Spring planting, part 1

I've been avidly reading the Auld Farmer's Almanack ( available on-line, pls observe modern spelling rules), trying 2 figure out what's starting from seeds, and what kind of sets I have to buy over ye next couple of days.

Getting lined up with the moon would be impossibly complex were it not 4 ye Almanack's handy, dandy planting by the moon chart.

Tomorow carrot seeds get startd in the house, & I'll have until 3/5 2 get the seedlings planted outside. Also leek sets, which'll go outside immediately.

Everything else goes in Wednesday: cukes, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes.

Potatoes & onions R already growing.

Parsley waits 'til Friday.

Celery stalks @ midnite. 

tarot reading

A 2-line couple's reading from November 23, 2014.

I'll analyze the bottom line first (hers), as it contains 2 trumps.

The sun is the birth of my partner's latest grandchild, the first born 2 her last child (her baby) and his wife, on November 24. She had known for some time that this baby would bring great joy to everyone, herself especially.  6 Hearts is the karmic love card, & tells her there is a price 2 B paid for things said & done in a love relationship, not necessarily the current one. The empress is a fulfillment of some sort, usually worldly, not aescetic. Having recently begun working, & finding herself well-liked and already considered indespensible, she's happy as I've seen her in a long time.

The 3 clubs at the top indicate a person living entirely inside his head. The 9 is the final stage of a particular approach 2 life, and is due to a new Parkinson's medication, Neupro. The deuce is the card of fussin & fightin, &  is closely related to the 6 hearts below it (this is a couple's reading). The 6 spades is the way-shower's card, sometimes called the John the Baptist card. I'll be teaching again soon, but what subject I'm not sure.

It's a complex spread, and like all others has to ferment in the mind of the interpreter 4 a few days before meanings become clear. 

Click on the photo for a larger view.

today menu!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/parkinsons-recovery/2014/03/11/parkinsons-relief-was-in-the-supermarket-for-glen-pettibone

labour day

On Labour Day, this past Monday, I took a
Parkinson's-induced fall and broke rib #9 on the right side (left in this picture). It's the last & smallest one w/ cartilage at both ends, the 3 floaters below it.

There's nothing the medical people can do for a busted rib. Patients are told 2 rest & stay quiet, & breathe deeply, 3 things that R tuff 2 do when you're in a lot of pain. Broken ribs R what drs. call a "pain management" problem.

I knew all this from a little cursory internet searching, and went to the urgent care place nearby where they took the X-ray & prescribed Percocet. Supposedly a heavy-duty pain killer, it gave me nothing but an  unpleasant "downer" high and constipation. So this morning I went to a regular hospital emergency room where they gave me a big old dose of Dilaudid, a synthetic morphine, & prescribed Toradol.

I'm sitting here now feeling 4 ft thick, drinking warm apple juice to try to unplug my gut, & feeling ø pain. They say 3-6 weeks, which'll be doable if I can cut back on the downers in a few days. Have U ever felt like someone else but U didn't know who?                                                                                                                                  

The strangest thing about all of this: when the pain was most intense, I felt intensely glad 2 B alive.

1/2 rations

I haven't posted anything here for a long time, and I wanted to stop in and tell you about my latest experiment.  Parkinson's disease is a trade off all the time. If you take enough medication to suppress all the symptoms you're left with side effects. Cut back on the medication and symptoms return.

The side effects of too much Sinemet (artificial dopamine, or L-dopa) taken with marijuana or not, is that you don't feel like yourself. Too much ganja creates problems of its own, mainly you're dopey &; kind of blissed out. Plus, something I'm taking == I don't know what -- has screwed up my immune system.

That's probably theSinemet too; I always look to the pharmaceuticals I'm taking to figure out why this or that bad thing is happening. I don't think the Turmeric is behind recent outbreaks I've had, although I suppose the B- or  D-vitamins I take might be implicated.

