Dog Days

We are having one of the hottest and driest summers on record here in No. Utah. The southern part of the state is finally getting its annual monsoonal moisture, but even that is hit and miss. Top the heat and dry off with smoke-filled air and you get the picture of current life in the Great Basin. Many days the smell of smoke is prevalent and we cannot see the mountains on the other side of the valley. Might as well get out a Cuban and enjoy a real smoke. The dry has affected the fishing as it now is hard to get into many of the reservoirs in southern Idaho and northern Utah that I like to fish. All of these serve the farmers who are understandably irrigating like crazy. Some will drain fisheries dry (alas) in order to make long-needed repairs to dikes and dams.

I have continued peripheral neuropathy. I know this is beginning to sound like a broken record, but I think there may have been some exacerbation of the condition given my most recent maintenance round of chemo. I can really feel it in my hands and arms, legs and feet in the penumbra of sleep early morning and late evening. It seems to conflate with arthritis. At this point I don't believe it is enough to medicate for as it is not causing me to lose any sleep. But I worry how much pain I am living with in terms of my shortness of temper. I feel more angry than usual, so it may be affecting me in ways I don't fully realize. Of course, I am sure that my anger is also related to the sheer dumbness of our politicians in the silly political season we are in, the heat, and more. Perhaps, like the summer and the election, it will blow over. 

I thought the amount of glutamine in the recipe I am taking for neuropathy (5 gms/day) was a mistake since the glut pills that one finds OTC are in the 100 mg range. (That would be 50 pills a day by my math.)  But no.  The health food place sells a powdered glutamine, one tsp of which equals 5 gms. So there is no mistake.  I am told that glutamine is one hell of an antioxidant. In any case it goes down easily in oj and doesn't seem to affect the digestion. The other components, Vitamin E, B complex and alpha-lipoeic acid, are in more usual amounts.  Can't say, given the foregoing, that I feel much effect of this recipe as yet. I am not optimistic about it.

Anyway, I'm still on the right side of the grass as they say and still looking forward to tomorrow.