The Sacrifice of Sacrifices

By now I'm sure most of you have given up on checking in on this blog to see how our sacrificing is going. We started off the year with high hopes of steering away from the food challenges and on to bigger & better things like exercising and saving the world, but we hit a major road block early on, and we figure you need an explanation! In case you missed it before, John has hives. To be more specific - John has Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria (CIU) and Angioedema. The first long name means that he has an autoimmune problem that causes hives, and nobody has any idea why, and therefor no real idea how to treat it. The second thing means he needs to carry an EPI pen all the time so that his throat doesn't close up. I should also mention that outbreaks can last from 6 months to 30 years. Fun times ahead, folks.

After failing the Exercise challenge miserably (who wants to work out when insanely itchy from head to toe?) John finally got the right combination of medicines from the allergist, and we thought we were good to go on a new challenge. Although the Savings challenge went well, it ended around the same time as the medicine. The hives came back slowly and are now almost as bad as 3 months ago.

After numerous doctor visits, one ER trip, 8 weeks of steroids, and a 57 shot allergy test, he's no better off - unless you count being on a first name basis with the pharmacist and finding out he's allergic to cockroaches (the Americans, not the Germans). On top of this, because his immune system is all wacky, he almost always has some form of a cold.

It's a pretty miserable situation with no end in sight... and needless to say, the gusto for blogging has been lost in the mix.

I suggested evolving the blog into a "John Duffy's Mystery Illness- the search for outbreak triggers!" and each month we could limit the prime trigger suspects (of which there are thousands), but he didn't find that quite as funny as I did... SO, the sacrifices are officially over. For now anyway.

But, just to update our green challenge... here is a list of some of the things we've changed this month:

1. We now recycle our cans (shame on us before).


2. I always use lids on my pots and pans when cooking (and the correct burner size for the pot). Also I have stopped opening the oven to check on food. tsk tsk
   
3. We've changed all the light bulbs that we can to compact fluorescent (just one keeps half a ton of carbon dioxide out of the air over the course of its lifetime!)


4. We don't use the "dry" feature on our dishwasher.


5. We buy in bulk when we can to save on packaging, and we refill things like cleaner, dish soap, hand soap, etc.


6. We've cut out an hour of t.v. each day this month that we would usually watch.
   
7. We unplug things that aren't needed.


8. We've stopped using hot water for laundry except for sheets, and I've cut back on how much detergent I use.


9. We signed up for a Page-A-Day email calendar on tips to go green.


10. I stopped using liquid fabric softener... mainly b/c our dispenser broke, but that counts. I won't start again. :)


11. We've been trying to conserve water use.


12. We've looked into "green funerals". (This was going to be a really great blog, but it didn't happen. This is my favorite.)


13. And my favorite change... thanks to Carrell we now have the coolest reusable shopping bags ever which hold what would be around 10 bags of groceries. And they are much easier to carry up our four flights of stairs. Thanks, Carrell!
    

We have lots left to do, including a tree to plant, but that is a good start for the challenge, and you have to start somewhere.