Medical Update -- "Beaver Fever"
My visit to the doctor wasn't bad. The HBP (high blood pressure) measurements were good, and aside from my eye drops, two different pills for that are the only meds I'm taking right now.
--Except that now, for a short time anyway, I have to take a third pill, an anti-biotic, three times a day, for a possible new ailment (new to me) called "giardia." The doctor said that it was the best suspect for what I yesterday called the "unstable state of my elimination system."
Giardia results from some protozoans taking up residence in your small intestine, where they can put you into various stages of diarrhea, which in my case has lasted off and on through the last four months. The doctor said it's pretty common around here, and my wife tells me that one of our closest friends and neighbors had a severe bout with it not long ago. But I was also a little discombobulated when another neighbor, whose family I stopped by to visit on my way back home from the clinic, said, "Oh, that's what my puppies had!"
It seems that giardia is widespread throughout the planet, and. in addition to people, cats, dogs, and other animals can also be afflicted with it. The main source of these invaders is drinking, swimming, and other sorts of water. It can occur in the wild even in seemingly pristine mountain streams, and one of the common names for it is "beaver fever."
Though our water comes from a well that is only about 19 feet deep, I am sure the beavers are how I got it.
Six or seven years ago they colonized our creek bigtime, building a series of as many as ten small dams and lodges stretching far upstream, though I drew the line when they even tried to settle in right next to my garden. After they chopped down my nice new 30-dollar pink dogwood tree, and after one especially large fellow didn't move out of my way fast enough on the garden path once or twice toward evening, with a little sabotage I convinced them that they had no good reason to be there. A little later the worst drought I've seen so far around here hit, and most of the creek dried up. That was the end of the beavers, though not of the numerous gnawed trees, some of them huge, and the other works that they left behind.
Then, last fall, I felled a large oak that landed right across the creek where they had built two dams, and where in addition they seemed to have lived in a little cave in the creek bank. I know it's there because one of my neighbor's dogs got trapped in there one time, and it was eerie, to hear this dog yapping from underground.
When I cut up the tree, a lot of the logs fell into the water and in the mud that didn't have the best smell, as if a residue remained from the beaver days, and I had to handle all those logs if I wanted to get any use out of them in my heating stove.
But I didn't think much about it at the time, because if you spend any time outside your house, as I do every day of the year, you're subject, sooner or later, to everything that Nature has waiting for you on its mever sterile plate.
--Except that now, for a short time anyway, I have to take a third pill, an anti-biotic, three times a day, for a possible new ailment (new to me) called "giardia." The doctor said that it was the best suspect for what I yesterday called the "unstable state of my elimination system."
Giardia results from some protozoans taking up residence in your small intestine, where they can put you into various stages of diarrhea, which in my case has lasted off and on through the last four months. The doctor said it's pretty common around here, and my wife tells me that one of our closest friends and neighbors had a severe bout with it not long ago. But I was also a little discombobulated when another neighbor, whose family I stopped by to visit on my way back home from the clinic, said, "Oh, that's what my puppies had!"
It seems that giardia is widespread throughout the planet, and. in addition to people, cats, dogs, and other animals can also be afflicted with it. The main source of these invaders is drinking, swimming, and other sorts of water. It can occur in the wild even in seemingly pristine mountain streams, and one of the common names for it is "beaver fever."
Though our water comes from a well that is only about 19 feet deep, I am sure the beavers are how I got it.
Six or seven years ago they colonized our creek bigtime, building a series of as many as ten small dams and lodges stretching far upstream, though I drew the line when they even tried to settle in right next to my garden. After they chopped down my nice new 30-dollar pink dogwood tree, and after one especially large fellow didn't move out of my way fast enough on the garden path once or twice toward evening, with a little sabotage I convinced them that they had no good reason to be there. A little later the worst drought I've seen so far around here hit, and most of the creek dried up. That was the end of the beavers, though not of the numerous gnawed trees, some of them huge, and the other works that they left behind.
Then, last fall, I felled a large oak that landed right across the creek where they had built two dams, and where in addition they seemed to have lived in a little cave in the creek bank. I know it's there because one of my neighbor's dogs got trapped in there one time, and it was eerie, to hear this dog yapping from underground.
When I cut up the tree, a lot of the logs fell into the water and in the mud that didn't have the best smell, as if a residue remained from the beaver days, and I had to handle all those logs if I wanted to get any use out of them in my heating stove.
But I didn't think much about it at the time, because if you spend any time outside your house, as I do every day of the year, you're subject, sooner or later, to everything that Nature has waiting for you on its mever sterile plate.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 7:04 AM
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