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.