AdventureWorld

Stumbling Toward Ecstasy

As if I already didn’t have enough health drama I had to go and get the weirdest virus ever. Or I had a rare type of migraine. The ENT says she thinks it was a virus.
Whatever. All I know for sure is that it hurt like a mofo and made me so dizzy I had to hold onto the wall when I walked down the hallway so I wouldn’t fall down. Yes, really. It was dreadful with a capital D so make that Dreadful.
Walking became an extreme sport. And of course having this virus just happened to coincide with that Big Ass Bioscience Forum (BABIF) so every day I had to stand up in front of a room full of people who were spinning around me like painted ponies on a carousel and hope like hell I didn’t just tip the fuck over. It was so very Not Good.
Talk about stop the world I want to get off. Literally.
I didn’t write about it before because it’s bad enough how much of my life gets taken up with this kinda shit without spending time writing about this kinda shit ..but then again—it is my life, and this blog is like the story of my life so there you have it. Read it and cringe on my behalf.
I told meerkat the mental image of me people get, as evoked by the never-ending health drama posts, must be some beater car chugging down the road with one headlight, bald tires, and a loose muffler  ..with a fender painted with primer and duct tape on the upholstery, of course. Jalopime.
Now I have to do physical therapy 30 minutes a day because even though the (excruciating!) headache and severe spins are gone I’m still totally iffy on my feet. The ENT says my body has to re-learn how to balance—it’s like my sense of balance has to be re-calibrated.
Sense of balance, you better hurry the fuck up because I’m going to be bouncing around in a Land Rover in two weeks. That ought to be interesting.   
I don’t know why The Universe seems so hell bent on deterring me from this trip. However, if my plane crashes the reason will be readily apparent. And The Universe will be able to say I told you so.
I hate know-it-alls.

Oh! Oh! Right Thurr, Right Thurr!

I went to the orthopedic surgeon today to get my bum knee checked out. He was moving it around all over the place and twisting it in all kinda ways saying does that hurt and it was pretty much ok ..until he started up with the poking. The poking is never a good thing.
When he pressed on what I later learned was my meniscus I rose a couple of inches of the table with an OOooooWEEEeeee (Weeeee, not wheeee! Trust me, there was no wheee'ing whatsoever).
He said well I guess I don't have to ask you if that hurt.
Fucking meniscus.
He thinks it's torn but I have to have an MRI first. My insurance denied the MRI twice already--first they said I had to have an ultrasound to prove I had a cyst before they'd approve the MRI. I did that.
Then they said just kidding! and denied it again saying I had to see an orthopedic surgeon first. Okie dokie.
So now I've seen one and he said I have  to have an MRI, so I wonder how the money-grubbing bastards are going to deny it this time. And might I just add--for fucking fuck's fucking sake!
Hhhhhhhmmmm. Somehow this all just seems so familiar.
It's a lot like déjà vu except not at all.
P.S. My doctor was downright adorable so that made it a little less heinous. Also, he used to be an orthopedist for the Denver Broncos. Shout out to my Colorado friends!

Déjà vuboo

I started 2007 with a leg injury and I started 2008 with a cyst in my knee. Yes, really.
I had the ultrasound today and it confirmed the cyst that my doctor had suspected. It’s probably a politeal cyst also called a Baker’s cyst.
After an injury or period of inflammation the synovium starts producing too much synovial fluid and when the popliteal bursa fills with fluid and expands, the result is a bulge called a Baker's cyst. It's similar to a balloon filled with water.
It’s keeping me from exercising because when I exercise my knee swells up and gets so tight I can barely bend it. It feels really creepy. Sooooo tight.
And if it’s due to a meniscus tear or something that has to be repaired I’ll have to have surgery AGAIN.
Motherfucker!
Hopefully, it’s just the result of chronic inflammation or that ruptured plantaris I had last year, the thing that the orthopedic said should just heal up on it’s own with no problems. Yeah, like that ever happens. [eyeroll]
[clench]

No Pain, No Gain

I’ve been in a really bad place for a while now. I knew that physical therapy was going to be hellacious and it is. But what I hadn’t expected was the psychological toll all this was going to take. As The Goose would say it’s really taken the wind out of my sails.
I hope as my hand gets better my head will too. I wonder.
Anyways, physical therapy is something I do non-stop—literally. Even doing it constantly I’ve been making only teeny-ninesy bits of progress every day, progress that doesn’t stick unless I’m relentless—if I don’t keep it moving it locks right back up.
Lotsa pain, little gain.
Every morning it takes hours to regain the previous day’s progress so now I even work it throughout the night. Needless to say, I’m very tired but I’m getting it done.
At first I couldn’t understand why sessions with the hand therapist were so exhausting but she explained it to me. She said it’s the adrenaline.
She said the anticipation of the pain is like riding a roller-coaster, you know what’s coming and your body tenses with anticipation. She said look, you’re on the edge on of your seat and you literally hold your breath when I touch your hand.
So, the first thing I had to do was start breathing.
Breathing is a really good thing.
On a brighter note (and anything would be brighter than that blubber-fest) I just typed this with my gimp hand. Woo hoo, look at me! I can barely move my finger but (evidently) I can type.
Progress, baby, that’s what I’m talking about!
Also, I need a Vicodin. Typing is a real motherfucker.

