the_rck

December was rough. Scott's brother and his family came to Michigan for the week leading up to Christmas, so there were family things every day that week. I couldn't go to the ones at Scott's sister's house because of our nephew's cats, but Scott and Cordelia were out every day.

Scott wanted to do a Christmas celebration with me on the 26th, but I got sick that day with an intestinal unpleasantness (zero respiratory symptoms) and wasn't able to eat properly for the next 5-6 days. I started feeling hungry again after 3-4 days, but I had to be conservative. The first few days, I went through about 72 oz of Gatorade each day.

About a week after that, I had a three day migraine with a nasty earache.

It's also been a rough start of term for Cordelia. She worked orientation which involved going back about five days early. The dorms let her stay, but none of the on campus food options were available until the third day when the orientation students arrived (at that point, the meals were part of the 12 hour work days). On the second 12 hour day, one of her professors posted a syllabus that started off with a hidden prerequisite, something that wasn't in the course description or in the online registration process. That was Friday at 11 p.m., so trying to talk to an advisor wasn't an option before classes started. On Sunday, she got the syllabus for her Intro to Women's Studies class and realized that it was going to be an unpleasant experience.

This means she reworked her schedule two or three times during that weekend. The anxiety levels were about the same as during her first semester, so we were all stressed, and Scott and I were kind of terrified that we'd miss a moment when Cordelia really upset and desperate.

Things are settling, but Cordelia is still needing to come home every weekend and is calling every day.

I finally saw a podiatrist yesterday. Getting a referral for orthotics was fairly painless. The doctor had no idea what's going on with my injured ankle, though. I hadn't been holding my breath on that point because it wasn't part of my original referral. Of course, I'm not convinced they had any record of that because they seemed to think I was there for diabetic foot care; the person who took me back to the room was a bit startled that my feet looked fine, and there was wound care stuff laid out on a tray. I didn't need any of it and never have, but... I assume it's a lot of what they get. Podiatry shares office space with the diabetes clinic, after all, and I doubt that's any sort of accident.

I also had to sign a paper acknowledging my awareness that Medicare only covers foot care appointments at specific intervals.

I'll have my orthotics fitting in late February. I'll be doing at least two different types of PT during that month, too, and February is always long term disability review month. I've also got several non-PT appointments. I want all of it over with, but none of it can reasonably be put off.

I will be scheduling OT for lymphedema, but the referral I got from my gynecologist was for PT (because that's what it was when I did it in 2017). I have to get a new referral that says 'OT' instead of 'PT.' I'm hoping that won't be a big deal. I'm pretty sure that that change will be rubber-stamped since, from the doctor's point of view, it's entirely a difference in terminology. It won't change the diagnosis or even change the phone number I'll call to make the appointments. It's an internal referral, entirely digital.

I've fallen way behind on my library books. It's been hard to concentrate this month.

We had friends over last night and played Scott's Firefly RPG for the first time in months. Our next scheduled session is the week of UCon and so may not happen, but who knows? One player was absent due to pain from having had a dental deep cleaning done, but we managed to work around his character.

We started late because Scott ended up working with Cordelia on her geometry homework until about half an hour after our normal starting time. They worked at the dining room table, so the rest of us waited in the living room and talked. One of the other players has a sixth grader, a boy, who's been having the same sort of problems as Cordelia, so that was a topic of discussion.

I tried helping Cordelia with her geometry homework, but it didn't work so well. I had trouble reading the worksheet when she was holding it, and she didn't want me to hold it. She didn't trust what I found on Google (but trusted it when Scott found the same information). I think that she also didn't quite get me working around the problems to figure out all of the different things we knew in order to try to figure out which of those things was applicable. I simply could not get her to accept the idea that, if two thirds of the length of a line was 8x and all of it was 9x+6, the length of one third of it had to be x+6.

