Posts Tagged → Health

Blogging about diseases is boring and sad but I need to remember these things so here we are

I haven’t been reading much. Well, I’m still reading a little, but I’m so preoccupied that in my off time I just veg out and either watch YouTube or TikTok. Still, I’ve gotten through Dungeon Crawler Carl and am currently working through the second book in the series, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. I’m doing the print version and the audiobook (which is interestingly done).

The series is fine. I like the relative mindlessness of it. Blowing up goblins and punching monsters so hard they explode. There are some unique aspects to the plot structure that are worth examining on a serious level — I feel like the arc of the story is built to be understood from a macroscopic lens; characters will make more sense the more books you get into the story. It’s as if the author planned on writing hundreds of thousands of words and just thought, “We’ll get to it eventually.”

As a writer, I’m used to doing this stuff quickly — I’m borderline minimalist. “Get to it!” that’s my motto. Or, as Vonnegut puts it, “Start as close to the end as possible.” Don’t waste words; your readers’ time is valuable and you should use it well. Reading Carl reminds me how flexible these rules are, because there’s a lot of stuff I don’t get or simply wouldn’t do.

It’s unfathomable to me that we don’t have more information about Carl’s ex-girlfriend yet, even though you know she’s going to make an appearance (or be brought back up somehow.)

I’m also not a fan of giving readers actual numbers for strength and intelligence. This book will give each character a level and stats, all of which are explicitly told to readers. Is this why they’re calling it “LitRPG?” (Horrible, horrible name IMO. And maybe, overall, just a bad idea.)

Increases in ability should be shown through action not spreadsheets. The spreadsheets were only ever created for RPGs like D&D where you couldn’t easily show strength or intelligence through action. In a narrative, though, all we have is time to show how characters act. That’s the whole point of a story.

I will never read a sentence like, “My strength was at 30 so I was confident I could win the fight,” and think, “That’s some good writing!”

I know, I know, not everything needs to be literary. Besides my gripes at the LitRPG genre in general, Dungeon Crawler Carl has been fun so far.

Anywho.

My dad has a feeding tube installed in his stomach and is out of the hospital, but his condition doesn’t seem to be…improving, or at least not improving rapidly. While he’s glad to be home, he really doesn’t have a lot of energy. I don’t know if that’s from the cancer or if it’s from weeks of not being able to swallow due to the tumor in his esophagus (which is growing rapidly), but it isn’t a good sign.

Sarah, my brother, and I went down to visit yesterday. Dad was able to get up and move around, but not much. He can’t swallow anything at all and chews on ice like they have you do in the hospital. His headaches are getting bad. He has a big red bottle of hydrocodone you can inject in his feeding tube.

Radiation treatments start this Thursday and will continue for most of April. Chemo will start after that, depending on how the radiation goes.

A “home run” at this point isn’t a cure; a home run is shrinking the tumor in dad’s throat enough that he can swallow food. Not only will that make his quality of life much better, but being able to get more nutrition will be an added bonus. Dad loves eating and I hate thought of him missing out on food he enjoys in favor of the flavorless goop that goes right into his belly.

Time marches forward.

School continues. The ACTs are tomorrow and I get to proctor.

Sarcastic yay.

I need that green drink fix man I’ll do anything

When I was 28 or 29 and living in South Korea, there was this little old saleswoman who would come into our private school and sell little, tiny bottles of fresh juice. She was small and polite and wore an apron as if she’d just come from the factory where they squeezed the greens. She drove around the neighborhood on a little refrigerator cart bringing juice to local businesses. (It is a job I’ve often dreamed of having…)

This little, old saleswoman said something like, “For $0.60 a day, you too can feel the health effects of mashed undergrowth!” and passed out a few free samples. Her schtick was you’d sign up with her and then, once a day, she’d come in with her electric cart and bring you a healthy little drink or two. There was pomegranate, garlic, ginger. All sorts of plants that you don’t normally associate with being “juice.”

The free sample I got tasted like grass that had been cut with the sharpened edge of kale leaf. It was bad, but not in a disgusting way. Bad like the most intense salad flavor you’ve ever tried. It was the most “green” you could possibly cram into such a tiny bottle.

I was immediately hooked. I’m not a masochist (I think) and I’ve never really loved salads, but at that point in my life I was very much in a Try-Everything-There-Is! sort of mentality. It’s just sort of something you need to do while you’re traveling — be open to ideas, try things you wouldn’t normally try, go places you wouldn’t normally go. It’s the attitude that lets you try eating dog, scorpion, or silk worm larvae. “Get uncomfortable,” basically. So, I signed up to have the lady bring me the grass/kale drink three times a week.

