That sure is a bright red colour. On a steamed lobster, that colour is ok, but when that colour is the colour of a person’s body…not so much.

That’s pretty much how I looked this afternoon, after having an allergic reaction (we think) to ginger. David made a ginger soaked ahi tuna for lunch, crusted with sesame seeds and various other marinades, but he used a LOT of ginger.

Usually, I do not have a reaction to ginger at all - I love the stuff an can eat a whole plate of it when we go to sushi - however, this was raw ginger not the pickled variety you get at a sushi restaurant.

Anyway - not 30 minutes later, I’m on the phone with a coworker and I feel my face start to flush, I get light-headed, and my head starts throbbing. Within 5 minutes, almost my entire body was red, my face was swelling up, my heart was racing, and I was started to get chills.

I wrapped up in a blanket, after taking a benadryl and two ibuprofin, and laid down on the couch shivering. According to our faulty thermometer I did not have a fever, but I was shaking as if I was.

For probably 2 hours my body continued to be bright red and puffy from all the blood at the surface, and my heart continued to race. And then it passed. I started to regain my normal skin colour, the pounding headache went away (since my heart rate was slowing down), and in general I felt much better.

But I have to say it was rather freaky having your entire body bright red and warm, while shivering underneath a cover.

Be mindful of what you eat :-).

Happy New Year and stuff.

I’m still sick.

Oh - and for those of you who prefer email subscription - you can now subscribe to this blog via the email form on the right sidebar. Enjoy!

Here we are, 30 December, only a day and two hours from 2008.

And I am sick.

Since the age of 12 (I think), I have enjoyed an annual lung infection.

Enjoyed is too strong a word - endured perhaps.

Oh the fits of cough in the middle of the night…oh the restless sleep.

And the phlegm. Greenish-yellow phlegm. Thick, disgusting, vile, putrid, and malevolent.

Anyway, Happy almost New Year!!!

My head hurts.

Someone in site services decided I no longer needed the filter in the light over my desk and so they removed it.

Why oh why do people not look at the reason it was there in the first place before removing it?

My eyes are killing me!

If you don’t know what a migraine is like, you can read about it here.

Old news, but…when shopping for a gift for your rebellious teenager this year, you might want to avoid buying him a gun. Also note that if you are in possession of a gun, and you stick that gun into your pants, please be aware of the position of the safety.

3:03 p.m. PT Nov 15, 2006

WICHITA, Kan. - A botched kidnapping ended with one of the assailants shooting himself in the groin, Wichita police said.

This day has been rough so far, and I’m hoping that it improves quickly.

Starting in the wee hours of the night, I dealt with feline frustration at having no food in their bowl. This was because Siobhan was scheduled for her dental cleaning this morning and was not allowed to eat any food after 8pm the prior night.

Well if Siobhan can’t eat, the boys can’t either, because I really don’t have a good way to separate them at the food area. So back and forth they wandered across my belly, trying desperately to get me to wake up and give them food at 2am. Then Siobhan started pulling at a plastic bag with her nails, creating that annoying crinkly plastic sound that is oh so enjoyable at 3:13am.

David finally crawled in bed around 4am, because he made the mistake of drinking a huge cup of iced coffee around 10pm and couldn’t get to sleep.

As we approached 6am, Lasher decided it was time to get more aggressive, so he walked back and forth up to my face and swatting his tail into my nose. I pushed him away over and over again, but realistically I was not going to get much sleep.

I woke up around 7:30am, showered, and got the carrier ready to take Siobhan out to a vet in North Highlands, which was recommended by Banfield, because their have a cardiologist on staff. Due to her heart issues, I needed to find a place that could use the appropriate anesthesia that would be easy on the heart. Originally, I had gone to UC Davis, but had a very negative experience there and decided not to go back.

So…we’re in the car heading north when Sio starts making the sounds she makes when she’s got to use the bathroom. I had prepared for this eventuality - she did this the last time she rode in the car, so I pulled over to the side, wiped up the carrier, and replaced the little towel with a fresh one.