I simply don't know. But I can tell you, cutting your med in half is very interesting. You start showing symptoms,  and at this stage of the game, 7 yrs in, those are: I walk with a shuffling gait, there's mostly mumbling instead of speaking, and occasional drooling -- things which endear a 70 -yr old man to every buddy.

So you can either travel stealthily, medicating heavily at 3 hour intervals, and be somebody else (I   never did figre out who), or you can skip the meds and just be yourself, which scares folks out in public, as they really don't understand it.

However, after 2 days on half rations, I've decided this is the way to go.

©∂†ß0X3®

usa today

War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. 

--Emmanuel Goldstein; The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical  Collectivism

A Whispered Tale by Siegfried Sassoon

             S. Sassoon

I´d heard fool-heroes brag of where they´d been,

With stories of the glories that they’d seen. 

But you, good simple soldier, seasoned well 

In woods and posts and crater-lines of hell, 

Who dodge remembered ‘crumps’ with wry grimace,

Endured experience in your queer, kind face, 

Fatigues and vigils haunting nerve-strained eyes, 

And both your brothers killed to make you wise; 

You had no babbling phrases; what you said 

Was like a message from the maimed and dead.

But memory brought the voice I knew, whose note 

Was muted when they shot you in the throat; 

And still you whisper of the war, and find 

Sour jokes for all those horrors left behind.

(World War I began on this date 100 years ago. The poet Sassoon survived it.)

no newt

/ NONTRNET

...but I must write...it´s the only way I can keep my disordered cognition from flying apart like a Model T doing 90.

¨Cognitive disorder¨ you say? Yes, but not the way you think. At this stage of the illness one´s cognition gets sloppy, runs over, gets all over everything, like a mocoso with an ice cream.

CRS on steroids is all it is, really. The light is still on, and there´s somebody home, but the bulb  flickers quite a bit.

It´s like listening to a radio which half the time is clear as a crystal bell, and the other half the time is nothing but static.

 It may sound horrible, but it´s not that bad. It´s not like having a kidney stone, or an inflammation of  the big nerve in your leg, whatever the fookinelle it´s called -- I´ve actually had it, but the name escapes me at the moment.

It´s just like that. All the damn time.

So its not as bad as a lot of other things I could name and a few things I´ve had. it´s not painful, it isn't dementia, at least not yet, and it doesn´t get in your way, except when you´re trying to remember the name of the biggest nerve in the human body. Hey, that´s it! Fookinitis!

1 hr. later I remember, & had to look it up. Siatica. Lookin it up took a while without no nternet.

Sciatica. Had to look it up, and I forgot NoNternet.

gardener's progress

Planting in early June.

Today, last day of July

going clubbing

My vacationing partner, visiting her family who live  far away, drew some cards for herself from an old casino deck, which is as good a medium as any other.

 Because of the single clubs theme of the draw, I don't think time is an element here. Instead, we´re looking at a manifestation of the present, and a very wise lady indeed.

In fact, the queen of clubs is wisdom personified. In my own deck, I´ve modeled her after this famous portrait by Miguel Cabrera of Sister Juana Ines de la Cruz, one of the greatest intellects of the 17th century, who joined an order of nuns not out of religious impulses, but because it was the only way in Mexico at that time for a womn to avoid marriage. Sister Juana Ines wanted to devote her life to study. 

                       


However much intellectual firepower the queen brings to this short spread, however, the most important card is the 8, as it is one of three "fixed" cards in both the playing and tarot packs. (The other two are the jack of hearts and king of spades.) Fixed cards are the most intense, and in the case of 8 clubs, the strength of the feelings which draw it to the center -- enabling mastery of most any situation through the power of unimpeded intellect -- also shed light on its weakness, a rigidity of thinking which can lead to mental ossification. 

Six clubs is the wayshower card, sometimes called the John the Baptist card, and indicates in this case the same person represented by the queen. This tells us if you´re fortunate enough to get advice from this person, you should listen. Her advice, if followed, will certainly change your life for the better.

garden

In the daily struggle with Parkinson's Disease, nothing is more important than maintaining a strong diet, rich in antioxidents, fruit sugars, & fish oil.

