It's Only A Paper Rose

Everyone knows the flu is awful. But what I always forget about it is that it's not the initial infection that's the worst thing about it. The fever and body aches are a pain, true, as are the respiratory symptoms, but mostly it's the weeks-long recovery process from the beating your body takes. It's been nearly three weeks and I'm still not up to speed, and I have a stronger-than-average immune system. I know it's not reflective of any great moral failings, but given how capable I'm used to being, it's frustrating to be so limited. (On the other hand, it's been a good time to ruminate on the lived experience of these people I know who deal with chronic illnesses, especially less-visible ones. My hat is off to them.)

I still managed a 90 and a 93 on my finals last week, which isn't half bad considering how my focus was absolutely shot. And I'm grateful that I don't seem to have infected anybody; at least, nobody at school's come down with it, and I haven't been anywhere else. So I'm crossing my fingers that this branch of the infection chain ended with me. (Take that, Random Dude On The Plane Who Kept Coughing On Brian.)

I just found out that Andrea Gibson is performing tonight in Pilsen. I'm really torn on this; she wrote one of my all-time favorite poems, and I've wanted to see her live for a couple of years now. But I just don't think two hours on transit plus time spent waiting in line is the best plan, especially with a full class load tomorrow and Thursday. So another quiet night in it is. Sigh.

On the upside: there's a pair of incredibly impractical and sexy boots on its way to me. Now to keep an eye out for a short skirt and a looooooong jacket.

(Boots! :D)

Flu recovery continues; slower than I'd like, but it's progress. Amusingly enough, my annoyance at the time recovery is taking has decreased dramatically today, as the weather went from sunny and warm to "35 and snowstorming". I think this anonymous person pretty well captured the citywide reaction. I'm slightly annoyed about missing class, but it's nothing I can't make up, and I have all of tomorrow, too.

On the upside, being confined to bed/couch has done wonders for both my social media interaction and my study time. Since the former's probably of little interest to anyone but me, here are some cool things I've learned from my Pathology reading over the past couple of days:

• Growth hormone, in addition to its eponymous function in children and adolescents, is largely responsible for tissue repair/replacement in adults - in short, healing.  It is also secreted almost entirely during stage IV sleep, the deepest level.  This fits with my own lifelong observation that most of the feeling-better recovery from illness takes place during long naps or overnight; it also explains why the people I've known with sleep apnea or other sleep difficulties tend to seem operate under a consistent sort of run-down malaise.  (And it explains many of the statistics where lack of sleep/sleep disorders increase susceptibility to any number of problems, from colds to heart failure.)
• For all that the vast majority of fad diet advice is absolute bunk, it's completely true that the typical American diet is damn near toxic.  The number of digestive and metabolic disorders that can be reduced in risk (if not outright prevented) by limiting intake of preserved/processed foods and refined sugar/flour is staggering.  Unfortunately, despite it having been repeated by the USDA with slight variations for decades, the dietary advice of "eat whole grains, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and some lean meat; keep consumption of processed foods and refined sugars to a minimum" has so far failed to catch on.  Maybe someone needs to take out flashy ads?  "Prevent cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes with this 1 weird trick!"
• Be kind to your liver.  Seriously.  You likely have no idea how much it does for you, every day.  They call it a "live-r" for a reason.
• Unlike the common cold (which is no longer contagious after three days of showing symptoms), influenza remains contagious all through (and, to a lesser degree, for a little while after) the recovery period.  Hence, I am refusing to feel guilty for staying home sick ever again.
• My mother always thought 90s-era Barbie was antifeminist because her feet were molded to wear high heels.  Clearly she was simply suffering from a severe, untreated case of pes cavus.  New from Mattel:  Treat jammed arches and prevent bunions with Orthopedic Barbie!  (Unfortunately, her footwear is roughly five times the cost of her designer heels, because something something capitalism something big government something healthcare.  At least until she's 65 and qualifies for Medicare.)

Forty more pages to go, and then I'm done...until it's time to study for the final.  Almost there!

Also, current average grade is 97.8%.  Just throwing that out there, says the former-barely-B-average student.

Feel-good moment of the day:  pictures from India's first lesbian wedding. What a beautiful commingling of traditions.  They look so happy.

And finally, here's Homework Enforcement Cat, helpfully covering up the answers so I can quiz myself (and pet him).

Hello, world! I'm not dead! I've just been...kind of insanely busy. As mentioned earlier, school is ramping up in intensity, and while I don't feel overwhelmed, exactly, there have definitely been some things falling off the edges of the plate. Thus, this post - part assessment, part update, so I can get a big-picture feel for how I'm doing and my friends have some idea of what to expect for the next six months or so.


