I'm so sick of doctors. In particular, I'm so sick of doctors poking, prodding, writing things down in what looks like ancient runes but is more likely gibberish, and then telling me they have an idea... but they can't really tell me what that might mean.
Tell me: would you go an auto garage and leave your car with some guy who tells you he's got a pretty good idea and he's just going to "try some things" to see if they work? Oh, and also, he'll need you to agree to some extra (ching!ching!) diagnostic testing, just to rule some other things out, because hey, better safe than sorry, right? Your tire is flat, but what about the rear differential fluid, huh? Could be related, he says. I say pretend you're aiming for the tire and kick him in the balls.
That's my opinion of doctors right now.
On that note, my husband and I, both as qualified as doctors as we are auto mechanics, started breaking down the "Why" of Why I Feel Like Crap, and Why Is It Only Getting Worse?
He came up with the answer he always comes up with: "You need more exercise". I managed to not punch him in the face, as I always picture myself doing when he comes up with his "I'm a man and boy is it easy to Fix Things! Watch me go! I'm on fire! Throw me another problem! I'll hit it outta the park! WHOOOOO!" solutions to things.
Men.
I've decided that the Neanderthal may be somewhat correct. *cough* You see, every time he suggests this magical cure all "exercise", I first manage to not punch him, and second, explain to him that I'm terrified I will cause myself further injury. I have repeatedly asked the various doctors and therapists what I should do, and the various ho-hum answers didn't make anything any better. Walk. Swim. Ok. I walk, and I become exhausted from trying to hold my body up. I mean, it's not like my muscles are totally atrophied, but it's a trial to try to use various muscles in random ways to avoid straining whatever hurts, and that can change literally from moment to moment.
For those of you who have a hard time comprehending that, it would be sort of like walking a mile with ten people surrounding you, and it's their job to randomly hit you with rubber mallets, jab you with something pointy, or whatever they feel like doing, while you not only willingly comply but oh, you
can't even see them. You can walk ten miles if you like, but that won't stop them. If anything, they'll probably band together by then and all decide you look like fun to ride WHILE they jab and poke and smack you.
I have literally sat on the floor in stores before, too tired to move another freaking inch. And I look like a very healthy person, so you can imagine the weird looks I get from people, while I'm trying, in my pain and exhaustion, not to look up and bite them in their emotional jugular, "That shade of green makes you look like a dead walrus, bitch! Stop LOOKING AT ME!"
Pain can be cruel. Usually in the form of what escapes from the person IN pain, which it is wise to avoid me when I hurt. Those close enough know I don't answer the phone. It's for the best.
The problem is, my son and my husband aren't on the other end of the phone. They live with me. And during these seemingly glorious times when my husband is at work and my son is at school, I can relax. And by relax I mean I can scowl and groan and bitch at inanimate objects in my house, taking out my frustration and pain on that stupid fucking sock that just HAD to fall behind the machine where I couldn't get it, that cottony fucking bastard can rot in hell! Fuck you, sock!
The sock doesn't care. The coffee cups nearby in the cupboard don't find my angst offensive or intimidating, they just sit there in their ceramic serenity and wait for tea. Freaking zen, I tell you.
My son and my husband, however, tend to find my cursing at things rather vexing. Precisely, they want to help, but they really can't. They can to a point, but that's it. Beyond helping me with tasks, they can't make my pain go away.
The problem is, apparently, neither can the doctors. At least, so far.
In a moment of utter despair I told my shrink that it's bad, really bad. It's not just the pain, it's the way the pain affects my life and the people around me. My husband can only hear so much before his brow furrows and he starts chewing on his lip or doing that weird thing he does pulling on his fingers... basically, looking neurotic as hell. And what good does it do? I bitched, but it's not like I got anything off of my chest: I don't feel better, and now I have a stressed and freaked out husband to boot. Yay. My son? I do my damnedest to hide it from him as much as possible, but he still knows. Argh. I told my shrink, "It's not like I can talk to anyone about it. It just stresses them out because they can't do anything about it. So I try not to talk about it, but that's like talking around the giant elephant sitting in the middle of the room, right? The one that's stepping on my toes, in fact. So, if I can't talk about it, and it's all I can think about, all that's really happening is that I'm getting more and more alienated from people. I'm already a fucking mess, my husband has had to see me sobbing on the kitchen floor in agony too many damn times, and my doctor just tells me we'll try some stupid thing that may or may not work, but what we DO know is that it will cause MORE pain in the meantime, and it may take a year, so okey dokey then!"
