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dangerous chocolate

So last night I went to get a cup of hot chocolate and almost wound up in the emergency room.

I’m allergic to milk, it triggers asthma attacks. It’s not stable, the amount I can tolerate and the severity of the reaction varies, with no schedule or cause that I can discern. Last night someone at Starbucks absent-mindedly gave me real milk instead of soy in my cocoa and a couple of hours later I was feeling it.

It wasn’t too bad, just a little wheezy and I won’t be running any marathons this week. I’ve spent time in oxygen tents for less milk than that. But something that struck me was that if I had needed medical attention, I might have had no choice but to start a lawsuit over it.

With no health care plan, no insurance, and no stable income, any medical bills are likely to be quite a bit more than my total net worth. Or gross worth, for that matter. It makes me wonder how many apparently frivolous lawsuits are really acts of desperation along those same lines.

Anyway, I want to reassure everyone that I’m okay. I’ll be a little wheezy for a few days, but I’m improving and should be back in action tomorrow. For today, I’m sticking to movies, books and bed.

Take care everybody.

Posted in Daily Post

Injury Update

Nov 5

Posted by Leo Tarvi

It’s been two weeks now since I fell down the stairs. For the most part I’m doing well, I can move with only a slight limp and at this point there’s only any pain if I do something stupid like try to put weight on that toe.

Did you know that when you walk a sizable part of your body weight is supported by your big toe? I didn’t realize that until I couldn’t do it anymore.

Fatigue is now a bigger problem than pain. Today I went shopping, and it was exhausting. I took the cane, even though I’m not using it inside the house anymore. I figured there would probably be a difference between walking around the house, where I can sit down at any moment, and walking around a store where I’m on my feet constantly. I’m very, very glad I did that.

It took more than two hours and I now have a bruise on the palm of my hand from leaning on that stick.

This actually sounds worse than it is. The injury itself is healing quickly, and when I accidentally put some weight on it there weren’t wailing alarms in my head like before, though it still hurt. At this point I’m having much more trouble from secondary aches and pains due to walking funny for the last two weeks.

And I just realized that I’m procrastinating from the NaNoWriMo book by stretching this post out. I’m procrastinating from writing, by writing.

Still losing every battle, but somehow winning the war.