Swing States

So the electoral college is unfair and part of institutional racism.

Australia already has a better variation where you can vote using a sort order.

Twice the electoral college and the popular vote have disagreed and it resulted in Trump being President of the United States.

Trump resulted in the Immigrant Detention Centers.

They are the worst atrocity the American People have allowed since Japanese Concentration Camps.

The only one worse I can think of are the Nazi Concentration Camps.

So the questions I already asked about how do we prevent future atrocities while still protecting freedom of choice?

And how fast can we heal those harmed by these atrocities? The knowledge of how to heal or manage their pain exists already, and we already know that the younger someone is, the faster and easier it is for them to heal.

Republican swing states for to move to if you want your Democratic vote to have more power:

  • Arizona Grand Canyon, good place state to start or support Native American rematriation
  • Colorado (known for being a good state to pursue physical health/athletics)
  • Florida (Home of Epbot.com)
  • Georgia my friends moved away from family there to San Diego, so I’m not sure about this one
  • Nevada closest option to CA, possibilities to repair the soil food web for water restoration.
  • North Carolina
  • Ohio
  • Virginia

Urgent & Important

Most urgent: I need an Upright MRI

To check function and rule some stuff out.

I’m guessing I might need a neurologist to order that, and they’ll have to be good enough to understand the difference between a regular MRI and an upright and why I would need it.

Cardiologist, Pulmonologist and a Pain specialist would be the next ones I need help finding. So far all the best ones seem to be on the East Coast.

Salty

POTS

Recent search for POTS info in the last week or so suggests 3-5g daily.

I take:

https://aletenutrition.com/products/saltstick-vitassium-1
Each serving (2 capsules) contains: 500 mg sodium (22 mmol sodium, 1270 mg sodium chloride), 100 mg potassium.
I take 8 capsules daily (1 cap every 2 hours that I need to stay awake & upright).

So 4 caps is 1g, 8 is 2g and I can consider taking up to (4cap*5g=20caps) 20 caps, so right now I’m taking one every two hours, and it would be nice to find a doctor that can help me figure out if I should be taking them hourly instead.

Medication Reaction Log

Divalproex

Liquid form: burning pain on ingestion

Sprinkle form: MCAS reaction

Solid form – 2 large pills: MCAS reaction

I can loosen the sprinkle capsules and spread them out with food to avoid the MCAS reaction.

I kept spilling the sprinkles.

We tried a different solid pill form (5 instead of 2) – I was able to spread them out to avoid the MCAS reaction.

I was put on it starting between Dec 21-24? and I tapered off by Jan 17th. It’s January 29th and I’m still healing from the digestive complications and aggravation of my external anal hemorrhoids. The pain and my fear of them rupturing fully was intolerable.

Discussion

I recognize my limits.

I recognize my child’s limits.

I don’t know if I recognize my spouse’s limits.

I believe my spouse struggles to set limits. My spouse does not believe that.

Define limits.

Can, will, must.

If sleep is the highest priority after breathing.

Then teaching child to sleep is highest parental priority after breathing is automated.

Then which parent needs sleep more at any given time must help child learn next skill. Or both parents need to ask for help.

Current next skill is going back to bed and getting comfortable before getting back to sleep after waking up cold or needing to go to the bathroom. Teach pulling up blankets or to sleep with warmer pajamas.

Steps: ask what’s wrong, if nothing, express love and redirect back to bedroom

If cold, offer help getting tucked back in.

My friend was asking what is wrong with me because apparently I don’t know how to tuck myself in right when I was crashing on his sofa. So it’s not surprising this is a struggle.

Bipolar Medications to Research

Mood stabilizers (probably not – risk numbing joy?)

NO Lithium: Drug Uses, Dosage and Side Effects – Drugs.com

Lithium affects the flow of sodium through nerve and muscle cells in the body. Sodium affects excitation or mania.

Lithium toxicity can cause death. Lithium is a medicine with a narrow range of safety and toxicity can occur if you take only slightly more than a recommended dose.

Much safer to figure out sodium dosage.
Currently 1g, consider 2g?

NO Lamotrigine Uses, Side Effects & Warnings – Drugs.com

Call your doctor at once if you have signs of other serious side effects, including: fever, swollen glands, severe muscle pain, bruising or unusual bleeding, yellowing of your skin or eyes, headache**, neck stiffness, **vomiting, confusion, or increased sensitivity to light.

Anti-psychotic (maybe, look at how they function vs Oxygen and Folic Acid/Methylation)

NO Seroquel: Drug Uses, Dosage & Side Effects – Drugs.com

While you are taking this medicine, you may be more sensitive to temperature extremes such as very hot or cold conditions. Avoid getting too cold, or becoming overheated or dehydrated. Drink plenty of fluids, especially in hot weather and during exercise. It is easier to become dangerously overheated and dehydrated while you are taking this medication.

NO Risperidone: Uses, Dosage, Side Effects – Drugs.com

Risperidone may impair your thinking or reactions. Be careful if you drive or do anything that requires you to be alert. Drinking alcohol can increase certain side effects of this medicine.

Stop using this medicine and call your doctor at once if you have fever, stiff muscles, confusion, sweating, fast or uneven heartbeats, restless muscle movements in your face or neck, tremor (uncontrolled shaking), trouble swallowing, feeling light-headed, or fainting.

Midodrine & salt to stay awake during day for 8 hours of sleep at night

Goal, 8 hours nightly in one block and/or meds and/or stable back at baseline.

So far meds is a no. Stable and baseline both need metrics.

Metrics

For measuring manic episode:

Aphasia

Pressured speech – pause and breath or check in with your body or write it down

If you can’t interrupt the person or get them to breath, slow their breathing – try getting them to lay down or get more oxygen (fresh air – outside, by a tree)

Bipolar Disorder Management and Prevention

I have a family history of Bipolar Disorder.

I had one Manic Psychotic episode due to oxygen deprivation due to know health conditions.

I am at a very high risk of developing Bipolar Disorder as I understand it (a form of brain damage resulting from repeated or ongoing oxygen deprivation or oxidative stress due to poor sleep).

This is a great article about relevant supplements:

Popular Vitamins to Supplement Bipolar Disorder Treatment (psychcentral.com)

I used to take all the recommended ones on that page until my Mast Cell Activation Syndrome was getting so bad that the next phase was going to be airway involvement.

I stopped taking all pill, capsule and even gummy supplements and instead drink Orgain Nutrition Shakes.

I do occasionally still take a gummy supplement (Nordic Naturals Curcumin Gummies, Magnesium Gummies) with my shakes as needed to reduce inflammation/pain or increase bowel motility.

I’m still figuring out the B vitamin stuff. I found Folic Acid on a list of ways to treat bipolar. I know am heterozygous for one MTHFR mutation (methylation pathway for B vitamins).

I talked to a nutritionist who pointed out that the Orgain shakes have a lot of b vitamins. I was having 2 a day – one in the am and one in the pm and had moved to between 2-4 daily.

The tetrapaks are hard to recycle and so far the powders are too gross compared to the shakes.

I also tried the Cusack Protocol Cusack Protocol – MEpedia (me-pedia.org) and the FB group I originally joined is how I realized the reactions I was having to some of the supplements was a full body histamine dump due to my MCAS Mast cell activation syndrome – About the Disease – Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center (nih.gov)

I’m still doing the Aloe (also from Thrive Market) – my sibling came up with the trick of freezing it and dropping an aloe cube into a drink. It’s helped both of us in some known and probably unknown ways, many being digestive.

Often we can only determine if something is helping by trying it and then stopping it and noticing that things are worse.

Fear and Parenting

I recall my child asking me why parents would use fear to control their children.

At the time I replied that it was because they didn’t know a better way to keep their children safe.

This is why stories change over time.

A story needs characters and a setting and a conflict.

The more we understand the more complex the story can be. And the more we master something, the more we can simplify back down.

Fear is pain is the stick is motion away from wrong, evil, bad, pain, hate.

Love is pleasure is the carrot is motion toward right, good, pleasure, love.

If you need to change the direction, you invert something.

Bad becomes good.

If you need to hide something from those who don’t understand, you encode it.

That’s why humans use stories and art to express ourselves and to gate keep and sort.

Each word tells a story and that is why language and communication is so complex.

That’s why teens are supposed to pull away from their parents. If they don’t, you’re too far out from the center and they have to keep going the same way. Away from pain or toward love.

I’m picturing the huge pendulum thing at the California Academy of Sciences, there is a word for that type of pendulum that has a center but is swinging back and forth in a circle.

Humans have to exist to protect the earth from the universe and other humans, because we and the earth have already survived flood and fire and ice. If humans needed to cease to exist, it would already have happened. We only had to drop the atomic bomb twice and have Hitler exist once to see how evil humans can be and still believe that humans must continue to exist because humans can recognize hope and love.

All the things that could destroy humanity have already been predicted. So all you have to do is decide what your purpose is.

Are you a parent guiding the future path of humanity?

Are you resting in peace or joy or love as a light of hope along the path so that humanity can find it’s way?

Are you a guardian making the paths that lead the wrong way harder to follow?
Are you choosing to guard, or are you trapped?
If you’re trapped, you must choose to suffer or cry for help – that is the only way to know if you are the villain that the hero has trapped and to get free if you are not.

If you can tell me the story, I can tell you the roles or purpose.

The choice is always easy once you know what the choice is.

Finding the right question to identify the choice is the only hard part.

That is why humans have free will, and angels do not. And why humans can be humans or angels or god and why the devil is also an angel.

This is why “where there is a will, there is a way”

Will is Haki in the One Piece universe.

Parenting

This is how you know your child is now an adult, when you can no longer protect them. Either because you won’t because it would be wrong, or you can’t because they are now better than you at seeing and righting wrongs.

This is the sole purpose of parenting, to make nothing more beautiful than love, and nothing more ugly than wrong. To teach your child those two things so that they can be free to choose to fight for love or search for love or spread love.

I just rewatched the first Puss in Boots last night and there were so many themes of love and right and wrong and pain and forgiveness and choice and healing.