Tag Archives: Valley Fever

by Luanne | February 15, 2021 · 5:20 am

A Better Week

This past week was better than the week before, although I did have medical tests for two days which was a big time suck. Tests for the Valley Fever (no results yet) and for the arm. I most likely have tendonitis of the biceps, and that is why it’s so painful. I’m now icing three times a day, but I might need some PT. Do you know if they will do PT via telehealth, at least until I get both vaccines? Yes, I’m a wimp.

When I came out of the Xray office, these birds were holding a noisy concert.

Before I forget to tell you, next week I’m going to post on Tuesday instead of Monday, but then I will probably go back to Mondays.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve been selling part of my wardrobe on Poshmark. I’m sick of a cluttered closet although I usually choose from a handful of yoga pants and tunic-Ts to wear. Also, I feel less guilty about all these art supplies I’ve been stocking up because what I am making at Poshmark is just covering my new purchases. I particularly love pan pastels, but they are expensive at about $10 each!!!

I’m going to share a page from my art journal with you to give you an idea of what I’m working on. If you haven’t been keeping up with me starting an art journal, I will let you know that I am a COMPLETE AND UTTER BEGINNER, which becomes clear when you see this page. But it is a good representative of me teaching myself how to use art supplies and experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. So here goes. [Covers eyes and ears at the same time with all 4 limbs.]

I worked on a separate sheet of paper which I then adhered to a background page (scribbled with pastels and water) in a temporary-type way. My daughter’s face is a transfer. Learning to do a transfer was the most exciting and most difficult thing I’ve done so far. It meant another supply I had to buy: Fluid Matte Medium. I used watercolors and acrylic paints. A scrap of a poem called “Daughter Poem” and a ticket from a production of Rent my daughter was in. A “Love” stamp with gray ink. Gray pan pastel with 2 different stencils and a die cut. A pocket made of tracing paper with a plaid secret note and a gold star. I would have liked to stitch the pocket with colorful yarn/thread, but the paper has been weakened from all the coats of paint and products–and the transfer process as well.

A pick-me-up that occurred this past week is that I had an essay accepted at a journal with a very nice editor–we worked a bit on revision. And . . . I had three poems accepted by another wonderful journal. The essay and the poems are all about my father, so maybe this is a trend for 2021.

I am hoping to get the vaccine this week. If not this week, then certainly next week. Keeping these fingers crossed until it happens.

Make it a great week! XO

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Filed under #amrevising, #amwriting, Art and Music, Literary Journals, Publishing

Tagged as #ampublishing, #amrevising, #amwriting, art journal, Covid vaccine, lit journals, Valley Fever

by Luanne | November 16, 2020 · 5:20 am

Too Many Ideas

Last Monday I saw the Wizard (aka the infectious disease doctor). I learned more about Valley Fever, plus I was able to hear his insights about Covid. And he told me about a Margaret Atwood poem in The New Yorker. Does anybody have a copy of it? I’d love to see the poem if you could take a pic and send it over :).

For a VF case like mine, I can expect to have the exhaustion for four months. After six months if I don’t get worse I can be pretty sure I won’t be bothered by it again, except for the node or nodes left in my lung (which is just an annoyance).

As far as Covid goes, he told me no restaurants (not even outdoors) and nobody in my house to fix the sink without a mask on. I have to entertain my family outside. So basically, just what I’ve been doing since mid-March.

Two weeks ago I talked about my new archetype tarot cards and researching The Destroyer archetype. Because I’ve had other stuff I’ve had to do I didn’t get as into it as I would like as of yet. But you know what I did anyway? This is so crazy. Let me preface it by saying that lying on the couch too tired to actually do something gives me a lot of time to think. And you know what I think about? All I should be doing, all I want to be doing, and about new things to do. Insanely, I bought supplies to start an art journal. I am already missing writing, staring at the tarot boxes (Wild Unknown and Original), and not touching my SCRAP scrapbook project (fabric swatches and memories). I need to face the fact that I am one of those people who always have to have projects going on. My dad was like that, too. I’m pretty sure there is a gene that causes it.

I have watched more TV in the past month and a half than in the last year, I think. I’m not a TV person usually, but the gardener and I recorded all the October horror movies and have been watching them. Plus we love Professor T , a Belgian mystery show, and Baptiste, sequel to The Missing. The latter is filmed in Amsterdam and is more “typical” than the former. Professor T is a bit surprising and very endearing. Then on Netflix, on my laptop, I watched (by myself) The Haunting of Bly Manor. I found it interesting (the blind casting was very thought-provoking and problematic), but a little slow-moving. I’m also left with so many questions. [SPOILER ALERT!!!!! skip to next paragraph] For instance, if the ghosts originated with Viola, why was Dani haunted by her fiance even before she went to Bly? Wait, what about Miles? How did he survive? How did grownup Flora not recognize the names Bly and Owen, especially since Owen was at her wedding? Was Jamie really at Flora’s wedding or not? She seemed ghostlike to me, but she was still alive.

My daughter says the The Haunting of Hill House is not as slow, so I should watch it.

I am so blessed. I am not in much pain, and I have a good prognosis. I have everything I need at home (except people), and I live with the gardener and six pretty kitties so am not lonely. And nobody is waiting for me to finish that art journal ;).

With Covid on the rise, PLEASE STAY SAFE. No unnecessary risks. It’s not fair to yourself, to your loved ones, or to others, including healthcare workers. But then you knew all that.

