"The Answer, My Friend.."

One of the things that I'm really looking forward to about getting rid of my chronic pain is the ability to read my body's signals. I used to be a bit hypocondriacish, which has gotten better. Here is an example of why I was, using the symptoms of a heart attack:

"The most common symptom of heart attack is chest pain or discomfort. Most heart attacks involve discomfort in the center of the chest that lasts for more than a few minutes or goes away and comes back. The discomfort can feel like uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness, or pain. It can be mild or severe. Heart attack pain can sometimes feel like indigestion or heartburn."

I constantly a pressure in my chest that gets better or worse depending on the time of day, how my back is doing, and other myriads of factors.

Other common signs and symptoms that a person can have during a heart attack include:

• Upper body discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw, or stomach
• Shortness of breath may often occur with or before chest discomfort
• Nausea (feeling sick to your stomach), vomiting, lightheadedness or fainting, or breaking out in a cold sweat

Minus the shortness of breath most of the time, we have what an average afternoon used to be like.

I know, I know, I'm whining, but it was hurting a lot yesterday. And honestly, I can't wait! I've been making tons of progress.

Apparently, women can get pregnant on their period.
"While a woman is unlikely to conceive during menstruation, "nothing, when it comes to pregnancy, is impossible," said Aaron Carroll of Indiana University and co-author of "Don't Swallow Your Gum: Myths, Half-truths and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health" (St. Martin's Griffin, 2009).

Once inside a woman, sperm can wait for an egg for up to a week. Ovulation can occur soon after, or even during, the bleeding phase of a woman's menstrual cycle, giving patient sperm the chance to get lucky. The timing method of birth control doesn't work well, Carroll said, agreeing that couples who practice it are often called: parents."

I'm making a vow today to stop fantasizing as much about certain things.

That reminds me of when I was a kid and I created a fantasy world with "evolutionarily sound" animals. It always got to me that fantasy creatures were seemingly based solely off graphic design and would generally not survive in a real world, because I was a weird kid who also loved silly putty, similar-to-silly-putty goop, and collected pens. Pokemon came out about the same time I was creating my this world in the USA, which annoyed me greatly because I was afraid that it would look as if I was ripping things off from them in creating my creatures, even though the two had nothing to do with each other. In middle school I had a fantasy that if I wrote down enough of the details from one of my other fantasy worlds, it would come to life. Heck, I still kind of wish that would happen.
Who am I kidding, I have billion-zillion fantasy worlds that I think I will start visiting more often.

In all honesty, though I never thought I would admit this "out loud", if I came across one of those portals to another world that exist in many a children's book I wouldn't feel that surprised, though my views on the metaphysical have expanded into something much more complex. Also, unless hypothetical fantasy worlds evolve, well, real mythology can be very freaky. You might be seeing some contradictions in my personality here. The short version is that it all works out in my head. Also, science is awesome, did you know?

I've been thinking about how an object is simply an object, separate from patterns that related to other objects and the word that describes it. I've also been thinking about cases where being a part of a pattern is part of an object's being. Maybe the Dhammapada is being absorbed into me by osmosis.

Genetics final tommorow. I have to stop staring at this photo, but it's so evocative and beautiful.

Photocredit:Stockxpert via Livescience via Jezebel

Title quotes Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind"