Health Fitness and Beauty

Strange Addictions

February 26, 2011 by Tricia

OMG I kept hearing about this show “My Strange Addiction” so when I found it on the Learning Channel a couple of months ago I started taping it on my PVR, but I didn’t get around to watching any of the shows until this week and well … uhm … these people need help!

I don’t think on any of the shows that I’ve seen so far that any of the people have stopped their obsessive behaviors .. not the girl that loves to make and wear fur costumes, not the woman that eats toilet paper, not the woman that eats couch cushions and I’ll bet that the show that I’m currently watching – the one with the guy with the “real doll” and the woman who picks her scabs, I’ll bet that they both continue with their behaviors too.

I think everyone probably has something that they are a little too obsessed with or perhaps a little too unhealthily addicted too .. but these people really carry it too far. Most of their behaviors or addictions are harmful. One of the shows I watched was about a woman who was addicted to weight lifting. You’d think overall that that might be ok, but she was injecting growth hormone and taking large doses of supplements and who knows maybe too much calcium supplements for all I know. I don’t think the weight lifting itself was all that bad – at least not at an hour a day or so, but when it was at 6 hours a day and with everything else she was truly doing herself harm.

Do you have any strange addictions or obsessions? Hopefully they aren’t as bad as the ones on the show “My Strange Addiction” but if they are have you ever tried to do something about it?

Eczema worse in Winter?

February 26, 2011 by Tricia

I don’t know if it’s the cold dry air, the weather or just me, but my eczema seems to be getting worse and worse.

I’ve had eczema on and off ever since I was a young child. I think it first appeared on one of my legs oddly enough. In fact, I didn’t get a smallpox vaccine as a child because of the eczema and because my sister had/has as bad case of eczema as well. Apparently eczema and the smallpox vaccine don’t get along so they didn’t want to take a chance vaccinating me for something that there was little chance of me getting.

Skip forward to 2001/ 2002 when the government was seriously thinking of having all front line workers vaccinated against smallpox in case of terrorist threats etc. Being an Emergency Room nurse I would have been required to be vaccinated. I would have either had to risk my health and get the vaccination or change jobs. As it turned out the government canceled the plan for some reason, but I’m sure at some point in the future they’ll think about activating that plan again. Sigh.

Anyway … back to my current eczema problem .. I have this spot on my wrist that just won’t go away. I’m going to try a new treatment for eczema that I’m hoping will make it go away once and for all. I’ve tried so many over the years with varying results, I guess it’s worth giving yet another one a try.

If you have eczema does it get worse in the winter time or at any other particular time of year?

It’s been almost five months since I quit smoking

February 26, 2011 by Tricia

Last weekend my husband and I went to Brantford to see his family. It had been my husband’s mothers birthday earlier in the week and the family was getting together to celebrate her birthday by having lunch together in a local restaurant.

We drove from Toronto and met everyone at the restaurant. Unfortunately the meal wasn’t all that great, I don’t really think anyone except my father in law and one of my brother in laws really liked their food. After we finished eating we went back to my in laws for birthday cake and to spend some time talking.

I was talking with my mother in law when I realized that everyone was starting to congratulate my husband and I. I didn’t realize why they were praising use at first, but they it finally sunk in that they were saying how happy they were that we’d quit smoking and they were happy that we’d been so successful.

You know, up until that point I’d actually forgotten that I’d quit smoking. Aside from Christmas this was the biggest, and to be honest really this was a bigger family gathering we’d been to since we both quit smoking in October. We haven’t really been to many large gatherings or parties since we quit, probably because we’ve been avoiding social occasions that might make us want to smoke, but I think we’re probably over that hump now.

I still get the occasional urge to smoke, but it’s usually when I’m at home doing something that I used to do with a smoke. I never get the urge to smoke when I’m out of the house. I worried about smelling other peoples cigarettes but that actually turns me off. Now that my migraine auras are worse and I’ve developed a “smell aura” that makes me hypersensitive to smell I pretty much can’t stand to walk outside stores where everyone is smoking. Sometimes when I take the dog outside late at night one of the first things I’ll smell when I walk outside the door is someone smoking a cigarette and I’ll look around and I’ll see a neighbor a block away standing on their porch having a smoke or maybe my neighbor who loves to smoke macanudo cigars – yes that’s how sensitive my nose is these days.

Anyway, as I was saying, it was nice to have people telling us that they were proud of our accomplishment. I quit smoking on October 12th so I guess I’m closing in on 5 months without cigarettes. That is pretty good now that I think of it. I think I feel a little bit better health wise and we’ve certainly saved ourselves quite a bit of money that literally would have been up in smoke.

I’ll have to live with being exhausted I guess

January 25, 2011 by Tricia

Well I saw my new endocrinologist about my thyroid last Thursday. I was seeing her because two years ago I noticed that I had swelling on the lower right side of my throat, where my remaining thyroid is. I had the left portion of my thyroid removed in the early 90’s because a tumor grew in it and the cells were precancerous.

