Results tagged “pain” from KatScan

I have good days and bad days, and some really bad days, and then some really good days.
Last week, I had some really bad days, so bad that I couldn't even get off the couch, I just laid there trying as hard as I could to not move around too much because every single joint ached so bad it felt like my limbs were going to break off if I so much as moved an inch.
This week, well at least so far, I am having some really good days, so I am taking full advantage of them and trying to get some things done around the house.

One of the things that I am doing is trying to clean the terrazzo flooring in this house.
I hate the terrazzo.
What I wouldn't give to have some cheap laminate flooring in every room instead of this crappy stuff, but I have what I have, so I have to deal with it.
Terrazzo is just so hard to clean, it's made with concrete, stones, and marble chips, then it's given a protective coating which is supposed to keep it shiny and looking good.
Every so many years, you're supposed to have it restored, sand-blasted down, sanded again, buffed, given a new protective coating, and then polished and polished until it looks all shiny and new again.
But I don't think that the terrazzo in my house has been restored in many years, I mean, I have now lived here in this duplex for 12 years and the floors didn't look that great when I moved in, so yeah, I'm pretty damn positive that they haven't been restored in ages.
This duplex was built in the early 1970's, and that's when the terrazzo was laid down, and I'm not even sure that it was restored in the years following that.
Cleaning it is a real hassle, you can wash it, scrub it, wash and scrub it again, and it still doesn't look all that great.
But I got a brand new mop that I have only tried twice now, and while it hasn't made the terrazzo look brand new and all shiny-polished like new, but it has made it look a whole lot cleaner than I have ever been able to get it in the 12 years that I have been living here, so I plan on doing a full review of my new mop within the next few days.
Yes, I do believe that it's the mop that has made the difference in how clean the floors are getting and looking.
It's a brand new mop, just now out on the market, and I can't wait to tell you about it!
Yeah, I'm a total dork getting all excited about a mop, but I have used all kinds of different mops on my terrazzo flooring over the last 12 years, and this is the only mop that has ever made the terrazzo flooring look any good at all.
Yup, it's that good of a mop.

I had my pain doc appointment today, it went as it usually does.
On the pain scale, 1-10, with 1 being no pain, and 10 being OMG kill me now it hurts so bad, where are you right this minute?
I was at a 7 this morning because I had a rough night.
I was super stressed out so I didn't get any sleep, and so I just laid on the couch watching movies all night long, and so my back got super stiff and locked up by morning.
The dose of my pain medicine this morning just didn't cut it after such a crappy night, and on doctor day, you don't double up because they pee test you, and if you have too much in your system, you get yelled at, so I just dealt with the pain until I left.

I did finally tell the PA (my doc's Physician's Assistant,  Mary) about the Elavil and how much I don't like it, so they put me on a new one, Cymbalta.
I have been taking the Elavil since July 17, 2009, and I tolerated it every month, but it's side effects kept gradually getting much worse for me.
For the last few months, I would say, the last 3-4 months, within 20-30 minutes of taking it,  my throat felt like it was closing up, like something was stuck in it, and my hands would start shaking uncontrollably.
Those side effects would last anywhere from an hour to several hours, so I asked to be taken off of it today and she agreed with me that if that's how it's making me feel, then we should definitely switch to something else.
She said that they have been trying Cymbalta with some of their patients who also cannot tolerate the Elavil for a wide variety of reasons, and so far so good she said, so she put me on that.
She gave me two sample bottles and each one contained 7 capsules, so that was enough to get me through 14 days, but Mark and I just got back from Walgreen's and Publix, so I already picked my prescriptions up.
Because there is no generic for the Cymbalta yet, my insurance co-pay is a bit higher than it normally is for my medications, but it's still a really great price at just $6.30 for a 30 day supply.
The regular price with no insurance is $188.79, so yeah, way happy to have insurance.

I am really hopeful that I can tolerate the Cymbalta a lot better than I did the Elavil, because it looks like Cymbalta can actually help me with my chronic pain too.
This is what Drugs.com says about Cymbalta;

Cymbalta is used to treat major depressive disorder and general anxiety disorder. It is also used to treat a chronic pain disorder called fibromyalgia, and to treat pain caused by nerve damage in people with diabetes (diabetic neuropathy).

That makes me so very hopeful that not only will I be able to tolerate it well, but that it will actually do what it says.
That would be so awesome, you have no idea.
If it can actually help with chronic pain and nerve pain, then I would have to take less actual pain medicine which would be freaking awesome!!
Keep your fingers crossed for me that it really works please!!

One of my friends took me to my doc appointment and pharmacy today, and all I had to do as a way to "pay" her for the ride, was to help her take her respironics oxygen concentrator to the medical supply place, and have them fix it.
She can't lift it, and I know, I'm not supposed to lift heavy stuff either, but as soon as the clerk saw me getting it out of the trunk, he came out with a dolly and wheeled it in for us.
Then she went in and told him what was wrong with it, and they fixed what wrong with it which was just a dirty filter, and she admitted that she never cleaned it, she said she didn't know how to open it, so they cleaned it for her and then put it back in the trunk for us so I didn't have to try and lift it again.
Her son was at home (summer vacation) and he's the one who put it in the trunk for her, and she said that he would take it back out again when she got home.
I had offered to go home with her and get it out of the trunk and take it in her house for her and then she could drive me back home, but that's when she told me that he was at home and he was the one who would take care of it, she was just happy that I was with her and so willing to help her.
She said that one of her other friends that she is always giving rides to, never, ever wants to help her with anything, and complains the whole time they are doing anything at all where she needs help.
She almost started crying when she was talking about it, I felt so bad for her, so I told her that anytime at all that she needs help, all she has to do is call me, I'm usually always at home so I can be ready to go and help at pretty much a moment's notice.
That's when she really did start crying and saying thank you about a gazillion times.
I said she didn't have to say so many thank yous, she helped me with a ride to my doctor's office, the pharmacy, and home again, so helping her is the least that I could do.
I am always so appreciative when people help me out with a ride where I need to go, so helping them in return is my way of saying thank you and repaying them for the help. 

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but this is a very serious product review of a medical device that claims it can completely relieve pain, "remind the body to heal itself", and strengthen the body's immunity, and many, many other medical claims.

About two months ago, I was contacted by a woman named Cheryl who said she had an amazing product that would help me, help me with my back pain, blood pressure, all kinds of things, and she would love it if I would try it out and review it on my blogs.
I agreed to test it out and I have been using it as she told me to ever since receiving it in the mail.
It's called the Amega Amwand, and it claims to use "zero point energy" to help the body heal itself.
I HATE giving these people a link, but I feel that I need to so that people WILL NOT fall for this scam, I need to warn people that this thing is a total scam and costs hundreds of dollars ($304.00) to buy, and all it is is the body of a ball point pen minus the ink and ink chamber.
It is one solid piece of metal shaped like a pen, it looks exactly like the image above.
You can pretty much tell that this thing is a scam by the url of the website where they sell it.
The url to purchase this thing has the words "CASHRICHES" in it!
Another of their sites is just one big page all about positioning yourself to get in on this amazing money making scheme!

Cheryl told me that in order to get the most benefits from it, to use it properly, all that I needed to do was to simply "wave" the Amwand over my body, the areas that are in pain, in a clockwise circular motion for 30 minutes, 5 times per day.
"It's vital" she said.
She even told me to "wand" my son Mark with it as well because he is having bad back pain too.
Mark laughed at the idea, but he let me use it on him for the entire two months that I've had it and have been testing it out.
Below are the claims that this "wand" can supposedly do to help people.

Usage of AmWand Can:

* Discharge blockages in the body
* Clear distortions in our bio energetic field
* Facilitate the body in healing
* Energize food and drink increasing potency of the minerals & vitamins within them
* Use it on our pets and plants to supplement any energy deficiencies that they have
* Balance and energize imbalances your body may be experiencing
* Help to remove aches, pains and other discomforts
* Lift the face...tightens the skin
* Energize our environment in which we live

Amega AmWand Benefits Can:

* Help the body obtain homeostasis condition
* Help the body's bio-energetic field to source Zero Point Energy
* Relieve aches and pain
* Neutralize harmful elements (energetically) from the liquid we drink, & food we eat
* Energize the skin providing a "face lift" with noticeable improvement
* Energize creams and oils for better absorption of nutrients
* Facilitate and strengthen the flow of energy in our body
* Stimulate bodily functions and strengthens immunity
* Help the body to look and feel younger

You also can have quicker and stronger nail and hair growth, and a greater resistance to tooth decay that is visibly seen. The lifting of the face with noticeable improvement has also brought forth an additional and extremely high interest.

When water is treated with the Zero Point Energy Wand and then used in conjunction with any supplements, they can be absorbed much more quickly and efficiently, and effectively by the body's cells.

I have used the Amega Amwand every single day, five times per day for 30 minutes each session as I was told to do.
I even "wanded" my water with it as I was told to do.
I am here to tell you that the Amega Amwand did absolutely nothing at all for me.
It did not relieve any aches, pains, or other discomforts, it has not helped reduce my blood pressure, and I saw no noticeable improvement in my hair, nails, or face.
It has not helped me to look or feel younger.
It has not helped or strengthened my immunity, as a matter of fact, I've been really sick several times during the last 2 months, and it did not help me get better faster, or at all.
It did not do a single thing that it claims it can do.
The Amega Amwand is a total scam and I feel the need to tell people the truth before they fall for this scam and waste hundreds of dollars on it.

Every day, millions of people live in pain and are desperate to be free from that pain, and would take any kind of supplement or other types of self care items to try and relieve that pain.
If you live with chronic pain or know someone who lives with chronic pain, then you know how desperate you can feel to get any kind of relief, and there are very unscrupulous people and companies out there who know that desperation and are ready and poised to take full advantage of those people who live in pain.
There are thousands of products on the market already that make thousands of claims that their product can help you be free from pain, and people buy them because they are so desperate.
This product, the Amega Amwand, is one of those products that claims so many amazing things that it can do for you, but it does absolutely nothing.
NOTHING.

The existence of zero point energy is not controversial although the ability to harness it is.
No device claimed to operate using zero point energy has been demonstrated to operate as claimed. No plausible description of a device drawing useful power from a source of zero point energy has been given. Thus, current claims to zero point energy-based power generation systems currently have the status of pseudoscience.
That means that this Amega Amwand is a total scam.
It is pseudoscience, fake, not what it claims to be.

Amega Global makes all kinds of products that claim to use zero point energy to help the body heal itself.
They make the Amwand for $304.00, the AmPendant in silver for $394.00, another AmPendant in Rose Gold for $404.00, and another AmPendant in bronze for $409.00.
They also make "food" that ranges in price from $52.00 up to $270.00.

They make all kinds of other products that claim to use this zero point energy, and they are selling them to people that are desperate to be free from pain, there are testimonials out there that claim this thing really works, but I can tell you after testing it on both myself and Mark for almost two full months, that it DOES NOT work.
I really feel the need to warn people about this new self care, help the body heal itself, scam.
I do not want to see anyone at all fall for this, and that's why I have used the name of it, Amega Amwand, as many times as possible so that it will get indexed in Google and other search engines, and be in the search results for it so that people will find this post (cross posted to My Single Mom Life as well) and learn that it is a total scam.
I feel very strongly the need to warn people so that they do not fall for this scam and waste hundreds of dollars on any of these Amega Global products that will do absolutely nothing for them except remove hundreds of dollars from their bank accounts.

Please, if you or someone that you know suffers from chronic pain and have either been told about the Amega Amwand, or they read about it, and are thinking of buying the Amega Amwand, please, direct them to this post.
I would not ever lie to my readers, this product, the Amega Amwand, is a total scam, it does not work as it claims to.
I tried and tested the product 5 times per day for 30 minutes each time, for two months, and saw no noticeable improvement in pain relief or energy, or any signs of looking and feeling younger either.
The Amega Amwand is a total scam.

Back when I first received the Amega Amwand, I brought it with me to one of my pain management appointments so that I could get my doctor's opinion of it. I took out the box and explained to him what the distributor Cheryl was selling to people at a cost of $304.00 and a promise that it could heal people's ailments and completely relieve pain. He read the little pamphlet, looked at the wand very closely, and then he asked me if I had actually paid for this thing. I told him no, of course not, and explained to him how I received it and what my plan to review it was. He told me, and I quote,

"Kat, you have to use your websites to tell people about this. This is probably the single biggest medical scam that I've seen in the last five years, and believe me, I've seen a lot of them. If you have your blogs (he looked kinda confused on what a blog really is) and the power to reach as many people as possible, you absolutely must tell people the truth. And Kat, the truth is that this thing is 100% garbage. It is a lie packaged and sold to desperate people, people who are so desperate to be free from pain that they will do just about anything they can to get relief. You have the ability to help people not waste their time and their money. Use the power you have to do something good. If you just spare even one person from wasting their money and their time, then you've done something great. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I am going to go to the website and then email this to as many of my colleagues as I can, they need to know about this too and try to stop their patients from getting scammed if any of their patients happen to mention it or ask their doctors if they've heard of being healed by zero point energy."

He then laughed and repeated the phrase "zero point energy" as he jotted down the website urls for both of the websites that Cheryl gave me.
When I got back home and was going back over the pamphlet and stuff that came in the box with the wand, I found the certificate of authenticity, and one thing that I noticed on this "Certificate of Authenticity" that comes in the beautifully padded and silk lined box, is the ultra fine print typed so freaking small that I had to get my jewelry making magnifying glass out in order to be able to read it.
On the very, very bottom of the back of the certificate of authenticity, it reads in super tiny fine print exactly as follows:

DISCLAIMER: These statements have not been evaluated by The Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or physical condition.

These lying scammers know full well that this freaking magical "Amega Amwand" absolutely cannot treat, cure, or heal any ailment of physical condition.
They know that it cannot relieve pain, the number one claim that they use in their selling techniques!
The FDA won't approve this damn thing because they know that it's a total fraud, and these scammers admit, right there in super fine print, that this thing cannot do any of the things that they claim that it can!!

I will be updating this post on both of my blogs with new information or links to other articles about the Amega Amwand and what a total fraud it is, as I find or come across them.
If I find other reviews, I will link them, if I find video reviews, I will link to them as well, and when I see my doctor on Tuesday at 11am, I will be updating him about my "progress" after using it for two months.

**EDIT**
Added 2 links on 6/22/2010

Here is a link to a Youtube video and a post about the Amega Amwand scam.
I am not a hamster, Boob product: Amega Amwand.

Amega Amwand: Medical Scam, at the blog I Am Not A Hamster.


Amega Amwand Is a Scam at Blahvert.

The comments on this post at a money making blog are quite interesting, especially one by someone named Chadi.

FTC disclosure;
I was not compensated in any way for this post.
I received the Amega Amwand for free to test it and review it, and I have to send it back.
It is not mine to keep.
There is absolutely no free product to keep, or compensation received for reviewing this product.
The opinions expressed here are my own, but some of the wording has been taken directly from the Amega Global websites where they either sell the product or hype the product to get people to become distributors of these products.

You know what sucks wicked bad for me?
I have all of this wicked awesome fitness equipment in my house, and I can't use any of it.
I can't use any of it because of my back surgeries, because A) I can barely move to use it, and B) my doctors don't want me using it because it could do all kinds of damage to my spine and all of the equipment inside of my body.
Using my elliptical and weights, lifting weights, could actually cause me to damage some of my implants and fixtures, I could make them rip off of my spine if I do something too much or too hard, and then I'd have to have all kinds of surgeries again.
That would really suck, but it still sucks because I'm so out of shape, I'd love to get in shape, turn all of this fat into muscle, not be so damn flabby.
I've lost a wicked lot of weight, I was at 200 pounds, and I am now down to just 155 pounds after almost a year.
It will be a full year come July 5th. I was 197 pounds, and I now weigh just 155, so I've lost 42 pounds, but I'm all flabby in the gut, I would love to be able to do sit ups and get all of that flab turned into muscle.
That would be awesome, but I can't.

Things I'm about to say are really hard for me to say.
I face the possibility of a lot of people having their say about me, judging me, or anger, or pity, or hate, fear, worry.
I face the emotions of all kinds of things because of what I'm going to post here.
And I deserve whatever people have to say.
I do not deserve kindness, and I certainly do not deserve anyone else ever telling me again how strong I am or how strong they think I am.
I am not strong, I haven't been strong in years, I have not been "me" since 2001.
I lost who I was when I had to stop working outside the home, when my life was forever changed because of this body which has imprisoned me.
I am not even a shell of my former self.

I left out something that happened on Sunday, left out several things that happened on Sunday.
I left them out because of fear, guilt, and shame, and I still have all of those emotions speeding through me like a train going at high speed with no conductor at the front.
I don't know if people will understand, if anyone at all will understand, and so I am afraid, afraid of being judged, hated, pitied.
I hate people pitying me because I have enough pity and self loathing running through me to cover me for however long the rest of my life is.

The reason that I have very brief memories of Sunday is because I made a mistake taking my medications that were given to me on Saturday.
I was given the phenergen to stop the pukes and the diars, and I was also given valium to help calm me down and help me rest.
I hadn't slept in days, approximately 7 days at that point, I hadn't eaten either because eating made the pukes and diars worse.
So I was completely exhausted and dehydrated. and still getting sicker and sicker.
The phenergen wasn't working, I was still puking and having the diars every 10 minutes, so I called my doctor, I asked him what to do, he told me to keep taking the phenergen, so I did.
Or what I thought was the phenergen.
Both bottles were identical, same color, cap, labels, and height, the same tiny print, so I kept taking the phenergen, or what I thought was the bottle of phenergen.
In reality, I was taking 2 valium every 4 hours because the phenergen's instructions were to take 2 every 4-6 hours if the symptoms kept up.
I thought in my exhausted and dehydrated state, that I was taking the phenergen, but it was the valium, and a lot of it, so yes, of course my condition worsened.
The diars and pukes didn't stop at all, and I was stumbling and staggering to the bathroom to get sick, and stumbling and staggering back to the couch.
My condition terrified the teens, they had no idea what was happening to me, neither did I, I was taking the wrong medication.
I don't recall the ride to the hospital, I don't recall anything that happened at the hospital except for the doctors talking about my white cells and some sort of infection, I don't recall things said or done by me to people, to doctors and nurses, to Mindy and my sons, to Sebastian.
Apparently, I was very nasty to everyone, yelling, cursing, saying extremely hurtful things, and I recall none of it at all.

Since learning the very next day what I had done, I've been extremely depressed and ashamed of myself, beyond ashamed, guilt is running through me so badly, that when I think about what I possibly said to people, I fall apart and start crying uncontrollably.
I hurt people, I hurt people that I love and care about so much, and I cannot forgive myself even if they forgive me.
I hate my body, I hate all of the pain, I hate all of the pain medications, and medical tests that I endure, and I hate of the doctors, and I hate every damn minute of every damn day of my life.
I hate being alive because I am a prisoner of my body, it holds me captive with it's never ending pain and the medicines hold me prisoner because my body needs them now, is totally addicted to them, I am trapped, stuck in a world of pain, hurt, and medicine that has me so tight in it's grasp that I am suffocating.

Please do not mistake me saying that I hate being alive as me being suicidal, because I am not.
I am far too much of a coward to take my own life, and no, I do not even think about suicide, I just hate this life that I live, I hate it more than the word hate can ever fully describe.
 I am just so full of guilt and shame because I have hurt people that I truly love and care for, and I honestly wouldn't blame them one little bit if they never forgive me for it, I don't expect forgiveness, I don't deserve their forgiveness, I don't want their forgiveness.
I want to feel this guilt and shame, I want it, I have earned it, what I did and said, the hurt that I caused, I earned it, it's mine and no one can take it from me.

