Happy Anniversary To Me!

You know how in a new relationship you celebrate every milestone no matter how trivial? How you think about them all the time? No matter what is going on, they can pop into your head and drive every other thought out. Ah, the beauty of new relationships! Today is my 2 week anniversary with my hurt knee. Yes, it has been 2 glorious weeks of nonstop togetherness. My knee has been on my mind constantly, to the exclusion of every other thought. I think about it all day and without Lord Lortab I would fantasize about it all night.

I twisted my stupid knee getting into the tub. Nothing major at the time, but as the day went on it kept getting worse. The next morning I could not even put a toe down. I don't know how I made it to the back door to let the dogs out or got my coffee going, but those are 2 huge priorities in the morning so I hopped around and got it done. I figured I just sprained it, so I spent the next couple of days holding down the couch, giving myself freezer burn on that knee, and in a lewd position trying to keep that knee elevated. The only part of the RICE (Rest Ice Compression Elevate) treatment I was unable to do was compression. I can't stand even a blanket on it when it really starts to sing, so that was out. I finally raised the white flag and went to the doctor a week ago this last Friday. My guts were protesting so much OTC pain meds so I was also hoping to get a little higher end med in addition to finding out what in the hot heck hades hell was going on with my knee. My knee was already hurting but when that doctor, who I had no problem with up to this point, started messing with it I about came up off the exam table. Acorn says the only thing that was touching the table were my elbows. From that moment on, I have hated him and never want to look at his ugly (he wasn't really ugly) mug again, and have been pondering starting a smear campaign against him. He, not having to deal with the pain, told me to keep with the OTC meds, even though the recommended dose was not helping and I had been going over it -- he just told me not to do that -- because he is a diabolical servant of Satan. I was living on Sprite and crackers, in a tremendous amount of pain, busy cutting out words from magazines to glue together as a hate letter to send to that doctor, when I lost all my good humor and went to the E.R., after talking to his nurse and finding out he was out for the day, no doubt checking in with his lord and master Satan. They at the E.R. sympathized with me, after seeing my white knuckled grip on the chair, and gave me a prescription for Lortab. They are not on my hate letter mailing list, which is good, my magazines being cut to shreds and not wanting to go to the store to get more. I am seeing an orthopedic surgeon on Weds because the MRI showed fluid in my knee and God only knows what all, I don't speak Evil Bloody Hemorrhoid so I'm not sure what all the doctor spewed out.

Today I am going to spend time thinking of my not beloved, and pondering 2 weeks of togetherness. I really hate new relationships. I'm going to the store to buy more magazines now; my knee just got on my mailing list.

Calories And Strange Trees

*Update: Are those toads or frogs? I thought they were toads, but I could be wrong and they are some pseudo-toad-frog thing. Either way, I will now be accepting orders for seeds from my toad/frog tree.


I sprained my knee the other day. I was getting into the tub and nearly fell. Luckily (?) I caught myself before I could fall, but I twisted my knee in the process, which Acorn should be happy about because she didn't have to come help my naked arse up off the floor. It hurt, but it wasn't too horrible right away. As the day progressed it got worse and worse. By the time I went to bed it was really hurting but I didn't think too much of it. I woke up throughout the night from the throbbing and the next morning I couldn't put an ounce of weight on it. It was an ordeal just to make it to the bathroom and if it hadn't been 4 am I would have woken Acorn up to help me, but I knew she was going to have a long day of doing everything for me, so I let her sleep. While laid up I ate, in order, 4 donuts, 2 burritos, 2 pieces of pizza and a handful of Skittles. Ugh! I think I consumed my calories for the week with just the 4 donuts, never mind the rest of it. Yesterday I tried to eat a little less junk, but I did treat myself to another round of Skittles, polishing off the bag, so I may have to go to the store to get more because I'm worried that I may waste away just sitting on the couch not eating junk all day and not burning a single calorie. I'm bored stiff just sitting here, but when I was walking around, thanks to all the ibuprofen I ingested, my knee started hurting again, so it was back to the couch and moaning about my knee. I have been calling everyone I can think of to have long meaningful conversations and my little sister said that if I don't stop calling her she is going to press charges for harassment. I foresee another boring day today, because my knee is still sore, and more speed dialing everyone and having restraining orders taken out against me.

