Protected: Energy – It’s a Funny Thing

Things I Learned Just Here Recently

So, blah blah, broke my foot. Misery, woe and pain, gnashing of teeth and everything. We all know that story. And I had physical therapy and that helped a lot. But what I never talked about was that once I started physical therapy, something happened to my OTHER foot, which I thought was a result of too much strain on it from the first one being broken and the subsequent rehab.

See, I developed a condition called plantar fasciitis and boy, is that a fucking bitch. So for the last two months I have been having horrible, stabbing pains along the arch of my foot whenever I get up from either sitting too long, or first thing in the morning. That first thing in the morning pain… OMG that’s a “clinging desperately to the wall, grimacing like a crazy woman, cursing the Fates, limping across the room like a tired old whore” kind of pain. After you take 5-10 steps the muscle stops spasm-ing or whatever it’s doing, but it’s a crazy kind of pain.

At first I thought it would go away, if it was caused by over-use of foot 2 due to foot 1 being incapacitated, but then I realized it wasn’t and decided to do some reading up on it. And after reading scary stuff about foot surgery and permanent crippling pain, I read further and then it turns out I was creating the condition myself and by fixing what I was doing I think I’ve pretty much made it go away.

See the thing is this: my broken foot is still slightly swollen. I don’t know how long that takes to go away, or if it’s permanent because the bone healed slightly wider than before. All I know is that none of my shoes comfortably fit my left foot anymore. So back in early May I took myself to Marshall’s and bought a cute pair of black Bass flip-flops which DID fit, and I’d worn them pretty much everywhere since then. I am not usually a flip-flop person, but these were special circumstances and they’re really cute, for real. This was around the time I was in PT I was having a lot of pain in my broken foot. My therapist suggested a shoe that wasn’t tight around my broken foot, and these fit that bill. This was exactly when the pain in foot 2 started, so I didn’t relate the new shoes to the pain necessarily. But then I read that article that I linked to above, and when it called plantar fasciitis the “flip-flop disease” I suddenly realized the error of my ways. I switched back to my trusty Børn sandals. And even though squishing my broken foot back into them was not at all pleasant, I sucked it up and waited to see what would happen. It’s about a week later and I am extremely pleased to report that (knock wood) my pain in that foot seems to be almost completely gone. In fact I got up from reading on the couch just now and it didn’t hurt at all! Which inspired this post. Because it’s rare that I have tidbits I really think need sharing with the masses, but if you’ve somehow stumbled upon this page because you’re Googling info about pain in your heel or the arch of your foot, foot pain when you wake up in the morning, stabbing pain in your feet, whatever – stop wearing any kind of flip-flop shoes! Wear something supportive, with a slight heel. It will NOT take long to get better if you stop wearing the shoes that aggravate the condition. Seriously.

OK that’s it for this public service announcement and that’s all you will have to hear about my feet. For today.

Now to sort out the tendinitis in my left wrist…

Random Monday Morning Crap

Warning—unfocused, rambling whine-fest ahead. If you’re not in the mood for that, please skip. If you’re up for it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Continue reading »

Obstructionism and the Medical Profession

There is the bitchiest, most thick-headed beeyatch who answers the phones at my endocrinologist’s office. She is consistently assholish and deliberately obtuse, today being no exception.

Issue #1 : I had a situation this spring in which I had gone for some diagnostic testing and no one told me beforehand that one of my medications is contra-indicated in combination with the medication they use in the test, since the combo can cause kidney failure. I understand how the error happened, since Dr. 1 prescribes me the medication and Dr. 2 sent me for the test at Facility 3. But it’s still annoying because I filled out all kinds of paperwork at Dr. 2′s office, informing him of my medications/dosages, so what’s the point of that if they’re going to send me for testing without reading it? Tiresome. Anyway, I got to the place for the testing and in BIG letters the paperwork there asks if I take this medication, and when I tell them I do they say that I can still do the testing, but have to stop the medication and not start it again until 48 hours later AND I have bloodwork to make sure my kidneys are still functioning. Nice. So anyway, after the test is over I call Dr. 1′s office and explain to them what happened, wanting to double-check about the instructions and have them add kidney function testing to the bloodwork requisition I already had for that week. Also, I had been painstakingly working my way up to a full dosage of this medication for weeks, and I was worried about stopping it for 48 hours, what that would do to me (most likely make me really ill.) The phone call proceeded as follows:

Me: I had <x> test done, and I take <z> medication, I understand that now I have to have some bloodwork done?
Beeyatch Nurse: You can’t take that medication and have that test done. You have to stop taking the medication.
Me: I know, but now I need to have bloodwork done?
BN: Why did you have that test done, when you’re on that medication?
Me: Another doctor sent me for the testing.
BN: Well, then he should have told you that you couldn’t do that.
Me: Well he didn’t.
BN: You can’t take that medication and have that testing. That doctor was supposed to tell you that.
Me: Well he didn’t
BN: Well he should have.
Me: OK, well regardless of what he should have done, I have now HAD the test. What do I do?
BN: You need to have bloodwork done, and stop your medication until the results are back.
Me:…. (isn’t that what I just started out saying?) OK, well can you send me a thing for new bloodwork? I have to have some done Friday anyway, so I will just add this in.
BN: It’s too late to send it out! It will never get there in time!
Me: OK, so can we adapt the requisition that I have now to add in the new test?
BN: Normally we don’t do that.
Me: Can we do that this time, though?
BN: Well I suppose so. But normally we don’t do that.

I mean, FFS, she’s obviously one of those people who takes delight in the drama caused by being obstructionist. I hate that trait in people. People who freak out over what should have happened or what might happen, rather than dealing with what IS happening.

OK, so Issue #2, today. I have to go for (you guessed it) bloodwork this week. Since I have been having these absolutely ridiculous female issues, I decided I wanted to have my current level of iron tested too, to see if I need a supplement. So I called and get BN on the phone. Now I need to note that they answered the phone and immediately put me on hold for 9 minutes and 50 seconds too. So it’s already irritating. Finally she answers again.

Me: I am a patient of Dr. 1, and I have to have bloodwork done this week. I want to also have my iron level checked. Can you send me a new requisition which includes my iron level?
BN: You’re having bloodwork done already?
Me: Yes, but it doesn’t include iron levels, and I want those tested too.
BN: Did the doctor want your iron tested?
Me: No, he didn’t ask for it, but I want it tested and I thought since I was going to have bloodwork done I would just combine it, rather than going twice to have blood drawn.
BN: Well, I can’t just send out a new requisition form, I have to check with the doctor.
Me: I assumed you would need to check with the doctor. That’s fine. (Thinking: was there some option I missed where I could call the doctor directly? Otherwise it’s pretty standard that I call you and you check with him, right? Isn’t that what phone-answering nurses are FOR?)
BN: Why do you want to have that checked anyway?
Me: I am at work and I prefer not to go into it, actually. The doctor will understand why I want it checked, when you talk to him.
BN: *heaves a sigh* A number at which you can be reached?

Obstructionist people who hurl up imaginary obstacles everywhere are some of the most tedious people with which to deal, seriously. Just MAKE IT WORK, people. No bitching! There’s no bitching in baseball! Just MAKE IT WORK.

/rant

The Unbearable Cuteness of Being

I am PMS-ing pretty hard, it seems, since three things have made me tear up this morning.

1. A story about a lost parrot who had his name and address memorized so was reunited with his owners
2. This picture
3. Our local Stray Rescue winning a $1 million dollar shelter makeover and the picture of the dog that survived a 2003 attempt to gas him.

This picture didn’t make me tear up though, it made me smile. So I thought I would share that too.

more cat pictures

Now Michael Buble is making me tear up with his song “Everything”. This is all on top of Monday’s episode of House making me cry like Nancy Kerrigan too. It’s going to be a long cycle.

So, Done with Physical Therapy

Today was my last physical therapy session. In my evaluation I said that I felt I was about 85% better, and the rest of the improving I have to do I can do with my exercises at home. I can now balance on my bad leg for 30 seconds though! When I started I couldn’t even do one second on that leg. It was really busy at the PT place, my 4:30 slot was a pretty popular one for people getting off from work, I suppose. There really are some characters at that place, for real. Made for excellent people-watching.

Oh, and (accidental I think) weirdness. When my therapist was doing my post-therapy evaluation we were chatting about how busy it is there, and how strange some of the goings-on are. Then he was saying that he thought I would do fine with my at home exercises. “But,” he said “Call me if you have any questions. Even if it’s not about your foot, feel free to go ahead and call me.” Which – I kinda blinked at. Like, what sort of questions? I have a lot about the ways of the world. And why people are the way they are, and why bad things keep happening to me, and all sorts of other kinds of queries, none of which I had thought to address to him. And then it made it kinda seem like he was hitting on me. Which I will presume he was not, but go ahead and totally take because I needed the Friday afternoon ego boost.

