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My fingers hurt constantly now. Not the joints so much, but the bones in between the joints. That is not a good sign to me, but there is hope. The VA rheumatologist asked me last Friday if I was taking the folic acid I've been prescribed to offset the methotrexate. One gram a day. I assured her I was taking it. Then, in an almost off-hand manner she told me that I oughta think about doubling that amount. That seemed odd to me because I was warned by the supervisor of my first rheumatologist at the arthritis clinic that I might wanna watch how much folic acid I took with my regular vitamin tablet.
I've been having trouble with having little ulcers inside my mouth and gums and my tongue has been so sore it's been difficult for me to eat any spicy foods. Last night, around two o'clock in the morning, I remembered what my doctor had told me about doubling up on the folic acid, and I got out of the bed and Googled up "lack of folic acid" to see what it said the symptoms of folic acid deficiency might be.
Believe it or not, I was delighted to discover that some of the symptoms were ulcers, especially on the edge of the lips and a sore tongue. My doctor only told me to double the dosage I was taking, but the sites where I read the information said that some people needed to take five grams of folic acid to remedy the problem for at least four months.
It turns out that I'm not eating my leafy vegetables. I gotta do the Popeye diet and eat lots of spinach. My habit of drinking alcohol doesn't help either. Much of the alcohol I've been drinking, like the coconut flavored vodka, was little sips of it during the day to clean my tongue off because I thought it might help with the soreness. I chose the vodka because wine wasn't strong enough to cut through the film on my tongue.
I took two grams of folic acid and went back to bed. This morning after I lay in bed awake for a while I realized I had some fairly sharp pain in my stomach, and I figured that was from the extra folic acid I popped during the night.
It was a busy night. Some of the most amazing dreams I've ever had. The Gnaural software I use for meditating conveniently has a feature that allows it's users to start or stop the sequence anywhere they like. I did a full 74 minute session yesterday morning, but after my brother and I walked about a mile or so before dusk I decided to meditate for about thirty or forty minutes before I went to bed.
The last part of the default theta state sequence drops to the delta state for six minutes before it brings the user back up to the predominant alpha state. Since I intended to go to bed soon after I used the program, I started the program at 42 minutes into the sequence to include the drop into the delta state for that final six minutes.
It was a stroke of luck that I stopped the program at the end of the default delta stage, but before it woke me up to the alpha state. It only takes a minute of quickly rising to the alpha state before it ends the sequence. I was happy I caught it before that happened, but it probably wouldn't have made that much difference in getting to sleep.
The dream that amazed me started in a large, long room that had a glass wall that was taller than the other side of the room on the northern side. The ceiling of the room was tilted toward the south. The room was filled with light. Throughout this long dream the strange events that happened were always centered about this room full of light.
I knew I was dreaming right away. I get the feeling that is because of the meditating I'm doing using the Gnaural software program. It takes me to deep theta. Just above where the delta brainwave frequencies begin. Just above four hertz, and keeps me there until the end of the default sequence drops into delta for a finale.
Some of the visitors to that room of light in my dream were people I knew. Some of them since childhood. Because I was lucid I realized I could change the events of the dream, and I did, but I was also able to show my visitors that they could change the events of the dream that concerned them.
The room of light seemed suspended in the air like it would have been on the second floor level. Not way up in the air. Most of the time. But, since anything and everything about the dream events and circumstances could be changed to anything me and my visitors wanted to change it to, the height of the room of light was very flexible.
One of the things that happened is that my visitors discovered they could leap from the room to the ground and then back up to the interior of the room passing through the walls of the room as if they were not an obstacle. Lots of flying went on. Later on, every object of the dream constantly changed into other amorphous shapes such that I didn't have any control unless I woke up a bit.
The dream became "a comedy of errors." That is new. I don't know where this aspect of dreaming will take me, but for some reason I'm not afraid of it going wherever it takes me. It breaks down the organization of thought itself into the elemental parts I originally used to create formal ideas with as a child. "Swing low... sweet chario'. Comin' fo' to carry me ho-me."
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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.
