Author: Hell's Bells and Mast Cells

I walk circles around the hospital

Everyone warns you that prednisone will make you fat, and when it does make you fat, they remind you that prednisone made you fat. Meanwhile, you’re just trying to stay alive. In 2015, before I was diagnosed, I became dependent on daily prednisone to control my symptoms and allow me to keep working. My weight gain did not frighten me; it seemed like a reasonable side effect in exchange for keeping my job, health care, and sanity.

However, no one warned me prednisone can cause muscle wasting. Contrary to popular belief, prednisone will not turn you into The Incredible Hulk. While it may incite bouts of rage, long-term use will actually convert you in A Blubbering Blob that has to ask grandma for help standing up. My arms became swollen noodles unable to compensate for my collapsing legs. I relied on my toy poodle to pick up items on the floor. (Note: get a bigger dog.)

Although I stopped daily prednisone four years ago, my muscles still haven’t fully recovered. To be honest, physical therapy hasn’t been a priority. I’ve been preoccupied with breathing and eating. Also, between MCAS and EDS, physical therapy can do more harm than good. Even well-intentioned specialists can cause injuries with life-altering consequences (e.g. CSF leaks). On the other hand, strengthening muscles can help stabilize joints and reduce injuries.

I have been walking a lot more lately though. Not because I want to rehab my muscles, but because I want to rehab my poodle’s muscles. Last fall, he injured his shoulder tendons and he had to wear a brace all winter. Now, his physical therapist has prescribed strength training, including daily walks.

Yes, I prioritize my dog’s physical therapy over my own. First of all, I still trust veterinarians; they understand my health issues better than most of my doctors. Second, my dog loves physical therapy. Maybe I would be more enthusiastic if someone fed me bacon or peanut butter every I lifted a leg.

Walking is my safest form of exercise, but it’s still difficult and exhausting. I worry about getting dizzy and passing out. I worry about getting stung by a bee and needing an ambulance. I worry about subluxing my hip or knee in the middle of my walk, and struggling to make it back. So, I walk circles around the hospital.

Trust me, it’s not as weird as it sounds.

I live next door to a hospital.

Okay, that part is slightly weird. I prefer to call it serendipitous. I bought my condo years before my MCAS diagnosis and subsequent emergency room visits. It is super convenient and it allows me avoid one of my greatest fears, asking for help. I just hobble over with my swollen throat, kidney stone, or spinal fluid leak. I never worry about my safety, even though passing out along the way is always possible. (I have considered a go kart.) Between the smokers, security guards, shift changes, and constant stream of ambulances, I know wouldn’t be left unattended for long.

Which leads me to my latest hobby: walking circles around the hospital. Sure, it’s no nature reserve, but I don’t worry about dying. Do you know what’s more soothing than chirping birds? The screaming sirens of ambulances rushing to save lives.

The sidewalk loops around the building for a perfect half-mile roundtrip. My poodle bounces along my side, putting much-needed smiles on visitors’ faces. Sometimes I consider waving through the window to the staff at the front desk, and shouting, “Hi neighbor! May I borrow a cup of Benadryl?”

My scale says I’ve gained a couple pounds this week. I hope it means I’m finally building muscle, not packing macaroni. I don’t need a bikini body, I just don’t want a weenie body, if I can help it.

Reading is my therapy

I have no money. Initially, when I was diagnosed, my bank account grew. My mast cells reacted to everything: shopping, eating out, socializing, eating in. My sole hobby became staying alive in the security of my own home. Gone were the days of Target receipts as long as my arm.

However, soon enough cocktails at happy hour were replaced with IVs in the emergency room, costing me a couple hundred dollars a month despite insurance. Add in a few hospitalizations and pharmacy bills, and I’ve been teetering on the edge of financial ruin ever since. I’d donate blood to help pay off my debt, but of course, no one wants my mutant blood.

Anyway, while my world and bank account shrank, I sought solace in library books. My local library is one of the ten buildings I can enter safely without a mast cell reaction. It has high ceilings and good airflow, but the best part is minimal social interaction! I can peacefully check out my reserved books without having to talk to or smell anyone. (I think my disease might have turned me into an introvert.)

At first, it was hard to find a book I could enjoy. In addition to brain fog, all I could think about was my pain and fears. When I was able to concentrate, I couldn’t relate to most characters. The stakes mocked my real-life struggles. Every happy ending seemed suspicious.

One day, I picked up Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. It’s a nonfiction book about the daily life and struggle to survive in a slum near Mumbai. The story is a series of horrors: poverty, heat, hunger, and violence, to name a few.

For the first few chapters, I tried relate in the only way I knew how. I imagined myself living in the slum and counted how many pages into each scene until I would inevitably die from mast cell disease. I died a lot.

