The century is bending—have a very happy ending
We are still dealing with Schrödinger's plumbers, but last night I was in bed for almost twelve hours and may have slept for as much as ten. The previous night I slept none and had an urgent care appointment even later in the day than it had been scheduled for: who needs a functioning health care system when a pandemic is no longer a national emergency? It turns out I have a sinus infection. I curled up with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and cats and read Gwynne Garfinkle's Can't Find My Way Home (2022), which I loved with its varyingly figurative degrees of haunting and its never simplistically shifting definitions of art and friendship and revolution and its own questioning, exhilarating soundtrack as it spirals in and out of time, which I impractically wish could have been included as a mixtape with the text. I have a better grounding in protest music of the Vietnam era than in American daytime drama of the same decades, but Garfinkle makes a strong case for caring just as much about the soap operas. With any luck, coming a year late to this full-blast first novel only means less of a wait to its follow-up, whatever form it may arrive in. This one takes several by turns: an unmissable kaleidoscope.
spatch and cats and read Gwynne Garfinkle's Can't Find My Way Home (2022), which I loved with its varyingly figurative degrees of haunting and its never simplistically shifting definitions of art and friendship and revolution and its own questioning, exhilarating soundtrack as it spirals in and out of time, which I impractically wish could have been included as a mixtape with the text. I have a better grounding in protest music of the Vietnam era than in American daytime drama of the same decades, but Garfinkle makes a strong case for caring just as much about the soap operas. With any luck, coming a year late to this full-blast first novel only means less of a wait to its follow-up, whatever form it may arrive in. This one takes several by turns: an unmissable kaleidoscope.
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I hope your sinus infection vanishes soon.
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You're welcome! Your novel was a highlight of mine and would have been even in a week without plumbers.
(There is a Spotify playlist for the novel, though I created it before Joni Mitchell yanked her catalog from that service.)
Yay! I will supply the missing track.
Revisions of my next novel continue apace; it also has its own soundtrack.
I really look forward. Is your next novel already placed, if you don't mind my asking?
I hope your sinus infection vanishes soon.
Thank you. The plan is to treat it aggressively without oral antibiotics or steroids, which means I am putting a lot of things up my nose right now.
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Check. I didn't know if you had a deal with Aqueduct or something. (I just think people should be buying your books. I hope this one has been receiving suitable critical attention.)
(I had an agent when I was writing Can't Find My Way Home, but then we parted ways and I ended up selling it myself. The new one is, among other things, about reproductive rights, which I wish hadn't become even more relevant since I wrote the first draft, but perhaps its topicality may be helpful publishing-wise.)
Seriously. Fingers crossed. I love seeing your posts about the music you write and revise to.
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As part of my normal regimen, I rinse nasally with saline twice a day; we have added the topical antibiotic mupirocin to my evening rinse and the topical steroid budesonide to my morning rinse. If I don't show significant improvement over the weekend, we add a blitz of Afrin which I am hoping to avoid because I haven't used it in years because I hate it. (I can't tolerate oral decongestants like Sudafed.) If I don't show significant improvement after that, I'm on oral prednisone and I don't want that, either. The budesonide is anti-inflammatory, to give my head a chance to drain while the mupirocin works on the infection. Topical antibiotics for sinus infections are slower to work than oral antibiotics, but don't come with the side effects that I can no longer risk.
[edit] From my perspective I am showing significant, in the sense of statistically meaningful, improvement in that while I am still in a great and distracting deal of pain, I have slept a normal amount two nights running after being in so much pain that I couldn't sleep, even dozing, at all.
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we have added the topical antibiotic mupirocin to my evening rinse and the topical steroid budesonide to my morning rinse
Ah I see, I was kind of hoping for non-prescriptive stuff because the clinic I go to refuses to prescribe anything for my sinus infections, period. How do you add the antibio to your saline rinse? Is it a neti pot or one of those saline rinsers? (I'm sorry if I seem overly interested etc. but sinus infections have just made my life hell for forever, and they're getting worse as I get older, with the inclusion of my eustachian tube which means temporary? hearing loss, tinnitus and vertigo.)
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I don't have a neti pot; I use a NeilMed bottle which I bought for the purpose. The mupirocin is a roughly inch-long ribbon, added first with the saline mix (packet or homemade) and then about half the water, heated to a slightly higher temperature than usual because one shakes the bottle like a glutinous cocktail until the antibiotic ointment is dissolved, after which the rest of the water can be added and the whole concoction shot up the nose per usual. The texture of the treated water is fine, its smell and taste are medicinal, but I have found that it doesn't linger unbearably. The budesonide is a slightly acrid liquid and just gets dropped in with the saline and water; the trick there is to wait ten to fifteen minutes after rinsing with it and then rinse again with plain saline, to wash off the excess once the steroid has had a chance to be absorbed into the relevant tissues. Leaving it in predisposes nosebleeds, which characterized my previous experience of budesonide and made me highly reluctant to include it in this round of treatment until the doctor explained the use of the second rinse, of which no one had heretofore informed me. Your clinic is treating you inappropriately, which I am sure you know. It may still be worth asking them for this kind of treatment, if the oral antibiotics are their sticking point. While the combination of topical antibiotic and topical steroid is considered aggressive, neither of them is controversial to prescribe.
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You're welcome! Good luck! Godspeed!
*hugs*
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I was recommended it constantly in college and grad school, which in hindsight feels like one of those weird medicinal pushes that pass through the medical profession—I had some unpleasant reactions even before reaching the rebound and developed a distinct antipathy. Budesonide does not have a rebound in my experience. It does need to be tapered, but not dramatically: every other day for a week, sort of thing, and then stop.
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