‘Random Babbling’ Category

  1. Bless you, Alexander Fleming

    March 4, 2011 by ChiaLynn

    When I woke up Monday morning, my left ear hurt. “That’s irritating,” I thought, and I took an Aleve and a decongestant and it went away. The pollen count’s high, so I figured it was an allergy thing and went on about my day.

    When I woke up Tuesday morning, it hurt worse, and this time it didn’t respond to the NSAID. As the day went on, the pain got worse, and the left side of my throat swelled until NovySan said, “You’d better go to the doctor tomorrow.”

    And so I did. She found a big chunk of wax in that ear (it’s not the first time I’ve had to have wax flushed out of a sore ear, but it is the first time in more than 20 years), and enough inflammation to prescribe antibiotics, even though she thought the sore throat was viral.

    Wednesday night, my temperature spiked, and I woke up in the middle of the night in so much pain I was shaking. More Aleve, an ice pack on the side of my head, and as soon as Kaiser opened, I emailed my doctor. “Keep taking the antibiotics,” she said, “and if it’s not better tomorrow, come back.”

    Today it is better. It is so much better. The pain’s receded to a dull ache, the fever’s down to a degree that doesn’t make me feel floaty and half-unreal, my throat’s half the size it was yesterday, and if some of the swelling’s been replaced by an ugly white patch, I know that’ll be gone in a day or two.

    I know this little episode will go down as “an illness to remember,” but at the end of it – I could just kiss Alexander Fleming on the top of his pointy little head.

    Category Random Babbling | Tags: ,,, | 3 Comments

  2. Can I call myself a runner now?

    January 21, 2011 by ChiaLynn

    I have never been a runner. In high school, when they’d make us run a mile, I’d walk it. The summer I was 15, I rode my bike 20 miles a day, and I still didn’t run. It was uncomfortable, it was unpleasant, and I didn’t like it.

    A couple of years ago, though, when Slackmistress started the Couch to 5K program as part of her Post-Apocalyptic Workout, I thought, “Maybe I could do that.” And I tried it, and sometimes it wasn’t too bad, but mostly my shins hurt and my knees complained and even when I got my boobs properly strapped in (with the help of an industrial-style sports bra that holds everything firmly in place, but also shapes it into a rocket-nose-cone that any 50s sweater girl would envy), I could feel my belly pudge jiggling and it freaked me out, so I mostly walked.

    Then came the 2009 Tevis, which I crewed for my dad. Over the course of the weekend, I discovered that running on dirt didn’t hurt the way running on asphalt does, and I started doing the occasional run on the beach. It wasn’t until I started reading about barefoot running, though, that I realized why running on dirt was different. It wasn’t because it’s a softer surface – it’s because when I run on uneven ground, I don’t land on my heel. One pair of Vibram FiveFingers later, I was running more often, even on concrete, with much less discomfort. I even started getting used to the way things jiggle.

    Last fall, NovySan and I started running every night – just a mile, and if I’m being honest, I have yet to run that whole mile. I’ve discovered it’s much easier for me to run fast than slow, but I can’t keep up the pace for a mile. So, I sprint, then I walk, then I sprint some more, and over time, I’m not only managing longer sprints, I’m also getting stronger, which helps me jog more comfortably as well.

    I’ve had no knee pain in a long time – all those hours in the gym have definitely paid off in that respect. But the shins have had many, many things to say to me, all of them unpleasant. Google tells me that’s due to tight calf muscles, which I definitely have, so I’ve been stretching them and it’s been helping, but I obviously haven’t been stretching them enough, because Sunday night, half a block into my run, I felt as though someone had stabbed me in the calf with a hot knife.

    It wasn’t a cramp. It was a strain, and thankfully a mild one. Five days later, it’s still sore, but I’ve been able to walk a bit and I went to KungYo Wednesday night without ill effect. Actually, the yoga helped a lot.

    What makes me think I can call myself a runner now, though, despite not being very good at the actual running part, is that this is the first sports injury I’ve ever had, if I define a sports injury as an injury received as a result of physical activity, which makes it impossible or difficult to continue doing that activity until it heals. And my reaction to receiving said injury was an internal moan of, “But… but… This means I can’t run for at least a week! And what about KungYo? No, I’m going to KungYo, even if all I can do is sit on the sidelines and watch. I wonder how long I should wait before I get back on my bike, or the elliptical? Aw, man, I was really looking forward to BodyCombat, too!”

    Come to think of it – maybe I’m not just a runner. Maybe I’m actually an athlete.

    Category Random Babbling | Tags: ,,, | 6 Comments

  3. How do you find it if you don’t know what you’re looking for?

    October 27, 2010 by ChiaLynn

    A year or so ago, I read The Ghost Map, which is about the 1854 cholera epidemic in London. One of the book’s narrative threads is the tension between the miasmic theory of disease transmission, which held that “bad air” spread infection, and the emerging germ theory, which recognized that diseases like cholera could be water-borne. Adherents of the miasmic theory had difficulty understanding the data which clearly showed that this outbreak of cholera had originated at a particular public water pump, because the idea of a water-borne illness made no sense to them.

    Now, I’m reading Norman Longmate’s history of the V-2, Hitler’s Rockets. One of the great scientific breakthroughs of Germany’s V-2 program was developing a liquid rocket fuel – a mixture of alcohol and oxygen that provided far more power than a similar amount of solid fuel. In the UK, though, the military scientists hadn’t been able to create a similar fuel, with the result that although Britain knew that Germany was investing heavily in rocket technology, it was determined that these rockets used anywhere from four to twenty tons of cordite to get off the ground. There was no evidence of a facility within range of England capable of handling such a blast, so many British authorities believed that Germany’s rockets were incapable of reaching them.

    They weren’t.

    And so now I’m thinking about the difficulty of seeing something that’s right under your nose, when not only do you not know that it exists – you’ve actually been trained to expect to find something else. You don’t have to be ignorant, unintelligent or close-minded to be blinkered by your prejudices and expectations. I know, of course, that this has real-world consequences (and I’m sure I’ve been guilty of it myself), but what I’m thinking of now is its effect on a character living in London during the bombings – a character in my NaNoWriMo project, who’s got to square the evidence with a worldview that doesn’t allow for the evidence. I’ve known all along that he’d have trouble accepting what he comes to know is true – but now I realize that he’s going to have trouble even seeing it.

    We’ve got a lot of work to do.

    Category Random Babbling, Writing | Tags: ,, | 5 Comments

Older Entries
Newer Entries