Fuck I had a shitbag week at work. It just keeps getting more and more insane there. And I can’t find another job that I want at a place that it wouldn’t kill me to work. I can’t work for a chemical company, or a rifle manufacturer, for god’s sake. Nor do I want to work for a stockbroker or an architecture firm. I guess I just love working in education. It’s just that my kind of position at an educational institution is hard to come by. I have several resumes out, so we will see. For now I am just hanging in there. The good news is that as my hormone levels are (presumably) straightening out, I am much more calm. That’s really good. I like being calm. So it takes more to get me wound up. But by the end of the week I tend to be somewhat wound up. And I wanted to go out tonight and realized that MyTodd™ is in Vegas for a wedding (asshole) and I don’t really like to go out without him, as I have mentioned before. Maybe I will go out tomorrow. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I spend a hefty sum on new plants tonight including an emerald phlox that has foliage to die for. And that cheered me. Also I put my keys in the pocket with the hole in it (note to self: examine why so many of my pockets have holes in them. perhaps some mending is in order?) and then had a frantic “dig through purse 30 times in vain effort to find keys” moment and then found that some kind soul had turned them in. But then I got home and two of these foul little dogs had pooped in my office because I was so late. So all in all it’s a mixed bag kind of evening.

OK /end overshare-ramble-rant.

Medical Mayhem Update

So, aside from crying like Nancy Kerrigan I haven’t posted much about my medical situation lately. Mostly because it’s confusing and it’s not funny at all. (I can’t even make it funny, and I can make almost anything that happens to me sound funny)

I am suffering from what seems to be a startling panoply of maladies, and after being told for so long that I was “just fine” that seems strange. I will, however, share this latest incident, because it’s not about the main thing that’s wrong with me, and it’s weird and funny insomuch as it has to do with the incompetence of other people.

OK so I can’t breathe. Now seriously, when I tell you that I can’t breathe and that’s not the main thing wrong with me… well. Anyway, that’s enough dramarama. Oh shit, I just realized I never blogged about the Truly Horrific Upper GI Incident™. Well, sit back, this is likely to be marathon then.

So for about a year I have been having intermittent problems & weirdness with my breathing. Like, suddenly I would be driving down the road and realize that I hadn’t taken a breath in a minute or so. Or sitting at my desk and suddenly feel as if I couldn’t catch my breath. Like everything else I chalked it up to stress. But then it got worse. I was not only having problems breathing, sometimes I couldn’t swallow. Sometimes I would swallow and it would go down the wrong way. Sometimes I had to mouth-breathe, and you know that makes you look stupid. Stress? I didn’t know. When I was finally diagnosed with several of the main things wrong with me (surprisingly, none of them mental!) I mentioned this whole “can’t breathe” thing. My internist sent me to have an ultrasound of my thyroid (considering that I have thyroid disease) and also an “Upper GI/barium swallow” to see if there was any mechanical obstruction of my airway. Both tests were scheduled on the same day, early in the morning since the barium one is a fasting type-o test. I was scheduled to go into work after they were done. The thyroid ultrasound was first. Those tests can be sort of relaxing, as medical tests go, since they’re in a darkened room and (aside from the vaginal probe ones) are non-invasive. The gel is kinda gross, but overall an ultrasound is not a bad test.

Then I went for the Upper GI. Holy mother of fuck. That is just not a normal thing. Let me try to sum up my experience.

Continue reading »

This Week’s Garden Pics

Ajuga reptans “Chocolate Chip”

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

bleeding heart

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

Lily of the valley

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

I can’t believe the changes in the garden in just the last two weeks. Amazing. I hope it’s never winter again.

In other news, I finally got around to listening to The Weepies new album “Hideaway” and it’s just as amazing as I thought it would be. It’s so good it makes me cry and sneeze at the same time.

Every song, better and better. Just like their previous albums, the marriage of music and lyric is so perfect that it literally hurts my heart.

You can listen to some of it at their site, linked above.

“Orbiting” is my favorite so far. Partial lyric:

Guess I went somewhere to hide
Far behind my eyes
I willed you there to see
But you never came for me

Now I’m out of your range
Now it’s kind of strange
How we change orbit in our lives
You were kind of a moon
outside of my room
I could just feel you nearby

Now I feel you gone
‘Cause I know which side you’re on
And it’s not mine

In other other news, I just had my first pedicure since the infamous bone-breaking stair mishap of 2008. I like pedicures at the same time as they make me really nervous. I am not big on strangers doing personal grooming things to me, so the person has to be really good to make me relax and enjoy it. This person wasn’t like that. She just grinned a lot and was nice to me because she wanted a big tip. Fair enough.

Anyway, my feet feel wonderful and look pretty and tomorrow when I go to physical therapy and the guy “manipulates” my foot at an uncomfortable proximity to his crotch I will at least not be embarrassed of my calluses, I will just be embarrassed that my foot is going to accidentally rub something it doesn’t want to.