The algebra education at her old school was really terrible, so she didn't quite get that having all sorts of different bits of information about x makes it easier to solve for x. I think, too, that me wanting to use algebra for a geometry assignment confused her. Plus, she's got the idea that I'm very, very rusty on this sort of math and doesn't trust that I have the slightest idea what I'm talking about as I try to pull things out from 35 years ago.

I had a discussion, years back, with a friend who maintained that the only necessary math after algebra was statistics. I agreed that statistics is important but argued that some bits of geometry are as necessary because they have real world applications if one's ever going to design or build so much as a community theater set. Doing proofs teaches a little bit about step by step logic, too, and that's a generally useful thing.

I'm not sure where the rest of yesterday went. It certainly happened. I was certainly there. I got very little done. My hands and elbow are both hurting quite a lot. My left ankle is also giving me problems if I move it injudiciously. Standing on it and walking on it aren't problems. The trouble comes when I fidget by pointing my toes. That particular movement provokes a pain spike in a very particular spot. I move my feet pretty constantly while I'm sitting, so this is a thing that happens every five minutes or so. I'd have thought that my brain would have gotten the message not to do it by now.

I'm having better luck with the c-PAP at this point. It's not causing me so much anxiety. I'm usually able to wear it all night. There are two problems. The first is that one of the straps, the one around the back of my head, slides upward and off as the night goes on. I have to rouse enough to pull it back down. The second is that once or twice a week, I will wake just enough to be utterly convinced that I need to remove the headgear and then do it and fall asleep again. I've had similar near wakenings in the past where I became convinced that I had to lie on (or specifically not on) one side or the other or to have my legs bent in some specific way. It's new since the cancer in 2015, and I have no idea why it's now a thing. It leaves enough of a sense of urgency that when I wake fully I wrack my brain, trying to figure out whether or not there actually is a reason for the lying on one side and absolutely not the other. At least, when I start questioning what I did with the headgear, I know that there is no reason at all for me to have been convinced of that.

( Pretty much all venting )

The chores I did yesterday were enough to make the tendinitis act up again, so I'm not looking forward to the walking I'll have to do today. Right now, my plan is to take a cab to UHS, get lunch somewhere nearby after the appointment, hang out somewhere (Espresso Royale, probably) until about 2:00 and then get the bus to the hospital. PT is 2:45 to 3:45, so I'll just wait for Scott to be able to pick me up after work. I really ought to make a lunch and take it with me, but I don't want to deal with that.

I've tried ice on the tendon. That hurts all the way up my leg. Right now, I'm applying heat. That's making my calf muscle ache, too, but I'm hoping it will loosen the dratted thing up enough that I can stretch it properly.

My left elbow has started giving me trouble. The pain is at the back of the joint and fairly pinpoint. It is, sadly, probably more tendinitis. I think it's stress from trying to compensate for not using my hands in the ways I normally would.

I didn't go with Scott and Cordelia to Cordelia's PT appointment yesterday. I was so very, very tired that I thought that staying home was a good idea. I haven't generally had the option, so that was nice.

Scott's avoiding pork products now. I'm not sure if he's going to try one more time to make sure that he didn't just have a bug last weekend or if he's just cutting all of that permanently. I think that, if it is an allergy, one more exposure won't make it suddenly as bad as the beef allergy, but I know that such things get worse with more exposure, so this isn't going to be something he can indulge in occasionally.

I'm working on clearing out all of the frozen stuff we've got that contains pork. Scott buys potstickers and spring rolls frequently, and he never looks to see what's in them as long as they don't say 'beef' on the front. It's resulted a few times in me not having easy options for feeding Cordelia's Muslim friends, so I've learned to check the freezer ahead of when I expect to have them over to see if I need to make Scott go out and buy something that will be okay.

Getting to the hospital by bus didn't cause me too many problems in terms of pain, but getting home again was much harder. By the time I got home, I was utterly exhausted, and my Achille's tendon hurt even when I wasn't walking or standing. I iced it and did as little as possible all evening. I had intended to wash my hair, but I didn't think I could stand up long enough to manage that.

