Losing my Sense of Smell

I still don't have my sense of smell back after my traumatic brain injury and I probably never will. So, I'm learning what it is to live without it. 

As we all have experienced when we've had a head cold, not being able to smell deadens us to the flavors in food. All we can taste is what our tongue's taste buds tell us is in it: salty, sweet, sour, bitter and savory. Without smell, I can't taste nuances in flavors or detect spices, either. The flavor of the dish, which is the mixing up of all these different ingredients my mouth to get the distinctive taste of it, is absent. Food tastes bland and I'm forced to enjoy it by its mouthfeel (crunchy or smooth), temperature (both thermally and chemically, i.e. hot peppers), whether it rests well in my stomach and the overall satisfaction it gives me.

But there is more to eating than flavor. Normally, smelling a food when it's cooking prepares us for eating by secreting digestive juices based upon what we've smelled. Without smelling the food beforehand, my body doesn't know what I'm going to eat and therefore my digestive juices lag behind. Eventually, the correct juices start flowing, but then I don't know when I'm full. If I don't stop eating before I'm full, I end up eating too much. Therefore, satiation lags behind, too.

Losing my sense of smell affects me in other ways I didn't fully appreciate until after I lost it. First of all, I've learned that the sense of smell helped me navigate by scent-tracking, like bloodhounds do. I'd sniff the air, recognize a smell and subconsciously register which direction it was coming from, which oriented me. Also, a smell would draw my attention to things I wouldn't ordinarily notice without it, like a newly cut lawn or the scent of meat cooking on a grill. Now, when I'm walking around an unfamiliar area, I have no scent trail to follow. I have to rely solely on visual and auditory cues to remind me of where I am in orientation to where I've been. Therefore, this grounding sense of smell underlying where I've been is missing and it's a lot harder to find my way back.

I've learned that the sense of smell also plays a role in perception. When we can't smell, we don't get into the depth of our surroundings. Universal smells based upon human activities such as diesel exhaust or fireplace smoke, plants such as the sweet scent of jasmine or the sharp scent of junipers, animals such as the smell of a wet dog, a rookery or decomposition overlay one another to form an invisible, particular smell landscape called a smellscape. Each environment has it's own smellscape, making an ocean shore smell different from a pine forest and a rural area smell different from a city. We subconsciously remember these invisible but powerful smellscapes, which evoke an emotional response. For example, if we stand next to the ocean, we can see the waves, hear them crashing, touch its water and feel the cool, humid breeze against our faces. But if we can't detect its smellscape, how can we be fully engulfed within the experience? Without my sense of smell, I feel almost like I'm not completely there.

Finally, I've learned that the sense of smell is strongly tied to memory. Before my fall, if I smelled the perfume my mother wore, a vegetable soup like my Grandma made, the smell of a baby's head, fresh paint or cigarette smoke, it would bring to mind the memories attached to those smells. We smell something, think about it, then form a memory of it. But use it or lose it applies to the brain as well as the body. In time, I know I will forget some of those memories because I am not being reminded of them. I will also have more difficulty forming new ones because I can't detect the smells associated with them.  

Because I can't smell anything, I don't feel like I'm living life as deeply as I would like. Instead, I'm living in a virtual reality.

My Concussion: fixing my hearing

Shortly after I wrote my one year anniversary blog post, I began researching panic attacks after concussions. I was also missing words when listening to people talk, especially if there was background noise. As a result, I had a hard time concentrating and finding the right words when talking. No wonder it was so difficult to write! 

Finally, I found a great website for military personnel that detailed all the tests I should have had after being diagnosed with a concussion. It advised getting one's sight and hearing checked right away after a concussion. Why didn't the local hospital tell me that? I'm still rather irked that I wasted more than a year thinking I would never be able to lead a normal life again when all I really needed was to get my hearing checked.

I found a highly rated audiologist with a free two-hour evaluation and made an appointment. The audiologist sent me a video about the damage hearing loss does to a person's cognitive abilities. People with hearing problems have an increased risk of dementia due to lack of proper auditory stimulation, which leads to the degeneration of the auditory nerve. Hearing problems can also cause social isolation, depression, cognitive overload, memory problems, increased risk of falling and deteriorating  quality of life. I think I experienced everything on this list except depression.

I went into my appointment thinking that I had a noise sensitivity and would need ear filters. After going through multiple tests, I discovered that my problem was that I was hearing differently in each ear. In one ear, I had high frequency hearing loss and in the other ear I had low frequency hearing loss. This unusual condition is called asymmetric hearing loss. My poor brain had been trying to process different sounds from each ear and that's why I had cognitive overload and became overwhelmed in noisy crowded places. My uncorrected asymmetric hearing loss had caused my brain to abandon my previously existing auditory pathway and generate a new, inefficient auditory pathway, which overloaded easily.

So, I now have hearing aids in each ear. They will be gradually tuned so that my brain can catch up and reprogram itself. It will take six to eighteen months for my brain to be fully reprogrammed, but I am already hearing well enough to eat in noisy places without any problems. Some noises are still too loud, though. I can tune down the hearing aids a little bit, but sound reducing headphones work better.

I received my hearing aids May 15th and left for a two week trip to the UK on July 12th. On the whole, I did fine with loud noises--except when we visited what should be peaceful Kew Gardens, outside of London. I went there in 1976, found it quiet and fascinating, and was eager to show it to my family. Since then, Heathrow Airport added a new runway that has resulted in large, low-flying airplanes flying over the Gardens and nearby town of Kew, bringing almost constant disruptive noise along with them. Because I didn't bring my headphones with me that day, I didn't handle it very well. But without my hearing aids, it probably would have been a lot worse.

July 20, 2023 at Kew Gardens

Here is an interesting post about living under the flight-path of Heathrow Airport during the pandemic: https://hacan.org.uk/?p=78676

My Concussion: One Year Anniversary

Today is May 2, 2023, one year to the day after my concussion. In many ways, I feel like it was a lost year. For months, I easily became overwhelmed when driving and shopping, continued to be sensitive to light and noise, and experienced panic attacks. I felt disoriented and tired and had daily headaches and I never regained my sense of smell.