Actually since starting PT I have felt so much better, this weekend has been the best yet. I worked for about 3 hours in the garden today and I feel fine. I think it was just finding out what I could safely do, since I was petrified to even look at my foot lest I damage it. This guy has assured me I can’t rebreak my bone that easily and shown me all the things I need to do to loosen the muscles that are all cramped up. He’s also impugned my ability to teeter on one foot with my eyes closed and told me that if I had better balance then I would be less likely to fall in the first place. Again, fair enough. I am supposed to be practicing my balance. Shoot, gotta do that today.

OK that’s all.

Boot Free!

(Obv’y sung to the tune of the song Sinatra made famous)

BOOT free
as free as the wind blows
as free as leg hair grows,
boot-free to follow your feet.

WALK free and hazard surrounds you
the fear still astounds you,
each time you step on the stairs.

WALK free where no velcro stops you
your gait’s like a cool pimp,
so there’s no need to limp.

BOOT free and life is worth living
but only worth living,
Cause you’re BOOT free!

On Being Sick

So I am sick. I have this thing. Not like, a deadly thing (at least in the short-term). But I am pretty sick. It turns out I have been sick for quite a while now (see my own endless posting and whining on that topic for the past 4 years) just no one recognized what it was because it’s a pretty complicated endocrine-system syndrome which is reserved specially for women. Whee! Women have all the fun.

I have read all I can on it and I am only just beginning to understand how it works. And no one knows what causes it, and it’s chronic. But there’s treatment which, even though they don’t understand why it works, works. And that’s a good thing – sorta.

So now I am taking this medication to make me not so sick anymore. But the catch is that the medication makes me sick. Like, I take the medication and my whole body goes into intestinal revolt. Or, I take the medicine and then can’t move for the rest of the day because I ache too much. Or, I take the medicine and start to run a fever and get chills and i can’t get warm even if I stand in front of the open oven (yes, I’ve tried). I am at a half dosage, and have been taking it for 9 days. I have to work up to take twice as much as I am taking now within the next few weeks. The omniscient “they” say it’s about a month before the side effects begin to abate.

One of the things that makes the reaction to the medication worse is carbohydrates. I am supposed to eat a lot of protein and not a lot of carbohydrates. But I don’t eat meat. I mean, I CAN eat meat, but I don’t enjoy eating meat. So that’s hard. And I am supposed to eat every meal with a balance of protein, fat and vegetable stuff, but not so much carbs. What the feck do you eat for breakfast besides cereal? I always eat cereal for breakfast, cereal or oatmeal. Is there other breakfast food? I know of none. I can’t (ha!) stomach the thought of eating eggs and bacon and that kind of crap for breakfast. Gross. Of course, pretty much everything I look at now I think “gross” since I know how sick it’s going to make me when I eat it and take this medicine. If there ever was a deterrent to eating, it’s knowing that you’re going to want to barf it all up twenty minutes later.

So, that’s the realistic, justified complaining part. The “complaining for superficial reasons” part starts now. Continue reading »

Update on nothing

Life lately is nothing but doctors, work, medical tests that sear away the last remaining shreds of my personal dignity, more doctors, excruciating pain, medications that make me really ill and rain. Which, surprisingly, isn’t really as bad as it sounds – at least in comparison to the winter I had.

Now it’s April, which I find hard to believe. February was the longest month evar, and then March blew by in a windy breeze. Now it’s April and I live for the hope that (a week from Friday) I might finally get my left leg back. Other than that, I think I may have finally gone completely dead inside. Which, while not a state to which I aspire, does leave me rather less upset than I have been lately wont to be.

Since that’s kind of depressing, here’s a picture of Jake which is very cute, think about that instead.

Friends do tell me it’s best to say little
The less you put out the less that’s gone
But sitting here lazing the smaller I feel
‘Cause I expand when I let on

meh

Two more doctor’s visits today, to the hospital for more tests next week, oh joy.

Didn’t get boot off, but got smaller boot. That’s good. Probably/maybe get the boot off in three weeks.

Tired.

Edit to add boot photo. See how close my toe is to the edge of the boot? No more clown shoe = good thing.

.

Protected: More Doctors in My Future

The pre-verts has arrived!

In perusing my blog stats I found some kewl key phrases leading people to my blog.

This first one is a total WTPF:  “password protected underwear”

I don’t even have a word to say on that.

But I am also now starting to get hits for “Women in Leg Braces” which is awesome.

Welcome cast-fetishists! We knew you were out there somewhere!

Protected: Doctor’s Visit update