A Wriggle and a Wiggle and a Giggle

That title will be way less funny to anybody who’s not a Buffy fan. Crazy fucking Dru. I adored her even when she was reeeeally annoying.
But surely I digress, straight outta the gate.
When I saw my surgeon on Monday she took the stitches out while I wriggled around because my poor little mitt did not like it AT ALL. She told me they had also glued it. Huh.
She wasn’t surprised that it was still hurting like a mofo because she reminded me of all the things she’d done to it in the surgery that I’d forgotten all about. She’d had to cut through a ligament to get into the head of the metacarpal so there’s that healing up.
And when she was in there she discovered that the bone had become quite deformed from the pressure of the tumor so she’d had to whittle some of the head of the bone away.
She said that is what’s causing the worst of the pain and why that joint is so tender, so sensitive to even slight pressure or movement.
I start physical therapy tomorrow. [meeps!] I was relieved to hear her say that she did NOT want me to try moving it to pincher-like to my thumb which is exactly what the therapist tried to get me to do last week before fitting me for my new cast.
Good thing I refused. I told her no way was it ready for that, fuck I was breaking out in a cold sweat just trying to wiggle it. It hurt so bad I was seeing blindingly bright colors behind my eyes.
Pardon me while I [vomit]
But on to the giggle part. My surgeon and I were talking about how I was “present” off and on during the surgery. She remembered my musical requests. She remembered asking me what I wanted to hear (after they had given me the feel-REAL-good dope before they put me under).  She said “you said Springsteen--but it has to old Springsteen, like Born To Run, not that goofy Dancing in the Dark stuff”.
She said “stuff” but you know I said “bullshit”. Guaranteed.
And I probably said “goofy-ass” ..or even more likely said “fucking”. Oopsie.
I said how about when I asking for Aqualung over and over and blathering on endlessly about him. She said the funny thing was that she actually had an Aqualung CD in there and she really wanted to put it in for me but, you know, they were kinda busy at the time. We laughed and laughed.
Before I checked out of the hospital a whole horde of interns/residents came in to tell me bye. They said they just wanted to say goodbye and give me get well wishes because I’d been so much fun.
I didn’t recognize any of them, but we’d had a so much fun???
I have no idea what that was all about and something tells me that’s probably a really good thing. File that under Ignorance is Bliss.

Same Song, Second Verse

Gah, all I ever write about anymore is my never-ending medical problems but that’s kinda what my life is about right now. With all the intensity of the bone tumor drama my auto-immune specialist and I decided to set aside figuring out what to do about my AS so now I have to tackle that.
I wasn’t kidding when I said I was not going to continue the infusions after that last horror show.
I quit.
I told my doctor when I did a cost benefit analysis, the cost of the infusions seemed way disproportional to the benefit I was getting from them ..and I’m not talking about monetary cost I’m talking about the cost to my quality of life.
The infusions were no longer making my AS better, and they seemed to be making me really sick. That can happen because the biological response modifier drug in the infusions contains mouse DNA and you can develop antibodies to it, and the longer you use it the more likely the odds are. I think I’ve been on it 4 years.
That’s a long time, huh.
My doc agreed that we should stop the infusions and figure out another treatment plan but then the bone tumor was discovered and we said we’ll deal with the AS after the surgery. I had all I could handle at one time.
So tomorrow I see my hand surgeon in the morning and my AS doc in the afternoon. If the x-rays of my hand look ok I start physical therapy this week—three times a week for four weeks.
Fuck, no wonder I never talk about anything else. I'm not doing anything else.
My life's a rather dreary grind right now and I've offically become the most boring (or perhaps annoying) bastard on the planet. Bygones!
*sigh*
But at least I still have my hand.
I’m Ms. Brightside, dammit.