I told 'Doodles that I wanted to write my doctor's name all over myself in Sharpie, walk into her office and blow my fucking head off, right after informing her that she should learn to LISTEN to people when they say there's something wrong. I wanted her name in Sharpie, I explained, so there was no way my intention could be misconstrued. I regretted it immediately from the silence on the other end of the phone, followed my my best friend's voice as she tried to keep an even and calm tone but failing at it while she said, "I...wish you wouldn't say things like that..." I tried to tell her I wouldn't actually DO that, of course, but that angst ridden suicidal thirteen year old in my head never really shuts up. You know, the one that tells you to wear all black and go driving in the rain while blaring the Cure... which actually, makes me bizarrely happy, for the record. Positive thirteen year old coping mechanisms? Minus the driving part, that wouldn't come for a couple of years... but still. I managed to cage that beast, but I still hear it.
I'm in pain. And while pain can be maddening, I have yet to punch a hole in the wall or drive 120 MPH down the road or even throw shit in my doctors office, much less pick up a gun (hello, I am afraid of guns, in case anyone's wondering, never shot one in my life) and do the worst thing imaginable: leave my child motherless.
No. I yell at socks, and in the case of this morning, my own underwear. I put it on sideways and didn't realize it till I thought I was ready to run out the door (it was a last second thing, ok?), then had to strip down and put it on correctly so the other mothers at the bus stop wouldn't ask me what the hell was wrong with my unmentionables and if I was walking like that, perhaps I should see a doctor? No, I just changed again and got outside to realize we missed the bus and I drove him to school instead. I tried to make a joke out of it to my husband by saying, "It's a bad sign when your day starts out with your own underwear turning against you." Yesterday I rose out of bed groaning and yelling, "The mighty Bed Leviathan rises from the depths of the blankets!" It's ok. My husband was in the other room. I don't think he even heard me, dammit. I thought it was pretty funny. It's damn hard to be funny when you wake up feeling shittier than you did when you went to sleep, I can tell you.
Hmph.
My attempts at humor aside, Jack and I spent a while brainstorming on what could help me. I told him I didn't understand why I felt worse as time went on. I always hurt, but not like THIS. Not even after I fell down the stairs (well, maybe for the first few weeks). I still went to work and it was some pretty hard core manual labor. I quit the job when I moved here, but I was still pretty active, despite being pain then. We went bikeriding, hiking, roller blading, swimming, body boarding in the ocean.
And then one day I woke up and couldn't move my neck. At all.
I went to the doctor, they sent me another doctor, who sent me to physical therapy and I got much MUCH worse before I started to feel better.
Six months of that went by and my insurance decided I was better. I knew I wasn't, but kept up the exercise they told me to do. My hips began to hurt horribly, and once I weaned myself from the meds they had me on for physical therapy I realized I was still in really bad shape. Really bad.
I went back to the doctor. She sent me to the orthopedic surgeon. He sent me back to the doctor, who then sent me to the specialist who is currently pissing me off.
The only light I've gleaned from this doctor so far is the idea of hypermobility. Sticking with that new idea, Jack and I started to talk about it. Throughout the course of the conversation, I was telling him the things I had been reading about it, and how if a joint has hypermobility (the ability for the tendons and ligaments to stretch far more than then they should) then the surrounding muscles try to compensate. Ok, I reasoned, so I was really strong before. But that hyperextended hip still gave out and I fell down the stairs. After that, I was in a lot of pain, but still kept pretty active. Once I went into physical therapy, Jack noted, I did the exercises they told me to do, but that was it. And that was when the pain in my hips REALLY began.