The physical therapist is male. He used the same office that the woman I saw for lymphedema did. He was perfectly willing to address both back and tendinitis, but that is apparently making bureaucratic problems that have the clerical support staff unhappy with both of us. There was a little weirdness with him telling me that all sorts of long standing diagnoses weren't in my medical record. I have no idea what was going on with that. The fibromyalgia diagnosis, for example, goes back to 1987, and I've been in this medical system since fall of 1985.

I have two calf stretches to do regularly. I tried one last night, but the tendon was hurting so much that I couldn't. The other requires setting up something I can safely stand on that's a couple of inches off the ground and positioned so that I can hold onto something for support. The PT suggested stairs but only stairs with railings on both sides. Our basement stairs don't have that. Also, he seemed to want me to get my heels down to the floor while keeping the balls of my feet on the raised surface. I don't think there're many (any?) human beings capable of doing that on a standard set of household stairs. Scott's suggestion is a stack of hardcover RPG books. They're big enough and won't, we hope, slide.

Things are still hurting. I'm pretty sure that the calf muscle is knotted badly. I'm trying to figure out a good way to massage that. The best I've been able to do is to apply pressure with my other foot. I can manage a fair amount of pressure that way, but it's kind of hard to target. Experience says that tennis balls don't work worth a damn because I can't get into a position where I can put enough pressure on one to have it be useful. I strongly suspect that getting to and from the hospital by bus will make the ultrasound treatments the PT wants to give me pointless.

I tried to call my grandmother last night to wish her a happy birthday, but the phone rang and rang and rang. She lives with my aunt and uncle and their seventeen year old granddaughter, so I'm not worried in that respect, but it seems very odd because I know they have an answering machine. I'm planning to try again in about three hours. If I still can't get an answer, I'll email my cousin who lives in the same town so that he can find out if they're having phone problems (or tell me if the number has changed).

I've promised Scott that I'll watch Agents of SHIELD with him when I'm less stressed. He really likes the series but isn't willing to watch it alone. I'm not sure why he feels that way about it given that he watches other things alone. Possibly he's just feeling off balance because I've been leaving the living room most evenings for the last few months. That's because I'm too tired to cope. I'm not sure what to do to change that.

Today's main goal is to finish that letter I started. The secondary goal is to figure out how I'm getting to and from PT tomorrow. I also need to wash my hair and to do an assortment of things to prepare for the cleaning lady's arrival. I usually do most of that last during the hour before she arrives, but I'll be at OT during that time.

I'm kind of tempted to nap instead.

I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon and evening on the verge of tears for no reason I could figure out. Maybe it’s something hormonal? I don’t know. I haven’t had a full period since October, and goodness knows things in that direction are out of whack due to my age and medications. It was just completely out of the blue, and I really wanted Scott to help me out, but I couldn’t seem to get him to understand or to remember.

This morning, I had a very definite anxiety dream— I had gone back to college and registered for classes, but I didn’t know which ones I’d gotten or where or when they met. Supposedly, I could find that information out online, but I didn’t know the right commands to get the computer to do anything at all. Oh, and the computer was green on black in terms of text display. I haven’t used anything like that in about twenty five years.

I think, weirdly, that having Scott and Cordelia both in the house constantly all week has added to my stress. I love them dearly, but… When they’re at home, I end up rearranging everything in order to accommodate them without them being accommodating in return.

But having them go back to school and work will be vastly difficult for me, too.

We’re still trying to figure out the bedside table problem. I don’t have a c-PAP yet, but I will very, very soon, and I’m going to need a place to put it and to put all of the stuff I currently keep there. Scott is talking about taking out my bookshelves entirely, but I’m reluctant. I use those shelves for things I’m currently using for fic or think I will soon, for things I haven’t read yet, for reference books, and for library books. Everything that was there that I’m willing to store in the basement has already gone downstairs.

