Out and about—with no choice

The smell of tarmac.. I must admit it’s not my favourite scent!

I have just been reading the blog of Jenelle Dorner, a doctoral candidate in neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University.

“Synaptic Jen”, as she calls herself, explains how for 12 years now, she has suffered from tardive dystonia, a common form of brain damage caused by neuroleptic drugs.

Tardive dystonia is a disfiguring and incurable disease typified by painful and uncontrolled muscle jerks and spasms. Jen is now confined to a wheelchair because of this.

Jen describes how the drug damage has also made her hyper-sensitive to sound. She writes:

Yesterday I had a dystonic attack at work in the lab. Another graduate student was using a tone to train his mice that had a very high frequency and triggered my attack. I have had mild attacks at work before, but never a full body severe attack like I had yesterday. As usual I had to convince people not to call the paramedics. Attacks are very scary to people who see them because they look like seizures only I am conscious. I managed to calm everyone down and get some medications to help get the dystonia under control. We also stopped the tone of course. Unfortunately once an attack is triggered it usually takes a while for me to recover. Luckily I was doing a lot better after about a half hour or so.

Good to hear the yoga was good. Yoga was just recommended to me so I guess I’ll give it a try. I did a bit a couple of years ago and liked it – not sure why I quit.

We also have painters outside our house. The aren’t scraping – not yet anyway or like you I would HAVE to leave. They are getting my dogs barking which is almost enough to make me leave. And, the lack of privacy and disruption to my routine is a problem. Hopefully they work fast and get it finished soon. Hoping the same for you with your painters.

Tamara

Aww. My sympathies. I know how noise can drive us nuts.

My previous neighbour, a wily old fellow, well into his 70s, decided he was going to re-surface his driveway with tarmac.

Normally I would have said all credit to him. However, it took him weeks to finish the job.

He started each day at exactly 7am. A perfectionist to a fault, you could set your clock by him. He rolled out a tiny area of tarmac at a time and then spent hours smoothing it with a mechanic “whacker plate”. The glass in all the windows rattled. In fact, the whole neighbourhood shook! I gave up trying to sleep.

the yoga class was a killer. It was an hour and a half long and I did the whole thing! I took one 2 minute break.

I was exhausted but for good reason—unlike my previous bouts with long term chronic fatigue. I’m really amazed with what I’m able to do now. And I’m fine today too…I’m still pinching myself!