Toasty

On Wednesday I went in a Zipcar to see my friend in Novato. We went to Marvin’s for lunch and sat outside. The weather was gorgeous. I had a grilled turkey sandwich with Swiss cheese on sourdough bread, and onion rings; I slathered a quarter-cup of butter on the outside of the sandwich. It was sublime.

We spent the afternoon playing cards. I told her about feeling so tired at work and in effect now being on a leave of absence and she asked if I resort to sugar or caffeine at those moments. I was shocked! Such a thing had never once crossed my mind, but I guess that is what people do, now that she mentions it.

Needless to say, the typing of which never stops me from going on to type the thing that was needless to say, by the time I talked to Lisa C. on the phone yesterday, my decision about moving or not moving had liquefied to a certain extent. It’s that dread of making a fatal error: What if I feel better in a few months and, alas, my job is gone? But then, what if this is my permanent condition and, alas, someone else now owns my house and is pulling up my weeds?

There are some things that still need to be done for the house in any event, including removing the bottom six to eight inches of about 75 feet of wood paneling in the basement that either has been touched by water already or could be in the future; this is a mold prevention strategy.

I had put a lot of effort into another thing to be done in the basement only to finally grasp that the City of Ypsilanti does not permit it, as confirmed on the phone by one of their inspectors. 

To wit: There is ancient clay tile under the basement floor which is clogged with dirt and who knows what else; this has been verified by camera. Water collects on the floor when it rains; this has been verified by my eyeballs. The advice I got was to tear out that clay tile—which is not tile per se but pipes—and replace it with some nice, modern PVC pipes out to the footing, which is the perimeter of the house. When it rains, storm water goes in drains in the footing or under the footing or near the footing or in some way having some other relationship to the footing, and then, if the clay tile were sound, it would go through those pipes to the sanitary drain in the basement floor and off on its municipal adventure. Oh: a sanitary drain is where the water from sinks and toilets, etc., drains.

But because the clay tile is blocked, water ends up on the floor; it might be seeping right up through the flooring, if there is such a thing as seeping up. That is the theory of one person with expertise in these matters, anyway. If we had put in the PVC pipe and still seen water, the advice was to then install “drain tile” (not to be confused with clay tile) just along the stretch where water was seen, and then, the water that went into the drain tile could make its way via gravity to our now-confirmed-to-be-functioning sanitary drain.

One could also install drain tile clear around the whole perimeter of the basement, along with a sump pump, if one wished to spend north of twenty thousand dollars.

I was in the process of getting my third quote for the PVC pipe when I finally came to understand that in 1981, Ypsilanti disallowed having storm water go into the sanitary drain, because all of that rainwater then has to be processed by the water treatment plant instead of going more or less harmlessly into the ground. Ann Arbor doesn’t permit this, either, and probably zillions of places don’t. You are required to have a sump pump and something outside the house (specifically drywall or a “bubbler”) to absorb the water so it doesn’t go right into the basement of your neighbor whose house is downhill from yours.

I guess you can easily find someone to do this disallowed thing, as evidenced by the two quotes I got without the contractor saying one word about a sump pump, but I would rather do the right thing. Also, what if you did the wrong thing and then had some kind of problem with the new system? It could get to be a big mess.

So I think that ends for now any idea of doing anything about the wet basement, as we don’t have enough cash left to do drain tile all the way around the whole basement. By the way, it took me months to grasp even the rudiments of how this all works. It felt good, the other day, to confidently explain to a contractor what exactly we need—just before I found out it’s not allowed.

Along with removing the bottom of the wood paneling in the basement, which the estate will pay for, there are a whole bunch of things to be done if I am going to buy the house, nearly all having something to do with Marvin the cat. So there continue to be many, many phone calls to make, and by late yesterday morning, what I have self-diagnosed as a vestibular migraine had set in and is still with me. It’s not even really a self-diagnosis; my chiropractor, who knows and fixes just about everything, concurred when I mentioned that.

It is definitely giving me the heebie-jeebies that soon I will have to stop whipping out the estate’s credit card and start reluctantly extracting my own from my wallet, though whatever I spend will result in at least a minor improvement to something I will own that will presumably appreciate in value unless it’s completely swept away by a tornado.

I’m now starting to think the difficulty with this decision might boil down to fear of my own death. My parents have both died, removing the generation that in some conceptual way was standing between me and the great beyond, and whereas there is at least still one more thing after working—retirement—after retirement, which this decision greatly turns upon and which might have already happened, there is only death, at least as seen from my habitually gloomy perspective.

I had mentioned here that a co-worker had recommended this book: The T.I.G.E.R. Protocol: An Integrative 5-Step Program to Treat and Heal Your Autoimmunity, by Akil Palanisamy, MD. I don’t have a diagnosis of autoimmune disease, but I ordered the book, whose advice my co-worker had followed with good results. The idea was that autoimmune problems can cause inflammation which in turn can contribute to fatigue. So if there is fatigue, is there inflammation or even the beginning of some kind of autoimmune problem? (Though besides not having a diagnosis of any autoimmune condition, the couple of times I’ve had C-reactive protein tested, it’s been very low.)

After acquiring the book, I put it on the shelf where it couldn’t do me any immediate harm. I was put on my first diet at the age of seven by my mother, whose intentions could not have been better, but this was the beginning of decades of disordered eating, not to mention the conviction that I was fat and ugly. At this point, I know very well to be extremely cautious with anything that feels like a diet; an elimination diet is one of the major components of the T.I.G.E.R. Protocol.

Yesterday evening I had gone to the other extreme and decided to read the whole book ASAP—in the coming several days, if possible—and to do what it says to do: What if following that advice actually worked and I could return to my job? In a rush, I turned right to the part of the book about how to eat and soon concluded that I would rather feel horrible every single day for the rest of my life than to follow that plan for even two weeks. I couldn’t even if I wanted to; by about the second day, I would be eating a half gallon of ice cream after getting home from McDonald's.

I also felt a little confused: The book mentions fermented food as being great for your microbiome; I believe that. But the internet mentions fermented food as being a known migraine trigger. (The internet also avers that “vertigo” is a symptom and not a diagnosis. This I did not know.)

Fortunately, I had an appointment with my chiropractor on this very day, which forced me to shower for the first time in a week, because, really, who cares any more? (My friend in Novato is ten years older than I am; I was hoping that thing about the sense of smell diminishing with age is actually correct.) Truly, this is a very difficult time. I have also stopped meditating, but I think that is actually for a good reason. I’ll get back to that some other day, probably. (Cliffhanger!)

I told my chiropractor that the vestibular exercises seem to be helping a lot: the room no longer spins and the floor does not suddenly tilt. I told him about the symptoms that are continuing: brain fog, slight vertigo with certain motions, very slight headache if symptoms go on for enough hours, nausea; I’m not sure if the nausea is related. On my last two trips by airplane, I came close to vomiting.

I asked him if vestibular and autoimmune issues are related and he said they could be; the gut affects a lot of things. He watched me do some of the vestibular exercises and confirmed there has a been a big improvement. (It has something to do with how the eyes focus on and track a moving thing.)

I told him my feelings about attempting the T.I.G.E.R. Protocol and asked what he thought about my just ceasing to eat gluten (on the theory that gluten can cause “leaky gut,” which can cause inflammation, which can cause fatigue) and he said that since I don’t have a diagnosed autoimmune disease and since that’s my visceral reaction to the matter, setting gluten aside for a time would be a “good elimination.” This mainly affects eating out at certain restaurants; at home, it’s just a matter of having oatmeal instead of toast.