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Filed under #writerlife, #writerslife, Arizona, Cats and Other Animals, Memoir, Nonfiction

Tagged as art journal, Baptiste, covid, Memoir, Professor T, projects, Valley Fever

by Luanne | October 26, 2020 · 5:20 am

A Little This, A Little That, and a Lot of VF

My life has slowed down to a crawl, but I am still learning things. For instance, this. Sloopy Anne has to eat her meals in the bedroom because she has a sensitive nature and Perry will keep her from eating if he can get to her. She is so skittish that if I set the food down, turn around, and start to leave the room she will run out of the room ahead of me, unless I walk out backwards. Hahaha. So she watches the direction my feet are pointed. That should not surprise me because cats are all about gestures. That’s how they communicate. A flick of the tail, a tip of the ear.

When you see how innocent he looks when he sleeps or cuddles it’s hard to believe Perry can be so naughty.

I’m learning a lot about this stupid Valley Fever. I still have the same pneumonia I had a month ago and it’s possible that my blood levels have gone up (they will be retested in a couple weeks); this is because the fungus grows very very slowly and then very very slowly is pushed into an onion of a lung nodule (the rings, you know). This will take months. The fungus doesn’t just evaporate. It gets pressed by my immune system like a pearl in the making. In the end there will be a nodule in my lung.

Another thing I learned about VF is that my neck pain–remember my neck pain from a few weeks ago?–was the first symptom I had of the disease. For some people that is the first sign. A man in an online support group told me to hydrate like crazy (my GP had told me that, too) and that the pain would be diminished because it’s displaced pain from the inflammation in the lungs. I was glad to hear of something to use because the neck pain had come back, radiated into my upper back on the left side (my left lung is the affected one), and I had even bought a little brace from Amazon. (Gee, Mom. It cost ten bucks–how much could one have cost in the late 60s?)

I’ve also learned that the brain fog from VF makes me make stupid mistakes, so I need to avoid impersonal social media as much as possible. I hope I don’t make an egregious error on here, but I guess y’all will understand if that happens. That word “egregious” is so much fun. Years ago I bought a book on sale called I Always Look Up the Word Egregious. After that, I never forgot what it meant and it’s a lot of fun to say.

This fall has brought a lot of rejections from lit journals. Some of them even praise the work I sent, but say it doesn’t fit. Um, ok. What does that mean? I think it means it’s weird. But I did have a pleasant acceptance finally this past weekend to The Orchards Poetry Journal. Another problem with publications right now is that there are a few poems that were accepted many months ago, but the issues have not been published yet.

Keep on staying safe, please!!! Grab this week by the horns!

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Filed under #writerlife, #writerslife, Memoir, Nonfiction, Poetry, Publishing, Writing

Tagged as #writerlife, #writerslife, Memoir, Nonfiction, pneumonia, Poetry, Publishing, Valley Fever

by Luanne | October 19, 2020 · 5:20 am

Day 22

This is day 22 of Valley Fever.

At least it’s getting slightly cooler in Arizona, finally.

The roadrunner came back!

The last book I read before I got sick was John W. Howell‘s Eternal Road. What a fun and thought-provoking adventure! Click the title to purchase it on Amazon. Last I looked, the Kindle version was $.99!!! Here is my review: Goodreads review of Eternal Road

I was supposed to prepare a video poetry reading for the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, but I could not handle that. I guess this is not my season for poetry. #wtf2020

That’s all for today, folks. Please wear a mask and social distance!

XOXO

Best Nurse Ever

Although I still haven’t heard from a doctor, I was seen by a nurse practitioner at an urgent care last Monday. She insisted I probably had Covid. I admit I can be a real PITA when I want to. This was our conversation:

NP: I think this is Covid.

Me: It’s not possible. I’ve been a hermit for six months.

NP: Everyone says that and is surprised when they are diagnosed.

Me: (this is where I am a PITA) They are lying to you. I am not.

NP (ignoring what I said) You can get it at the grocery store or the gas station.

Me: I haven’t been either place in six months.

After the chest xray results came in a half hour later, NP said that according to the radiologist it was either Covid or Valley Fever. At that point I could tell that for my sake she was hoping it was Covid–under the thinking that if it was Covid I was on the mend without real damage. A blood test for Valley Fever was taken. From there the gardener took me up to the Mayo tents for another Covid test.

In a day I knew the Covid test was negative. Of course, now I was worrying I got Covid from the urgent care! Although the gardener kept hoping that my illness really was viral pneumonia and that I would soon be well, I had a strong feeling it was Valley Fever.

And it is. If you don’t live in the Southwest U.S. it is possible you haven’t even heard of VF. It’s considered an “orphan disease” or quite rare. But it’s not rare here in Arizona. It’s more like the “silent epidemic.” Tell too many people about it and they won’t want to visit Arizona. It’s a lung disease that is caused by a fungus found in dust in the SW. There has been a big pile of dirt from a construction site right next to my house for months, so all it took was a little wind to blow it over to my house. Many people get VF and don’t even know they have it as they are asymptomatic. But if you have symptoms it can be annoying as it takes weeks or months or longer (average time is six months) to clear up or it can become very dangerous as it invades other parts of the body.

I have an appointment with a specialist, but not for quite awhile. In the meantime, no nurse or doctor has talked to me about this potentially dangerous and definitely life-changing illness. I suspect there are just not enough doctors to cover all the regularly sick people and all the Covid people.

Today is day 15, and I am just as tired as I was a week ago. If I do a little chore or two in the kitchen, I have to nap for 30-45 minutes afterward.

This is fifteen years ago to the season that I was laid up for a year with a tumor and reconstructed foot. At that time, Pear Blossom lay with me and took care of me. Although she is 20.5 years old now, she is still doing so. Perry and Tiger lie with us, but make no doubt about it: it’s Pear’s couch and she is taking care of Mom and just letting them hang out. I hold her little paw or she holds my big hand with her paw.

I’m going to turn off comments again because I still haven’t responded to comments from two weeks ago or been reading blogs. I hope to be able to do that this week.

Hope you have a happy week and PLEASE stay safe.