In my backyard, there is a tree that a bunch of toads are always on. Not just around the bottom, they actually climb up the tree and hang out up there. I don't get it. Why do they climb up that one tree, besides to make me ask questions? I've never seen toads in a tree before and am baffled why they do it. I'm sure one of you brilliant readers know the answer to this and will shed some light on this most perplexing situation for me. Until I know why, I am going to assume that I have a toad tree growing in my backyard and am going to start selling seeds from it, for others who want their own toad tree. Having a toad tree reminds me of the donut tree my neighbors had when I was growing up. The lady worked at a donut shop and brought home donuts and dumped them under the tree in her front yard. I'm not talking just a few donuts, I'm talking a pile that reached almost to my waist, and I'm a tall girl. That donut tree tortured us to no end. My mother is a health freak and we didn't have junk food in the house. Ever. We didn't even have sugar in the house for a long time, we used honey for sweetener, so to have a donut tree across the street was cruel and unusual punishment for us. Our dog would bring home donuts all the time and my little sister, who didn't get the nickname Sugarbowl for nothing, said she wanted to wrestle the donuts away from the dog, they looked so good. One of my friends said that we should hang pot roasts from one of our trees and ask our neighbors if they wanted to trade pot roast tree seeds for some of their donut tree seeds. I would love to have my own donut tree, but the calories! I think a toad tree might be a better tree for me, especially as I'm getting no exercise right now, but to have a donut tree. . . that is the stuff dreams are made of.

Dear Blindbeard

Dear Blindbeard,

Oh, Blindbeard...I hope your head/eye pain is receding. If it turns out to be a bout of optic neuritis, will you do a round of steroids? Be well...

Long time reader, first time comment leaver-

Lori


Dear Beautiful Lori,

I always said that the only way I would do the steroids again was if I lost my vision, so. . . yes? Wait, no. Definitely maybe! The steroids make me so sick and crazy that I'm afeared of doing them again. It is such a miserable experience for me; I worry about going off the deep end again, and I worry about the other hideous side effects. The horrible heartburn, the raging insomnia, the most disgusting taste in my mouth that nothing will get rid of, the insatiable appetite that makes me take jars of peanut butter and jugs of milk -- and I NEVER drink milk -- to bed with me. But then I remember when my hug first started up and how much pain I was in. I was ready to do the steroids then if it would give me any relief. So it's always a possibility. A possibility that I hope I never have to do, but pain and misery can drive a woman to actually listen to her neurologist, so I may give in to her and do them if I am feeling too bad. Ugh! I would rather order all my books in Braille than go through steroids again. It would probably be a heck of a lot cheaper.

Love,
Blindbeard



Dear Blindbeard,

Big Fan! I've read your whole blog. I don't have MS, but I don't NOT have it either. ( I have the lesions and meet all the diagnostic criteria but have another disease that my doctor says "covers" MS as well) Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I like that your blog is not all MS all the time. Its refreshing to hear about all of the aspects of your life. When I first started getting sick and started reading other blogs I was worried sick(er) that my life was going to be miserable. You have helped me to be mostly positive (when I have the energy) and to concentrate on living my life and not just being sick.

Amy


Dear Beautiful Amy,

This is the best comment I have ever gotten! Sometimes I think that maybe nobody wants to hear about how, yesterday morning, the middle sized dog cleaned himself to completion on my pillow! I'm not saying that I never reach completion in my bed, but I don't do in on my pillow, right by a just-waking-up person's head! If I didn't know better, I would have thought he was having a seizure. I can't remember the last time I got out of bed so quickly. Or how Sugarbowl and Princess were fighting the other day, so Sugarbowl locked her computer so Princess couldn't use it and now she can't remember her password so she's locked out too. Or how I've been thinking of taking one of these adorable little toads that are all over the place and keeping him as a pet. I have already picked out the name, Toadly Winks, but am not sure the upkeep is worth having him/her. Or how this heat has made me melt into a pile of warm jello and my pit juice keeps running off like the 2 bit whore it is. One day I told Acorn that my pits felt like they had died and gone to hell. About 5 minutes later, I felt a tickle in my pit and a spider came dragging its way out, thankful to be alive but needing years of therapy to recover from the experience. These are all the little nothings that make up the part of my life that MS has nothing to do with, ie all the fun parts.

