Finally. Got assessed into hand therapy today. Came home with a light splint, a squeezy gel egg, and a couple of instructions. My right hand is officially only half as strong as my left hand right now. Today was the first time anyone said it's ok to use heat for the pain, which was bliss. I'm five weeks out from the surgery and everyone else is still saying use ice. Now that I'm back home in slight shock at the amount of pain increase over such a tiny amount of focused therapy baselines, I'm running into a spike in wrist pain, and now I'm seeing there is a wrist tendonitis dynamic with carpal tunnel and a whole page about the art of icing... 😕
~this is today~
My resolve to cut coffee down is happening, just in time for National Coffee Day, lol. I'm down to one cup a day now, and *bing* suddenly much more awake. Not a clue if that means I'm finally past the surgery exhaustion or it's really my system breaking a little more free from chemicals, since I'm also finally off the daily opioids now. Or it could be the cold front that moved in and is messing with me, who knows. Whatever is going on, I dropped another pound, so huzzah.
all my pix click out 🎃
Today is my last follow up with knee surgeon, possibly, unless there is a 3-month or something down the road. I have 3 more physical therapy appointments for knee and a sparkly new grueling occupational hand schedule that goes up through November 1st, which is also my last follow up with the hand surgeon. Somewhere in the middle of October I have primary care checkup and likely a flu shot. All the driving so far has flared impinged shoulder nerve on 'good' side, which lately is spiking up my neck into headaches (driving is bad, mkay), because it's been hurting to drive with my surgery hand, so you can imagine I will be thrilled when all this driving into town slows down in November.
Got my bank and calendar super synced this week. I'm already missing sending a couple of birthday cards (not cool when your dad makes it to 89!), so it's crucial I get all my ducks in a row before my brain collapses into an alt dimensional state of mush during the holiday slide. I usually have all my stuff lined out as far ahead of Thanksgiving as possible because by the time that gets here, I'm just done the rest of the year while Christmas blurs by and I stumble back out of my daze later in the winter.
Stuff I need to work on (super facepalm fail this month, I'm soooo sorry, guys) are getting back with Mike and Myke and Emily on stuffs we're working on, wrapping my brain around plugins so my tech-moderator tag is more than just a pretty badge, and writing. I have so many things I want / need to write / get written. There is always too much going on, and when there's not, there's depression, so swimming in syrup is just a lifestyle. That reminds me, I also had a great talk with psychiatrist about my super low dose xanax being a psychological crutch, and goal over the next six months is get it shaved down to half of what I'm taking now (very laughable in the medical world, not funny at all in the addict world), and from there get ready to leap off again. The gabapentin is my fallback for that safety net feeling, thank goodness it's good on anxiety along with the nerve pain.
click to get lost in pinterest
I know I get too blabby repeating some of this stuff, but sometimes I look back a few years at how hard it used to be just rounding up my brain to type a few sentences out, and I can see how easy this has become, and that it really has helped me stay on track and not slide into the decay of weight gain, self incrimination, hiding, justifying, and more depression. Eat your salads, kids.
In the shower going ok, so Cat Boy has super cat speed, cat balance, and cat ears, Gecko has lizard grip, invisibility, and super gecko muscles, and Owlette has owl wings, owl eyes, and...? Oh, yeah, projectile feathers. Had to go look that one up. In case you wonder what I think about in the shower.
And then during my monthly fibro maintenance massage the other day I was thinking about the cool ways I need to finish up my player shop on the game server. So I started work on that this morning. Took awhile because I can't count right for beans any more nowadays, but I got my Thunderbird moved over to start, so it has survived both a server transfer and a claim move now. I should add up what it's worth sometime, spared no expense designing it.
Had my first real ocular migraine over the last 24 hours. It was a lot like that in the demo pic on that site if you click over, but more shimmery. It was like a kaleidoscope edge that kept shimmering and moving and pulsing, while the center of my eye was all blurry and shimmery, but I could see in the periphery all around between the central blur and the outer shimmery edge encircling it all.
Another thing to watch, I guess. My mom had vision problems from time to time and loads of headaches, and eventually we found out she'd been having hundreds of TIAs that whole time. After several years she started having the big strokes. It's horrible watching a parent go down like that. It's worse realizing you're on the same path and you know your future.
