The Sea is a Salty One

Cranky today. I barely slept last night and I think it's an indicator of my asthma getting ready to ramp up into an attack. I have all the precursor symptoms, bad mood, lots of coughing, no sleep. It does not help that we're up above Denver as far as altitude and I'm having issues with low oxygen levels.  I'm a little less enchanted with this place today. The room is just awful, small, pokey and filled with bugs. Not enough electrical outlets to run my various lung appliances. Electrical problems. Every time Jim turns on the light in the bathroom it cuts off the electricity to my VPAP machine. But... I'm writing a list of what I need to buy on Friday when we take the bus back into Santa Maria to make that pokey room just a little less awful. I feel sort of like this today, I know I'm judging this place on my first world standards, which is so unfair.

Sleep. That's the main thing I've been doing since landing here in Copey, Costa Rica. Sleeping. It's hard not too. The remodel of my house was fraught with stress, problems and was turning into an endless money pit. I finally broke, tossed a few things in my suitcases and blubberingly hauled ass across the country to my mother's house. Things didn't go any better once I got down to South Louisiana. I discovered the day that the car was supposed to ship out that I was missing one of the crucial documents for shipping and had to contact Virginia DMV to get a copy sent out. The shipping company handling my household things suddenly decided to bill me and demand payment right then after me calling them for two weeks wanting to pay the bill, at a bank that does not even exist in Louisiana. Add in my mother and her myriad issues including her panic over the Tropical Storm and you have me getting a rental car and decamping early for New Orleans to wait out the...

One of the highly inaccurate things I saw reported on this week was at Alternet. One of their writers did a piece about the drug I was on for just shy of eight years - Xolair. The writer did a grave disservice to the many asthmatics out there by their allegations against the drug and the pharmacy company. They alleged that Big Pharma was intentionally ripping people off with Xolair because of the insanely high cost of the drug and that doctors were prescribing this dangerous drug for anyone that even slightly wheezed once. Here's the truth: Yes, the drug has a 'Black Box' warning from the FDA. Yes, it very slightly increases your chance of cancer. Yes, some folks on it have had strokes and heart attacks. But, as my favorite pulmonologist used to say that the population of Xolair users were much sicker than the average asthmatic to start with so you were automatically going to see higher rates of heart attacks and strokes. Add in the fact that epipens can bring on both ...