mini-rants and updates, May 2024 edition

1. Like many, last Friday we watched the northern lights with awe. Unfortunately, we didn't know about the trick of enhancing the view with a cell phone camera until the next day. So the first picture is from Saturday night, which was considerably less spectacular but still very cool, and one from a few nights later, when there were no northern lights, just a beautiful night sky.

2. After four+ years of posting a mini-review on Goodreads of almost every book I've read, I suddenly found myself tired of it a few weeks back. Since then, I've tried out several alternative sites and apps, but none of them are as simple and straightforward if your main goal is just to keep a record of what you've read. (After several hours of using the most promising alternative, I still couldn't even find the list of books I've read.) Apparently the most popular features now are timers and reminders and game-like motivators, none of which I would use. 

So for now, I'm continuing on with Goodreads but without writing reviews (as far as I can tell, no one reads them except my daughter so that shouldn't be a problem). GR gets a lot of hate because it's owned by Amazon, but I have to say why not take advantage of a service that they are in effect providing for free? The current saying is, "If it's free, you are the product," and of course that's true, but the ads are way less intrusive than some of the other reading apps I tried, and I'm unwilling to pay $50 a year for what is really just a memory aid for me. I'm open to better ideas if you have suggestions. So far I've tried Book Buddy, Storygraph, and Bookly.

3. You know what works? Sportswashing. There may be plenty of unanswered questions about how the PGA (the player-owned professional golf association) and LIV golf (owned by the Saudis) will integrate, but no one is talking about human rights violations or institutional misogyny any more. It's sad and a little disgusting. Money makes all kinds of problems go away. I have rarely been as disappointed in a famous person as I was when Rahm signed on with LIV at the end of last year.

4. For years now, body positivity has been challenging cultural attitudes about women's bodies and working to end fat shaming, slut shaming, and genital shaming. And yet suddenly there is this big push for full-body deodorant and everybody seems to think it's great. Human bodies smell like human bodies. We do not need another thing to be ashamed about. I wear under-arm deodorant and I take regular showers, but I refuse to be ashamed about how my body smells. The commercials for this stuff come on sports networks all the time. It's super annoying--and this time it's aimed at men and women, which just goes to show how sensitive we all can be when it comes to body shaming.

5. The rest of this post is about migraines so you can stop reading if you're not interested. I'm pretty sure I've told you that after I had covid in November 2020, my migraines got way worse. Way worse. I guess it is my version of long covid. 

I've had migraines since I was in my 20s, and I have tried all manner of dietary changes, hormones, antidepressants, anti-seizure meds, physical therapy, chiropractic, acupuncture, cranial-sacral therapy, energy balancing-- pretty much everything, science-based and not. Some things helped (especially triptan meds), some didn't, but I have consistently averaged 6-10 migraines a month for decades--which is no fun, but manageable with the triptans. 

But post-covid, with my frequency way up, I finally qualified for stronger interventions. First up was botox injections. You get a bunch of injections, starting in your forehead and going up and over your scalp and into your neck and shoulders. Apparently the shots themselves are a deterrent for some, but the whole thing takes less than ten minutes and they don't hurt nearly as much as a migraine does.

It sounded great, and they've been life changing for some, but for me they did next to nothing, even after five or six rounds of treatment. Possibly there was some reduction in severity--and as my neurologist said, that's not meaningless-- but there was no reduction in frequency. 

So several months ago, I stopped the botox, and asked my neuro what was up next. He prescribed Ajovy, one of a number of new migraine drugs that are based on monoclonal antibodies and don't ask me to explain that. Ajovy is a monthly injection that you can give yourself at home, and I've done four injections now. 

I am cautiously optimistic. It was miraculous the first two months, the best I've felt since before peri-menopause (mid-40s). Then it started working less well, but I also had a covid-like illness during that time period (the covid test was negative, but the symptoms were similar).

So I am hopeful it will get better again. I went to see my neurologist last week and he said to do a couple more months of Ajovy before I decide it's not working. I'm not 100% cured of migraines, but even at the less effective level, it's still way better than before.

Bottom line: if you are a migraineur and you haven't been to your neurologist in years (I hadn't, pre-covid), try again, because there are new therapies. They are also super expensive, but not too bad with good insurance. I am grateful.

Have a good weekend. In case you couldn't tell, this was a filler post while I try to figure out what I'm doing next. I have two ideas, one of which I am unqualified to comment on, and one of which you're probably not interested in (apologies for dangling prepositions). Stay tuned. Maybe a third option will present itself.