I may have to stop drinking coffee altogether. Remember I caved and bought ice cream? It was my favorite, coffee. The last time I had coffee ice cream it affected me so badly that I dumped the rest out. I love coffee. But not enough to wind up with migraines and possible strokes. I also put off starting the statin my new cardiac doctor prescribed until after my surgeries. Guess I'd better get on that.
So today I'm dealing with this ugmo headache. I seem to be fine otherwise. My eye feels a little strained so I got back off game and after I post this I'm not going to read or watch anything. Really pushed it yesterday, to the point of having to ice my hand again, which I'm sure would make my entire medical team frown at me. It's not cute that I'm powering through and hurting myself. It's hard on my family. I need to be considerate and take better care of myself. And seriously, I think I'll make a plan to get back down to half a cup a coffee in the morning like I used to in the old days. One of my better years had less coffee in it and a lot more calorie and carb restraint. I know I'll feel better if I get back on that discipline.
I'm going to my happy place today. I'm going to shut my eyes and listen to this while I wander through minecraft in my mind and think about the weird dream I had last night about finding out the smaller rural post offices across America were covers for something, one of those wow moments, but waking up I couldn't remember what it was, but I remember thinking so that's why they wanted to shut down the smaller post offices... I think I tweeted something once about back when you could mail a child. (Feel free to check that on Snopes, lol.)
K, see ya. Hope your weekends (and Mondays already for some) are going well. 💗💝
Yeah, that flex up there is exactly what I was NOT supposed to do so soon after surgery, and why it's been swelled back up real hard ever since. I assess into occupational therapy on Wednesday specifically for that. My surgeon was very glad I called up to discuss it.
So this was me on the game server today, dealing behind the scenes while I dealt with a problematic duo.
click pic for a good write up about writer problems
I took half an opioid left over from my knee surgery just to be able to log back into internet. I cannot do anything but type with this hand. I'm back to square one.
Cool videos I've been watching to help pass the time while I ice my hand.
This next took me nearly an hour to watch because pausing to read all the things, but perfectly answers all the same things I was feeling about season 4. Essentially, I don't think Sherlock ever got off the plane.
I'm still working on this one because it's so long, but I keep coming back to it to continue because it's so cool.
I really do like this anon vid. Spot on.
I'm not on any particular side (the anons don't take sides, we are all humanity and should all be given the same considerations, dignities, and opportunities), but I do quite enjoy watching and listening to Julian Assange. This popped up in my suggestions so I watched it. He's a very pretty man.
Because I watch such a wide variety of things on youtube, I get all kinds of suggestions, and I filter through thousands just to watch a handful. I very quickly stop and move on if the first minute doesn't hold me. There are some really good things to see, and I'm so thankful I live in a time where I can see so much with so little effort and cost while I am stuck not being able to use my hand very well. #transparency I was once stood up by a guy who couldn't tell me he was an alcoholic. He had already come out as gay years before to me in a very bad area to be gay, but he chose to get shitface wasted and get picked up by another guy and then couldn't face calling me up to cancel, which I'd have been ok with. What he didn't know was that I am an alcoholic, too, and I'm pretty sure I've been much worse places than he's ever dreamed. You know what? Let it go. Just be you, guys. Own your guilt, your pain, your fails, and be human with the rest of us. We love you anyway.
It dawned on me I had been turned absolutely loose without anything beyond follow up to remove stitches and a generalized run-through of nerve glides I'd already learned. I wasn't given a time table, what to do over time, wasn't even told how long to ice and elevate. Because of this, I wasn't aware that I could do further injury, and my wrist swelled back up so hard that I was waking up with my hand numb and getting shooting pains up my fingers through the day.
I literally need to be told DO NOT DO THIS LIST FOR THIS LONG. After going over those articles it hit me I had started getting back to 'normal' way too quickly, and even though I did follow the generalized advice, I was already one to three weeks ahead of the healing process on a few things.
Skip healing and go directly to making it worse. *ouch*
So I brought it up with the physical therapist who's been working with me on my knee recovery, and she said it looked good but commanded me to get back on making the time to get my wrist elevated while icing and call my surgeon for therapy on wrist. And then she extended the therapy on my knee for three more visits. So as much as I hate dragging out and having to do this, looks like I'll be in occupational therapy possibly up through Halloween, and in the meantime the rest of my body is going Hey, what about us? Because I was doing nerve impingement last spring and we stopped in the middle of that, and the ongoing maintenance on everything else pretty much just stopped completely.
