Category: Journal

I’m currently working on moving my site from Squarespace v5 to v7. The new version is a real pleasure to work with, but the transfer did unspeakable things to the formatting of old posts. I don’t know when/if I’ll get to fixing those, but I am aware of the issue and I’ll try to address is when/if I have the time and energy.

One of the weird little pleasure of public transportation is watching the cyclists on the path next to the train tracks riding alongside the train as it approaches the station. I’m not quite sure why it pleases me so much to see this, but I look forward to it every morning. 

Yesterday, a co-worker of mine asked “Have you done anything to your beard?” I responded that I had not done so. Her response tickled me no end: “Well, it looks more profound today.” I’ve never heard anything like that and I suspect I never shall again, but it certainly made my day.

I feel really fortunate to have an allergy P-Phenylenediamine. That might just be the giddy euphoria of finally having an indication as to what has been ailing me talking, but I feel genuinely lucky to have this particular diagnosis. Why? For starters, it could have been a great deal worse. I could be dealing with an autoimmune disease, or organ failure, or even a dangrous food allergy. An allergy to a clothing dye seems downright rosy in comparison. I’m particularly glad that this popped up in 2014 instead of 1984 or 1994. PPD allergies are rare enough that clothes are seldom marked to indicate the risk. Doing research on different materials, manufacturers, and environmental standards organizations is difficult now, but imagine trying to do it without an internet. My choices are expensive, but at least I have choices. I can’t imagine what I’d do without the ability to do this kind of research. I’d probably be restricted to ordering by mail from a single manufacturer. The cure for my particular ailment is, as you have probably guessed, “buy new clothes.” That’s essentially it. I mean, I’ll have to buy new sheets and towels and stuff, but even then, wow, to cure my problem, I have to go shopping. I can live with that.  My doctor has asked me to adhere to an “elimination diet” for the next few weeks. That boils down to “eating really healthy foods.” Again, there’s not a lot of downside there. I can’t eat most desserts, or drink sodas, or eat fast food. On the plus side, I feel about a zillion times better and my belly seems to be shrinking.  I’ve even taken this as an opportunity to start exercising a little.  The net of all of this is that I feel almost euphorically good. I’ll be honest with you: Nine months of itchy skins that easily becomes infected and no clue why had me in a serious funk. My energy level was so low it wasn’t measurable and I was in a dark mood. I could go to work and that was about it. The steroids they gave me to control the symptoms helped, but the side effect was that I gained a lot of weight. So, I really don’t think I’m rationalizing when I say that my diagnosis was a fortunate one. I’m thrilled at where I am now and I wish that everyone else with long-term illnesses were as lucky.  

I have been sick for quite some time now. This is my first encounter with chronic illness so I don’t really know if I’m “taking it well” or not.  After nine months of tests, with all of the poking, prodding, sawing, and other unpleasantries they entail, my physician believes that we’ve found a cause, if not necessarily the cause.  My skin has been in a poor way since last November. I’ve been itchy to the point of madness, and small wounds heal slowly or not at all, turning into larger and larger sores. The worst part, though, is the itchiness. It goes from merely annoying to literally maddening, depriving me of sleep and robbing me of the ability to concentrate on much of anything. My general practitioner assumed I had fallen victim to scabies and treated me thusly. When I didn’t respond and people around me failed to develop symptoms, I was referred to a dermatologist. I cannot fault the doctor for a lack of thoroughness. We’ve tested food allergies, kidney and liver failure, thyroid issues and autoimmune diseases and run all manner of rules over my blood. None of these turned up anything of note: Mild allergies to garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pet dander. This came as no surprise as I was told from the beginning that discovering the cause of a skin ailment was often a needle in a haystack proposition.  As a final straw before sending me off to find another doctor,we tried a patch test to test for common contact allergies. This consisted of taping three panels to my back and waiting to see if anything happened. It did. The area of skin under patch #20 reacted in a violent manner, one that I would rather not describe here. The nature of the reaction was such that the doctor took pictures and brought in other doctors to see a most unusual area of skin.  My oppressor finally had a name: Paraphenylenediamine, AKA P-Phenylenediamine or just PPD. If that substance doesn’t sound familiar, don’t feel badly about it. I’d never heard of it and had to do a fair amount of Googling to get my head around what I was up against. Weirdly enough, it’s primarily used in hair dyes. The days of me sporting gloroius, blue-black hair are already well behind me, so that wasn’t the source of exposure. Unfortunately, it’s used in many blue and black dyes in clothing as well. I am, for all intents and purposes, allergic to black. Unfortunately, it can be used for dying clothes of other colors as well, so merely wearing Miami Vice-esque pastels is no guarantee of beautiful skin.* Finding clothesmakers who make PPD-free clothing is tricky business. You won’t find it listed on any labels and the Global Organic Textile Standard is silent on the subject. The best standards agency I’ve found to-date is a European outfit named Bluesign. Their site is a little tricky to navigate, but they have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to PPD. In theory, I should be safe wearing clothing from the manufacturers listed as partners. Itchiness knows nothing of theories, so I’m contacting manufacturers directly. I’ve sent out several dozen requests and made a similar number of phone calls. So far, this is what I have: Prana: PPD-free REI: 25% of REI branded items are PPD-free, with a commitment to achieve 100% by 2018. The Gap/Old Navy/Banana Republic: Have to contact custmer support on an item by item basis;no comprehensive list available. Nike: Despite being Bluesign-listed, Nike’s customer service informed me their compliance was on an item by item basis. Those are the only companies to have responded thus far. I expect Patagonia to wind up on the good list soon. I have a grave fear that my beloved Keen sandals are a no-no and I’ll be having to donate them.  My doctor has also put me on an anti-inflamatory diet. Fortunately, I have magnificent support at home and I anticipate being able to stick to it for the four-week period my doctor requested and maybe beyond. The fact that I may get a little healthier in the process is a nice carrot at the end of that stick. And I expect I shall be eating quite a lot of carrots in over the next four weeks. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that, with my wounds starting to heal and my skin starting to feel somewhat less sensitive, I expect I will be here more often. It is my hope that I won’t spend all of my time writing about illness, but it felt good to get this down on an increasingly vague approximation of paper.  Thank you, and take care, R. Kemp   EDIT: Just heard back from Patagonia and they have confirmed that their clothes are 100% PPD-free.   * In fairness, there is probably no product on this planet that would guarantee me beautiful skin. As a wise man once said, “Time makes fools of us all.”** ** Yes, I know someone else said it first. Not as well, though.

I don’t know why, but these seems to me like an idea that would suit OK Go remarkably well: Write and record a song, then hand all of the individual instrumental and vocal tracks to 12 different producers. Don’t give them any direction beyond “Do what that wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Go ahead and work with them, re-record stuff if needs must, but make sure all the producers are working completely sepearately from each other. Then, voila, a new OK Go album made up of 12 versions of the same song produced by 12 different producers. Is it just me, or does that seem like an OK Go kind of thing?

The sense of horror one gets when witnessing from afar a tragedy unfolding but being unable to either avert the disaster or to even warn the soon-to-be-victiims of what the certain doom which approaches. From your office window, you see the train and the car stalled on the tracks. In cinematic slow motion, it dawns on you that the crash is inevitable and you have no time or means to alert the engineer nor to signal to the driver whose car straddles the rails. Even though it has yet to happen, it will, as certain as the rising of the sun.  Which is to say, my family, rabid supporters of the Three Lions, taped the England-Uruguay match and implored me to keep the result to myself.