I had expected this to be a pretty good day.  The workweek was over, and Double XP weekend has begun in City of Heroes, one of my favorite games.  To top it all off, I bought a new mobile phone, except it is more like a small always-online computer.  A small, SLOW computer, but even so.

But toward the end of the workday, I noticed that I was feeling weak. I came home and saw that my pulse was far above normal, so that just standing was the equivalent of exercise.  I tried to mow lawn again since it wasn’t raining today, but had to give it up, my pulse was way out of normal range then. I also had a slight headache and my skin felt warm to the touch.  The temperature was only elevated by less than a degree Celsius, though.

Over the course of the evening my hemorrhoids have grown ever more painful. These made themselves known earlier in the week as I had a near brush with constipation after adding salt to my diet.  There hasn’t been anything the last day or two to cause this pain though, which is worse than in many months at least.  Anyway, I haven’t heard of anyone getting fever from hemorrhoids (and I suspect 9 out of 10 women have had worse piles than I) so instead I was like OMG SWINE FLU PLZ HEAL in my head.

However, the pulse has gone down a bit, as have the other symptoms, except the hemorrhoids which are getting steadily worse. -_- I’ve read that a blood clot may happen in these occasionally and cause unbearable pain.  It is however not fatal (or about in the risk range of meteor strikes).  So the flu would be worse.  Last time I had (normal, seasonal) flu, the fever came in the night, and when I woke up it was just barely I did. I had to crawl, literally, to the bathroom, where I somehow with great effort got the cold water to run and splashed enough on me to cool me down to where I began to think clearly and take full control of my body. That was a near miss.  But at least I am not responsible for anyone else, so all I need to focus on is staying alive.  Tonight I am eating a small dose of paracetamol before going to bed.  I generally avoid Paracet because of the risk to the liver, and Aspirin because of the stomach lining, but right now my priority is a bit different. Dying with a great liver is not a priority. Not that I think the Great Flu would withdraw this easily, so I really don’t know what it is.  But just in case.

So yeah, still alive.  I still feel that I am lacking the bottom third of my lungs and just can’t get enough air, but it is hard to doubt now that it must be psychological. Today I vacuumed and mowed the lawn (with manual lawnmower, or “lawnmover” as I like to call it) for 45 minutes, and my pulse was exactly as I would expect on any other day. Only at the end of that time did it edge up more, probably because I had burnt up the easy sugar rather than any lack of oxygen.  I’d think that no matter whether it was a problem with lungs, blood circulation or brain stem, the body would try to speed up the heart rate to get oxygen around faster if there was less of it. So I must conclude that there isn’t less of it.

So if this is a software bug, where does it come from?  I was at work on Friday for 10 hour, which may have stressed me, what with my arm hurting like it hasn’t done in a couple years.  But all that was restored over the weekend, or as near as I could feel.  And the feeling does not magically arise when I go to work or disappear when I come home.  It is a very convincing emulation of respiratory problems, and I might never have doubted it if not for the amazing technology of the pulse watch.

Do I have a telepathic connection to someone who got the swine flu?  That’s pretty far-fetched and should probably be moved to the end of the list.

Then there was Saturday, when the landlord stopped by. He was not happy with the length of the grass on the lawn. I was – it is not like it’s growing wild, I just keep it at a pinky’s length rather than cropped down to the moss (yes there is moss and has, as far as I know, been since before I first saw the place).  So perhaps my subconscious is like “oh noes I can’t mow the lawn anymore because OMG I can’t breathe!” but that seems unlikely after I mowed for more than half an hour today (the lawns are many and large and the mower does not cut well anymore).

If it were childhood memories working their way to the surface, I assume they would emulate the bronchitic asthma I had at the time, not a medical condition I have never had.

The one thing that seems to negate it for a short time is breathing while yawning. No, seriously.  It is not an easy thing to do, but part of this experience is a near constant need to yawn.  Hmm, Google time. “Constant yawning” – yep, this is pretty common and usually a case of stress building up slowly to make certain muscles chronically tight.  It can also be a symptom of a number of very creepy things, but I think most of these would cause actually lower oxygen levels in the blood and thus a higher heart rate.

Curiously, one of the topmost replies mentioned that eating salt helped.  (Provided you don’t have high blood pressure, in which case salt is a risk factor.  My blood pressure has always been wonderful, but then again I generally don’t love salt.  When I grew up, my mom made salt-free bread for herself because of her hypertension, and I would eat it as happily as the normal bread she made for the rest of the family. I can’t say I noticed much difference. The next older brother up from me, however, was a dog for salt. He would lick it like some kind of candy, much like I would with sugar, only in more moderate doses.) The reason the salt reference caught my eye was that I noticed today after work that I was down 3 pounds or so from my average weight. Since I haven’t eaten less or worked out more, the sudden weight loss most likely means there is less water in my body than usual.  I haven’t been drinking less either, and it’s no hotter than usual.  But if I eat more salt, I am likely to retain the water in my body longer.  It seems most likely just placebo that it helped the other person – muscle tension is quite amenable to placebo – but since my blood pressure is awesome every time, it should be fairly harmless to try.  Mmm, yummy garlic salt! It is almost empty though.

More meditation is probably also in order.  Working less, however, is not really an option, since almost everyone else in my team is on summer vacation.  Let’s just hope the swine flu doesn’t get me now.  There was this guy sitting in front of me in the bus today coughing and sneezing. He looked rather boarish too, with a rotund body and head, small glaring eyes and a face full of bristle.  OK, that was probably not relevant.  I’m not exactly Robert Redford myself, to put it mildly, but I try to cover up any public coughing and sneezing at least.