A producing garden is an inestimable ally in this fight. One needn't look 4 the organic label cause that's all we got. From left, tomatoes, zucchini growing on a mound behind & 2 the left of the main bed, strawberries, onions, red (cayenne)& jalapeno peppers, marijuana, potatoes, carrots, bush beans, pea vines, & lettuce. Cuucumbers are on a mound behind the green herb pot flanked by sunflowers.

The zucchini, cukes, and peas are already abundant. Tomatoes will be coming in soon. Green onions & carrots are just about ready. Spuds & pot went in later than the rest, & should yield well about the beginning of September.

 For people dealing with chronic  diseases, food is medicine. If it's not, you need 2 rethink your diet.

drink yer eggplant!

Had 4 shots in a row day before yesterday, with no  ill effects on the gut. Will try it again 2day.

Along with 4 spritzes of glutathione, this could B z tickette.

pea vine

I thought I heard that pea vine whistle blow;

I thought I heard that pea vine whistle blow.
& It's blowin just like my baby's gettin on board

Did you ever make the milk run out on the pea vine line? (Nodum sane?)
D'jever do the milk run way out on that old pea vine line?
It's the road to ride if you want 2 ease a troubled mind.

(Instrumental with China cymbals, trompettes made from 
thighbones of the deceased, Tibetan bass hornettes, drum, 
& c. & c.)

You know I cried last night, but I don't wanta cry no more;
Yes, I cried last night but I ain't gonna cry no more.
'Cause when I change my way of livin I won't be cryin no more.

post zip 7

Excuse please the more-than-one-week absence, but life intervenes sometimes, as was common in earler days, but unlike those former days, I don't always take el computador with me. 

I feel different than I used to a lot of the time, having been on  glutathione & eggplant juice about three weeks now, which seems to account for a lot of how I' m feeling. Timing is critical; miss a Sinemet-banana bread  by an hour, and you´re playing catch-up.

So your body tells you what you need, & you just got to listen all the time.

Besides drug therapy, we´ve had lots of gardening therapy lately. Marijuana went in yesteday, otherwise it´s all is in & up -- lettuce, peas, bush beans, radishes, scallions, carrots, potatoes, red and jalapeño peppers, strawberries, zucchini & cukes -- & lots of marigolds.

So yesterday I made miso with a baby scallion, zucchini, & 3 pea pods. yum yum. & it only gets better.
                                                      

parkinson's day off

It's July 4, a holiday where I live.

Do yourself a favor & go read Charlie.

djoos

• • 

    Dave Brice is feeling berry good. The eggplant juice helps, I´m sure, and if it´s the "placebo effect" I´ll take it. Today I´m doing shooters -- 2-1/2 shots of pure eggplant juice chased with a big old gulp of jolly old Mr OJ.

    
    

    I make up enough in the morning for both of the day´s refreshment ordeals.

    
    

    Since the reapparance of glutathione in my daily routine, and now Asian eggplant, I feel like I´m truly getting a handle on this thing.

90-weight

We went out & bought a Jack LaLanne juicer yesterday ($90@Costco) so can juice Chinese eggplant. Superdoc assures me this exotic-looking day-glo-coloured vegetable is the motherlode of nicotine, which has been found in some cases 2 protect against PD symptoms.

So far I've drunk the juice of 1 and 1/2 eggplants, and about 1000 lbs of apples, oranges, carrots, celery, and pineapple to mix it with, as it's the color of mucous, smells vaguely like a garbage can, & tastes like dead frogs. it develops nasty-looking froth as it seeps from the juicer into a glass, and causes whatever you mix it with to suds up.

3/8 Cup of Asian eggplant juice in a medium tumbler filled to the brim with pineapple juice worked pretty well. You know, you can get it down without making faces.