As for my OCD, it gets worse and worse every day, my ticks get worse every day, I have caught myself in the middle of my little rituals and even though I've caught myself, I still can't stop doing them, as a matter of fact, it makes me do them again and again.
I've picked up some new ones too, I am now constantly wiping my eyes and wiping away my hair, pulling my pony tail tighter, re-arranging my head band, sweeping and brushing my hair out of my eyes, and then, if I see even a single strand of hair blowing in front of my eyes, if it will not stay in place away from my face, I will pull it right out of my head.
I grab the strand and follow it all of the way up to it's root at my scalp, and I yank it right from there, right at my scalp.
Eventually, I'll be taking some sort of medication for hair loss prevention because I'm pulling so much of it out.
Then, after yanking away even a single strand, I brush my clothes off from a sitting position here at my desk, then I stand and brush them off, and then I wipe off my entire desk, moving my mouse, the coaster I have for my cans of Diet Coke, my pencil box, my notepad, I move every single thing and wipe my desk with my right hand.
Then I wipe the monitor, and then I get up and wipe off my computer tower, and then the table on which it sits, and before you know it, I've wiped down everything within a 4 foot circle of my desk area.
It's getting worse, the ticks are getting worse, things set them off, and what sets them off the most are extreme feelings, nervousness, guilt, shame, fear, and so this week, I've put one hell of a polish on my whole computer area and probably yanked out a good couple hundred hairs.

This week has been hell for me.
I made a huge mistake taking my medications and I hurt people that I love, my sons, my friend Mindy.
I hurt them, and my guilt and shame is eating me alive and setting off my ticks almost hourly.
I catch myself crying, I catch myself barely breathing, I catch myself staring at nothing, pulling hairs out, wiping my desk, my mouse, wiping everything, and wiping in very particular patterns, always wiping everything down in an exact order, and in an exact pattern.
 
I fear that I'm going crazy, like really, truly, going crazy, like my brain is starting to shrivel up and dry out, like I am not going to be ok, like eventually, I'll be locked away or I'll be one of those crazy cat ladies who talks to her cats because they can't talk back, because even if you say hurtful things to them, they have no idea what you are saying and then I won't have to feel so guilty.
I hurt people that I love and care for, I made a huge mistake with my medications, I never do that, I never ever have taken the wrong medication, and because I did, I ended up hurting people that I love, and I am so so sorry, but I am not wanting forgiveness, I am not worthy of forgiveness, I am falling to pieces because of this damn body that imprisons me.
It's grasp is tight, it's prison walls are growing smaller, and I am in a place that I hate, a body that hurts me more and more each day, and I am full of guilt, shame, self pity, self loathing, and I am not forgivable, I do not want it even if it's there.

I don't need any products like a  fat burner to help me lose weight right now,because on top of my foot issue, I now have a cold.
Actually, both of the teens have colds too.
All 3 of us are coughing and hacking, have stiff and achy muscles, and basically, just feel miserable.
Because of my spine fusions, it hurts to cough.
When you cough, your lungs inhale and exhale very quickly, and this causes them to expand and shrink again, very rapidly, which uses all of the muscles in your rib cage, which is both the front and back of your body.
Coughing uses all of the muscles surrounding your entire rib cage, so every single time I cough, it pulls all of those muscles and hurts like hell.

I tried to eat, but I kept coughing, so I ended up choking on whatever I tried to eat, even soup.
Take a spoonful of soup, cough, have it go down the wrong way, and start choking on it.
Choking on soup.
I don't need to take anything to help me control my appetite, because I can't even eat or I'll choke.
I am staying hydrated though, I am drinking plenty of fluids, just very small sips through a straw, (as always) and so at least I'm not going to get dehydrated during this cold.
I may try drinking my soup through a straw later, I am wicked hungry, so maybe drinking it through a straw like I am with my juice, will allow me to "eat" something.

It really sucks that I have a cold and am coughing like this every 30 seconds.
It started yesterday about mid to late afternoon, it wasn't that bad then, but it still hurt whenever I did cough.
Then it started to get worse just as I was setting up my camera to do a video product review that I need to get done.
I am already seriously late getting it done, and when I say seriously late, I mean seriously late.
It was due at the very end of December, but the company had to change when they shipped them due to the holiday, so I didn't actually get it until the 2nd week of January.
Then I got really wicked sick for the next almost 3 weeks, with a horrid stomach thing from hell, and then thing after thing just kept happening to prevent me from doing it.
I was using the product though, it is something that I use every single day as it replaces something that I do everyday, so I used all of the product up and needed to order more.
So I ordered more, waited for them to get here, and then when they arrived, something else came up to prevent me from doing the video review.
Now here we are, I had every single intention to do the video review last night, but I was coughing so loud, that doing the video review, especially for the product that I'm using and reviewing, it would not have been ok at all.
Then I thought that maybe the coughing would be over by today, or at least lessened enough that each cough was about 5-10 minutes apart, far enough apart that I could get through a few minutes of recording myself without hacking up a lung.
But nooooo, the coughing just was so much worse when I woke up, I'm coughing every 30 seconds or so, it's a loud, barking, and "wet" sounding cough, so yeah, again not a good way to be for making a video review of the product that I'm using.

I will get it done, I just have no idea when now.
I feel absolutely horrible about it too.
I have never, ever been this late on completing any work before.
I know how bad this looks, and even though my health issues are a perfectly legitimate excuse for why my review isn't done or had been done closer to the due date, but I do know that this looks really, really bad on me.
I am ashamed of myself for not getting it done yet, I know that I have had numerous health issues that prevented me from doing it, but I still can't help feel absolutely terrible about this. 

I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, (among all of the other things that are wrong with me)  but RA is an autoimmune disease that primarily affects the joints.
An autoimmune disease is defined as a disease that can not distinguish healthy bodily tissues from harmful foreign substances.
Rheumatoid Arthritis is an inflammatory disease that is capable of producing systemic problems (when the disease affects organs of the body).
Your immune system, a little science/medical info for you, is your body's way of protecting itself, of fighting off illnesses and other things which are foreign to your body, so that you can get back to being healthy.
Your immune system is supposed to help you, not hurt you.
With RA, the immune system is attacking healthy tissues and joints throughout the entire body.
When your immune system is already fighting and battling off the healthy tissues that your body thinks are foreign enemies, there's not much left over to take care of any real things that get into your body and make you sick. 

My joints ache all of the time, they get worse when the weather changes, rain or cold, and then it's just a daily battle to try and keep the pain away long enough to do all of the things that you need to do.
I take vitamins and supplements every single day to try and help my immune system fight off everything that it needs to fight off, so that I can try to be somewhat healthy and not in miserable illness all of the time.
I take a cal/mag/zinc supplement, a multivitamin, and an antioxidant every single day, but I wonder if taking a much stronger vitamin, like prenatal vitamins, would be even more beneficial to someone like me.
Prenatal vitamins have like all of the best stuff in them, they have the best of everything in them, and more of it.
I'm not pregnant nor do I want to ever have another baby, and even though it's been a long time since I was pregnant, I do recall that I felt the healthiest when I was pregnant and taking prenatal vitamins every day.
My hair was awesome, my skin was looking great, not a single blemish, my nails were long and strong, and I just felt terrific, so maybe taking a prenatal now would help me.

It's just a thought, something I thought about tonight while I sit here feeling miserable once again. 

I'm now a regular at the Doctors Hospital ER, I should get like a badge or something.
ha ha
I had broken out in hives again on Thursday, they were all over my body, really bad all over my body.
Both of my eyes were nearly swollen shut, and the hives were spreading everywhere, even on the top of my head.
When my left hand started tingling, I made the decision to go to the ER Thursday night around 6:30pm.
I have high blood pressure, so I was concerned about that, like maybe I was having a heart attack or something.
It wasn't busy, thank goodness, I got right in, and when the doctor came to see me, she said I had the worst case of hives she had ever seen.
Both of my eyes were almost completely swollen shut at that point, my face, neck, torso, head, shoulders, every inch of me was covered in raised red welts.
The hand tingling thing was a hive growing larger and right on top of a nerve in my hand, and that's why it was tingling so bad, the nerve was being squished by a giant hive on the back of my hand. 
She asked me if they were "literally" everywhere on my body.
I said yes, they are every single place that there's skin.
She said "Aww, that really sucks, but we're going to take care of it right now, hang in there just a few more minutes."

She had the nurse start an IV line, and then they pumped in 8 different medications to get rid of the hives, stop the itching, something  for the pain, and one med to ease my stomach because the other drugs are known to cause stomach issues.
She warned me what the side effects of the drugs were, and she asked me if I had a ride home or was I driving.
I told her a friend was going to come back and pick me up.
She said good because 1 of the drugs can make people fall asleep within minutes of getting it. She also told me that a couple of the drugs were like taking an appetite suppressant, that I would not feel like eating anything at all during the whole week that she's got me taking the meds.
She was right about that, I haven't wanted to eat hardly anything at all, I just don't have any appetite, none whatsoever.
Which sucks because we got the Girl Scout cookies that I ordered, on Thursday night when Mindy brought me home from the ER.
Many thanks as always to Mindy and her family for helping me out when I need to go to the hospital and stuff.
She's truly a great friend to have, I am very lucky to have her in my life.

I went in at 6:45 pm, and was not let go until almost 11:30pm, that's not too bad considering that all of that time was actually spent on a bed in the ER with an IV line and getting the itches and welts taken care of.
I've spent an enormous amount of time in bed this weekend, she wasn't kidding about the drugs making me tired, I was out like a light man.
I definitely enjoyed the sleep because I have insomnia really bad a lot of the time, so I totally didn't mind falling asleep and staying asleep for a full 6 hours at a time.
I took them all weekend long, and yup, they make you dead freaking tired.
I've probably had the best sleep of my life this weekend and got it because I was broken out in hives.
I need to get the name of that medicine, I hope that it's a sleeping pill and not like a drug to cure things.
They could totally market and sell it as a sleeping aide.  

I was very fortunate to receive an Acu-Life Thera Pod soothing 2-in-1 therapy heating and cooling pad for my review.
I received it free of charge in exchange for my honest opinion of the product.




The Acu-Life Thera Pod provides both moist heat and cold therapy to help facilitate healing of sore and tired muscles, aches and sprains, and even migraines.

For moist heat therapy, you remove the cold pack from the Thera Pod and place it in the freezer, and place the Thera Pod on a microwave safe plate, microwave for just 1 minute, and then you place it directly on the area that needs the moist heat.

It stays in place because it comes with an adjustable velcro strap.
So you can wear it on your lower back, arm, leg, shoulder, (like in the picture) knees, ankles, anywhere that you need to use moist heat or cold therapy.
 




For cold therapy, you insert the cold pack and wear it where you need to.
Moist heat helps with stiffness and flexibility, and cold therapy helps with inflammation and swelling.

All 3 of us have used the Acu-Life Thera Pod since getting it.
Sebastian has used the cold pack for his migraines, and both Mark and I have used it for our sore lower backs.
It really works well too.
Both Mark and I absolutely love the moist heat therapy,  just nuke it and wear it until it cools off, and by the time it has cooled off, our lower backs no longer hurt as bad, and we both had improved flexibility, we were able to bend over and stand up straight without the usual discomfort.
The other night when it was a bit chilly out and I was really hurting from the cold weather, I nuked it for 1 minute, strapped it around my lower back, and laid on the couch and watched a movie for 2 hours.
When the movie was over, my pain was drastically lessened and I was able to get off the couch without the stiffness that I usually have trying to get up off of the couch.

I've tried to use heating pads while lying on the couch before, but if you roll over or change position, the heating pad would move and I would have to readjust it over and over again.
With the Acu-Life Thera Pod, because it's strapped to my lower back, I was able to lay on the couch, change position as I needed to, roll over, and it moves with me, so it's perfect for laying down and soothing and relaxing my sore lower back.
I almost wish it was full back size, like big enough to strap around my entire back, because then it just might help with the freezing cold and stiffness from the titanium rods.
But wearing it on my lower back and laying on the couch with a blanket over me, it did help warm me up a bit on the inside, and it did help with the stiffness and pain in my lower back.

I really like the Acu-Life Thera Pod, it works very well, it can do both moist heat and cold therapy, and both are needed in soothing and relaxing sore and stiff muscles.
I'm very glad that I was given this product to try and review, I would have never known about it had I not been asked to give it a try. 

I had my appointment with my pain doctor today and was able to get a medicine that works and my insurance, Humana, will pay for it.
Yay!
Because of the whole Purdue lawsuit, the pain med that I was taking, the oxycodone 40mg, is no longer available in the generic, and Human absolutely will not pay for the name brand, my doc had to switch me to a new med.
We tried a couple of different ones, none of them worked, and the last one, the methadone, caused me to be sick and also itch like freaking crazy, so he had to switch me again.
He personally called Humana to ask them if they would cover certain medications, and after talking to them for over an hour he said, he was finally able to find a pain med that will work and that Humana will cover.
He put me on Roxicodone 30mg, which is a short acting pain reliever, not an extended release like the Oxycodone 40mg, but it will kick in faster and work just as well for my pain as the 40s used to do.
Now I am on Soma 350, Hydrocodone 10/325, and the Roxicodone 30mg.
I only take the Soma at night to try and sleep, I take 2 of the Hydrocodone every 6 hours, and 1 of the Roxicodone every 4 hours.
This should work to help keep the majority of the pain away, and he said that if I end up having breakthrough pain that is intolerable, like when it rains and the titanium starts to hurt, that I can take either 2 more Hydrocodone or another Roxicodone every 4 hours until the pain goes away.

The doctor had a few more patients to see and my script for the Roxicodone had to be typed up and signed, so they told me to go home and come back to pick up the script after 2pm, so I left and went to hang out with my friends who gave me a ride at their house until it was ready because I live across town and they live close to the doctor's office.
We would have wasted a ton of gas bringing me home, them going home, coming back to pick me up, back to the office, and then to the pharmacy, and back home again.
So after 2pm, we went to the office and then to the pharmacy to get all of the scripts filled, and they were having issues with their computers and stuff so they were unable to accept credit cards, so I had to go to the gas station and use the ATM to get money to pay for my scripts which sucked because the ATM at the gas station charges a $3.00 fee to use it.
I hate that, but by the time we got back to the pharmacy, they had all of my scripts filled and ready to go, so I paid and we left to come back home.
We all hung out here for a bit and then they had to go, but they're coming back later tonight to watch movies and eat pizza and hang out for awhile.
I'm totally ok with that, so I'm going to get up off of here and go do some general cleaning around the house until they come back.
I hate having people come over when my house is dirty.
The litter boxes most definitely have to be cleaned.
Egads those damn cats sure do pee and poop a lot!
Later days!

Right now I am in some really horrible pain in my left ankle, no, not another spider bite, and no, I didn't twist and sprain it, but I think it may be diabetic neuropathy.
When I tried to get up from my chair here in my little office furniture corner of the living room after posting my review of my new Christmas decoration, (it took me about an hour to write that post, I kept getting interrupted) when I went to put my feet down on the floor from my usual placed up on a high foot stool, my left ankle started throbbing immediately.
I couldn't put any weight on it at all.
It's not like a pinched nerve or tingling kind of pain, this is like a twisted ankle kind of pain, it's that bad.

Diabetic neuropathy usually creates a tingling or numbness sensation in the feet, but it can "occasionally creates a severe burning pain, or other very unpleasant sensations, that are extremely frustrating."
And yes, it is extremely frustrating to know that I did not do anything to bring this on, I did not do anything out of the ordinary at all, I went for my regular 2 walks every day, and the general walking around my house to clean and do dishes and make dinner kind of stuff.
My ankle did not hurt or even tingle when I sat down to write that post, it just happened over the course of the hour that I sat here with my legs propped up, while writing that post.

In all these past 6 or so years since I was told that I had diabetes, I have been able to control it and my blood sugar through diet alone with the help of my doctors keeping me on track making me keep food and sugar readings diaries every single day.
Once a month, I bring in my diary notebook, the nurses photocopy the new months entries, the nurses go over highlighting anything either above or below normal, and bad foods that I know I shouldn't eat but do anyway, and then when I get in the room with the doc, he reads all of the highlighted entries and tells me (yells at me actually) what I'm doing wrong and how to stay on track, how to get and keep my glycosylated hemoglobin value into the normal range, and to keep my blood sugar tests normal as often as possible.
But if when I go to see him this coming Wednesday and tell him about this foot pain and he goes over my diaries, he may tell me that we had a good run, but it's now time for insulin.
That will totally suck if it happens and it's probably going to, but I did have a very good run, I went almost a full 6 years controlling it through diet alone, I did really great at it only messing myself up a few times.
There have been times that I needed to spike myself up or I wouldn't have any energy at all to even make dinner for the boys, so I would intentionally take on too much sugary foods, like some ice cream mixed with marshmallows, followed by a full can of Mountain Dew to help wash down a Snickers Bar and a few Twizzlers.
The sugar spike would have me buzzing around the house cleaning everything I saw, the house would be totally spotless in like 2hours, dinner would be done cooking, everyone would be done eating, and the dinner dishes would be all washed and the sinks and counters wiped down and sparkly like Fly Lady tells us to do.
My docs yell at me for doing that, but seriously, there ar just times that I am dead tired, have zero energy, and if I don't do it, absolutely nothing at all will get done and the teens won't be fed.
It's really that bad, I just lay on the couch on those days and sleep off and on all day and night listening to the tv for anywhere from 24 to 48 hours.
Sugar spiking myself and then crashing after it's all done, is sometimes the only way, and it IS like the number 1 thing that my docs yell at me for doing.

I'm afraid that my awesome 6 year run of no insulin is over.
Diabetic neuropathy can be controlled by controlling the sugar and the glycosylated hemoglobin in my blood.
I don't hate needles, I've had so many jabbed in me over the last 10.5 years to give me shots, take blood, give blood, so it's not a fear of needles, it's realizing finally, that I cannot control it on my own anymore, that I've failed and need to take even  more medicine.
I'm so over taking medicine, every single day, pill after pill after pill, all day long every single day for the last 10.5 years and will be taking pill after pill every single day for however long I live.
It sucks.

I can't be entirely sure just yet if the cause is the new medication, or if I caught the flu.
If it's the med, I have stopped taking it and that should cause the sickness to stop.
If it's the flu, the puking will continue.
Either way, I don't think I have to worry about gaining any new belly fat for awhile.
What med did he put me on?
Methadone.
Yes, Methadone is what they give to people addicted to heroin or other narcotics, but it's also given to people dealing with long term pain because it's like morphine.
He is giving it to me for this month until he gets clearance from the insurance, Humana, to give me an immediate release generic oxycontin pain medication.
Humana does not like to allow that particular med, and they make sure that any patient getting it is closely monitored, both in dosage and weight.
The immediate release oxycontin 30mg is dosed based upon weight, my weight has been fluctuating pretty significantly for the last 6 months.
The patients weight determines how many of the 30mg pills to give the patient every day.
The heavier you are, the more they have to give you.
The skinnier you are, the less they have to give you.
My weight has been fluctuating between 10-15lbs up or down for 6 months, I gain it and lose it, rapidly, and not really sure why.
I am concerned that the Methadone is what caused me to puke non-stop last night because it is so similar to morphine which I am highly allergic to.
It is only 1 chemical molecule off from morphine, which means it's very, very similar to morphine.
I told my doctor when he asked if I was allergic to morphine, that I was, he asked what happens when I take it and I told him.
 I itch so badly on every inch of my body, that I have pulled out huge clumps of hair while sleeping, that I have scratched so hard  on my legs, stomach and arms, that I have actually caused huge gashes in my skin that have gotten infected, and I have gotten very sick to the point that eating anything at all came straight back out within minutes of eating it.
Even trying to take tiny sips of water or Diet Pepsi last night caused me to be very ill.
Deep scratches scab over, scabs itch, so I have scratched at the itchy scabs until they became infected and ended up having to be treated by doctors and antibiotics.
He still prescribed the methadone.
I don't understand that, if he knows how similar it is, is he just hoping that it won't affect me the same as morphine?
I did not take my dose last night or this morning, I am only supposed to take it twice a day, and I am now not taking it, screw that.
If it is the methadone causing the pukes, I am not going to take it.
If I stop taking it and remain sick for days or a week, I'll know it was the flu.
But I don't feel like I have the flu, I have no flu symptoms other than puking, no fever, no lethargy, nada, just puking, so I am almost like 99% positive that it's the methadone and how similar it is to morphine that is causing the sickness.
I should know for definite by tomorrow after not taking it for about 24-48 hours.
I'll tell you what though, I am really not happy about being a guinea pig with the testing of drugs.
I had a drug that worked for my pain, it's unavailable, there is another in the exact same family, just immediate release instead of extended release, that will work, and they are not allowing me to have it.
Instead, I've been given a drug that is more than likely causing me to be extremely sick.
I puked out nothing but stomach bile for 3 hours last night after all the food had been thrown out.
Bile burns man, it burns and hurts, and I am not happy about any of this.
It sucks.
I at least have the regular hydrocodone 10/325 for the pain.
It doesn't work as well as the oxycodone ER 40mg, but it will have to do for now while my doctor figures things out with Humana.

