Episode 13: Dream Messages, Leg Lumps, and Mycophilia

No doubt this episode will sound hyperchondriac-ish, a charge my son lodged against me not long ago—but that one had no merit, as what I described to him had been confirmed by medical tests.  Hypochondria means:
 “extreme depression of mind or spirits often centered on imaginary physical ailments" (Merriam-Webster Online).  

When the conditions are real, and confirmed by lab tests of Western science (the only valid knowledge base on the planet, according to most people I know), the charge of hypochondria falls on its face.  I'm one of those folks whose body is waging a war on itself--but I'm also one of those fortunate folks who tends toward optimism.  I really want to hang around for a while, without being sick.  Others seem to think I enjoy these weird health conditions, but au contraire,  I miss the me who used to be full of energy and verve.  

Episode 12: Blood Sludge for Turkey Day

I’m still getting the hang of this polycythemia thing.

You see, my blood is too thick. Too many red blood cells. That makes my blood turn to sludge, and sludgy blood is not good. Not only does it put me at higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and pulmonary embolism, it makes me feel as if I’m full of sludgy blood, which means every cell in my body feels heavy and slow and, well, sludgy.

You’d think that feeling would be easy to recognize. The thing is, it’s insidious. I start feeling bad and, because I’ve had fatigue problems for the past few years, I just accept it, even as it gets worse than usual. And then I finally realize, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got that thick blood thing, too … maybe it’s time to get drained.”

Episode 11: Discouragement

Discouragement: the scourge of chronic disease.

I do my best not to wallow in it; I try to push it away when it comes crawling in, like a fog under the door. Even when I’m immersed in it, I hate it. I’m afraid of it. I worry that it’s right, and I’m wrong, and one day I’m just going to have to give in to its seduction.

Yet I’d be lying if I pretended it didn’t happen.

It’s not something I like to talk about. As bestselling author Laura Hillenbrand says about chronic disease, “I didn’t want to talk about it very much because I had the experience of being dismissed and ridiculed.” No one wants to hear a sob story, and persons with chronic disease can look perfectly healthy most of the time, so the inability to apply the stamina of most persons our age to our lives becomes suspect in others' eyes.  Better to only imagine people think you're faking, not to see it in their eyes.

Episode 10: Happy Halloween with Some Creepy Plants and Critters

[Feel free to skip my asides.  I talk too much on this show!  I'll try to mark my tangents with brackets.]

Halloween barely registered with me this year.  Long gone are the days when my kids went out trick-or-treating or I went to parties in Elvira costumes.  [I figured I had the best possible chance of being beautiful when I could disguise my natural appearance with wigs and tons of makeup.  I never had the slightest interest in looking scary, as many of my more confident friends enjoy.  If I were ever to dress up again, I'd want to go as Morticia.  Carolyn Jones as Morticia was the ultimate feminine role model--socially aware, compassionate, smart, and sexy.  Oh, and beautiful.]

But Mother Jones gave me an idea .... Why not report on the creepy plants and critters I've encountered in my yard and elsewhere over the years?  This can be my contribution to Halloween this year, and the Great Pumpkin should be pleased.  Unlike pumpkins, though, most of these species won't be found here in Appalachia at this time of year.

Episode 9: On Fox News and America's Future

Okay--for the most part, The Mary Dell Show will stick to topics I find in my yard, i.e., interesting plants, fungi, and creatures, but because my yard does lie in the United States of America, I cannot ignore the topic of politics when the future of our country is at stake.  If I alienate some viewers, so be it.  I have to speak my mind.

On Thursday, I had a doctor's appointment. My physician is so popular that her patients are willing to wait hours to see her--or at least put up with waits that are often hours long. I've been happy the last few times I've been there that the television has not been tuned to Fox News. I'd rather hear the noise of the soap opera on that day than the lies and misinformation spewed forth on "Faux News,” with my blood pressure rising by the minute.

I quickly lost myself in Smithsonian Magazine's article on the Taj Mahal--a majestic structure I have seen with my own eyes and walked around with my shoeless feet and, ever since, a fascination, as is India itself. (The book by Amina Okada and Mohan C. Joshi, by the way, is a well-researched and well-written account of the reign of the Moghuls in India and Shah Jahan, who built the tomb for his favorite wife who died giving birth to their fourteenth child. I highly recommend it!)

