The nuances of pairing the right tea with a particular food are subjective at best, and rather personal to say the least. But some people love reading about other peoples’ rules of life, and some people even incorporate them into their own lives. It is not my intent that anyone should incorporate to themselves any of my particular nuances of pairing tea with particular events. I am more concerned with event/tea pairing than food/tea pairing. In any case, I will take neither credit nor responsibility for any consequences, real or imagined. I don’t know that anyone else even has these events in their lives, but broad extrapolation is readily suggested.
Event: You have reached a life decision. You are ready to consider knee replacement surgery. You were told years ago this day would come. You are so ready. You get a referral to an orthopedic surgeon. You are ready, but no one else is. The surgeon is scheduling three months out. No one will even call you for an appointment for two weeks.
Suggested tea: Blue People, a delightful ginseng oolong. This is an energizing tea, and you are a blue-capped drone in line for your corporate-medicine turn at seeing a doctor.
Event: You’re on the phone with your sister for an hour and a half. She does all the talking.
Suggested tea: Northwest Tea Time. The touch of smoke added to this pleasant Assam/Keemun blend lends a hearty sense of fumigation.
Event: The Cat throws up in two different places on your freshly mopped floor. One place is under the table. The other is in his food dish, and he is yowling for more.
Suggested tea: Jade oolong. An exquisite, truly relaxing, and quickly brewed comforter with a sweet fragrance that belies said event.
Event: It hits you. You have cheerfully committed to having people over on three of the next four days. The euphoria has worn off and you swoon at the reality that you can barely cook for two on any one day.
Suggested tea: Irish breakfast, brewed about 6 minutes, topped with stiff whipped cream. The reasoning here should be obvious. You need to be very alert and very coddled, for the next four days straight.
Event: Next week, you are having company again. There will be one more of you than you have plates.
Suggested tea: Pu-erh. This earth-cached beauty may help to remind you that something old may be perfectly useful. This could be a good thing to remember about yourself, too. You also save a trip to holiday-mad Target, or the necessity of purchasing an additional piece of a place setting you wish someone else would hurry up and inherit.
Warmly dressed for the November wind and rain, my husband and I set out for Seattle Saturday, with the joyful mission/distraction of procuring spices, tea, and perhaps a Japanese teacup, one without a handle, that I could hold comfortably. The happy agenda included Uwajimaya, a massive Asian grocery and gift complex in the International District; World Spice, and, if necessary, Market Spice, the holiday hub of the human hive known as Pike Place Market.
I am much worse than a kid in a toy store in places that have Olympic-size displays of tea and tea-making things. I am much worse because, unlike the kid in a toy store, I have the awesome power of VISA. Fortunately, World Spice does not accept credit cards, and we carry little cash, and so my passion was providentially constrained for the good. The good in this case was the serendipitous discovery of a new tea shop, and this one does except VISA.
But I don’t buy everything I see. Tea is a discipline, and it would be obscene to be undisciplined in procuring the stuff of a discipline. Decency and discipline are essential elements of proper tea acquisition, preparation, and consumption.
As we walked from our car to World Spice, I noticed a new storefront along Western Avenue. Vital T-Leaf has been there over a year, but I’ve not been in that part of town in a long time, so the shop was new to me. Their sign was certainly inviting: “Free Tea Tasting.” The offer was beyond resistance, and we decided to continue to World Spice and stop at Vital T-Leaf on our way back.
World Spice was packed with Saturday shoppers, and efficient, friendly order takers were employed to full capacity. Once you know what you want, you stand in line, recite your order to one of the efficient, friendly order takers, and wait to pick it up. Spices are upstairs, and teas are downstairs. I hadn’t been to the shop in several years, and I didn’t remember to go downstairs and look at the tea selection before I placed our spice order so that I could present my full order for tea and spices at one time.
An efficient, friendly order taker downstairs let us know that the line was backing up, and hoped that we could give him our tea order soon. Feeling a little rushed, I became overstimulated and my brain froze. I selected two smoky tea varieties and relayed them to the efficient, friendly downstairs order taker. Then I had to go back upstairs for ginger that I had thought, since I planned to add it to a black tea blend, would be down with the tea, but it was up with the spices. I met with another upstairs efficient, friendly order taker to request the ginger. After reciting three orders at mind-numbing speed to three efficient, friendly order takers, we secured our collection of spices and teas, handed over all the cash we had, and retreated from all the efficient friendliness into the halcyon bracing cold.
Now I was ready to taste some tea. We entered Vital T-Leaf and a new world. The shop was colorful, beautifully decorated, and quiet. We were warmly greeted by Vin and Becky, who emanated the high aesthetic ethos of Chinese hospitality. I was immediately comfortable, and we sat at a long tea bar where, for the next three hours, we were treated to Becky’s cheerful company as I sat transfixed, observing the beautiful tea leaves, beautifully simple tea ware, and Becky’s graceful hands deftly preparing tea in the traditional Chinese style. We talked a bit; I asked a few questions, and she exclaimed delightedly, “you know tea!” Few share my passion for the manifest vitality and aesthetic of tea, and we forged a bond.
I still think of the wonderful couple who owned a tea and coffee shop in Santa Barbara when I was in college there in the 1970s, who initially kindled my interest not just in making and drinking coffee and tea, but in excellent coffee and tea, and their precise preparation. I meet so few people who work in the area of their true passion as these people did, and as Becky does.
Becky explained every step she performed. Making tea is not mere ritual. Every step has a purpose essential to the outcome. Tea is a living entity and must be treated properly to be properly enjoyed. She handed us tiny cylindrical “smell cups” to appreciate the tea’s delicate fragrance before she poured tea into tiny half-ounce cups for us to taste.
I realized I had flunked a dimension of life, because I had not previously mastered proper preparation of green and oolong teas, and consequently had not enjoyed them at all. In addition to improper preparation, my experience was diminished by poor tea. I had not sustained the standards I learned from my Santa Barbara mentors. I had succumbed to a false economy and betrayed a sense of excellence, when I had acquired the discernment to apprehend true economy and real excellence. There were times in my life when I could not afford to uphold my sense of excellence, but there were more times in my life when I simply succumbed to lassitude toward excellence. My time with Becky, during which my husband had to leave twice to refuel the parking kiosk, disarmed my lassitude. I recommitted to excellence.
A jasmine flower comes furled in a tightly wound ball of oolong tea. The flower comes to life when boiling water is poured over the ball and covered a few minutes. The bloom is a dramatic testimony that tea is alive.
Although Becky used a draining tray and several attractive and useful implements, it is not difficult to follow her method of preparing tea without elaborate special equipment. First, she poured boiling water over the leaves in a filter to rinse them, and poured off the water. The reason for rinsing the leaves is to activate, or “awaken” them before brewing. Rinsing also reduces the concentration of caffeine. Green and oolong teas are brewed for just five seconds, but the leaves can be infused again as many as eight times. Subsequent infusions should be for ten seconds, then fifteen seconds, and up to a minute as the leaves lose strength with each infusion. The filter containing the leaves can be stored between infusions in a covered cup for up to a full day, or overnight in the refrigerator. Since some rare teas can cost up to $12 an ounce or even more, it’s a good thing the useful life of the leaves is longer than five seconds!
The amount of caffeine in tea depends on several variables, all of which matter more than whether the tea is black, green, oolong, or white. Soil conditions contribute significantly to the caffeine content of tea. I had always wondered whether the same amount of loose tea had the same amount of caffeine brewed in eight ounces of water or 16 ounces of water. Becky had researched this and was able to answer my question. More water equals more caffeine. With more water, more caffeine is extracted. It does not matter that the amount of tea remains constant; the amount of caffeine extracted depends on the amount of water extracting it. So, if you’re trying to cut back on caffeine, watering down your tea is not the way to do it. The way to cut down on caffeine is to rinse the tea, even twice, before brewing, to brew very briefly, and to drink — as un-American as it seems — small amounts. Really good tea is satisfying. I learned that I can enjoy and be satisfied with four ounces of tea. I bought some two-ounce cups. I can make a four-ounce pot of tea, sip a cup slowly, have another, and feel like I’ve had a really good cup of tea. I can easily drink sixteen ounces of gutless tea, and by gutless I don’t mean weak. Overstrong tea is not good. By gutless I mean insubstantial, a subjective sense of being unsatisfying. So good tea is good economy, especially when you can use the same leaves to make several pots.
As we tasted our tea in our half-ounce cups, Vin taught us that it took three sips to taste our tea properly. He taught us that the Chinese ideographic character for “taste” is three mouths. Anyone can drink down half an ounce in one sip. The tasting cups are the size of the little glass communion cups some churches use. The point is, you don’t taste your tea if you don’t savor it.
