Sculpin

I’m still recovering from getting squashed last June. Apparently, it takes a lot longer to heal a herniated disc that’s been re-injured than it does to heal it the first time.

This week, though, I’ve been hitting the treadmill with a vengeance. I bought new walking shoes a month ago, and they’re still giving me that new-shoes I-can-do-anything feeling. Remember being a kid and getting new tennis shoes for the first day of school? And how you felt like you could fly? Like that.

Major props to the woman at Greenlake’s Super Jock ‘n’ Jill who sold me these things. The thing is, because my nervous system sort of sputters in and out of adequacy, my gait changes every day and sometimes every hour. Sometimes I pronate; sometimes I supinate; sometimes I flomp around like an animated sack of wet laundry. Occasionally the stars align and I walk with something approaching my old gait, and it fills me with nostalgia. So I’m some kind of hell customer, I’m sure, but they know their stuff there at Super Jock ‘n’ Jill. The shoe saleswoman there found me a pair of Asics that are stable every which way I might tip. They’re super.

For months on end I misheard that lyric in “Thank U” as “Thank you science,” which did seem appropriate for somebody who’d been on antibiotics. “About time somebody thanked science like that,” I thought. Oh well.

If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I’ve been having a colossally sore throat for about a week. It’s sore enough that I haven’t talked for a couple of days. Compared to this, mono was a walk in the park. It’s even been waking me up because it hurts to breathe. The usual home remedies are nearly powerless against it. I keep looking for signs of strep, but it keeps on looking viral. (Low fever, some conjunctivitis – basically I feel like I’ve been stuck head-down into a vat of toxic dust.)

At least it’s given me the opportunity to learn that “hot potato voice” is a medical term of art. No kidding.

If I gave this bug to you, I am very, very sorry. If you’ve seen me in the last ten days or so, please stay hydrated and eat your vegetables or do whatever it is you do to fend off a virus. But if that doesn’t work, you might be interested in this handy review article from 2000: How effective are treatments other than antibiotics for acute sore throat?

I react well to aspirin generally, so I’ve started using the aspirin+caffeine treatment, and while I’m still not about to try anything crazy like talking, I do feel a lot better. Thank you, science.

So, last year I spent a good while stuck in bed with a whoppingly herniated disc. That was damn painful — I’d say I averaged 8+ on the pain scale while lying still in the least exacerbating position. That was enough to give me a good case of the stupids. (You know your pain is legit when you’re more clear-headed on opiates than off.) Pretty much all I was able to think about for a while was the pain, and after a while the pain became interesting in its own right in almost an aesthetic way — all its little textures and fluctuations. I noticed a few things.

My skeptic friends like to scoff at the power of prayer, and I’m right there with them with one exception: pain. Pain is weird. I’m willing to believe that, for many people, believing that friendly people are praying for one’s pain relief would reduce pain, just from the enhanced feeling of community and love.

My own experience was that all the support I got from friends actually reduced my pain by a solid 0.5 out of 10. That counts for a lot up in those upper pain registers. I would read words of support on Facebook, or read a book or watch a video that someone had brought for me, etc., and I would literally feel better. Not enough that I’d get up and dance, but enough that I might manage to turn over without steeling myself for five minutes first. It was the damnedest thing.

This may not be entirely surprising, at least if you follow what’s been going on in pain overlap theory. There’s been a fair bit of research in the last few years into what looks like a shared neurological basis of social and physical pain, and it’s been shown in a number of situations that social support can ameliorate physical pain.

There’s all sorts of interesting stuff going on in our pain systems, as it happens; lately it’s come out that taking a dose of Tylenol seems to help people keep from acutely feeling the pain of social rejection. It makes me wonder about all those low-dose daily aspirins that some people take for their cardiovascular health. Could those be enough to protect against some emotional stress as well as inflammation?

Something else helped: kitten videos on youtube. I swear to you, fluffy kittens at play are nature’s own minor narcotic. The Kitten Effect works even when they’re just falling asleep.

Hooping is canceled until future notice, very possibly until next year. There was an unrelated incident a few weeks ago that sent me back to physical therapy. I was pretty bummed. Not that it isn’t great to see my charming PT again, but I would’ve preferred it be under other circumstances.

Instead, I’ve taken up contact juggling, with the help of ContactJuggling.organd the old James Ernest book I happened to come across. It’s more contact dropping, really, and some contact carrying-the-ball-around, plus a few wobbly attempts at isolations. I have a lot of strength and dexterity to build. My left hand hasn’t been too great since I burned it, and lately I’ve noticed that both hands have gotten stupid and weak. I think it’s because I couldn’t do much in the way of daily activity in most of 2009. I didn’t stop to think about the effects on my hands of all that disuse. (So there’s my hot tip: if you’re ever stuck flat on your back for several months, work your hands.)

So, I am the very opposite of a natural contact juggler, if there is such a thing. But it’s fun all the same, even the donkeywork. If you happen to know of any great contact juggling resources, especially ones local to Seattle, please let me know.

In other news, my recent bloodwork came back looking pretty good after all. So, hooray! I do not have to do some long annoying round of endocrinology whatnot. Losing almost 25 pounds was effective for me. Given, with two skinny parents and three skinny grandparents, it’s not too surprising that skinny would be the better phenotype for me. I’m just surprised that it would be that much better. In fact, I’d like to lose a tad more (particularly if these findings hold up) but my dance card’s pretty full for the next couple of months. Practicing weight maintenance is plenty for the time being.

Somebody at work asked me how I did it. “I ate less and moved more,” I said, which was, oh, such the socially wrong thing to say. But beyond that, I’m not entirely sure how I did it; my list of rules didn’t really capture the process. I can tell you, though, that it took up an outsized chunk of mental processing power. Writers, you know how you can feel a poem or essay cooking in the back of your head, even if you’re not consciously working on it? It felt something like that. If I could run top on my own brain, I think I would have seen the weightloss process taking up a lot of my own personal CPU.

I found I had to let some other things slide while I was actively doing the diet thing. It was worth it to me because my blood had turned into an oily sludge that was threatening to kill me. Otherwise, not so much. As glad as I am that I lost that weight, I sense that it would have been exponentially more difficult if I’d been trying also to write a book, design an experiment, raise a child, or foment even a small revolution. There’s only so much passion and focus a person has to give, and dieting takes up a surprising amount of it. It’s made me wonder how much genius — particularly women’s genius — has been lost to dieting.

There were some fabulous comments in reply to that last post, but I especially wanted to give time to Carol’s, because what she said stuck with me all day yesterday.

I’ve been calling this thing the Stick’n'Twig Diet in part just because I’m the sort of person who likes that kind of sarcasm, but also in large part as my secret homage to Tom, Josh’s late uncle. I’m sorry I never got to meet Tom, because from all I’ve heard, we would have gotten along like a house afire. Tom had an advanced case of some kind of cardiovascular disease and managed to control it astoundingly well through what I think was probably the Ornish diet. He wound up living several years longer than was predicted. The diet he was on was tough; sticking to it took a whole lot of discipline on his part. I admire his gumption and hope to emulate it, even while working within to a plan that is much less restrictive.

It’s also the “Stick’n'Twig Diet” because I chafe at some of the happy-clappy talk I’ve come across in regards to eating — you know, the sort of language you might come across in magazines aimed at an “Eat Pray Love” kind of audience. (Always with, “It’s not a diet!!” *twinkle* *sparkle* “It’s a way of life!!”) This not-a-diet diet culture bugs me. That stuff reads to me much like virtue language, which I grew up with and learned to thoroughly loathe. You know: good food! bad food! sin! guilt! woe! Except now it acquires a sort of psychobabble/enlightenment overlay. You know, I’m just losing weight. It isn’t a journey into wholeness. I was plenty whole to begin with.

I have to say, it also annoys me when I read, “You know, all that weight didn’t go on in a matter of weeks!!” Yeah, uh, thanks for the reminder that it’ll take a while to take it all off, but in my case, yeah, it kinda did. Triple irritation points if this is couched in language that implies that I have had a life of sinning but, if I am willing to devote my life to reverent obedience to the wisdom of my nutrition guru, I can be redeemed. Ugh. Ugh.

More subtly, I feel that I’d be selling myself a bit short if I started in on how I was adopting a whole new lifestyle. Not to blow my own horn, but — oh what the hell: my natural eating has been brilliant. Yeah, I had my mild fluctuations within roughly a ten-pound range, but in the grand scheme of things, my body’s food intuition has historically been pretty awesome under normal conditions. Consider: I had a disabling case of chronic fatigue syndrome and didn’t leave the BMI’s “normal” range; from what I can tell, that’s not usual. While I do have some old habits* that I want to return to, I really don’t think I have a lifetime of bad habits that I must overcome and jettison. It’s more like I’m choosing the subset of my habits that’ll do me the most good.

No, I respect my body’s intuition. I’ve been lucky. Given enough money for groceries and the absence of crushing stress, my appetites tend to be for pretty healthful foods in amounts roughly appropriate for homeostasis. It’s just that homeostasis isn’t the plan right now.

Calling it a diet — that’s just what works for me, with my own history and the particular ways in which my own psyche is torqued up. I think almost everybody is weird about food, weight, and weight-loss. You’d have to be pretty emotionally heroic not to be, in this culture.

* I do love those tomato-based dishes. A nice spicy batch of chickpeas and cauliflower smothered in a chunky, oniony tomato sauce redolent with turmeric and cumin… Yum. Sorry, Josh. You don’t have to eat any.

I’m still getting better. Today I’ve been cleared to take short walks as long as I carefully attend to the tingling level. Oh hell yes. I have not, however, been cleared to do the dishes. So I feel like I’ve reached some kind of local optimum in gimpage.

Speaking of things I’m supposed to be attending to with care, I was going to write about what I learned about pain these last few months, both my own experience and in general. I’ve done a lot of really painful things in my life. Still, this adventure in ow has been something special. (You know you’re in real pain when your cognitive function is better on the opiates.) Unfortunately, a windstorm is blowing in and the lights are starting to flicker. It looks like shutting down might be the better part of valor.

Quiet here, huh? I’ve mostly been writing over at Facebook; microblogging is good when sitting at a desk is a little much.

I had another epidural injection about a week and a half ago. They’re working brilliantly. I’m lucky: as herniated-disc patients go, I seem to be way out there on the awesome end of the recovery bell curve. The nurses and techs were floorjawed to see me up and walking at all. Don’t get me wrong: I still hurt and I still have to be cautious. But I can take very short walks now, and I’m even going back to work on Thursday for a few hours. That’s a big change from being almost completely unable to stand up.

Thank you to so many friends for offering support. I’m still working through the what-to-do ideas from my last post, and thank you all for them. Ted, your Pinkwater idea was brilliant. I had to spend a lot of time flat on my back, and listening to Pinkwater read his books made that time worthwhile. (I was a huge Pinkwater fan as a kid, but hadn’t kept up with his work; reading his new stuff felt to me like finding a new Jane Austen novel.) Amy, your chair was invaluable. Cabin fever would have had me chewing the drywall without it. Plus, I felt like you and Kill were my back-pain buddies in the Sisterhood of Ow — no matter how bad it got, I knew that you guys had been there, and that helped. Mia, your generosity made me all choked up. Carol and Ulysses, thank you for the stack of books — they were beautifully chosen for a whole range of cognitive capacity. I’ve really enjoyed revisiting the James Herriott books. Karl, that is a magnificent care package, and I’m especially happy to have a chance to watch Shimmer. You’re right: Sara del Rey is fantastic. (I love watching pro wrestling when I’m injured. Look, people who hurt more than I do!) Chris, thanks for playing delivery boy.
If I’m forgetting anyone, and I probably am, please blame the drugs.

