urbandruid

I'm sorry this is going to be so scattered and all over the place, but that's just the way it is. I haven't written for too long, and there's too much going on.

Practically all semester (since the end of August, anyway) I've been doing exactly what the doctors told me to do, and trying really hard not to do what I was told not to do. I've been taking it easy on the typing and especially on the writing things out longhand. I've tried to moderate my computer use, and people who know me know that that's a lot to ask.

And honestly? At the risk of fucking my hand up even more, I just- I can't do it anymore. I'm done. I'm tired and I'm stressed, it's two in the morning and I'm not sleeping, and I need this. I need to write. Need to do something.

Because, really? Behaving myself isn't helping as much as you might think. Long story short- I smacked the hell out of my right wrist in late August. I figured I'd broken it, hairline fracture or something. As if any of my medical problems could be that normal. Nope. It turned out to have aggravated something I've probably had for a long time, called a ganglion cyst. Which after taking a while to figure out what it was, the nice doc at the school health center stabbed a needle into and drained in October. And we figured, okay, the hand situation will get better now, right? The swelling will go down and the pain will go away, and it'll just- not be such a pain in the ass. Yeah. Didn't happen. Instead the swelling got worse, two fingers and my thumb started to go numb.

And I started to drop stuff. Just- sitting there and watching it go, like someone else had dropped it. Except it was me. Because suddenly I have no control over my own body, or at least my right hand.

So, now I have a new specialist for my collection. Orthopedist #2. Ortho #1 does knees and shoulders, I needed a hand specialist. So. I saw him... like a month ago, I think? Got myself scheduled for an (yet another) MRI and a nerve conduction test, because in addition to Return of the Cyst from Hell, he thinks I have carpal tunnel. Too.

So, Chris, you ask, do you have carpal tunnel? No clue. Because I don't see the doc again until the 4th of December. Yeah. So I have two weeks from this past Tuesday to go. Hanging out with my falling-apart brace from the student health center at school, hoarding the painkillers the doc there gave me for the really bad days.

Wondering if I'm going to need one hand surgery, or two. The number of surgeries I actually want? Zero.

And on top of it, one of the main ways I calm myself down, one of the main ways I keep myself together and just cope with things... is writing. Which I'm supposed to do as little of as possible. Which, yeah, I've been trying. And I just can't do it anymore. I'm typing with my brace on now, and it's slower than I'm used to, and I'm making more mistakes, but at least I'm getting some of this out. Other than talking to my new therapist, or my best friend at school, and my mom, I haven't been able to get a lot of it out. And there's a limit to how much shit I feel like I can dump on my friend L and my mom.

It's been a long semester, my first at real college. And the second or third week this happens, the start of the hand saga, and things have been insane ever since. I got to have someone else take my notes for a month when we thought the hand was broken, but after that- with nobody being able to say for sure what was wrong yet, there was no doctor to sign the Disabled Students form. Nobody to say, let's take a little pressure off this woman, let's make her do a few less things with the hand of doom. I have the form, which I'll make the ortho do something with when I see him in December. But right now I'm stuck doing everything. The only saving grace is that in the one class where I really have to take notes, he uses PowerPoint, and puts the slides online for us to print out. So I only have to write down everything that isn't on the slides.

Still, on the days when the hand is really bad, you can't imagine how much it hurts to write. How much it hurts to fill in the little bubbles on Scrantons for my tests. And thank GOD there are no essay questions.

My psych prof has us doing 'mind maps', these drawings to illustrate the concepts from our reading in our two textbooks. You ever try to draw with (probable) carpal tunnel and a cyst on your wrist? It's a bitch.

The whole thing is a bitch, to be perfectly honest. I'm unbelievably tired of all of it. I am finally, finally on break for Thanksgiving. I've only been looking forward to this for months, because dragging your ass through six units of upper division classes and learning your way around a new college is enough fun without the stress of constant, chronic pain. And the stress of the whole unknown 'what the hell is wrong with me this time and what are they going to have to do to me to fix it?'

But at least I've got some time now, and I'm going to try to do some fun stuff with that time. I've discovered I can't just not write, so I'm going to try typing in moderation (she says, working on this huge journal post, but whatever) and see how that goes. I've gotta do something, you know?

I don't know whether to scream or cry at this point. The way things are going, I'd better not cry.

