sometimes things are not as they appear

Go planet! You're awesome!

Today is Earth Day, so says the intertubes. I had to check the date, in a state of disbelief. Time flies. Then again, so do cherry tree seeds. If that doesn't say happy Earth Day, then by golly, I don't know what does.

The people of Japan have parties during the cherry blossom season. As one photographer so elegantly states:

"Cherry blossoms are beautiful and delicate. They have a week to "live" and then fall down like snow when the first strong wind or rain comes along."

what do needles, Harry Potter, and lolcats have in common?

Lest anyone think I've taken a flying dive off into the deep end, I suppose I'd better write something.

Update: I've taken a flying dive off into the deep end.

Your suspicions were correct.

But what does that mean? Well, for starters, the few times I turn on the computer is to update the budget, check out library books, check on the weather, and mostly research medical stuff. That and a regular dose of this crazy phenomenon I had heard of, lolcats, but had not bothered to really scope out. I don't know how it happened, when it did, but I'm up to my eyeballs in the ridiculous things, even going so far as to take pictures of bizarre critters with the full intention of posting my very own lolcat, although I haven't seen that through yet. Hell, I haven't even been keeping up with my e-mail. For that matter, I have a veritable stack of overdue library books, but at least I have my priorities.

I revel in the warm comfort of knowing other people look at a moment in time and see the same sorts of things that I do:


I also find myself vastly amused by knowing that I am not the only person, far from it, that can look at other animals and have some bizarre voice over going on in my head, as if I truly know the ways of the animals, and they obviously make popular low brow television references at each other, especially while trying to propagate their species.


I mean, it's so OBVIOUS.

But most of the time, I'm just doing as much stuff as I can, and trying not to piss off my shoulder too much. Having pain that is seemingly random is one thing, but looking at the MRI photographs of the destroyed tissue in your joints and seeing your skeleton making up new bony spurs as some form of a demented defense system is damn creepy. Knowing that every time I sit down to write, I am aggravating those deteriorating tissues in my joints is sobering, to say the least.

There's plenty to say about that, but it's ironic to type about it, now isn't it? But it's that or have my freaking head explode, so here's the latest update...

The last appointment I had with my new doc, the only one who seems to have any skills of observation, went well. Painfully well. She wanted to start me on prolotherapy shots in my left shoulder, since it's really my only alternative to surgery. I'm all about it, I told her, but alas, I seem to have spent all of our savings on various dipshits that didn't know what was wrong with me, only to arrive in her office with a stack of possible solutions and a depressing lack of the funds to follow through.

That's been a depressing kick in the ass. Oh, indeed.

I told her the predicament, told her I was very seriously pondering filing for disability, and she told me she didn't think I had much of a case. Another kick in the ass, especially since I have dismissed the idea until now. How ridiculous is it to stand up and say, "The government should give me money, 'cause I got lots of boo-boos. All the doctors I have seen cannot find anything wrong with me, so you'll just have to take my word on it: I hurt." Yah, I see that going over like a flying bag of rocks. I wouldn't even have the audacity to do it, it would be humiliating in and of itself. No thanks. But now that I am starting to get proof that real things are wrong, not just some nebulous phantom agony, I am all about getting some financial help from whatever organization that feels like bestowing it upon me. It's not just for a paycheck, you understand, I'm too proud for all that; it's the fact that the money disability pays could very well pay for the tests and procedures I need done to stop BEING disabled. That's a win-win as far as I'm concerned. But the new doc says I don't have a case. I took it hard, but have since had some new info come to light.

I asked for my medical records, on the grounds that I needed to see a chiropractor, since my stupid insurance doesn't actually pay for HER to do any adjustments on me (moronic) and the thought of going to a total stranger who hasn't a damn clue about my various medical bullshit and having them yank and twist my person around sounds like I might as well pay to wrestle an angry badger for all the good it would do me. On the contrary, it could very well harm me, and greatly, to have someone unaware start trying to pull and twist anything at all. Even if I go in and say, "My SI joint is subluxated," that doesn't tell them squat. Knowing that the tendons and ligaments in my hips are not symmetrical at all, neither are the muscles in my legs, that could lead them to assume all sorts of erroneous information.

I called and asked for my records, or at least a detailed description of what she did that I need to have done, precisely, because it was correct. Instead I got all the notes from our two sessions together, and while parts of it are meticulously detailed and informative, parts of it are oh so very very wrong. In particular, she listed what she could verify was wrong, and nothing more. I can see why she might err on the safe side, saying only what she knows to be true, but some stuff wasn't true. Things like, "Patient sits comfortably in seat" and "can ambulate freely to and from the table", something about my gait being normal (maybe for Frankenstein), and a few other blips, me expressing no pain while rotating the right shoulder, in particular.

I told her upon first meeting that I don't express pain. That is, not to the extent that I'm feeling it. I come from a family, both sides, of stoic and proud people, people who act as if showing pain is a sign of a lack of moral fiber or something. I remember a boyfriend commenting on my "stoic nature" when I got a horrible sunburn and he found it odd that I was not wincing. He had asked me if it hurt and I said, "Of course it fucking hurts! Duh!" to which he just cocked his head and told me I was interesting, and that he'd "never met a chick who had such a stoic nature about her". I just looked at him like he was weird. But the scene comes back to me now, remebering how this new doc was poking around my back, trying to feel out the trigger points, and seemed to be taking a long ass time. I finally asked her, "Are you wanting me to say something?" She paused and asked me what I meant. I said, "Well, like OW or something?" (pause) "You've hit plenty of really painful spots already, but if you're looking for feedback I need you to TELL me that, because there are so many of them, frankly, I just feel like I'm whining."