Unfortunately, when I got back into the car, I discovered that none of the buttons on the driver door were functioning. I could not raise or lower the windows (the two back windows were down about 3 inches), could adjust either mirror, and could not lock or unlock the doors. Even as I pulled back onto the street, my driver door did not auto-lock like the others did. I even tried to use the window button on the door behind me, but the window would not move. A complete electrical failure of the door systems. This car is cursed.

Great. Just yesterday I had noticed that the outdoor temperature display in the car had gone on the fritz. It either displayed —, or -40F. Obviously, in the Sacramento summer it’s not -40F. Something was wrong, but I could have dealt with a faulty temperature gauge, not with a much larger electrical problem. I tried to run the a/c, but apparently it felt that if the temperature outside was -40F, regardless of whether I had the a/c button on, it needed to put out hot hair. Lovely.

Off we went to the vet and I dropped Sio off for her dental, which she desperately needed ($650 that I wouldn’t have had to pay if Banfield had a cardiologist), and made my way down to the Volvo dealer, having called them ahead of time to tell them I was on the way.

Thankfully, the dealer found a loaner vehicle for me, and I was able to get back home and back to work.

So a cat’s at the shop and my car’s at the shop. Let’s hope that both come back better than new :-).

Update as of 2:08pm: The doctor found some type of crack in Siobhan’s lower jaw, while she was under anesthesia, and he will be putting a wire around two teeth to pull them closer together to help fuse the crack. He has no idea what caused it or where it might have come from, but said it should be ok within 4-6 weeks.

I was laying in bed the other day, with a throbbing headache. As I tried to nap against four pillows and bundle myself in the sheets and blankets, I could hear my heartbeat echoing in my ear, and could feel the blood rhythmically pounding in my temples.

As I tried to force myself to sleep, I started taking long deep breaths. I discovered that as I started to inhale, my heartbeat slowed down and the pounding in my temples went from very rapid to calm and slow. As soon as I began to exhale, however, the calm and slow quickly reverted to rapid pounding. I tried this several more times and realized that it was happening consistently. Inhale slow heartbeat; exhale rapid heartbeat.

Why was my heartbeat slowing down when I inhaled?

Before starting my research, I came up with a hypothesis of my own. I made the assumption that on inhale the body wants the blood to gather as much oxygen from the lungs as possible, so it slows the blood down to give it more time to gather. When exhaling the body wants to get rid of carbon dioxide as quickly as possible, so it rushes the blood through the lungs to get rid of the CO2. Anyway…that was my thought, not being a medical student myself, and really having insufficient knowledge about the process to know better.

Then I started the research…and discovered that I should apparently be experiencing exactly the opposite of what I did…namely, that my heartbeat should be increasing when I inhale and decreasing when I exhale.

It’s called sinus arrhythmia, from what I’ve found online (I did not feel it necessary to pay a co-pay at my doctor’s office in order to write this post), and it’s described as:

Sinus arrhythmia: The normal increase in heart rate that occurs during inspiration (when you breathe in). This is a natural response and is more accentuated in children than adults. [Reference: medicinenet.com]

Odd - exactly the opposite behaviour that my heart should have been exhibiting. However, on that same page I found this reference:

Sinus tachycardia refers to a fast heartbeat (tachycardia) because of rapid firing of the sinoatrial (sinus) node. This occurs in response to exercise, exertion, excitement, pain, fever, excessive thyroid hormone, low blood oxygen (hypoxia), stimulant drugs (such as caffeine), etc.

Perhaps this is what I was experiencing. I was indeed under the influence of caffeine, and was experiencing pain in the form of a migraine. Although, I’m not sure why this would explain why my heartbeat slowed down when inhaling, then resumed it’s “tachycardia” when exhaling.

Has anyone else ever done this little experiment of measuring your heartbeat during deep inhales and exhales? Are you arrhythmical or tachycardial? (I realize those are probably not actual words, but spell check didn’t seem to mind)