Another life-changing thing I learned at Vital T-Leaf is that I love pu-erh tea. I have never tried this rich and delicate type of tea before, mostly because I thought it would taste like dirt. Pu-erh tea is cached in earth for years, maybe decades, to attain an earthy flavor. But its flavor is very delicate and yet more complex and no less rich than a good Assam. It is a deep red-brown color, and tastes a little bit like chestnuts. It is unique and well worth trying, because it is a potential favorite for a tea aficionado. I think it is my new favorite tea. An entire wall of Vital T-Leaf is dedicated to shelves with canisters of different varieties of pu-erh teas.
I participated in a working study tour in China in 1987, and one of the free-time activities I was able to attend was a tour of a tea plantation. It was a beautiful place, and very clean; everything was done by hand with great pride and discipline and care. Seeing shelves and shelves of canisters filled with tea leaves hand rolled into tiny balls, and learning that Becky grew up on a family tea plantation, brought back fond memories of my time in China. The kindness and hospitality of people toward foreigners who expected to find telephones and elevators everywhere, was ubiquitous. Nanjing’s streets don’t follow a grid pattern. I don’t know what they follow, if anything. I consistently got lost when I ventured out from my hotel for a walk. I carried matches with the name of my hotel on them. When I wanted to return, I showed my matchbook to a stranger, and he or she invariably took my arm as if I were a small stupid child, and walked me back to my hotel. One of my colleagues and I were invited to a doctor’s home for dinner. The doctor and his wife treated us to delicacies that must have set them back several months’ wages — literally — since a doctor made $30 a month. They had a bed, a table and two chairs, a chamber pot under the bed, and a floor brazier on which they cooked. Liz and I sat in chairs, and the doctor and his wife sat on the bed. We had a feast, and afterwards, they walked us back to our hotel, disappointed that we knew no way to get them to America.
I kept a journal for the six weeks I was in China, with notes from conversations, excursions, and interactions with local people. I have the few pictures I took before my camera fell in the Hong Kong airport and went brain-dead soon after my arrival. I filled in the blanks with postcards. I haven’t looked at the journal in years, but renewal of my memories of this adventure was another fruit of my time with Becky at Vital T-Leaf. It was a full and fruitful day.
I returned home with three precious packets of tea: Blue People, a ginseng oolong; Jade oolong, and a house pu-erh; some small cups, a bamboo tea scoop, and new knowledge. I also acquired new things to appreciate, a new ally in tea, revived memories, and a renewed sense of excellence. I read through part of my China journal and recalled many wonderful forgotten adventures.
Oh yes, we did go on to Market Spice just to see if it was still there. The crowd was reminiscent of the buses in Nanjing, which prompted one of the members of my group to believe that the buses, which we only observed as pedestrians, had no seats. Not wishing to corrupt my peace of mind, and having no desire for the usual de rigueur free cup of Market Spice tea, we hiked back to Western Avenue to our car, and headed home while the memories were good.
Rushdoony blindsided me; I had not seen this coming. Scarcely twenty pages into his book, The Foundations of Social Order, he cudgeled me. I stand convicted: guilty, and even ready to change. Rushdoony identified not a seed, but a healthy sapling, of my rebellion that I had hidden even from myself (though it is entirely likely that others saw right through it more readily than I did). I hate roots. I am absolutely terrified of them. Wherever I am, I identify myself as “not from around here.”
Growing up in northeastern New York State, I was fairly obsessed with Zorro, and thought of myself as Spanish. I mused that my real parents were Spanish, brought to Schenectady by pirates. When we moved to California, I was from New York. When I moved to Arizona, I was from California. When I moved to Texas, I knew I would be returning to Arizona within six months. I lived in Texas for six years before moving to Montana. When I lived in Montana, I was from Texas. And when I moved to Washington, where I still live, and have lived longer than I have lived anywhere else, I cinched down my identity. I am a Montanan. But it would be nice if we moved to France.