The only time she got a clear and concise response from me was during the actual trigger point injections, because I would start to gasp for air, bust into a sweat, and finally had to lay down for a minute so I wouldn't pass out. Her notes on that visit said that I had "an impaired breathing pattern". Another friend of mine who has a nursing background looked over those notes and snorted. "Well, fucking DUH!" she said, "You're in agony while she pokes you with a needle, why in the world could you possibly be breathing weird?" She expressed all the frustration and disgust I felt myself, and then said, "I'm coming with you to your next appointment." I told her I would love nothing more, but no one but the patient is allowed in the exam room. She said, in her insanely no nonsense post menopausal screw that attitude that I adore, "Fuck that. Tell them I have power of attorney over your medical care, and I'm coming in the room. End of story." If I did, she most certainly would. I just smiled and told her I'd think about it.

The wonderful thing about that appointment was the moment when the new doc told me she simply could not keep giving me trigger point injections, not in good conscience, she said. "I know you need prolotherapy, I know you can't afford it right now, and I don't know why they charge so much for what is essentially dextrose and water. If you'll keep it quiet, I'm going to go ahead and give you a few injections into your shoulder." I started tearing up, I couldn't help it. "It won't fix your shoulder," she warned me, "the places that need prolotherapy to fix the rotator cuff tear I can't do in this room, we have to use (some medical device to see inside my shoulder), and I can't get away with that as easily," she continued quietly.

I was a little conflicted. Like, what she's doing is strictly wrong, but yet it follows the Hippocratic oath with an unerring point as sharp as an arrow. She could numb the spots, yes, but the damage in the joint will continue. It's a Band-aid, she said. Or, she could do the injections she's trained to do, do a few on the sly, and see if it helps me. Seeing as how prolotherapy is very expensive, insurance won't cover it, and for some people it is oddly ineffective, the chance to take it for a test run was too golden to pass up, so I nodded and laid down. No passing out for me, thanks.

I was glad I did. She told me it would hurt far more than the trigger point injections, and holy hell on a peanut butter sandwich, she was right. After reading up on it later, I realized I wasn't aware that the prolotherapy shots are not aimed at trigger points, which are painful enough, but at the very point where ligament and tendons meet bone. That is where the fluid is injected.

I'm not sure I can express the pain, but I will tell you I was sobbing as silently as possible, both out of pain and gratitude, and turned my head to stuff as much of my hoodie into my mouth as possible to muffle myself.

Turns out that bleeds quite a bit, too, which knowing what I do now, does not surprise me at all. Gack. Talk about gross.

Even after the trigger points and the prolotherapy shots, I asked her what should I go about my left hip. Since she had adjusted the right one, the left one was hurting like hell. She looked at me and kind of laughed, a little shaken still by my tears. At one point she had said, "Oh, please stop crying! You're going to make ME cry! This is going to help, you know?" to which I could only sob, "I know, that's why I'm crying..." So I sat on the table with my tear streaked face and asked her what to do about the hip, and she said, "For someone who doesn't like shots, you sure do ask for a lot of them!" I tried to laugh and explain I wasn't asking for SHOTS, but relief from PAIN, and there's a difference. She just chuckled and agreed, told me to roll on my right side, and started feeling around.

"Oh." She felt around some more. "Oh, geez." I heard her making some sort of decision making noise and get up. "Hold on," she said, and grabbed something else from the shelf behind her. "This one needs cortisone" she said, followed by some rapid fire medical jargon that I couldn't remember if I tried. "It's really inflamed," she told me, and asked if I was ok with her injecting it with cortisone. I think I told her something to the extent of, "Whatever it takes." My next move was to reach down and stuff my hoodie back into my mouth, because that was no trigger point injection, either. I felt the entire length of my hip and then ass muscles go into the worst freaking cramp I've ever had, and she rubbed on the spot for a minute and started rapid fire injecting the trigger spots in my thigh and butt that probably couldn't have been more obvious at that moment than if they came to life, stuck their demonic heads out of my skin and tried to bite her.

I asked a friend of mine about what it felt like when she got cortisone shots and she told me it felt like someone was injecting peanut butter into her spine. I thought that summed it up nicely. It was followed by a week long sensation that I got kicked by a mule, and every time I rolled onto that side it felt like someone was punching me in the shoulder AND the hip.

The cortisone shot hurt less to get but hurt worse the next few days. Once that pain faded I have to say, the prolotherapy shots are still kicking my ass. Even now it feels like the inside of my shoulder is a throbbing bloody pulp, which isn't too far off. Prolotherapy is meant to cause inflammation, to help the tendons and ligaments regrow. Try to do THAT with surgery, ha! But I can't help but think of Harry Potter lying in Hogwarts infirmary while the nurse tells him regrowing bones is not pleasant. If tendons and ligaments hurt this much, I don't care to find out what Skelegrow could do for me, thanks.

At this point I don't even know where I'm going with this. It's late and I'm sore and I keep looking for Dobby. It's time to kick back and let my Muggle grow me some new shoulder innards medicine work and stop trying to type while not moving one arm much. It's not easy, and takes too much effort.

But I'm here, and inflamed, and doing my damnedest to view that in a positive healing light.

There's so much more to tell, so many other little details and observations and downright hilarities of life, but for now I have to concentrate on healing, so I can get back to the telling.

Go, Skelegrow, go!



Totally.

dagnam cacti poachers!

"The authorities now believe smuggling of cactus plants is the third biggest racket in Mexico, behind drugs and guns."

One of these things is not like the other.