Behind the Window: Autumnal

Michelle's Helpful Holiday Hint

So, um, as you're popping your Christmas carols into the CD player (or iPod -- yeah, I'm still sooo 20th century), I have one little, tiny suggestion: don't listen to Mr Hanky the Christmas Poo while you're eating breakfast. Or any meal for that matter. Or snack. Just, ya know, not the most appealing song to listen to when you're eating your Cheerios and blueberries. Funny song? Very. Appetizing? Not at all.

So, you know. Just sharing that little tidbit of information with you as the holidays get into full swing. I mean, it's not like Martha Stewart is going to...

"Number 9...Number 9..."

In Live Science's Top 10 list of mysterious dieseases, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome comes in at Number 9 -- in between Morgellon's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob (aka Mad Cow) Disease. AIDS got the sexy number one position and the Common Cold came in at number 3. Multiple Sclerosis, my dear godfather, got lumped in with all autoimmune diseases at number 6. Unfortunately, Live Science didn't really explain the criteria of its rankings.

And for some reason, the whole thing made me think of "Revolution 9" from the White Album. I just wasn't witty enough to find a way to link the two together. But then, I think that's quite in keeping with "Revolution 9," don't you think?

P.S. A. asked me today why they call it "Black Friday." My guess, which I warned him I was totally pulling out of my ass, was that it's when companies' balance sheets go from being in the red to in the black.

And dude, I was so totally right!

Fredo or Michael?

Gawd, I'm holding my breath after what happened in Lebanon today. I imagine they are too.

Lordy is it ever feeling like 1975 again.

Junior was definitely more palatable than his grandad, who visited the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and thought Hitler was so cool that he came back and started his own version of the Nazi Party called the Kataeb Party, aka The Phalange, who went on to do great and wonderful things like slaughter women and children refugees. Assassinating anyone in the Gemayel family is like setting off dynamite.

So far everyone is asking for calm. The Phalange want protests at the funeral to be a "peaceful move." ("That's because they don't have any money to rearm," cynically responded Talal when we talked on the phone this afternoon.) Pierre's father, Amin, has asked everyone to respect "Pierre's martyrdom for the cause and not try to take revenge." Other Christian factions denounced the murder, as did Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Shia Muslim organization Hizbullah, which said that the killings were intended to "provoke the Lebanese and pit them against each other in order to create a state of chaos in the country."

Sure as hell got that right. Which is why just about everybody is pointing the finger at Syria. Talal and I think that perhaps Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, miscalculated when he pulled out of Lebanon last year and he knows it. Now he wants back in and figures killing members of rival factions will reignite the civil war and allow Syria to move back in to restore calm. Or so our theory goes.

I guess we'll have to see if Bashar turns out to be Fredo Corleone, like he's often rumored to be, or Michael.

P.S. Also consider Robert Fisk's insights over at the Indy. And I still cannot recommend too highly his tome, Pity the Nation.

Christmas 2006 newsletter

It's that Christmas newsletter time of year.

Ugh.

I've been thinking about not even doing one. Does anybody really care if they get one or not? I just get tired of always having to put some sort of positive spin on yet another year of being sick. Even more sick than the year before.

Last week at my clinic while I waited for the medical transportation cab, I saw an old friend of mine from grad school. I've missed him a lot. He and another friend of mine and I met for lunch one day during a particularly stressful term and we had so much fun laughing. Indeed, we enjoyed ourselves so much that we decided to make a weekly date of it. For the next couple of years our lunch date would grow or shrink depending on schedules and personalities. But there was always J. and me. Eventually his schedule changed and I kept getting sicker and we drifted apart.

"Michelle! Oh my gawd! I keep looking through the Oprah book club and your book isn't there yet!"

We laughed. But it made me ache.

"I keep asking Dr. S. about you and he says he doesn't know what happened to you."

"Yes, well, I just got so sick..."

It is like I've dropped off the face of the planet to most of the people in my life. And while I miss them so so so much, it's almost as if I prefer it this way. I feel so damn needy. Hungry for some connection with them all and the life I used to have. Somehow I also feel like a failure for getting sick and not achieving all those things everybody assumed I would.

I hate not having some heroic story for my newsletter of overcoming my illness against all odds and accomplishing all the wonderful things I was supposed to. Instead, I just have more bad news to report. I ended up with blood clots in both lungs. I'm now on blood thinners for the rest of my life. Now I have asthma. I spend most of my days in bed. And ::sigh:: yes, the doctors still don't know why. Ambiguity just isn't a great narrative, ya know?

I dunno. I suppose the heroic story is that I'm still alive. If that radiology person hadn't looked carefully at my abdominal CT scan that second time. If that CT scan hadn't caught the bottom part of my lungs in the picture. Well, if those two things hadn't happened, I might very well not be around right now to feel my angst about writing a Christmas 2006 newsletter.

