I have been eating too much chocolate and have been mildly constipated the last few days. I am making an effort to get more fruit, veggies and fruit juice into me. I also wanted to get some peppers into me today, for a different reason. The result has been two incidences of diarrhea today, the kind I associate with die off and purging. This was followed by fever. I haven’t gotten enough other stuff done today. This kind of wrecked my day. I am trying to make my peace with it and trying to look at it as a positive in that it is forward progress on my health and my health is the single biggest reason for my financial woes.

Yesterday was a bright sunny day, contrasting with all the cloudy, foggy weather we have seen since getting here. I got fairly sunburned which taxed my system enough to cause a crisis with one of my weak areas: My teeth. I have found that my dental pain can usually be cleared up with enough organic butter and sea salt. But I am living in a tent, so no refrigerator and thus no butter on hand.

After a miserable night, I woke up somewhat improved but still in crisis. I mentally ran through my options and then went and got a breakfast burrito with potatoes, bacon, cheese, and eggs. The bacon and cheese are both sources of fats I tolerate well and served as a good substitute for butter. On the way back, I walked barefoot through the surf to get some sea salt into me. I didn’t really feel right until after lunch but I was no longer in crisis. I had a surprisingly productive day in spite of how badly it began.

We had an evenrful day yesterday and I never got around to doing a blog post. My son with CF caught my sore throat/ear/sinus thing the night before. We spent part of the night and much of yesterday dealing with it. Then I went to bed early. As part of our treatment, we walked out on the jetty together yesterday. It was my first time since we got here.

The jetty is a stone structure that goes out into the water, sort of like a pier. It has something to do with guiding ships into the harbor, or so I gather. As you walk out on it and leave behind the land, the air becomes thicker, heavy with water and salt. When we visited here six years ago, we went out on the jetty as a breathing treatment. We went yesterday to help us fully recover from the upper respiratory infection I picked up a few days back, probably from some unwell retiree when I took a shower in the nicer showers. We plan to stick to the cheaper showers in the future. They seem to have a generally younger, healthier crowd.

I ended up pitching my contaminated clothing and doing a few more things to get my sore throat fully cleared up. I am still recovering from that and not doing much today. Also bought some garlic-laced chips to help kill the infection, spiked my soda with diet tonic water a few times, and have continued to walk in the surf daily. Oh and put peroxide in my ears and up my nose. Lots of little things working together is how I stay out of the ER and off harsh drugs.

One reason we wanted to come to a our current location is so we can wear sandals year round. It is warm enough here to do so and the tourist-oriented shops sells them twelve months out of the year. We have long favored sandals as much as possible because we find that closed shoes promote smelly, itchy feet — in other words, skin infection of some sort. With our “sandals preferred” policy (combined with all the other things we do), our feet have gradually grown healthier and less prone to problems. With increased ability to favor sandals, we should see additional gains. As an unexpected bonus, walking in the surf (in either sandals or barefoot) is causing my feet to heal in unexpected ways. What I had thought was callouses seems to have really been some kind of infection. The depth of dead-looking skin is thinning and pinker, healthier skin is emerging, especially on my heels.

I woke up with a sore throat. I walked down to the shore and soaked my feet for a bit, soaking up the salt and other minerals found naturally in sea water. My throat is much improved. I joke that I am part mermaid and that is why I have respiratory problems: I am like a fish out of water. The antidote to that is not boatloads of drugs. It’s getting me the nutrients I need found naturally in abundance in the ocean but much harder to come by further inland.

I get really bad floaters sometimes which means my vision can be really crappy at times. As best I can tell, it is a side effect of die-off and is probably due to higher-than-normal levels of detritus in the bloodstream. I had a rough day yesterday and could not look up while walking. I mostly looked at the ground in front of my feet. Today, my floaters are not so bad and I find myself looking ahead for part of the time when I walk. I should have a better day today than yesterday and I was surprisingly productive yesterday in spite of floaters and probably also fever and shock.

Earlier this month, I moved to a coastal town. I wanted to settle here six years ago while going through my divorce but was too sick to figure out how to make it work. Coastal climates are supposed to be good for people with CF. Yea, verily, we are finding it very beneficial. My son periodically goes out on the jetty as breathing treatment. I am not really ready for that. Just breathing the moist, salty sea air everyday is having enough impact. I sleep ten or twelve hours some nights and sometimes have diarrhea, all very familiar as part of the healing process from years and years of pursuing better nutrition and alternative remedies.

I had to mail a form today. I do not own a printer and do not keep stamps or envelopes on hand. A trip to the library allowed me to print four pages for sixty-five cents and a trip to the post office allowed me to purchase a single envelope with prepaid first class postage included. Yes, it is relatively expensive on a per item basis compared to buying in bulk. But I do a lot of stuff online or arrange for bills to come directly out of my account. So I only do this once every few months. It is well worth the hassle and small premium involved to help me limit how much paper I have at home.

I have been traveling under difficult circumstances and dealing with a lot of sunburn and minor injuries. There has been no opportunity to take a bath, only the occasional shower. So I have been unable to take salt water and apple juice baths like I normally do for such problems. We have found that eating pig skin (which you can get as a snack) or chicken skin (as part of a meal) speeds the healing process significantly.