Back At Altitude

We got home in less than two days, and last night, when I went to bed, I knew I was going to be in trouble. For the last several months, I've been waking up at night, when I was here in Colorado, with a panic response. I felt like I couldn't get enough air. I would take a lung capacity test, and it would come out normal; but I felt, emotionally, like I couldn't breathe. It was awful.

My allergy doctor, Dr. Li of Flat Iron Allergy, has been urging me to take my Advair twice a day when it used to be that one inhalation a day was enough for me. So, reluctantly, I decided to take his advice. I probably should have done it sooner, as that very night, I stopped having the panic attacks. He's also the doctor who told me to get off Montelukast, which used to be an asthma drug that Dr. Murthy put me on, but the side effects of Montelukast were anxiety, vivid bad dreams, and some patients became suicidal. There were also side effects of ADHD, sleeplessness, and loss of mental clarity. All things that I'd been blaming on my lack of estrogen because Dr. Pfeiffer, my family medicine doctor, told me that that was a probable cause. My getting onto hormone therapy ended up with a hysterectomy last September, but I'm still on a low dose of estradiol, but I was still having the panic dreams and have a hard time getting to sleep.

Now I'm not so sure. And there's no way to "cure" someone of the Montelukast side effects. I took that stuff for nearly fifteen years. 

So I guess I get to live with it, and do the things I can do. Stuff like therapy, melatonin at night, and doing my Advair every night as well as in the morning and giving my body the time to acclimate back to being at altitude. At least I'm not taking it anymore. I am grateful for that and for Dr. Li telling me that I should stop. The month after stopping was pretty hard, but I got through it.

I spent the day cooking and playing Hades, to keep my mind off how much I dreaded trying to sleep. We also went to the Rec Center and worked out to a nearly empty workout area. It was a beautiful, sunny day outside, but the wind was wicked sharp. Exercise helps with the sleeping, too, so I do what I can. 

One of the things I could do was red beans and rice. We'd bought all the ingredients when we were in New Orleans, and I soaked the kidney beans last night, and cut up the trinity, garlic, and all the meats that were in Kenji Lopez-Alt's Red Beans and Rice recipe. Well, not ALL the meats. I couldn't bring myself to put a full pound of sausage into flavor just a pound of beans, and I added half an eight ounce packet of tasso instead of the smoked ham hock. I also did use the eight ounces of pickled pork we'd found at the little grocery store. And it was a dish that was very very heavy on the meats.

One surprising thing was the 4 grams of ground sage. My dried sage was nearly a tablespoon and a half of the stuff when it weighed 4 grams. I ground it finer with a mortar and pestle and STILL had more than a tablespoon of the stuff. I finally just put it ALL in, as you need a lot of flavoring for a whole pound of beans with nearly a pound and a half of pork products as well. It made the house smell wonderful. And it went into my Wonder Bag before the cleaners came.

We hit the Rec Center while they were busy, and when we came back I started my sourdough again. This time I'm doing a lazy rise loaf, where I put less fed starter into the dough, only 60 grams of active starter instead of the 160g from my other recipe. And after the dough has been folded enough times to really get the gluten going, I just let it rise overnight, out on the countertop, rather than using George's incubator.

Getting back to Hades was really nice. I needed to know that I could beat the game without God Mode on, and I started with a whole new save file; but then went back to my old save file and just turned God Mode off. The first build was just awful, but the second build with two Zeus/Poseidon duo boons and some of the higher end Zeus boons with a bit of Artemis critical hit help just went through Hades with no problems whatsoever. So I can win the game without God Mode turned on and do it pretty handily, and that helped my brain a lot. 

I also had a Council meeting to take minutes for, and participate in. In May we'll have a congregational meeting, and for the first time in a really long time, I'm going to step off Council and take a year off completely from church governance. We had dinner before the meeting, and the beans turned out wonderful! We'd also bought a Jazzman Jasmine rice in Louisiana, and we actually cooked our first white rice in a very long time to eat with the beans. It was very fragrant and lovely with the savory beans and meat. John also made a salad. The salad was a little trying to eat with my tooth being tender, but I was happy to realize that I'm less tender than I was even a few days ago. It's improving!!  So I have hope that it can completely heal with time.

So I'm home again and doing Home Things.  Jet's coming home for Spring Break next week, and I'm probably going into 911 tomorrow. Those things are all good. And hopefully, I'll be able to sleep eventually and my lungs will catch up with what I need them to do after the aerobic workout today and maybe a little more time.