Life

Seeewwwww Loneleeeee

Excuse the random lolspeak title. I’m in a weird(a.k.a. normal) mood today.

(Warning: this post is full of many random subject changes due to my mind having no sure direction and more than one thought at a time this morning.)

The muse has returned!

Grandma came home last night (she ran away. (went on vacation) ), and just as I had suspected, my lack of inspiration to write was directly related to living alone. I am not a live-alone person. At all. As I think I said in a post earlier this week. I get depressed, uninspired, subdued, and don’t feel like eating. Totally  not me at ALL. I’m generally very happy, weird, random, and I eat all. the. time.

So I woke up this morning and -after taking a few minutes (or an hour) to wake up- I had the strong urge to get back to one of the five million stories in my head and write. For hours. And hours. I miss it. 😀

Also, I have returned to the dark side.

picture0098

Of hair.

(here’s a reminder of what color it was last time you saw me.)

And yes, it is pretty much always in my face like that. I have obnoxious and stubborn hair (for anyone with curly hair out there, yes, straight hair can be unruly, too. It’s just more slippery and never stays where you want it instead of tangling and going wild all the time.)

This color is much closer to  my natural hair color, except that my natural hair color doesn’t have a random red sheen under lights, and it’s a little lighter.  I think. You know, it’s been a really long time since I’ve let my natural color grow out… I get too impatient/bored with my hair, and since most of the time I’m letting it grow, the only option I have to change it up is go dye it.

But that is the longest I’ve ever resisted my normal choice of dark hair dye. A whole three months! 😉

Goodness.

It’s ridiculous how much happier I am when someone’s home.

Oh! I just remembered I was going to give an update on the natural allergist.

She was… interesting.

The office smelled like air purifiers (due to the…air purifiers… in the office…) which I really dislike- there’s something about purified air that just… blegh. It also affects my breathing for some reason. I’m odd like that.

Mom and I sat in the waiting room for about… oh… five to ten minutes while the allergist (Mary… I think. I’m horrible with names. We’ll call her the Nature Lady.) cleaned up her room after another patient and then washed her hands (she washed her hands a lot). She told us we were having too much fun. Mom and I laugh a lot. At ourselves. We’re pretty funny. 😉

Anyway. When she was ready for us, we were ushered into a very small room with two chairs, one of those standard flat beds that… every doctor has… a desk, a bookshelf full of natural pill bottles (pills of natural remedies) and  another taller bookshelf full of Naturopathic liquids. We sat. She asked us a series of questions about family medical history, my own medical history, how I reacted to allergies, food allergies, etc… and then she explained what she did, how she got into Naturopathic studies, and who had first started acupressure (not acupuncture, acupressure. No needles.) treatments for allergies.

It was a very long and detailed (and slightly boring) explanation full of information that I did not retain but that sounded logical enough.

Then we began.

First, she had me  hold out my left arm, thumb facing down (by this time I was sitting on the cushy bed-table thing), she told me to uncross my ankles (automatic position when sitting on something that doesn’t allow my feet to touch the ground) and she told me she was going to use my deltoid  muscle as an indicator of whether my body was saying yes or no. It’s a muscle resistance test. She would say (quietly) “hold strong” or be silent repeatedly as she very lightly pressed on my wrist, and my body would react accordingly.

It was interesting how even though I wasn’t controlling my reactions to her words or the pressure at all, my body knew what she was  doing and it knew when to resist and when to let go. She demonstrated how when she distracted me- by tapping my leg, or my shoulder, or both- at first I couldn’t resist the light pressing of my wrist (my arm has been held out all this time, by the way), but when she had me cross my wrists, clasp my hands, and… bend my arms in, thus folding my hands under my chin, and then cross my legs- thus “lighting up” both sides of my brain- for a few minutes, my focus was better and my arm resisted just fine.

After that, she tested my muscle resistance to allergens. This is where it got odd/funny/random/interesting.