I swear, the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry must be cahoots with each other.
They do everything that they can to get the most amount of money from people for the least amount of work or money being spent on their end of the transaction.

One of my medications is not being made any longer, well, let me rephrase that.
The generic of it is no longer being made, and my insurance company will not pay for the real name brand one unless my doctor calls them and gets prior authorization, tells them that it is medically necessary to have it because the generic is no longer being manufactured.
The real name brand one costs a lot of money, a wicked lot of money.
The generic version of it would cost me $789.95  for a quantity of 90 pills, if I didn't have insurance.
The real name brand one would cost me $1,325.00 out of pocket if I didn't have insurance, for the exact same amount, 90 pills.
My doctor does not want to switch me to another pain medicine unless he absolutely has to because this one works very well for me, he doesn't want to have to make me take something else that may not work as well, and then go through possibly months of trying on new medications until we find one that works.
Getting this particular one took about 5 months of trying a new one every single month until finding this one worked the best.

So basically, I went to my doc appointment today and got all of my prescriptions, 4 of them, but was only able to get 3 of them filled until Humana either decides to cover the name brand one, or forces my doctor to write a new script and start the drug try-ons until we find one that works as well as this one does.
I have been on and tried so many different pain relievers, I could write reviews of them as easily as I have written diet pill reviews on my blogs.
I really do not want to have to try a new drug, or several new drugs.
It sucks trying out new ones, they all react differently with my body, and the one pain med that I absolutely do not want to ever have to take again, not even for a week or so, is Ultram/Tramadol. (the generic is Tramadol)
That one makes me feel like total crap.
It makes me feel agitated and angry, like if anything is even normally mildly upsetting, that little thing makes me explode violently and I start screaming and yelling at anyone within earshot.
It also makes me feel dirty and gross, like slimy and disgusting, and no amount of showers makes that feeling go away, it makes me feel strung out, like jacked-up, cracked-out.
It's how I imagine smoking crack would make me feel.
It also upsets my stomach.
Most narcotic pain relievers cause you to be constipated, I deal with that by taking a stool softener every 3 days or so.
On Tramadol, (the generic) it's the exact opposite, it causes diarrhea, so the whole time I am taking it, I need to stay close to home, close to the bathroom, and I can not eat much at all because it just comes right back out, explosively.
So the doc's office is calling Humana and faxing them, a medically necessary-please approve the name brand medication form, and the doc's office will call me tomorrow to either let me know that I can go to the pharmacy and pick it up, or go back to the doc's office and get a script for a brand new pain reliever.
I am hoping that they will approve it, I really hate trying out new ones, it sucks a wicked lot. 
 
Tramadol is what Mark's doctor has him on, and poor Mark, he is suffering the exact same side effects that I get while taking them, and they really aren't helping his pain much either unless he takes 3 of them at once, but then taking that many causes him to be really agitated and have the stomach upset 3 times worse.
He went and had his MRI last week, and we're supposed to go in tomorrow for the results and a refill of his meds, but I don't have any transportation, and I am not going to spend $40 for a cab ride, so I had to call and cancel his appointment.
I am going to call and talk to a few friends, and ask them if they could give us a ride, they can pick the day that works the best for them, and I'll just tell his doc to either fit us in on that day, or they'll have to wait until I can find another ride from someone else.
Getting his test results are a huge priority for me, I need to know exactly what Mark has and how bad it is.
These results will determine whether or not Mark can go ahead and apply at the police academy and take the law classes in college. (you need to apply at the police academy and then go take the classes)
If his back is really bad, if he has a lot of spine deformities and nerve damage, it will negatively impact his life-long career choice.
If his bad is super bad, if he can't be a cop like he's always wanted to, I will have 10 times more guilt over this than I already do.
I feel absolutely horrible that my genetics, that my DNA, may have destroyed his ability to be a police officer.
The day that I heard that he has spondylosis, I came home and cried my eyes out. 
I so didn't want him to have anything medically wrong with his back, I was so hoping that his doctor would just tell him to lose weight, that because he's overweight, that's why he has lower back pain, that's what I wanted to hear, not that my DNA has been handed down to him.
I have to find us a ride,  someone that will take us there and either wait possibly for an hour or 2, or drop us off and come back to pick us up when the appointment is over.
I need to find out what's wrong and how we're going to treat it, if it can be treated by bracing or physical therapy, or if it's bad enough to need surgery.
Once I get the results from his doctor, I am going to try and fight with medicaid to get a second opinion, and that second opinion will be from my surgeon, Doc M.
Doc M. is the most qualified spine specialist in this state, Mark's doctor even said that if he thinks Mark's spine needs surgery, that he would send him to Virginia to be treated by a specialist there, he already knows that he's not qualified to do the surgery himself.
I am almost scared to get the results, I don't want it to be any worse than what it is right now, just the spondy and arthritis, I am so afraid that he's got other spine deformities, maybe scoliosis, or severe nerve damage like I have.
I do not want him to have to go through any of the years of pain and hell that I've been through, I won't be able to handle that, I don't want my son to suffer like I have. 

All of that stuff that was going on with me and my family a few months back now, is still on our families stage.
Instead of being front and center like it was, it's now just hanging out somewhere stage left.

Mark and I had a long talk on Thursday afternoon, that's why I haven't been around much during the daytime hours recently, not posting to my blogs during the day, only hopping on and off of Twitter every few hours and stuff.
Mark and I, had a long talk about his upcoming MRI on Monday afternoon.
He's really starting to get worried.
Not about the MRI itself, but the results.
He said that if the results say that it's bad and that he will definitely be needing surgery when he's older, he asked if he can tell the doctor to just do the surgery now, while he's young.
I said that of course he can tell the doctor he wants to do it now, but that doesn't mean that the doctor will, but he has every right to make his own medical decisions now, he's legally an adult.

He said that after watching me go through the spine fusion surgeries in my mid 30's, and watching George have spine fusion in his late 50's, after watching the 2 of us suffer through the surgeries, the recoveries, and watching us still be in pain (even years later in my case, George had his surgery just 9 months ago) that he does not, under any circumstance, want to have his surgery in middle age, when the body takes longer to heal, when the body is actually starting to decline in health, he does not want that kind of life for himself, and he does not want his children to have to go through what he and Sebastian have had to go through.
He said that it wasn't my fault, he doesn't blame me for anything, but it really sucks being a kid and having to deal with all of this stuff for the last 10 years of their lives.
 
He also said that after he has his spine fused, after he's recovered as much as his body will recover, that he wants to go to drug rehab and get off of all of the pain medicines while he's young.
He said that he does not want to be like George and I, having to take pain pills every single day for the rest of his life like we have to.
He said that he believes that the reason we are in so much pain, the reason that our surgeries didn't go so well, the reason that we are still suffering, is because the surgeons waited too long to do it, that if it had been done while we were younger, our lives would be so much different.

I really can't argue with him there.
I have often tried to imagine what my life would be like if the doctors had taken better care of me when I was young and first diagnosed with scoliosis.
I know that back in the early 80's when I was diagnosed, that they were using Harrington rods, and I know that those rods failed after about 10-15 years, but dammit, I would have had 10-15 years of being straight before the rods gave out and needed to be replaced, and when they did, the new titanium rods that I have now, would have been developed and doctors would have begun using them by then.
I would have been ok.
I wouldn't have started suffering from the excruciating backaches and burning pain that has  plagued me every single day since I was 19 years old.

Do you have any idea what it has been like to be in pain every single day for 20 years?
There has not been a single day since I was 19, that I've not had pain.
I honestly don't know what it feels like to not have pain, I can't remember what no pain feels like.
 
Maybe if those damn doctors had done their job and fixed me when I was younger, when I was a teenager, fixed me like another girl in my high school class was,  that I wouldn't have become disabled at the age of 31.
At age 31, I was told by 3 orthopedic surgeons and 2 neurosurgeons, that my body couldn't handle the stress anymore, that if I continued to work, continued to put any kind of physical stress on my body any harder than walking at a slow pace, that I would be in a wheelchair within 5 years, and instead of doing spine fusion surgery, they would have been amputating my left leg at the pelvis due to the extensive and non-repairable nerve and blood vessel damage that was running from my lower back all of the way down into my left leg and all of the way to my toes.

All 5 of those surgeons wrote letters to SSDI and told them that I could never work again, and I made and kept copies of all of the letters that every single one of the 21 surgeons and specialists that I saw beginning in July 1998, all the way up until I met my surgeon in November 2005.
I have all of my own medical records, I had to pay to get copies of some of them, but after going from surgeon to surgeon so many times, I just started making my own medical records to bring with me to meet the new surgeons so that time wouldn't be wasted waiting  for my records to be sent over to another new surgeon time after time.

It took from April 2001 to December 2005, to get approved for SSDI.
They denied me twice even with an attorney, and that's when I asked each of the 21 surgeons who treated me to write a letter to SSDI explaining how bad my condition was, and they all agreed to do it, they all wrote letters and sent them to my attorney, and almost all of them included their original notes from during the time they treated me and then had to send me to another doctor who "might" have been able to help me.
I really think it was those letters that finally got me approved.

I went off there eh?
Sorry, didn't mean to, it's just that period of time in my life was not only physically challenging, but emotionally challenging.
I wanted to give up fighting every single day, but then I'd look at my boys, and just keep on fighting.

Mark is a fighter, he will fight to get whatever needs to be done, done, but done his way, when he says so, not when a doctor says so.
He does not want to be middle-aged and fighting a battle everyday to just walk from the bed to the couch.
He doesn't want to put his kids through this either.
I asked him if he was really planning on having kids and he said that he was, at least 2 he said.
Then he told me that I need to make my body as strong as I can because the "Gram" is always the kids favorite babysitter.
Ha ha
I said I would do my best, but for now, let's just get through doc appointments and hurricane season, we can talk about me being a grandmother later.
Muuuucch later. 

I posted about this week/ends issues with all of the rain we've been having, and stuff around the house not getting done like I wanted to, but man, the rain is really starting to piss me off now.
I'm in so much freaking pain right now.
The rods are freezing cold, I'm stiff as a board, and to top it off, I am blocked up like no tomorrow.
I am so blocked up I feel like I'm carrying quadruplets.
My stomach is all distended, it hurts, I just want it to stop.
I took the last of my stool softeners until I can get to the grocery store tomorrow.
I spent the whole day trying to fix the leak in the bathroom sink pipes, and now I'm too tired to do anything else.
I'm so blocked up, I can't even eat anything.
It sucks.

I went and saw my pain doc today and actually got to see him, not his physician's assistant like I have been seeing the last 3 visits.
This is something that I had talked about before, that I wanted to see him, because he's the only one who can change my medications, fix the dosage and amounts, or remove one that isn't working and try something else.
The PA just gives you the prescriptions that he has prescribed you, already signed by him in the morning.
That's how they can see so many patients, there's him, another pain doc, and then 3 PA's.
Every morning before they open, the 2 doctor's go through the files of every patient that will be seen that day, they write out the scripts, sign them, and then when the patient comes, the scripts are ready to go, and you have your appointment with him or the PA, whoever you are scheduled to see.
At last month's appointment, I told his PA that I wanted to see him at my next appointment because the meds I am on just aren't working as well anymore, that I'm having a rough time of things like they are, so they scheduled me to see him today.

I told him how things were going, how the meds they gave me had caused me to end up in the ER, he had the notes from the ER and had spoken to the doc who treated me that night by phone, and he apologized to me for that happening, and had made a note in my file to make sure that I am never given those particular meds again.
Basically they got added to the list of meds that I am allergic to so that from now on, no one ever gives me those again, and he said at my next appointment, he will have a typed up and signed allergy card for me to carry in my wallet in case there is ever any emergency and I am unable to speak.
He said that the allergy card needs to be in my wallet right with my ID card so that if I'm ever in an accident, the EMTs or police, whoever, when they get my ID out to identify me, they will also find the allergy card so that any medical people who treat me will know what I cannot be given.
I thanked him for that because trying to remember 4 meds accurately by name and spelling  is hard enough in good condition, so trying to remember them by name and spelling  accurately in a bad situation, would be very difficult.

I also talked to him about my weight, that I am going through losing weight/gaining weight phases which I am not happy about, and the muscle spasms I get in my middle and lower back, pain from doing pretty much anything like walking, doing dishes, and going grocery shopping,  which causes me to take more pain medication, and my never ending battle with insomnia.
He asked if I wanted a sleeping pill and I told him no because they don't work for me, I know this from experience.
I had been prescribed sleeping pills by my primary care doc, we tried 3 different ones, and they all wired me up instead of putting me to sleep.
So I asked him if he ever heard of a product called Stemulite, and if he had, what did he think of me trying something like that.
Stemulite, according to it's makers and from user testimonials, is supposed to be good for several things.
Things like improved sleep, increase strength and reduce pain from working out or exercising, increase muscle tone and endurance, and increase weight loss, wellness and energy.
He said that he hadn't heard of it, at least he didn't think he had, so he had me spell it and he wrote it down, said he would look it up and at my next appointment, he'd let me know what he thought of it.
He said he generally doesn't like prescribing any type of weight loss medication unless the patient is severely obese, which I am not, but he is concerned about the fact that doing things that are easy for most people, things like grocery shopping for example, cause me to be in a lot of pain and have bad muscle spasms in my lower back for many hours afterward, and my constant insomnia.
He said it was really odd and definitely not the norm that I can't sleep when the pain medications that I take normally cause most people who take them to be very tired, they all cause severe drowsiness, but not for me, instead of even being slightly tired, I'm wired up and ready to go.
So he said he would definitely look into it and let me know what he thinks because there has got to be something that will work for me, something to help me with the multiple issues that I have, insomnia, increased pain from doing even simple things, muscle spasms, and my weight always fluctuating.
At my appointment last month, I had lost 7lbs, the appointment before that, I had gained 10lbs, and at today's appointment, I had lost 9lbs, up and down like a yo-yo.
He said he would be ok with me trying something like Stemulite after he looks into it, because so far, nothing seems to be working for me, my muscles are just not healed up well and they should be, they should have far more strength than they do, so maybe next month, he'll give me the ok to try it.
That would be awesome if he did ok it, I've been looking into it for quite awhile now, I posted about it when I found out about it back in April, so yeah, if he ok's this, it really just might be what could help me with all of the things that I am having trouble with.
My latest battle with insomnia lasted for 6 days.
During those 6 days, I only got a total of 3 hours of sleep.
It was an absolute hell, I was like going crazy from the lack of sleep, I tried and tried, I did all of the things I could think of to try and relax myself to sleep, things like gentle stretching and then relaxing of each part of my body starting at my toes and working my way up.
I tried taking a warm shower, I tried listening to very quiet classical music, and even some lullaby music I have, I tried drinking some sleepy time tea, and I even bought some over the counter sleeping pills which was a HUGE mistake because I KNEW they wouldn't work from my own experiences with prescription sleeping pills, but I was desperate for sleep, so I was trying anything I could and nothing worked at all.
It really sucks when you can't sleep, it makes you crazy.

So anyway , today's appointment went very well, we talked about a lot of things, he increased the doses of the meds that I take, and promised to look into Stemulite for me, to see if it will have any side effects or if it will interact badly with the meds that I currently take, and I also got a copy of my pain management contract.
He said he will also make sure that I get copies of the drug tests that he does on me every month, and the 2 random tests that he's done so far, and those will be ready for me to pick up at next month's appointment or if I want them earlier than that, to just give them a 72 hour phone call/notice, and he said they will be available to pick up after that.
But he said that I have passed every single drug test so far, and from the records he got from my previous pain doc, that I also passed every drug test that they did on me.
He did ask me why I wanted these things, so I told him what was going on.
That was really hard for me to tell him, I almost busted up bawling my eyes out but was able to hold it together for the most part, only cried a little bit.
He told me that if I had ever failed even just 1 of the drug tests that his office does, that he would have stopped being my doctor and would have added my name to the blacklist database, and he told me not to worry about it, to just let it go, let people think whatever they want to think because they don't make my health care and pain management decisions, he does, and if I had failed any of the tests, he would have personally told me that I did.

He also told me that I'm not the first and certainly will not be the last patient being treated for chronic pain, that people accuse of being addicts, he said that he hears it from almost every single one of his patients, that their families just don't understand, and probably never will.
He said that if any of those people ever had to deal with even just 1 day of the kind of pain we are in, they would change their tune in a heartbeat, and he doesn't wish that kind of pain on anyone, but he said that it would be the only way that anyone would understand, they would have to spend a day in our shoes to "get it", so I need to let it go, ignore what the people say, and just keep on doing what I'm doing, keep making my appointments, keep taking the monthly and random drug tests, and just try to live my life the best that I can, that those people don't live my life, and they should consider themselves lucky that they don't.
He's a pretty cool doc, I wish I could see him every month instead of his PA who talks wicked fast and into a tape recorder the whole appointment, but it's up to the scheduler who I get put with, and next month, I get to be with him again because of the things he said he's going to do, but then after that, I'll probably get with the PA again.
Oh well, at least I get to see him again next month and find out if I can take the Stemulite.

I might dust off my scanner and just scan the pain management contract, which I noticed is a new version, this one has been condensed to 3 pages down from the previous 8 page one.
I asked the office staff why it was smaller, and they said that they realized it was just far too wordy, that the new one says what it needs to say without all the extra and often confused wording. They told me that once I read through it, it is totally clear, that there can be absolutely no confusion over any of their rules at all.
Just glancing at it for a minute while waiting for the scheduler, I was like uh yeah, definitely plain as day what you can and cannot do as one of his patients.
But yeah, I might just scan it and have it available to email to anyone who wants to read it and understand that I absolutely cannot fail a single drug test, miss more than 3 appointments, or lose/have stolen any of my medications.
There is NO room for mistakes as one of his patients.
He is a very good and kind pain management doctor, but he's definitely not the kind of guy that you can try to roll one over on. He's heard all of the excuses people have, and he knows every single way that someone can try and pull one over on him, and it isn't going to happen with him, he's very strict with his rules, he has to be.

Anyway, that's my update for now.
I have a ton of emails to catch up on, a contest winner to draw which was supposed to be done yesterday, (UGH!) and then some dishes to do.