Did they do something wrong in physical therapy, not realizing what the problem was? Or did the muscles become so weak while I was too afraid to use them that now the joint hurts because of the pulling on the weak joint? Could it be that my neck was stuck forward because of years of my body trying to shift my center of gravity to lift the weight off of my hip bones, and now that my postures straightened back out, the pressure is excruciating?
I don't know. I'd talk to that doctor about it, but she's a fucking moron who won't listen to ME. What do I know, it's just my own body, after all?
Ok, I told Jack. I don't have options left. I can't wait for this bitch to do whatever she thinks is going to help, I can't wait a year to maybe be in less pain, I have to do something NOW. I'm losing my fucking mind, being in this much pain. I'm freaking people out, scaring my son, and the absolute state of total depression I feel when I'm in pain is unbearable.
Jack nodded. So, I said, I'm going to try to restrengthen those hip muscles. Despite the pain, fuck the pain, maybe it'll make me worse, but it's a better plan than NOTHING, which is what is driving me crazy. I begged that damn doctor for some advice, some stretches, exercises, anything, but she just told me she'd see me in another month.
Fuck that.
I've spent the last two days busting my ass on my Gazelle and my Swiss ball, watching mostly horrible TV and trying to stretch the muscles that are freaking the fuck out. But strangely, despite the pain of working out, I feel better somehow. Like, the pain is moving away from the joints.
Granted, it's moving into other horrible places, but it's oddly more specific. For instance, I can now tell that the myofacial tissue between what is basically the top of my butt muscle and up through my back and into my shoulder and arm is tight, wicked tight, and I suspect that it may be that specific pile of tissue that's causing my lower back so much pain. It feels like my spine is getting compressed when I stand up straight, but only sometimes. If it was a disk or something, it would be all the time, right? But if it was a problem with the myofascia, that would make more sense. And I can tell you this: when my husband massages the muscles it barely helps. When he takes his fingertips and rakes them up and down the length of my back, it's wonderful. Last night I had him pulling his fingertips across my neck, the back of my head, over my jawbone and into my face. All that because of a grotesquely huge lump of very painful muscle in my neck, which rubbing directly did NOTHING to, except perhaps point out that yes, indeed, there is one fucked up muscle in my neck. Yes sir. there it is, all right.
I've spent the last two days taking a whole muscle relaxer in the morning and sleeping like the dead for about two hours, more or less. I'm not really ok with that, because if my son's school called I might be able to answer the phone and carry on a conversation, but driving would be out of the question. Still, the idea is to start my muscles at a baseline of "not in pain". Hubby's idea, although his idea was to take it in the middle of the night. I have yet to be able to manage that. I'm afraid it will too close to when I have to actually get up, in which case, I won't be getting up. I will probably be able to tell my husband something incoherent, but that's about all. I take one before bed, and it's obvious once it kicks in because my tongue does not behave and I start slurring my words. That's the point he leads me off to bed, usually with a hand on my arm so I don't hit EVERY wall in between wherever I am and the bed. They give me a hell of an aim for doorways, I gotta say. If there was a doorway mosh pit, I would be the queen.
Yah. My doctor thinks I should take them three times a day. She's fucking HILARIOUS.
Although the extra sleep in the morning seems indulgent for a stubborn bitch like me, I've got to admit it seems to produce nearly miracle-like results. I get up and start stretching, eat lunch while stretching, or today, while doing light circles on the Swiss ball.
More stretching, followed by the Gazelle, followed by more stretching and today, nearly an hour of typing (interrupted by much stretching). By the end of the night, I am vaguely miserable, but at least I've managed to spend two days without laying on the floor crying.
Ha, how I wish I were kidding. I'm so not.
Now, back to stretching. And cheese and crackers. Hell, I might even make it to the grocery store. And a shower.
My son is busy giggling at the show about funny animals, and he sounds cute. Maybe I'll sit and giggle with him.
Moments like that are not to be underestimated. Although, I couldn't really tell you who enjoys it more, me or him.
