April 24, 2018

Today has been health evaluation day. Over the last few days, sensing myself on the brink of collapse, I’ve tried to change my life. The doctors are not precisely helpful, but useful diagnoses can be cobbled together from bits and pieces that fall out of their mouths. I have decided this: my exhaustion, anemia, itchy skin, excess of phlegm, and dehydration are the result of the drugs which I’ve been taking to calm muscular inflammation. They have damaged my kidneys, throwing my body into crisis mode where it is always trying to make more blood. I stopped all drugs for inflammation and replaced them with cbd oil. It has worked. In three days the muscle cramps have ceased, and for the first time in six months I can talk and sing without elaborate hydration. The pain from arthritis lingers–softened–but the burning sweater of inflammation that used to grip my shoulders is gone. Tylenol remains to me, and I’ll try that on the arthritis tonight.