( Stuff that's going well! )


( Stuff that's going less well. )

On the whole, I think I'm doing pretty okay. I could probably stand to de-stress a bit more; maybe a few more hot baths are in order. But for the next six months, I think I can deal. After I get my license, hopefully things will calm down a bit, especially if I'm working part-time. We'll see.

It's been a good couple of weeks.

Last week I was at my mother's for Thanksgiving. We had a holiday dinner, and decorated her house, and I got to see the Eugene Ballet's touring version of The Nutcracker twice. (Short version of long story: my mother was going to take Brian and me and my friend Carl and his girlfriend Leilani, who in true Alaska small-population fashion my mother once worked with and quite liked, out to the ballet; they ended up breaking up a couple weeks beforehand, so I changed her ticket and and bought an extra one for myself so we could go the day before. It turns out she's pretty awesome, and she's a massage therapist too, so hurray for new friends/future colleagues.) Then we took the overnight flight back Saturday night, slept most of Sunday, and Monday it was off to my first day of class.

One week in, I'm pretty impressed with the New School for Massage. My entire class is a grand total of four people (winter classes are usually slow), but I don't feel that anyone's stinting on the quality of attention. Quite the reverse; I rather like that all of the staff and most of the other students knew us by name after the first day. Dominika, the school director I met before, continues to be incredibly warm and sweet whenever we run into each other; the first day I was running a few minutes late and didn't know where to go and wandered into her classroom by mistake, and she took me to the orientation group personally. (Not that it's a large space, exactly, but it was a nice touch.) And I got an email from her today asking how my first week of classes went, and could genuinely tell her that I feel like I fit in well here. I hope it continues.

For once, I'm not among the more well-traveled of my class. One of my classmates is from Germany and spent the past four years in Tel Aviv, and another is from Guatemala and lived in California before moving here when she was younger. Somewhat amusingly, the three of us are all women in our thirties; our fourth is a twenty-three-year-old dude who currently works as a personal trainer. Fortunately he's pretty easygoing and doesn't seem to mind kicking back and letting us all go on about our experiences; as he put it the second day, "I like listening to stories."

On a more ambivalent note, there's a certain amount of (often jokingly acknowledged) woo-woo stuff in the curriculum. I've been trying to keep an open mind about it, but have been surprised at how strongly judgmental my reactions have been, despite the fact that I have almost no direct experience with it and no knowledge of whether there have been any scientific studies on the subjects. (I am, unsurprisingly, relieved that the bulk of the lessons seem to be largely anatomy- and science-based.) It's not that I have anything against chakras or reflexology or aromatherapy or any of that; I know they've helped lots of people, and it makes sense that it would be part of the material, given that they're commonly used in the field and a lot of clients probably expect you to have a working knowledge of the theory. And believe me, I understand how strongly intuition factors into any healing profession, and whether that intuition takes the form of "your chi is misaligned" or "your muscles are knotted up" probably doesn't make a whole lot of difference on the level where I'm likely to be practicing. (Aaaaand I probably just vividly demonstrated exactly how little I know about either form of medicine. Heh.)

Upon reflection, I think a lot of it's about my personal hangup with pride and how others perceive me; there may (or may not) be lots of evidence supporting the efficacy of alternative models, but science-based healing is, ultimately, more prestigious and respected than alternative modalities in our culture. And I have a real trigger around not being taken seriously; so anything that feels too hippy-dippy crunchy-granola gets a negative modifier attached to it. Which is not precisely flattering; I'd prefer to react to ideas based on their own merits and not whether or not people are going to like me if I espouse them. Clearly I need to ruminate on this issue some more.

Still, it's not hopeless. Rather than using the term "alternative medicine", with the implication of it being a replacement for traditional doctors, the textbook suggests referring to acupressure and massage therapy and chiropracty and whatnot as "complementary medicine". I like that a lot better; it implies that these can be useful tools but aren't meant as a replacement for Western-style treatment. It's nice to think that both modes of thought can peacefully coexist, even if nearly a decade of Apple vs. Android (or Playstation vs. Xbox, or VHS vs. Betamax) tribalism seems to imply differently.

...Now that I think on it, I have almost no personal experience with 'alternative medicine' outside of massage and some very limited acupressure. So, help me ruminate! Have you tried (or learned to administer) any complementary medicine? What was your experience? Did it seem to help? I'm curious!