I am not going to have an extra snack this afternoon, I'm not I'm not I'm not....

Does anyone have one of those child locks I can quickly put on my desk drawer?

Okay folks, how do you tell the difference between getting sick and having an allergy attack this time of year? My wrists started hurting a couple weeks ago and I wrote it off to too much work. The past week, my nose has been stuffy despite taking my allergy nasal spray. I think the spray has in general been decreasing in effectiveness over time. Yesterday my eyes were really dry all day. Today my knees started hurting, my nose is running, and my eyes are watering. What the heck is going on? I can blame the nose and eyes on allergies, but what's up with my joint pain magically returning? I'm starting to think that my pharmacy put placebo pills in my thyroid medicine...

Jessica - I find that a couple of times per year I have to shake up my allergy medicine a little. I take Zyrtec & use Flonase daily. When I trade off I go for Claritin for a few days, or if it is chest congestion I try Zyrtec D. For the nasal spray I will do a day or too of straight saline to clear everything out then go back on the Flonase, though I don't do that during peak allergy season. My eyes water and my nose is runny all the time this time of year. The joint pain I can't explain. Does the thyroid medicine control that symptom usually?

The way I look at it, inflammation is inflammation, and allergies are inflammation. So, it might have something to do with your joint pain.

OTOH, if you are getting some kind of cold or flu, that will make joints hurt also.

If you're really unlucky, you could have both at once.

There is just no help for allergies some times of year. Last October when I was visiting California, my eyes got so bad I had to have a course of oral steroids to get the symptoms under control when I got home. Played heck with my weight, of course.

Jay

Ugh, I hate inflammation! We had a health screening at work as part of our new wellness program, and all of my bloodwork came back great except that my C-reactive protein was elevated. I guess they test it to determine heart disease risk, but it is a general inflammation marker (all my other heart-related tests were perfect). Back when my wrists and knees were really awful before my hypothyroidism got diagnosed, the only bloodwork I ever had come back abnormal were inflammation markers.

Shannon, yes, in the past my wrist pain (tendinitis from repetitive stress injury) was much worse and didn't respond to treatment while my thyroid was out of control. The knee pain was 100% a hypothyroidism symptom and disappeared when I got on the right medication. I also use Flonase (well, a generic for it) -- I hadn't been taking it most of the winter, but started again several weeks ago but it doesn't seem to be doing much of anything.

Jay, ouch on the steroids! My allergy history is kind of funny. I didn't used to "have" allergies. Then one year when I was in college I had a cough that just wouldn't go away after I recovered from a cold/flu. When I went to the doctor, she said, oh, you have postnasal drip from allergies, and gave me Flonase. After taking it for a few weeks I was amazed to realize that my entire life, I had thought it was normal to NOT be able to breathe through your nose! I had been congested since birth. The Flonase was like a miracle. Nowadays it seems to be far less miraculous though.

Oh, Jessica! I hope you feel better. My DH does the same meds mixup as Shannon. He usually takes Claritin and uses a saline nasal wash daily. When he feels like things aren't working, he switches to Zyrtec for a week or so.

JayEll~can you send me a link to that website?

My sister's new husband was raised as a Southern Baptist and his father was the minister. Anyway, he's about 70 and his parents are still around (in fact they recently moved in with my sister). Anyway, several years ago the four of them were at a family wedding and *gasp* my sister had a glass of wine. Her husband, who does drink, still won't drink in front of his parents! And he was 65 at the time!!! I find that hilarious.

The only thing holding DH back from writing the letter is that our optometrist is Mormon. His son is playing football for BYU. We get an earful every time we go (even though he knows I'm not Mormon). DH has EXTREMELY poor eyesight (-16.00 = cokebottle glasses) as well as keratakonis and this optometrist has been a godsend in getting contacts to help both conditions, so we don't want to make him mad LOL.

Jessica - I've been on the generic for Flonase for about a year, (Flonase for four years total) and this last time I got a refill they used a different generic than they have before. I've noticed it doesn't seem as effective either, wonder if something is different in the delivery maybe? Did your generic change recently?

My "religious" education was interesting. My parents got married in the Lutheran church because all of the Estonians who came to Toronto went either there or to a Baptist church.

My cousin and I were sent to the sunday school there for about 4 years because my grandmother demanded that we go. When she died we were released from "religious duties".

Neither of my parents ever went to any church, although my dad always yelled about being a Christian and my mother declared herself an atheist when I was a teenager.

She also told me, when I was around 10, that I could make up my mind about religion and choose which church, if any, I wanted to attend.

So I "shopped" the local United, Anglican, and Catholic churches and I also stopped in at the one synagogue in our area. I did this alone and I imagine the clergy at those various churches considered this a little strange.

I wound up attending the Anglican church for a number of years because the sunday school teacher took us on amazing trips and her assistant was this hugely cute guy that we all had a crush on.

I never really considered Easter a religious holiday. In our house it was all about colouring eggs, eating chocolate, and having a great big meal on Sunday.

Dagmar

Interesting to see everyone's religious educations. I had none really -- my dad is Jewish and my mom is Lutheran, and since they didn't agree about what to do with us they decided to just do nothing. I remember asking my parents one time, "Am I Christian or Jewish?" because someone at school had asked me, and they were like, well, you're half of each, but when you're older you can pick whatever you want. We celebrated all the holidays from both religions at home, but it was always about an excuse to get together with the family and do some various fun traditions than it was about the religious aspect.

