Highlights of the week

Far and away the best part of my week was reading Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. I reviewed it for my column this week. Writing the column was also loads of fun. I think I started it on Monday because I was so excited by the book that I had to write about it. It was one of those times where you feel like the words are just flowing right out of the fingertips, from the brain to the keyboard in one easy step, no fuss, no muss.

The next best thing is that today I noticed I can hear pretty well. Despite the fact that I have been headachy and throwing up nearly all week, today I felt pretty good and there has been very little pulsating tinnitus.

More and more I am convinced there is an extremely strong link between my sleep and how much fluid I have in my head. Sunday night I was at Johns Hopkins for the sleep study and my sleep was horrid. Not only did I feel like I was awake all night but I slept without the CPAP and felt really wretched all day long. I had been pretty sick going to the hospital, throwing up once in the lobby (luckily there was a pretty good sized trash bin in a convenient location) and Tuesday when I went to see Dr. Rismondo I threw up four times on the way there.

Last night I fell asleep around three and slept until 11 and I felt good when I woke. No vomiting, very little headache, despite rearranging a good bit of my bedroom with attendant noise and bustle, and my hearing is good.

I think that taking melatonin is helping. It never seemed to help me before but perhaps melatonin with valerian works. Or perhaps I am just very susceptible to suggestion. Whatever is going on I've got very high hopes I can get better without having surgery.

Stupid Scams

The 419 scams are getting weirder. I have gotten a progression of them from fictional characters ranging from Charles Brown to Harry Potter - a Colonel in the British Army who stole some gold while in Iraq. I guess this lot of scammers are trying to bilk those who don't read.

And speaking of reading, I am back to reading From Hell, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's masterpiece. It's extremely disturbing.