I went to the eye doctor last week for my annual checkup. Everything was fine.

Yesterday afternoon my left eye, the one I have very little vision in, started hurting. I checked it out in the mirror, and the eyelid looked kind of red and puffy, so I put some basic rewetting drops in. Didn't help. Started putting hot compresses on it this morning, which didn't help much either. Now my eyelid's red, swollen, and painful. I can't tell if it's affecting my vision any, because I can pretty much only see out of the corner of that eye.

I'm pretty sure I know what this is. I had something similar back in the 90's, only it was much worse because it was in my good eye. So this scares me a little bit less than that did, but I'm still not having a great time.

I was laying on the couch this morning with a heat pack over my face for almost an hour before I decided enough was enough, and called the eye doctor. I hate to do it, because I was just there, but this is not going to go away on its own, and the pain is starting to really make me cranky.

Thankfully it was almost lunch when I called the doc's office, and the phone rang so many times in the front office that I think they finally had to pick it up in the back. This would explain why the person I talked to seemed to have it together anyway.

Really though, this is why I love my eye doctor's office. "What's your name and date of birth? And what's going on?" Pause. "Can you come in this afternoon?"

Yes, I can.

So, you know where I'll be at 3:15. And it's not that I don't want to go, it's just that I don't want to have to go.

So, I have my first physical therapy appointment today. I'm not looking forward to it, obviously, but it's more than that. I can't shake the feeling that it's not going to work. I'd love to be wrong, but I don't think I am. If it was just tendinitis, I think the anti-inflammatories would be doing more for it than they are. I think we wouldn't still see so much inflamation on the MRI and the x-rays. I think it wouldn't be locking up on me and hurting like HELL in 3D. I think maybe I'd be able to wash my hair or brush it or do other kinds of reaching things without it locking up or the pain getting so bad I have to stop whatever I'm doing.

And I'm kicking myself for not telling the ortho guy my doc sent me to, about the locking up, or the occasional inability to brush or dry my hair. Or the fact that sometimes it's impossible to write, and once I had to do it anyway to answer an essay question on a history test, and every fucking letter was torture.

I'm mentioning it to the PT, that's for sure, but I feel stupid for not telling the doctor. Usually I write stuff down, especially when I'm seeing a new doc, but it was finals week, the day of my history final, and I was just... not at my best, let's put it that way.

I just think, from everything I've read, that that kind of weakness and especially the locking up, is a sign of an injury, not tendinitis. I'm afraid it's gonna make a huge difference in diagnosing what's wrong with it, and I fucked up. I don't see the doctor for 6 weeks or so, though it may be sooner if this really doesn't work.

I have these nightmare visions of my arm swelling up like a party balloon, you know? And, not so incidentally, hurting like hell.

Speaking of which, the shoulder would like its morning dose of painkillers, NOW. I need to jump in the shower anyway, and get ready to go. The hot water usually helps. Except it'll lock up at least once... maybe again when I'm trying to hold up the blow dryer...

If I have to ask Mom to help me dry my freaking hair, I will cry.

Well, today's going to be fun, in the sense of not really.

So my doc thought I just had really bad tendinitis in my right shoulder. Turns out... maybe not. I got one shot back in October, in a place I don't really wanna talk about, which seemed to do wonders for a while there. Then the swelling and the pain started creeping back up... and this is with prescription-strength anti-inflammatory drugs twice a day. So I went back to the doc in early November. Got another shot, which didn't seem to do nearly as much for me as the last one did... and got scheduled for an MRI.

Which I tried to do last week. Only, it turns out? I'm not just slightly claustrophobic, I'm really claustrophobic. So I'm going back today, they're giving me some kind of conscious sedation (I'd prefer unconscious, actually...) and we're gonna try again.

They said I could take my pills in the morning with small sips of water, but what I really need to take my pills (anti-inflammatories included) is food. Which I can't have for six hours before my appointment.

No food, no pills, nothing to drink- and I'm not really all that hungry, but I'm really thirsty. Bringing a bottle of water to have when I get out of there, but it's sure no fun right now.

Oh yeah, and I'm 1.) still scared to death of the MRI machine of doom, and 2.) even more scared that my doc's right, I've torn my rotator cuff, and I might need surgery to fix it.

If I never need another surgery in my LIFE it will be too soon.

Ugh...

