Tag Archives: immune system

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Damaged or blessed?

Am I damaged or blessed to have PANS?

Damaged because it has put me out six times? Four times with pneumonia, once with preterm labor, and once with mononucleosis. Plus getting really sick with strep A as a kid, an earache that had me crying with pain at age 8, coughs in medical school that would hang on for six weeks and not respond to albuterol. Only rest would help. A year this time and not better yet, 6 months out last time and then seven years working half time. In 2012 out two months. 2005 out two months. Preterm labor out 6 months. Mononucleosis: dropped ten pounds and did not feel better or gain it back for two months. How much income have I lost? A lot. Am I damaged?

Blessed because I am not dead? My sister dies of cancer at 49, my mother at 61, my mother’s father at 79. All three married people who had “anger issues”. And all three got cancer.

I think that they had anger that they could not reach.

I do not think that ALL cancer is buried, unexamined, unresolved anger. But I am starting to see a medical pathway that could lead from buried anger or other buried emotions to illness and death. The buried emotions are stressful. The body tries to hold the stress. The body works very hard at it. The conscious mind is not aware. This is the realm of the unconscious. The stress, the unresolved trauma, anger, grief, whatever, triggers antibodies. Heightened sympathetic nervous system, higher adrenaline and higher cortisol. Cortisol is the steroid system. Steroids help to lower inflammation but they also impair the immune system. The immune system is chronically suppressed, trashed, and then it can’t do its job. Anti lysoganglioside antibodies form and block the lysogangliosides. The lysogangliosides are supposed to clean house in the brain. They can’t clean house, they are paralyzed. And the brain forms plaques: dementia. Or some other antibody forms that blocks cancer removing cells in the immune system: and there it is. Cancer.

We all have cancer all the time, that our immune system is removing. That’s a little weird to think about, isn’t it? So we need healthy immune systems, we need the parasympathetic nervous system, we need to relax, we need to play, we need to laugh ourselves silly at stupid cat videos, we need to make ridiculous memes go viral on TikTok, we need to use the power of the internet to drive the cost of a share up just to fuck with the rich Bosses, because we are tired of them fucking us over.

So, says my sig other, or he who used to be. You need to avoid stress, in order to not get sick again.

Well. I stopped eating on Saturday a week ago and ate minimal calories and mostly high protein and fat. Because I was pretty sure he was breaking up with me. He felt the same about me. I was terrified when we walked two days ago, so I wore the dragon shirt. Most of all I wanted not to yell.

Neither of us yelled. We both listened. He doesn’t know why he has shut me out of three areas of his life, and the three most important ones. It isn’t me. He is aware that it is him. He was not really aware that he was doing it. I am trained to hide emotions, from childhood in my crazy family and then physicians are trained as well. I cry with patients sometimes, when we find that their cancer is back, or other things like that. The child dying. But I can hold a calm expression even when a person tells me that they are hearing voices telling them to kill themselves and would I please take out the antenna in their tooth. So I sat hard on my emotions for ten months. Until I thought the right time had come.

Even then, I did my best and screwed up. We’d opened up one thing and I thought the rest would be ok. I sent an email. Whoa, boy, it was NOT ok, and I got yelled at. I burst into tears. I didn’t feel like yelling at all, I was crushed. But it is ok, it had to come out. The Year of the Ox is almost over. I hope the Year of the Tiger is less horrible. But at the same time, I would not trade the time with him for anything.

Damaged or blessed? Cursed or blessed?

Both, I think. All of us.

I am submitting this to today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt, though it is not a hawk.

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Cat Collapse Disorder

Boa cat is 11. We got her and Princess Mittens when my daughter was 7.

Last summer Princess Mittens was killed by a car in front of our house. We were looking for her the day after she went missing. A neighbor said, “There is a cat dead across the street. I’m sorry.” Yes, it was Princess, all stiff. We put her in a box and brought her in the living room. Boa came in, and went stiff legged, arched and fur on end and backed out of the room. She had been crying and looking for Princess and she stopped then.

The next morning we dug a hole and buried Princess in the back yard. Boa joined us and watched. She avoided the living room for 24 hours and then was ok.

Without her companion, she is more social. Princess was the one who would come into the middle of a party and lie down as equidistant from all the people as possible. Boa would rarely venture out in company but now she is social.

In January she started dropping weight. She didn’t look right. By March I worried. I changed her food first, to an all protein, no corn, no GMO one. In May she went to the vet. She is an indoor outdoor cat. I let her out for a while when I am up writing in the hour of stupid early and the hour of insomnia and the hour of convalescence. Both cats would return when I clapped, because that meant I was locking the door and might not open it again until I returned from work. No cat door. We have a family of raccoons and they can get a bit exciting in the house.

The vet said fleas and parasites and maybe we should do a whole bunch of things including antibiotics. I negotiated by phone from Portland. My daughter promised to pat Boa while I was gone. She’s a bit cat allergic, so usually she doesn’t. She said, “Can I wear your clothes if I am going to pat Boa?” Well, good idea. She wore a cat-patting outfit and then promptly changed.

Anyhow, Boa is still thin but better. And so why would she have fleas and parasites and general awfulness after we’ve pretty much managed her the same way for 11 years? Grief, I think. I got terribly ill after my sister died and then after my father died. I think that grief lowered her immune mechanisms and she was just prone to everything. And why did I switch her food? I don’t think that cats normally eat corn or much vegetable filler, and so I wanted her nutrition to be as normally cat like as possible. Also, this spring she caught and ate 7 mice and two birds and she has never done that before. I think she had realized that the cat food I had for her was not ok. Since I switched foods, she has not brought in any catches. She also thinks I’m a bit dense, but you know….

I used to think those people who bought organic for their pets were nuts. But I can change my mind.

But reading about honeybee collapse disorder, it’s not one mechanism: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006481. It looks like it’s multifactorial. Do GMOs bother honeybees enough that then they are more likely to get parasites and mites and whatever? Or maybe the bees are grieving…..

The picture is from 2005. Boa is the black one and Princess Mittens is the black and white tabby.