And just everyone who dropped me a kind word, thanks. I thought of you guys as I went in for my second injection, which was psychologically difficult. Given that the first one felt like having my femur broken over and over — and I am not exaggerating here — I was bug-eyed with fear and dread going in the second time. I had my little beaded bracelet and kept going from bead to bead thinking, “I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha.” That, and holding Josh’s hand, and remembering that folks were rooting for me, kept the fear down to a dull roar. Even so, as I moved toward the injection room, I could feel my body becoming heavier and heavier. You know how when you take a cat to the vet, it magically becomes about four hundred pounds? I felt like that; my prefrontal cortex was saying “Yes” to the procedure, but the rest of me was saying, “Oh hell no.” If I’d had claws, they’d have been digging involuntarily into the floor. As it happens, the second injection was better, but it was better like having my leg broken only once. I hope I don’t need to do this again.

Anyway, it’s doing its thing. I am moving much more smoothly now, and have more complex motion in my walk. I’m still using a cane, and I’m thinking about using the push-chair for at least one more event, but I get around the house and yard entirely under my own power.

Apparently this herniation has been epic. Once she saw that I was up and recovering well, Dr. Ren started using phrases like “Oh my God it’s huge” to describe it. And Dr. Ren does not strike me as someone who says OMG on a regular basis. She’s… see, I perceive her as warm and relaxed, but she doesn’t put a lot into performing “warm and relaxed”, if you know what I mean. I adore her. She’s on exactly the wavelength that works for me. And thank goodness, because undergoing those procedures with someone I did not have a good feeling about would have been twenty times more awful.

If you’ve been following my facebook or livejournal entries, you’ve heard the news: I have a lumbar disc hernia the size of a small marble. I’m under treatment from a good physiatrist, and I hope to avoid surgery. I’ve cancelled plans for the next several weeks. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

That I could walk at all with that thing in my back was miraculous, with a healthy side order of “What the hell was I thinking?” Okay, so I guess I proved I was tough. Once again my strength of will outstripped my common sense by a significant margin. Note to self: strength of will is supposed to be in service to common sense.

I’m still screwed in terms of getting anything done. My first cortisone injection took out most of the pins-and-needles and about half the pain. With the help of tramadol and vicodin, this means I can do exciting things like sleeping and turning over in bed without biting back a scream. I can get to the bathroom without it being a big dramatic ordeal. And I have much of my brain back; before that shot, the pain was bad enough that I was actually more clear-headed on vicodin than off.

Sitting for more than a couple of minutes and (especially) standing for more than a few seconds, though, are things I still very much prefer to avoid.

I didn’t update here before because I couldn’t remember my wordpress password. It was written down in a little book that was across the bedroom; it might as well have been in Iceland for all I was going to get to it. Normally I’d just use my desktop machine with its autofill, but right now, no.

I have a snazzy laptop to use here in bed, but typing is a little tricky given the positions that are currently comfortable. So I owe some email, and what I’ve sent has tended to be terse. I can read just fine, but writing is harder. This post is taking me a while.

Some notes on the experience:

1. I mentioned using a wheelchair to someone who reacted with a certain degree of shock. That shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did, a little: wheelchairs totally look like instruments of liberation right now. Want. Even though sitting is not all that comfortable, WANT. (Also want a pirate hat and a sword, yarr.) I’ll probably rent one; if sitting gets easier, I’ll definitely rent one.
2. I cannot make my own coffee right now. Arrrgh. Fortunately, it does come in expensive little cans — the Starbucks “Doubleshot”.
3. At my request, Josh made me a Google form that helps me track my medications. Very handy. I should have used timestamping like this ages ago. No more, “I took that last one at noon, right? Oh hell, I’ll wait another hour just in case.”
4. After spending a lot of time reading in a supine position, I have a new preference for paperbacks. When you drop them on your head, they don’t leave marks.
5. I miss my chickens.
6. I really like hearing from friends. Thank you, friends!

Anyone read any good young adult novels lately? That’s about my speed right now. Good, kind of dumb movies or TV shows that I might find on Hulu? Boredom hasn’t really set in yet, but it will, it will.

