Recently in Health, Beauty & Fitness Category

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.  

Back in December I learned that I was seriously allergic to the Bounce Dryer Bar along with a ton of other people who had the exact same reactions to it.
Severe itching, hives, welts, and a rash, were reported by me and many others on the Bounce Get Satisfaction community forums.
I posted about my experience with it here on this blog, on My Single Mom Life, on my Facebook, and even Twittered it a few times when the itching had kept me awake and miserable all night long for days on end.
I thought that getting rid of the Bounce Dryer Bar, completely removing it from my dryer, scrubbing the inside of the dryer drum down with warm soapy water, and re-washing all of the laundry that I had done with it, approximately 12 large loads, would be the end of my misery.
I was wrong.
Very wrong.

I tried to go back to using the fabric softener sheets that I was using prior to buying, trying, and failing horribly with the Bounce Dryer Bar, Publix brand 'Clean Breeze' scented dryer sheets, and am now in allergy hell again.
For the last several days, I have been itching really bad again, and I couldn't figure out why.
I know that on Tuesday the 16th, that I did come in contact with some peaches while grocery shopping at Publix, because I didn't wash my hands thoroughly after shopping and before eating the crackers I bought for myself, because only my hands and lips swelled up like they always do if I get any type of peaches near my mouth and hands.
But then the hives started to appear all over my body, arms, legs, torso, chest, upper back, neck, everywhere, and I do mean, everywhere.

Then earlier this evening as I was sitting here eating dinner and watching a movie with the teens and scratching myself nearly to death, it dawned on me that when I went shopping on Monday afternoon with Sebastian and I picked up a few things, that one of the things that I bought was a box of Publix brand 'Clean Breeze' scented dryer sheets because I had run out of the Purex Complete 3-in-1, but I had a bottle of liquid Purex laundry detergent.
I wanted our clothes to be soft and static free, so I went back to my old brand of fabric softener.
It's what I had been using for years before trying and loving the Purex Complete 3-in-1 laundry sheets, so I didn't expect there to be any problems.
I was wrong.
Very wrong.

Now that my skin has been so badly affected by using the Bounce Dryer Bar, I am now like super sensitive-allergic to, apparently, all fabric softener.
I don't have any Benadryl or other allergy medicine in the house and I keep forgetting it when I go to the store, but I also just realized what this is that I'm dealing with, so I've been trying some of the other stuff that I have in my medicine arsenal to try and kill the hives, itching, rash, and welts.
I tried taking some of the antibiotics that I had for my tooth, I've tried Nyquil, aspirin, Tylenol, my cal/mag/zinc supplements, and I even tried taking some of the herbal diet supplements that I have sitting here on my medicine shelf.
I tried all of those things in the hopes that at least one of them would stop the itching.
I don't care about the hives, I just desperately need the itching to stop.
I am scratching myself raw and I can't stop scratching myself!!!
It itches so bad that I am like, compelled to scratch wherever it itches right that second.
I have OCD, I am itching really bad, so I am OCD forced to scratch whatever itches, and I am literally scratching my skin open in places.
None of the things that I have done have worked.
Nothing has worked.

I now have 1 giant hive right below my left eye.
It's huge and reddish-purple, it looks like I got punched in the eye, and I have 1 big hive now fully formed on my chin since I first posted about it on Twitter an hour ago.
My right cheek is also tightening up so there will be a hive, or hives, there soon too.
They are literally everywhere, every single inch of my body is covered in either hives, welts, or a rash.
I've taken 3 showers today and have now re-washed all of the laundry that I washed between Monday and now, which is 3 large loads because of Sebastian taking showers and needing clean clothes for school etc.

I just can't believe that because of that stupid Bounce Dryer Bar, that I am now possibly allergic to my regular, been using for at least 5 years, fabric softener sheets.
I really, really, really, hope that when I go out and buy a refill of the Purex Complete 3-in-1 laundry sheets, that I don't end up being allergic to the fabric softener in that too.