Okay, to make a long story short:

1.) Have kidney stones. Plural. Not sure I want to know how many exactly, but it's been pretty miserable.

2.) It's too fucking hot, making the kidney stone thing even worse.

3.) I have an appointment with a specialist on the 10th, which I'm really nervous about.

4.) DSL is down, because apparently the phone company thought this would be a good time to mess with me. Yeah. I thought it was just the modem, but the ISP guys say it's the line, and I'm inclined to believe them.

5.) Mom goes to see a podietrist today for this foot thing she's got. We think we know what it is, and it could be kind of bad.

So, yeah. That's where we are. Somebody hug me?

Ugh... So today's the first day of class. Oh, joy.

It's going to be 94 F, which is a downgrade from the 97 they were predicting last night.

This still sucks.

It sucks even more because I spent the last 2 weeks fighting a kidney infection, the last 10 days or so on major antibiotics, and I still feel like total crap and am hurting in places I shouldn't. I'm going back to the doc on Thursday, unrelated mole removal, and I'm debating if the kidney stuff can wait till then.

Since I spent all weekend popping the painkillers said doc gave me for the infection, and need to take more after I eat breakfast, I'm thinking it probably can't wait. Will call her after I get home from (whee, yay) class.

I don't have class till noon, which'll give me time to fight the bookstore lines and go get my new student ID/library card, if I decide I'm up for that today. And I only have to buy one book, for Oceanography, since we use the same Spanish book for Spanish II as we did for I (Thank you, Professor M!)

I keep trying to console myself about the back to school thing with all the good stuff about school- access to our library, whose nonfic section rocks; no freshmen in my classes; two profs who are really good and whom I like; and, well, I was getting a little bored anyway.

On the flip side we have: State U cut their fall enrollment again, and we know what that means- Freshman Menace, redux; the heat; the fact I feel like crap.

Oh yeah, and I'm exhausted, because I've been staying up later than I should have to watch the Olympic finals in stuff like gymnastics and swimming. (No love to NBC for intentionally putting the best stuff on dead last. And I'm still pissed about equestrian being on freaking Oxygen, too. Assholes...) Network gets nasty letters when I have time to write them.

It's gonna be a long day.

Did I mention I don't really want to do this right now? If it just wasn't so hot... (Okay, I'd still be annoyed and tired, but I wouldn't be as worried about my kidneys.)

Anyway, I apologize for being so out of touch for so long. Kidney infections really suck, and I think I've had this one for close to a month. Yeah, I know, I'm an idiot. I was going to call the doc ages ago, before I thought I passed that stone, but things calmed down, so I figured I was clear of whatever it was. Then it started up again week before last, and I did call her.

And now need to call her again. Bleh.

Kidney infections suck.

I'll tell you this, though- those freshmen had better stay the hell out of my way, or I may not be entirely responsible for beating their ankles with my cane, not to mention all the swearing.

Well, learning new vocab words is all part of the college experience, yeah? ;)

For those of you not in receipt of a semi-stoned Druid tag tonight, I finally went to see my doc (last week? no, the week before, I think?) about my headaches, because they suck and I'm tired of them. She said probably migraines, gave me some stuff to try, call her if it works, etc.

I got 2 different drugs to try, and took one tonight when my head started hurting in that throbbing stabby sort of way. It worked, and pretty well, but the side effects are... strange.

My throat and lower jaw feel stiff and a little sore, and it kind of hurts when I swallow. Actually it kind of hurts a lot, which wouldn't be so bad if I didn't keep getting thirsty, and wanting to drink a lot. Also? Am tired, and yawning, and that's unpleasent too. This side effect really sucks, though it's better than the damn migraine, no question. Will try the other drug on my next headache and see what annoys me less.

Anyway. It's pretty early for me, but I feel kind of cruddy and I have to go to class tomorrow, so I'm going to go to bed very shortly.

Tuesday, 8:47 AM
Well, this is just fantastic. In the sense of not really. I'm writing this from school, but I'll have to post it when I get home, because, after nearly an hour of running around from the reference desk to the computer lab, to the media center where the techs hang out...

