, and not least, their faith in God. At the time, their levelheaded response to the situation kept me from being inspired to panic by everyone else's false cheer.

I was still really in a lot of pain. My head felt like it was going to explode. The pain was so bad, I almost wished that would happen. I've since wondered if this type of pressurized head pain was the trigger for the first uses of trepanning in neolithic times.
Bright as the lights at home had seemed to me, they were nothing in comparison to the hospital lights, and the sounds were overwhelming. One particularly lively nurse seemed to be personally drilling through my skull with her voice. I think she was lucky I couldn't sit up.

There was another doctor there. She was very pretty, smelled like some kind of perfume, and had a warm, genuine smile. She told me she was going to have to stick a needle in my back, and that I had to lay very, very still for this test, then asked if I understood. I remember telling her that I was not scared of needles because of my weekly allergy shots.
She had me roll over with my back to her. I don't think I was supposed to see the needle, but the nurse who brought it in carried it right past me. The needle was longer than any of my fingers, and it was attached to a tube that was as long as my forearm. I remember thinking that it wasn't the length of a needle that hurt, but the poke, so why would anyone think a longer needle would be a bigger deal?
The doctor told me that the needle was going into my spine, and that I had to lay still so that it wouldn't hit anything it shouldn't. Even though that sounded a little scary, I was pleased that she spoke to me as more of an adult, rather than the way everyone else was talking down to me.
I resolved to hold very still.
The needle going in didn't seem to hurt at all. Maybe it was because the pain in my head was so bad, but I barely felt the puncture, and was not aware that she had stuck me until it got pretty deep. Even then, I felt only cold and pressure, but no pain from the needle.
A spinal tap is a procedure used to extract an amount of cerebrospinal fluid for testing.
I did not know at the time, but I was being tested for Spinal Meningitis.

When the needle entered the stream of fluid, it shot out so hard it hit the wall behind the doctor with a loud splat. I heard a clink as she put something over the end of the tube, but was distracted from the rest of the procedure by another sensation - the relief of pressure in my head was immediate and dramatic. The headache didn't go away completely, but it went down quite a bit. I remember the nurses telling me how brave I was to face such a large needle, and I recall that my reply was about how much the procedure relieved the pain and pressure in my head.
I was put into a hospital bed after the spinal tap, and given an I.V. They had told me it would help my headache and I wouldn't feel so sick. After a short time, the medicine in it began to work, and I wasn't nauseous anymore. Though my head and joints still hurt, it wasn't as bad as it had been at home.
I was told to lay still for 8 hours. That was really easy, because I was exhausted, and went right to sleep.

While I was asleep, I had a strange dream about being in a tight tunnel, not quite tall enough to stand in. It was very dark in the tunnel, but bright at both ends. One end just had light, but the other had light and sound. I could hear Mom's voice coming from the end with sound. I could hear someone talking to my mother. A woman's voice told her that I had something called Encephalitis. She said that it was a virus, and then I heard the door open and close, and I couldn't hear them. For awhile there was only the sound of the T.V., and then I could hear Mom talking to me again.

There was an older guy with me in the tunnel. He said I couldn't get out of it, and that he had been stuck there for days. He told me that it got "thicker" near the lights, and I wouldn't be able to get through. I tried going toward the silent light, and found that what he said was true. When I got closer to it, it got harder to move, as if I were trying to move through water. The sensation of "thickening" was like trying to move through something like Jello, except not wet. It thinned in front of me, however, as soon as I turned to go back, though behind me still felt thick. That was when the dream stopped being strange and became scary, and I turned and ran toward my Mother's voice. As I got close to the edge of the tunnel I could see the hospital room around me. Mom was sitting beside my bed, holding my hand, reading out loud from a book.
Then I kind of jolted awake, back to the pain and pressure in my head, aching joints, fever, and chills. Somehow, those were much less scary than the dream. When I woke up, Mom got a nurse to come check on me. She looked at my eyes, checked my pulse and blood pressure, and took my temperature. She said my temperature was better. I remember thinking I could have told her that, because I could see right and I wasn't freezing.