Regard what Rushdoony says:
Everything associated with roots and certainty is today despised by the self-styled new elite. Marriage, morality, family, law, order, certainty, and above all, Christianity, are hated with a passion. Man’s freedom is to avoid all certainty except himself; the quest for certainty is seen as the quest for death. Life for these men means uncertainty and rootlessness….The hatred of roots and of certainty is basic to revolutionary activity. The revolutionist destroys things of value precisely because they have a value apart from him. Only what he decrees can stand. The revolutionist destroys roots, values, and laws because they speak of certainty, and he is at war with certainty. This is the basis of revolutionary destruction. It seems senseless to those who fail to realize that destruction is basic to revolutionary faith. (pp. 18-19)
Okay, by God’s merciful providence , this is not entirely me, but most of it has been me, and some still is. But when I read Rushdoony’s words, I had a strong need to hold a heavy object. I needed some type of kinesthetic cue of permanence. I made some strong tea in my cast-iron teapot. I hauled a steel table into my study from the den. I even wanted a truly settled setting, and went to the buffet drawer for a tablecloth, but remembered I had given those away, because we prefer to eat with loins girt, blood on the lintel, and the angel of death approaching. Tablecloths simply imply too much rootedness. They also become grungy when my Cat gets up on the table.
Whenever we begin a remodeling or redecorating project in our home, it sparks an energized discussion and research process focused on where to go next. We figure whatever we are doing to the house will only make it more saleable. My husband and I both moved around a lot as kids. I find it incredible and even a little weird that my sister has lived in the same place and had the same phone number for thirty years, but it makes it easier not to lose track of her. If someone I had not seen in thirty years wanted to find me, they might need a skip-trace.
I cannot help the intra-continental shuttling that extracted me from my early roots, but I am glad that it did, because I am a Westerner. And Westerners typically do not grow roots. That is what cowboy songs are about. However, there comes a point where willful rootlessness is rebellion. I cringe to think I would rebel against the blessings of being where I am, for instance, in a church, with the tremendous privilege of aging with a likeminded cohort and watching their children grow up. But I do rebel against this, because it is a huge responsibility to keep loving these people, to share their sorrows and disappointments, to keep my temper when they are noxious, and to keep in check my ever-ready impulse to be noxious.
Faith gives me the ability to repent, and providence sets up plenty of things for me to repent, most especially, perhaps, in the environment of faith. Other areas of my life are cordoned from rebellion. If I rebel against my medication regime, I will die. If I rebel against my dietary regime, I will become ill and require more medication. If I rebel against my marriage and the template of creation, I will be miserable. But this does little to subdue my rebellious desire to be making the decrees about these things. And that is because I have weak roots, weakened by my rebellious hacking.
I am grateful that Rushdoony got me thinking about my deficiencies in the area of rootedness, because I had just written in our year-end letter that our own roots had sunk deeper in our own soil. And I meant it. The thought just needs a little more burnishing: a lifetime of it, really.
I would consider it perfectly reasonable if a reader wanted simply to proceed directly to the frittata recipe: just scroll down till you see bold type. For those more interested in the framework in which a frittata is created at my house, I have provided some context.
It was a bright and stormy day. For a long time I have washed towels on Friday; and in this way alone, this particular Friday was unexceptional.
I brought a thermos of coffee to a friend and visited with her for a little while at her workplace before she began her shift. The coffee cheered her, but she is always cheerful, and she greeted and encouraged her coworkers as we walked about. Some hard things were coming up for her, but her sanguinity and gratitude for God’s uplifting help evidence a great portion of spiritual grace. I cannot even imagine the strength she has to live her life, and yet she considers me some kind of stanchion. The bond of Christ among his people is as mysterious, and yet at the same time, as effable, as the hypostatic union of the Trinity.
From my friend’s workplace, I went to a nearby health food store to get a tin of Tiger Balm and some tea. A pleasant man named Abdullah was hawking a line of organic cosmetics. I took a smidge from the eye cream tester, because the texture of the skin beneath my eyes resembles an orange peel. The product was too expensive for me to consider, and seemed no better than Burt’s Bees, and happily, I was rescued from engaging with Abdullah by the sudden appearance of someone calling his name, recognizing him as a colleague of twenty-some years ago. It seemed a good day for friends meeting friends at work.
At home, I made some ginger peach tea and went through the mail. My husband happens to be working on a case in which a Ford truck spontaneously combusted while quietly parked in its garage. In Friday’s mail was something from Ford. The recall notice, for that is what it was, included this charming prospect:
“Ford cannot be confident that over many years in service, a speed control deactivation switch installed on your vehicle will not leak brake fluid, posing the risk of a fire. This condition may occur even when the vehicle is parked or when it is being operated. This risk exists on vehicles equipped with or without speed control.”
It also says,
“Until you have the recall service performed, park your vehicle outdoors away from structures to prevent a potential fire from spreading.”