My friend Christine sent me this link to an advice column posting, and it made me feel so much better to know that there are people out there who understand what I'm dealing with.
I'm going to copy and paste it here, but anyone is free to go read the posting at the link above.

Dear Annie: This is for "His Wife," who worried that her husband might be addicted to painkillers.

I am a family practitioner and sometimes prescribe OxyContin for chronic, refractory noncancerous pain. Addiction is the physical and/or psychological craving for a substance despite documented damage to one's health and well-being. A person will beg, borrow or steal to get that substance. Her husband is not addicted. He appears to have chronic pain for which there is no surgical cure. He is under treatment for a bona fide medical condition.

I wear glasses. Am I addicted to them? No. Am I dependent on them? Yes. I am also a diabetic. The medication on which I am dependent has a specific purpose to control a medical condition.

The same goes for the OxyContin. If it is prescribed by a physician and his condition is monitored regularly for the purpose of improving function and maximizing his potential, it is legal and beneficial. If I cannot cure my patient, my next goal is to alleviate suffering. For too many years, patients have suffered in pain because we doctors were afraid of "causing" addiction. - A Doctor in California

Dear Doctor: Thanks for the lunch-bucket lingo explanation. Our readers will appreciate it.

See, it doesn't matter what your disease is, if you have a cancer like mesothelioma, you take medicine for it, if you have diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, have to wear glasses because you can't see well, a heart condition, whatever, your doctor treats you the best way that they can, and for those of us with chronic pain, have had surgeries that were supposed to fix us but didn't, whatever our reason is for being in pain, our doctors treat us with the medications that are available to treat us with the best way that they can.
I know that the people who have said things about me, or believe the lies told about me, have medical conditions that they take medicines for.
Arthritis, heart problems, diabetes, and skin cancer, and even some feminine problems like having to take hormones for "the change".
Are they addicts because they take the medicines prescribed by their doctors for their conditions every single day of their lives?
No, they are being monitored and treated for their health issues with medications.
I don't judge them or call them addicts, I know that they have legitimate medical conditions and they are being treated for them.
I've been through surgical hell, painful surgeries, heck, the pictures are at the top of this blog with the stuff that is forever inside of me, and I am currently stuck with my head down until medical science can find a way to fix me.
It is extremely painful to live like this, so my doctors treat me for this pain with medications to help make living like this easier.

So am I am addict?
Not me, not me the person, but my body is, my body needs them, and I am under constant medical care, and I am watched and monitored closely by my doctors.
I have an 8-page contract that I signed with my doctor, I take monthly and on-call urine drug tests to prove to my doctor that I am not taking any other drugs that he has not prescribed me.
If I do take anything other than what he has prescribed me, any illegal substances, I will be kicked out and unable to return to his office or any other pain doctor's office.
I will be blacklisted in the state of Florida, all doctors will be notified, and so will pharmacies.
At this month's appointment on the 14th, I am going to get a copy of my contract and copies of every single drug test that he has made me take, and I will send them to anyone who asks to see them to show people, to show anyone who thinks that I am doing anything illegal, that I am not.
Do I want to have to do this?
Should I have to do this?
No, hell no, but I will do it to put an end to the stories and the lies told about me.

Well I certainly didn't need any Phenphedrine these past few days, my medications took care of that for me.
As I posted on my other blog, I now have 2 more medications on my allergy list.
I now have to write in whenever I'm asked for medication allergies, morphine, albuterol, phenegren, and clonidine.
The phenegren and clonidine nearly killed me in just 2 short days of taking them.
I started taking them on Monday, became horribly sick and confused, slept for hours and hours, and when I wasn't sleeping, I was horribly ill.
It got so bad that I ended up in the ER last night, they almost pumped my stomach, but instead hooked me to IV fluids and gave me several shots of stuff I can't even recall the name of, to try and get the bad stuff out of me.
It worked because I am totally coherent now, I can read, write, sit up, walk, and talk, all things that I was completely unable to do from 5:30pm on Monday night until last night at the ER when they started pumping me full of fluids and meds.
It was some scary stuff I tell ya.
I don't think I've ever felt worse in my entire life than I did for the last few days.

Extreme stress, worry, fear, sadness, all of it, has made me completely lose my appetite, I have no need for any diet pills whatsoever.
I haven't eaten anything in days, I can't, the smell of food, the thought of food, makes me just feel horrible.
Not sick, but just not wanting to eat it at all, nothing is appealing, not even the slightest bit.
This is all just so screwed up, no one is listening, no one understands what life with chronic pain is like, what any of this has been like.
My frustration is at an all time high, I am just ready to explode.

I'm so sick and tired of complaining.
I'm like a broken record and I'm sick of listening to myself complain, I can only imagine how other people feel about it.
I am so sick of being in pain, sick of being sick, sick of having to take pain pills to deal with the pain, sick of running out of pain pills because of the crappy rainy weather and having to double up just to be able to move, and then having to wait 3-4 days for my refills to be ready, being out of pain meds makes my body go through withdrawals which is absolutely horrible to deal with, you have no idea what a nightmare that is.

It has rained almost every single day for the last 7 days.
Every day for almost 2-3 hours per day.
The humidity goes up, the rain comes down, and the titanium rods get frozen solid, they get stiff and do not allow me to move.
I lay on the couch underneath my blanket trying to warm them up with my heating pad, I try to move, I try to get up and do all of the things that I need to do as a mother.
Cook dinner for my sons, do their laundry, go grocery shopping, but I can't, I can't do any of it.**
I can barely walk to the freaking bathroom without crying, never mind stand and cook dinner.
I hate the rainy season, I hate it so so much.
It hurts me, it makes me hurt, it makes my body stiff as a board, an unbreakable board, and there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it.

I hate all of the pain pills, I hate it all.
I hate what I have to take, I hate how much I have to take, and I hate that after this next surgery, there will be even more of it to take, probably even higher doses, maybe even stronger ones, and that really, really bothers me.
I lay in my bed at night and cry about it sometimes, actually, a lot.

I hate what all of these pain medicines have done to my body and my mind.
I hate how my body requires them, needs them, and that at exactly after 6 hours, if I don't take another 1, my body starts screaming at me to take it.
My back starts to spasm, my stomach starts cramping up to let me know that it needs it or else there will be hell to pay in the form of diarrhea or vomit.
I go through withdrawals almost immediately if I do not take my pain medicines every 6 hours as I have been doing for the last 10+ years.
My body is so used to having them every 6 hours that my mind is trained to know exactly when I should have them.
I am fully addicted to my pain medicines.
I am totally ashamed to admit this, but I am at a loss of what to do right now because I'm having another fucking surgery.
When I 1st started seeing my pain manager after my 1st spine fusion surgery, I told him that I wanted to get off all of the pain pills, and that is what we were working on.
We had successfully gotten me off of almost all of them when we got the news that my neck vertebrae were basically killing me, and I had to have emergency surgery in 30 days or I was going to die in August 2008, and then I had the surgery on September 9th 2008.

But I was taking 320, 10/325mg Hydrocodone (pain) per month, and we got down to taking just 40 of those.
I had been taking 180, 30mg Oxycontin (pain) per month, and we got down to taking just 30 of those.
I had been taking 180, 250mg Soma (muscle relaxer) per month, and we got down to taking just 30 of those.

I had the 1st spine fusion in February 2006, and spent the 1st year doing physical therapy and adjusting to life, and then that whole 2nd year and right up until I got the news about my neck, I spent it trying to get off all of the drugs.
I was working on it, I was slowly weaning off the drugs, it was working and it was going so well.
I wasn't having any painful withdrawal symptoms because my body was still getting the drugs it wanted, it was just getting them much more spaced out, many, many hours spaced out, we were doing it the right way, and we were so close to finally being off all of them, I was almost free of the drugs.

And then I had the cervical spine fusion surgery, and they put me back on:
320, 10/325mg Hydrocodone, 180, 40mg Oxycontin, and only 30 of the 250mg Soma per month.
I don't like the Somas, they knock me out for hours and hours, and when I wake up, I'm completely confused.
I don't know what day it is, where I am, where my kids are, anything, completely and utterly confused.
They don't have the nickname "soma coma" for nothing.

On June 29th, I'm having another cervical spine fusion surgery, this one will go all the way up to my occiptal bone in my skull, a metal plate will be attached to my skull permanently, I'll have new rods and screws, I'll be in a halo brace for anywhere from 3-6 months, there's a possibility that my throat swells shut during surgery and I'll need a trach tube in order to be able to breathe, a possibility that I won't be able to eat and swallow food so I may need a feeding tube.
There is no telling what kind of drugs they are going to put me on for the amount of pain that I will be in.
I'm going to have 4 screws in my skull for 3-6 months and a contraption on my head and shoulders for that long, it's going to be annoying and painful, I'm sure the drugs will be strong and flowing, and my body will love them.
And then it will be hell to get off of them.

My body is addicted to the pain medicine that I take and I am ashamed of that.
I am also very afraid of it, I am afraid of what they are going to give me next and for how long, and afraid of what it's going to be like to get off of it all when the time comes.
Withdrawals are very, very painful, your whole body hurts and aches, your skin crawls and itches, spasms, you hallucinate, every single inch of your body and mind is in absolute hell while coming off of the drugs and I admit to being terrified of what is going to happen and it's not even time for it yet, but it's because I know that with this next surgery the drugs they are going to give me are going to be even stronger than what I am taking right now and because I know how bad my body craves what I take right now.

I hate this.
I hate it all.

I woke up this morning and accidentally took the wrong medicine.
Instead of taking my pain medicine, I took one of Sebastian's migraine pills.
It really messed me up very, very bad.
I was out of it all day long.
I have no idea how Sebastian handles being on that stuff all day, every day, because it made me feel like I was tripping on acid.
I could not eat anything at all, it was like the best diet pills I've ever used, I had zero appetite!!

He takes Topamax 3 times a day, and I honestly do not know how he can do it, because that stuff was like wow, some serious stuff.
I seriously felt like I was on acid.
I had the trippy vision, all the side effects that you get from acid, it was wild, I really do not know how he handles being on it.
It took me all day long to feel better, to feel like it was out of my system, and I'm still not entirely sure that it is out of my system, i still am having some vision issues from it.
At one point, I thought I was having a heart attack from it.
I was actually scared that I was having a heart attack.
I just laid in my bed all day long, I felt so bad.
I told the boys what happened when I realized what had happened about an hour after I realized what I had done.
There are just so many pill bottles on my shelf, and I have my bottles and his bottles separated, but somehow I must have grabbed his by mistake being so tired, I don't know how I could have made the mistake but I did.
I'm still not feeling totally right, I can feel it, and I'm typing not perfectly, I can see that, I mean look at how I'm typing here?
Yeah.
Ugh.

I have now lived in this duplex for 11 years as of this month, that's a long time to live in one apartment, and it shows.
My house is not dirty by any means, it's just lived in, cluttered.
My home will never be featured in a magazine like Better Homes & Gardens that's for sure, but it's not a disgusting pig sty either.

The carpets are old, faded, and worn out.
The cupboard doors and knobs have all seen better days, the bathroom fixtures are corroded and falling apart, and the walls definitely need to be cleaned and painted.
I'd love to get everything out of the house, move it all out into the driveway/carport, and then get one of those pressure washers and spray clean the entire house.
Just wash every single inch of everything down, get rid of cobwebs and dust hanging in corners, hanging off of the textured ceiling, put down all new tack paper in the cupboards, get all new knobs and fixtures, get the bathroom all new faucet fixtures too.

Or move.
Move and start over totally fresh and clean somewhere else.
But after living in any home for many years, it would be all lived in and cluttered again.
Our homes are where we put our stuff.
I used to be meticulous about cleaning, my home used to be spotless, but as the pain got worse, as I got surgeries and treatments for pain, the less cleaning I did.
I do keep up with as much as I can, and like I said, it's not a disgusting mess in here, but there is dust in places I just can't reach, I can't get down on my hands and knees and clean as well as I'd like to, and it definitely looks like people live here, we have stuff everywhere.
I really would love to just start in a room and clean it and get rid of as much stuff as I possibly can.
I'd love to just get rid of all of the crap we haven't used or touched in 6 months or longer, just get rid of it all.
I want to take back control of my house, clean it, get rid of things, wash the walls, and then paint everything.
I want to rip up the carpets and put new carpet down.
I want to make my house look really good again, but it's something that I'm going to have to work on really slowly over time.
I'm definitely going to start in my room, that's the room with the most crap in it to get rid of.

I have had a really bad couple of days here, still hurting pretty bad too.
It's been raining off and on since Thursday, so my joints, my bones, and the titanium, have just been in pure agony.
In yesterday's mail, I got a letter from Cindy, my surgeon's nurse, and in it were all of the surgery dates.
My surgery pre-op testing will be on June 10th at 9:30am, and my surgery will be on June 29th, and I have to be at the hospital at 6:30am.
It's all scheduled, so it's on whether I'm mentally ready for it or not.

The bathroom undermount sink has been driving me crazy!
It's been leaking, and clogging up all weekend, I have got to get that fixed soon.
It started clogging up last night, and when I went to plunge it, I felt some water hitting my feet.
I know that I didn't splash any out of the sink, so I opened the doors and saw that there's a link in the pipes.
Great, just great.
What was a simple project to replace just the faucet, is now going to have to be handled by the landlord, and the whole thing is going to have to be fixed.

Today was a very rough day, it actually started last night and yesterday afternoon as rains moved into the area.
The titanium rods get so cold, just so so cold, it's painful and agonizing, and I just hurt over every inch of my body.
Today was so painful, I laid in bed most of the day trying to sleep, but the pain was just too much, and so instead of sleeping, I spent the day crying.

I hate this ya know, I hate this life that I live.
Every day is a struggle to move and do things, take care of my home and family, try to do what I'm supposed to, try to do it all through the pain, and some days it's just too much.

I have to have another surgery, and the thought of going through it again, dealing with more pain and more recovery time, just makes me very angry and depressed.
I hate the pain, I hate constant and never ending pain, the constant pain medications, I hate it all, every single bit of it.
There are days, much like today, that I simply don't even want to go on anymore, I want it to all just stop, I want it all to be over with.
I'm so fucking sick of being in pain, being on pain meds, being stuck in these awful and painful positions.
I'm so fucking tired, just so so fucking tired of it all.

The other night, I was locking up the house for the night, and I slid the 2x4 under the doorknob, and then used my foot to make sure it was kicked under tight, and then my foot slid down the board, and it ripped off a callous that I have on the bottom of my foot.
Hard.
I've now had this horribly painful sore on the bottom of my foot, and every time I step down on my foot.
Which foot?
The left foot of course!
You can click it for bigger, you may not want to though, I am in serious need of a pedicure.
My feet are all rough, dry and calloused wicked way bad.













The amount of times that I manage to hurt myself doing really stupid stuff, it's a good thing that I don't own a motorcycle, or I'd need some motorcycle accident attorneys to keep me from getting sued by the city and stuff for crashing into things.

So I went to my doctor's appointment this afternoon, it went very well, the new pain doc and his staff are totally awesome and understanding about everything.
They gave me my prescriptions and I headed to Walgreen's.
The pharmacist pitched a fit because the doc had written on the bottom "Please fill today, medically necessary due to patient not being able to drive."
He said when a doc writes medically necessary, that means brand name, and my insurance, Humana, will not cover brand name.
So I had to go all the way back to my doc's, get them to write on it "Generic OK", and then go back to Walgreen's.

I asked the pharmacist if they had all of them (3 scripts) in generic, he said yes.
So I sat and waited.
For 45 minutes.
My name gets called, 1 of the pain meds is NOT the generic, it costs $610.00.
I told the pharmacist waiting on me that I asked for generic, the pharmacist said he had them, so why was I being given the brand name.
He started yelling at me that the generic is out, that the pharmaceutical companies have not made them in 6 months, I said that's bullshit because I picked it up here last month, and he says to me;
"Ma'am, I'm the pharmacist, I KNOW what I'm talking about, you do not, you are not a pharmacist. They are not making the generic of these any longer, we have not had them for the last 3 months, there is no way that you picked them up here. Now, are you going to pay for these or not?"

I told him 3 times through his shouting at me, to get a manager.
The manager comes over, I told her to look up my account and tell me when I last got that med filled.
She looks it up, says last month, you picked it up here.
I looked at him and asked him if he heard the manager, he said no, so I asked her to tell him what she just told me.
He says all sarcastically, "So."
I nearly flew over the counter and punched him.
I asked for my prescription back so that I could take it elsewhere because I refused to deal with a liar for 1 minute longer.
The manager was trying to apologize, I told her I didn't want to hear it.
The guy had been yelling at me, lied to me, I wanted my script so I could go somewhere else.

I went down the street to another pharmacy, asked them if they had the generic in stock, they said yes, they filled it, and then I asked them if the company had stopped making it.
Both the clerk and the pharmacist looked at each other and laughed, told me no, who told me they had, I told them Walgreen's did, and they both said "Ma'am, he lied to you. They have not stopped making the generic, as a matter of fact, they have increased production because the 30mg ones are not being made anymore."

I knew that, that's why my doc switched me to the higher ones.
But that little jerk lied to me, yelled at me, I'm freaking pissed.
I think I'm going to take my business elsewhere from now on, Walgreen's can suck it.

One of the things that you just sort of have to deal with living in Florida, is the insane amount of bugs and other creatures like lizards, that are simply everywhere.
You can have your house sealed up as tight as a drum, but lizards still find their way in, and if they are getting in, so is everything smaller than them.
I HATE bugs, the Palmetto bugs especially, which are basically cockroaches.
There are ways to get rid of them and keep them away, but come on, putting your toaster in a plastic bag every single night?
Get freaking real here folks.

I usually grab a cat when I see a bug or lizard, hold their head in place so they see it, and then run away to let the cats play with it, torture it, and eventually eat it.
This saves me money on bug sprays, roach traps, moth traps, and all kinds of other small critter traps.
But you still have to clean your house like crazy all of the time, it has to be impeccably clean, hospital sterile, if you really want to keep out every bug and roach.
It's a hard task let me tell ya.
There are days I simply cannot move, let alone sweep, mop, vacuum the rugs, wash down counters, scrub the sinks and dry them, etc etc.
I do the best that I can, but honestly, I need to win the lotto, buy a brand new house, and hire a couple of maids.
One for day shift and one for night shift.
Have around the clock cleaning going on.
I doubt that will ever happen, so I'll just have to keep doing my best when it comes to cleaning the house, and keep the cats happy so that they will keep on chasing and killing all of the critters that find their way in.

I waited and called all day again, and kept being told that it was being worked on, but I never got the call to go get the MRI.

My sister reminded me that I still had my boot from when I fractured the same ankle 6-7 years ago, so I had Sebastian help me get it out of the closet, and I've been wearing that since yesterday evening after we came home from shopping.

Tomorrow, we have Sebastian's appointment with his neuro to go over how his migraine meds have been working for the last month, in the afternoon.
So if they call me about the MRI, they need to do it in the morning or else wait till Thursday, so I'm wearing my boot and the ace bandage until they send me in for the test.
It is still as painful as it was the first night.
Gah.

I spent the entire day, since 8am, waiting for a call back from my doctor's office telling me what time to head over for an MRI of my ankle.
I called back 3 times, and each time I was told that the doctor was busy with patients, and as soon as she had a chance, she would fax over a referral for the MRI, and then they'd call me to tell me what time to go.
My last call was at 3pm, both the doc and the MRI place, were set to close at 5, so I needed to know what was going on.
Again, no one called back.