My daughter has a podcast called Live from Suckville in which she interviewed me about my concussion last June, which was still early in my recovery. If you want to listen to it, it is Episode 9 on this website: https://soundcloud.com/user-168118630 

It took me months before I finally went to the eye doctor for my annual checkup. There, I learned that my eyes were misaligned, which was probably caused by the concussion. Now I understood why I had such a hard time reading, shopping, driving, concentrating and mentally focusing on the book I've been working on for over two years (and still haven't finished). I was seeing in 2-D and it seemed like everything was coming at me all at once. When shopping, I had to run out of the store in a panic. When driving, my peripheral vision was all messed up and, overwhelmed, I had to pull over so my husband could drive. When I received my first pair of prism eye glasses, my headache intensity considerably lessened, my eyes felt much less tired, I could handle shopping and driving, and I could see in 3-D again. (Prism glasses reflect light in such a way that misaligned eyes are corrected). It was amazing how much easier life became.

 But my headaches continued to be almost constant. They felt like they were on the top of my head, where I fractured my skull, but I think they were tension headaches coming from somewhere else. So I went back to the concussion doctor, who I last saw 3 weeks after my concussion. She thought that perhaps I had suffered whiplash when I hit the ground and the headaches could be caused by that. I then went to a physical therapist who gave me neck exercises and acupuncture (he called it dry needling). After three weeks of treatment, my headaches are essentially gone, although I still have to practice the neck exercises every other day.

I also went to a speech and language therapist because I sometimes had trouble finding words when speaking. After two hours of tests, I was relieved to learn I don't have cognitive brain damage and my trouble with words probably was caused by cognitive fatigue. My brain was spinning all the time, causing it to be exhausted and depleted of energy, which significantly slowed down my recovery. At the same time, my brain was trying to function normally and heal by rerouting around damaged areas. Doing additional work like this takes a lot of energy and if I tried to "push through," I ended up totally exhausted and couldn't think or concentrate. 

To correct this problem, I made it a habit to periodically evaluate my energy level. If it was low, I needed to take a break--for me that meant performing diaphragmatic breathing and neck exercises--to restore my energy level and then back to what I was doing until I got tired again. I stopped multitasking, which was a quick way to exhaust myself while not doing a very good job with what I managed to get done. Which explains why I'm now on the third revision of a manuscript that is not even finished yet!!

So, I can see in 3-D now, I no longer have headaches, I can concentrate a lot better than before and I can go shopping with ease--as long as the music isn't too loud and the store isn't too crowded. Which brings me to one more problem I hadn't solved yet: noise sensitivity. 

In late February, my husband and I started traveling again, which meant going out to eat. That was when I noticed that noisy restaurants put me into a panic because I couldn't filter out background noises from regular noises or tell where they were coming from. Loud music, talking, silverware clattering on plates, bright lights and movement all jumbled together and overloaded my senses, making me very anxious. I had to run out of restaurants several times just to get to somewhere quiet. I had to ask restaurant staff to turn their music down or seat me in their quietest corner and at a side table with my back to the wall so that all the noise would come from one direction. Otherwise I couldn't handle it. 

Finally, I made another appointment with the speech and language therapist for suggestions about ways to overcome this. But she seemed at a loss. I'm especially worried because we are planning a family trip to the UK in mid-July. So what can I do to fix this? I have no clue.

Which brings me full circle: I still can't smell anything. It's hard to explain how losing this sense impacts my daily life. It's a sense we take for granted; until it's gone. So going out to eat, which is such an important part of socializing, especially when traveling, is now more of an ordeal than anything else. And the smell of roses or the rain or baking bread or brewing coffee has to be remembered rather than reinforced. Because I don't get the "whole picture" now, everyday life is harder to remember and always seems like something is missing. Cooking dinner has become cooking for others, not for me. 

At least I figured out that protein smoothies for breakfast with its cold temperature and smooth, velvety mouthfeel is rewarding. So I have one every morning. Lunch has become whatever I can grab to satisfy my hunger and dinner is what agrees with me. I've lost about five pounds because I don't eat fattening sweets anymore except for the occasional ice cream or gelato. As far as cake, pie and cookies . . . why eat all those empty calories if I can't taste them? I can taste dark chocolate, though, especially when I melt it in my mouth. 

What I have learned from this experience so far is that it could have been much worse. Also, I have a wonderful husband and family who support me, a beautiful peaceful place to live in and good friends. How could I ask for more??

Learning to Fly: My Concussion

 

“I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings. Coming down is the hardest thing.”

Tom Petty

 

Three months ago, my son Kyle and I were hiking on a steep slick-rock pour-off. We were trying to catch some little frogs and return them to the muddy pond on the bottom of the slick-rock. He was bending over to grab one of these little frogs below me and I was standing above him with my boots gripping the steep slope. Not thinking about my surroundings, I leaned forward to look at the frog and ending up falling.

Now, slick-rock is a misnomer as it is not slick at all. It's actually a gritty, rough sandstone that grips the bottom of one's shoes and is deceivingly easy to walk on. And a pour-off is where the rain concentrates after a storm to flow downhill on rock, also known as a seasonal waterfall. In wet years, the pool underneath this pour-off becomes filled with water, but this year it was just wet and quickly drying sand.

Kyle tried to grab my flailing arm, but he couldn’t catch me. Instinctively, I twisted around in mid-air, landed on my right butt cheek and hit the back of my head on the surprisingly hard ground. I probably fell about six feet.

My glasses flung off, but they weren’t broken or anything. Kyle called out to my husband Scott, who was waiting for us nearby. By the time Scott reached me, I was sitting on a rock with an aching head and feeling dizzy. I don't remember getting up from the ground and walking to the rock. Both Scott and Kyle agreed that I should go to the hospital and helped me walk back to the car. After stopping by the house to change, Scott drove me to the emergency room. 

A CT scan showed a crack in my skull on the top of my head, although I have no idea how I hit it there, and two small brain bleeds in the subarachnoid and subdural layers of tissue between my skull and my brain. (I'd never heard of these layers before and had to look them up later). The doctors diagnosed me with a concussion and kept me in the hospital overnight to make sure the bleeding had stopped. Although they woke me up every hour to make sure my pupils were equal, I knew where I was, I could focus on how many fingers they were holding up, and I was grateful to be there. 