fever, but not the lovely way to burn kind

i feel so craptacular because i've been running a fever almost non-stop since my surgery. but turns out that's normal--as long as it doesn't go over 101.5. mine's hovering at 100. not alarming but really annoying. oy.
there are a number of contributing factors. it can come from the lungs because being out on the operating table for several hours can cause collapse of some of the air sacs at the base of your lungs. collapse of these air sacs can cause fever. and so can the "breakdown of blood products in the surgical field" whatever the fuck that means, but the doc said it's the lung thing.
isn't that just so very interesting. fucking fascinating.
i'm surprised that happened to me though because i wasn't completely knocked out the whole time. because they had used a nerve block to totally paralyze my arm i couldn't feel anything AT ALL so i was awake part of the time. i was even talking--or, more accurately, yammering. oh dear.
i remember some of the things i said ..and i rememer the surgical team laughing their asses off because i kept making music requests, as if they could be running over changing cds a zillion times. i ask them (unfortunately repeatedly) if they had aqualung.
the surgeon said rather incredulously "you want to listen to jethro tull??" thinking i meant the song but i meant the artist aqualung, not the song aqualung ..which i recall explaining more than once ..and maybe more than twice ..and telling them how great-like his songs are. and had they heard them--yep, it was an aqualung yammerrama.
it's so odd that i was high enough not to know i was repeating myself but now can recall repeating myself.
more fucking fascinating fun facts!
by the way they had a drape blocking my view of my arm because i could never ever be high enough to watch them hacking on it. but it still amazes me that i was so "present" a lot of the time, being fully aware that behind that drape they were hacking away on my hand. [shudder] but now i think i have post traumatic heebie-jeebie syndrome because just the thought of it makes my ass pucker like it just ate an unripened persimmon.
i'm not sure if they meant for me to be quite that present, though--the anethesiologist seemed surprised when i started yacking to him. he rolled his chair over so we were face to face and he made sure i was ok and asked me to take some deep breathes. i don't know if he was checking my breathing or trying to keep that air sac collapse thing from happening.
he was really nice. we'd chat for a while and then he'd make me unconscious. it was kinda like a date that was really nice but reeeeally boring.
i have to go to bed now. the fever thing just sucks the life right outta me and typing one-handed ramblings brings on the keeling over now part.

One-armed and Dangerous

Well, I don’t type so great with two hands so one-handed is going to be interesting ..well actually more like really annoying. Ah, yes—the joys of one-handedness—where do I begin?
Basically every simple little daily chore takes forever and/or is impossible with one hand. Things like bathing, washing my hair and getting dressed suck up a whole morning. I have to be careful not to get my big-ass splint/bandage (from elbow to fingertips) wet so I have to wrap it up in a plastic bag before I get in the tub ..with one hand wrap it, hold it tight and tape it. Very difficult, trust me on this.
As you can imagine there is lots of cussing, with some occasional gnashing of teeth but no pulling out my hair because hello! no free hands ..er, hand.
Also, I realized just how exhausted and maxed out altogether I was before my surgery because when I came home from the hospital I had nothing to wear, literally. I had bought scads of new jim-jammies and t-shirts but they were all long-sleeved and here I am with a bandaged up mitt the size of a softball.
WTF was I thinking.
I was thinking that I’m always cold so I was buying things to keep me warm and in my exhausted head totally forgot the big ol’ post-surgical splint part. So, I had to cut up a bunch of brand new clothes—jim-jammies and t-shirts.
The first few days it was agony for anything to even touch my fingertips so there was no forcing even stretchy sleeves to stretch over the bandage. I learned that lesson pronto when I had to do that getting dressed at the hospital because, of course, I'd worn a long-sleeved shirt.
I almost screamed pulling it on but there was no way I was going to wait an hour for a nurse to come cut the sleeve off because I was so fucking desperate to get out of that House of Horrors THAT MINUTE. (but that’s another long and gruesome story, perfect for Halloween)
I had to cut that shirt off me when I got home. And it was really cute dammit!
Anyway, I’m better now. The pain comes and goes these days but most of the time it’s not too bad. Of course it’s going to be a real mofo when they take this splint off and I start physical therapy—when I start moving my fingers. [gulp] Just thinking about makes me vomit a little in my mouth.
But other than that I’m just peachy.

Postcards From The Edge

Showtime

Well, tomorrow’s the big day—bright and early, too, five fucking AM I have to be there. Maybe I’ll be so sleepy I won’t care what is going on …uh, no.
So, I got some DVDs lined up for recuperating down time and of course I had Buffy Season 7 in at the top of the pile and I started watching them this weekend so I actually watched Showtime last night.
Buffy has seen me through some plenty bad times before.
Good ol’ Buffy. She saved The World and AdventureGirl a lot.

Girlie Show

Fabulous Gay Friend, meerkat, and I were having lunch last week and FGF said that he thought I should get some “feel good” movies for my recuperation. He said he had made a list of his favorites but I would probably hate all of them.
So he started naming them off, a buncha uber-sentimental movies. And I kept saying oh, I actually do like that one, much to my shock and dismay and perhaps embarrassment.
Finally, after I’d admitted liking far too many of his chick flick picks, I said “for fuck’s sake! I knew you were a girl but I didn’t know I was!”
I guess you had to be there.

