7ToF: catching up, sept 2024 edition

1. We just spent a week (mostly) in our camper, driving around eastern Montana. There's so much to do in the western half of the state that we've never spent much time out there. But eastern Montana has plenty to recommend it, including Makoshika State park, the Fort Peck dam, and the highline (highway 2, which runs east-west across the entire state, 50-ish miles from the Canadian border, and is how we arrived in Montana when we moved here in 1992). No lack of natural beauty anywhere. And also there were dinosaurs in all the museums and visitor centers, which is always fun.

(did you know: the dinosaur dig in the first Jurassic Park movie is set in Montana, although I don't think they actually filmed it here. Read about the Montana Dinosaur Trail here.)

2. We met a whole lot of very sweet, very kind, very conservative people who were friendly and helpful and sometimes went to considerable trouble to make our trip better. One example-- when we arrived at the Glendive history museum on Thursday and discovered that it is only open on weekends after Labor Day, the proprietor who was there doing maintenance opened it up for us and hung around until we had seen everything. The rural US is doing just fine, they are not sitting at home wishing they could move to the city and become coastal elites. 

We, of course, didn't announce that we are on the other side, so we heard or overheard a number of conversations about the dire straits our country will be in if the Democrats win in November-- conversations we hear from our progressive friends all the time, except from the other side. What happens when both sides are convinced that the country will be destroyed if the other side wins? Maybe we should all take a deep breath and lower the stakes a bit. 

Then I think about the Unhinged One and I can't do it. 

3. For the sake of people who maybe haven't ever been in the same room with a blue collar conservative, I have many times thought about writing a post about the "Trump base" and why they are not evil. We live with them. Our neighborhood is filled with Trump and Sheehy signs. I don't agree with them, and there's no chance I'm voting for those guys, but our neighbors aren't evil. Then Nicholas Kristof wrote this column (gift link) and said it better than I could so I don't have to (phew). 

And then I read something like this, and I can't bring myself to defend them at all anyway. (that link is to a column in the Washington Post which I somehow read once, but now it is behind a paywall. The idea is that after eight years, no one can say they don't know what Trump is about, and is the fact that you're mad at the libtards a good enough excuse to vote for someone you know is not capable of governing?)

But I still think that it can't hurt to lower the disdain and contempt each side has for the other. Liberals, and especially highly educated progressives, have shown little but contempt for conservative religious values for decades. We do believe in freedom of religion, right?

4. The headache report: I wish I could tell you that a miraculous cure has been found and that I am now in complete control of my migraines. Yeah, that didn't happen. This is still ongoing, so I'm not ready to state anything with finality but here's what I know so far: 1. I was taking too many over-the-counter medications before. I feel much better overall without them, although my record of not taking any is not as pristine as the last time I reported. 2. So far, I haven't uncovered any new food triggers. 3. I'm still having headaches most days, but not as many migraines. That's all I can say at the moment, and of course it may be that I'm still in the process of getting over rebound headaches. Will update further as needed, but maybe you're as sick of hearing about this as I am of thinking about it.

5. It's time for my quarterly reading update. I thought about just listing my four- and five-star reads and calling it good. But I do have Thoughts about a few of them, so maybe if I have time this weekend I'll pull together a few of my Goodreads reviews and post them on Tuesday. 

I'm still slogging through Trust, the pulitzer prize winner by Hernan Diaz. I've been reading a few pages a day for a couple of weeks now. Normally if I was this bogged down in a reading experience I would toss it aside, but I've heard from numerous sources that it hinges on some things that become clear in the last section, so I'm pushing on. It's not bad, it's just that after I've been reading for fifteen minutes or so, my eyes start to glaze over. I'll probably be able to let you know by Tuesday if Part IV lived up to its billing.

6. So here you go: 

Highly recommended (five stars): The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue, The Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward, Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, and one other that I will save for Tuesday. 

Recommended (four stars): The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (didn't live up to my expectations but was still worth reading), Sandwich by Catherine Newman (got a little preachy toward the end but not enough to ruin it), Search by Michelle Huneven, Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly, It's So Easy and Other Lies by Duff McKagan.

Recommended if you like quirky genre fiction: The Magician's Daughter by HG Parry, The Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis, Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death by Maria Vale, Charm City Rocks by Matthew Norman, and the Page&Sommers series by Cat Sebastian (there are only two out so far, but I enjoyed them both, especially the second one).

7. We're going to New England for a wedding next Thursday and we'll be gone for a week, so no post from me next Friday. We did a couple of "leaf peeping" trips when we lived on the east coast long ago but it's been a long time and I'm happy we have the chance to do it again.

have a good weekend.

the headache/migraine detox progress report

Staying off meds has been hard.  (In case you don't know what I'm talking about, read the previous post.) My neuro uses a ten-point pain scale, so I will use that here. Usually for anything over a 3, I'm popping over-the-counter meds, like advil, extra strength tylenol, or excedrin migraine (tylenol/aspirin/caffeine). If my pain level gets up to 6-7, I take prescription migraine meds. I almost never get to 9 (which includes vomiting) anymore, because of triptans. And I've only made it to 10 (worst headache you've ever had, medications ineffective, trip to the ER/outpatient clinic) a couple of times in the twenty+ years that triptans have been available. 

So not taking any meds means I've spent quite a few days out of the past two weeks feeling like crap, including one headache that made it to 9. But also, several days when I've felt pretty good. The thing that has been confusing is that it hasn't been a consistent improvement. I was expecting that there would be a few bad days, but then--it seems to my non-medical, totally biased brain-- if the problem really was rebound headaches, once I got through a few really bad days, there would be a steady improvement. Maybe not fast, but over the space of a week or two, I would steadily feel better.

But that has not been the case. The first few days were surprisingly pain-free, nothing over 0-2. Most days since then, I've had a headache. About ten days in, I had a 7-8 pain level day when I also had a couple of commitments that I couldn't miss. On that day, I took my usual prescription meds, and later in the day, one advil. But other than that one day, I haven't taken any pain medications at all for 15 days. I've had 4-5 days of feeling pretty good (pain level 0-2), and on those days, I think, wow, this is working! This is great! But the rest of the time, I've had a headache. It's kind of discouraging. My in-house medical advisor tells me that if I really want to do this, recovery from rebound headaches can take quite a while. So I'm not giving up yet. I will go at least one more week, probably two.

Because I'm not feeling all that great, I haven't done the full elimination diet (and I may not). Here are the parts I am doing: no caffeine except morning cup of black tea, no alcohol, no almonds or raw onions, no bananas or raspberries.

Since I'm still feeling like crap--and its entirely possible that's from detoxing from the meds-- it's hard to know if any of that is helpful. Also, it's fire season in the west, so there are varying levels of smoke in the air, and that is a big trigger for me. It's supposed to start raining again in a few days so maybe at least I'll be able to eliminate that. 

The only other thing to report is that I've been super tired. Zero energy. In case you can't tell, I'm feeling a little discouraged at the moment (my pain level as I'm typing this is 6-7). On the plus side, I'm very proud of myself for not taking meds because there have been moments when it was REALLY HARD. I didn't realize how often I was popping (over-the-counter) pills until I stopped doing it. 

When I sat down, I had some other things I was going to say, but I'll save them for another time. We're headed out of town on Thursday and will be gone through the next week so I may not post again until we get back. Please send headache-free vibes my way.