Tomorrow I think I'll try shooters; a  shot of eggplant. then chase it with something good. Two shots in the morning and two in the afternoon, with the objective of a cup a day.

 Already, the two major new meds are making a difference. In some ways, life is going back to how it used to be.

$ & senses

Glutathione is the greatest thing ever. So is Advair, & I know that's irrational, but there it is.

It's a good thing I'm a rich Ameddican, otherwise I'd never be able to afford this modern, custom-developed-as-if-on-cue medication.

I wanted 2 lay out all the $$/mo so as 2 figure out how much this is costing me.

glutathione -- $100/mo
nicotine              60/mo
co-Q10               40/mo

Those are experimental and as yet under-the-radar treatments for PD. In addition, I take two respiratory meds so expensive and inadequately insured here that I buy them through Canada. They are

Advair                75/mo
Combivent         45/mo

all the regular prescription  & supplemental stuff -- Sinemet & Acyclovir, the B & D vitamins, turmeric &  magnesium -- runs $20-30/mo for all of it. So far we´re loking at a predictable 350 bucks a month.

Which brings us to the item whose cost swings wildly between $160 & $540/mo. I'm speaking of course of cannabis Indica, which makes Sinemet doable & life livable. So Ineed to come up with somewhere between $510 & $890 a month just to keep looking healthy.

I cant complain at the moment because Im probably the healthiest-looking sick guy youll ever see.

doc @ the crossroads

The last four days I've felt better than I have 4 a lomg time, &; I atftribute it to the new meds. I'm amazed at how few prescription drugs I'm taking -- I count four: Sinemet, which is cheap and plentiful, a generic covered by insurance. Two respiratory meds, Advair amd Combivent, both of which are prohibitvely expensive in the US for reasons I'll get into below. Acyclovir is also quite inexpensive, and 90% covered.

Glutathione is an experimental treatment, unrecognized by the FDA. It costs about $100 for a 35-day supply. The vitamins, Turmeric, and patent medicine (Loratadine) are readily available and cheap. Co-Q10 costs about $40 for a month supply of liquid, which the body absorbs more easily than the pills. The cheapest nicotine patches run $60/month.

Advair and Combivent are good examples of how big pharma holds us hostage. Besides COPD patients like me, millions of asthma sufferers are dependent on these drugs.  The copay for both is around $350 a month. This has asthmatics screaming, when they can get enough breath, and for good reason. I don´t know what Advair costs in Europe, but Combivent and similar inhalers are either given away or sell OTC for five whatevers (Marks, Francs, Lire, Shillings), because they keep people out of hospitals, thus saving everyone money.

Because I refuse to give big pharma their cut of the action, I buy those two prescriptions out of Canada. My Advair Diskus (It's called Salmeterol and Fluticasone Propionate [a generic version of a brand or "premium"  drug]) is from GSK, the maker of Advair, but is marked "For Sale Only in India and Nepal." The Combivent is genuine, trade-marked Boehrenger/Ingelheim, but the box and instructions are in Polish. A three-month supply of both costs about $325, which is a whole lot better than the thousand-plus in copays if I bought them here.

This is just one of the ways pharmaceutical giants hand us the shitty end of the stick. Respiratory medicine is a racket, but the worst corruption of American health care occurs, or so I´ve heard, in the area of cancer medication. But that´s another story.


We´re just about done here, but no little tour around the neighborhood of Parkinson´s medication is complete without a telling of the cautionary fable of the pharmaceutical and the herb. The new pharmaceutial was synthesized in the laboratory a few years into the new century, and all the fond hopes and dreams of the company, Amalgamated Everything, were with the infant pill. It was tiny, only 1 mg, and cheap to make, but very expensive. Just the copay alone ranges from $3-$5 per pill! The good thing is patients take one pill a day, but the bad thing is most can´t tell what it does for them, if anything.

