Friday Fast 3

I'm only doing three today, since my three that I have are long.

Nummer Eins
Our dog can be strange sometimes. Almost daily, Josie will wander off. I'll notice she's gone after about 10 minutes or so, and decide to go find her to make sure she's not doing something she shouldn't. I have lately been finding her in our bedroom or bathroom, but it's so odd it makes me laugh. Sometimes she's standing in our bathroom, staring at the floor, sometimes she's just laying near the foot of our bed. One time I found her half standing in our shower, half not, staring at the floor like like she was confused. Another day I found her just laying down in our closet. Not, like, curled up in a ball, but paws forward, head up, like it's the most normal thing in the world to want to chill out in the closet. It's so random and goofy. Maybe she's playing hide and seek with me, because she probably knows that I will eventually always come looking for her. I'll see where she decides to hide out next week...

Nummer Zwei
This week Apple re-introduced a smaller iPhone the same size as the one I have from 2 years ago. I'm glad, because I'm not a fan of the bigger phone trends. Along with that, they updated their software which I installed on my iPad yesterday. One new feature is the "Night Shift" option. Night shift removes some of the blue light from your screen during evening hours. The theory is that all of us who use our devices an hour or two before bed are getting less or poorer sleep due to the 'blue light' emitted from the screens. It is said that it messes with our brain and sleep chemicals our body produces to help us become tired and fall asleep. But the jury is still out on whether this is true or not, or how much it actually affects sleep. 

However, what is known is that blue light is damaging to our eyes. I know this from my eye doctor and since I wear glasses, I am always offered (and encouraged, since I have a job using a computer) to add a protective coating to my lenses that helps block the damaging effects. 

I tried out the "Night Shift" option last night, and it basically makes your screen more orangey. But after some time, you get used to it. And when I went to turn it back off, the quick shift back to normal on my screen actually hurt my eyes. Apple is pushing this as a way to help us sleep with set hours for the option to come on the evenings, but I'm wondering if it should be enabled all the time? If my eyes were already more comfortable in that short time, maybe it's something for me to consider. The problem is, being the designer and creative I am, I like my colors to be as true as possible. White is no longer white, it's a warm off-white. I went back and forth with LED lightbulbs because I didn't like the slightly different light they cast, but now I admit I'm used to it and don't notice as much if it's different than incandescent. I'm due for my yearly eye checkup, and I think I'm going to ask my doc about this feature, see what he says. But maybe I should just put up with it for the sake of my eyes? 

Nummer Drei
As Lent comes to a close, I'm faced with a decision: keep up with my Lenten resolution, or go back to old habits? I semi-failed at my first Lenten resolution, so partially in to Lent I switched it up and gave up Facebook on my phone. I need it for my job, so I couldn't just stop entirely, but taking it off my phone felt like a decent plan. 

The first week was the hardest, and I realized that checking it was something that was hardwired into my brain, because I would swipe over and hit Facebook with no thought, only to be met by the login screen because I forgot I signed out for Lent. I had this innate desire to look at it for that first week, but once I got past that point it wasn't so bad. For the most part I didn't miss it a whole lot. I won't pretend I was necessarily making 'better' use of my time, but I'd rather watch a show or movie I enjoy, or read or crochet, or just sit in silence, than scroll through stuff on my phone. So personally, I find that a better use of my time, even if it's still not all that useful, haha.

For now, I think I'm going to stay logged out. I'll allow myself to log in on occasions I need to, like for a group I help manage, but I want to try to stick with this. I'm a bit of a news junkie, which fits well with my job, but I gotta be honest that the election coverage is really getting me down. I realized that seeing those headlines so often—even though it's unintentional—in my feed is bad, and I need to distance myself from it. When I log in to Facebook less, like I have been, the most important stories are on top from people I care about, it takes no time to get through them, and the rest is just filler.

Allergies: The Bane of My Existence Right Now

Last week, I started up with allergies. Off and on I'd have days with sniffles, drainage, and increased cough. I've gone through like 4 boxes of tissues in the past week. It became clear that my Zyrtec wasn't working for me anymore and it was time to switch to something else. This is common—even though it sucks—where your body gets used to an allergy med and then it doesn't work anymore.

Tuesday I had a checkup with my doctor, and we agreed to give Allegra a try. And I had a good checkup, too. My PFT's were still pretty good, though not as good as a month ago when I had those unbelievable numbers. But I still had not lost much ground and I blamed most of it on the allergies.

Wednesday... totally different story. I was blowing my nose constantly and coughing my head off. It was a terrible day, and it had been a terrible night too; I got little sleep and woke up coughing 3-4 times. I was starting to worry I was sick, but it just doesn't make sense because Jarrod hasn't caught anything from me and this just feels like allergies.

Thursday I started the Allegra and noticed some improvements as far as drainage and cough, and I thought I was getting around okay until I went to treadmill... I could not breathe in deeply at all and could only make it 15 minutes. My oxygen sats were awful.

Today is worse. I'm coughing my butt off this morning and I don't even feel like I took allergy medicine.

I feel like if I'm going to have any chance of maintaining my good numbers, I need to get better fast, and that's the most frustrating part: knowing that I need to turn this around NOW, not later, and every day that I can't is another day I'm more likely to stay this way. I need to clear out the gunk in my lungs before it settles in and is harder to clear out days later.

It's just so frustrating, maddening almost. Of all the things that come with having CF, of all the daily things I go through, this is possibly the most aggravating thing of all.

It's not the 2+ hours of daily treatments, the 30+ daily pills, coughing for 1-3 hours every morning, the oxygen tubing... It's the fact that one day can be so vastly different from the next, with no apparent warning or reason. On Sunday I felt great, and did a lot at the gym, Monday was decent, Tuesday I had a good checkup, and then Wednesday it all just went to craps and all of my progress at the gym on Sunday was pointless. I'm back to square one though no fault of my own. I'm doing about everything I can to stay on top of this, yet these allergies are making my life terrible right now.

It just plain sucks and I cannot put into words how frustrated I am.