Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

While I was away, the heat went off. Without going into details, we were able to get the gas company's service team to come over and get it going again. This took three people many hours over three days; heat was restored the second day, but the actual repair took much longer. I talked to the repair crew when I got back, and older guy with experience with this type of boiler, and a younger guy who was working with him. Apparently, the call they got from the first responder was "Wait til you see this one, it's the size of a Volkswagon." Indeed! We have a hundred-year old cast iron boiler that used to be fired by coal, but now uses gas. It heats water which rises to the radiators as steam. You have to keep it filled and blow out the sediments that can gunk up the various gauges and pipes. There is also a little motor that goes on to get the gas going, and they no longer make them. Once that goes, the whole systems will have to be replaced. There is asbestos to be removed through abatement, etc. A huge job, and not one we want to do while the temperatures are below zero, as they are today.

They got it working again, and we hope it will last through the heating season, but I'm getting estimates to replace it in the spring.

Acnestis is the spot, notalgia parasthetica is the itch.

Rob Breszny's horoscope for the week beginning Jan 17:

"You know that area on your back that you can't quite reach if you want to scratch it? It's called your acnestis. I propose that we make it your featured metaphor of the week. Why? Because I suspect you will have to deal with a couple of itchy situations that are just beyond your ability to relieve. Yes, this may be frustrating in the short run. But it will ultimately make you even more resourceful than you already are. By this time next week, you will have figured out alternative solutions that you haven't even imagined yet."

After the week I just had, it is quite obvious to me that my psychic or spiritual acnestis is the unresolved burden of resentment I still bear toward my father and how he affected all our lives, which I have so unfortunately transferred to my workplace.  The fact that the bad behavior is real makes it feel as if the itch is out of reach, but there ARE ways to treat it, to relieve the symptoms, even to get rid of it.

One of my fibromyalgia symptoms has always been an itchiness in that one spot I can't reach, my acnestis. The itch is prodromal symptom of what becomes pain in that spot, but also in other trigger points, and the all-over pain and fatigue that feels like a flu with no fever.   It's the first spot to flare up, and at its worst, it feels as if someone has driven an icepick into my back, next to my left shoulderblade. I have also learned that there is a rare, but real, medical condition that consists of  severe itching, localized midway between the spine and the shoulder blade, or right under the shoulder blade:  notalgia paresthetica. Nothing relieves the itch for many people, who become desperate with frustration. Most research and treatment has focused on either topical relief (cortisone, ice packs, etc)  or some idea about injury to the nerve at the spine, but my own experience is that I can only relieve the itch/pain if I treat it as a myofascial trigger point, in which the nerve is compressed. Massage, manipulation to reset the position of ribs, etc, trigger point injection therapy, or some combination of these, has been most effective for relief of this spot for me.

A few years ago I read a book on treating fibromyalagia that suggested that one note the very first spot that signaled a flare-up, and give it a name. I named mine HAL: as in "HungryAngryLonely," but also after the rogue AI/computer HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. If HAL-9000 was a survival mechanism gone awry, then my "HAL" spot signals when my survival mechanisms have turned against me, and will manifest themselves as an itch that impossible to scratch, and then a pain that always returns.

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."