 

 

I had another CT scan the next morning that showed the bleeding had in fact stopped so they let me go home. That’s when I discovered I had a very sore and swollen right butt cheek, which developed into a large salad bowl-sized hematoma (deep bruise) that is still swollen and bruised two months later, but is not sore anymore—thank goodness. The top of my head throbs and I still have a lump on the back of my head.

I hadn’t thought about concussions much before this happened to me, but now I’m fairly well versed. Basically, concussions happen when your brain slams against your skull and gets injured. Because my brain went forward when I hit the back of my head and then back, they call it a contre-coup brain injury. So far, I’ve had most of the symptoms of a moderate concussion: fatigue, dizziness, headaches, ocular migraines (the fun part of migraines—aura but no headache), light and noise sensitivity, over-stimulation which causes panic attacks and, worst of all, a loss of my sense of smell. That means I can’t taste anything except what the taste buds on my tongue detect: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami, the savory taste of cooked meat and vegetables.

Before I lost my sense of smell, I didn't understand the difference between taste and flavor. Think of when you last had a head cold and couldn't breath through your nose. You couldn't taste your food very well because you couldn't smell what you were eating. However, you could still pick out some flavors  because the chewed up food in your mouth also passes by your olfactory nerves a second time when you breathe in. The molecules coming from the outside of your body tell you what you are going to eat via your nasal cavity. The molecules coming from inside your mouth give you the ability to distinguish between flavors. Taste buds plus aroma from both your nose and mouth equals flavor.  

If you have damaged your olfactory nerves, you can't detect flavor and have to enjoy foods by how they feel in your mouth (mouthfeel), what your taste buds can detect, and how you feel after you eat. I hope I get my sense of smell back, but I have a feeling it has been damaged beyond repair.

Here is a good link if you want to learn more about the sense of smell: https://www.physio-pedia.com/Olfactory_Nerve

Or if you prefer just looking at a diagram, here is the photo that comes with the above article:

What you can't tell from the photo above is how thin the bony barrier (called the cribriform plate) is between the brain and the olfactory nerves in my nose that detect smell molecules. Olfactory nerves   terminate in the olfactory bulb, which transmits the detected smell molecules to the brain. Since the olfactory nerves dangle down from the top of the nasal cavity, they are easily damaged if a person suffers a traumatic brain injury (TBI) such as mine. When the brain slams against the nerves, it can shear them off or severely damage them. Although olfactory nerves have the ability to grow back, there is no telling if mine are too damaged to grow back. Meanwhile, I’m sniffing everything I can find: essential oils, spices, plants, the air after it rains, etc. and hoping the repeated scent onslaught will bring my sense of smell back. But so far no luck.

Hidden Enemies

When I first wrote this post, I identified with the main character in the recent Netflix movie Tick Tick BOOM. He'd been working on a musical for 8 years and in one week would be showing the musical for the first time. Only one problem--he had to write one more key song. He sat at the computer and started a sentence. Then he corrected the sentence, then he deleted the sentence, then he rewrote the beginning of the sentence. He sat there, watching the cursor tick and tick and tick . . . 

I published the book Hidden Enemies in 2020. This book received an Honorable Mention at the 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards so I know it must be a halfway decent read. In 2020, I also changed my book Remember Me from past tense to present tense. Remember Me received first place in the suspense category in the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book awards and Honorable Mention at the Hollywood Book Festival. So I know it also must be a half-way decent read.

But few people have read it and it's all my fault. I have done a terrible job of marketing my books and have made very few sales. 

So at least someone would read them,  I decided to donate my books to the library yesterday and talked to the person in charge. He said if they are self-published, he needs to take a look at any book reviews on Amazon as well as the books themselves. I left him one copy of each book, plus Red Flag Warning that I had to regain my rights from Infinity years ago when they went out of business and republish myself (long story). I never heard back.

Back then, I was inspired and I had a lot to say. Then the pandemic hit . . . and I have been languishing. I am working on another book, but it's going slowly. And now, for the first time, I understand writer's block.

Since these books are difficult to find by searching Amazon.com, here is my author link: https://www.amazon.com/stores/M-A-Florence/author/B00915SFSE?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

So, I have two interesting sci-fi light, suspense books for you to read!! And I hope you take me up on it. 

2024 Update: I just finished converting Remember Me into the screenplay Mem-G. So maybe my story will get traction in the movie industry. I'm also on the home stretch of my fourth sci-fi light, suspense book. Wish we me luck that I will get it done this year! The working title is The Time is Now.

Finding SIBO

Finding SIBO

 

What is SIBO you ask? Well, it took me a long time to find out. But now I know why my digestive system has been out of whack since I had my cancerous appendix removed in February 2017 and a subsequent right hemicolectomy 16 days later. (A right hemicolectomy is the term for an operation that removes the beginning of the large intestine: which consists of the cecum and the appendix, the small finger-like projection on the bottom of the cecum). A general picture of the digestive system shows the appendix hanging down from the cecum:

Not long after I recovered from my surgery, I began getting mild acid indigestion. I kept a food diary and discovered soy products were part of the problem. So I stopped drinking soy milk, and eating tofu and protein bars made with soy. That worked for a while; then the acid indigestion came back. So  I stopped taking fish oil pills, which can--surprisingly--cause acid indigestion in some people. That didn't help much, so I decided to start taking my vitamins after eating breakfast, instead of at night. No change. Then I gave up coffee. I gave up wine and beer. I gave up chocolate. I put myself on a high alkaline/low acid diet. Nothing helped. 

I got to the point where I was taking Tums before going to bed every night, waking up multiple times with acid indigestion, taking more Tums, and paying the price of all this indigestion and lack of sleep the next day.  I turned to the internet and found a help group consisting of people like me who had digestion problems after having a intestinal surgery, especially a right hemicolectomy. Bingo. All these people had tried a lot of different diets that were not always successful and most were still searching for a cure. I further discovered that when my surgeon removed my cecum and appendix, he also removed a one-way valve that separates the large and small intestines. It's called the ileocecal valve.