Since then, I’ve made a habit of drinking strange “green drink!” just about everywhere I go. I’ve been doing this for years, but over the last 1 or 2, I’ve made it a daily habit.

Recently, I found this at my local grocery store:

Suja Uber Greens Organic Cold-Pressed Juice

And holy shit! My first sip was so intensely green that I thought I’d poisoned myself.

Sarah and I tried it together yesterday morning, pouring a small amount into a couple of glasses and downing them in one shot like it was Everclear.

“Gah,” I groaned, temporarily unable to form words.

“Is it supposed to burn?” Sarah asked, near tears.

“I think…that’s the…ginger,” I gasped. “It’s…fresh.” Then, as I usually do, I shouted, “Green drink!” because you have to shout that when you’re recovering from the health effects of these drinks (effects like hot neck and fizzy tum).

Anywho, I didn’t really poison myself. That drink is just…intense. They need to start doing commercials for it like they did for 5 Gum, except in these commercials people will say, “This is what it’s like to drink Suja!” all while being intensely and graphically violated by greens.

It might not sell very well at first, but I believe the commercials will find the right people. The people who need to see such things. Most of them probably aren’t even aware that they need to.

Home again home again jiggity jig

I was able to keep some food down yesterday (toast, some soup), but I’m still nowhere near back to “normal,” so I’ve decided to take another sick day. I still feel a bit feverish and just so…exhausted that I don’t think I’d be much use in front of a classroom.

I’m a little guilty about it. I always have felt guilty when I’m sick — any time I take day (or two) off of work, my mid-western brain starts beating itself up. “You’re just being lazy,” is a phrase that was always thrown around the house when I grew up, and now it lives rent-free in my head.

People always say your health comes first, but my mind is at odds with that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a person wanting to work a lot — if anything, I think I’d rather err on the side of being too hard-working — but that means I’ll feel bad about it whenever I can’t work.

And that’s a stupid way to feel. Like a boxer climbing into the ring alone, punching himself in the face, and then complaining to the referee that the rules of the match aren’t fair.

Sarah and I put a humidifier in our bedroom this winter and, holy cow, all the plants over by the window are absolutely thriving. Apparently they like a little moisture in the air.

Sarah’s taken charge of managing all the plants in the house, and she’s been doing an amazing job with them. Her policy so far has been “The more the merrier!” and it is really working. Nearly every available window has at least one plant nearby. Most windows have more. The biggest problem we’ve had is that a lot of them seem to be outgrowing the pots they’re in, which isn’t really much of an issue when you think about it.

I’ve only noticed these hearty greens because I’ve spent a lot of time in bed over the last 24 hours. Take pleasure in the small things, I suppose.

I didn’t read much yesterday, but I finished A Court of Thorns and Roses this morning and…I’m not quite sure how to feel about it. The book is fine. But that’s about it; there’s nothing really amazing going on.

The characters are a little bland, the prose is a little pedestrian, and there isn’t much happening plot-wise that really turns my crank. I think Sarah J. Maaaaas is steering everything toward a love triangle in the next book, which isn’t exactly ground-breaking.

It’s like a scoop of vanilla ice cream as far as fantasy books go. It’s not even French vanilla; just the plain stuff you get in a gallon-sized tub at the local IGA.

I’m going to give the next book a try — A Court of Mist and Fury — but I’ll have to see if things pick up a bit before committing to the whole series.

I should also keep in mind that I’m sick and I’m probably not going to *love* whatever I read right now.

Oh well.

Fruit is just a dream

Welp. My day yesterday went from me wondering, “Why do I feel so exhausted?” straight into my having to leave my first class to go throw up in the teacher’s bathroom.

Turns out I have the flu. Huzzah!

I managed to find another teacher to cover class for me and headed straight home to vomit in my own bathroom.

Then I took a bunch of Pepto and slept and slept.

I’m staying home from work today to rest, rehydrate, and eat toast with butter. If my stomach can handle it, I might upgrade the toast to fruit. At this point, though, fruit is just a dream.

I’ll see if I can finish up A Court of Thorns and Roses (10% to go!), but I don’t know how much I’m going to feel like reading. Today’s more of a “Watch Wes Anderson films while I writhe around in bed” sort of day.