Oh, and I use those shelves for my lotion and deodorant and hairbrush and a couple of medications that I often need at night… There’s also a specific spot where I put medical paperwork that I won’t need for a few days or weeks or longer but need to be able to find immediately the day of the appointment or whatever. We keep games and puzzles on the shelves, too, and really don’t have any other place for them. I think Scott assumes we can just get rid of most of that stuff, but if I was willing to, I would have already. Yes, they’re games I’m not likely to play again, but they’re also the specific copies of those games that I played a lot as a child and teenager. I used to play solitaire Scrabble a lot because no one would play with me. That may not be reason to keep the game, but… I want to.

As my back hurts less, my tendinitis is becoming noticeable again. My back hurt so much for a while that I just no longer felt the tendinitis. I hoped it had really gone, but it hadn’t. The noise from my back was just drowning it out.

Last night, my face and upper chest both started itching horribly. It was quite sudden, and I couldn’t figure out a cause. It felt a lot like I’d been rubbing those parts of my body with wool non-stop for ten or fifteen minutes, so I suspected allergies. I ended up washing and then taking benadryl and slathering on hydrocortisone. That was enough to let me sleep moderately well, but bits of my face still itch this morning. I don’t see any rash or swelling (a little damage from me scratching but nothing else) apart from the rash around my eyes that I’ve had since September. I haven’t put anything new/different on my face or hair. We’re still using fragrance and dye free laundry detergent.

I feel like I did a lot of household chores yesterday, but when I list what I did, it doesn’t seem like much at all because nothing on the list took me more than five minutes at a time. Of course, by evening, I was nodding off.

I pulled some ancient food out of the fridge and tossed it. I filled, ran, and emptied the dishwasher. I took some books down to the basement and shelved about a third of them. I watered our Christmas cactus. I moved a bunch of junk out of the living room so that the cleaning lady would be able to mop. I took out the very stinky trash that resulted from the kitchen cleaning.

We ended up with pizza last night because that seemed easier than trying to cook when we had to have the girls ready to leave for the school at 6:10 (to be there by 6:15). Scott pulled me aside and asked if we were expected to go because he wasn’t sure if Cordelia was in the play or working on it in some way. I really think he wouldn’t have missed her staying at school until 5:00 most days the last couple of weeks, but he was afraid he had.

There’s very little ice left on the sidewalk between here and the school, and it’s enough warmer now that I took the long way home. My Achille’s tendon didn’t like it much, but mostly, it hurts while I’m walking and not when I’m resting.

I’m not sure if it was the bacon on my pizza or if it was that I had chocolate around 8 p.m. (which I really shouldn’t have), but I had some reflux trouble last night. Possibly, it was the combination. I don’t know. That means I’m low on sleep. My current plan is to lie down after I call in a prescription refill and post this.

My left Achille’s tendon has really been hurting the last few days. It’s been very nice outside, in the 50s and 60s, and I very much want to take a walk. I just know that I wouldn’t make it very far before the pain was too much, and then I wouldn’t be able to do anything the rest of the day. That’s not been an option all week and won’t be today, either. Tomorrow, I will almost certainly walk too much because Scott has the day off (it’s his birthday) and will want to do things.

All of the laundry has also made my hands hurt a lot. My right hand was angry enough to make sleeping difficult last night which is highly unusual. I slept badly last night, generally. I was too warm, and my sinuses complained a lot. When I’m upright, I feel fine and don’t think I have a cold at all, but when I lie down, suddenly, I feel like I have a bad cold. I can’t think of anything in the bed that I might be allergic to.

We had three friends over last night. We talked about a game Scott wants to run in the Firefly universe. I’m kind of generally eh on Firefly, but everyone else is really enthusiastic. The game system will be Cortex Plus which I don’t know a lot about. We only had one copy of the book last night, and I let other people look at it since it lives here and is mine any other time.

I only have to do two loads of laundry today. I’m kind of hoping that I can get all of the chores done quickly and then nap. It might happen. Maybe.