The growth on the right side is also a tumor, but the one biopsy that I had a year and a half ago had fairly normal cells in it.

So anyway … I went to see the new doctor because I haven’t had any real follow up on this tumor and it should be checked on regularly, and as I’ve mentioned in a few posts recently I’ve been extremely tired so I’ve been wondering if that’s been my thyroid acting up.

The new doctor examined me fairly thoroughly – rolling her computer over on her poc cart so she could type in her observations as she talked with me. I did have an ultrasound of my thyroid in June and when she compared the tumors growth it had only increased in size by a mm or so – nothing much at all. She examined my neck, checked my pulse and took my blood pressure (110/70 very good)). As she did that I realized that my family doctor (the newish one (pain doctor) hasn’t taken my blood pressure in five years!

Once the specialist was finished examining me she decided that I didn’t need to get another ultrasound or biopsy just yet. She thinks an ultrasound once a year is just fine and if there’s any substantial changes (or symptoms) then she’ll get a biopsy done.

As for blood work … she’s holding off on that too. I don’t know why. I told her about how I’ve been so tired, that I could even fall asleep in her office if we stopped talking for a few minutes, how I was feeling extremely cold since September and how I suddenly gained weight at the end of November and beginning of December for no apparent reason … yet she could see that I’d had my TSH done in early November and that it was within normal levels so she didn’t want to do any more tests.

If it’s not my thyroid that’s making me exhausted I don’t know what else it could be. The way things are going doctor wise though I think I’m either going to have to either just get better on my own or become so ill that they’ll finally figure out what’s going on.

Tomorrow I see my gynecologist about my endometriosis .. that should be fun too.

Now I’m a super Smeller? Thanks Migraines

January 19, 2011 by Tricia

I had the strangest thing happen to me earlier today. I was filling out a form and for a few minutes I forgot the name of my street.

Yeah … I really did. I couldn’t believe that I couldn’t think of the name of the street that I’ve lived on for close to ten years!

I know why it happened though. Last night I increased my dose of Topamax (my migraine medication) to 100 mg and as I’ve mentioned before that medication comes with all kinds of wacky side effects, and memory issues are just the tip of the iceberg. LOL Even my typing and spelling for this post is way off. I’ve had to correct just about every sentence.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with a new doctor, an endocrinologist, and since it’s a first visit and I have to fill out forms and provide a lot of information about my medical history and current meds ie Synthroid dose, pain meds and probably even the chromium supplements that I started earlier this week, I think I’d better get organized and write them down tonight just in case I forget them tomorrow just like I did my street name earlier today. Man that was weird.

I still can’t believe I forgot my street name!

Another weird side effect that I was sure was coming from the migraine medication is that I’ve become what I call a “super smeller“.

I started to notice this side effect in early October when I started taking Zyban to quit smoking and I thought it was the Zyban that caused it … but I stopped taking that medication in November and well … I can still smell things way tooooooooooooooo good. I mean … I live in a semi-detached house (built in the 1920’s) and suddenly I can smell when my neighbors are cleaning their home (just in the last two weeks)?

I know I’ve mentioned how I think my dog smells now. She has this skunky smell and lately I can smell her breath. Everyone else still says she’s one of the only dogs they know who’s breath doesn’t smell, but to me when she’s panting her breath can stink up a whole room … yes … that’s how hypersensitive to smell I am lately.

I did catch a break this week – for the first time in months! I spent yesterday enjoying normal smell. I know it sounds weird. I m sure the whole last half or maybe this whole post sounds strange (the wonders of migraines and migraine medications?) but this is my life lately. Anyway .. yesterday was my first normal smell day in ages and you don’t know how nice that was.

I saw my family doctor yesterday and I told her that I had a normal sense of smell and she said she really thought it was my migraines that was causing the hypersensitivity.

It’s true that migraines can cause people to be extremely hypersensitive to smell … but if that’s true that would mean that since October or perhaps even earlier, I’ve been in a constant state of migraine that’s only just broken … that’s terrible! I actually do believe that’s possible because ever since mid-September or so I’ve had these flashes at the side of my eyes (I call them Roman Candles going off). the flashes happen every five minutes or so taking turns on each of my eyes (yes another very weird thing I’m living with). My neurologist sent me to an Ophthalmologist in early November to make sure that there was nothing wrong with my eyes and that the Tomapax wasn’t causing Glaucoma or anything, and now both of them have come to the conclusion that my eyes are perfectly healthy so what I’m experiencing must be migraine auras … yes constant 24/7 migraine auras …. so why not constant 24/7 several months long hypersensitivity to smell too? I have had headaches and migraines during this time period as well, but not constantly.

Yeah .. my life has taken a weird turn … yes it has. Hopefully the increase in dosage of my migraine medication will turn off all of the migraine side effects the painful ones and otherwise. I’ll let you know .. I’ll also let you know if I forget any other strange things.

Strange Addictions

Eczema worse in Winter?

It’s been almost five months since I quit smoking

I’ll have to live with being exhausted I guess

Now I’m a super Smeller? Thanks Migraines

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