It is amazing how you can just go through life as if nothing is wrong, when your husband’s 2001 Ford pickup is sitting quietly in your driveway every night, just waiting to spontaneously combust and take your adjacent Audi with it, and probably your house and you and your husband and Cat, too.
My husband will disconnect the sinister, scheming vehicle’s battery while said vehicle is in our driveway to belay any combustion attempts on the part of said vehicle until the recall service is performed next week.
A cup of tea later, I was reading a portion of John Murray’s Principles of Conduct, in the chapter on the dynamic of the biblical ethic. I was trying to get my mind around Paul’s use of “the Spirit of Christ” as a hypostasis, and decided to start making a frittata for dinner. I made one last night, and my husband loved it. And here is my recipe, with a brief foreword.
Frittata is Italian for omelette. I have no idea why so many recipes call for baking or broiling a frittata. I find it simplest to cook it in a skillet on the stove. I was telling a friend today how much I missed the fabulous artichoke frittatas I used to get at C&M Deli in La Jolla during my otherwise unexciting junior high and high school years. She asked for my recipe and I sent it to her, but I forgot to mention the cheese. Do remember the cheese.
Frittata
You can use any vegetables, meats, or cheeses you like or happen to have on hand. I am simply relaying what I use because I almost always have these things on hand and we like them. This recipe serves 2 if you are having nothing else, and probably 4-6 as a side dish. I honestly cannot imagine what else you could need.
2 small zucchini
1/4 of a medium onion
4 eggs
3 tablespoons canned pumpkin
3 tablespoons crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
1/4 cup sliced cooked turkey or chicken
1/2 teaspoon each of garlic salt, oregano, and paprika (Italian colors!)
2 tablespoons cooking oil, preferably olive
Slice zucchini and onions in a food processor, or very thin. Heat about two tablespoons of olive oil in a non-stick skillet and briefly sauté zucchini and onions. Cover and let cook until tender. While this is cooking, beat the eggs; add pumpkin, cheese, meat, and seasonings. When zucchini is tender, pour egg mixture over it and spread evenly. Cover and cook on low heat about 15 minutes or until it seems dry enough to remove without making a huge mess.
A few perturbations have rocked my already tenuous orbit lately. Like most Americans, I’m aware that we have predictable terrorist events waiting to happen within our own country. Like most Americans, I live in a county, and the county is run by council members whose pragmatism and blatant willful ignorance of the law jeopardizes the operation of ordinary services for ordinary citizens. Like most Americans, I sometimes wish there were such a place as “away” to which to run. But there isn’t, and this is largely due to the legacy of Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl.
Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl did not invent the terrorist-as-victim ethos, but I think they had a lot to do with defining it intelligibly. Charlie Brown’s secret adoration of the Little Red-Haired Girl was consistently thwarted by her sanguine indifference. I recall this fragment from one of the Peanuts books I read when I was twelve and my mother was trying to wean me from comic books:
Charlie Brown: ‘There she was, the little red-haired girl. I didn’t know what to say. I was all embarrassed and confused. So I hit her’.
Of course we empathize with Charlie Brown’s thwarted romance. But in his own small way, he was a self-styled victim-turned-terrorist. Charlie Brown is a gentle soul and no one’s idea of a terrorist. But in his frustration, he lashed out, and now liberal pundits wonder why Fort Hood (“alleged”) mass murderer Dr. Hasan didn’t receive help, why no one reached out to him, and why no one even questioned him closely, when there was clear evidence that he was maybe a tad testy, or at least potentially so. Allegedly. Probably no one seriously contemplated Charlie Brown striking the girl of his dreams, either. Each at his own level, Charlie Brown and Hasan had a peculiar notion that they were entitled to manifestation of their particular dreams. Other people failed to play their parts as Charlie Brown and Hasan thought they should, and the guys blew. In cartoons, damage is always reversible.
Charles Schultz showed real insight into the defects of human character. He likely understood the biblical concept of total depravity. Peanuts tracks the gospel, and a child can be mortified by Charlie Brown’s lapse when he decks the object of his thwarted love. Even Lucy, a paradigmatic fascist, rants against truisms in favor of some brand of ultimate truth. Linus exuded that soon all the birds would be flying south for the winter. Lucy seized the opportunity to burst his bubble and be the defender of truth. “Chickens are birds aren’t they? Did you ever see a chicken flying south?” At least she knew her logical syllogisms.
