Logic Puzzle

You have to take your entertainment where you can get it. I happen to take a certain perverse pleasure in the logical puzzles my symptoms provide. Do you remember logic puzzles as a kid? You would get a subject and a list of clues. The subject might be something like "Summer Activities" and the clues would run along the lines sentences like "Martha hates swimming." You would make up a matrix with the activities or names across the top and the other down the side. Eventually, you would learn that Billy likes boating and X out the other names for boating and the other activities for Billy. You would be able to narrow down Martha's preferences to the other three choices and go from there.

My logic puzzles would have to be three dimensional because you would need to be able to list activities, symptoms that prevent those activities and things to moderate or aggravate symptoms. Right now, we're moving into cold weather so my arthritis is acting up. It's been a bad year for arthritis in general but there is always room for decline. It is difficult to do anything with my arms or hands during a flareup but I can count on passive activities more because the boredom counts less during immediate pain. Drinking chamomile tea helps calm me and warms my hands which I can't bundle effectively and so I drink more of it in arthritis peak season. Then again, I refuse to give up writing altogether for any given season so I accept a pain increase which makes me want more tea which makes me sleepy.

Stress headaches are the worst for logical puzzles. The best way to make inroads against pain is to stop what you're doing that aggravated the symptom in the first place. Try doing that with stress headaches. I can stress about not being able to stop stressing over the original problem so that's pretty much out. There are two main tricks for dealing with stress headaches. One is learning to take breaks. The utility company that is threatening to cut me off is closed until Monday so I don't have to think about it on Saturday or Sunday. The other is attacking the problem once properly medicated and all. Utilities are a useful example since I'm not in trouble with them right now. (That's twice my knee twitched and hit my bottom desk drawer when I've asserted a lack of specific trouble. Honestly, bill paying time starts this Wednesday!)

Utilities are a great example because they don't make money by shutting you down. Paying them in full is the best solution but most are willing to take the maximum interest penalty allowable by law plus small fines to not shut you down. It tends not to add up to that much in what you pay them but I don't want anyone thinking that a corporation is doing something out of the kindness of its heart. Corporations have boards of directors expressly required to eliminate any heart and soul from consideration in favor of keeping stock prices high. Businesses can be owned by individuals who often have good hearts. You can stay warm by taking a deal from the power company, reduce your stress level and they make money on the deal.

Relationship stress is actually tougher than monetary stress most of the time. Of course, monetary stress is the most commonly cited cause of relationship stress. Don't ask it to make sense. It will simply snarl at you as the cycle spins faster. I am defining relationship stress as broadly as possible here and recognizing subsets which I will ignore for the moment. We all know about marital stress, parent/child stress and various kinds of friendship stress. If you live with and love someone who is driving you out of your freaking mind, there is no easy answer. Therefore, said loved one might make you explain something obvious to you for the fifteenth time that day. Given that you do not wish to hurt them, your options for dealing with the loved one are limited.

Try making a logical puzzle out of two adults living together. Drink some chamomile tea and reduce the headache but be prepared to hear about it should you not wash the mug fast enough. If you take too long, you might end up worse off than when you began. Relationship deafness is a good tactic although you run the risk of ignoring a serious concern. The good news there is that you spend much of your life learning what's safe to ignore and what isn't.

Unlike those logic puzzles of old, symptom and pain puzzles usually involve a little of this and a little of that. My doctors and I used to talk of it all like a big old fashioned machine with a lot of knobs. If you turn one knob all the way up, you might feel pretty good for a while but that knob is likely to malfunction shortly. You need to learn how to turn each knob just enough to get the benefit you need with minimal risk. When it works, it can be great fun and a big boost to your morale. When it doesn't work, it can be interesting to figure out why. When a knob breaks and has to be replaced, it can be most interesting of all if painful. What can I replace this with that is similar enough to have the same effect but without being so close that it breaks right away.

If nothing else, finding new medical answers can lead to Han Solo quotes.
"This one goes here. That one goes there."
"Turn it off! Turn it off!" Said with small explosions in the background.

I know. I prefer to call it eccentricity.