At first MD´s would explain to their patients that Azilect, for that is the newcomer´s name, worked with Levodopa (Sinemet) to help its effects last longer, but clinical trials, whie they didn´t disprove the assertion, found no evidence to support it. So the story changed a couple of years ago, and now Azilect is touted as slowing the progess of the disease. But this contention is in doubt also.

All we really know about Azilect is it´s 1) bad for the liver, and 2) costs a lot. On the other hand, there´s an herb -- I´m sure I don´t even have to name it -- which works extremely well in conjunction with Sinemet, removing all signs of nausea and reducing symptoms. Big pharma hates the herb, as it's a common weed, and Bog or God holds the patent.

Tomorrow I´ll wrap this up, and add up the numbers, and have a few general comments about health care in America.

pilz n stuff

Right. Meds are usually a boring subject, especially when old people start telling you about all the  various pilz they take & why they take them. Since that´s eggs ackley what I plan doing here, you´re forewarned.

I have three main conditions I take medication for:  emphysema, Parkinson´s Disease, & genital herpes. I´ve also had psoriasis within the past couple years. Today is the first day I had almost all my meds together, so it´s a good time to tackle the subject.

My mainstay pill is Sinemet, aka Carbodopa/Levodopa, mainly to replace the dopamine gone missing from the brain of a person with Parkinson´s. So I take 4-5 of these 100mg of levodopa (synthetic dopamine) + 25mg of carbonate (to control the reflexive nausea levodopa produces) each day plus a double at bedtime, 600 or 700 mg daily. 

In addition, with each little yellow Sinemet pill I take marijuana, almost always eaten in banana bread, brownies, cookies, or a square of chocolate -- my current favorite. This damps down all the  residual nausea which accompanies levodopa, even when it´s moderated by Carbodopa, and additionally suppresses any Parkinson´s symptoms, especially tremors and drooling, that ¨get  past¨ the Sinemet. That means I´m high most of the time, as I take pilz and chase them with little treats every 3 hours throughout the day. If Im up at 530, the meds come at 6, 9, 12, 3, & 7.

I also take glutathione twice a day (see the previous post from this past Saturday, June 21 ), in a nasal spray. Each application is 2 squirts up each side. Tilt your head back, &  notice it doesn´t taste that great. However, having completed three days on the stuff, I feel quite a difference. For example, I´m typing quickly and accurately right now, which is something I usually can´t do any more. Glutathione is a powerful brain antioxident that goes missing from the brains of Parkinson´s people. It helps impede the formation of something called homocysteine, but I don´t know what that is.

Also twice a day I take a liquid Co-Q10 for Parkinson´s and general brain function, and a supplement which doubles as a spice -- Turmeric -- 1440 mg in 2 caps/day. I usually take 2000 iu´s of vitamin D-3 twice, or three times a day, four if I remember, mainly for psoriasis, but also because doctors are pretty high on it at the moment. 

For emphysema,I just began taking Advair diskus today, a twice-a-day powder that´s already making a difference. It´s a morning/evening thing like glutathione. In between for breathing I take albuterol with ipraprium bromide, as needed or four ¨doses,¨ either from a compressed-air nebulizer or Combivent inhaler. It´s the same stuff, but the inhaler is a lot more portable.

Other than that there´s the once-a-day stuff: magnesium to control leg cramps, loratadine, an over-the-counter patent medicine to tamp down allergic sneezing and nasal water production, B-12 and multi-B vitamins, for general health and to help the glutathione keep homocysteine away. (Im not sure what that stuff is, but it sounds badass) and a nicotine patch, 21 mg applied in the morning and removed in the evening at bedtime, as a final control and symptom repressant for Parkinson´s. The final drug, missing from today´s roster of stuff I took, is Acyclovir, which both treats and prevents genital herpes. 400 mg a day is the preventive dose, and I need to get some more.

Tomorrow I´ll discuss how much of this is medicine, coverable by insurance, and how most of it, including the most expensive parts, falls outside the narrow confines of the FDA spotlight. Stayin alive in the USA when you´re old and sick is a lot easier than it used to be, but very, very expensive.