But something happened at some point to connive victim status from the vanquished and award it to the vanquisher. Relativism cloaked as fairness placed all human actions on a spectrum, and that spectrum was stripped of principles of conduct in favor of a “dynamic” state of existence. Principles always present tripwires to relativism. Dynamism is the fuel of relativism. A dynamic discourse need not make any sense. A principled discourse necessarily must make sense. Unfortunately, those who participate in relativistic discourse have lost track of what sense is because they have lost track of what principles are.
An example of relativistic discourse elevated to the absurd is presently before my county council. A judge who was convicted of a criminal offense resigned his seat. (Weirdly, he was under no clear statutory duty to do so.) The council decided not to replace him, citing emergency budget concerns. The council was informed by the county prosecutor that it had acted outside of its authority, because only the state legislature has the authority to set the number of judicial seats. With many litigants already waiting upwards of a year for trial because of a crowded docket, the county’s decision to reduce the bench by one member only aggravated the problem. One councilman’s response: “Sue us.” The County, prepared to sacrifice the interests of its citizens, is now the victim. And Dr. Hasan, sensitized by fantasies of spurious persecution and turned murderer, is now a victim because he was misunderstood; we failed to save him from himself in time. Unprincipled thinking often misplaces blame.
Unprincipled thinking co-occurs with abnegation of the absolute. This is a natural consequence of atheism, and Americans need to face that they live in atheist society, and that many Christians contribute to the problem when they insist upon fusing “God and country.” Principled thinking tracks the moral law of God. “Don’t murder” is a divine imperative. The relativist adds, “without some reason, even if it’s just an emotional thing. After all, we’re all in this together.”
And of course we are all in this together. And I can’t say Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl changed history, but sometimes I wonder. What if the Little Red-Haired Girl had been honest and said, “Buzz off, I’m just not that into you.”?
I’m so embarrassed about this that the only thing I can do is blog about it. I don’t mind being self-deprecating. I don’t even mind being culturally illiterate. But I have found my highest level of incompetence in a very unexpected area. I cannot find out how to watch Oprah.
This seems to be a peculiar pocket of incompetence. Generally, I think I’m a pretty good online researcher. I always had a knack for legal research. I have found people who seemed fairly tucked away: my niece in an ashram, an acquaintance of nearly 40 years ago in an online church newsletter birthday list, and other people I have turned up in newspaper archives, for instance. But when I wanted to find out whether there would be an Internet webcast of the great Oprah-Palin interview, I encountered total blackout.
We don’t have a TV, and I have no idea what stations air on what channels in my area, or what station airs Oprah. My computer came with an antenna, but I would have no idea how to tune in Planet Earth’s number one program. All this is notwithstanding my pastor’s recent admonition to the ladies of the congregation that watching Oprah does not count as a hobby. I daresay.
I went to Oprah’s website and Sarah Palin’s website and turned up no clue as to whether there would be a webcast on November 16. I fruitlessly searched various news agencies. I would not insult any of my friends by imputing to them the desire to watch this program, so I would not ask to watch it with them. However, I do have a neighbor who styles herself as “ga-looed to the television” whenever anything is coming down. This would include major events from tomorrow’s weather forecast to the assassination of President Kennedy.
Okay, so I don’t know how to watch Oprah. We all have our spheres of incompetence. I can always catch the spin after the fact. By today’s reckoning, that’s probably the height of cultural literacy. As I said, I’m so embarrassed about this.
Lauren and Grace collaborated on this Diablog. Both have Addison’s disease.
Lauren: When Grace landed on my blog while doing a search for “how to live while living with Addison’s disease,” her quest and her use of language immediately resonated with me. An e-mail marathon ensued, and I invited her to co-author a chronicle of the pre-diagnostic, diagnostic, and management phases of our Addison’s journeys. We both live in the U. S.: I live in the Pacific Northwest; Grace lives in the Northeast. We are the same age, 58, both married, and we both believe that all events transpire not by random coincidence, but through the sovereign providence of God.
Lauren: The most remarkable detail I experienced a few months prior to my diagnosis of primary autoimmune Addison’s disease was that I knew I was dying.
Grace: For the two years prior to diagnosis I thought I was just getting old and slowing down. I’d joke, but it wasn’t really funny for me, that Wednesdays now felt like Fridays- I was running out of steam. If only I had known how true that was-I was running out of the stuff that drives the human engine, cortisol.