In a complete digestive system, food travels one way: from mouth to stomach to small intestine to large intestine and then out of the body. The direction of this process is controlled by peristalsis (the muscular contraction of the esophageal and intestinal walls), sphincters and valves. Basically, digestion consists of mechanical breakdown (chewing), and chemical and enzymatic breakdown (acids in the stomach; bile and enzymes in the small intestine). Most of the nutrients are absorbed into the bloodstream from the small intestine and only a small number of specific bacteria inhabit it. The digested food then travels through the one-way ileocecal valve to the cecum, which absorbs water, vitamins and electrolytes, then into the colon where a large number of bacteria break down waste products and produce vitamin K.

From studying the digestive process, I learned that missing an ileocecal valve is not a good thing. Without this valve, bacteria from my large intestine can back up into the small intestine, colonize there and wreak havoc. I finally found SIBO: Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth. 

I went to my primary doctor and he put me on antibiotics, which helped for a while. But the acid ingestion came back with a vengeance. I needed a permanent fix. So I tried different diets until I finally happened upon a miracle: a diet that switched me from absolute misery to symptom-free. It's called the specific carbohydrate diet (SCD) and is outlined in the book "Breaking the Vicious Cycle. Here is a link: http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/home/

This book was written for people with large intestine problems, but it works for me. On this diet, I'm starving the bacteria that traveled up from my large intestine by cutting out foods that contain easy-to-digest carbohydrates. For example, flours, sugars and refined grains. I also gave up bread and gluten. The very day I started this diet, my symptoms disappeared. Not only did I find SIBO, I discovered how to lose it! 

Self-publishing with CreateSpace (Now called KDP)

Notice: The name publishing name CreateSpace has been changed to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), but otherwise it's still a product of Amazon.com and works the same way. KDP is a self-publishing service that doesn't cost a cent, if you do everything yourself. I've published 3 novels using KDP already and they are available on Amazon.com. I also finished rewriting the novel Red Flag Warning and am in the process of publishing it, too, on KDP.

Why am I publishing this book again on KDP?

1.  In 2012, before I knew about inexpensive do-it-yourself publishing, I paid Infinity Publishing to be my publisher for this book. I'd  already gone through the traditional publishing model, where I searched for an agent and sent chapters to what few publishers took unsolicited manuscripts. After some time passed without results, I learned about "vanity presses" as they were called then. I talked to some fellow writers who had self-published and decided on Infinity Publishing. After paying for them to design the cover and put my book into print, they put it on Amazon.com for me in paperback and kindle versions. I only sold a few copies, which was OK.

2. After I wrote a few more books and published them on KDP I saw that Red Flag Warning had been marked way up in price. I contacted Infinity Publishing about it and they changed the price back to what it should have been. But when I searched the Infinity Publishing website, I found that it had been sold to another company. My feelers went up when the website also did not work very well. I contacted the agent again about buying author copies and learned there were a minimum number of copies I had to order and it was expensive. Not so with KDP. An author pays how much it costs to print each book, with no minimum  number of copies required, plus shipping. I then looked up Infinity Publishing in the Better Business Bureau and it got an "F". That did it for me. I asked them to free me from my contract, which they did.

3.  Now was my opportunity to have total control of Red Flag Warning! I reviewed the manuscript, which I saved, and saw many ways to improve my writing. KDP allows the flexibility to change a book at any time. One still has to go through all the steps again, which can be a pain, but at least the author has the opportunity to change his/her book without payment. In the finished project, my story is exactly the same, but I made it smoother and faster to read.

4.  I get 100% of the royalties for any books and kindle copies sold!
 

Drawbacks to using KDP

 
1.  If you want a decent cover, you need to hire a graphic designer to do it for you. For my book Remember Me, I did just that (my son's girlfriend, who is a graphic designer).

As you can see, she did an excellent job and it helped me win several awards--first place in the 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the suspense category and an honorable mention in fiction in the 2018 Hollywood Book Festival. Since many writers enter these contests, I finally feel validated that I'm a good writer.  For Red Flag Warning, I am using the front cover I paid for and had to make up the back cover myself (which is not nearly as polished as theirs--but that's how it goes).

2.  There are a lot of steps to go through and you need to check everything to make sure it is correct. Self-publishing also requires a thorough edit and knowing how to set up a book. Some people will pay for an editor, but I am very lucky to have my husband and a few friends point out my mistakes. Since I was originally trained as a botanist and am largely self-taught as a writer, I definitely need the help! As for setting up the book, the author needs to have fairly extensive word processing skills. I was forever looking things up at first, but now I think I have the hang of it.

3.  The author must market him/herself. I'm not much of a marketer so I'll probably never become famous or make a lot of money on my books. Oh well; all I want is to get my books out there and to be read by someone, instead of piles of paper in a drawer. If a person doesn't have an Amazon.com account, that can be a drawback as far as sales go, too. But there are ways around that. That's one reason I send out this blog!

Synopsis of "Remember Me"

Hello faithful readers,

I'm feverishly working on fixing up my approximately 90,000 word manuscript, Remember Me, and am now on Chapter 32 out of 36. Almost done!!

Here is the synopsis of the story. I'm hoping to get it published with the help of an agent I knew when I lived in Chantilly, VA. I hope you find it interesting.

Remember Me

Synopsis

San Francisco University neuroscientist ROBIN LUND is puzzled by her lab chimpanzee Chelsea’s behavior. The experimental memory and learning drug Mem-G, which is designed to restore short-term memory recall in dementia sufferers, appears to be enabling Chelsea to experience ancestral memories encoded in her DNA. 

To more fully understand this drug, Robin illegally begins taking it herself. What she learns is both stunning and dangerous: her mother is not who she thought she was and a man her mother once knew wants Robin dead. Her mother knew this man as ANDRE TREMBLAY but now he goes by the name of DR. MARC BORDEAUX. Dr. Bordeaux is now Senior Vice President of Zerbico Pharmaceutical Company, the corporation that formulated the drug Mem-G. 

As Robin embarks on a journey of self-discovery, Dr. Bordeaux will do everything he can to prevent her from uncovering his criminal past. NICK EVANS, an ex-cop, helps Robin stay one step ahead of Dr. Bordeaux while she explores Mem-G nightly and travels to her hometown, Denver, to find out what happened to her mother. Dr. Bordeaux’s relentless pursuit continues, leading to a final chase that ends up at a police station. There, both she and Nick turn over evidence linking Dr. Bordeaux to the crime that put Robin’s mother in prison, where she died shortly after Robin was born.