Those who live will see! Of course, I better be one of those or you won’t see anything here.  So friendly prayers are always welcome. Prayers for me to do or not do particular things, however, are never welcome. That’s not really prayer but hostile magic, despite your convictions that you just want the best for me.  True prayer for another is always in the form of blessing or thanksgiving, both of which more energy to the higher self.  Anyway, hostile magic. Don’t do it.  My guardian angel has enough to do as is with my own antics, I suspect.  As for my atheist friends (yes, I probably still have a few) feel free to send me useful links or something. ^_^

This morning I woke up with the feeling that my lungs were too small.  I kept trying to breathe much more than I could.  I inhaled as much as I could, but it just did not seem to register. It was quite unpleasant.  And it continued through the workday. When I walked it was worse than when sitting, but not quite in proportion. So I suspected that it may not be the lungs actually.

When I came home, I measured my pulse while sitting, standing and doing light exercise on the magnetic bike.  My pulse was not particularly high and it varied normally with the workload. I would think it would have been much higher if I was actually lacking oxygen.

Now around midnight the feeling has changed to more bronchitis-like. I wonder if it really is all in my head. I don’t want to go to bed because I don’t feel sure I’ll wake up again. On the other hand, not sleeping is bad for your health. I guess the only way to find out is to let time do its thing.  If I write more entries after this one, it was presumably not fatal.

EDIT: It’s the next morning, and I’m still breathing. Not quite unexpected but still a cause for celebration, I think.

I already have this so I can sweat without getting anywhere.  Now how about the other way around?

During lunch break today I went to the local bicycle shop and looked for an electric bike.  By this I mean an ordinary bicycle with electrical assist.  They don’t require any special license or anything such, as their maximum speed is no larger than an ordinary bike, and their size, weight, steering and brakes are within normal range as well.  (Though they tend to be a little heavier than modern non-motorized bikes.) The main difference is simply that you can pedal comfortably up long hills rather than sweat and pant like an animal.  Seeing how the main challenge to biking to and from the city are exactly the excessively long hill slopes both ways, this sounds suspiciously ideal.  Well, actually the bus is far more ideal most of the year, if you don’t get swine flu on it.  But that is pretty optimistic, I’m afraid.

Anyway, the bike costs NOK 20 000, or approximately $3 200.  I think that is pretty steep, even if it includes the infamous 25% sales tax we have in Scandinavia. I happen to have that kind of cash floating around at the moment, but unlike most of my expenses, I would notice this one.  My income is pretty meager by Norwegian standards, I do this well because my expenses are pretty moderate too.  I generally don’t have a lot of things I want.  I am not sure how much I want this either.  It’s more like “it’s better than swine flu”, but I suppose even that depends on how severe the flu is.

Electric bikes is also another of those products I might buy in part because I want them to exist in the future.  But I would rather like them to be cheaper in that future.

Speaking of bikes, I guess there is a certain symmetry in having a bike that takes me places without sweating, since I already have one that makes me sweat without going anywhere. I am talking about my stationary bike, of course.  I was using it a bit today too, and that’s a story in itself.  It started before I even came to the house.  Out by the road, I picked up today’s mail, yet another letter from Centerpointe Research Institute. They were, as so often, trying to sell a friend’s product, in this case a supposedly supercharged version of qigong. It can treat all kinds of illnesses, such as cancer, by removing energy blockages in the body, they say.  There are of course several paragraphs in there about how one must avoid the words “diagnose”, “treat” etc because it is Not A Medical Treatment (despite all the people whose cancer and heart conditions disappeared as if by magic). Heh.

Not that there is anything wrong with qigong, probably.  It is a combination of breathing techniques and stretching exercises, similar to tai chi but slower and gentler and accompanied by mental imagery (visualization).  I like to think of tai chi as a love child of martial arts and meditation, and qigong as a love child of tai chi and meditation… wait, that’s just wrong! Uhm, let us just assume it was another meditation.  Anyway! Qi (known in Japanese as Ki) is a kind of life force that flows through the body keeping it alive. Or so most Asians believe.  This flow through a network of meridians is also the basis for acupuncture and acupressure.  Western medicine knows that stimulating nerves in one part of the body can have effects in a different part of the body, and we assume that this is how the theory of qi originated.

Anyway! The brochure contained a small demonstration exercise that I tried, but did not practice for long.  I may include something similar in The Teacher Appears (yes, I have decided in favor of that name now) but it just felt wrong for me, because of its focus on the breath.  Because of my childhood asthma, I prefer to think as little as possible about my breathing for the most part. If it works, don’t fix it!  Because it did not always work.

Despite my supposed “Lassie-fair” (pardon my French*) attitude to breathing, I actually found myself breathing strangely now and then while biking on my exercise bike later.  It has its own pulse meter, and quite precise too.  I found that breathing deeply in and then slowly out caused my pulse to go way down when I was biking on a fairly easy level.  Then I biked it back up and did it again. It was kind of fascinating, but creepy.  I really should not mess with my heart, even less than with my breathing.  The body knows a lot better than I do what my heart rate should be.  (It is generally quite a bit lower than what is common for my age, but it does not seem to lead to any symptoms.)  When I took a walk after the indoors biking, I found myself doing the strange breathing thing again and felt very uncomfortable.  I went back home and played Sims 3 until I had forgotten the weirdness.  And then it was already this late.

(*By the way, laissez-faire is not actually spelled “Lassie-fair”, but searching for that phrase on Google will reveal a good number of people with very strong opinions on economics. Sometimes Google is stranger than fiction.)