When I was about halfway through the article, a man stood and fiddled with the TV, then asked the receptionist if he could change the channel. She handed him the remote, while I silently beseeched the gods to keep him away from Fox News.

I live in a conservative area in north-central Appalachia. Though this region used to vote Democrat because of its exploitation by non-resident coal companies, most folks around here have since turned thoroughly to the Right, thanks to the culture wars and Fox News's exploitation of common fear and ignorance--and, by that, I mean only a lack of knowledge of the facts, not stupidity. I do not think all Fox watchers are stupid--but quite of few of them, I'm afraid, are brainwashed.

Episode 8: Effexor, Mugwort, and Dream Pillows

N.B. Feel free to skip portions surrounded by [brackets], as these represent tangents and, at times, diatribes.

In Episode 6, I discussed my recent identification of a heretofore "noxious" weed (in my estimation) in my yard. The tenacious thing pops up in all my garden beds and, as much of my lawn is uninitentionally turned over to weeds (because I don't have the energy to work it the way I want to), this monster grows to as high as 4 feet in the "prairie field" behind my house. I have precious little sunlight in my yard, which sits on the northeast-facing slope of an Appalachian mountain. The sun sets early on my house, like 4 p.m. So I know my sunny zones, one of which is a stretch along the northern woods where certain patches enjoy daylong sunlight that flows over the house's roof, past its shadow, and into that narrow strip before my yard ends at the wooded (and wonderfully natural) lot next doors.  Other spots, other than a 20 x 20 patch just in front of the house and before 100-foot spruces block it. This is completely extraneous information, but I do try to describe my setting now and then, since most of The Mary Dell Show, in homage to its precursor (see the Pilot Episode for the history of the show) will be devoted to herbs, plants, mushrooms, and such.  At least I hope so.  Medical problems are cropping up--pun intended--at an alarming rate.  These topics occur to my rambling brain during ramblings in my small, mostly wooded 1/2 acre lot, and sometimes the surrounding woods owned by my neighbors, who don't mind.

Mugwort, photo from Horizon Herbs

Episode 7: Hypochondria and Bear's Head Teeth

After texting my twenty-eight-year-old son about my latest health issues, he texted back, “You’re a hypochondriac.”

I texted back, “I wish.”

Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit and the more recent Unbroken, describes her battle with chronic fatigue syndrome in the New Yorker at http://www.cfids-cab.org/MESA/Hillenbrand.html.

I am eminently grateful that my health issues are not as debilitating as hers.

But there’s no question that I have morphed from a healthy, active person for more than half of her life to someone who is no longer at her best physically and, I’m afraid, quite often mentally as well.  I haven’t quite given up on the possibility of recuperating to the point of being as physically robust as others my age, and so far I’ve done a decent job adjusting to the need to write things down to remember them.  It’s the fatigue that is relentless.  I do still have good days, and I relish those.  I recognize them as they are happening … “Hey, I feel damned good right now.  I have some energy!  I can do some of the things I want to do!”

Unfortunately, in my ADHD fashion, I go in about seven different directions when I’m feeling well, so the overall gain is less than it should be.  Something that frustrates me even as it happens.

I’m not interested in hashing out the details of the latest diagnosis in my endless permutations of chronic disease, but just to give this episode some context, I’ll just say that the doc says I have “reactive airway disorder” or some such medspeak.  I’ve had a bad chest cough for the past five or six weeks.  It won’t go away, and it exhausts me.  Over this time, I’ve popped two “Z-Paks,” prepackaged week-long dosages of Azithromycin, a heavy-duty antibiotic, to no long-term avail, so my doctor just prescribed an inhaler, some Prednisone (a steroid that reduces inflammation and, by the way, made my mother psychotic when she took large doses to increase her white blood cells so she could take radiation treatments for her cancer), and another hardcore antibiotic. 

Episode 6: Mercedes Benz Needs a Competent Editor of its Ads

Tonight, I left work a little early so I could catch the Cowboys-Redskins game.  (I tend to work late.)