So in the morning, I'm going to start calling again, and again, and again, until someone tells me what time to go get a freaking MRI on this damn ankle!
It would be great if when a doctor says they are going to call you back in 1 hour, that they actually call back in 1 hour.
Doctors need to learn how to tell and keep track of time, maybe get a better watch, 1 that actually works well like a Panerai Luminor or something, because I'm getting tired of waiting around for call-backs all of the time.
The teens and I didn't leave to go shopping for their shorts until it hit 5pm, and I always take my cell with me, so they could have reached me if they really wanted to, which I don't think anyone even tried to call me back.

Beyond the cut is my hobbit-looking foot.
It's all misshapen and stuff, it's sore as hell, if this isn't an occult fracture, it's a wicked bad sprain and they need to do something about it because I still can't put any weight on it, can't scratch an itch near the ankle bone, can't go from having it elevated to down without all of the blood rushing to it, feeling it fill and swell, it's like a sudden burst of stabbing pain, and I'm feeling like I want to cry when I do pretty much anything with it.

Last night sometime between 8-9pm, I went into the kitchen to throw something away, then I turned around and felt something in my left ankle snap, kind of like cracking a knuckle.
It didn't really hurt at first, so I thought it was just my ankle bone popping, no big deal.
Then an hour later, the pain started, the swelling and redness started, it was unreal pain.
I took one of my Oxycontin 40MGs, thinking that would totally kick the pain out.
It didn't.
I waited about another hour, took another pain pill, but my ankle continued to swell and change colors, continued to feel like I had been hit with a sledgehammer like in Misery.
I couldn't take it anymore at all, Mark was awake, he looked at it, and then I decided to go to the ER, it was just so so painful, I was crying, I couldn't put any weight on it at all, I couldn't even touch the skin with my fingers, my cat Kali barely swished her tail against the skin on my ankle bone, and it sent me into fits and screams.
I called an ambulance around 1:40am, and made it to the ER by 2:15am.

When we got there, the paramedics were told that they close the main ER at 1:30am during the week, we'd have to go to triage, and wait it out.
When the main ER closes, that means they have exactly 10 exam rooms open, period.
So the paramedics wheeled me to triage where I was horrified to see at such a late hour, over 50 people sitting in the waiting room.
1 medic told the nurses about me, while the other 1 helped me go from the cart to a wheelchair to wait my turn.
The medic told the nurse they didn't think it was broken, that I didn't fall, which is true, they felt it was a sprain, a non-emergency.
This meant that all those 50 people who were there before me and me, would all be seen on a who's the worst off first served basis.
Crap.

So I sat and waited, and waited, and waited.
Finally around 3:20am, I was taken back to a room where I waited some more.
At 4:30am, a doctor came in at the same time the portable xray machine came in, and he looked at my xrays while they were being done.
Then he says to me,
"This may be an occult fracture, you have all of the signs and symptoms of one, but the xrays aren't showing that, which is totally normal for an occult fracture. There is a fracture line there, but from reading your records, you were here about 6-7 years ago for a fracture in the same place. That may be the line we are seeing, an old fracture line, maybe not. We are going to treat this right now as a sprain, but I want you to call your primary care in the morning, and if it still is this painful come Monday morning, call an ortho, have you ever seen one of those? And have the ortho do more xrays and testing."

Then he tells me that a nurse will be coming by to give me 2 shots, 1 for pain, and 1 for nausea, because they are going to have to wrap my foot up tightly, that it's going to hurt really bad, and then I can go home.

An hour later, now 5:30am, a nurse came in, gave me a shot of something for pain in my right shoulder, it hit me pretty fast, but it did not stop the pain at all, it just hit my head fast, that immediate morphine swoosh of heat to your face, warmth in the arm they put it in, then the warmth traveling down the arm, across the chest, and down my legs.
I had the warmth, but none of the pain relief.
The nurse tells me I need to roll onto my left side so she can give me the nausea shot in my ass.
I could barely roll over, I tried telling her it takes me longer than most people beca..
"Oh, I know, you're in pain, it takes time to move when in pain."
No, it takes me longer to roll over because I have been fused from C1 to S1, can't move my head or neck, have to have another spine fusion that is so far scheduled for April 10th, but if this is broken, it will have to be postponed.
"Oh", she says, "Wow, car accident?"
No, scoliosis, then my vertebrae caved in on my spinal cord, now C7 needs to be taken out in order for me to be able to have my head raised up.
"Wow."

So she gave me the shot in my ass, I rolled over, and she positioned my leg up on some blankets so she could wrap my ankle.
OMG, it hurt so freaking bad!
Mark had stuffed my little tiger in my purse when the medics were first at my house, he calls it my hospital tiger, it's for me to hold onto when I'm in pain and I need to have somebody who loves me with me and they can't be.
Too freaking sweet. *tears*

When she was almost done wrapping my ankle, she said, "Ok, this is really going to hurt", and then she put her hand on the bottom of my foot and pushed it straight up to be flat, like if I was standing on the floor normally, and then she finished wrapping it up really tightly.
That hurt so bad I let out a little scream, clutched onto my tiger harder, and begged her to hurry.
She finished, gave me my release papers, and got the wheelchair for me to ride out to the main lobby so I could call a cab and come home.

I took an ambulance there, and had to cab it back, because A) it was so freaking late at night, and B) I had no one to come and give me a ride.
I would have never called anyone at that hour of night to come and get me, wait with me at the ER, and then bring me back home.
No way.

I came home, Mark was now gone to bed and Sebastian was up.
I then sent him back to bed, told him neither of them were going to school today because of what happened, Mark had been up with me all the night before I left, and while I was gone, and then they swapped places when I called at 6:10am to say I was coming home.
I waited until 7:30am to call the school and explain why the teens wouldn't be there today, and they said ok, just send my paperwork from the hospital in with Sebastian on Monday as proof of medical emergency, Mark doesn't need a note because he's done with school.
Oh, and he wasn't in any trouble for missing today, Friday, one of the days he has to be at school for his graduation test results.
They said it was ok, so cool.

I waited until 8:30am to call my primary care, and I told the nurse what happened, she said they had already gotten the fax from the ER, the doc had seen it, I was to treat it as a sprain, but if on Monday morning it still hurts as bad, still hurts to the touch, can't put any weight on it at all, to call her back and she'll send me in for an MRI to check for the fracture.

Then, after having been awake since Tuesday morning with only a 2.5 hour nap in my chair that I got on Thursday morning, I hobbled over to the couch with my cane, laid down, and didn't wake up until 1:40pm.

Oh, they didn't give me anything else for pain management because I am already taking such high doses of pain medicine.
That's fine with me, I can't imagine what they would have even tried to put me on, I'm on some heavy stuff already.
I just wish it would work for this, but it's not.
I've taken an extra one with each regular dose today to try and kill or at least numb the pain in my ankle, and it's not working.
I really believe it is fractured, it shouldn't hurt this bad, I mean come on!
I am taking 40MG OXYCONTIN for crying out loud!
I am totally stoned out of my mind right now, have ZERO back pain because of the extra dosing, but my ankle is fucking throbbing and is hurting so much I want to hack it off.

This post may be a TMI (Too Much Information) kind of post.
It involves bodily functions and girly issues.
You have been warned!
Ha!

Not the town, but maybe me.
Kidding!
But I think it is time for the good old stool softener/colon cleanser again.
About once every 2 weeks, I need to take a stool softener because of all of the pain meds I take every day.
I take 6 Hydrocodone 10/325 per day, and 4 Oxycontin 40MG per day, and all opiate pain relievers are known to cause constipation, so having to take something to get things moving along again.

Another thing I have been noticing about how the pain pills affect the body, well, a woman's body at least, is how they affect menstrual cycles.
For quite a few years when I first had to start taking heavy duty pain meds and quit working, my periods were all over the place.
I went for an entire year without one, then would have one, then nothing again for 7 months, then like a half of one, and then nothing for 6 months and so on.
My doctors were convinced that I was pre-menopausal, and that within a few years, I'd be full blown, and they'd stop all together.
Then after the first surgery, well actually, right before the first surgery, I got a period, then another while in the hospital for 18 days.
After surgery, I had regular cycles again for 1 full year, then they sorta stopped again, but then they finally evened out, and I've been having regular cycles again since the end of 2006, beginning of 2007.

But the pain meds do affect them though, they effect how heavy the flow is for the first few days.
I'm like, gushing like a slaughtered pig for the first 3-4 days of every cycle, every single month now, and then it trickles down to nothing for 2 more days, then ends for the month.
But that gushing, holy cow, I'm going through both a tampon and pad every 4 hours during those first few days.
It really sucks.

I was so sick yesterday and last night, most of this morning, and I'm just finally starting to feel better.
I don't know what it was, but man, my stomach was just wrecked, I was throwing up, cramping up, in tons of pain, and my feet that were swollen and had gone down, had started to swell again.
I managed to pull myself together to go to my new pain doctor appointment, and went for my 3:15.

It's a very strict office I'll tell ya.
They make you pay your co-pay or self pay before they see you, and there was this one guy who was $10 short of his $350.00 fee, and they turned him away, told him he had to reschedule it, they don't mess around man.
I had enough to pay my co-pay and for my scripts, but I was 2 days too early for my insurance to fill them, so I have to go back to the pharmacy tomorrow morning and pick them up before I go to my surgeon appointment at 2pm.

But anyway, the new doc is very strict but also very nice.
He took a look at my records, my CT scans from the 19th, and my blood test results, and we started there.
He said, "So you had spine fusion in 2006 from T3 to S1, wow, that's really big."
I said, "Yeah, but I just had another one, I'm now fused from C1 to S1, the whole spine."
He said, "Wow, you are the biggest spine fusion I have ever personally seen. Did you say that you're having another surgery?"
I said, "Yeah, I see my surgeon on Wednesday, and hopefully he'll have a date and a plan for what and when we're going to do. C1 and C2 collapsed after the surgery in September, my head is stuck down, I don't have much movement at all in my neck, muscle spasms in my back and legs, sometimes the spasms are so severe that if I'm sitting at my desk with my feet up and my keyboard on my lap, the spasms actually throw my keyboard clear off my lap and knock over my foot stool. But C1 and C2 were congenitally fused from birth, there's no disc space there at all, so I have no idea how he's going to fix me."
He said, "Yeah, I'm looking at your CT scan and I honestly don't know how he's going to do it, I'm not a surgeon, so I really don't know, but I can now understand why Doc R. sent you to me. You are much more complicated than the patients he usually deals with. He's a rehab pain manager, he helps people get better and get off medication, and honestly, I know you probably don't want to hear this, but I don't see you coming off of medication for another 5-8 years, maybe the rest of your life based on what I'm reading in your records. You not only have had major spine fusion and another one going to happen soon, but you have arthritis, stenosis, nerve impingement, and a lot of disc damage. It could be years before anyone even thinks of taking you off of medication, or never at all. I'm sorry."
I said, "That's ok, I already knew I was bad off."

So he wrote out my scripts, added a muscle relaxer, which I hate taking because they make me sleep for anywhere from 6-8 hours, so taking those 4 times per day, I'd be sleeping all of the time, and he added Lyrica , which is for neuropathic pain.
I didn't get to pick that one up because it needed like pre-authorization or something, and I may not pick it up at all because as of right now, the Walgreen's website says it's $82.46 for just 30 pills.
That's crazy!
I refuse to pay that much for a medication that I have no idea if it will even work for me yet.
Maybe it hasn't been processed through my Humana insurance yet, but if it has and that's how much it costs, I may not pick it up at all, or I may wait until I get my tax refund back on Thursday.
I don't know yet, have to wait and see, but as of right now, it's still not ready for me to pick up anyway.
Apparently, they still don't have the authorization for it.

So tomorrow morning, I'll go pick up my pain meds, come home, and then get ready for the long ride to Safety Harbor to see the surgeon with my sister.
I'm giving Mindy the day off...LoL
Mindy does so much for me already, and she's been working hard at her cleaning business, taking care of her family, and other things, she's exhausted, so Wednesday is her only scheduled day off, so now it's really a day off for her.
I personally think she needs a nice long vacation somewhere really nice, like maybe go out to California all by herself, stay at a nice San Diego hotel, go see a few sites, and get some much needed rest.
She works way too hard and needs a good, long break.

I've made some really decent new friends over the last few weeks.
It happened sorta by accident, I met Dustin and his girlfriend Stacey through another friend, and they have just been really awesome.
They are like totally blown away by the amount of titanium I have, Dustin calls it the 'chainsaw back' because when you look at a front view of the xrays, it looks like a chainsaw blade.
But anyway, they are both just really sweet, Dustin helped me get to my doc appointment yesterday and to the pharmacy, and today, they both just stopped by to see how I was doing.
Stacey said that after my next surgery, she'll come by anytime I need help, help clean the house, help me take showers, shave my legs, brush my hair, stuff like that, because with the halo brace on, it's going to be very difficult to do things by myself.
I had been telling Dustin yesterday while sitting in the waiting room at the docs, about how awesome my teens are and have been after my surgeries, they helped me in and out of bed, in and out of the bathroom, they have even shaved my legs, brushed my hair, they do all of the grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and so he told Stacey, and she was like well hell, this single mama needs help sometimes so let's help her.
I thought that was really sweet of them to even offer, and who knows, I may take them up on it sometimes if I'm having a wicked rough time after surgery.

Oh, Sebastian just went out and got the mail, and in today's mail was my settlement check from the Airborne class action lawsuit.
I got a check for $34.95.
Nice!

I woke up feeling like absolute crap this morning, I'm just having a rough time of things the last few days.
My feet have been swollen, I've been dead tired for days, and this morning I woke up with my stomach doing back flips.
I have my new pain doc appointment this afternoon, so I am hoping I can keep it together until after I go see him.
I don't want to get sick again, so I have not eaten anything at all, not even my usual yogurt.
No more puke please. hahaha

I had some blood work done today for the new pain doc to have on Monday.
I am well prepared for him to freak out over the high white cell count, they all do.
I've had almost every test known to man to try and figure out what's wrong, and there is no infection anywhere, and no, I do not have any form of cancer either.
It's just really high and no one has an explanation, and no, I will not be going through any more painful tests to try and figure it out.

When I got home, I realized that my feet were incredibly swollen.



















So swollen, that I still have marks from my sandals in my skin.
So I've taken my blood pressure meds (water pills), and have my feet propped up on my office furniture stool, in the hopes that the swelling will go down.
It's actually been a bit painful trying to walk with them as puffy as they are.

I'm tired too.
That's a first in about 8 days now.
I think I might actually try and go to bed.

Most of my readers know by now that I receive social security disability and Medicare because of my spine and health issues, so I post about it every now and then.
I'm usually talking about the Medicare portion of it, the medical insurance and part D drug coverage.
Most of my meds are covered by Humana, the part D provider I chose, but some aren't, that's just the way it is with all insurances though.

My long time readers know how hard it was for me to even get my SSDI, I applied in April 2001, and it wasn't granted until December 23rd 2005.
I was denied twice.
When I first applied I didn't have any help, and so when I was denied, I didn't know where to go or who to get help from.
I ended up getting a lawyer to help me, but there are other places you can get help for applying and going through the process.
 
Allsup is one of those places.
They have a 97% success rate helping people from starting the application process all the way through until it's approved.
They've been in business since 1984, and they have helped over 110,000 people get the SSDI benefits and Medicare they deserve.
Having representation is so very important when you have to go through this process, you have no idea what you're doing, there's a million complicated forms, they make you go to their doctors, you have to get letters from all of your doctors, it's just so long and complicated, you really need the help.
If I had had help from the start, I probably wouldn't have been denied that first time, and if I had the right help, I probably wouldn't have been denied the second time.
If you're worried about how much having representation will cost you, don't.
The fees cannot exceed 25% of your total retroactive award benefit amount, or the cap which is $5,300.
This fee is set by SSDI, and no organization or lawyer can go above it, so you're not going to get ripped off by getting help.

I know a few people who are currently going through this process right now and struggling with all of the paperwork, and 1 of them has been denied.
I told her she needed to get help, and now that I know about Allsup, I'll be calling her as soon as I'm done with this post and telling her about them.
Every time she and I talk, she's always asking me for help with it, and just because I've been through it, it doesn't make me an expert, far from it.
I'm currently attempting to read and understand a letter they sent me a few days ago.
More mumbo jumbo legalese that I just don't understand.
All I could figure out so far is that my disability is ongoing and they will revisit my case in 2012.
That's all I can figure out from 10 pages of information.
It's very stressful dealing with all of this, so definitely get help with it if you're going to be applying or are in process right now.
You're going to need it.

The new med, the 40MG Oxycontin, is much stronger than the 30's, much stronger.
I had a very rough night with it, I was physically sick from it, puked like 4 times, couldn't eat, was wicked dizzy.
I spent almost the whole night just laying on the couch.
I think the problem with it is because I hadn't gotten any sleep in days, I was exhausted, I hadn't eaten much at all, so it hit me super, super hard.
I am adjusting much better to it today that's for sure.
I slept all night, didn't wake up till almost noon, ate a big breakfast, and so I am handling it much better today than I did last night.

I told you on Thursday about how things went with my pain doc appointment, and that he gave me a new med, and that Walgreen's said my insurance didn't cover it, so I was only able to pick up one of the meds.
Walgreen's had a new girl working behind the counter with the pharmacist, the new girl is the one who told me that my insurance, Humana, didn't cover it.
The cost out of pocket was going to be $295.00, that's basically the price of a night's stay of some luxury hotel rooms.
Way too much.
A friend of mine called me on Friday around noon to see how I was doing, I explained how things had gone, and he said, "Kat, you cannot be without that med, you'll go through the hydros faster, you'll be in pain, I'll come pick you up after work and we'll go pick it up, you can pay me back later."
So I called all of the pharmacies that I have gone to to get price quotes, some of them sell the meds for a little less, we found that Publix pharmacy had them for $283.95, about $11.00 cheaper than Walgreen's, so we went there.
He had given me the money, I sat and waited, the lady called my name, and said that will be $240.
I was like oh wow, cool, that's less than the price quoted on the phone.
So I counted out $240.00, and handed it to her, she said "No, $2.40, 2 dollars and 40cents."
I was confused and asked, and she asked me if I was Kat Cooper at my address and phone number, did I have Humana, I said yes, she told me that my insurance covered it.
I asked her to double check it because I had been told that my insurance didn't cover it.
She checked again, it did, I paid the $2.40, and we left.
I gave my friend all of his money back, and we came home.

I called Walgreen's and complained.
I told the lady who answered the phone what had happened Thursday around noon, told her to look it up, she did, I asked why I was told my insurance didn't cover it when it did.
I had to borrow money, go all the way across town to a different pharmacy where I was prepared to pay a whole lot of money for it and it ended up being that my insurance did cover it, that it wasn't right to make me go all the way across town to do that, I'm disabled, I choose that Walgreen's because it's close enough to my home to walk home if I need to.
I asked her what went wrong, did the girl enter my name wrong, did she enter the medication wrong, enter my insurance number wrong, what happened, because it was covered.
She said she didn't know, but while we were on the phone, she entered all my info and the drug, and yup, it was covered, she apologized several times, said she didn't want to lose my business, she would make sure to pass the information on to the pharmacy manager so that the new girl can be trained better or whatever they have to do because that wasn't right at all.
$295.00 is a big mistake, my insurance costs me $20.00 per month, my co-pays for meds range between $2.40-$5.80 depending on the medication, and this one was only $2.40.
That was a big mistake, it almost cost me owing somebody a lot of money, it made me have to go all the way across town, all because somebody made a big mistake.

