Stressed

One last lesson: my freely offering up medical information about myself is not a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It is a very practical law with some good applications, and people are getting it terribly wrong, though perhaps not accidentally.

If after a job interview the company called my health insurance or tried to find my doctor and get an idea of my health, or if my doctor wrote a blog post about an interesting case and you could tell it was me... then we are getting into areas covered under the act.  

A business asking me about my vaccination status as a condition of me shopping there (or wearing a mask there) is not.

Me choosing to blog about my health is obviously not a HIPAA violation, though it may have downsides.

Moving on.

I told you my eosinophils are somewhat elevated, and the usual suspects do not seem to be at fault. I have my own theory, which is that it's the chronic stress.

I said in an earlier post that I wasn't asking for advice, but there may be a place to help here. I was reading something earlier about the effects of short-term via long-term stress on the body. I thought it was in one book that I was going to re-read for sure, so I didn't take careful notes. Then when I re-read that one, it was not in there. I think I remember something like a KAUR... maybe a protein or enzyme. I am sure that is not right because I haven't had any luck on searches, but if that sounds familiar to anyone, and you can point me to a book or article, that would be great!

Even without that, I am pretty sure it is the stress.

I think it is the four years of caregiver stress, followed by the year of looking for a job and not finding one stress, all of which has been run through with financial stress, not to mention Trump presidency in an increasingly obviously racist police state plus pandemic stress.

I feel it in my body. 

I have felt it coming down on my shoulders, crushing me.

I feel it tightening up muscles. 

I feel it crunching down on my knees and other joints.

Sometimes I feel it pressing against the back of my head, or a tightening around the eyes.

I feel it writhing in my stomach. One of the possible co-conditions for eosinophilia is heartburn, and that has been happening more, I don't think because of that.

Surprisingly (because eosinophilia can also be associated with asthma), there has not really been any shortness of breath, but the chest gets tight sometimes.

There were times during the past five years when I knew I was losing time off of my life. Now I understand how: my already compromised immune system reacting to a threat that it can't fix.

I am not decisively sick, which I guess matches the absence of clarity on what to do or what will happen.

I am just kind of unwell. My body wearing down a little faster than it should, feeling more tired than tracks, because of things that I should be able to have some effect on, but that ultimately I don't control.