magnesium

Our “Special” Station

/ Shirleyjdietz / 3 Comments

I’m confused. I don’t know whose brain is having the most trouble any more – mine or his. Is he getting better? Sometimes I think so but it’s never clear enough for me to start treating him like he’s becoming more capable. And I think that’s making him angry, in a very suppressed, passive aggressive way. It’s not very much fun.

Our special station is TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network. There are some very good shows on it and I love seeing what is going on in the world with missions and Christian initiative. But it’s on almost all our waking hours and probably 80% of it is preaching, one speaker after another. You know that cadence of voice that is associated with preaching – yeah, that’s it. Almost all of them talk that way, and I say “talk” in a general way because a lot of the time it’s yelling. There’s always some man on a stage yelling at a huge auditorium full of people. I don’t feel like I’m getting more of God via TBN. I feel like I’m getting more of preachers.

Another thing that they all do is ask for money to sustain their ministry. Of course, they have bills, and they are doing work for God. The husband is very soft-hearted and convicted by all the yelling. He wants to give them money, maybe not all of them, but often. He’s been watching them for months, knows their jokes, their speaking habits, what their wives look like and how many children they have. They are his friends so when they ask, he wants to respond.

Just today he told me he really wanted to get a certain book, which comes with a $40 donation. Another preacher talks about how he has a habit of carrying hundred dollar bills around and handing them out when the Lord tells him to. The husband would love to be that man. He doesn’t carry money in his wallet any more and I wonder if he’s subconsciously afraid he might give it all away if he did.

Not too long ago, in his musing about how wonderful it would be when he got well, he mentioned that it would be so much fun to go to the store and buy something himself. I reminded him he had a credit card in his wallet and could do that now if he wanted to. He seemed surprised.

He kind of thinks he will be well this summer and should be able to ride his bike. It must be hard to have such high expectations and not be able to see more progress toward reaching them. Personally, I think he expects too much since he stopped riding bike even before he was diagnosed with Lewy Body. And how many couch potato 74 year old men are riding bikes even if they are well? Not many.

This afternoon he sternly told me that I needed to get Mom to the doctor about pain that she’s having in her legs. He is alarmed and knows what I should be telling her to do – the magnesium thing, still. Magnesium is curing cancer and Mom could have it in her bones. He needs to get the ball rolling by telling me to get on it. Never mind that Mom and I talk over her condition and options pretty much every morning. I’ve been helping her with all her medical decisions and know what she wants. I’ve also been doing the same for my aunt, oh and for him, the husband, as well. But I am too slow now and need to be told what to do for her.

I was irritated and didn’t give him the response he wanted. He is irritated and grouchy. I know he feels like I don’t take him seriously. It’s true, I don’t. But I kind of have to act like I do and then explain to him why I’m not hopping immediately to do his bidding. It’s just confusing. This guy is so much like my husband, but he doesn’t do any of the things a husband does.

And since I can’t take the steady dose of Godly teaching from our “special station” and retreat to my room instead, I guess that makes me more toward the pagan end of the spectrum than he is. That feels a bit uncomfortable, that and a lot of other things…

Trying to Sleep

/ Shirleyjdietz / Leave a comment

Bedtime is often early – 7 or 8 pm – after an early dinner. Around 9, just when I think I will have some undisturbed time to read or write, I will hear him get out of bed and shuffle to the door and peer around the corner at me while I sit at my desk. He will do a silly little wave and announce his first wake up of the night.

Tonight, he came out and sat down next to me as I wrote. He waited until I looked at him and then told me that he wanted to talk to me.  Conversations that start like this are often ones I don’t like.

What he wanted was for me to document “his phase” that he was in. It’s a problem that happens at night and this is how he describes it.  It’s tension that keeps him awake, a bit like restless leg syndrome.  He feels that his blood pressure is high and that he needs to have more magnesium water.  He wants very much to sit and resolve this tension but knows that he must do something active to resolve it.

I suggested he take his blood pressure to verify what it was, but the act of getting up and putting the cuff on to take the reading was something he said would cause more tension. He didn’t want to do it but finally relented if I would go get the cuff and put it on him. (And yet he knew the next thing he needed to do was his high intensity exercise, which involved moving too. He admitted the contradiction.)

His blood pressure reading was 167/95 with a pulse of 49.  He got up to do his exercises, which consist of mostly arm movements and a little bit of squatting for four minutes, but I doubt he spent that long at it.  He insists that it be recorded as his hands begin to tingle, and he feels the stimulation up the back of his neck, and of course, he gets tired and breathes a little heavier.  All this is important to note because it shows that you don’t have to have a lot of exercise to get what he calls “nitric acid dump”.  This is an exercise protocol he learned from an online coach named _______. After exercise his blood pressure was higher 183/106, pulse 58 which he predicted would happen. After resting for a while and drinking more Mg water his pressure was back down to the pre-exercise reading.

From reading, he has a mental construct of what he thinks is going on in his body.  Taking his blood pressure puts pressure on his bladder.  Autophagy starts taking place a certain number of hours after he eats and makes him have to clear his throat and spit, makes him have to urinate, makes him need more and more magnesium.  Something makes him feel that the whole process is speeding up and requiring more magnesium. He measures how much he thinks he needs by how much he is drinking.  He used to sip on one 16 oz. bottle of water with 300 mg. magnesium per day and possibly another one during the night. Now he is asking for at least two and sometimes three.  He asks because measuring the minerals is difficult for him. He shakes and spills some.

He believes the night time spitting and urinating are signs of autophagy, which is most certainly clearing the misfolded proteins out of his brain.  He feels like a scientist, taking part in a ground breaking experiment, which must be recorded. (I don’t know how to explain the drama involved in his every move, every word of this life changing stuff…)