Our little mini netbooks that is.
I was so sick, like OMG I think I'm dying call an ambulance sick, for like 2 and a half weeks, and all I could do was lay on the couch, run to the bathroom, lay on the couch.
I didn't eat, I didn't sleep, and I barely drank anything either, as anything that went into my body, came right back out.
But anyway, I totally forgot that we had the mini netbook, if I had remembered, I could have at least tried to get some work done, tried to respond to emails and stuff.
I just didn't even think of it.
I will blame it on being sick and not me being stupid.

I will get some term life insurance one of these days, I feel like I'm running out of time here.
Lately, it's been one thing after another with me, it all feels like it's falling apart, fast.
I turn 40 on March 1st, and my body is breaking down faster and faster as each day passes, or at least that's how I feel, that's what it feels like what's happening to me.

Intestinal viruses, drastic weight loss, illness after illness, medication changes, and then at 4am today, this Thursday morning, my way back right molar, which has been broken for a long time, freaking exploded like I got shot in the face.
I couldn't sleep, as usual, and all of a sudden, it felt like I had literally been shot in the face.
The entire right side of my face immediately swelled up huge, my gums are completely swollen, my whole face hurts, the swelling is moving up the whole side of my face, my right eye is swelling shut, it's really pretty bad.
The antibiotics that I have are not working on it, not yet at least, I need to go see a dentist, but there is absolutely no dental coverage on Medicare, none.

I simply do not have the money to go see a dentist, I won't have the money to see a dentist for a very long time, and even if I did have the money, I cannot open my jaw wide anymore, an extraction of that broken tooth would have to be done while I was put under, and they would have to be extremely careful or they could break my jaw.
Being put under for extractions cost a ton of money that I just do not have, will not have.
But first, before anything like an extraction could even be discussed, I need the correct antibiotics to get rid of this massive infection that is taking place and spreading.
If this abscesses, it can get into my blood stream and make me even sicker than I already am all of the time.

I'm so tired people, so so tired.
 
I'm tired of being sick, I'm tired of having things go wrong, I'm exhausted from struggling to make ends meet, I'm stressed out all of the time, it's really no wonder that I don't sleep and can barely eat, I'm far too stressed out to even properly function half the time anymore.
I lay awake all night long, sick, stressed out, worried about how I'm going to pay the bills, the rent, pay for all of this medical crap that is constantly happening.
Every single day is a medical and financial nightmare for me.
I'm so tired and so scared.
I'm absolutely terrified that I'm not going to be able to hold it together for much longer.
I get sick and then I can't work because I'm too sick to even sit here and type.
If I can't sit here and work, I lose making the money that I so desperately need to pay the rent, bills, and medical crap.
I'm feeling like total crap right now, the right side of my face, the whole right side, is completely swollen, it hurts, my whole jaw hurts.
I called both my pain doc and my primary care, I asked if they could call in some antibiotics, they said no.
They told me to go to the dental clinic butcher shop downtown, or go back to the ER.
I am probably already marked as a "frequent flier" at the ER, so yeah, I really don't want to have to walk back in there, show them my face, and beg them to help me, again.
 
I'm sick and tired of my ex-husband paying the child support once a freaking month because he knows that he can get away with it.
He doesn't even have to pay that much anymore!
Mark is 18, so he only has to pay for Sebastian, just $59.56 per week, and he refuses to pay it every week like he's supposed to!
He knows that he can miss 3 weekly payments in a row before any legal action is taken, so he doesn't pay for 3 weeks, then pays just the one payment of $59.56, and then doesn't pay again for another 3 weeks!
He hasn't paid a freaking dime since January 8th!
I know that's not much money, but I need every single penny that I can get, that I'm supposed to have.
That weekly child support payment pays for my doctor appointments and medicines, Mark's doctor appointments and medicines, helps buy food, and helps to pay some of the bills, and he just keeps avoiding paying it.
It's not fair!

When I say that I'm really scared, I mean it.
I honestly don't know how much longer I can keep this pace up, how much longer that I can try to hold my life together financially.
Everything is a mess, I get sick, I lose work, I lose work, I lose money, I lose money, I get behind on my bills and rent.
I am falling apart here, just falling apart and I'm scared.
I need help, I need someone to just come and make it all better, take the burdens off of me for awhile.
I need someone to just come into my life and take over for awhile, pay the bills, buy the food, pay for the medicines and appointments, and clothes for the 2 growing boys, I need someone to just come take over, I am struggling so hard and I am terrified.