...my network card is too !@#$ing old to connect to their wireless network.Fuck. I disconnected Anna and all her accoutrements, packed her and the minimum of stuff I need for my Psych class, into her case, and hauled 10 lbs of laptop, plus said accoutrements and school shit, into the library, all around the huge reference room, down the looong hall to the computer lab, across the hall to the media center, where I sat playing with things and swearing at them for a while till the techs got in... talked to a guy who seemed to know what the problem might be, and it was one I knew how to fix, so I did that, and... he took another look and told me the bloody network card is too bloody old.

My shoulder is already killing me, and I'm going to have to haul all of this crap half a mile to the freaking bus stop, lug it onto the bus, and lug it the several blocks home.

At which point I may have time to get it plugged back in and check my email, before I have to get ready for my dentist appointment.

Because, you know, this day didn't suck enough, already.

Oh yes, and I'm sitting at the far back table in the library, with the sun in my eyes- slowly rising, so it's getting a bit easier to see what I'm doing- because the library only has plugs scattered along the walls. Why, you ask, do I need a plug, since I have a laptop? Because Gateway sucks.

No, really, I mean it. That's why. Every computer I've ever bought from them has had battery issues. The first one, the battery never charged, and they had to send me a new one as it was still under warranty. Unfortunately, by the time I figured out the new laptop, Anna II, wasn't so much better off, her warranty had expired.

I guess she's only half as bad off, technically. The battery is supposed to have "at least" a 4-hour charge. It has maybe 2 hours, probably less, and they go pretty fast. It was down to 60% or so while I was working on it while waiting for the techs to show up, and I was praying the charge would last long enough for them to help me.

*facepalms*

I honestly don't know why this surprises me. Things like this never seem to go my way, particularly when we're talking about school related stuff that involves me going out of my way to do stuff, such as carrying 10 lbs of laptop all over hell's half-acre. I don't even want to think about how much fun it's not going to be to carry this thing to the bus and home again. In a word, ugh.

Other than that- oh, and having to go for my annual checkup/torture session/cleaning at the dentist, hah- it's been a pretty good day so far. Yes, this makes me feel a lot better, too.

Seriously, though, why does this stuff never occur to me? It's not like Anna's state of the art anymore- she's from 2002, at least according to Windows. Newer than Mom's laptop, Morden, or Kosh, our ancient desktop, but that's not saying a lot. And Anna's perfectly good for what I use her for, though I think her keyboard is starting to fall apart- among other things, the space bar has issues, and that stupid SysReq key I broke a few months back is kind of hanging on by a thread... but she's a good computer- and I think I'm kind of used to thinking of her as state of the art, whether she really is or not, because she's lightyears ahead of anything else we've got in the house.

But the upshot is, she's too old, so I'm sitting here, running AdAware, typing this, and listening to the work crews doing whatever the hell they're doing outside on the quad between the library and Admissions & Records this time- though it could be the guys working on the Admissions & Records building, too. They were supposed to be done last fall, but maybe they've finally figured out that they'll be a year behind if they don't finish by the time this semester is over.

I'm really starting to think the college hands out contracts like these to the lowest IQ-score bidders.

I didn't do much more than toss some spam out of my inbox this morning, because I figured that I'd have all of this time to kill at school, and I could surf LJ and other things at my leisure. Hah! So much for that plan.

Oh well. At least this answers the question of whether I ought to trouble myself with bringing Anna to school again. (And the answer would be, not unless I have a deep burning desire to do some typing that can't wait until I get home.)

I need to do some writing for AL, among other things, but I'd kind of planned on having the prompts accessable to me. Which, for obvious reasons, I don't, because they are online and I am not. I've probably already made this more than clear, but this annoys me.

I seem to be sitting right in a draft, too. Either that, or they have the AC on. Hell, as screwed up as this place can get, nothing would surprise me anymore. Even that. At least it'll be warmer upstairs, at 11:00 when my class starts. If I can make it that far and not die of boredom, which seems rather possible right now.

I guess I could always- ooh, isn't this exciting? - copy out my Psych notes so they're a little less chickenscratch, a little more legible.

If there's a plus side to this, I'm finally learning how to use my TouchPad. Or TrackPad, or whatever the hell you call it. It's really touchy, and I don't like it much. I use a mouse at home- I brought the mouse, and if I were online I'd probably use it, but I'm too lazy to dig it out at this point. It's not like I'm really doing anything of major concequence here. Just hanging out, watching the AdAware scan crawl its way through the temporary internet files- I ought to clean those out again, I suppose- and occasionally glancing over at the guy who sat down a little bit ago at the opposite end of the table. He kind of looks like David Tennant as the 10th Doctor- or maybe it's just the clothes, which are sort of preppy, and the hair which is kind of brown. Or at least I think so. Sun's still kind of in my eyes. But, you know, it's something to talk about, at least.