She would hold the vial of allergen to my ears, my sinuses, my chest, my throat, and… my liver, and at each spot would press my arm. When my arm resisted, I wasn’t affected in the area she held the allergen to. When my arm gave away, I was. (My ears aren’t affected by my allergies, but my nose, throat, and chest are.) Then she would have me hold the allergen to my forehead, the bridge of my nose,  my throat, and my chest. At each spot, she would press down  either side of my spine in specific points, have my roll my eyes around as she did something (that I couldn’t see) over my head, and then have me look side to side as she again did something over my head. (I think the latter two things had to do with getting  my brain to focus… on… something.)

After she thought she was done with the allergens, she would come back around,  have me hold out my arm, and she would  ask questions such as “am I done? Do I need to test anything else in this area? Is there something more?” as she again pressed my outstretched arm for the answer- whether I resisted (yes) or gave away (no). But the questions weren’t directed  at me or at her notes. I’m not exactly sure who she was asking; her eyes were generally closed and her face turned away from mine.

That part… was different. Especially when she told us that her senses were telling her that there was something else. (Not my body or my reactions, but her senses. Extra ones? It wasn’t very doctor-y.)

Despite the very… different (and unexpected) way of doing things, I felt improvement when we left. I was breathing better, and then when I was home,  my allergic reaction to my cat was much reduced, and it left at a  much quicker pace than usual. It was a contrast of a stuffy nose clearing up in five minutes vs the old being unable to  breathe for two hours.

She said that I should only need to go back one or two more times before I can move home (!) and I won’t have to get rid of my cat (!) and… if I should start having any sort of reaction, I can go in for a “tune up” and I will be just fine. Her testimonials from other people were very good; one woman who owned two cats was able to cuddle and stick her face in her cat’s fur (ew) and not have any allergic reaction at all, whereas before she visited the allergist her eyes would swell up so badly that she wouldn’t be able to see.

So I’m very hopeful.

But if you ever go to a natural allergist and have doubts while being treated, don’t worry. It  might seem really weird and you might laugh at the methods (it made me smile more than once, I have to admit. I laugh at everything, though.) but you will see improvement and it’s not just a bunch of crazy ritualism about nature.

Even if your natural allergist does occasionally wave her hands above your head  and say she senses a disturbance in the force*.

😉

*She didn’t really say that. 😀

 

 

6 Comments

  • Bethanything

    I make a point never to go to any doctor appointments on my own because my mom makes it way too much fun in the waiting room. 😛 I’ll take a bunch of books and never end up reading a page. She has a really goofy sense of humor and mine’s similar but slightly more witty/sarcastic so between the two of us… utter silliness. Heehee.

    Haha! That last part made me laugh! 😀 And I’d probably laugh at the Nature Lady’s methods, too. But politely, of course! I’m thrilled it’s working already for you! Hope it continues to! Yay!! I love cat snuggling. Never had one of my own, but I’m quite attached to my best friend’s two kitties. Even the one that hates me. 🙂

    • Mara

      Hehe, yeah. Mom and I are the same way. We have a lot of fun wherever we go. 😀

      Yeah, it was… a really different experience, and she sort of made me giggle. But it’s working, so I’m not gonna knock it. 😀

      Aww! Yeah. I’m very attached to my cat. Even when she doesn’t want to cuddle.

    • Mara

      I do too!

      Well… the allergies started about six years ago with these weird little bumps that would show up on my fingers or my wrist every once in a while… and they’ve just been getting worse and worse- spreading first to a rash on my legs, then to my breathing problems, and then to hives- in the last few years.

      But six years ago is when we first lived in a house with carpet and had an inside dog at the same time; I also got my cat six years ago. And the inside dog we had wasn’t hypoallergenic (before him we had a Schnauzer, and they’re not usually prone to setting off allergies. But we also lived in a wood-floor house.)

      • Avra-Sha Faohla

        But it seems like it’s been getting worse only lately. You’ve been living at your grandmother’s house for, what, three months? That’s a while, but not six years. Why did your allergies get so bad so recently?

        • Mara

          Allergies, when you grow into them, build up over time. So they have been building up over the last six years and going from a mere few bumps on my hand to almost always present rashes on my legs to the presence of hives and then manifesting in my breathing. And if I really think about it, I haven’t woken up without a stuffy nose for… a long, long time. So that in itself, while seemingly innocuous at first, is probably just another symptom that I never really thought anything of until my chest began to close up.