Tag Archives: RDP

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Xeno or infection phobic?

So is Xenophobia a pathological fear of strangers or foreigners? Like agoraphobia or arachnophobia? The Mayo Clinic site has a listing for agoraphobia but not for arachnophobia or xenophobia. Perhaps agoraphobia is more disabling. Though with our world having more and more people, xenophobia might be terribly dangerous as well.

Current world population: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/.

Number of people with Long Covid: at least 65,000,000, though the talk I attended yesterday say that’s a low estimate. Nearly one percent of the world population.

This article in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2 is about Long Covid, the research to date and the areas that need research. This is a very fast moving target with information exploding from multiple labs.

I attended an on line continuing medical education about Long Covid yesterday: https://hsc.unm.edu/echo/partner-portal/echos-initiatives/long-covid-fatiguing-illness-recovery/. This is a global monthly teaching session about Long Covid and current research and diagnosis and treatment. Yesterday’s talk was about immune cell abnormalities that persist and evidence is showing up that they are causing some of the problems. However, as one researcher said, the problems are multifactorial and any system in the body can be affected in more than one way.

Essentially some of the immune cells are puffy, sticky and enlarged. The suspicion is that the postexertional malaise is related to these puffy sticky cells. During exercise, or for some people normal activity, the muscles need more blood flow and more oxygen. The puffy sticky cells are stiff and won’t slide through capillaries easily. The muscles send a panic “I need oxygen!” message to the brain and the muscles do not work. The recovery can take a day or two days because of the food/oxygen deprivation. The researcher said that the same mechanism is suspected in ME-CFS (myalgic encephalopathy-chronic fatigue syndrome).

My muscles are feeling normal. My chronic fatigue is comparatively mild and happens with bad infections or with a vaccine that raises antibody levels, as it is supposed to. That’s how immunizations work. Do I have antibodies that shut down my muscles or do I have puffy cells? I would postulate the former but I can’t be sure right now. My home science kit is not quite up to that study.

When my fast twitch muscles are not working, are affected, it is very weird. They DO NOT WORK RIGHT. It is hard to describe: it is sort of pain, but it’s more of a very very strong STOP EXERCISING NOW message. And then I am exhausted for 1-2 days. In contrast, my muscles are a bit sore after a four mile beach walk 2 days ago and then an intense physical therapy session, but I am not exhausted. No naps the last two days. I have returned to my normal sleep patterns, less hours.

One of the researchers presented new technology that can make a movie of the microscopic cells going though a space with a narrowing like a capillary. Video electron microscopy. They are describing the cell shapes and whether they go through a capillary diameter normally or stick, for people with no Covid, diabetics, acute Covid and Long Covid. All are different. It is fascinating new technology.

I think I am more infection phobic than xenophobic. People all have the same basic blood cells inside, even with lots of different genetic patterns. So far infection phobia has not led me to agoraphobia, but the talk yesterday sure makes me want to keep my mask on.

There were over 350 attendees yesterday from all over the world. Lay people can sign up as well and the videos are stored for anyone to watch. I will watch yesterday’s a second time because five different scientists presented in 30 minutes and I ignored the chat which was going full speed with references to look up. Homework. And progress is being made.

Blessings.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: xenophobia.

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I took the photograph two days ago from East Beach on Marrowstone Island. The distance between the sea lions and the container ship is much further than it appears, and this is taken with a Canon PowerShot SX40HS zoomed most of the way out.

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Daily normal

This is normal during the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race. Feathers, headgear, human powered land, water and mudbog machines, as well as Kinetic Kops and bribery of the judges. All trying to be Most Mediocre.

Not whacky, nope.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: whacky.

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Cautionary tale

I climb in a flower gullet
That’s eaten by a horrid pullet
Then an eagle with a mullet
Grabs and flies with the wicked pullet!

The pullet’s dead, I must escape
I climb the warm wet red throat like tape
crawl out her beak, I’m on her nape
Staring down at a far landscape!

The pullet swings in the thermal’s rise
I can’t believe I am alive
The eagle soars and then she dives
A nest with fierce small beaks: a hive!

I jump as the eagle lands
her greedy children shout demands
they tear the pullet wing to gullet
while the eagle grooms her bloody mullet

I crawl through the nest and jump away
eaten and freed in just one day
to tell the tale for many days
of eagle mullet pullet gullet

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: gullet.

Why doesn’t bullet rhyme? Words are weird.

I took the photograph in Michigan in 2017 in July, at my friend Maline’s garden.

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Memory trip

The Swinging by the Sound dance weekend was a memory trip for me.

I met my future husband dancing, back in 1986. We met contra dancing, but he was already learning Lindy Hop. We took a class together and met people that I am still in touch with. We went to dances at the Spanish Ballroom, in Cabin John, Maryland, with 400+ people. We had an hour of teaching and three hours of dancing, in the old park which did not allow alcohol. The Ballroom was not heated in the winter and would be in the upper 90s in the summer. I remember winter dances with the band needing space heaters. The dancers did not need heat: we were generating it.

I took this photograph at a Swinging by the Sound class. People choose Lead or Follow and the instructors have the Leads rotate every few dances. I am happy seeing so many people learning both, because it makes you a much better dancer.

We loved our bands too, and Daryl Davis and his band played at our wedding.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: trip.

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Sometimes wise

Sometimes the wisest thing to do
is to refuse to watch the news
to go for a walk alone
and then go quietly home

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: wise.

Quieting the sympathetic fight or flight state to the parasympathetic relaxed state: http://www.wisebrain.org/ParasympatheticNS.pdf.

This is one of the pieces Rainshadow Chorale is working on:

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Holding a sing

My parents did not do karaoke. They held sings.

In college, late 1950s and on, they would have a sing. My father played guitar, they would invite all their friends, and sing folk songs. They used the book in the photograph, Song Fest, edited by Dick and Beth Best. Last published in 1955, I think.

I have no memory of the book itself. However, a friend of my father’s bound his copy in 2003 in leather. When I saw it, I searched on line and bought my own. It has words AND MUSIC and a chord progression. When I opened it, I know a song from about every third or fourth page.

My sister and I memorized the songs. We both had hundreds of songs memorized, many from this book, or from records. We photocopied a Beatles record insert and memorized all the words on a long car trip once.

I don’t know much about the Intercollegiate Outing Club Association, but there are still copies of Song Fest on line. My parents had to edit a number of the songs for two small children, since we were picking them up. They chose silly songs, “Dead Girl Songs” (Banks of the Ohio, Long Black Veil, My Darling Clementine, Cockles and Mussels) and work/protest songs. They rarely sang sentimental songs, except for lullabies. I loved to sing. We used to have reel to reel tape with my little sister singing a fifth off when she was three or four, but it disintegrated.

My father, Malcolm Kenyon Ottaway, was a fabulous musician. He sang in prep school, in college, in choruses on the east coast, in Rainshadow Chorale from 1997 until his death in 2013. He loved Bach and the Band and loved to encourage other people to sing. He was in our Community Chorus for years, to help new singers. People must try out for Rainshadow Chorale, but Community Chorus is for anyone who wants to join and sing. After my father died, men would say, “I would try to stand near your father in Community Chorus, to help learn the part. He was so good.”

Here is one of the lullabies from Song Fest:

At the Sings, my parents would start with a song and then go around the room, asking other people to pick songs. Sometimes people were shy, but my folks were really good at getting people to sing. Sometimes we’d have multiple guitars and other instruments. My sister and I had favorite songs too!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: karaoke.