In today's mail, I got a packet from the new pain doc I'll be seeing on the 23rd.
Yup, he's very, very strict with his patients.
I read through it briefly, he does random drug testing of his patients for any substances that are illegal, any of the prescribed medicines are showing up in the urine in higher quantities, and it does say something about drug safes or other secure locations for the medicines.
There are 6 forms in the packet that must be signed, all of them are contracts with him and his patients.
That's fine with me.
I don't take anything I'm not supposed to, but I do take some vitamins and supplements, and I will write those down for him so he knows what I take when he does the urine tests.
Heck, I may even just bag everything up that I take, and take it in so he can see everything I take.
I don't want to upset this guy, because if you screw up with him, you are kicked out of his office, he reports you to every other pain doc in town, as well as put your name on the pharmacy watch lists as a drug abuser.
So yeah, I'll take everything I do take in, let him see it all, and follow his rules to the letter.
What all do I take?
Ok, here's everything I take every single day:
Hydrocodone 10/325 x 6 per day
Oxycontin 40MG x 4 per day
Toprol XL 25MG x 1/2 per day (heart/blood pressure med)
Cal/Mag/Zinc x 4 per day (for bone growth)
BioQuench antioxidant x 1 per day (cuz my immune system sucks)
Publix brand multivitamin w/iron x 1 per day (cuz my immune system sucks)
Publix brand Tylenol for headaches as needed (cuz pan meds don't work on headaches, surprisingly)
Publix brand stool softener as needed (opiate pan relievers block you up)
Walgreen's Wal-som sleep-aid x 1 (as needed to try and sleep)

This may be long, sorry.

I went to my pain doc appointment this morning, and let me tell you, it was just a messy day.
My pain doc does sports pain, rehab kind of stuff, general pain management, helps people wean off of pain drugs.
That was my original intent when I started seeing him in 2007, to get off of the drugs.
I had my 1st surgery, expected it to be my only surgery, so our goal was to start weaning me off of them, and we were.
I had gone from taking over 300 Hydrocodone 10/325's per month, down to just 60, and we were well on our way to being off of them completely.
Since then, I've had another surgery, (September '08) and will be having another.
The pain medications I am on are very strong, I am not going to lie to anyone about what I take.
I take Hydrocodone 10/325 8 times per day.
I take Oxycontin 30mg 6 times per day.
That was until today.
See, the pharmaceutical companies that make the Oxycontin 30's, there were 3 of them, 2 of them were told to stop making them for some reason, so that leaves 1 manufacturer to create enough supply for the entire country.
They cannot keep up with the demand.
So the Oxycontin 30's are out of the question, they cannot be gotten by any of the local pharmacies, so my pain doc prescribed me a new dose, 40mg Oxycontin, timed release, for 4 times per day.
When I went to the pharmacy to get them and the Hydrocodone 10/325's quantity 180 per month,  I was told my insurance does not cover them, they cost $295.00 out of pocket, I simply don't have the money, so I only picked up the Hydrocodone 10/325s.

Also, my pain doc does sports injuries, rehab, he works mainly on smaller injuries and helping people get better so they can stop taking medication.
Because of my surgical history, because I'll be having another surgery, he decided that he cannot continue seeing me, and he referred me to another pain doc who works with people like me, surgical patients with a history and a future history of needing more pain management than he is capable of providing.
I came home and called the new doc, made an appointment, I see him on Monday the 23rd at 3:15pm, and hopefully he can help me.

There's another reason my pain doc has decided to transfer me to another doctor.
Last month here in Sarasota, a 17 year old boy broke into a house and stole the pain medication of a man dying of cancer.
He stole several bottles of heavy duty narcotics including Oxycontn 30's.
He went home and overdosed on the pills he stole.
Please remember that part, he broke into a home, stole the medication, and overdosed on it.

His parents found his body and the pill bottles.
In their grief and anger, they decided that somebody must pay for this, so they have hired a lawyer who must have found some loophole, and they are suing the doctor who prescribed the medication.

Did you get that?!
The parents are suing a doctor who prescribed medication to his patient, the patient had his home broken into by the 17 year old, the 17 year old overdosed, and so the parents are suing the doctor for negligent homicide.

I don't understand how the parents, even the lawyer, can think this is the right thing to do.
The doctor didn't prescribe them to the 17 year old and then the kid died, the doctor prescribed them to his pateint who was dying of cancer, the 17 year old BROKE IN, STOLE the medicine, and died, and so how is it even remotely negligent homicide on the doctor's part?!?!
I don't understand why the judge hasn't throw out this lawsuit either, it's not right.
How is the doctor even remotely responsible for this kid dying?
The kid broke into a home, stole the medicine, took a lot of it and died.
It's not the doctor's fault at all, it's the kid's fault.
He was a dumb ass kid who stole medicine and took too much and died.
How the parents can blame the doctor is beyond me.
They need to bury their son and shut the fuck up in my opinion.
Their son was a thief and a drug addict, the doctor had nothing at all to do with what their kid did, and for them to sue the doc is just stupid.
Their kid was stupid and so are the parents.

But thanks to them, doctors are scared to prescribe the medication, they are afraid that if someone breaks in and steals it, that they will get sued as well.
So I'm being sent to a new pain doc with more legal stuff than he has, more doctor/patient contracts than he has, he may even use medicine safes that can only be opened on a timer by the patient, and if opened at the wrong time, and alarm sounds at his (the doctors) office, and the doctor calls the patient to check on why they are opening it at the wrong time.
I don't know for sure, but that may be what I am in for at this new doctor.
In the mean time, I only have one of my medications because my insurance doesn't cover the other one, I can't afford to pick it up, my tax refund still isn't in, so I may end up having to wait until I get that money to pick it up, or wait until the 23rd when I see this new doctor, and he will have to prescribe me something that my insurance does cover.
I haven't been feeling all that well between the fall and just generally sick, so my pay that I just got a few minutes ago by paypal, isn't even close to being enough to pick it up either.
Nothing I can do but wait it out, hope the one med will be enough to get me through until I either get the money or get a new script.

It started getting cold here again, while other people up north are getting snow, we're getting the cold that usually accompanies it.
I could barely move, heck, I can still barely move.
I really hate the cold weather, this is Florida dammit, it's not supposed to be or get cold here.
I had to go out a few times to get some stuff, and I only have sandals that I can wear, I still have a ton of trouble putting on any shoes, sneakers, my combat boots, so all I can wear are my sandals.
It was so cold, I was wishing I had a pair of those fluff or is it wool(?) lined UGG boots.
They aren't that pretty looking, but my feet were freezing, and I was so wishing I had a pair of winter boots that I could wear.
Those Uggs just slide on from what I hear, so they wouldn't be as hard for me to put on.
My feet are still are freezing and I have the space heater on.
No socks, I can't put those on either, so I have ths space heater aimed right at my feet and they are still so cold.

I was so miserable the last few days, my joints and muscles are all stiff and sore, and I've been in so so much pain, that I dug around in my drawer and looked in my little lock-box where I found a bottle of Somas that the pain doc prescribed to me months ago, but I hate taking them because they make me sleep and feel all yucky, but I was hurting so bad and couldn't move, so I took one and promptly passed out for 4 hours today.
When I woke up, I couldn't even think straight for like 4 hours after, I felt completely out of it, I felt strung out, and I absolutely hate that. 

I also found out today that the medicine that my pain doc prescribes me every month is no longer available.
I have my Walgreen's account set up to notify me of changes with any of the medicines that I take, price increases, when generics become available, and discontinuations.
Today, I received an alert that the pain medicine Roxicodone 30mg, is going to become far more difficult to fill by any pharmacies in the entire US.
There were only 3 manufacturers in the US, and 2 of them got shut down about 2 months ago, and the third is having extreme difficulties keeping up with the demand from doctors and pharmacies, because the compounds to make them are becoming scarce.
No explanation was given for the 2 manufacturers having to shut down, but what this means is, that the pain doc and I are going to have to find me a medication that works exactly like those did.
After getting the notice, I called my Walgreen's that I usually pick them up at, and CVS, Bee Ridge Pharmacy, and about 20 of the Publix pharmacies between North Bradenton and Venice, and just for the hell of it, asked them all if they had any leftovers in stock or if they'd be getting any more shipments of them by the 12th.
Every single pharmacy said no, they were out, not getting any more shipments, and quite a few of them explained about the manufacturers shutting down and the only one left having trouble keeping up with demand.
A few of the pharmacies even told me to tell my doc to stop writing scripts for them because there is no way any pharmacy in the whole state is going to have any left in stock at all, and if they have some right now, they probably won't by the end of the week.

That really sucks, it's the only pain med out of about 30 that we tried, that actually worked really well and didn't mess with my head at all.
I hate the pain meds that screw up my head and my thinking, I hate that strung out feeling a wicked lot, hate it with a passion, and now we're going to have to try and find another med that works really well.
Maybe he can just prescribe me the lower doses, the 15mg or the 20mg, those are still being made, and he can just have me take more of them to equal the dose that I was taking, the 30mg.
If he prescribes me the 15's, I can just take 2 of those at a time and get the same effect.
I hope that we can do that instead of having to try an all new medicine, I think I've tried almost all of them, and almost all of them just screwed with my head so bad I couldn't function, I felt paranoid, my skin crawled, no one could touch me, I couldn't put my legs together while sleeping because it made my skin feel all itchy and crawly.
I really, really hope that that's what we can do.  

Once again, I am all backed up from both of the narcotic pain relievers I take up to 10 times per day.
It's now been 14 days since I've had any movement of the bowels.
This is an awful thing to go through, those of you who have ever been constipated know exactly what I mean.
You're all backed up, you feel bloated, full, you have to go, you always feel like you have to go, but you can't no matter how hard you try.
And the harder you try, the more it hurts.
The longer it goes on, the worse you feel.
It's all just sitting right there, you can feel it sitting there, you push and you push, and nothing comes out, it's like so solid, it feels like there's rocks sitting in your anus, and if you try to push them out, it hurts, you may end up with hemorrhoids from pushing so hard, you may even bleed a little.
It becomes so backed up and full in there, that even sitting on a chair causes your butt to hurt.
It sucks to be completely honest.

I was telling my son Mark about this last night at bedtime, he asked why I kept going into the bathroom so much, was it because of my blood pressure meds which make me pee like a race horse on lasix, I told him no, explained about the backed up plumbing, and he laughed, he thought it was absolutely hysterical that I can't poop.
I said you just wait buddy, someday when you're older, your poop isn't going to come out either, and when it happens and you call up your mommy to find out what to do, I'm going to laugh hysterically for a really long time before I tell you how to treat it.
That made him laugh even harder, that I would wish constipation on him.
Boys always think that poop is a funny subject even if it's painful.

Well today was the final straw, I couldn't take another day of being all backed up with hard as rock poop, so when the teens came home from school, Sebastian and I walked to Publix where I picked up some stool softeners and some more food stuffs, and then we walked back home, I put the groceries away, and popped 3 of those little poop softening gel caps in my mouth, and washed them down with a huge slurp from the straw in my Diet Pepsi.
It says take 1-3 gel caps per day, and within 12-72 hours, the poop will be soft enough to move on out.
I'm evicting it, it has 3 days to get out, or I will take even more of them and force it out by whatever means necessary, and if that means an enema, then so be it.
I really don't want to have to do an enema, I'm really not a fan of those, but one must do what one must do to get relief from the stone poops.

I was so busy being stressed out about things, that I forgot to update how it went at the pain docs yesterday Friday. (lost track of time too, obviously)

First, his dog, Holly, is ok.
One of her back legs is badly broken, she had to have an operation, has pins and screws in her leg, a couple of broken ribs, and something else, but she's fine.

The nurse took me in the room, asked me to tell her what was up, so I told her everything that happened during surgery and after, and she wrote it all down, told me the doc would be in in a few minutes.
The doc came in, started reading, and then asked me again what happened, so i explained it all to him.
I told him that I had to have another surgery, and showed him that my head doesn't move, about the possible surgery options that my surgeon has, and everything else.

We talked about it all for a bit, he said that if I do end up with a trach tube, that we will work out a way for me to be in contact with his office without having to speak cuz I won't be able to.
He said he'd probably give me his cell number or one of the nurse's cell numbers, and that way I could just text them when I need to make appointments, or if I'm having any severe pain or other troubles.
He wrote out the scripts for the meds I take and actually gave me more than my surgeon was giving me, so that we don't run into any more running out issues.
My surgeon was only giving me my meds by the week, that's all he's allowed to do by law, but the pain doc can do them monthly and even 3 months at a time if need be, but he's got me scheduled to come back in 1 month several days before I am due to run out.

So yeah, all better now, things with my doc are going to work out, he's going to help me as much as he can, he'll help me with the trach tube and not being able to speak, the feeding tube if I need help with it because my surgeon is far away, and my pain doc is local and could get to my house in like 5 minutes if anything bad should happen.

Things are going to be ok.

I went for my daily walk just a bit ago, all the way up to the corner store and back, I needed to get a loaf of bread anyway, and I was craving chocolate, so I grabbed a snickers too.
Yum.

When I got back, I checked the mail box, which amazingly, has not been hit by a car again in a good long while, (knock on wood) and in today's mail, I got our new Netflix movies, Hancock and Repo! The Genetic Opera.
The teens want to see Hancock, and I want to see Repo!
It looks sorta interesting and it's got good reviews on Netflix.
I also got my dvd that I ordered with my Buy.com gift certificate from a shopping mix-up, the Poltergeist (25th Anniversary Edition).
I have always loved that movie, it's been digitally remastered, and it's just a classic, plus, I had to spend the rest of the gc, it was only $6.00, so I said why not.

Then I saw it.
A jury duty summons.
I can't serve jury duty.
A) I can't get all the way to Venice every day, no car, no driver's license, and B) medically, I'm just in no shape to do it.
I take heavy duty pain meds 24/7, I have doctor's appointments up the wazoo all of the time, and I cannot sit in the same spot for hours on end every day.
I am constantly having to get up, walk around, lay down etc, so yeah, I cannot serve jury duty.
I'm all about doing my civic duty and all of that, but I can't do jury duty, not right now, it's physically impossible for me to get there and sit there all of the hours that would be needed.

Who needs diet pills that work when you have pain pills that do work, but also shred your stomach so bad, that no matter what you eat, it's guaranteed to come back out within 20 minutes?

My surgeon prescribed me some really strong percosets, and they do work for the pain, but oh man, they just shred my stomach something fierce.
I end up with wicked bad cramping, nausea, vomiting, and the poops.
My stomach simply cannot handle those meds any more.
After 10+ years of taking really strong pain killers with acetaminophen added in high doses, my stomach is just trashed.
I've spent the entire week without back pain, but with horrible stomach issues.
I know that my pain doc will give me the other strong meds that don't contain any acetaminophen at all, so I won't have this sickness that I've been dealing with all week long now.
2:45pm tomorrow cannot get here fast enough.

I didn't sleep at all last night, didn't take a "nap" today until about 10:30am or so, woke up around 1:20pm, and then spent the rest of the day trying to stay warm.
So much for global warming eh?
This is Florida and the weather here is so cold it cuts to the bone.
I know it's not like other states where winter means snow and below zero temps, I know what that is like, but winter here is a different kind of cold, it bites you.
When the teens and I went Maine to visit my folks in February, it was negative 5 with a wind chill of negative 10-15 every single day, but it didn't affect me like this is, this is really a different kind of cold.

I've had to run the small electric space heater all day, kept it on low, it kept the living room sorta warm at least.
Tonight, I'll move it into the dining room, make everyone leave their bedroom doors open, and I'll set it to medium and it should help keep the house mostly warm all night.
It's supposed to be another freeze night tonight, so yeah, gotta use the space heater.

I am one of those people that loves to look at all of the things that I wish I had the money to buy, adds them to my wishlist, and then when I have the money, I make the decision among the 3-4 things I placed on my list.
But every time an online retailer says they are having a sale or they are Buy.com and always have weekly deals, I am so there checking them out.

Now that the digital converter box is is attached to the outside of the house, and all installed correctly inside, my tv is working and looking beautiful, I no longer really need to look at a new digital tv, so now I get to do some wishful shopping at other things I would like to have someday.

So now I'm looking at a laptop, this laptop to be exact, an Acer Aspire One A150.
I even like the color it comes in, the one pictured on the site, I don't know if it comes in other colors, but I like this sapphire blue one very much.
You can click the image to see it bigger, and also click the link to see other views of it.
















If I had a laptop, then on days when I'm not feeling well, having trouble moving around, sitting and stuff, I could lay in my bed and take advantage of our wireless router.

I could lay in my bed, be all toasty and warm under my comforter, have my kitties at my side, and get some work done.
My blogs have been totally neglected the last few days, and generally get neglected whenever the weather kicks me down, so having a laptop, I could work in bed.
I could post to my blogs, I could read everyone else blogs, I could stay on top of everything instead of laying in bed or on the couch feeling miserable and guilty because I'm letting people down.
I don't know if other people see me being absent as letting them down, it's just how I feel.
I have tremendous guilt when I'm not able to get my work done due to my health, or help people with things they need help with.

Anyway, I really like this laptop, and I love Acer computers anyway.
I now own 2 Acers, mine and the one I bought my sons, they are great computers, never have any issues with them, they are wicked easy to upgrade and just a wicked nice product at great prices.
Buy.com's normal price is $389.00, and right now they have it at $50.00 off, making it just $329.00.
That's a really great price, plus, as always, free shipping!
I love how they always have free shipping on almost every single item they sell, that's a huge bonus, especially in today's economy.
Paying shipping on large and/or expensive items, can be a deciding factor in whether or not people actually buy the product, so yeah, free shipping is a major bonus.

Here's just a few of it's features which make me want this Acer Aspire One A150 laptop even more;
It has a 160GB HDD, 8.9" WSVGA, 802.11b/g, Webcam, Multi-in-one card reader, and it has Microsoft XP Home which I absolutely love.
All of our computers have been Windows XP home, and it's by far the easiest version of Windows to work with.
Another feature that is awesome for me because I'm still on weight-lifting restrictions and will be for a very long time to come, (another surgery coming up soon) it only weighs 2.2lbs.
I'm still only allowed to lift things that weigh 5lbs or less, so yeah, a super lightweight laptop would be awesome for me!
All of the reviews of the Acer Aspire One A150 are really, really good too, everyone who has purchased it, according to the reviews, absolutely loves it, the only negative thing most reviews are saying is that it doesn't have a dvd drive, but all of them that said that, said they used a portable usb dvd drive, and that made it perfect to use in their opinions.

So now when I get my taxes back, I might just have to get this laptop.
Even though it probably won't be part of the weekly deals anymore, it's still an incredible buy at $389.00.
My sister just got a new Dell laptop with about the same exact features a few months ago, and it cost about 4 times as much as this one, and the features are almost duplicate except that hers does have a dvd drive.
So yeah, total no-brainer, I'm seriously thinking this will be part of my income tax refund shopping.
This and a new cell phone.

I finally got through to my doc.
Their number is correct, but Comcast cable *accidentally* disconnected them over the weekend, and it took until 1pm today for Comcast to fix the error.
He can't see me right away, but I will be seeing him on the 10th.

My surgeon called in 1 new med yesterday, and it's starting to help, not great, but it's starting to, so that's a good thing.
They also mailed me 1 that is stronger.
Certain pain meds cannot be called in because they are strong narcotics, so the scripts have to be mailed, they mailed it out on Monday, so it should be in tomorrow's mail.

We are in a cold spell and another 1 is on the way. There's another freeze warning for tonight, which sucks, but I'll just throw another blanket on top of my comforter and use the space heater if it gets too cold. 

I tried to call my pain doc this morning, I'm released back to him, I called his office, his phone number is disconnected.
WTF?!
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
I called information, they gave me the same number that is coming up as disconnected, they can't tell me anything else.

Holy crap!
What am I supposed to do now?!?

I've been dealing with back pain, chilly weather, cold spines, swollen ankles, hurting ankles etc, and today I go see my surgeon, so I'm hoping I'll have good news when I get back.