It is so hard for me to admit my failings, to admit that I need someone to help me, to just take control before I lose control and lose everything, house and job, everything, but I am losing it here folks, I'm really losing it.
I really don't know how I'm going to hold it together for much longer.
I have so many bills all due during the first 3 days of February, and I do not have the money, I just don't have it.
I'm not going to have it.
Do you see?
Do you see at all?
Have you ever been so scared that you're really going to lose it all this time?
That this is it, this time is going to be the time that you just can't hold it together any longer and you can do absolutely nothing at all about it?

I can't do anything about it.
Nothing.
I'm so lost and so scared, and just wow, I really don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to hold this life of mine together.
This life of mine.
It's not a life anymore, it's just fear, stress, and worry 24 hours a day, I'm really losing control.



 

Like I've said a few times now, I am losing weight through being sick and not eating right, and I am a whole lot less weighing than I have been in awhile, but I still have a belly.
I have no idea how to reduce belly fat that I have.
I have belly pudge, that's what make me feel fat, having that there all of the damn time.
That's what makes me feel like a huge cow, having a bulging belly.
I would love to be able to get rid of it, but without the ability to do any of the traditional core exercises, I am stusck with the belly pudge.
I know that it's all pure fat, it squishes and jiggles, so yeah, total fat.
I would probably need some liposuction and some plastic surgery to remove all of that hanging flabby skin after they suck all of the fat out of me.

When I win the Powerball, the first thing I'm doing is buying a house, and the second thing that I'm doing is liposuction and plastic surgery to remove all of the flabby and hanging skin.
I would feel tons better about my body then because other than the belly, I have a really great body.
If I do say so myself.

best fat burning supplement is, but I would have to say that any type of gastrointestinal disorder is a damn good close second.

I spent most of my Sunday afternoon today in the ER of Doctor's Hospital, the only local hospital that I ever go to any more because of the care and compassion the doctors and nurses provide.
But anyway, I got there today after having not slept for almost 5 days in a row now, and because when I finally did fall asleep this morning for all of 10 minutes, I woke to find myself puking my guts out for about 30 minutes.
That was it, I've had enough of this 3 week long stomach crap, so off to the ER I went.
She ran a bunch of tests, did a dehydration test on me, and then had the nurses start pumping me with fluids.
3 full bags of fluids by the time the day was done, 2 injections of some type of stomach meds, 2 injections of dilaudid for the pain and severe muscle cramps that wouldn't stop for almost 2 hours.
Anyway, the doc says that I have some sort of intestinal virus, she gave me 2 meds to take, tells me to increase my liquids, and to call my doctor in the morning to make him fully away that he's not giving me enough meds to survive the whole month which was a partial cause to the intestinal virus.

So yueah, a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Taking some hgh supplements for my spine and bone growth.
I know that hgh can help build up muscle and tissue, and some reports say that it helps with reversing the aging process or slowing it down, but I really wonder if it would help stimulate the new bone growth that my body needs to produce to make the new fake vertebrae that I have as strong as they need to be, and the titanium rods and screws, even stronger.
Spine fusion isn't just about inserting rods and screws and that's supposed to keep you all together and better, but spine fusion actually means to grow new bone over the implants and the fake vertebrae to make the spine even stronger than it was before.
I know that I have to grow new bone in each of my hips because that is where they took out some of my bone to make the new fake vertebrae.
The fake vertebrae are part metal, part plastic, and part of my bones.
The bone inserted will help grow new bone over the metal and plastic, but it's a very long process to grow new bone.
At one point after my first surgery, I had to wear a bone growth stimulator for 6 hours every single day.
It sent some sort of electrical impulses through my body which supposedly stimulates new bone growth.
It was a pain in the butt, so that's why I'm curious about hgh and if it would help grow new bone.
If it does, I'd happily take it every day to help make all of these implants even stronger, and maybe they would help take away the pain too.