I suppose too I have to let go of the grand, heroic story. There probably isn't going to be great health news to share in my Christmas newsletters to come. But I still live, even in bed.

Please don't say this gets added to the Coumadin-interaction list...

Chocolate Has Antithrombotic Effects Similar to Aspirin

"Chocolate, even in small amounts, was an independent factor in inhibition of platelet activation," Dr. Naraday said. It extended closure time, regardless of age, sex, smoking status, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol level, fibrinogen levels, or von Willebrand factor.

"The magnitude of the effect was quite small," Dr. Naraday emphasized. Chocolate had the same type of effect as aspirin, but by a factor of 5 to 10 times less, according to the assay used in the GeneSTAR study, he said.

So, does that mean it will affect my INR? I'm guessing since it's less than the affect of aspirin it's not too lethal to continue nibbling on my organic dark chocolate from Trader Joes...hopefully?

Creating organic awareness one stockboy at a time

Last week when I went to Safeway, I was looking for some organic chicken. In between literally hundreds of various cuts of Foster Farms and Safeway store brand chicken was a tiny little column of Safeway's new O organic brand chicken thighs.

"Can I help you find anything?" asked a young guy with an apron on that made him look like he was clearly attached to the meat department.

"Do you have any more organic chicken?"

"Um..." he looked from one side of the column o' organic to the other side and finally said, "I'm afraid that's it."

"You call this capitalism?" I joked. He laughed too.

"Well, capitalism when there's a monopoly," he said. We laughed that cynical laugh yet again.

I pointed out that awhile back they were carrying some organic chicken from a farm based on the Oregon Coast, which I liked because not only was it organic but it was also local. They've also been carrying some organic mushrooms from a Yamhill farm -- again, both organic and local (and at pretty much the same price as the conventional mushrooms). He didn't know what happened to the Oregon Coast chicken, but he made a note that I was requesting it and that I was pleased about the mushrooms.

Today I managed to make it to Safeway again and wanted to buy some buttermilk. And while there was organic whole and reduced fat milk, as well as milk from local dairy Darigold, the only buttermilk they carried was from Safeway's Lucerne label.

"Can I help you find something?" Another helpful lad who appeared to be unloading milk products.

"Yeah, do you have any buttermilk that's not Lucerne?"

"Um..." He looked at the row upon row of Lucerne sparsely populated by O, Darigold, and Horizons.

"Just anything that doesn't have rBST," I said.

"Oh, you mean, like, lactose?"

"No, rBST is a growth hormone that they give to cows to make them produce more milk. But it makes the cows sick and the pus that forms on their teets gets into the milk." I then pointed to a Darigold label where they proudly display that they don't use rBST.

The poor guy looked like he was going to be sick.

"Ugh, I don't think I'll ever be able to drink milk again."

"Yeah, my boyfriend, who's from the UK, won't drink anything but organic when he's here. Actually, rBST is banned in most countries except the US because Monsanto -- the company that makes it -- has a lot of money and, well, you know..."

He nodded.

"Wow. I had no idea," he said. I was starting to feel like I had somehow become some sort of spokesperson for the Organic Consumers Association.

At that point, an annoyed shopper behind me wanted me to get moving as that aisle is only one-cart's width wide and I was holding up traffic.

"Well, thanks anyway," I said as I started moving my self-righteous organic ass out of the way.

"Sorry we don't have that." He was shaking his head a bit as I glanced behind my shoulder. "You learn something new everyday."

I hope so.

A rambling pause in the silence

Yeah, I've been a bit quiet this last week.

Mostly I just haven't been online as much. I've had some sinus congestion-inspired migraines and looking at a computer just hasn't been all that appealing. I'm also adjusting to life with asthma (I was diagnosed last month), which has mostly consisted of getting bad Fibromyalgia flares whenever I use my Combivent inhaler as it makes me really jittery. Needless to say, I've been sleeping a lot, like I did yesterday when I slept 15 hours.

And I've been going to doctors appointments. I'm at my clinic about once a week to either see the doctor or to get my blood (INR) checked. And there's acupuncture/massage therapy at least once a week. The getting dressed and leaving the house thing is really wearing me out.

Emotionally I'm at a rough patch. A few weeks back I finally talked my doctor into testing me for a bacterial infection I strongly suspected I might have as my exposure to it coincided with my health taking a decidedly downward turn nearly three years ago. A friend of my mom's who is a doctor thought I was spot on in thinking this might be our culprit and after presenting the evidence to my doctor, he ordered up the blood test. Though he did warn me that it might turn up negative regardless because of all the antibiotics I've been on these last two and a half years. Sure enough, it was negative.

