Sometime this year, I got sick of the burn from the C shots.

I used to fill the 3 cc syringe, shooting up 1.5 grams of C at once. Ouch! I would do anything to get better. I did.

Sometimes the C oozes back out from the injection site from a large shot. What a waste of enduring the burn! Make sure you do your shots in your black yoga pants or cheap, ugly lounge wear, not the cashmere set, Kids. Sometimes they also bleed.

This year, I lowered my daily dose to 1.5 ml, 750 milligrams of C. This scared me because I have gotten so much better on a higher dose. But it was worth trying. They hurt a lot less. Yay!

Cashmere wool robe by Arlotta. My house was made by hand, before there were building codes. It lacks well-sealed windows and doors and insulation. I need a good robe to stay warm. I could turn on the heat, but it will drain right out, so why bother.

I used to wear this boiled Merino wool cardy by Lands’ End as a robe around my house. It was the greatest! So cozy and soft and warm. But the dry cleaners ruined it. 🤬 They must have subjected it to high heat because it came back shriveled. They stretched it out twice because I could not get my arms in it after the first stretching. I tried to live with it because I couldn’t replace it. Lands’ End doesn’t make it anymore, they are just selling off the remaining sizes. 🤬🤬

Then the dry cleaners shrunk it again. 🤬🤬🤬 WTF?? I was paying for dry cleaning! Now my lovely garment was hopelessly shrunk. The dry cleaner and I negotiated a store credit to reimburse me for my loss (which cannot be measuered in dollars) and I started bringing my best pieces elsewhere.

Since lowering my dose, if I am getting sick, if I am overly sore from exercise, if I am feeling stressed and run down, I add a second shot. I look for signs of my body failing to heal and repair. All I need is to keep up with those basic requirements so I can function. The injecting of C has made my collagen stronger but it is still highly elastic. I cannot seem to get less flexible even though I avoid stretching like some people avoid that devil, gluten. EDS is very much a disease of weakness, of being unable to heal and repair adequately. It would be nice to see it described better in the medical literature or wikipedia. The flexibility itself is not so disabling, if you can heal. I am proof.

For a deeper dive into what happens to vitamin C in the body, click here.

This lower dose could be just fine. When the human body is saturated with C, the excess is excreted. But it should be saturated. Perhaps this lower dose will be enough. Time will tell.

Mr. Pennington pulls the shots for me. Ascor is a thick syrup, so it is a lot for my filmy hands to do. We store the loaded syringes in a box of chocolates he bought when passing through Paris on his way to Dubai. Chocolates long since eaten. Happy memories! Of the chocolates, not of Mr. Pennington’s trips around the world. So unsettling to think the earth is round and he is on the other side of it.

I am doing great on this dose so far.