X: Happy New Year and peripheral vision

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Thursday, January 03, 2008
Happy new year and peripheral vision


Happy New Year to all! And I hope this year is not as shit as the previous one. Ok, 2007 had its high points.

When I was a kid, I thought we would all be dead by now, and here we are, the world turns. I thought the world would have exploded or something, well that's what they said on TV. I thought I would be SOOO old. Sheesh. I'm not old! No comets, no super volcanoes, no superviruses, no Ice Age, phew that was close. Something will be on its way soon, I'm sure. Ebola scares me.

Anyway, let's talk about me.
When walking through a crowd of people, I hate it. I stop, almost crash into someone, veer off to the left, stop, start, apologize (see, I apologize when I almost bump into people, I'm so more suited for England than Spain) and move through the crowd jerkily. I was in the metro today and moved smoothly through the crowd. Wow! I stopped looking at people. It seems when I walk through a crowd, all I see are faces coming towards me, and I can't move properly, too much stimuli. So what I did was not look at any face, and just use peripheral vision to walk through the crowd, just seeing shapes. So much better, and at least I was spared having to look at people's faces so early in the morning .

Oh yes, the other major reason, I have a big nasty cold sore. Well, it's running down, but the scabs are hideous. I feel like a monster and I didn't want anyone to see my face so I didn't look at anyone and just used peripheral vision. It really helped, I didn't feel overwhelmed by the mass of people coming at me and surrounding me.
My fr**king cold sore, herpes simplex 1. Urgh. I haven't gotten it for years, and generally small ones, and I got a huge one that was actually 2 fused sores into a monster cold sore in the summer when I was on vacation with my boyfriend! 2 weeks I looked hideous! I don't see my boyfriend very often and the two 1/2 weeks we spent together, I was unkissable for most of it. I cried I tell you.
Then now as I'm jetting off to Amsterdam tomorrow Friday, I get another one, same pattern as the summer one on Sunday. Saturday, I felt a tingling while I was asleep, briefly woke up, and went pah! The universe is not that cruel and rolled over back into sleep. Oh, yes it can. So Sunday I got an even more tingling sensation and there was no hiding in the sand. It was the arrival of the mother of all cold sores! So I panicked and rushed around looking for an open pharmacy on Sunday, found one, paid 18 euros for a tube of penciclovir (I read it was more effective than aciclovir which had been quite useless the last time on the summer monster) and Compeed patches.
And dabbed those on. Those Compeed patches are not good for the fumble fingered. I followed the instructions and they stuck together, stuck to the plastic. I read and researched for hours and found out a lot of stuff I never wanted to know about herpes (did you know you could catch herpes on your fingers? Dentists used to get that a lot, ew).
I tried the nail polish remover, the ice really helped with the swelling, I even burst them. In retrospect, the bursting was not so good, not because the infection spread (it didn't), it did reduce the swelling and the cold sore never turned into a weeping sore but because now I have some unslightly scabs.
The magic ingredient was LYSINE! It's an amino acid. Apparently the herpes virus feeds on argnine, and lysine interferes with it. Arginine rich foods are nuts (I stuffed my face the Thursday and Friday before, nuts are good for you! Ha!), raisins (see Thursday and Friday), bread and herpes is also triggered by sunlight (In retrospect when I had the tingling sensation on Sunday, I shouldn't have stood in the sunshine to bask in the life giving rays and thinking it would clear it up like it does my eczema. BAD MOVE), menstrual periods (who's going to go through the dreaded bleeding soon? Moi, I tell you), stress (pah!) and low defenses (my feet turned blue this weekend, not good for yer health).

Anyway, I rushed to the herbal store on Monday, popped 4500 mg of lysine (4000 to 6000mg is the recommended dosage for a herpes outbreak), 2 hours later the swelling was going down, on Tuesday, it went straight from swelling lip to scab. No weeping sore in between. I could almost hear the virii screaming. Take that suckers! That's why the bursting of the blisters weren't good, it made it more scabby. Next time.
I've never know anything to work like that. I'm impressed. Lysine rules! And it's good for the skin.