You see, while I was growing up in Takoma Park, Maryland, seven miles from the DC border, my family's religion was the Washington Redskins.  While I'm horrified by the money being floated around over nothing more than a game and simple entertainment, I justify my interest with the economic impact football has on the good old U.S.A.  I do believe the money would be better spent helping starving children in Africa, but at least folks in the lower economic echelon in the U.S. reap some benefit (if disproportional) from the sport.  Besides, watching football makes me feel close to my dad, who I lost in 1985.  Nostalgia is a powerful motivator, as every good advertiser knows.

Episode 5: Featured Guest: Sabine

Of course, I had already noticed her.  Who wouldn't have?  She moved through the hallways unlike anyone else, tall, elegant, "lovely in her bones," always dressed in a way that we Americans don't, putting together textures and colors and styles we never would and pulling the ensemble off with panache.  With her blond hair and bright blue eyes, along with the mellifluous accent, I assumed she was Swedish.  In fact, I'd learn she is German, but her voice carried none of the harsh sounds I'd always associated with that language. Hers was High German, in which "No" is "Nay," not "Nein.," though her friends came from Southern as well as Northern Germany and all over the world, and she would settle, at the end, not far from Stuttgart.

One day shortly after I began working at the law firm, I stepped into the ladies' room, where she was just leaving.  She reached out a hand and, with a friendly smile, said, "Hello!  I'm Sabine!  Welcome!"  (She tells me we first met in the coffee room--isn't memory fascinating?  This is how I remember it.)

I'm sure I mumbled my name in reply, but no one at that point in my twenty-eight years had ever approached me with quite so much confidence and warmth.  Perhaps it's because I grew up in America, and Prince George's County to boot, or perhaps it's because I just hadn't been around many confident, sophisticated people, but I truly couldn't remember anyone introducing themselves to me in that manner. Besides, my shyness had been pathological since a young age.

Sabine's warm introduction was a revelation.  What a sensible, good-natured approach! 

Here I was, Queen of Shyness and Social Anxiety, seeing perhaps for the first time how easy it is to open oneself to others, to demonstrate one's affability, and to instantly make friends.  As I said, a revelation.

Sabine and Me, General's Beach, Albania, on the Adriatic, 1/2012

Episode 4: Amanita muscaria var. guessowii ... and other things

Today I found an Amanita muscaria var. guessowii in my front yard. Of course, I had no idea that's what it was when I plucked it from the earth. I've been riding a mushroom obsession since I visited my best friend from sixth grade (forty years ago, in other words) recently after finding her on Facebook, and her German mother sauteed up some fresh mushrooms from her yard with onions in olive oil and served it to me on a toasted English muffin. 

In fact, forty years had not been enough time for me to forget this woman's culinary talent.  She made a dish so delicious one night when we girls were eleven that I've dreamed about it ever since.  After telling her this, she and I both thought it might have been a spaetzle, but it also had dark noodles or something in it, as I recall. Unfortunately, she isn't sure, and she never uses recipes, of course, so the dish lives only in my memory. Those recent mushrooms came close, though. 

This wonderful woman, Alice, lived in Germany through the war and scouted for mushrooms to bring home, as food was scarce.Her strategy for determining whether a mushroom is poisonous is whether she sees the bitemarks of little critters on it.  "Nature is smarter than we are," she says. However, this is not really a good rule of thumb whatsoever. Turtles, for instance, are known to eat mushrooms poisonous to humans who have died when eating those turtles.

My Audubon Field Guide to Mushrooms warns not to believe any folk tradition for determining a mushroom's edibility. It's true, however, that Miss Alice has lived to the fresh and spry age of 77, eating mushrooms from the German woods and her American lawns from the time she was a child, and I'd eat anything she handed me.

I, however, haven't had the guts to eat anything yet without identifying it first in the Audubon guide or on Roger's Mushrooms, a great site for helping in the ID process. I'll talk more about Miss Alice on a future show, as her story is inspiring, but I must get back to our subject today, photographed with my iPhone: 

Amanita muscaria, var. guessowii from my yard, 9/24/11
Feel free to use, but I would appreciate an attribution.
(Copyright Mary Dell Spalding)