Wanna say to all the younger people out there who think you're tired and achy and whatever problems with little kids- wait till you're doing all that with the added benefit of being twice as old. It's fun.
Random thought- I see "antimicrobial" as a sell point on things like plastic covered dish drainers, but I never see that word used on toys designed for water (pool, bathtub) play, especially when water can sit inside a toy and mold. Just a thought. Really grosses me out to see kids pretend toys are things to get a drink out of.
My. Hand. HURTS. That is all.
That is not all. I keep remembering all these scenes in TV shows where a character slices the palm of their hand for some reason, to prove they they are human, to make a pact, whatever. Now that I know what a cut that deep feels like and how long it takes to heal and how easily it gets infected, I'm imagining characters down the road with withered hands from nerve damage, missing hands because gangrene, and fumbly klutzy hands for weeks while they heal kind of thing. You don't just slice a hand and then go wield a sword. Or put a saddle on a horse. I can still barely lift my coffee cup.
Anyway, I can tell you everything that can go excruciatingly wrong with that palm slice now.
And I'll tell you exactly what I was thinking having a carpal release and knee arthroscopy on the same day, get it all done on only one plop of anesthesia, right. WRONG. Quick surgeries even back to back require extended medications in two different areas and I have had a horrible time coming off all that. It took a few days just for the anesthesia and local numbing agents to wear off, and I got so mean. I was eating people over nothing. The pain med barely covered both areas once that set up regular residence in my body, and then I got so sick and nauseated I had to get off it for a couple days, and then the pain was so brutal I had to get back on it, and I've been clocking out smaller doses so I can balance between the pain med and the actual pain without feeling sick.
I am 22 days out from surgery. I am still in this much pain.
They were not kidding when they said it would take awhile on both wrist and knee. I know I've had some tough issues in my life, but all this getting complicated, even with really fast and smooth healing, has been almost nightmarish to get through. I have a really high pain tolerance, and yowza.
I think the biggest challenge is needing to move around. The rest of my body is so tired of sitting with my leg elevated, my hand is overworked because I'm so bored, my neck is getting spiky pain and yelling at me to get up and go do stuff, and every time I do stuff I swell my knee up again, and this is just a no win situation. There is no comfort, no real rest without scrambling my brain up on meds that screw my baditude, and I cannot wait for this part to be over. Everything I'm reading says 4 to 6 weeks on both knee and wrist for some kind of 'normal' to come back.
I could go into more detail but the enraged dragon in me wants to set my laptop on fire right now, so I'd better just go.
One of those medical assessment posts for my glitchy memory.
Established with cardiology yesterday. I had a cardiologist a couple years before and after my radio ablation for SVT back in 2000, but insurance changes flipped me to another network, and I'm just now establishing again after the May hospitalization for uncontrollable blood pressure breakout. I am fabulous right now, so I don't have to go back until next year, but at least now I have direct call waiting and email to specialist if I need one. I think my primary is relieved.
Ramping slowly back up to 300mg 3x a day on the gabapentin per neurologist, again. This is the third time I'm trying. First time (winter 2017) went up too fast and turned into lethargic zombie. Second time (May 2018) coincided with amlodipine and got significant leg swelling, plus the amlodipine wrecked my diabetes. This time it's slow and the only med being changed. So far I'm sleeping better and getting up easier, no weight gain or fluid retention that I can tell. Being commanded to watch blood pressure after stopping amlodipine, have been able to solidly correlate pain level to blood pressure since I also ramped down the gabapentin and now ramping back up. It's one thing to say pain causes high blood pressure, it's another to actually see it on paper. Clearly I need to stay on pain management, now that I'm below the 140/90 target again. I'm still on toprol, of course, but my pain levels easily override control when I try to tough things out and power through, like I was brought up to do through my childhood. Looking back, I can see that powering through probably set me back through much of my adult life, as I gritted my teeth and held on through college and jobs and trying to be a good parent for kids in school. The band president year was pretty rough. I loved it, though, and I don't regret it. Stuff like that. But yeah, I fought hard to stay as normal as possible in between month or year long stretches of complete disability and severe immobility.