Chronic Pain

Chronic Pain

A few months after breaking my ankle, I noticed that whenever I touched my right leg and foot from about 2 inches above the incision down to my toes, I would get an electric shock/tingly/bump-my-funny-bone-type feeling. In other words, a tender ouch.

I asked the doctor and he said he had to move a nerve out of the way when he did my surgery. He said the nerve is usually on top of the shin, but my nerve traveled down the outside of my leg. I now have tingly feelings in my foot and ankle, the result of nerve damage. He said it should take a few months to subside. But they never did. In fact, they got worse.

So, on January 25^th I had the plate and screws removed from my ankle. I was not certain that the plate was the cause of the rubber band tightness around my ankle and the intense prickly sensitivity on the top of my foot and toes, but I was willing to take a chance. I had decided that I could not live with the wincing pain every time I put my sock or shoe on or took them off, the thorny, scratching sensation I had if anything brushed against my ankle, and the dull, throbbing pain in my ankle before a storm.

(By the way, I looked “bone ache before rain” up on the internet and found out that it is real.  Before a storm, the barometric pressure drops and decreased air pressure causes tissues in the body to expand, thereby putting pressure on a sensitive area, such as an arthritic joint or injured nerve, and causing pain.) 

After they wheeled me out of the surgical room, the doctor stood at the foot of the gurney and asked me how I was feeling.  Although still woozy from the anesthesia, I could already tell that the pain had diminished considerably.  And now, 10 weeks later, we had a rain storm yesterday and my “bone ache before rain” is also gone!

It turns out my nerve had been pinched between scar tissue and the plate.  It had also branched, which is considered unusual for that particular nerve.  This information led me to do some research on nerves. Basically, nerves are made up of cells with long fibers called axons that are bundled together inside insulating sheaths, like wires in cables. Since the nerve had been undergoing pressure for over a year, it could not transport nutrients and messages properly and was becoming more injured over time.  No wonder I wasn’t healing.

Which brings me to the subject of chronic pain.  I didn’t realize I was experiencing chronic pain in my ankle and foot until the cause of it was removed.  Maybe that's because I seem to have a high pain tolerance.  After all, I walked five miles out on my broken ankle (and probably injured it more in the process) because all I could think about was the expense of calling a helicopter to fly me out.  And, a few years ago, I walked up about 1,000 feet from the Colorado River to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon with two broken toes.  Not to mention childbirth.   

But those instances involve acute pain—pain experienced for a short duration and then—poof!  It’s over.  Thinking back, I can remember experiencing the pain and can describe it—sharp or throbbing or raw or a dull ache—but I can’t feel it again.

Chronic pain seems to be difficult to define.  Some doctors say chronic pain is any pain that lasts longer than 3 months at the onset.  Some say 6 months and some say over a year.  Perhaps the best definition is:  pain lasting longer than the expected time of healing. 

And what is pain, anyway?  And how can it be rated?  On a 1 to 10 scale with 1 being no pain and 10 being the strongest pain imaginable? For me, Ms Pain Tolerant, I’d give my pain before surgery about a 5 out of 10.  For someone else, it may have been a 8 or 9.

Nevertheless, subconsciously enduring that pain put a layer of tension beneath everything I did.  All the things I dislike—stinky smells, bright lights, loud or rumbling noises, annoying distractions—magnified and stressed me out so much that I felt on edge most of the time.  I gained weight, I didn’t sleep well, I snapped at my husband, I lost patience a lot more easily, I couldn’t concentrate, and I got the worst cold I've had in years.  In fact, I had to put the surgery off for 2 weeks because I wanted to get over my cold and build up my immune system first.  My quality of life had bottomed out and I didn’t even realize it until after the plate was removed!

Uproar in Utah's Dixie

I get the local paper on Fridays so that I will know the true movie times, which can be wrong online.  I know this by experience. 

The top two stories on the front page in last Friday’s paper were about the agony created in St. George by renaming Dixie State College (DSC) after it merges with the Utah University system. 

When moving here, I think I was one of the few new people who understood where the name “Dixie” came from.  In 2005, when we put our Fairfax, VA house up for sale to move to St. George, Utah, our realtor handed us a recent Washington Post article about Dixie State College.  “You have to read this,” she said in a shocked voice.   Here it is:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/04/AR2005100401349.html

In summary, this article describes the Confederate symbols on the DSC campus:  a statue with 2 Confederate soldiers, one holding a flag; the Rebel nickname with a Southern Colonel mascot; a recently eliminated Confederate flag as the college flag; slave auctions as fund raisers, etc. etc.  It was a play on the word “Dixie,” which originally referred to the warm climate in SW Utah, the soil color (instead of being southern red mud, it’s red sand here), and the fact that the original Mormon polygamous pioneers grew cotton.  Among these pioneers were a few southerners.

We moved to St. George right after DSC changed the Rebel mascot from a good-old-boy southern Colonel to a Hawk (a red-tailed hawk, to be exact).  With a new college president came another change.  The nickname, against popular vote, changed from “Rebel” to “Red Storm.” 

As one student put it, the nickname "Red Storm" reminds her of “that time of the month.”

The new mascot became a cross-eyed bull coming out of a tornado as the mascot.  The doe-eyed bull costume failed at its introductory game.  Here is a link that may give you a chuckle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnxe_eeqIis

So, seven years later, the town is once again divided.  The locals want to keep “Dixie” in the name; most of the people from outside the area want to eliminate “Dixie” from the name.  And the college is now spending tons of money on a consultant who is gathering data and opinions about the new name. 

It’s true that this area also has a Dixie National Forest and many businesses named a “Dixie” this or a “Dixie” that.  But I don’t think any of them ever raised a Confederate flag or held slave auctions.  Nevertheless, remaining on campus to this day, is the Confederate soldiers holding a Confederate flag statue, which shows that the college still hasn’t completely rid itself of negative Confederate symbolism.  I’m surprised how many people don’t understand that. 

It will be interesting to see what happens. 