After awhile, someone brought me a tray with broth, tea, crackers, and (irony of ironies) a container of Jello.
After I had slept a second time, I remember feeling well enough to read, even though my head still hurt.

I do not remember being told I was discharged, nor do I remember the drive home from the hospital, but they did send me home while I was still sick. After they had determined that the infection was viral, there wasn't a whole lot they could do at the hospital. The only thing I do remember, and I do think it was from when I was leaving, was going past the next room on the way out. When I left the hospital, a nurse had to wheel me out (yes, even in 1984 they were doing this for liability reasons) and it felt like she went pretty slow. I remember seeing that guy on my way out. He was a bit hard to recognize, but it was definitely his face. In the "dream" he had hair, but there wasn't a lot of it left when I saw him in his room. He was in a bed like mine, and had several machines in his room, one of which was beeping. There were tubes in his arm and his nose, and wires going into his shirt. There were other wires and tubes, but I couldn't tell where all of them went. There were people in his room, one of whom was a man who looked a lot like him.
A woman was holding his hand. She was also older, but didn't look like him. A nurse was talking to a younger adult whose face also looked like the face of the man in the bed. I remember hearing the word "Hospice" float out of the room... I noticed that word because I'd done a report on Hospice for school the previous year, so it was familiar, and I realized that the man must be dying. It felt like I was going past that room in slow motion, but it was really only long enough for that single but meaning-laden word to come out the door. Hearing it, I thought to myself that maybe he'd go to the other end of the tunnel. At the time, that thought made me feel better about the dream. I guess he got out of that tunnel, too.

My fever continued to spike. Once, I remember being sure that the cold war had I'd learned about in Social Studies had become literal. I warned my mother that the Russians were bombarding the US with ice, and we were all going to freeze to death.
I also had a long, in-dept conversation with Samwise from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Rings. I remember it was about vegetable gardening.

One night after I had started getting better, I got up to go to the bathroom, and totally lost all of my senses. It was the first night since I'd gotten sick that my mother was not sleeping in the room with me. We had all (my father, my brother, and me) insisted that she needed rest and should sleep in her own bed, and I would be fine. I'd been out of the hospital for weeks, and was hoping to go back to school soon.

My bedroom had heavy, quilted curtains to keep it totally dark. My mother made them herself. They were so thick they even acted as insulation from cold air leaking in through the windows.
I have always slept better in total darkness. However, it was winter, and so there were two lights in my room; one from the digital clock in my alarm clock/radio, the other from my little space-heater. It was the kind with a metal ribbon that heats up. The heater ribbon vibrated and turned bright orange when it got hot, giving off a fairly bright glow, and a steady buzzing noise.

When I stood to go to the bathroom, the pressure in my head flared suddenly and intensely. At the same time, a circle of darkness closed in on my vision, like an old T.V. shutting off, with the light of the heater winking out in the middle as the sound faded to nothing. To keep from falling, I grabbed the top of my bedpost with one hand, and then lost sensation in that, too. It was like a much, much bigger version of what happens when you are overtired and then you stand up too fast. For what felt like an eternity, I waited for everything to come back. I couldn't see, hear, or feel anything. It was like I was standing on nothing, touching nothing, experiencing total nothingness. I suppose sensory deprivation, when it is a chosen experience, is interesting, but when it is unchosen and unexplained it is very disturbing.

As the time stretched on, I began to worry, and then to panic. I had once read a novel entitled "Helen Keller's Teacher" and remembered that miss Keller's loss of hearing and sight had been attributed to her body reaching a high temperature during a bout with Scarlet Fever. I knew that my temperature had been measured at the hospital at over 105º F, and I began to be afraid that my senses were not ever going to come back, or that I might even be dead.
Just when I was on the verge of panic, I realized that I could smell the heater. It had a kind of burning dust smell to it when it got hot. As soon as I noticed that, I began to hear a sound that seemed to be coming from very far away. As it got a little bit closer, I recognized the buzzing of the vibrating heating filament. For a moment, the noise was still soft, then everything all rushed back in at once with kind of a roaring, whooshing sound in my ears, ending in a hard throb as my sense of the headache returned along with everything else. I still had a death grip on the top of my bedpost, but my knees were not going to hold out.
According to the numbers on my alarm clock, I had been standing there like that for a full 5 minutes.