( To do list )

Scott brought home cookies, a pie, and chocolates for the whole family. Cordelia announced again that she doesn’t like chocolate any more. I know I’ve told Scott that more than once, but it hasn’t stuck because he can’t quite process the idea.

I’ve sent Cordelia off to school. Fingers crossed that she can stay.

I keep forgetting to stop by Facebook and then remembering after days have passed and putting it off because the backlog of posts seems too much. I kind of want to go back to Imzy, too, but I haven’t been there since November, so that’s difficult.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to use IRC via Adium, but the things I try aren’t working. I need to investigate documentation to figure out what I ought to be doing to make it work. If I can make IRC work on Adium and like the interface, I can use Adium for both IRC and AIM instead of using Adium for AIM and Colloquy for IRC. My laptop really doesn’t like running both of those programs at the same time for some reason.

I over-walked yesterday. I had to go to the school to pick up Cordelia’s missed work, and I also went a little bit down the hill past the crosswalk to recapture the portal at the church. Those two things combined with taking out the trash were enough to leave me hurting a lot by evening. I ended up not eating dinner because I couldn’t face walking enough to prepare food for myself. Right now, I’m not doing too badly that way, so I’m going to try to get the dishwasher going.

I did some writing last night, a little bit on two different WIP. Maybe I’ll manage more today. I hope so.

I finally remembered to call my step-father on Monday evening. His birthday was Saturday, but what with Cordelia being sick, I kept forgetting to call. I left a message, and he actually called me back. I was startled by that because he and my mother are terrible about that sort of thing. He told me that they didn’t have any tornadoes closer than a few miles away but that some were in their parish.

Mom will probably come to Michigan in April. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on the yard of their house in Lawton before the dogs arrive. Mom wants to try to get some grass established before the dogs come, and she wants to fence them out of the flowerbeds because they destroyed those last year. My step-father will drive up, with the dogs, after his semester ends.

I’m really physically worn out. I don’t expect this to get better any time soon, either, because it’s half stress and half scheduling problems that I can’t fix (I can’t go to bed earlier. I can’t sleep later. I can’t nap during the day). I want to finish some of my library books, but my brain starts shutting down when I open a book. I don’t fall asleep; I just stare stupidly at the text, unable to make it make sense.

Cordelia and I had lunch at Totoro today after her appointment. It was more expensive than I expected because she ordered two $9 sushi rolls. I was able to exchange the too small t-shirt that Scott gave me for Christmas for one the right size.

My left Achille’s tendon is really upset with me for walking the three blocks from the appointment to the restaurant and then to Cordelia’s school and back. It had already been cranky because I walked a bit more than a block when we went for bubble tea last night and rather a lot more than that a couple of days ago when we went to Target after some things Cordelia needed urgently.

Due to the appointment, Cordelia missed presentations by the various local high schools that she and her classmates might choose to attend. The school counselor promised to save copies of all the handouts for us, though. I’m sorry for her missing those presentations, but we really needed to get this appointment in as soon as we could manage.

The city has decided to do deer sterilization in an area that includes our neighborhood. We’re on the far edge of the area with parks where they plan to do lethal culling only a block away. Judging by the flyer we got, the sterilization program is considered less risky in areas where people live because the sedative darts don’t go as far. I kind of boggle at the idea of surgically sterilizing deer as it seems pretty time consuming and potentially iffy for the survival of the does that are sterilized. There’s a lot of time involved per doe, too, both surgery and transportation.

Of course, I’m weird according to local community standards by not minding a lethal deer cull (apart from the inconvenience of certain parks being closed from 3 p.m. to midnight for a couple of weeks). Meat from the animals killed in the cull will go to 'a local food bank,' and they’re not talking about wiping out the deer population. We’re in an area without predators big enough to take down a deer, so there are very few options for keeping the population controlled— starvation, disease, and human hunting are really it (well, there’re deer/car collisions, too, but those tend to be very, very bad for whoever’s in the car. Not recommended).