Horoscopes are a bunch of hooey

I don't know about you, but I always read my horoscope to see how my day is rated.  I then compare it to how I think my day will go or how my day went.  It usually coincides with my mood, but I know it's all a bunch of hooey.

That point was brought home to me on Black Friday.  My Salt Lake Tribune horoscope read:  "As you set out to do some Christmas shopping, allow your creativity to emerge. You could be overwhelmed by everything you have to do. Nothing can ease the pressure like diving right in, but remember to maintain your budget. Tonight: Be naughty and nice."  4 stars.

But I didn't participate in Black Friday.  I had a Green Friday.  My hubby and I went south out of town to Blackrock Mountain on the Arizona Strip.  We hiked on the northern part of the Parashant National Monument and came upon a gigantic bull skeleton.  We reasoned that he probably had a good, long life and died under a huge ponderosa pine.  No feed lot for him. 

The only people we saw the entire day (including the drive out and back) were 5 seniors from Mesquite, Nevada who were out exploring the back country on their golf-cart ATVs. We were greeted with:  "I'm not lost, but I don't know where I am."  So my husband explained the roads to them while I chatted with a husband and wife encased in a plastic breathing mask--did I tell you that the Arizona Strip is almost all dirt roads?  It was all rather strange.  But I digress.

On my birthday, I got the worst "day you were born" horoscope ever. This is also from the Salt Lake Tribune.  "This year you often become angry and frustrated if you feel that others are not being as sensitive as you would like them to be. Recognize that you are more dynamic than in past years. People could be taken aback by this new strength and energy."

What kind of horoscope is that??  Should I just undergo a lobotomy and get it over with??  Start psychotherapy?  Take valium?  Where is the helpful advice in that? 

But I like my sign:  Sagitarius.  And my purpose:  make a difference in the world.  It also fits in nicely with my personality, which is INFP or INFJ depending upon the day.  (This is from the Myers-Briggs Personality Profile.  If you want to learn your own personality profile, here is a great website:  http://www.mypersonality.info/ ).  Again, I digress.

Way back in the Dark Ages I had my personal Star Chart done by a Czechoslovakian gypsy I met at a youth hostel while traveling in Greece.  After days of analysis and discussion about what type of person I was and what I would become, he finally realized that he did not figure the hour of my birth properly.  It was an hour or two off, which made everything different.  He was too frustrated to go back and re-do it but I still have a copy of what  I could have been if only I was born at the correct time.

Looking at it rationally, why should a daily horoscope fit one out of every 12 people on the earth on that particular day?  Or the birth date horoscope fit one out of every 365 1/4 people (I'm looking at Leap Year when I say that)?  Isn't the lining up and pull of the planets different on various places around the world?  

And why should that particular arrangement of faraway planets determine my life's journey?  Don't the effect of barometer highs and lows surrounding us every day have any say in the matter?  Now I'm really digressing.

In spite of all my ranting, I just checked my horoscope.  It has nothing to do with what I am going to do today, but it least my day is rated 4 stars!

How I Beat Sleep Apnea

It's been about a year since I stopped using the CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) machine.  In fact, I don't know whether I really needed it to begin with.  My story:

Over the past few years, I had found it increasingly difficult to swallow pills and sometimes felt like my throat was closed up, making it difficult to breathe.  My husband told me that I was snoring a lot, especially when sleeping on my back.  At the same time, one of my brothers had been diagnosed with sleep apnea and was put on a CPAP machine.  My family has long suspected that our father, who loudly snored and snorted his way through the night, also had sleep apnea.  But what drove me to the doctor was waking up with my heart pounding and gasping for breath.

My doctor found that my blood pressure was sky-high.  I had never had high blood pressure before--but I was fairly freaked out about the panic attacks I had been experiencing.  Finding nothing else obviously wrong, she referred me to a sleep doctor.

The sleep doctor put me through 2 sleep studies: the first one without and the second one with a breathing mask.  In both studies I was hooked up to wires that measured leg movement, sleep position (back, side, stomach), eye movement, brain waves, breathing and a microphone for recording snoring.  I got copies of both studies, which I compared.

Without the breathing mask, I had several episodes where I stopped breathing for 10 seconds or longer.  Most of these happened when I was sleeping on my back and were labelled as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).  That type of sleep apnea is from blocked airflow and is common in obese people.  It also becomes more common as people age.  My results indicated that I had mild sleep apnea.  However, my sleep quality was good because I went through all five stages of sleep, including the dreaming REM sleep.

With the breathing mask, I did not have any OSA but I did have central sleep apnea (CNA), "which results from a problem with how the brain signals the breathing muscles. This type of apnea can occur with conditions such as heart failure, brain tumors, brain infections, and stroke" (Web MD).  That's scary stuff!  My sleep quality was also poor and I did not attain REM sleep.  Nevertheless, the doctor prescribed me a CPAP machine.  He also gave me speech pathology exercises, which I performed daily.  They didn't seem to make a difference, however.

So, I used the CPAP machine for at least 4 hours a night over 90 consecutive days, as required by the insurance company.  However, that machine never agreed with me.  First of all, I looked like a monster!  Talk about a self-esteem killer.  And almost every morning I woke up with a bloated feeling and burped all day.  I tried a face mask but it was too tight and uncomfortable.  I then tried a nasal mask and slept better, but still felt bloated the next day.

The doctor had started me off with a pressure setting of 7 (the machines go from 4 to 20).  I told my neighbor, who uses a CPAP machine, about my bloating problem and he said the air might be blowing into my stomach.  So I called the doctor and he lowered it to 6.  Same bloating problem.  Then he lowered it to 5.  By then I also had an upset stomach all day combined with burping. The doctor prescribed Nexium, but I didn't want to take drugs to combat the side effects of a machine that I was really starting to hate.  Instead, I tried eliminating coffee, then wine, then anything acidic I could think of--to no avail.  That CPAP machine was ruining my quality of life!  So into the box it went.

I turned to the internet and found the website http://www.ihatecpap.com/  After reading through that, I decided to try using Sleep Right strips (since I have a deviated septum), and sleeping on my side only.  (I absolutely love sleeping on my back, so that was difficult to give up).  Both of these changes decreased my snoring and enhanced my sleep quality, but I still couldn't swallow big pills very well and had trouble breathing sometimes, even during the day.