You'd think after all these years, with all the bazillions of blood tests that have come back negative on me, I'd be used to it. And normally I am. But this one I was so sure about. I just wanted some vindication for once, ya know? Is one damn unambiguous result too much to ask for?

I know all is not lost yet. My doctor's warning when he ordered the test suggests he might be open to trying out the six week antibiotic course anyway. But for some reason, that rational reassurance has not been enough to arouse me from my despair. I just need to know that at some point, this is going to get better. I mean, I know it's not going to get all better. I've made my peace with the fact that it is quite unlikely that I will ever return to the the level of health I had before that awful surgery nearly eight years ago now. Yet, all I want right now is to just be well enough to be able to write a little bit on a regular basis. Or to get on a plane and go to Baltimore to visit my sister. Or the UK to be with my boyfriend.

That last bit is probably a big part of my despondency of late. Gawd I miss A. This separation has been the hardest yet, I think. For both of us. With Christmas approaching and him still short the money for his ticket over here, I think we're both feeling a certain edginess these days. So, you know, if you suddenly see a Pay Pal button in the side bar one of these days, you'll know why. ::grin::

Most of my posts the last few weeks have been about politics, particularly the Middle East. The euphoria of the election has worn off and the unpalatable reality that the Democratic congress is merely there to create gridlock (i.e. put the breaks on a clinically insane Bush administration) rather than doing anything of value has set in. And the Middle East, of course, just gets more and more depressing and will for the foreseeable future. I spent some time the other night reading articles by Robert Fisk in the Indy and his pieces on the massacre at Marwahin or the evidence of Israel's use of a secret uranium bomb in Lebanon were particularly galling. I think the one on Marwahin was especially hard to read in light of what happened in Gaza last week. How long can one country shoot down women and children in cold blood and not face the slightest amount of opprobrium for it?

There is one note of optimism regarding the election. Harry Reid will be majority leader in the Senate, and while I haven't found him to be particularly captivating on most issues, he's been a strong supporter of the CFIDS community for many years now (as the age of that link demonstrates). Elections have consequences as they say, and hopefully the consequences of this last one will mean more pressure on the CDC to "cut the crap and do the research" instead of pouring money into lame-ass Public Service Announcements.

But more on the big public awareness campaign later. Believe or not, I gotta go to bed.

::sarcastic grin::

An additional friend

"I am not inviting America to sacrifice a traditional friend: Israel. I am offering America an additional one: Palestine ."

-- Afif Safieh, Head of the PLO Mission to the United States, in an open letter to the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives

(Hat tip to Friends of Sabeel North America)

Qana in Gaza

Okay, as much as I hate to rain on such a great day, November 8, 2006 will also come to be known as a very black day in Gaza.

The elections here have taken attention away from a new Israeli military push into Gaza that began last week. I know, I know. The Israelis were supposed to have withdrawn from Gaza, right? Well, apparently withdrawl includes going into Gazan cities and going door to door, breaking down walls and ordering all men between 16 and 50 to show up in the middle of the town for questioning (I won't say what that reminds me of...) along with the usual dropping missiles from Apache helicopters and the like. This morning one of those missiles fell on a house full of sleeping people, killing seventeen members of one family, in addition to IDF attacks that killed 11 others throughout Gaza and the West Bank today and 52 the week before. Some are comparing it to the Qana massacre that took place this summer in in Southern Lebanon.

Last week in a particularly ballsy move, the New York Times published an op/ed piece by Ahmad Yousef, the senior advisor to Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, in which he called for a hudna - a ceasefire with teeth. Since the link to the New York Times requires a subscription, I will direct you to Ira Chernus's discussion in Common Dreams of both the op/ed and the concept of hudna. As he points out, Hamas has been making the offer of the 10-year ceasefire repeatedly. And as they have done so frequently, Israel has answered with, well, bombing a house full of sleeping women and children.

One bright point in what has otherwise been a truly disturbing week, was the demonstration of woman power last Friday that the Yahoo news link above mentions and Helena Cobban discusses in detail here. After a group of Palestinian men were holed up overnight in a mosque exchanging fire with Israeli soldiers, Hamas radio called upon all women to go to the mosque. And go they did, en masse, braving live ammunition (and death in the case of two women), and basically, got their men out.

Well, anyway, here today is a great new example of Palestinian people power in action. Yes, it is quite tragic that one of the women participants in that (unarmed) demonstration was killed by the IOF. But still, the women's mobilization did serve to defuse the tensions around the mosque, most likely saving the lives of many more than one person at the scene. Plus, it no doubt helped show the leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian political groups-- and the women participants themselves-- the great value and strength of civilian mass organizations.