The Girl With The Flammable Underpants

A nurse called me to go over pre-op stuff for my surgery tomorrow and she actually brought up the whole patients catching on fire thing that I was writing about the other day. She said that’s why it was important that I have no metal on AT ALL—like no wearing jewelry or a bra under the gown, because metal could cause a power arc that would set me on fire. She said this as if she was telling me something normal and not at all alarming.
I told her that was ok because I didn’t want to wear a bra or jewelry I just wanted to wear underpants. (I say underpants in honor of Jesse because the word “underpants” made us laugh and laugh, Also, I hate the word panties—always have and have no idea why.)
Anyhoo, the nurse said no underpants because they are cotton and cotton was flammable. I said yes, but the gown is cotton and the sheet covering me is cotton so if cotton is a problem I’m already fu…er, going up in flames. She totally ignored the very rational rationale of my point and said no underpants.
"And why do you want to wear underpants?" she asked, as if that weren't patently obvious. (has she never seen those gowns??)
I said because, oddly enough, I prefer not to have my ass hanging out of a completely open gown. She said it’s ok we’ve seen lots of asses. I said yes, but when it’s your own ass on display that is soooo not the point—it’s about the person with her ass hanging out, not about whether other people mind looking at bare asses all day.
She still didn’t get it about the EVERYTHING ELSE is cotton so why are underpants so deadly. Ooooof course not. Logic is such a bother. Logic schmogic, take off those underpants RIGHT NOW, you fucking fire hazard!!
Also, death by underpants would be the funniest thing ever ..except for the actual burning and death part, of course.
And, certainly it will come as no surprise that I’m taking my goddamn underpants, dammit!

Stick A Fork In Her, She’s Done

I have popped an anti-anxiety pill but it seems to have made me feel really sad. Or maybe I just want to blame it on the pill. Maybe I just am really sad. Imagine that!
At least on the upside I’m too exhausted to stress over all the things I didn’t get done that I wanted to before I go to the hospital. But I do have to walk over to Safeway and get some food to have when I get out of the hospital.
Maybe I’ll see Habbaniceday but she never seems to working when I’m there. I miss Habbaniceday telling me to habbaniceday! with that big ol’ smile.
Speaking of missing things; I miss Happy Things. I feel the loss of every one of them tonight.

Tumor Humor

Eggy and I were talking about the horrors of surgery, we’ve both been under the knife multiple times so we’ve experienced the fuckery firsthand . Surgery creeps me out for real reasons, not imagined ones. Like the time I came out of anesthesia before I was supposed to and they still had the breathing tube down my throat and I couldn't breathe through my nose because I was packed full of ten tons of gauze in my nasal passages and sinuses.
I was fighting the tube and "smothering" and choking and couldn't say help! because I had a fucking tube down my throat ..and nobody was around. (they had just just wheeled me out of surgery and left me in the adjoining post-op
observation room unattended, thinking I'd be out for quite a while).
Oooopsie!
But Eggy was totally gobsmacked when she saw on TV that 200 people a year catch FIRE during surgery. She vacillated on whether to tell me but (1) she knows how much I love the absurd and (2) she knew if I was going to worry that would not be what I’d be worrying about.
And she was right because its one of the strangest things I’ve heard in ages. And I do love the strange.
She explained that it usually happens when a “hot” surgical tool gets too near the oxygen. So I said I’m glad my hand will be away from the oxygen on a little side bar thingy. My arms will be outstretched to the sides--you know, like on a crucifix.
Fuck!
Or like that T thing, like when they give lethal injections.
Double fuck!
So, of course I decided I had to think up some lethal injection reference I can make right before they put me under. I wondered if they’d get it if I said “I’m innocent! I swear I’m innocent!”
Eggy and I started making a list of all the cheeky monkey lethal injection references I could say which would be HI-larious if the surgical staff would play along but I’m guessing they won’t. They tend to be a rather grim, no-nonsense group; gallows humor might go right over their surgi-capped heads.
Anyways, my lights will go out in nano-seconds when they shoot that shit into my veins. I won’t even have time to say “motherfucker!”
I’d probably only get out “mother...........” which could sound like I was a Big Baby crying for my mother, which would be exactly the opposite of Spunky Little Monkey. I’d look like a total dink.
But I’m sneaking a lethal injection joke in if I get the chance. I want to go out in a blaze of ridiculousness.
I just have to pick one. (Feel free to add your own, I’m all about group participation posts!)

"Uh...did Arnie happen to call?"
"Is it commute or commutate?"
"If we could skip this, I'd devote my life to finding the REAL killer."
"Wait...I didn't get my dessert."

But now that I think about it, it will be awfully hard to work in a lethal injection joke and tell them “No talking about me while I'm under because I can HEAR YOU. No setting me on fire, either, damn it."