Back Again

Over the years I seem to have a horrible track record of keeping up with this blog.  Life gets busy and in the way of blogging, the old laptop was cantankerous, and blogging from a cell phone is a bore, especially since it won't import photos very well.  I am not sure how well I will be able to get photos into this blog from this new laptop, but I am going to try.  Copy and paste does not seem to work well from the laptop into this blog, so I am not sure what to do to streamline the operation.  

Anyway.

 It has been since January that I have made an entry here.  I do have a draft post from late January, but I haven't gone back to read it.  

Many things have happened, as they have a way of doing, over the course of a few months.  Ellen had a great first year of college.  She has now signed up to be a leader during Welcome Week at the college in August. She always did that in high school and I expect she will have a blast doing so in college.  

 We had a really wet Spring with several "gully washers", or "toad stranglers" as Gary would say.  Many driveways got washed out so he hauled quite a bit of gravel off and on.  One neighbor just barely got his driveway fixed from one kashoosh, then another came 4 days later and washed the driveway out again.  

There haven't been as many wells as usual go out the past few months, but Gary has done a few.   

I have been a bit of a mess healthwise, due to the Alpha Gal crap of course, but I am gradually figuring things out and feeling better.  Here is a brief rundown:

 Since my main reaction with this dratted alpha gal syndrome (AGS) is cardiovascular, heart palpitations and tachycardia (rapid pulse) I was referred to a cardiologist to see what they could find out.  I deeply regret doing that, but at the same time now I know the truth, but anyway....

So March 9th I went in for a stress test.  This is where you go to radiology, have a chest scan, then they inject you with something, (or maybe it's the other way around, I forget) then you go down to cardiology and have the stress test, meaning they inject you with this gunk that does something to the blood vessels/arteries.  Then you mosey back to radiology and have yet another chest scan.  Then a week later I go to back to the cardiologist who tells me the stress test said I have a blocked artery.  Of course I freak out. I mean, who wouldn't? 

And I might add that from probably late Fall 2025 up through March I kept having heart symptoms; palpitations, rapid pulse off and on, super exhausted...just weird symptoms.  So I'm telling the cardiologist all of this, as well as telling him that I have alpha gal and that my symptoms are cardiovascular...etc.

But no.  He tells me I have a blocked artery and need to have an angiogram, where they stick the camera up vein in the right arm and go scope out your arteries in the heart. I went the next day to the ER to have the do it because I was freaking out.  I hadn't been sleeping well for months due to the heart issues waking me up at night (histamine dumps at 2-3 AM are a real thing and for me they cause heart symptoms.)

The angiogram was the strangest sensation, but it turns out that my one artery in the heart is perfectly clear, and the other one only has minuscule deposits (about 13% they said).  So much for a million dollar machine giving a correct diagnosis. 

So they had me on blood pressure meds and I don't know what all.  After about 3 weeks of those I started feeling awful; nearly passing out and all.  I just quit the meds, track my pressure at home, it's fine.  

Anyway. After some experimenting around I discovered that the rosemary extract in ground turkey makes me react.  I quit eating that and boom, no more constant palpitations, no histamine dumps in the middle of the night.  I feel so much better.  I also discovered that A&W Root beer gives me reactions.  It must be the "natural flavors."  And somehow the process to make rosemary extract involves mammal fat of some kind.  It is well-known in the alpha gal community that this is a "thing."

All last school year I only substituted at the high school; maybe 2-4 times a month.  I was super nervous because I didn't know what would cause me to have a reaction.  Now that I am narrowing down what does and doesn't cause me reactions I am feeling a bit more confident in subbing.  I hope to do more of it this coming school year.  They have changed the schedule at the school district; they are going to a 4 day school week.  This should be interesting.

I will quit for now.  It's time for bed.