Also, the stenosis in my neck is bad enough now that even slightly turning my head either direction sends shooting pains down shoulders (so fun in traffic!), and if there is really less wiggle room in there, maybe it's time to move past chiropractor. It was a lifesaver over the last decade as I was going through core strength in physical therapy, but all that is stabilized now and I rarely need adjustments any more. I knew this would be part of Plan C, moving on to the meds.
I'll still need ASTYM maintenance or I'll freeze up solid, but you can't ASTYM a nerve trunk, lol. The thought made me giggle. There's a special kind of humor in pain lifestyle.
There is also irony, like slamming through a week long tweetfest one week before carpal tunnel surgery. 😂 I have really been enjoying #SharknadoWeek on Syfy, but barely able to hang onto anything because of it, like flipping a spoonful of yogurt on my good blouse, casually tossing my phone into a wet sink, I won't even bring up keys. Too late. But yeah, it's crucial to always close the toilet around a person like me in the house. Anything could go anywhere at any time if my hands even pretend to touch something. You'd laugh if you could see how klutzy I am trying to moderate on a game server. Just trying to type a short command under pressure is hilarious when the player has one of those long names spelled weird with caps and dashes and extra x's sprinkled around.
Let's see, what else. Allergies are so bad right now that I've tripled my zyrtec and benadryl, ears feel like I'm underwater or flying 20K feet, throat is on fire and sore to swallow. I'm mostly fine inside my house. We have 3 hepas now and I'm so stringent on laundry coming in that most of it stops at the door, but even just driving into town in a climate controlled car with air filters has me swimming in snot. I was chunking more antihistamines in traffic yesterday only 15 minutes from my house. Between all the mowing and the rains and wind now in a high humidity region, I am breathing particulate soup everywhere I go.
Is this boring? I feel boring. No one ever talks about the conspiracy scenes in Sherlock. Oh, yeah, the fan theories, but you know, like the background scenes and stuff... Here, lemme distract you from that before you actually think or something.
The Cases Are Fake: A Theory That Totally Changes Sherlock
Except that all falls apart in season four, when we find out it wasn't Mycroft...
Ok, I'll give you a nibble. Like the clock scene when Moriarty is giving the raspberry in the air sending a text off to Mycroft. The time is 10:55. Check this out, from What are police codes? What is the meaning of the police code 1055?
10–55 means “dead person” or “coroners case.” This would be the ten code used on a police radio when an officer arrives on the scene and finds something dead. Although the code is meant to describe dead people it is often used to describe other dead things like a dead car battery, a dead radio, or dead animal.
Yeah, I know that's a stretch because that's a U.S. code, but still fun to think about. I could make a whole list, though. I still say the filming was brilliant, whether it was purposeful or not.
And because I free associate right off the page, I wound up here
A lot of people think stuff like that field across the road from my house looks messy. I think it looks beautiful. It's not exactly native prairie, but at least it's fairly indigenous nowadays since it's been neglected so long.
I finally wrapped my head around school shopping. I've decided that this year I need to fix up my bug out bag with a mobile med kit in one of those plastic pencil boxes (I'm always needing alcohol wipes and latex free bandaids or a nail clipper), a mobile post office (cards, stamps, address labels, birthday confetti, address book, colored pens), and possibly several other organized kits. It's silly being caught flatfooted so often. I thought about mailing out a birthday card to my sister 3 different times, and I finally sent it off today and it's going to be late. Anyway, I've also been anxiously checking for my college to show up in the back to school stuff, and there we go, today there was suddenly a whole bunch. And of course, Bunny has corrupted me, I found adult sized Shopkins sox, so I'm ready for back to school now.
I saw my neurologist today for 6 month follow up. I've been going every 6 months for several years. I've had 2 full needle workups making sure my nervous system is still working ok, and he coaches me into physical therapy and meds here and there. He's rather insisting that I try to ramp back up and hold at 300 mg of gabapentin 3x a day again. (I've tried it 3 times now, I keep coming back down to 200 3x.) The ultimate goal is to keep me moving as much as possible, particularly now that I have 'frozen shoulder' coming on, which is when the entire shoulder area gets so difficult to lift that you finally just can't, and the muscles 'freeze' up as they harden with scar tissue. Between the ancient car accident and subsequent years of fibromyalgia, and now arthritis starting to show up with the documented nerve impingement, I'm on my way to losing that arm if I don't keep using it as much as I possibly can. The last round of therapy last spring was brutal, but I am still retaining full range of motion even though the pain is pretty sharp and it's hard to keep moving through it. And by sharp I mean like someone stabbing me hard with a long needle into the nerve that runs over the top of my shoulder. I've been working on this arm since 2015. It was so bad in 2015 that I could barely use that arm at all, and I was close to losing the use of my fingers. I remember my mom's arms and hands finally just curling up until her hands were just fists. Aging doesn't have to be that horrible, but it takes a bit of effort to slow that down if you've got aggressive illnesses like diabetes and/or arthritis.
