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"Taking the risk of being labeled a fool by someone like Renfro is more fun than it needs to be. Baiting him to accuse me of being himself is rudimentary in learning to be a fisher of men. Jack is the same way. Despite their intellectuosity they still reach for the tribal things to feel secure about what they ignore."
I wrote this in response to being written about by the fool who projects his foolishness on me. I like the way the last line in the paragraph turned out. He apparently doesn't have a clue the implications of what he does by accusing me of being like he is. He's the biggest sucker in the group aside from me. My tasseled crown is safe.
Today the temperatures are supposed to get balmy. Up into the mid-70s (22-26° C) in the daytime, but dropping down into the 50's at night so that I can still use light covers to stay warm. Perfect spring weather. My youngest brother drove over with the disk on his tractor and plowed me a couple of rows for a garden.
I'll probably get out there today and rake the grass and as many of the roots up as I can so the centipede won't re-root itself. Fortunately I've got a couple of days left on Prednisone so that my hands can grasp the rake handle without excessive pain.
The effect of the prednisone/steroids on my joints, especially as associated with my wrists and hands, astounds me. When my hands and my wrists are swollen up I give the appearance that accords with the line from the prison movie The Shankshaw Redemption, "Out there in the real world, he's just another old man with bad hands."
If I accidentally bang my hand against something as inanimate as furniture the pain incurred can be debilitating for a moment. I have to stop whatever I'm doing to acknowledge it. Grabbing a rake and working furiously without thinking much about it is not possible.
After a week of taking 20 mg of prednisone the swelling is almost completely gone, and my hands and wrists work just like they always have. I figure that's the clue I need to research if I'm gonna find a comfortable way to live with RA (rheumatoid arthritis). I need to find out about how my own body produces the steroid equivalent and if it can be pumped up through whatever means available. If I figure that out I really will have a chance to become rich and famous because nobody else has discovered it that I'm aware of.
It wouldn't surprise me that if somebody did find a way to make having the disease that method would disappear into the woodworks because RA and Diabetes are the medicos guarantee of a generous income. If a person lives long enough they're probably gonna get one or the other or both. If you get an autoimmune disease you're most likely gonna seek help. It's not pleasant in the least.
I'm getting to the point where I might emulate Coretta King and go to the quacks in Mexico. I like to think I'm smarter than that, but that's never really gotten me anywhere before when I've thought that I was smarter than that. If I actually have behaved in a smarter than usual manner I forget about it right away because nature gives up. If I could keep the swelling down there wouldn't be any pain. None.
As an effort to keep from going to Mexico where they have no prescription laws, I'm using a new supplement I read positive things about in the flashy ad sites and the more respected medical sites associated with university research hospitals alike. It's called Alpha Lipoic Acid. The overdose levels are at least a couple of magnitudes higher than what I'm taking, and the documentation states that a subscriber urinates out what it don't use if they don't get nutty and shove it into their body by the truckload
There is one aspect of this chemical/drug/whatever that appeals to me. It has the reputation of removing heavy metals from the body safely. I bought some Boron and other unknowable stuff to help me with that, but what I'm reading states that taking alpha lipoic acid does it in association with other stuff it straightens out, so I've stopped the Boron. I'm putting my heavy metals removal into this one basket.
I'm not taking the last prescription medicine called leflunomide. It's just not people friendly. Two days after I started it I started defecating blood. Nobody wants that. If the pain and swelling gets to be too much I might start taking it again anyway, but the side effects are horrible. Even worse than the pain of the RA. If it won't cure me, and it won't (there is NO known cure), then I'm not going to introduce additional suffering and body part disintegration as an experiment. I'm not letting no doctor decide I should commit suicide to keep from experiencing pain and death. There ain't a pill for that yet either.
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