I've taken my shower, just need to put on my clean clothes and attempt to do something with my hair.
Just having a slightly freaked out day, pain, stress, argggh,

  We all went over to Mindy's house yesterday afternoon and evening, for her son's 18th birthday party and bbq with family, and it was a wicked great time, but I'm suffering today.
Jeff turned 18, made out like a bandit in the ol' cash department, the food was awesome, company awesome, but I totally stayed too long, sat awkwardly on furniture, and I'm paying for it.

With limited pain meds until Wednesday, I can't double up to knock it out, so I'm stiff and sore and suffering badly.
I'll manage, but ugh it sucks a fuckload.

It's a shame that diet pills like some of the leftover Lipovox or whatever it is I have sitting here, doesn't help with pain too.
The weather is seriously killing me here.
This is Florida, it's not supposed to be this cold, but it is, and I'm suffering badly.
I can barely move, every muscle is stiff, the rods are frozen, and argh, it's miserable.
I put in a call to my doc, I'm hoping that he calls me back tomorrow and does something to help me because this is just unbearable right now.
None of the pain meds I have are working, I'm tired, sore, and cranky.
Sorry if I've been cranky to any of you, I'm just miserable and can barely do anything at all, and I hate not being able to do things.

It's been cold here the last few days, an even bigger cold front is on the way, and man, do I feel it.
It's times like this that I wish that I had a pop up tv in my room so I could just lay there under my heavy and warm comforter, and watch tv or movies.
I don't even have a tv in my room, never mind a pop up tv, but it would be nice to have one with a dvd player or at least a vcr, so I could just lay there and watch till I fell asleep.
Every joint aches, every muscle is stiff, I just want it to stop but it's not going to until it warms up outside, and it won't be warm-er until maybe the weekend.
It kind of sucks.
I'm just so sick of being stiff and in pain because of the cold weather.
If I still lived back up north in Maine, they would have had to admit me to the hospital by now due to the never ending and excruciating pain that I'm in right now.
Blah.

I absolutely love music, I have it on and playing all day long even while the tv is on.
I use my headphones plugged into my speaker so I can hear it while I work online, and at night, I fall asleep listening to it on my mp3 player which is very similar to ipods.
I have a much cheaper mp3 player, but it works awesome, it's small, but has a large LCD, brightly lit display so that while I'm laying there in my pitch black room, I can read it and go through the music menu to get to a song I want to hear.

There are a lot of nights that I can't sleep at all, insomnia sets in, so I just lay there listening to music for hours and hours.
My body gets the rest it needs, and I get to be entertained and not so bored as the hours tick away and my my brain won't shut off.
I can't sit here all day long, I have to get up and move around, go lay down and stuff, or my body gets super stiff and sore.
I think that's why I love having an mp3 player so much. I don't have to have a big radio in my room and waking the teens up.
I can lay there and listen and not disturb anyone and still get the rest that I need. 

I cannot wait to go back to my pain doctor's office when I get the clearance from my surgeon.
Before I left for my surgery, he was telling me about how after the new year, he was going to be finished setting up an all new section at his office.
The new section is all about weight loss, dieting, diet supplements, exercise programs and routines, and that he was even working on a deal with the local YMCA to have his patients use the pool for both water therapy and as part of his new weight loss programs.

There's many reasons that people are in pain, and when you're in pain, you don't want to cause yourself more pain, so a very large majority of people with chronic pain stop exercising because it hurts, and they end up putting on a lot of weight.
That excess weight puts more stress and strain on your body, which causes you to be in even more pain.
So he's going to help his patients lose weight so they can reduce some of the pain they are in.

I'm really hoping that he's got some good stuff worked out, especially for patients like me who have skull to tailbone fusions.
Because we are fused so big, we can't exercise like normal people, our bodies don't move easily anymore, we can't bend to touch our toes, we can't bend to do sit-ups or crunches, side bends, none of that, so losing weight is extremely difficult.
I love my elliptical and can't wait to get back to using it, because it doesn't require me to bend or any of that, it's like walking, gentle stair climbing, so it's easier on my back and body.
I'm still on restriction from my surgery, but once I'm let go while waiting for the new surgery, or after the new surgery that's coming, I plan on getting right back on my elliptical.
I love that thing, I so want to work out on it now but I can't, and I know if I did, I'd end up hurting myself really bad.
Oh well, not much longer now I hope.

I feel like my belly is protruding, distended, puffed out because, well, this could very well be a TMI (too much information) post.
I'm constipated.
See, opiate pain relievers constipate you, there is no way around this other than to take some sort of stool softener.
I don't recommend taking a laxative if you have to take opiate pain relievers because laxatives work too well, and then you never get out of the bathroom, but you always forget to buy stool softeners until it's too late, until you're well on your way to full blown discomfort.
And every single time this happens, while I'm sitting there on the cold porcelain, I always, always, think of the movie Trainspotting, and the line the main character Mark "Rent-boy" Renton played by Ewan McGregor, narrates after he's decided to stop doing heroin and has had to settle for some morphine suppositories as his "last hit".

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: [narrating] Heroin makes you constipated. The heroin from my last hit was fading, and the suppositories had yet to melt.
[moans loudly, doubles over]
Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: I'm no longer constipated.

The scene that follows is truly hysterical as he has to run and find a bathroom, and finds the worst toilet in all of Scotland.
It's a foul and disgusting scene, but as I'm sitting there in my bathroom scolding myself for not buying some Senocot or something, I think of that scene and laugh.

I did a lot of stuff around the house today, and I mean a lot.
I dusted and cleaned off all of the tables and tv stands in the living room, vacuumed all of the rugs, put up all the Christmas decorations, and cleaned the bathroom.

I paced myself though so I didn't over-do things and hurt myself to the point where I would have to call it quits and not do any more of it though.
I did a chore, sat and rested, did another, sat and rested, until I got it all done.
I may still pay for it pain-wise tomorrow, but so far so good, not too bad of pain at all, just my lower back.

The boys helped me with the decorations, they love dong the house up, especially knowing that the girls are coming tomorrow to hang with us for awhile.
They love looking at all of 'auntie kat's' Christmas decorations, so I wanted to make sure everything was out and in it's place for them to enjoy.

And I just feel better.
My mood is like 1,000% better since learning that I will be having my surgery soon, it just really made all the difference in how I was feeling emotionally.
I still can't cook the big holiday meal, but I actually feel like celebrating Christmas now.

I went for a little walk just a bit ago, got out into the sunshine and nice weather, gotta get that vitamin D and all ya know.
Anyway, it's a total pain in the ass walking with the neck brace on and my head placed the way it is, my line of sight is downward, not straight ahead, so it's a rather difficult chore to just go for a walk.
And that's when I realized that it also hurts to walk like that.
The pain is right below my shoulders, like the bra strap line, and goes down the whole length of my spine to my tail bone.
I barely made it home without wincing and bending over from it all.
On December 10th, I go see my surgeon and I'll get to tell him about all of the various problems that I've been dealing with since the surgery.
The pain, the head placement issues, the inability to open my mouth and eat anything that isn't a liquid or flattened as thin as paper, that I can't even drink out of a cup, I have to use a straw every single time, the vomit/choking issues, etc etc.

What pisses me off and makes me greatful at the exact same time, is that this surgery saved my life, yet it has seriously reduced my quality of life.
My vertebrae were closing in on my spinal cord, crushing it, it was killing me slowly and eventually it would have closed off completely, stopping my breathing and my heart.
I know that they did the best they could in there, I know there were complications during the surgery, I know that I'm lucky to be alive and all of that, but I really hate how my life is right now.
It's a major struggle for me to do almost everything, and I hate it.
I tried to reach on top of my medicine cabinet to get my electric toothbrush, and I couldn't even look up to see it. When I went to put it back, it was a struggle to try and find the base to put it on without being able to see it.
I can't lift my damn head up, I can't see up to do things.
I can't lift anything over 5 pounds, I struggle to cook meals because I can't turn around to do stuff, can't bend over to get a pot or pan, can't get things out of the cupboard because I can't see what I am trying to reach.

I know, I'm lucky to be alive, I'm greatful, but I fucking hate this.
I want my surgeon to pick a date for the revision surgery and let's just do it, let's just get it over with.
I personally think that it's the rods causing me to not be able to raise my head up, I think they are too long, so when I try to raise my head up, the back of my head gets stopped by the rods.
I also think the top screws are bent the wrong way, if you look at the xray, you'll see the top screws bent upward, and the rods themselves are like right freaking there, so I can't raise my head up.
I want him to fix it, to cut the rods down shorter, remove those top screws, they won't be needed anyway if the rods are shorter, or just do whatever the hell he has to do to allow me to raise my damn head up.
I am so unhappy right now, I hate being unhappy, I hate feeling this way, but every single day I find some new thing that I could do that I can no longer do, and it bothers me so so much.
When standing up, I can't even look into the faces of my sons when they go to hug me, I can't see their faces!
I hate it all so much, everything I can't do, I hate that I'm sad all of the time, I hate that I'm so unhappy, and I hate that I can't even look into the faces of my sons.
I need him to decide what he's going to do and when we are going to do it.
If I have that info, I'll make it through however long until we actually do it, but not knowing when or what's going to be done is just making me more and more unhappy as each day passes.

It was so cold in the house last night, and I wasn't feeling well to begin with, but I didn't take a shower like I normally would have to help my body be able to rest.
It would have taken the hot water tank far too long to heat up the water.
I really wish we had a tankless water heater in this duplex.
It wouldn't have taken long to heat the water up, and I really could have used a long hot shower.
My joints were suffering something fierce last night, the pain meds weren't helping me at all either.
I just laid there tossing and turning, my hips, knees, and ankles were swollen and inflamed from the cold, and if I had been able to take a long hot shower, it would have reduced the inflammation so I could sleep.

I can't take any Advil or NSAIDS because they interfere with bone growth, and my fusion needs to be solid, so all I can take are the pain meds.
I even tried to use the heating pad, but it's not big enough to cover each joint at the same time.
So I grabbed the space heater and plugged it in in my room, and tried to heat up my room enough to help my body stop suffering so badly.
It helped a little bit, I managed to get about 10 minutes of sleep every hour, so I'm hoping that tonight I'll be able to sleep better.
I found a bunch of blankets, and they are in the washer now, so I'm just going to layer them on my bed and hope that all of the layers will help keep my body warm and not cause my joints to get inflamed.

I love movies, I love seeing them in the theater, but I can't stand sitting in the theater.
The seats, no matter how nice the theater is with their seats that recline back, the extra over stuffed cushions, and the cushioned arm rests, it doesn't matter, it is far too painful for me to sit in one of the seats for 2 hours.
So I wait and wait, I add them to my Netflix queue using the saved feature for whenever it gets released to DVD, and I continue to watch almost every new released DVD I can with Netflix.
I am home 24/7, so I watch movies and blog.
So here's my list of upcoming theater releases that I will be adding to my saved Netflix queue.

Star Trek  I like all the Star Trek movies and shows.
Friday the 13th  is a remake, but doesn't look too bad. Plus, it has the hottie Jared Padalecki in it. W00t!
Timecrimes  I can deal with subtitles if the story is good enough. This one looks interesting.
Seven Pounds  It looks interesting too.
The Lodger 
Transporter 3  I liked the first two.
The Alphabet Killer  Based on a true story. Looks decent.
Up  I LOVE Pixar movies! Yay!
Angels & Demons  I loved the book, and Tom Hanks is back portraying Robert Langdon again.
My Bloody Valentine in 3D I loved the original movie which came out in 1981. It was probably the very first slasher film I ever saw. I was 11 years old and my passion for horror movies began.
Let the Right One In  A foreign vampire movie where the vampire is a young girl. Coolness.
The Unborn Oooooh, this looks good!
Plague Town  Looks kinda scary. Yay!
My Name is Bruce  Haha! I LOVE Bruce Campbell. He's playing himself in a movie about himself.
The Uninvited   Another remake of Japanese horror movies. Looks pretty decent.
Twilight  I've never read the books, (OMG!) but I love vampire stuff, so yeah, I'd like to see it.
The Haunting In Connecticut  Ooooh, another scary based on a true story movie.
And finally, Sunshine Cleaning  A movie about cleaning up crime scenes like murders, suicides etc. This is the exact line of work my sister in law heather does and she loves it, plus it pays awesome.

Do you suffer from chronic pain and insomnia?
I'd really like to know just how many people are out there suffering day in and day out, like I do.

I have chronic pain from both of my spine surgeries, I take pain meds to help fight that off, and they work fairly well most of the time, but I can't sleep.
And the no sleeping things is 100 times worse if I don't take my pain meds.

I'd say I get roughly about 2-3 hours of sleep per night, and that's on a good night.
Most of the time I lay wide awake in my bed until the alarm goes off to wake the teens for school, or I am just sitting here at my computer all night waiting for the alarm to go off.
Then, I'm awake almost the entire day, sometimes I get tired enough around noon-ish to take a quick 1 hour nap, and that's it, that's all my body needs because once I wake from the nap, I feel completely refreshed again.

So what about you?
Do you suffer from both chronic pain and insomnia at the same time?
Please answer my poll to the right.
The poll has no end date, so anyone can answer whenever.

Thanks!

I was digging around in my phone's pictures, and I found this pic I took of myself in the hospital.
That's the first brace I had right after surgery.
It was so uncomfortable and painful to wear, even though I was laying in bed the whole time with a pain pump.
And it smelled funny.
Not funny good, but funny gross.
I actually got nauseous a few times when I caught a whiff of it.
The nurses would come in and give me a bath with this awesome smelling body wash, and my whole body would smell really nice, and then just like 5 minutes later, I'd catch a whiff of the brace, either the plastic parts of it or the padding parts, but something on that brace just really stunk badly.
So between how it smelled and how painful it was on my chest, they switched me to another type of brace.

You can see how swollen my face was too.
My left eye was swollen and black and blue underneath, my left cheek was swollen, my top lip was swollen, basically, my whole face and neck were swollen up.
I also had that bandage on the side of my head from the bolt holes where they bolted me to the table for the surgery.

Just thinking about having to go through that again makes me kind of ill. 

I have spent the last few days trying to recover from cleaning up all that water mess that the septic tank created.
I have been having some really severe muscle cramps and nerve spasms too which are quite worse that muscle spasms.
I had to go get my prescription at Walgreen's this afternoon, and while siting there waiting,  my body was literally shaking from the spams.
There were two people sitting waiting with me, and every time my body jerked, they kinda got freaked out.
I couldn't stop the spasms from happening.
If you get a nerve spasm in your leg, not only does your leg jerk, but it sends waves of spams through your whole body.
I was so embarrassed, but I knew there was nothing I could do, but I bet I sure did look totally pathetic.
If there had been something I could hide behind like some  bamboo shades  or a giant floppy hat and sunglasses, I would have.
It was absolutely embarrassing sitting there and having a nerve or muscle spasm in my arm or legs, and having people stare at me.
I had my neck brace on, my hair hadn't been brushed, and my whole body was doing the herky jerky.
I wonder what they thought was wrong with me.

We have a situation here at the house with the septic tank and the toilet.
We have some mild flooding issues, and we've been really lucky it hasn't gotten worse than it is.
The landlord will be here tomorrow to take care of it, but in the meantime, we've had to plunge the toilet and wipe up tons of water.

The teens have been awesome, they've really been helping take care of it all, but I did some of it too, and now I'm totally paying for it.
Pain doesn't really do what I'm feeling any justice at all.
I am going to be so fucking sore tomorrow.
Holy shit.
And we're still not done.
The water keeps leaking and I can't get the valve to shut off.
Dammit.

I spent the majority of the day laying on the couch covered up in a big huge blanket.
Why?
Because it was chilly here once again, and wow, my whole body hurt bad, the rods were super icy cold, I had no flexibility at all, I was walking around the house all stiff like Frankensteins first steps after coming to life.
Just totally stiff and sore.

Then when the teens came home, they did their chores and wanted to play xbox and WoW, but something was wrong with our KVM switch, so I had to get up from my comfy and warm couch and fix it.
Luckily it's a really easy fix or else it wouldn't have been getting done today.

As you probably guessed by now, I didn't get to go see Obama speak today.
Reasons being #1, I was way too sore to go stand out there for a few hours, and #2, my sister couldn't get out of work.
The boy she takes care of was admitted to the hospital again, he's not doing well at all, another infection.
I feel so badly for him and his parents, his whole family.
Greg as been in and out of the hospital since the beginning of August.

What song is that from?
Anyway, I do think it's going to rain either tonight or tomorrow at some point.
The pain has been almost unbearable today, and it usually gets like this when there's a storm on the way.

Speaking of storms, I was laying down under a blanket trying to get my joints all warmed up and watching daytime tv shows.
I was watching the soap All My Children, and they all just nailed with a huge tornado that wiped out like half the town.
Like everybody is dead or dying.
I bet my parents are watching this.
They've been watching this show for years and years.

The nurse was here this morning, a different nurse than the ones who have been here before, and she didn't like the way that we've been changing out bandages.
She wanted to do it a different way, so she had me lay on the end of my bed, face down.
This was not good.
Within minutes, it felt like my throat was being squished, my vocal cords felt tight and compressed, and I literally couldn't breathe.
I had to roll over and she was like "what are you doing?!"
I told her that I've not laid on my stomach before, I don't sleep that way, and I've never laid on my stomach to have the bandages changed, and I couldn't breathe, it was hurting me quite badly.
She was "oh, I'm sorry."
I told her to note that in my chart, no face-down bandage changes ever again.
I was actually kind of scared at how quickly I couldn't breathe, at how much it hurt.
She finished up with me on my side, and she left.
She didn't know anything about why she was changing my bandages, like she didn't read my chart.
It says why they are doing this in my chart, I shouldn't have to explain the whole 2006 spine fusion and the new fusion to the nurses when they get here, they should read my chart, know what's going on, and be prepared for what my back looks like before they get started.

After she left, Mark woke up and headed into the bathroom.
I was in the kitchen when he walked past me, and I had to do a double take.
He had his whole face covered in stuff, like one of my face masks.
I asked him what that was for, and he told me he's started putting on a face mask at night because it helps to clear up his acne .
I was like, oookaaay, and I giggled a wee little bit, and he told me not to laugh, he said it really works, his face always looks really good in the morning when he does it.
Old zits are dried up, and no new zits have formed over night.

Hey, whatever works right?

The brace company, Hanger Prosthetic and Orthotics, called me a little bit ago.
The girl on the phone said they received the order from my surgeon and have been trying to figure out what type of brace will fit and work best for me.
I have a short neck, so they may actually have to make a custom one for me.
The regular adult size is too big for me, and the child/young adult size is too small, so it may come down to making a custom fit neck brace for me.

It's important that I have one that fits correctly because I have to wear it for 3 months, possibly longer, for 24 hours a day.
I am allowed to take it off for one hour per day and just lay perfectly flat in my bed for that hour, and allow my skin to breathe and my neck muscles to relax.
I've been doing that every single day because it feels so good to let air touch my skin, to not be confined and hot.
I go in and grab my Sandisk mp3 player, lay down and take off the brace, and just listen to music for that whole hour.
It's nice and relaxing, comfortable.

I even have to wear the brace while taking a shower.
The braces come with changeable padding, so when the brace gets wet in the shower, I can change out the wet pads and put in the clean and dry ones, and then lay the wet ones flat to dry.