I'm already hearing stories about knee surgeries, lol. Scott's coworker said whatever I do, do NOT skip the pain med coming off the anesthesia. He said that was about the worst pain he ever went through till the med could kick in again. Personally, I've been through so much pain I kinda doubt I would think it's the worst, but I sincerely don't want to feel it, no.
Today's blood pressure in the office was 151/94, so it's going up again, and obviously both pain and diet related. Even with cutting calories, I'm still getting too much salt. I totally felt that yesterday. I ate an ounce of Cabot seriously sharp cheddar with a normal portion of bite sized Tostitos corn chips and wowzers, talk about a nasty headache. I'm getting so salt sensitive it's unbelievable. I started looking up diets for hypertension and ran into the DASH diet, which is part monitored fasting and mostly very restricted processed animal proteins and lots more fruits and veg. Since my diabetes is already well controlled through diet, now I've gotta control sodium. I obviously can't eat the amount of grains that DASH recommends (too carby), and I can't do the nuts and legumes (allergies), but I can definitely eat more veggies and substitute yogurt for cheese. I'm also going to cautiously try some fasting, but more like how you calorie restrict before a digestive system procedure and you have to empty your whole gut. They make sure you still get 500 calories of clear liquid, but if I do that I'll have to be smart about it, because it can get dangerous on a busy day. I'm not very good at powering through a headache, and I tend to get goofy and make poor decisions anyway, so I'll save that for days nothing is going on.
I've lately had the luxury of doing some comparison thinking, experimenting with projecting possibilities on my own brain and trying reactions on for size.
For example, after the things I've already lived through, the traumas and illnesses that have taken me down into shards that I've spent years cobbling back together, what would be more shocking to find out I must live through next, and whether there is a comparison at all between something like rocky mountain spotted fever vs something like cancer in any of its various stages.
I'm lucky. I accidentally discovered a tick, accidentally wound up at a doctor follow up for something else within a decent range of finding that tick, and quite accidentally wound up on immediate treatment for something I wouldn't have suspected in the slightest even though I was obviously being affected.
And then to find out up to 70% death rate before this particular antibiotic was invented, and in the short time up to morbidity, a very miserable slide into the depths of hell that include inflammation in the brain, along with capillary fail all over the body and particularly lungs and other organs being damaged along the way.
People finding out they are in the first stages of cancer would live longer than I would without treatment.
Given my health and genetic history and my age, I'm lucky I'm alive right now as it is. So far I'm not terribly sick, no. So far I'm not suffering horribly like I could be without treatment. I'm very blessed and very lucky. But this is nothing to blow off like it's a piece of cake. Yes, I'll be fine, but, as with any length of cold or flu, yes, I will be a bit worn out and apprehensive, and I think I deserve that appreciation of circumstance. I've been very thankful for the handful of people who have actually understood the weight of this new challenge. There is no cheating on this life test.
Several long time agos, a friend here or there fussed about not being told something after finding out, like their feelings were hurt not to be on some kind of contact list about something important. If I contact someone personally about something scary and feel blown off, I don't waste my time on my feelings over that. I simply pare down the list. Apart from that, all my stuff is public, and anyone can check on me at any time. I understand that all our plates are full and sometimes we can't deal. It's ok.
If you're checking in to see how I'm doing, though, thank you, I've been having chills for about 24 hours along with the usual pain of aching all over that comes with any germ warfare. My knee is bendier and easier to walk on now, but still a bit gooshy with fluid near the tick bite. MRI today will let my doctor know whether any real damage has been done. My understanding is that doxy, while an excellent treatment, can't work miracles against some of the damage that can happen very quickly. That I have to do on my own over time as I heal.