At my next dentist appointment, I told her my story.  First she suggested using dental appliances and then she looked in my throat.  She told me my soft tissues were sagging in the back of my throat!  She gave a mirror.  I looked at my almost closed throat and then at her completely open throat.  No wonder I couldn't swallow pills.

She recommended that I should see an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist about surgery to remove the excess tissue.  Although I did get as far as making an ENT appointment, I did not want surgery.  Then--what do you know--I broke my right ankle and had to cancel my appointment.

Stuck at home with an elevated foot and the laptop on my lap, I began to explore other options, such as learning the didgeridoo.  Several explanatory youtube videos later, I knew that I did not really like the sound of the didgeridoo, did not have the desire to learn how to play it, and would never be able to master the circular breathing required to play one.  So then I turned to exercises.  I knew that the speech therapy exercises hadn't worked for me--but would there be other exercises that targeted the throat?

I read that singers rarely had sleep apnea because singing kept their throat tissues tight and then happened on a website that advertised a 3 CD set of singing exercises "specifically designed to reduce snoring caused by lax muscles in the upper throat." Just what I needed!  The website is:  

http://www.singingforsnorers.com/  

I ordered the set but wasn't ready until April to get started on it.  Once started, I sang the  exercises daily for one month before going on to the next CD.

These exercises have made a big difference in my life.  My throat tissues have lifted--I can even see the top of my throat again when looking in the mirror.  I can swallow pills again, too and I sleep a lot better (still on my side, unfortunately).

I finished the daily singing of the third CD in July.  I had emailed Alise in June, told her my progress, and asked her how I should maintain my throat muscles after finishing her program.  She said that I would need to continue to sing the exercises a 2-3 days a week for the rest of my life.  That's OK with me, but my poor husband!  I try to sing when he's out of the house.

The Animal Parade is published!!

Hi Readers,

I just discovered a free publishing and distribution service that is part of Amazon.com that was called CreateSpace when I wrote this post and now called KDP.  I used the process to published my first ever children's book!  It took me days and days to get it set up but I am very pleased with the result. Here is the book and its description:

The Animal Parade 

An illustrated animal alphabet book. 

Poem and pictures by M A Florence, poem with Lynnette Smith. 

8.5" x 8.5" (21.59 x 21.59 cm), Full Color on White paper, 30 pages

Juvenile Fiction / Animals / General

"Follow the animals as they dance to a Samba beat and form a parade on a city street."

 

The Animal Parade can be found at:

 https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Parade-M-Florence/dp/1479170488?ref_=ast_author_dp

I can also buy it in bulk directly from KDP at a reduced price and try to sell it on my own. 

 

My co-author Lynnette sent me the following comments from The Animal Parade readers:

 

Andre (1 1/2 years) loves the colors.
Brendon (5 years) loves the rhymes.
Anton (7) liked it more when he heard it read to him but had trouble reading it himself.
Byron giggled but lost interest in the middle of the book (letter M).
Elena (Croatian, aged 53) was tickled pink.
Octavio's father told him the three things he must do in his life:
1) write a book;
2) build a house;
3) get married. 
Jerome thought I was teasing when he saw the warthog.  "No way, there's no such thing."
Coletta (a nurse from Kenya) had never heard of a mongoose or a jackal.
Kylie calls it "My animal book" but only asks for it when Grandma is there.
Raymond think the snake is "cool.'
Jon thinks I made up the aardvark.  He says, 'No way, Nett.' "

Cooling down the garage

Hi all,

When we built our house, we kept costs low by putting cheap carpeting in the living room and bedrooms, doing our own landscaping, and not insulating the garage.   That was the only way we could afford to build our own home because we couldn't sell our old house, had to rent it out, had to get an home equity loan to avoid a jumbo loan, etc. etc.

However, we did put some energy saving features in the house when building it:  a radiant roof barrier that reflects heat, passive solar windows, and a geothermal heat pump (a 200 foot loop of pipe in the ground that uses the earth to heat and cool).  We love these features and have found that our energy bill is half of the local, smaller, Energy Star house that we finally sold!  And we're still waiting for the next electric bill that will show us how much energy we have saved by putting in the solar panels.

Since we moved in, my attention has been on improving the house, including cooling down the garage.  Since our mojave desert climate consists of regular temperatures over 100 degrees from late June through August, the garage doors face southeast, and the outside wall faces southwest, our garage cooked during these months.  If it was 100 degrees outside, it could also be 100 degrees inside.  It also doesn't help that all the approved home and garage colors in our HOA are dark ones!

For my first attempt at reducing the garage temperature, I had solar screens installed on the 3 square foot diameter windows.  I don't know if they did much good although solar screens are supposed to reduce 75% of the heat (or thereabouts) while still letting in light.

Second, I contracted an insulation company to blow in insulation into the outside walls.  That procedure resulted in about a 5-8 degree heat reduction compared to the outside temperature. One drawback--the garage doesn't cool down as much at night.  One other plus--the garage temperature is very comfortable in the winter.

Third, we planted some trees that will eventually shade the outside wall.  "Eventually" is the key word here, which can be translated into "the trees are still small."  

My last trick, just completed about a month ago, involved painting the garage doors with Hy-Tech insulating ceramic paint.  I found this paint on the internet when I was actually searching for sound insulating paint because--although I love our geothermal heat pump--it is mounted on the garage side of the second bedroom wall and pump noise travels through the wall.  More on that some other time.

Anyway, I bought a bag of Hy-Tech ceramic microspheres to stir into a gallon of flat outdoor paint for only $15--much cheaper than the blown in insulation, I must say.  From the brochure:  "Hy-Tech insulating ceramics are a result of the NASA technology developed to combat the extremely high temperatures that the Space Shuttle experiences during re-entry . . . ."  It is "a ceramic insulating additive, that when mixed with the paint creates a barrier to heat."  


The ceramic microspheres look like talcum powder but are in fact little hollow ceramic balls.  The additive should be stirred into paint that has been poured into a larger container because it expands a bit.  Also, the additive makes the paint thicker so I added about a cup of water to it.  I painted on 2 coats with a roller, which resulted in a suede-like surface.  So far it's holding up well.  The best part of all is that it reduced our garage temperature about 3-5 more degrees.  I tested the heat barrier theory by touching the garage door when the sun was shining on it--and it was extremely hot.  This stuff really works!!