Yes, it would be great if Hamas transformed itself totally into an organization of civilian, nonviolent, mass action. (Ditto, of course, the state of Israel, which commands and is clearly prepared to use means of violent aggression and control that are hundreds of times more lethal than those used by any Palestinians.) But neither Hamas nor the state of Israel is, it seems, about to do that.

But still, absent a complete disarming of organizations like Hamas or Hizbullah, seeing them turn increasingly to, and recognize the value of, nonviolent means of organizing is a very important and constructive development.

As always, Cobban provides some very good insights regarding Hamas and Hizbollah as social service organizations, as well points out that the ANC under Nelson Mandela was very similiar in structure to Hamas with primarily a strong political orgnaization along with an armed wing. But you definitely see the Quaker in her coming out in the above quote.

Now if only Gazan woman power could combine with Bil'in non-violent protest and get the media attention it deserves...

At any rate, I'm going to try to make a point of contacting my congressman about this. Maybe even call the State Department. I know I usually just get polite letters, but hopefully enough people will voice their outrage and at least make this a PR disaster for the Israeli government.

Like Christmas morning

Last night when Talal and I were watching the last of the election results before heading to bed and it looked like maybe even the Senate would go to the Democrats, Talal said that we might just wake up to Christmas morning.

When I turned my laptop on this morning, I saw that not only are the Democrats poised to take the Senate, but Donald Rumsfeld has resigned!

It's like waking up on Christmas morning to see that shiny new bicycle under the tree.

Why do I have the sudden urge to break out into a rendition of "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead"?

That's done

Just dropped my ballot off in the mailbox. Don't know why I always wait to the last minute. I've had the damn thing for a couple of weeks now, but realized this was the last day to mail it in or I'd have to physically take it to a drop box -- something that is very difficult for me to do.

And this is an important election. Not just on a national level but locally as well. There are two ballot initiatives that could eliminate funding for many of the social services I get (gawd I love living in a state where my health care is on the line with every election!), as well as ballot measures making it difficult for teenage girls to get an abortion (judicial by-pass my ass!) or dispensing with the use of credit ratings for car insurance (hell yeah!). Not to mention a creepy Republican guy running for governor.

So, you know, vote. Unless you're a Republican and plan to vote for creepy Republicans. Then might I suggest that you need a break. You know, you've worked so hard screwing up the country -- the world even. Put your feet up. Watch some Fox News. Open a can of Bud. Relax and forget all about voting. ::grin::

Behind the Window: When puns go too far

Even my boyfriend A., who used to write for a British tabloid, thought this one went a bit too far. I mean, sometimes you can just be too clever, ya know? ;)

Yep, it's totally Lebanon on the Euphrates alright

I have a new acupuncturist/massage therapist and since we're still getting to know each other, we tend to do a lot of chatting. Which is not always a good thing when you're supposed to be relaxing. Especially when, upon finding out you used to be a Middle East specialist, she asks what you think about Iraq.

Actually, she asked me specifically what I thought about the US and Britain withdrawing troops from Iraq. My answer was that, while I think the presence of the US and UK exacerbates the violence on some level, Sunnis and Shias are not killing each other because of the Americans. They're killing each other, of course, because they're competing to see who will control Iraq, a country with potentially more oil than Saudi Arabia.

And after reading Patrick Cockburn's latest piece in the Indy today or at Alternet yesterday, I couldn't help but think of Lebanon, with the added ugliness of American hubris, incompetence and sheer corruption on a staggering scale thrown in for good measure. A few anecdotes that brought back fond memories -- or rather, post-traumatic flashbacks -- included:

Dusty truck-stop and market towns such as Mahmoudiyah, Balad and Baquba all lie on important roads out of Baghdad. In each case Sunni fighters are driving out the Shia and tightening their grip on the capital. Shias may be in a strong position within Baghdad but they risk their lives when they take to the roads. Some 30 Shias were dragged off a bus yesterday after being stopped at a fake checkpoint south of Balad.

No target is too innocent. Yesterday a bomb tore through a party of wedding guests in Ur, on the outskirts of Sadr City, killing 15 people, including four children. Iraqi wedding parties are very identifiable, with coloured streamers attached to the cars and cheering relatives hanging out the windows.

In Baghdad it has become lethally dangerous for a Sunni to wander into a Shia neighbourhood and vice versa. In one middle-class district called al-Khudat, in west Baghdad, once favoured by lawyers and judges, the remaining Shia families recently found a cross in red paint on their doors. Sometimes there is also a note saying "leave without furniture and without renting your house". Few disobey.

Indeed, I'd say if you want to know what's going to happen in Iraq, read Robert Fisk's tome Pity the Nation about the Lebanese Civil War. It's not a precise replica, but you'll get the general idea of just how nasty it's going to get.