I really wish it was "winter" here because it is so hot, and wearing a brace is like wearing a turtleneck in the middle of summer.
It's hot.
The braces have all of that padding which makes it even hotter, and I just sweat and sweat while wearing it.
It really is like wearing a big turtleneck sweater in the summer.
So I'm hopeful that the new brace is lighter somehow, not so stuffy and hot feeling, but I'm sure it won't be though.
It's job is to hold the neck in position, and the padding is to make sure the skin isn't right up against the hard plastic of the contraption.
It's kind of miserable wearing a neck brace, you don't realize how much you move your head and neck every day until you can't do it anymore.
I'm dealing with it all though, getting used to it I guess you could say.

Anyway, I'm hopeful that tomorrow they will have a brace that actually fits the way it's supposed to, or can custom make one that will fit right.
I want to heal up the right way with my head straight, not looking down, and the braces I have are too big so my neck is straining to hold me in place, and because it doesn't fit right, my head ends up falling down and that is so not the way I want to permanently heal up.

My stitches are itching like crazy, it's driving me absolutely freaking crazy!
I'm not scratching them though, I'm gently massaging them about every 10-15 minutes, gently rubbing the skin around them, trying to make the itchies go away but it's not really helping.
It would be awesome if I could use some anti-itch creme or something on them to take the edge off.
It's insane how badly they itch.

My surgical follow up appointment is on October 7th, that's when they are going to take them out.
That's a wicked long time to have stitches in.
The standard length of time is 14 days or you run the risk of skin growing over the threads and making it very difficult to take them out.
Difficult as in wicked bad awful painful.
Not looking forward to that because mine have now been in since the 8th, that's 21 days.
It will be 29 days when they finally come out, that's way too long.
The nurses who are coming here every other day now to take vitals and change the bandages, keep telling me that I need to get these stitches out, and I keep telling them when my appointment is, but they keep saying that's too long, it's going to be hard to get them all out.

What am I supposed to do about that?!
I've called my doc, I have an appointment, I have told them about the nurses opinions on the stitches, there's not much else I can do.

It's been 21 days since the surgery, and I'm still bruised up.
My arms are a disgusting shade of green and yellow mixed with some blue and purple.
I still have needle marks and surgical tape stuff on my arms too.

*Edited at 1:30am to add a new picture.*
Sebastian helped me a bit ago with the itch problem, he took off the bandage and was going to just gently rub along the sides of the scar/stitch line and wipe it down with a baby wipe to get it a little clean for me because the whole length of it itches wicked way bad, and that's when we figured out why it is itching so much.
It's all healed up, there are no open areas at all, but where the stitches are, there are some small scabs.
No, he did not pick them off, he simply wiped them off with a baby wipe and a skin prep wipe one of the nurses left here.
A few of the nurses have left the basic wound care supplies in the little hospital tub/bin that all patients take home.
It usually has the standard stuff like toothpaste, a toothbrush, baby powder, lotion, and the hospital body wash stuff.
I'm sure those of you who have ever been in the hospital for a stay, or had a family member in for a stay, know what little tub/bin thing I'm talking about.
They are usually pink no matter what hospital you go to, pink tub/bins full of body care supplies to make your stay in the hospital easier.

Anyway, all of those scabs are the reason it itches.
They are all healed and dried up, but just sitting on my skin, so he took a baby wipe and just wiped them all off.
It felt sooooo good, OMG, it felt awesome.
Then he took one of the skin prep wipes and wiped the whole suture line and the sides of the line, all over, and then put the bandage back on and taped it down really good.
It's looking really good, no open areas, no infection spots, all healed up.
I can't see my own back, so I had him take a picture of it for me.
You can click it for bigger if you want, unless of course stuff like this grosses you out, but I promise there's no blood, no puss, nothing disgusting at all.

I'm sooo glad I had Sebastian* do that, it doesn't itch anymore at all.
Yay!




















Sebastian was not awake until 1:30am. He went to bed at a little before midnight because he was helping me clean off the itchies.
I'd say right after I originally made this post is when I asked him to do it for me.
The original plan was to just wipe my back down with a baby wipe, to just get it a little clean, (can't get my back wet till the stitches come out) and that's when he saw all the little scabs and when he started wiping, they just started falling off.

My sister came over today with my niece Skye, and they brought us lunch from Boston Market.
Then she took Sebastian to Publix to get some more food and other items that they forgot when he and Mark went the other day.
I had her pick up the Glad Press n' Seal stuff  (yes, the plastic wrap for food, sticks to the skin and makes a water proof seal around wounds that need to stay dry) so that I can take a full shower and not get my sutures wet, and also some hair elastics so after she raked through the matted hair, she could braid it.
I didn't have any more of them in my basket because I always do the girls hair when they come over.

Then the hair hell began.
My sister has a considerable amount of patience and she tried so hard to not pull my hair and hurt me, but the hair was just so matted that no amount of gentleness could stop the pulling and pain.
Here's what ended up coming out, it's a lot of hair, it's all tangled and matted, there was absolutely no getting a brush, comb, or pick through it, so we did the only thing we could do.
We cut it out.

























































After we got all of the knots and matted clumps out, I wiped away my tears, and got a grip on myself, and she then braided my hair for me so that this won't happen again during the long recovery process.
At least once a week from now on, the hair will have to be unbraided, combed through with heavy conditioner, and then braided again.
 




















I look awful.
I had just spent nearly 2 hours getting my hair fixed, I cried a lot because it seriously hurt.
My eyes are all red, I have huge dark circles under my eyes, just ugly looking.
My hair had been in a ponytail since the 8th, had not been washed, conditioned, or brushed since that day.
It was a huge huge mess, and even after soaking it in de-frizz serum, Infusium, and half a bottle of conditioner all at the same time, that big huge matted section could not be combed or picked through, it was excruciating pain, every hair felt like it was being ripped out by the roots.
My scalp is raw, I'm surprised it's not bleeding from having all those hairs pulled on.
My sister tried to work through it, she really did, but I couldn't take the pain anymore and told her to just grab the scissors and just cut it out.
Hell, my surgeon's team had already shaved parts of my head, cut other areas, I knew I was going to lose some hair, so cutting it out was the only thing I could do for now.
Once I'm healed up a bit better, I'm going to have to go to a salon and get it all cut and evened out and stuff, and also get a pedicure.
 
My feet are a huge mess as well, but we can't just cut the toes off now can we?
It will be the usual embarrassment, the little Korean ladies will talk about my gnarly toenails and my rough heels in their native language, as they try to make my poor battered feet look more human-like and less disgusting looking.
The girl doing my feet will say something, and then the other ladies will find some kind of reason to come and walk by her station and take a glance at my feet, say something in Korean, and I know it's not nice stuff, it never is.
I may not understand the language, but disgusted and grossed out are a universal emotion that is easily recognized in facial expressions.
I have not been able to bend over and care for my feet on my own in just about 3 years now.
Having titanium rods running the full length of your spine makes taking care of your own feet damn near impossible to do.
I really wish I could find a mani/pedi place close to home and my local shopping places where at least one of the people speaks English so that when I explain why my feet are so bad, they'll understand me.
I try to explain it to the Korean girls, but they just don't understand words like spine fusion, titanium rods, no bending at all, impossible to take care of my own feet, sorry they look so bad but I tip really well for all of your troubles and good work making them look nice.


I really appreciate my sis helping me today.
My hair was an absolute disaster and every single night of sleeping and naps, just made it worse and worse.
I can only lay on my back, so the hair was just getting more and more matted.
I feel a lot better now, it's fixed, it feels better, it will be less hot, less of a pain in the ass, and way less embarrassing when the nurses and friends come over to see me.

Now I'm off to find something to eat and then lay down on the couch and watch tv for awhile I guess.
Later days.

The home nurse was already here at like 9am, and Mindy and her husband are coming over to fix the ac unit today, and my sister will be coming over around dinner time to fix my hair for me.
I'm exhausted already.
I'm just so tired all of the time right now.
Recovering from surgery takes a lot out of you.

You know what sucks though?
I can't lay on my sides at night.
It hurts my neck wicked bad to even try to roll over, but laying on my back all of the time hurts too.
It hurts my back.
I really hope it doesn't stay like that forever, it would suck big time to never be able to lay in any other position than on my back.

Oh yeah, my legs need shaving too.
They are like super monster hairy but I can't shave them.
I can't lean forward long enough to do them, it hurts my neck wicked fierce.
Oh well.

Well there it is, my new scar line.
It's pretty big and badass looking, it goes all the way up into my hair line which you can see to the far left of it all.

My skin heals incredibly fast as you can't even see the remnants of my scar from my AP spine fusion from February 2006 any more.
It's not visible at all on my back, so I know that this scar line will heal up just as nicely as that one did.
I have one minor complaint, but as I've been reminded, I'm alive, that's more important.

The details of the fusion now go like this; I am permanently fused from C1-S1, that is the full length of the spine, there is no space at all, top to bottom, what the fuck else can go wrong with my spine?
Not fucking much I would think.
I'm like the terminator in there now, all fucking titanium but absolutely no power.

Weak, human, powerless to do anything about anything.
While I have my small moments of self pity, tears, feeling all shitty for myself, I was reminded that I'm a mother and that I'm alive, I'm here and I need to stop feeling all shitty for myself.
Indeed.
Mother is the word for god in the hearts and on the lips of children.
I need to remember to do my crying in private, it's still all too much for them to handle.

I know that my upcoming surgery, the laminectomy and new rod installation, is not going to be any where near as bad as my previous spine fusion, but surgery is surgery, and I'll still be subjected to all of the needles, tubes, and catheters, pulse oximeter readings, and all of the daily swallowing of antibiotics and stool softeners as I was before.

When I was getting my blood drawn for my labs yesterday, the guy was surprised by how calm I was about it.
He told me to take a deep breath and look away, I didn't.
I just watched him insert it, start the draw, change the vial, fill, change to the next vial, and then even helped him pull the needle and hold the cotton, remove the tourniquet, and put on the band-aid.
Mindy was sitting right outside the room laughing because the guy was all "most people hate needles", and I'm all dude, I've had so many needles and stuff in me, I could probably do it myself.
I told him the only thing I don't like is the central picc, I freaking hate that one.
They have to place those in during the surgery, and it's usually in there until they remove the breathing tube.
I hate that one because it's very uncomfortable, even though I'm usually doped up really bad, I can still feel it in there, it feels stiff and hard, like if you were to turn your head, it would snap in half or something, or poke through the other side of your jugular and kill you.

Ha!
I just said turn your head, something I won't be doing anymore after this surgery, so worrying about the picc stabbing through my jugular is not really going to be a worry or a problem.
It's still going to feel stiff and uncomfortable, but at least I won't have to worry about turning my head and killing myself. *LoLz*

And I need to remember to tell them, or remember to tell my sister to tell them, not to give me so many damn stool softeners this time.
They gave them to me like 3 times a day every day, and my body does not need that many.
After being on opiate pain relievers all of these years, I know all too well about the whole constipation thing that happens because of them, and I've somehow trained my body to "go" after just one stool softener per day, every other day.
If they give them to me in that large of doses while I'm there, we're going to have a bit of a messy going problem if you know what I mean.
I have a really good relationship with my meds and my bowels these days, I know exactly how many poop pills to take to get things moving along just fine.

Ok so, my pre-surgery physical didn't quite go off without a hitch.
She's my new primary care doc, so she wants to do all kinds of fun tests.

The nurse checked me in and weighed me, I'm down to 169.10lbs, then she took me to a room and took my blood pressure.
My blood pressure is really high because of the thing wrong with my neck, the spinal cord compression.
So she takes it and it's 137 over 98.
Then the doc comes in, asks me all kinds of questions about my history, natural childbirths, my surgical history etc, then takes my blood pressure.
It's now at 147 over 110, extremely high, she thinks I'm having a heart attack in her office, so she opens the door, hollers for the nurse to bring in the EKG machine, they strap me down, stick all those things on me, and the whole time I'm trying to explain it's not a heart attack, it's just my blood pressure due to my neck, but she's not listening.
The results of the EKG come back just fine, no heart attack.
Um, yeah, listen to me people!
But now she's super concerned, puts me on water pills every morning to help lower my blood pressure, and then orders a whole new battery of tests.

Tomorrow morning I have to go to the lab for a full work up and several other tests, she's gonna shit bricks when she sees my white cell count, I already know it, they all shit bricks when they see that number.
But come on people!
It's not normal for a body to have 26inches of titanium rods running the lentgh of your spine, nor is it normal to have 32 pedicule screws, of course my white cells, that little army of blood cells that fight off infections, are going to be in high numbers trying to fight off the foreign objects attached to my spine!
Then next week, the real doctor fun begins.

I have Monday September 1st off, (so far) then Tuesday, I go see my surgeon for my pre-surgery consultation.
On Wednesday, I go back to see the primary care doc to get the results of the lab work and the real full physical including the gyno pap and swabby joy joy.
Then Thursday, I go back to see my pain doc for my last visit with him before my surgery.
Then on Friday the 5th, I get to go have a mammogram. (Oh rapturous joy!)
Then on Monday the 8th, surgery.
It's all moving way, way too fast now.
Every new medical appointment just means it's getting closer to the actual day, and nope, still not ready yet.

But I did get in to see my pain doc today, I made it to his office before 11:45, and he gave me my script, so at least I don't have to worry about being in pain all next week when things start getting crazy busy for me.

Holy hell, 6:45am came far too fucking early this morning.
I went to bed around 1am, but didn't fall asleep until like oh, 3:30am.
Yeah, that makes for a very short night of sleep, just like I knew was going to happen to me.
I knew it at like 10am yesterday, even said so in an email to someone.
"I'll be up all night in like full blown panic attack mode."
I woke up Mark at the usual school time of 5:45am, and told him that right before they walk out the door, they need to come in and wake me up.
I knew I was only going to get about an hour more sleep, but I needed it big time.
When they woke me up, I'm pretty sure I started crying.

I have a busy morning today.
I need to get my butt in gear, take a shower, shave everywhere, and head to my pre-surgery physical at 10am.
Then, as quickly as I can possibly get out of her office, I need to rush over to see my pain doc
before he goes out of town again.
He' gone out of town twice in the last 2 weeks, I know doctors do that kind of stuff, but geez, it makes it very difficult to get in to see him when he's out all of the time.

Flickr isn't working with my blogs very well anymore, don't know why, I can't even get it set up right with this particular blog, so I'm going to try using Twitpic while in the hospital to post photos.
I tested it last night, it's not showing any of the text notes I send with the pics, but at least the pics are showing up about 6 or so minutes after I send them in.
If you want to see whatever pics I send in during that week, you'll be able to follow me here,
http://twitpic.com/photos/mskat

Well I suppose I need to get my ass in gear and get going on everything.
Later days.

I woke up feeling like I got hit by a truck.
I slept weird too.
Like all twisted up and stuff, so now my lower back and right hip are just killing me, and I can't get in to see my pain doc until Monday, before 11:45am.
Because at noon he's going back out of town.
But at 10am, I have an appointment with the new primary care doc for the pre-surgery physical, which I have no idea how long it's going to take.
So this means I'm going to have to call my surgeon to cover the refill on my pain meds again.
For the 3rd time, because my pain doc keeps going out of town.
My surgeon is going to start thinking something funny is going on.
Yeah, not quite so fucking funny when every time I need to make an appointment, he's going out of town.
And so I'm stressed out and in pain, and I can't see my pain doc because I have to go to that physical, I don't have a choice.
I have no idea how long the physical is going to take because duh, it's my new doctor.
The appointment could end up being 2 hours long, or like most doctor's, you sit and wait for a full hour or 2 before you even see the doctor.
And it's a full physical which means full naked, gyno, swabby, poke, prod, touch and pee in this cup appointment.

Seriously.
I'm way stressed out about all of this stuff right now.
In 18 days, I get my neck sliced open, have a couple vertebrae and discs removed, new rods installed, and I never turn my head left or right again.
18 days.
It may seem like that's a long time, but it's not, and it's creeping up on me faster than I know how to handle.

And I swear, if one more person says they'll pray for me, or let go and let god, trust in god, god will take care of you, I'm going to fucking explode!
This bill collector called me at 8am this morning, wanted to talk about an old hospital bill I owe, and when I said sorry, I can't pay that right now, they asked why, I explained why, I let it all out on the girl, and she says to me, and I quote, "I can stave off the collection phone calls for about a week, and I'll pray for you. Wow, I don't even know how you're feeling, but I imagine. I promise, I'll pray for you."

You'll pray for me?!
These calls are recorded for customer quality results, and man, I hope they recorded that one.
You are never to get personal with the customer, never ever, get personal with the customer when you are calling them to collect a debt. I know the rules, I used to work for Georgia Power and Gas, that was one of the major big time rules, never, ever, get personal with the customer, stick to the facts.
Fucking twit.
I hope they recorded that call and heard me tell her to shove her prayers up her ass.

Mentally speaking I mean.
I've been in a slight state of depression for the last few days, my lack of posting I'm sure alerted some of you that maybe something was wrong.
I just don't feel happy, it's not one thing, it's multiple things.
It's stress over money and bills, anger over the child support shit, the lack of sleep, the constant idiots who call me at the crack of dawn nearly every freaking day, a lot of things.
The stupid asshat who called me at 8:05am this morning got quite an earful, I hope he enjoyed it.
I don't know who he was and I don't care.
I yelled and screamed, and then hung up.
And I've been doing that with nearly everyone who calls lately.
I'm just in a place.

Anyway, I'm off to my surgeon to find out about my neck and shoulder pain.
Be back later.

No, that's not the first words out of my mouth today.
My first words words were yelling at people who started calling my phone at like 8 o'clock in the damn morning, and people kept freaking calling.
I want you all to know, I hadn't slept in 39 hours.
Yes, 39 hours.
I was awake from 9am on Wednesday until 3am today, Friday.
Heck, that might be more than 39 hours, but my math sucks and I'm still exhausted.

Mark has been really good about washing his face with the new acne product stuff I bought him, it's starting to clear up a bit.
Looking much better.

I'm just messed up today, my body hurts, I have a lot on my mind, stressed out about all kinds of things, and I'm sorry I yelled at you if you were one of the unfortunate people to call me and wake me up, but damn, it's summer vacation, NONE of us get up by 8am unless I have a doctor's appointment.
Most of the time, I sleep until 9am, unless I couldn't sleep which wakes me at 11am, and ya know what?
Just don't call here before 1pm, how's that?
That works for me.

Just when I think I've finally found a product to treat Mark's acne problem, he gets another massive breakout.
I need to find him the best acne treatment available, but doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to pay for.
He has such a bad breakout today too, it's worse than I've ever seen his face.
Poor kid, but at least he's still on summer vacation and none of his friends will see his face.

I've had a long weekend of feeling like total crap.
I was sick from my meds all weekend long.
I ran out of one, couldn't call my doc because it was the weekend, and that made me have to use one of the other meds I take by itself.
It has a completely different effect when taken by itself.
The bad feelings are wearing off finally, so I should be back to normal by tomorrow.

Last night around 11pm, I got a sharp stabbing pain in my lower back, my left knee swelled up and started aching really badly.
I told Mark, it's going to rain big time, a massive storm is coming.
My rods are cold, my muscles are tight and achy, my knee is hurting pretty bad.
We're going to get a really big, bad storm either overnight or tomorrow, it's definitely coming.

So I was sitting here catching up on some things on line, when all of a sudden, it felt like someone had turned on a few giant basement dehumidifiers, the humidity in the entire house just vanished, the temps in the house dropped so quickly, the AC started dripping fast, and then the skies opened up with a loud bang.
It's been raining now very hard for the last 40 minutes or so, the thunder is clapping so loudly, the cats are freaking out, there's been a few shots of lightening, and you can just hear the rain gushing down out of the clouds like there's a waterfall right outside my window.

The noon news is on and they said it just moved in really quickly, and it will probably do this all day long.
I may or may not lose power and/or internet.
My DSL tends to get crappy when it rains.