This is what I found out from writing only 266 words in about an hour and a half. Sigh. Note that I am incredibly frustrated with myself. I want my crazy levels of productivity back!!!!! On top of that, the one wisdom tooth that is the furthest in is driving me crazy because it is trying to come up further. Let's just say that I have great sympathy for teething babies at this point (did I mention that it has now been...six months...since they started breaking through and none of them are even HALF uncovered?). The good news is that this cold has been quite mild. Irritating, a bit, and friday evening I was hit a bit hard, but besides that, it really hasn't been that bad. It did exacerbate my cough today, but all things told, it could be a LOT worse. I should still be at almost-peak performance level for my festival class tomorrow, when I play the second movement of Bach's E minor sonata. Did I mention that I LOVE Bach's flute sonatas? This is now the fourth one that I have played, and one of the other years I played Bach's Suite in B minor. The only problem with festival is that they only let you play ONE movement of a piece!! At least at the flute-specific festival come May, we can chose to play one movement, two, three, all, so long as it fits into 15 minutes.
Cage's Lecture On Nothing was discussed/presented upon in Philosophy of Music today. It clarified things a bit...to a certain degree. I have more Cage readings to finish, and obviously, I need to write more of that 266/c.3000 words paper.
Today was Pancake Monday at the FoM, which, when combined with companionship, helped relieve the crazy depression feelings that I felt when I got up this morning and took the bus down to the university. It was just one of those mornings when you wake up and feel like crying and can't really figure out why. The day did mostly improve as it went along...chocolate chip pancakes are delicious, being with friends is great, getting a hug is even greater, having two classes go well is good, having a good lesson with a very encouraging flute teacher definitely helped...
Sometimes, I can't help but wonder if maybe I have decreased my medication too far, that I really do need a little bit of a higher dosage. Last night, I didn't even take 25mg. I know this because I am cutting the 100mg tablets into 4 pieces, and it isn't exactly precise, but we are talking a medication that I have PSYCHIATRIST permission to alter the dosage on. I really can't say whether decreasing would have this effect, whether it is just one of those random life things, whether it is other stuff going on, you get the picture.
Well, now that my rants have been somewhat satisfied, I will get onto reading those Cage articles, and perhaps even writing some more of the essay. Real work, not just relieving feelings, although as I often say to people, if writing helps, if art helps, if music helps, if running helps, if hot baths help, if tea helps, go for it. Okay, so those are all things that I like. Although I haven't done any running besides unsuccessful between-classes-in-close-by-buildings runs that ended with crazy breathing or coughing issues. Just over a week until my pulmonary function test. Hopefully it will let us know something. Although the coughing might be 'nothing', I can definitely not deny the problems with breathing that were going on for some time before everything fell apart, even if it is a weird coincidence that they started on a day that I had a paper due and was a bit concerned about, but trust me, I have had waaaaay more stress about papers before. And the breathing episode that came along with losing sensation in my hands and the tachycardia? Well, that began during a friend's recital when I was very relaxed. Explain that one! Or, explain how I was breathing EXCEPTIONALLY well whilst waiting at my last appointment. One would think that if I was going to be affected by stress, waiting to get back results from an echocardiogram would be amongst the most stressful times, and would thus cause the symptoms to increase. Instead, they decreased. I have a feeling that I am going through a denial/acceptance period here with my pulmonary function test, just as I did with the echocardiogram, girating back and forth between yes-there-is-something-wrong and no-there-is-nothing-wrong. Though, I know that part of the reason that I thought there would be nothing wrong on the echocardiogram is that I did not see mitral valve prolapse, which I had previously seen on a picture on the internet and had figured was most likely that I had (given that 30% of patients with ED's have mitral valve prolapse, it is often diagnosed in younger women, it is the most common valve condition, etc etc). So, having ruled that out, I began to think that maybe I was just imagining things. I wasn't though, so perhaps I should trust my instincts on the gut feeling I had perhaps after the second time that the breathing thing happened. I mean, if it had happened once, sure, I could accept that as stress. But after happening another time or two? Sure, I was ignoring it, pushing it aside, thinking that maybe I was anaemic, but deep down, I knew that there was something up, and that I really should get it checked out, even though I was afraid of being labelled a hypochondriac by my doctor. I had actually been planning to phone up my doctor's office and make an appointment the day after classes ended, or thereabouts...although I was still thinking that things would probably just resolve once classes were finished.
As we know, my body had other ideas. And so it continues. I would say that pretty much everyday at some point, I will notice some degree of problems breathing. Sometimes not too bad, sometimes really annoying, and if I wasn't experienced with that degree of difficulty breathing, I would probably be more concerned. Sometimes I hide just how bad it is from those around me (perhaps not such a smart decision), but the people I spent the most time with-my flute friends, my wind ensemble conductor, my flute instructor, my small ensemble instructor, some of my other friends from other classes-all know what's up. A number of them were right there when 'it' happened (thankfully). Once I have whether I have asthma or not sorted out, I will be investing in a medic alert bracelet, but there is no point in getting one right now when the diagnosis is possibly incomplete. At this point, even if they said there is no asthma, it would still be important to put something about the heart valve down, along with my new-found latex sensitivity (an emergency surgery someday with latex gloves could pose a big problem, and just because a valve perhaps isn't causing great problems at the moment doesn't mean that it couldn't start causing huge problems relatively quickly). But...I'm not about to spend the money twice!
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