I keep asking why we chose this planet, it's so toxic out there... lol. Guess it's really pretty, though. Hope you guys are having a great week. 💖
Positive on the first part of the tick panel coming in. I've been on doxy for 3 days and got enough immediate relief the first 24 hours that I was able to start bending my knee again, and today was able to get out again and walk around Walmart. Feeling super drained now, though, and yesterday it felt really good to blow the day off and not really do much but play on game. Can only guess at how bad this would have gotten if I hadn't been seeing my doctor for follow up on something else. I got lucky, because I wouldn't have gone in as quickly otherwise. My knee had been swelling and my leg going rigid for at least a week before I got on antibiotic. Looks like it can be pretty serious.
This is my second tick disease. I'm a Lymie from way back, and back then I was untreated. I'm almost in a disbelief state, just cruisin on spaceout spaz. I mean, what are the odds? I so rarely go outside, and this was the first and only teeny weeny tick I even found on me. I never even thought of a bite being by a swollen knee being the cause. And now I'm running into articles about people winding up with amputations and worse. Eek.
As you can imagine, my incoming work pile is on hold. My brain is already gone for the day, and I feel like I have a virus draining me. I just wanna curl up and sleep, and I just might as soon as @bonenado gets back and takes over Bunny sitting.
I've had a little time to think today about how intense the last 8 days got, especially after another brief breakout last night that has me in another 2-day holter. This is old hat, I've done overnight, 2-day, 7-day, and month fairly regularly over the last 2 1/2 decades, and every time it happens there is a settling into new med dose period where I have little minor breakout burps after an initial big one. Except this last big one took 2 days to wrestle back down out of emergency status range. Kinda like with diabetes, there is a set of ranges they consider imminent even if the patient isn't aware it is, blood pressure has its own ranges of 'anything could happen without warning' when you get above or below a certain range.
Over the years I've heard it all about panic response (out of a dead sleep, that's hilarious), acute anxiety (without warning while I'm having a good day?), pain response (we do watch that, and it's not logically consistent or predictable), and of course they check for anything physical going on, too. My blood work is pretty great for someone my age, I pass all kinds of tests with flying colors, and still I get these outrageous break out blood pressure binges after months of good control.
But. I do have to look at what I've been doing lately. I have been deeper tissue restructuring on top of finally dealing with one of the biggest PTSD trauma events in my life, which basically boils down to medically condoned self harm during a mental crisis, and it dawned on me during another ER run last night this is what it really looks like. Is it much of a stretch to connect that to the worst uncontrollable blood pressure break out I've ever had? The timing is exquisite.
Something to talk about with my primary doctor during follow up tomorrow and my psychologist next week.
I DVR'd the Patrick Melrose mini series on Showtime, but didn't start watching it until the first episode today. I was alone in the house, and every nuance triggered the hell out of me from the very start. I've never done hard drugs like that, and I've never been abused like that character was, but I have been through other abuses and spent many years on very addicting medications, and my life started out being treated for withdrawal as a baby. I have never not known pain in all the forms it takes in humans, physical, psychological, spiritual, emotional, medical, mental, traumas in my own experiences and all around me both hidden and ignored, and I felt so synced to Patrick Melrose split into pieces while barely maintaining a false cover of normalcy. All those people around him who knew he'd been miserable but had never ventured into finding out why, glossing it off for clichéd reasons, and especially an old girlfriend winding up shoving him off like a freak instead of really noticing or listening, and he was even begging for help.
I grew up self medicating, but it wasn't alcohol because we never had any. I didn't know that a lot of kids were doing that all around me in school, getting into medications and liquor cabinets. Did they start at three years old? I OD'd when I was around 3. No one even knows what to say to that. I was on phenobarbital since babyhood, found the love of my life in codeine around 12, and graduated into round the clock drinking and chain smoking after a divorce. I rarely bring up the brandy bongs because people get the wrong picture. I was a workaholic without a real emotional connection to anyone, and I moved along from one addiction to another to another to another, and part of that migration has included pain addiction. I am very, very good at pain addiction. I have literally used it to get off med addictions. I have used therapies as a coping mechanism because they focus pain. I get high while I heal, the more bruising, the better. I noticed this last week that I was craving the needles. I had so many people putting needles in me. My left hand is half black and blue, my stomach has a very bright purple circle as big as a silver dollar. My arms are tracked up and bruised in half a dozen places. Not one needle was used to administer a pain med or muscle relaxer or anything relieving like that.