I began to think about the book when I wasn’t even reading it. In the bathroom, I thought about pooping without a toilet. At night, I thought about sleeping on trash. In the morning, I thought, “If that child gets up every day to scavenge for garbage in sewage, then you can get up and take your pills.”

It was exactly the therapy I needed. This book changed my life, not because it reminded me to be grateful or that others have it worse, but because it unlocked my empathy. It stunned me into thinking about someone other than myself. I realized my grief and anxiety had driven me to self-absorption and I embraced it under the guise of self-preservation. It felt good to leave my body for a few minutes and imagine I was somewhere else, someone else.

Since then, I have regained my love of reading and acquired new problems. I’m constantly browsing the internet for new book releases and placing holds before my library even receives the copies. I obsessively check the statuses of my requests, trying to calculate whether the ebook will become available before the hard copy. Without fail, several holds usually become available all at once and I have self-induced anxiety trying to figure out how to read them all before the due date.

I prefer ebooks, especially in the winter, because I still struggle to get to the library. Hard covers often trigger my tendonitis. I love my fourth generation Kindle, which I regularly stuff into a Ziploc for Epsom salt baths. Sometimes when I’m having anxiety about due dates, I turn my Kindle onto airplane mode and hold an ebook hostage.

But then I have anxiety that an angry librarian will show up at my door. It’s totally unrealistic, but I let the ebook go.

Although treating prostaglandins has helped my brain fog, I can’t always concentrate. In the hospital, I managed to downloaded a free trial of Audible high on pain medication. I don’t remember the book title, let alone the plot; sometimes the goal is just to relax. For moderate brain fog, I recommend young adult and comic books.

Here are some books I enjoyed in the months after my diagnosis:

Easy to read

  • Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
  • The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
  • Heart and Brain: Gut Instincts by Nick Seluk
  • Adulthood is a Myth by Sarah Andersen

Humor

  • Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
  • I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
  • Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Calming

  • O’s Little Book of Happiness
  • Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver

 

Which books have helped you through a hard time?

The soup that helps me survive winter

I have never enjoyed cooking food. Maybe it’s because most food hurts me. Maybe it’s because standing in the kitchen makes me dizzy and exhausted. Maybe it’s because during my first cooking lesson, my mother told me that my great grandmother died in a cooking fire.

However, my body demands home cooked meals. Soy, garlic, onion, corn syrup, lactose, salicylates, and high-fiber foods make me feel like I’ve swallowed a demon. High histamine foods, basically all the remaining foods, make me puke within 20 minutes of ingestion. It’s easier to explain what I can eat: fresh, plain meat; potatoes; rice; bread; and butter.

This makes lunch at work incredibly difficult. I cannot breathe in restaurants, and there are no safe takeout foods. I cannot eat refrigerated food, which increases histamine, but frozen is okay.

My friend encouraged me to make soup, which sounded tasty. However, when I learned her recipe involves roasting a chicken and simmer the bones, I abandoned the idea. The only thing I roast are bad healthcare providers.

I don’t appreciate food enough to spend hours of my precious energy preparing it. I often remind myself that in the event of a zombie apocalypse I will die because I don’t know how to roast a squirrel. But let’s be honest, I probably can’t catch a squirrel and I’d probably die from running out of my medications first. I’d be lucky if I lived long enough for a zombie to eat me.

This year, when Minnesota’s windchill dropped to -50F, my body demanded soup. I scoured Whole Foods for a gastronomic compromise. To my delight, I discovered the nectar I’d been longing for: a chicken broth made without garlic or onions. From then on, it was surprisingly easy to develop low-energy soup recipes.

Here’s my recipe for chicken noodle soup:

  1. Think about making chicken noodle soup. Eat air sandwiches for lunch and sleep through dinner time until you are so hungry that you can’t feel your joint pain anymore.
  2. Eat cereal for energy to go to the store.
  3. Go to Whole Foods at 5 pm, because that’s when the rotisserie chickens are fresh. Buy one plain rotisserie chicken, celery, carrots, green onions, and 48 oz of 365 Everyday Value® Organic Chicken Broth. Pray that you still have basil, thyme, and pasta at home.
  4. Eat part of the chicken and take a nap.
  5. Maim the celery and carrots. I hate celery and carrots. They taste shit and aren’t going to cure me. But I eat them just in case.
  6. Sauté the vegetables in garlic oil if you feel fancy.
  7. Squirt the box of chicken broth into a pot over the vegetables, emulating the sights and sounds of colonoscopy prep. This is my favorite part.
  8. Dump basil, thyme, and pepper into the pot until it looks pretty and bring the broth to a boil.
  9. Add 2 cups of tri-color rotini because curls have more fun. Boil for 7 minutes.
  10. Remove from heat, add chopped chicken and green onions, and stir until you get tired or bored.
  11. Spoon into Pyrex bowls and freeze.
  12. Tell the poodles to do the dishes.