Self-publishing--I'm finally doing it!

Hi all, I decided it's time to publish my third and best manuscript, Red Flag Warning.  Since my writing group, The Writers of Chantilly, has used Infinity Publishing to publish their anthologies and I am happy with their work, I downloaded their "how to" book last week and made an appointment to talk to a representative.  He called today and I gave him my credit number.  So here I go!

Below is a brief blurb, synopsis, biography (of me) and possible front page photo:

Title of Book:  Red Flag Warning

Author Name:  M. A. Florence

Blurb: 

An arsonist at large.  A coworker murdered.  A forest fire out of control.  What began as Sophia’s first field job in years quickly became an inferno of trickery and intrigue.

Synopsis:

Sophia Davis had trepidations about her new field job in a tinder-dry forest.  Add eccentric co-workers, wildfire, arson and murder to the mix, and her misgivings turn to alarm.  Increasing suspicion and distrust from her colleagues and the local community push Sophia to search for the real culprit.  As she uncovers secrets and traces clues, a strong storm system pushes through and a red flag warning, unknown until too late, puts Sophia’s life on the line.

Set in the precarious mountains and wide-open valleys of eastern Oregon, Red Flag Warning showcases the realities of wildfires in our western forests today.

Author Biography:

M. A. Florence has an MA in Biological Science and currently teaches classes for the University of Phoenix.  She has worked as a botanist on field crews for the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service in Wyoming, Nevada, California and Oregon, as well as botanical contract work in New Mexico.  Her previous publishing credits include short stories and poems in numerous anthologies and literary journals.  She now lives in southwestern Utah with her husband and two cats.

Book Excerpt:

With growing apprehension, I stared at the wispy, caramel-brown smoke column surging up from deep within the Dragon Mountains.  I hoped it was not another arson, like the one we had in these same mountains a few weeks back.  Fire investigators had traced that fire’s origins to a campfire deliberately set at the edge of a forest thicket.  Upslope winds, or perhaps the arsonist’s own breath, had fanned the flames into the bone-dry forest, burning over two hundred acres of pine, a few squirrels and at least one fawn before it was brought under control.

Today the smoke appeared to be coming from the Rock Creek area, where we worked last week.   The forest there was also dry and thick as dog-hair, and the narrow meadow straddling the creek had already turned to straw.  Rock Creek itself barely trickled.  It wouldn’t produce enough water to put out a campfire, much less a forest fire.

This summer comprised eastern Oregon’s seventh year of drought.  Our normally lengthy growing season had consisted of a dozen weeks in early spring and now, in early July, the parched meadows and heavily littered forests had become tinder-dry, primed for a spark. Under conditions like these, a stiff breeze could turn even a tiny blaze into a raging inferno.

I called out to our crew leader, “Hey Debra, it looks like there’s a fire over by Rock Creek.”

“That’s nice,” she said, hunkered over her foot square study plot.  Without pausing, she plucked out a grass-like plant from the cracked earth and examined it.  I watched her identify the plant, write down its abbreviation on the data sheet she had secured by a clasp on her clipboard, and then calmly reach for another plant.

Irritated with her dismissive attitude, I thought again about how much I didn’t want to deal with Debra on top of all the problems arson and a possible early fire season would entail, and added to it my new burden:  Jackie. Jackie had been hired to replace our crew’s soil scientist, Tom.  Today was Jackie’s first day and she already seemed to be rubbing everyone the wrong way. 

I glanced at the smoke column again, noting how much it had thickened and darkened. The fire was growing.  I sniffed.  Yes, wood smoke was definitely beginning to overpower the usual fresh pine-scented breeze.

I called out again, louder this time.  “Debra, I don’t think we should wait on this fire.  If you’re not going to call it in, I will.”

She expelled a long, exaggerated sigh and then squinted up at me.  Her stiff, wide-brimmed straw hat hid her slanted, dark brown, East Asian eyes and most of her short, thick black hair.  But it didn’t hide her frown.

“All right, Sophia,” she said, speaking with a slight lisp on the letter ‘s.’  She could never pronounce my name quite right.  ‘Sophia Davis’ came out ‘Thopia Davith.’  

“I get the message,” she continued.  “I’ll make sure it gets called it in as soon as I finish this section.  It’s almost time for lunch, anyway.”

“Good,” I said, happy to have at least that settled.  Bending down to count plants again, I tried to push out the fretting that had been casting a shadow upon my thoughts all day.  I was working on a soil-vegetation inventory crew miles away from my two teenage children and a husband who loved to fight fires.  What if he was called away to fight this one?  How would I manage everything then?

As the familiar feeling of dread crept over me, I told myself to stop it right there.  This was just a solitary smoke column, for gosh sakes.  And it might be a natural fire, not arson. 

I visualized a single lightning strike on the talus slope above the creek, a fire that wouldn’t go anywhere, and I consoled myself with such platitudes as ‘you’re making good money, you can finally be a botanist again, you should be grateful you even have a job.’ Then I forced myself to focus on the reason I was out here to begin with.

On hands and knees now, I baked under the unrelenting sun and swatted at biting insects while classifying, counting and tabulating the meadow vegetation before me.  But my task couldn’t keep that growing fire far from my thoughts.  When was Debra going to call it in?

Finally, Debra stood up, dropped her equipment into a tidy little pile, and stomped over to me across the brown grass. I sat back on my feet and looked up at her.

With a scowl on her face, she snapped, “Okay, I’m done.  As soon as you reach a stopping point, get Tom and Jackie and meet the rest of us at the road for lunch.  I’ll tell Luna about the fire on the way up.”

Relieved, I nodded my acknowledgement and took a brief break to watch slender, long-waisted Debra stomp off through vegetation so dry that it crackled with each step.

I soon completed my last entry and laid down my clipboard and pencil.  Standing up, I stretched the kinks out of my back.  It’s no fun getting old!

Possible front cover photo:

Image from the website article:  http://dels-old.nas.edu/climatechange/mountains.shtml

Title:  A wildfire sweeps through Bitterroot National Forest in Montana.

Image courtesy of John McColgan, USDA Forest Service.