Trying Something Different I'm trying something a little different today, testing the waters writing up a phlog using something other than the BBS's built in line editor. Today I'm on my Amiga 500 and have experimented with a number of different editors, none of which are particularly great as wordwrap either doesn't exist or doesn't work in any of them hence, why I'm still manually adding newlines at around the 80 character mark. Ghost Stories Fellow SDF'er Ralf wrote on his phlog (gopher://sdf.org/1/users/ralfwause) a response to my question at the tail of my Ball Lightning post asking what unexplainable event(s) has anyone experienced. It is a very interesting read (gopher://sdf.org/0/users/ralfwause/phlog/unexplainable.txt). I have a ghost story of my own. I should first preface it that I am an atheist, I do not really believe in ghosts as they are normally understood. I do believe there are things in this universe which we don't understand and are barely aware of and that what we do know about the universe is only the tip of the proverbial iceburg. Anyway here goes ... I was probably around 8 or so and I was in my sister's room while she was off somewhere else. I don't remember what I was doing there, playing with some toys probably but can't remember why in her room. Anyway out of the corner of my eye I caught movement in the hall, looked up and for about 1/2 a second saw a tall man dressed in a very colorful patch- work robe levitating a few inches above the ground with legs spread as if in a stride but legs were not moving. He was heading down the hall toward my room. I got up off the floor and looked down the hall but saw nothing. He never made any noise. Ralf's second story is about a triangular UFO. I have not seen these myself but a neighbor I had about 11 or 12 years ago told me he saw that while working night security out on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in S.E. Washington State. He was generally a pretty level headed guy and didn't talk about UFOs, aliens, conspiracy theories or anything like that so it really stuck with me when he mentioned that. Histamine Issues Okay this one is a bit off of what I'd usually post about and it comes mostly second hand from my wife and her research. She has, over the past few years, been developing issues which the doctors are doing a pretty pathetic job at tackling, but that is to be expected in the US with profit-driven health care. Her symptoms: * Something that appears like "Hot Flashes" but much more frequent and intense. * Feelings of doom and dread that accompany these "hot flash" episodes * Feeling drained and weak for a few moments following these episodes * Being unable to stay awake sometimes and even drifting into micro-naps in the middle of a conversation. The hot flashes aren't just a feeling, I can feel the heat coming off of her. It's like a really bad fever that lasts about 2 minutes. Sometimes we are on the couch, I'm rubbing her feet while we're playing a point and click adventure, and I can feel the heat starting up before she's aware of it. What I observed is the clockwork nature of them. First off after lunch she would fall asleep on the couch. Then in the evening, as if on cue, she would have a terrible hot flash episode at around 19:00. I would get up before this started and go into the kitchen to get water and ice packs because I know it was coming and it never failed. What we have discovered is that it is food related. Well, actually it's histamine related, but many foods can be high in histamine. She is now treating these symptoms with a round of antihistamines and also DAO (don't ask me what that stands for) but DAO is something which breaks down histamines, something your body is supposed to be producing naturally but her's doesn't seem to, at least not well enough. There's two types of antihistamines she's using, H1 and H2. I can't explain the difference. Some of these antihistamines are over-the-counter but there is one that was prescription. It was prescribed as an anti-anxiety treatment. Well the "anxiety" is just one of the many symptoms of these histamine attacks so ... yeah, it helps. Histamine is a naturally occuring chemical which your body produces and is needed but in my wife it seems to be out of control. There have been a number of other people whom my wife has found online which report similar problems and similar benefits to antihistamine usage. She says that this is MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome) but when I looked up the symptoms of MCAS, at least on Wikipedia, it doesn't quite fit with what she's describing so I'm not sure that's correct. Nevertheless the symptoms she has are quite real and the antihistamine treatments she's been taking are pretty effective but only for about 4 hours at a time. She's taking pretty small doses for now and I'm reminding her to keep an eye out for side effects that any of these pills might be causing and to keep an eye for any known symptoms of *too little* histamine as once you start micro-managing your body's chemistry you have your work cut out for you keeping everything in balance. There was some small signs of this starting to happen right around the start of the pandemic and at the time she was working as a school bus driver and got sick all the time. This was before we (well the average US citizen anyway) knew about Covid. Most likely she was getting Covid but didn't know it. When she got a Covid vaccine in 2020 these symtoms ramped up suddenly and with great intensity and have only been getting worse since then. She's not an "anti-vaxer" but any stretch ... definatley pro-vaccines, but in this case this particular vaccine on this particular person with her particular issues was ... very bad. If you, or someone you know, is having symptoms like this you might try some simple over-the-counter antihistamines like benedryl or pepcid and just see what happens. If there is improvement you may want to ask your doctor for a blood test to see your histamine levels and if they're significantly elevated see what they think. Hopefully, where you are in the world, you have better doctors than we have here. .