To be honest, all the holidays were also about food. Christmas = tree decoration, cookies, and a big meal, Easter = chocolate bunnies and cadbury eggs, Passover = charoses, matzoh, and gefilte fish, Rosh Hashanah = apples and honey and challah, Hannukah = latkes.

Nowadays I consider myself to be a secular humanist Jew. I feel like I'm ethnically Jewish, but in terms of ideology I am an atheist (or pantheist, depending how you define it). DH was raised with a Jewish religious education (bar mitzvah and the whole deal) and is mostly agnostic. The funny part is that I have been to church with my mom and grandma on Christmas (to hear the choir mostly), but I have never actually gone to Jewish services.

In other news, our basement flooded. Plumber is coming tomorrow to replace the sump pump. Luckily about all we had in the basement was empty cardboard boxes, but some of DH's fertilizers and gardening stuff got messed up. I was just happy that the one corner of the basement that stayed dry was the corner that had a big bag of potatoes in it!

Dagmar, I love the image of a 10 yo shopping churches. I’d have chosen the fun trips and cute assistant too.

Jessica, without a doubt holidays in my family were about the food. Food, food, food. Sorry to hear about the flooding. Good thing a new sump pump can fix it.

My religious education was Christian through and through. Sunday school, communion, confirmation, etc. Until I escaped as an adult. Now I am mostly a believer of Mother Earth and a higher being than the mostly warped humanity we have inhabiting this earth. So maybe on Easter I’ll go commune with Mother Earth at Crater Lake and go snowshoeing. Because someone/something created the most beautiful National Park and I have it close to my house. Then homemade sourdough pizza for dinner. Oooo I’m liking my plans!

A winter storm is on the way tonight through tomorrow. We had the most mild winter this year. Maybe a couple inches of snow total (hence the severe drought even in the desert) and now that it’s spring the temps are like December. It is so depressing. I want spring and the long term forecast has snow for the next week. What the heck is with Mother Nature?
Marie

I love that we can get off on tangents-- religion, allergies, etc. and still get back and focus on what we are here for. It is just like friends-- just thinking about online friends and what a difference this type of communication has made over the past 10 years or so. I so wonder what our friendships will look like in the future. None of my real friends know what I weigh, yet I have it out here for the world to see!

Feeling so worn out and exhausted today. I had to be up early to register for the second to last class I'm taking for my masters degree. I've taken all the terrible classes and am really looking forward to my last two-- they are by my favorite prof and advisor and they are only offered once (one this summer-- one section only and one in the fall-- same thing-- one section only). Since I take my classes online through TWU (Texas Woman's University) I had to get on to register at 6 am (8 am Texas time). Why is it that every college has you register online but they all get overloaded and crash? I was online at 6 am to register and couldn’t get in. Finally got in… my class is only offered this summer and there is one section with 25 max. There were 13 available spots when I got online at 6:02. Then it wouldn’t let me select it—it kept booting me out. I got back on and there were like 9 spots left—I chose the class and went through the screens but it kicked me out again. When I got back on the class was full and closed and I didn’t know if I had a spot or not. This took me 30 minutes for one class so then I was behind schedule!! I checked awhile ago and it was on my schedule so it looks like I made it!

I'm glad I started journaling a few days ago. I've always tracked my food (well-- not always but for awhile!) but I just started tracking my weight, thoughts, feeling, etc. I was frustrated because my weight was up for no apparent reason (125.6) and then yesterday and today it was back down to 123.6. I'm going to watch trends and try not to let it drive me so crazy all the time!!

What a pain to register Michele! I'd be going bonkers! Glad to hear it looks like you got in!

Allison - funny that you guys stay on the rolls to keep from alienating your optometrist! Considering the trouble we have had with DH's eye this year and the fact that the chalazion has come back after his last doctor visit I can totally see the need for a good optometrist.

Dagmar - the trips and the cute assistant would have won for me, too!

Jessica - isn't being all about food the real reason for the holiday? They are all linked around food at my house, too. Sorry about your basement, glad DH got is dried out and taken care of.

Michele - glad you made your class! And I've thought the same things about some of the rambly discussions we have. I don't have a lot of friends I chat with in real life, other than DH, so I enjoy these discussions here. The journal is a great idea, too. Seeing the trends will help you control the trends.

Maria - I like your Easter plans! I've seen pics of crater lake - gorgeous.

So health care reform is making me crazy. Love it, all for it, we seriously need it. Tired of everyone wanting to know all the answers right now to 'what happens to my insurance coverage?' Unfortunately, the answers just aren't out there yet.... And our company policy just came back with a 32% renewal - based on our diagnoses codes and estimation of predicted usage next year. My actual usage for this plan year is just at 80%, so it is all on what they think we will spend next year. Sigh.

Good day everyone!

I'm so glad to hear someone else who thinks this is a good idea! I have friends who are so totally against it. Gosh. To think that in 4 years, I, being a small business owner, can group with other small businesses to get better rates. That's a bad thing? There won't be any denial for coverage due to pre-existing conditions. That's a bad thing? No more caps on coverage, no more cancellations due to disease. That's a bad thing? I could go on...

Re health care I'm glad I'm Canadian. Our system is actually declining in service, and some things we have to pay for now, but overall I'd much rather be covered for a broken arm than rack up a bill of $92,000.00. That's what happened to a young woman in NYC. One slip on the ice and, a year later, massive debt.

We don't always appreciate what we have here.

Now if only someone could find a cure for the common cold!

Dagmar