Pain, Pain, Go Away!

I don't normally get into online arguments, especially now that vegetrollians have gone away to start eating meat again or scolding people for--well, practically anything nowadays. But something set me off the other day and I finally realized why.  A poster on a forum asked how he could cheaply obtain several hundred rose starts to make a giant rose garden out of an uncultivated piece of ground at his house. I love roses, I've grown a lot of them, and know what's required to grow them. I asked several questions about cost and maintenance of such a project and pointed out potential pitfalls, all of which he waved away, even though he mentioned he was on a budget.  For anyone under the delusion that gardening is a dainty hobby, a garden this size typically has a crew and a professional horticulturist to plant and take care of it. Annual pruning alone would take one person two solid weeks of stoop labor. And since rose gardens went out of style with bridge games and Tupperware...

Michigan sheriffs aren't the only ones against some of the state's COVID restrictions. Governor Gretchen Whitmer went to Florida to visit her father, weeks after warning others against taking spring break trips .  Michigan is currently the biggest COVID hotbed in the US. Nevertheless, Travel Michigan ran an ad on a local Indianapolis radio station this morning to entice Hoosiers to come visit "pure Michigan." Michigan is too far away to pick up Indy radio stations, so contrary to Travel Michigan's website, they couldn't have been trying to lure fellow Michiganders to take a camping trip, which is apparently allowed now.  Manistique MI--an island of calm in a sea of craziness. Photo from Pixabay . Maybe it's an unofficial acknowledgment that the lockdowns have only kicked the can down the road and that Michigan needs the revenue.  If I go to Lake Michigan this year--something I've meant to do for years--I'll probably stay on the Indiana side where ...

Sitting in another doctor's office this week, I wondered if I was on my way to a 17-year bout with diarrhea, like John Nicholson in The Meat Fix . I wondered if this doctor would have any fresh insights. I wondered why Community Health sent me to a clinic 30 miles away when I live in a city full of doctors. This doctor saw that the lab never ran the lab test for ova and parasites as they were supposed to, so she opened the order for the test. After an examination and taking my symptoms, she suggested seeing a gastronenterologist. I countered with a request for a prescription for a gut zoomer test. She looked it up and was skeptical of it and admitted she wouldn't know know to read the results, but she did write out a prescription for it. No way was I going to get scoped and run the risk of ending up like Wolverine , who went in healthy for a colonoscopy and nearly died after getting perforated and needing an intestinal transplant.  Later that day, my stomach felt like it was bu...

Hazards have been lurking where I never expected them. A chipped fuse on a pressure cooker last week, and last night, navy bean soup and probiotics.  The new fuse on my pressure cooker held out despite my apprehensions: it looked a little different from the old one and maybe it was cheap junk that would blow out and let hot soup spray me while I washed the dishes. But the fuse held and I had a wonderful dinner of navy bean soup. Later, though, I was thirsty and my potassium was low.  Then the trouble started at 4:00 this morning. I woke up hot and jittery with diarrhea and spent a rough day at work. I've also been having what feels like  sleep paralysis , but while I'm wide awake. The problem has to be bacteria--beans are full of prebiotics that bacteria love to eat. Dr. Davis said based on some similar reactions to SIBO yogurt, I'm probably having a die-off reaction from BNR17, one of the ingredients in SIBO yogurt and in the Synbiotic 365 I started taking a few months a...

 March found me back in quarantine, as it did last year. This time, it wasn't a bad cold, but a three-week case of diarrhea. Pepto Bismol, Candibactin BR, black seeds (nigella), NAC, thyroid medication and probiotics did nothing; a jar of kimchi made it a lot worse. So I went to urgent care, where the doctor prescribed a stool test for C. difficile and other nasties that will make you extremely ill. C. diff is so toxic that my employer advised me to stay home until results were in. Of course, I didn't want to infect others, so I quarantined myself...again. I'm even working on my computer in the sunshine as I did last year. I forgot that it's hard to see the screen.   Photo from pixabay.com All the test results were negative, so I'm still trying to figure out why I have diarrhea. Hypotheses include too much B vitamins and too much gut bacteria. It all started shortly after beginning a new probiotic and re-starting thyroid medication (25 mg). As I mentioned, I took ...

"We thank you for the revenue!" says a satirical(?) billboard just south of the Michigan-Indiana border. The billboard also honors(?) Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as Indiana's businessperson of the year and welcomes residents of her state to "free-roaming Indiana." Whitmer made the news last year when she banned sales of gardens seeds and activities such as boating or traveling to a second residence. Sheriffs in various counties refused to enforce some of the orders . Peaceful protestors, mostly in cars but some of them armed, stormed the capital and surrounding blocks.  Photo from Steve Swick. Michigan's excess deaths per capita has been among the worst in the US.  Sign owner Steve Swick says,  It’s from the frustration that we see so much with Michiganders who are coming over the border,” said Swick, a Michigan native who grew up about 15 miles north of the billboard in Coldwater. Whitmer “effectively shut down and destroyed small businesses and industri...

What if you could take a flamethrower to everything that was wrong with 2020: the lockdowns, the riots, campus speech codes, chokeholds, the endless emergency orders by fiat? The Indiana assembly has all that and much more in its sights this season . Isolate Grandma? She should soon be able to see a caregiver she's related to. Caught rioting? Three hots, a cot and no government job for you. States of emergency? Not without permission from the legislature, and they're in no mood for mission creep . Speakers you disagree with on campus? Grit your teeth or head for a safe space. Defund the police? LOL, the assembly is looking to repeal the law requiring licenses to carry handguns by persons not otherwise prohibited from doing so.  Also on the agenda: prohibition of conversion therapy , civil forfeiture reform , a ban on police chokeholds, decriminalization of marijuana, body cams and dash cams for the police, allowing pharmacists to prescribe and dispense birth control pills and p...