Lauren: I have a bloodline imperative that becoming an invalid is not an option. I have a routine. I have certain tasks that I do the same day each week. I have fibromyalgia and arthritis, so I budget my energy with the routine to try to belay total crashes that can last for days. I have certain rules that I follow to maintain my routine and to prevent stress. One of these rules is that I don’t go to bed during the day no matter how tired I am. If I fall asleep reading, that’s okay, but I don’t go to bed unless I have a fever and a serious acute illness, something that very seldom happens.
Grace: There was one rule growing up in our house-sickness was a personal weakness to be avoided at all costs. Not having a stoic personality, I earned an undeserved reputation for being a slacker. To combat this, and to help put food on our table, I developed an insane work ethic: I valued myself on the basis of how much money I was able to bring home. My career as a RN started out at the same time I became married and a new mom-at the tender age of 21. I thought crazy amounts of stress were normal, when in reality it was all I had ever experienced growing up. It took me close to four decades to realize what a nearly-deadly lifestyle I had embarked on.
Lauren: In the summer of 2007, I became faint walking to my laundry room. I was unable to stand for any length of time. I hyperventilated trying to speak. I simply had to lie down, sometimes after being up only a couple of hours in the morning. I recalled the humiliation and misery I experienced with doctors who did not believe in fibromyalgia. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” rang again, loud and clear.
Grace: Over the past two years I had begun to call out frequently on Thursdays and Fridays because I thought I was falling asleep at the wheel — in retrospect, I was having pre-syncopal (pre-fainting) episodes. Only by the grace of God I did not actually pass out and potentially injure someone else. I know of a woman who was diagnosed only after she passed out — at the top of her steps. She fractured multiple vertebrae and spent most of the next year in the hospital and rehab.
Lauren: I researched my symptoms, and came up with “adrenal fatigue” as a match. Unfortunately, naturopathic sites promoting adrenal fatigue can be a great disservice. I settled for this diagnosis, took extra vitamin C, and figured I would tough it out five or six weeks. If my symptoms didn’t resolve by then, I would see an endocrinologist.
Grace: By the grace of God — yet again — I had a MRI done as part of a workup for migraines in 2007. The results were normal except for a partial empty sella, and that was the first clue that something physically may be wrong with me. The sella tursica is a bony cavity in our head, located at the base of the brain, and that contains the pituitary gland which is one of the most critical glands in our body. The pituitary is the endocrine system’s “Grand Central Station”; it sends out chemical signals that control the function of multiple glands such as the thyroid and adrenals. We each have two adrenal glands, one on top of each kidney. The adrenal is composed of two portions; the inside part, or medulla, makes adrenalin; the cortex, or outside portion produces many hormones, one of which is cortisol. If the cortex no longer produces cortisol, this creates a condition known as Addison’s Disease. It used to be fatal before steroids were invented — timing is everything! Good thing I wasn’t born 50 years earlier.
Lauren: My symptoms worsened, and I had been presumptuous in assuming that an endocrinologist could see me within four months. At that point, my husband and I both knew I wouldn’t make it that long. He moved a few mountain ranges and somehow got me in to see an endocrinologist within the week. I saw the doctor, was tested for everything imaginable the first day, returned the second day for an ACTH-stimulated cortisol test, and heard back from the doctor the following evening. Chronic adrenal failure. Addison’s disease. Impossible. It’s funny how I could know I was dying but never suspect I had a chronic disease.
Grace: My type 2 diabetes was not under great control, so in early 2009 I made an appointment to see an endocrinologist for the first time in my life. I took a copy of the MRI with me, and told him not only the information about my diabetes but also what had occurred 29 years earlier during the birth of my last child. I had a rare complication of pregnancy and suffered severe post-partum hemorrhage requiring about 15 units of blood. Because of this, my BP was critically low for the better part of a full day. When I was conscious I asked my nurse what was my systolic BP (top number)- with a hesitant voice she told me-40. Not good. Not good at all. Weeks later my OB doc told me this much hemorrhage can cause damage to the pituitary gland, because it was deprived of its own blood flow. After the MRI result, I began to wonder what had really happened to my pituitary-if it was functioning properly it should have taken up the entire space of the sella tursica. But my MRI showed an empty space where the pituitary should have been. What happened?