Love,
Blindbeard

This Post Is Brought To You By:

The letter Z and the number 1, as in 1 enormous painful Zit. It started this life as an itchy red bump on my chin. I noticed it as we were heading to the lake and thought nothing of it. Heck, how many times have I had an itty bitty red bump of a zit, scratched it and never had any trouble from it again? Too many times to count. Little did I know that the simple act of scratching at it would cause it to bloom into a huge cauliflower-like thing. And how was I to know that nobody around me would bother telling me that I had a huge cauliflower on my chin that needed my attention NOW! Or stopped me from going out to chat with the neighbors with that thing taking over my face and resembling a parasitic twin sprouting from my chin. The poor neighbors! They probably had a hard time finding my eyes with my zit blocking my whole face.

I was hoping it would be a lot smaller this morning, but when I woke up and could hardly lift my head off my pillow because of its massive weight, I knew I was going to have another day of dragging it around with me. Hopefully I will be able to keep mountain climbers off of it, because I have things I want to do today besides chase yodelers off my humongous zit.

Nobody around me has any sympathy for me because I have such dry skin that I almost never get zits. Everyone else has oily skin and are always boo hoo-ing about some zit, so they think the behemoth on my chin is nothing. They won't think it's nothing when I get mistaken for the elephant man and they have to explain that I am not an animal, I am a human being. Or try to tell people that I am not growing a prize cauliflower on my chin, I just have a "little" zit. It's going to be a long day, dragging this growth around. I hope my neck doesn't snap under the weight of it.

Oh, Me Aching Head!

I woke up with such a headache, I wouldn't be surprised if my head split open like a rotten melon and an alien popped out. I had one of the worst nights I ever weathered, so it is little wonder my head feels so throbbingly rotten melon-like. I had those stupid irritating dreams, you know, the kind that are so frustrating they make you mad in your sleep. Where you wake up ready to round up a posse and go hang the bastards that pissed you off, even though they claim they had nothing to do with it. (Like when I would dream that my ex husband was sleeping with someone else I would be mad at him all the next day.) I don't think I ever hit the R.E.M. stage of sleep because my bladder woke me up every 2 hours. I've been having bladder urgency for the last few days. It doesn't matter when I'm swimming at the lake (be careful of warm spots when swimming with me) but it's annoying when out of my giant toilet. And don't act like you've never peed in the swimming hole, or even the pool. I used to get out of the water, but then realized that none of the kids around me ever felt the urge to get out of the pool no matter how long they had been swimming, so they might as well swim in my pee as I swim in theirs.

I used to pee about once a night. My little sister said that she and her fiance would wait until I got up to pee, about an hour after going to bed when that glass of water I drank with my night meds finally hit my bladder, then they would get it on. I am so glad I sleep like the dead because that is something I never want to hear. When we were younger, Sugarbowl had a boyfriend spend the night and even though she had her radio playing in her room, I still heard what sounded like a pig caught in a bear trap. She loves when I tell that story so much that she is now very careful to make sure the house is asleep before bringing out the bear trap.

On top of having to pee every time I am comfortable and want to read, I have been having double vision in my left eye if I look even slightly off from straight ahead. The double vision, while annoying, is accompanied with a lovely deep pain around my left eye. I've been taking so much ibuprofen I can feel my kidneys raising the white flag in defeat.

I suppose I should call my neurologist, but I don't feel like it just yet. She will want me to come in and do a bunch of tests, if not an MRI, and I don't wanna do all that right now. I want to get a few things done around here, in between all my peeing, then I will call her. Funny how when I was newly diagnosed, I would have called right away. Now I'm content to wait a bit and call when it's convenient for me. I think it will be convenient once the alien in my head hatches.