9:45 AM
I've killed almost another hour playing around with this. Still annoyed. Still bored.

9:54 AM
David Tennant lookalike dude is gone. Sigh. My shoulder hurts, half from hauling the damn laptop around, and half from hunching over the damn computer so I can see what I'm doing to type this oh-so-important document. I have no Advil, ibs, or any other kind of painkiller on me. If I wanted non-asprin, I could hike way the hell over to the nurse's office, currently residing in Bungalow # something or other, also known as the village of portable classrooms way the hell and gone almost to the edge of campus.

In short, no thanks.

For some reason which I really cannot fathom, the security alarm at the entrance to the library has gone off every time I've walked through it. The last time I came back in here, the kid at the front desk looked at me, asked if i had a laptop, and when I said yes, waved me on through.

I wonder if they'll want to search the bag when I leave. They're welcome to, nothing in there but Anna, her mouse, two notebooks, a paperback (Babylon 5: The Shadow Within) my Psych syllabus, my iPod, wallet, keys, and a couple of pens. Oh, and a makeup bag with pads in it.

Anyway, they've got signs posted everywhere saying they reserve the right to search bags and/or persons- there werent' as many of these signs last semester, so they must've had some problems with book theift. People are idiots. But, you know, whatever. As long as they don't make me late for class or hurt my baby, I don't really care.

I've never had my bag searched before, so it would be a novel experience. Though I guess it'd happen if I ever took a plane anywhere. I haven't flown since way before 9/11- we're talking mid-1990's, here. One of these years I'd like to travel. You know, if we ever win the Lotto or something. We play, but we never win.

The Apprentice has a contest where you can enter to win 10,000, and I entered that last week. Didn't win, though,but I'm not surprised. I entered online, and we all know how fast Anna's dialup connection isn't.

10:02 AM
Things to do, if I a.) ever get Anna home; b.) survive the dentist; c.) ever remember that this list exists.

( massivly long list )

I hit my knee getting into the shower this morning- well, I suppose it's yesterday morning now- and it's been driving me crazy since. The only time it doesn't hurt is when I've got an ice pack on it. I'm significantly less than thrilled by this. There's very little bruising, mostly soreness, pain, and swelling, which isn't good. I seem to have hit the place directly between my kneecap and lower leg bone. Lucky me.

Livejournal needs a better mood setting for this sort of thing than "sore". Sore doesn't come close to covering it.

It's funny, but I think the lj randomizer thing is strangely truthful. I can't explain it, but there's some sense in the nonsense. Try it out. :)

For all zero people who care, the Gap fic is coming along, and it's spawning little ficlets on the side. Apparently now that I've opened the door, every character I have even the slightest liking for wants to have his or her say. And here I was thinking I'd be able to sit down and hammer out the next chapter of Standing Stones this week. But no, half the 'Gap' cast is whispering in my ear, saying, "Pair us up, you know you want to! Look, subtext!"

Useless Fic. TM, patent pending.

If I'm going to write crap nobody is ever going to read, it might as well be original stuff that I have a slim chance of maybe getting paid for. I know this; I do. But the novels in progress are all going to require extensive editing before I can get back to working on them, and I'm just not up for that. Plus they're all suffering from having no plot outlines, as I haven't touched them since way before I started outlining anything.

My Harry Potter fics have better plots because I've actually paused to think about what I'm doing with them. I used to hate outlines, but with "Standing Stones", I didn't have much choice; there was so much going on that I had to start writing it down, just so I could keep it straight in my head. And from there it progressed to writing outlines. More like lists of events in the story, with some notation to mark what I've written up to, but anyway.

I'm trying not to stress, to just...go with the flow. Not worry for a while. It's silly and time-wasting, but if what I really feel like doing is writing weird fanfiction between bouts of icing the knee, than that's what I'm going to do. No matter how stupid it seems.

I'm using randomized stuff from my own LJ for titles for a while; I'm lazy, and some of them are strangley fitting.

Okay. One more round of ice for the knee, and then I'm going to bed.