Lauren: As far as work issues, I had already put careers as an epidemiologist, journalist, and attorney behind me and had been happily at home for nearly 10 years when I was diagnosed with Addison’s. Consequently, I was fortunate to have no upheaval in my life concerning whether I could continue working. Life goes on pretty much as normal, even if normal is never the same again.
Grace: Summer of 2009 I was formally diagnosed with secondary Addison’s Disease and started on a lifetime of oral steroids to replace what my body no longer made. It was easier to replace the steroid than it was to repair my lost sense of self — I had always worked fulltime, with overtime. Sadly, I had once defined myself by my money making capacity and now was unable to work. Who was I, really?
Lauren: I am not so sanctified as to have no resentments. To name a few: my life depends on the stable production and distribution of a controlled substance, and on the continued existence of endocrinologists, and the necessity of living within driving distance of them. I become excessively indignant with people who push naturopathic remedies for Addison’s (there’s no such thing!) because they believe hydrocortisone must somehow be “hard on me.” But I have learned to simply respond, “When you say that, all I hear is ‘drop dead.’” Hydrocortisone replaces cortisol, nothing else does, and cortisol is necessary to life.
Grace: My last job was as a university hospital-based nurse case manager, primarily dealing with insurance and discharge planning issues. It had become extremely stressful during the past year, in no small part due to the recession and increased needs of the patients. As a nurse case manager, had been able to get doctors to do pretty much what I asked of them, including filling out forms and writing prescriptions as I instructed. Now I was (drum roll please) a patient. Roles reversed. I have to tell you-it sucks to be the patient . Now I have to plead with doctors to get my paperwork done, especially for disability. People tease me how ‘lucky’ I am to be able to stay home now. You have got to be kidding me — lucky? But maybe I am lucky — lucky to be diagnosed, to have a loving and supportive family. Lucky to not have been born before Dr. Addison figured out what this disease was. His wife had the disease, and it killed her.
Here is a non-technical and very palatable pumpkin soufflé-like comfort food for people who cannot have piecrust or sugar. These things become an acquired taste with discipline, but this is actually very good.
Faux Pumpkin Pie
1 29-oz can pumpkin — not pumpkin pie filling
4 eggs
1 teaspoon each of: ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon each of: cloves, salt
Separate eggs into two bowls. Whip egg whites until frothy and stiff. Combine pumpkin and spices with egg yolks and mix thoroughly. Fold in egg whites. Butter a pie pan — a silicon brush works wonderfully well for this — and pour in pumpkin mixture. Bake at 350° and begin testing for doneness after 45 minutes. My oven took an hour.
Faux Pumpkin Pie works as a breakfast or lunch entrée, or as a dinner side dish, or as a dessert.
When I was in law school, we used to encourage one another with these words: “there’s always beauty school.” This is not a faithful saying, nor is it worthy of any acceptance whatever. Most of us never would have made it through beauty school. But beauty school was code for a refuge for the kind of dumb.
I have had several hairdressers over the years who were reasoning beings, as well as a few who were possibly employed a little above full capacity. I can say the same for the population of lawyers I’ve known over the years.
Now, the woman who cuts my hair is a good woman. And what, you might ask, covert nuance of character am I trying to suggest with this epithet? Is even “good woman” code? This good woman was a bit under the weather today, but very cheerful as always. She was surprised to learn that I have a diabetic cat; she is surprised to learn this every month. I went through the drill again: layered ends, keep enough length that I can pull it all into a ponytail; you know, I’m just trying to maintain the same length. I hate change. She asked whether she should take the same two inches off that she trimmed last month. She asks this every month. Hair grows half an inch a month. If she trimmed two inches off every month, within a year, she would be out of a job, and I would have no more worries about a crooked part.
But she’s a good woman, and I like her a lot. When she asked if I had read anything by John Hagee, I brought her a copy of Arthur Pink’s The Sovereignty of God when I came the following month. The month after that, I asked how she was liking Arthur Pink. She said she liked him a lot. I think this good woman likes everyone a lot. She’s still reading John Hagee’s book; she can’t put it down.
In praise of this good woman, I have to say that she is probably trying to urge me toward a bit more style. I think she thinks Seattle Grunge becomes me. Today, she finished up my trim, but didn’t happen to comb my hair back out of my face. She handed me a mirror, and I said I couldn’t see. She’s a good woman; she handed me my glasses. So I re-created Cheryl’s new style for me for the purpose of this one exclusive photo op.
Note to Heidi: I am not trying to copy your house-Mufti look! This was an original created just for me. :-)
