It's the end of a pretty successful non-day. After too many nights of 7 hours sleep, I finally got my 10 hours in this morning, dozing for an extra hour until 11. There followed an hour of gentle but much-needed physio. (I saw the acupuncturist yesterday; I was mostly good which meant he could do some proper fine balancing, which clearly released lots of sputum that had been trapped for some time.) This in turn led to a late breakfast about 12.15, and frankly after that you don't feel like doing much else. I dozed a bit more, watched some old Strictly* footage on Youtube, played some silly games and generally rested. I didn't get any Christmas cards done, and I didn't order my mum's new computer, but I'm feeling decidedly more human.

As I was eating my lunch/supper earlier I wondered how this fitted into the life of those around me. There's no doubt that, on a day like this, I buried my head very comfortably in the sand. At the same time, I have friends suffering, whether through grief or illness, or have just had a child, or who I simply haven't contacted for ages; there are various people with CF around who are hard up; I have colleagues at work who have been seriously ill, or with again new children; Avaaz is constantly sending me opportunities to change world politics; and that's not even mentioning all the terrible (or occasionally fantastic) things happening elsewhere in the world, or the various other activities I have committed myself to. When I bury my head in the sand, how does this affect them?

Let's face it, though, I'm not alone in this. Most of us have no time to worry about everything and everyone. Human society exists which allows people to ignore the world around it. This isn't such a good thing. This negligence is what let has allowed the big supermarket chains and oil companies get away with so much (differently, obviously), for instance. But practically, we have to focus on what's important to us, to think about ourselves as well as others. Even the most caring of people cannot help every single person all the time.

So if I ever have moments of guilt, I can remind myself that I do help people a lot. For someone with CF, even just looking after myself is helpful. A day of rest like today means that I can keep working on the HELPdesk; I can keep helping the church and local community; I can cause less work for an already-overstretched NHS; I can continue to talk to and encourage my colleagues at work (sure, verbal support is pretty thin, but I still something). And I'm there are those who have seen me grow up who see my continued health as something wonderful and it cheers them up by itself - I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

So yeah. Good day :)

* Strictly Come Dancing, or Dancing with the Stars to non-Brits. I luv it!

The previous post contained my ideal system, ideal because it puts all characters on an 'even' footing. What follows is a more 'sensible' rules set.
( Rest of the rules summary )

However, I have one major hang-up on running live C:tL. The basic character in Changeling has at least 4 different clauses known. Every clause has entries for timing, range, cost, catch and effect. Moreover, the different clauses in a contract are rarely linear. Finally, they are cheap and the systems I am envisaging encourage changelings to buy contracts not other stats. While some players will remember their major clauses, I suspect that regardless of the player, having vast numbers of contracts on the character sheet will risk them being forgotten or confusing. My next task, I think, will be to ask some people who've played lots of live werewolf (the nearest equivalent), if the large arrays of gifts became confusing. If so, I'll have to slim the contracts down.

As mentioned a few times, I'm really loving C:tL and, especially reading Dancers in the Dusk (review pending!), I kept wanting to run a live game. For now, it's still in the possible future as a one-shot or a quarterly event tied to the seasons. The trouble now is finding a system.

- I don't like any of the Minds Eye Theatre systems created.
- I really wanted to update the bead system for it. However, this isn't working.

So I've been running various options through my head. What follows is my ideal system, although I'm fairly convinced it won't work.

( Rules summary )
I'll try to post the other system tomorrow-ish.

My new herbs finally arrived on Tuesday. They have definitely made a difference because things started to shift again and my ennui started to fade. Unfortunately I picked up a random bug on the same day and took Wednesday off to recover.

The good part of that was, while sitting in my duvet watching Allo Allo, I could start clearing all the gunk that the herbs had set moving again. It was a somewhat strange experience, since it didn't have any of the sputum clearing/thinning properties of my usual lung-focused herbs so it was a fairly vile colour still. My diabetes had already improved on the no. 21, so not surprising it has continued good on the no.22.

Right now, though, I think the time for it is passing since for two days I have woken up in the morning with a dry tickle. However, I've also just seen my osteopath (who kindly rearranged after I was ill Wednesday) and with the extra freedom after that I think I'll stick on them one more day before resuming with (the new batch of) no.21.

As promised a few posts ago, my diaphragm and shoulders were still very tight - much better though - and there was plenty for my osteopath to do. However, with the herbs sorted out, most of the problems which I think caused it are now behind me and next week's appointment will hopefully be the last extra session needed.

Acupuncture yesterday - I asked why no.14 was making me tense which led to discussions that cooling damp heat or phlegm heat my do this. Further discussion and investigation suggested that the problem was damp heat in my "middle burner" (this makes, as I understand it, the lungs the upper burner, the spleen and other organs the middle burner; it didn't ask about the lower burner). He also put a needle in the "triple burner" point, which apparently is there to make the 3 burners harmonise better. Curiously he talked about the point as underused by acupuncturists without training in Chinese herbs, since they are taught about the organs and this point is not tied to a particular organ. It makes me wonder how many acupuncturists aren't truly holistic.