So, around November 8 or so, Josh and I took out about half of our driveway. It’s in full sun, a really beautiful exposure; assuming it’s not horribly contaminated (I will be sending samples for testing) it’ll be a wonderful place to grow tomatoes once we get another raised bed in there.

We hadn’t really intended to do so much that day. I’d thought of it more as a day for proof-of-concept than anything else. But we got into the rhythm of it, using crowbar, 4x4s and sledgehammer to tear it up and break it apart. It was a lot of fun, and incredibly satisfying. Man, were we proud. A good day’s work.

I was unattractively smug the next day about hurting less than Josh (who turned out to be pretty nastily thrashed), though I did wonder about the odd cramps I was getting on my left side. And then after a few days, ye gods, my glutes, what the hell? And my leg! And lower back! Agh! Well, now I have a pretty good idea what the hell. I was the one doing most of the sledgehammering, and I strained the living daylights out of my left psoas. This probably wouldn’t have been too bad except for the Wood Chip Incident a few weeks later, when I reinjured it by hurriedly forking a mountain of woodchips off the sidewalk. And, um, turning the compost probably wasn’t a good idea either. I have, in short, been a big idiot. Once again, “Work through the pain” is not a great idea. It all got worse and worse.

As it happened, I had a standardized-patient gig a few weeks ago in which I played a patient with lower back pain. About the third time I had to fake my way through some tests that were supposed to be normal, I figured perhaps it was time to talk to my doctor. Josh and I see the same guy. It was kind of fun to go in and say, “Hey, remember when Josh came in last month with a back injury from taking out the driveway? Well…”

The good news is, I probably haven’t screwed up a nerve or slipped a disc. The other good news is, I am loaded up with Vicodin and muscle relaxants. The bad news is, I may well be like this for a good month longer. I was way too optimistic about how quickly this kind of thing heals. (Doctor: “And when you go up stairs, try going up only with your right leg and pulling your left leg up after.” Cam: “So, uh, not back to Pilates all that soon, then?” Doctor: *wince**twitch* “Yeah, probably not.”)

Anyway, I think I’m on the mend. I was having pain spikes up to 8+, but now they only go up to 6, 7 at the most. Whee. I can get out of bed now with just yelping instead of shouting, and I’m a lot less likely to be stuck all twisted up. But I’m pretty grouchy and impatient about it all.

The psoas does a lot for posture and balance, so it’s not a great idea for me to go sliding around in the snow. Which hasn’t kept me out of the snow entirely — I can get by with Josh’s Yaktrax plus two trekking poles if I don’t go far. But I’m getting stir-crazy here.

At least Facebook’s “Pet Society” is truly riveting when you’re on opiates. I have been racking up a tremendous score.

And I chipped in with my mom to buy Josh a gift certificate for a Long Haul Trucker for Christmas, so there’s some vicarious out-and-about fun. I can hardly wait to see Josh riding it! Go away, stupid snow!

When we take out the rest of the driveway, some fine day, we’ll do it right. Have a work party. Pizza. Beer. Maybe drag the stereo out and put the new Pretenders album on it. Let everybody have a piece of the fun, and (I hope) nobody have a piece of the ouch.

Well, it’s been a month and my knees never really did get all that much better. I guess that means it’s time for me to haul my carcass in to physical therapy. Just as soon as I get dug out around here. Hmph.

It’s almost certainly my own fault for not letting my knees rest. They’ve been just good enough for me to stump around on them; it’s only bike riding that really obviously aggravates them. But I probably did them no good when I was building the latest incarnation of the compost bin.

The new compost bin is designed to insulate the compost somewhat over the winter, and it’s basically a three-sided structure made out of sod, reinforced (barely) with cheap plastic-covered steel rods, with inside dimensions of roughly 3′ x 3′ x 5′. Properly speaking, I should probably drive some pipes through the sod walls to increase air circulation, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m enjoying how ancient and Celtic it looks now.