I love pain. They started noticing this in physical therapy about 3 years ago. It's become a topic of interest with my psychologist. Lately I can't help noticing that the more emotional pain I feel, the more physical pain I crave. Funny I never noticed that before. I can look back on my life and see years of it now.
I have no idea if that dynamic can trigger such a horrible blood pressure breakout. I spent the last two months rolling out scheduled blog posts about dealing with some horrible stuff in my life, creating a survival narrative, and right as the last of it was ending, and my mind finally started feeling more free than it has ever felt, my blood pressure exploded and my life diverted into more than a dozen needles and a lot of tests. During that time, the deep tissue area we've been working on in physical therapy for 6 weeks also exploded into searing pain along nerve pathways and referred into muscle strings and bundles. The pain was severe, and I laid there loving that I was feeling it and feeling lots of needles all over and mandatory fasting for almost 24 hours, and I never once felt sorry for myself.
Nearly 4 years later, I suddenly notice I can put more on my mobile. I fixed up both Pinky blogs a bit, probably be adding more soon. Much more shows up beneath posts now.
Had one of those sudden diversion weeks, no laptop for several days, and now I feel outrageously behind in everything. Which is weird because I'm suddenly getting so much done again.
STOP DROP AND ROLL FOR MAJOR DIVERSION INTO STUFFS
Ok, I'm back. Power point on stuffs-
MoreLittleLexx.netdiscussion about nameserver updates and which domain registry to use.
Currently behind posting last weekend's #latenightmovie chat and there's one tonight, so that's piling up, lol.
Started a super cool moc wither fight storyboard post, need to pick up where I left off and get that out.
Game server party pix post from the end of May needs to get done.
Not even going to list real life stuff.
The hospital stuff from the other day is best sifted down to powering through poor pain management 4 days ago till I set off an outrageous breakout blood pressure that had me almost too delirious to call 9-1-1. It happened in the shower, and I can tell you from experience that the 5 minutes you might spend trying to decide whether to get on the phone for rescue or put underwear on first can be really fuzzy, I can barely remember it. BP was 228/121 on their arrival, and the nitro helped only about 20 minutes before it broke over 200 again. Got a 12-lead, showed a blip so they gave me a shot to dilate my veins, got worse, another 12-lead and the fastest CT I've ever been rushed through, another 12-lead, and bam, up to the 4th floor. From there it was overnight fasting for stress test imaging, and THAT stuff is also supposed to dilate veins and bring blood pressure right down. Mine was only down to 187/102 after all that previous stuff, and when it held steady as a rock out of spite, the entire room went silent. They almost never see that happen. After that was additional meds and another overnight monitor, and finally down enough to go home.
So I'm on double my regular BP med plus another BP med that is double what I used to add during breakout episodes in the past, and with nothing else warranting action presenting during testing and monitoring, I was given the all-clear. If they'd seen anything, I would've been sent to surgery immediately. During my stay I had two shots in my stomach, I think for precautionary blood thinner, several IV pushes and cups of pills, some of it precautionary. I can't even imagine what might've happened if I hadn't made the call. I had no idea my blood pressure was so high, didn't even feel that. All I felt was the initial pain stab and then utter delirium. I could have wound up with a major stroke or even a heart attack just from runaway blood pressure over a nasty pain spike. The veins around my heart were in danger of becoming inflamed or developing clots from the pressure. I've had a number of breakouts that have been ER monitored, but I'd always been sent home after 4-6 hours. Not this time.
Goal now is solid pain management, so the gabapentin doses are going back up. I missed a physical therapy appointment during all that, and since I've been getting extreme deep tissue shred and massage on shoulder and all around shoulder blade, that nerve center was definitely on full blast. All it took was one move to spike some really nasty pain and set all that crazy blood pressure off, and naturally I should be on muscle relaxers and nsaids and possibly even a steroid, but my poor body is so med maxed out I just can't keep that up any more. I'll need to finish out my therapy appointments light, and no more power shopping the groceries and hauling all that in myself during the summer heat. I'm also relieved of after school kid duty for the summer, so I need to get back on taking daily naps, or at least taking an hour off to lay down. I'm going to push my carpal tunnel surgery further out, there is no way they'll use anesthesia until I can control this on my own for a few weeks.