I collapsed to the floor, but I still really had to pee. Remember, when your kid has a fever and has been throwing up, you push fluids. It felt like I could float to the bathroom. Remarkably, I had not lost bladder control during the loss of my senses. That made me feel a bit better about having lost control before.
Since I couldn't stand up, I crawled to our tiny upstairs bathroom and used the side of the tub as a brace to pull myself up into a sitting position so I could go.
I remember making the mistake of standing back up afterward, but the next memory after that is of my Dad finding me on the floor and carrying me back to my room. I had gone in there in the middle of the night, but it was getting light out when he found me.

I know that I was out of school for nearly a whole grading period (six weeks) with the virus. Friends brought schoolwork home for me, and with help from my parents, I kept up with what the class was learning. I didn't get all of the homework done, but I aced the tests. My grades weren't the best, but I passed everything except Phys-ed and Music classes, as those required participation, and I wasn't there.

By the time I returned to school, I was so underweight that one of the guys suggested that I'd come to school dressed as a skeleton and told me Halloween was over.

Even after I returned to school, there were strange symptoms. I was easily worn out, and it hurt to get too cold. My muscles were weaker, too, with less endurance before they would feel fatigued. I felt like I was starving. I can only imagine how much my parents must have spent on groceries that Spring! The weirdest symptoms, though, were mental. Sometimes it was as if my brain had temporarily slowed down, and other times things happened that I can only describe as glitches, like in a computer. I can remember having to set my clothes out for the next day at night, always on the same chair, and always having to change into my pajamas next to the hamper. That way, I had a clue to remember whether I was getting ready for school or bed. Otherwise, I would spend half an hour repeatedly taking off and putting back on the same article of clothing before I remembered what I was doing.

For weeks, getting ready for school took about two hours, instead of the 20 minutes it had taken me every morning before the virus. I was constantly either forgetting what I was doing, or getting hung up on a single detail and focusing on only that until I was interrupted by a family member.

In class, I had trouble answering questions if the answer had any complexity. I'd forget what I was talking about and wander off into other verbal territory, or get my words mixed up. I called people and objects by the wrong names, got turned around and went the wrong way in the halls, etc.

Slowly those symptoms diminished until I got mostly back to normal, but I still do occasionally have what my friends refer to as blond or senior moments. One weird one that remains with me to this day is word substitution. I might mean to ask if my son has his homework done, but instead I ask if he's finished his jacket.. We laugh, and move on each time, and I know why it happens, but it still bothers me.

Another is the fatigue and phantom pain, particularly muscle pain, but also joint pain in the morning, and stiffness throughout the day. I still get forgetful a lot if I am not making a concentrated effort to not be. Testing has demonstrated that I haven't lost cognitive ability, but sometimes it seems like it because I can be so scatterbrained.
I've got a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia Syndrome, but I have never been sure that the symptoms which got me diagnosed as such are not actually just lingering gifts from my little friend the bug.

Still, it could have been much, much worse. There were 11 cases of the same virus in my county that year, and I know that at least one person died from it. The danger to children and the elderly is greater than to healthy young adults, and with my severe asthma, I did not have a strong immune system to begin with. Still, I survived the experience.

It was not my first near-death experience, nor was it my last... just the only one caused by a tiny little bug... but I won because I squished the bug when she bit me, and I am still here.

In 1984, they didn't give us a name for the virus. They just said it caused a condition called encephalitis. There is nothing I've been able to research online that causes encephalitis, and only has an hour incubation period. It may be that the infection progressed so quickly in me partly because of my mosquito bite allergy, or perhaps because my immune system was compromised by my severe asthma. I'd also been ill recently, an annual occurrence during my childhood. Every year, I had at least one respiratory infection, also probably due to my asthma.
I would be interested to know if anyone else knows of a virus or bacterial infection that can be transmitted by mosquitoes and has such a short incubation period that, upon infection of an individual with a weakened immune system, could manifest overt symptoms within the first hour as this infection did with me.