That's a bit of an aside. The cooling effect of the no.14 cooled too far which was giving me the tension, and as a lung formula it wasn't tackling the problems. So, for the first time in a couple of years, he's given me a new formula - 22 - which is designed to cool and tonnify the 2nd burner. It uses the seeds of a really common garden flower but I've completely forgotten which one it is. No 21 sort-of covers it but it isn't ideal.

Will update when I've taken it for a few days.

Still meh in fact. I pushed myself some more last week (on the church website in this case) and then was exhausted. In theory, part of my grand recovery process involves achieving things late at night since the achievement of them is part of the process, regardless of stupidity. For some reason that hasn't worked so well and I suspect it's age :( The worst shock was how tense my torso, which I only realised when I had osteopathy on Thursday last. I could have spent another 40 minutes there without difficulty. I think it was a combination of:
- Too much time spent tired in front of the computer
- Coughing from the hot phlegm.
- For some reason, some of my herbs, especially no. 14, have been making me feel tense. The is new...

To cap it all, I had a day off yesterday (a friend from the choir died recently so I attended the funeral and decided it was preferable to take the whole afternoon as leave and sleep for the second half). So I did sleep, from about 6pm-8.30pm. I woke up with most of the tension gone, and that let me cough up gunk from places previously inaccessible. Then I ate, then I went to bed. And didn't sleep. All night. In the end I dozed off merrily at the table while wating for my van to be serviced.

So I now haven't slept properly for over 24 hours. Here's hoping tonight is different. And I'm even more behind on my paperwork!

On Thursday I saw the acupuncuturist and was disillusioned.  It wasn't the damp after all (although I'm sure the weather had an effect).  It was heat caused by yin deficiency (in effect, tiredness).  As a consequence I've been taking heavy doses of no.14 to cool me off and tonify my spleen which should also, I understand, work on the yin deficiency.  It's fascinating that every time he thinks I need a new formula, it turns out that one of the existing ones is almost perfect.

On Friday I went to choir practice for the first time in about 3 months.  Then on Sunday I, maybe rashly, pushed myself by singing in two services, digging out items for a different costume for vampire and then playing in said vampire game for about 4 hours (I was early).  Then I had just over 3 hours sleep before I went to my annual review down the hospital.  This in part explains why I'm so tired at the moment - I was already recovering from tiredness, then went and pushed myself a bit.  Work is fairly non-stop as well which means I have less opportunities to recover.  Oh, and I'm going to the opera tonight.  I hope my companion doesn't mind me snoring!

I'm not bad, but I'm still more tired than I want and my concentration especially is a little off.  It really doesn't help that every time I read more Changeling it makes me want to run a live C:tL game again, even though I KNOW it's a bad idea.  -sigh-

As promised in my last CF post, I saw the physios on the Friday.  We did find sputum, but it was buried at the bottom of my lungs in hard to reach places.  This left me exhausted again over the weekend.  I didn't help by cutting back on the 10b, but I wanted to demonstrate to myself that my good lungs weren't just down to that.  When I got some energy back on Monday, I did another focussed physio session (on my own) and that cleared out most of the remaining gunk.  After that, my sputum was a nice fluffy whitey colour for the most part.

Unfortunately, as is the way of these things, I then picked up a cold.  Not serious - just a few sniffles - but it went to my lungs for a few days.  That had mostly cleared by Friday and, since my sick note cleared me until then, I went to work.  This is day 3 and I'm doing OK.  I'm still tired.  My lungs are still weak so are being affected strongly by the damp weather.  I woke up this morning coughing up gunk;  since I had had a hypo the night before, was fairly convinced it wasn't a blood sugar problem;  my lungs had been good the day before so I didn't think it was an infection problem;  "ah-hah" I said (or at least vaguely thought), "it must be wet again".  And it was.   Back to 10b to clear my lungs since I don't have much that's particularly good against damp.

What I'm thinking about is where to go next.  At the moment I feel like a lame horse trying to get back on his feet - getting there, but I keep stumbling.  I'm slowly working back into things I neglected - most recently, some roleplaying downtime I couldn't drum up the energy for previously - but I'm still a long way from bouncing.  Exercise and time are the two most useful tools here.  At least one of them is achievable...

Blatantly stolen from fenris_lorsrai, but I thought it needed wider circulation (more on her LJ).




Fuel prices:  108.9p /litre.

Whatever I have been doing has been doing something good.  My FEV1 still needs watching at 2.36 (55%), but that's higher than 'fine' results last year and 300 ml more than Friday.  FVC (total exhaled) was 5.2, the highest it's been since I did a post-inhaler test in 2006, but that is trumped again by my ever increasing non-forced vital capacity or 5.35.  To top it all, my weight has actually increased from the already-high 77.9kg to 79.something.

So while both the registrar and I acknowledge that the remaining tiredness - although an improvement - and the the thick sputum were still worrying she accepted my decision to hold off on IVs, although I will be taking more time off work and continuing the Cipro for the second week.  I did, however, see the physio and it was very clear that there were some areas of my chest that were much more accessible with help so I have another appointment tomorrow when, hopefully, I'll have more energy.  Still, I did a lot today by my recent standards so I feel I have the right to be tired at this point.