The rest is up to me. I'm tightening up an already pretty focused diet because I've gotten slack. I had made the most beautiful homemade coffee ice cream. Got home and threw it out. Ice cream isn't worth that kind of suffering and cost. Back to the diabetic diet combined with cardio diet, 30 minutes of exercise every day, and monitored caloric intake.
To all those memes going around facebook that say chillax and live your life because we all die in the end- yeah, you can choose to coast out really miserable at the end. If I had lived that belief I'd already be dead several times at an early age, and coming back from early immobility sucked bad enough. That's a bunch of crap and a lie. They want you to die lining their pockets with the tiny little bit of money you've barely got. There are CEOs making 6 figure salaries talking about food dyes and sugar and how to make profits and get their raises while people in poverty eat and drink themselves into a hellish misery. Do they care that their products do that? No. I haven't had a real autoimmune flare up in at least 3-4 years now, longest I've ever gone, and this blood pressure thing could have easily kicked off into an autoimmune response sparking pericarditis. That would have sucked so bad.
I think what bothers me most is my sleeves feeling tighter...
I spent months thinking about what to do with this web presence I'm junking up into something I never intended to do, and I've decided the extraneous Pinky stuff needs to become part of the fossilized stagnation of the random webs. It's funny that so much time, actual work, even money went into Pinky things, and Janika is still what wound up worth more both as presence and property.
This week has sucked all to hell next door, and I'm doing my best to help support the one person in this house who is able to be the most support for them while working nearly 60 hours a week, and I'm afraid I've overworked an arthritic joint doing it, so now I'm resting in my bed watching The Day the Earth Stood Still. I've meant to watch it for years. I guess this is what it takes. I've always liked Jennifer Connelly, one of the rare few I attempt to follow through film projects.
Anyway, per the About This Blog page, I'm not going to keep much of an eye on how this blog incarnation ranks. I migrated Pinky here because I need to blog, and this is how people can see what's going on with me without having to call or write anywhere. The last blog will have a few more scheduled posts, and then the dotcom will expire in September. This blog going forward is just me being one of many Pinkys on the webs. This blog doesn't need to be part of a platform.
Incidentally, while I understand the need for the extra checkpoints, the latest update junk is very annoying.
🙄
Btw, if you are coming in on mobile, you may not be seeing #allthestuff. After years of steady post reading, I found out someone was never seeing the tags on mobile. Tags at the bottoms of posts are crucial for tying together trains of thought, and this month on the last blog I auto scheduled a series of posts all tagged with one word. Like, you click on that word, you get all those posts lined up without the other in between junk in the way. Much of the lengthier visits followed tag trails. I also have a search bar in the side column, good way to find anywhere in the blog that I've mentioned something in particular. I can tell that came in really handy for readers wanting to find more autism related posts.
Let's see, other junk. Physical therapy was extended, moving arms much better, maybe this fall I can start working on legs. I tried going back down on my gabapentin (neurontin) dose now that shoulder nerve is freed up and healing, but the rest of my body is yelling harder, so I might be jacking that back up. It's touch and go now with pain management, and I can no longer tell if the gabapentin is why I feel kind of numb or if it's blinky nerve stuff. Oh well. If a nerve in a leg wants to feel like it has soggy wet cotton wrapped around it instead of zinging zaps around making me jump like I just got stung, I can't complain if I can keep moving around on it.
My brain has been pudding most of this week. Oh yeah, another biggie. I've already gone through a sort of imminent phone death months ago with this phone, dumped a bunch of apps and had to start plugging into laptop just to charge it. Finally reached the point where it now only charges in the car, of if it's turned off will charge on laptop, but that's all. Fine tuned another major purge, cut everything in settings to the bone, and now I'm hoping I can just get it through the summer.
My radishes and cantaloupe plants are coming along, nearly got a batch of chicks but stuff came up last minute and veered us onto a new track. Not sure now if I'll try again in June because carpal tunnel surgery coming up in July, not going to push that much work in the heat with a big wound and possibly other difficulties. 😬
Anything else? I know, I still haven't done Batman pix. I need to find another pic first. 😁 Another time, perhaps.