I still don't have the slightest clue what the very best diet supplements are, but just since November 10, 2009, I've lost 34.4lbs.
I weighed 196.5, and when I weighed myself, actually my friend Nic forced me on the scale after listening to me complain about how fat I was, and I now weigh just 162.1 lbs.
I do know though that I haven't lost it the right way.
The right way being through healthy eating, exercise, and plenty of water, so I'm almost positive that I'll end up putting it all back on at some point.
I lost the weight by a combination of factors.
One was that I'm always sick.
I catch everything that goes around, plus I get med sick when my meds get changed like they have been 5 times over the last 3 months, or if I run out, which causes very painful withdrawal symptoms and makes it so that I can't eat or even drink anything for days on end due to my stomach cramping up, the diars, pukes, etc.
I had the flu, I think it was the flu, all last week, then I ran out of meds and didn't have the money to go get them for about 3 and a half days.
So I know that the way that I lost this weight isn't the right way and it will probably all come back, but it still feels good to know that I don't weigh almost 200lbs anymore.

In my quest to find an acne treatment product that works for both of the teens, I've ended up reading a TON of online reviews.
Almost every single acne product on the market contains benzoyl peroxide.
But what happens to your skin once you start using those products every single day is that your skin can become addicted to using it, and if you stop using it suddenly, you can end up with even worse breakouts than before you started using it.
I read up on one product and read what the tazorac side effects are for it, and found out that the most common side effects are redness, irritation, dryness, and even allergic reactions to it.
You have to be super careful with some of these because if you spend a good amount of time outdoors in the sun, these acne treatments can cause your skin to breakout even worse than before.
So what is a concerned mother supposed to do to help her teen sons not have so much acne that they grow their hair wicked long so people don't see all of the pimples on their foreheads, cheeks, and chins?

I feel terrible for Sebastian right now, he's having a wicked breakout and he's super embarrassed, and nothing that we've tried has really helped him at all, but I don't want to buy him something that his skin will get hooked on and make him look worse if he stops using it.
Because that is what teens do, they will use it until their skin gets cleared up, once it is, they stop using it, and then they breakout even more than before because the skin got so used to the product.

*sigh*

You know what the best diet supplement is?
Being sick that's what!
I was sick as hell all weekend, sick on Monday and Tuesday, and I thought it was going away, but nope, it's still here.
I think I've puked about 80 gazillion times since last Friday and I'm so not happy about it at all.
All I want to do is sleep but I can't sleep, my stomach keeps turning and I feel like I'm dying.
If this keeps up, I'll call the doc or go to the ER, I can't take too much more of this crap.

We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man.
We can make him better than he was before.
Better, stronger, faster.

Someday doctors will be able to do stuff like in The Six Million Dollar Man, they will be able to make not like super bionic people, but do spine fusions with better materials, stuff that won't break down over time, stuff that will help us heal faster, stuff that will help take away the pains that we suffer.
Maybe they will use car parts, like maybe from super fast sports cars like some Ferrari parts thrown in so that our bodies won't be so stiff and sore, but better able to move, be better able to get around without stiffness and soreness all of the time.

I know that once we do get that kind of technology, it will be far too late for me, but it would be really cool for other people.
I have hope that someday when doctors perform major life altering surgeries like spine fusions, that they will have the technology to make it better than it is now.
Help people heal better and faster, help people move better, live better lives, have a far better quality of life.

I have days where I feel ok and other days where I just want it all to be over with.
It really sucks that doing something fun and as small as sitting in a theater seat for 2 hours, can cause so much pain and stiffness the next day and for a few days after.
Someday they will find a way to make it all so much better.
I just know they will.

I am still not with it, I still just don't feel right.
I think I'm just under too much stress.
The holiday and medical bills are killing me and I just don't know what to do, how to deal with it all.
I wish I could just take off and do one of those Outer Banks vacation rentals that I'm always seeing ads for, ya know?
Go somewhere, anywhere, just go away and leave it all behind, but I know that won't work either, I know that all of the problems will still be here when I get back, they may, no, they will actually be worse, when I get back.
I don't know, I'll figure something out, some way to get rid of all of this stress and worry and fear over things.

I'm starting to get really annoyed with the cold weather we're having.
These are the warnings in effect for our area.
Freeze warnings, freeze watches, wind chill advisories.
This is Florida!
It is simply not supposed to be this cold here.

















The lowest that it's going to be this week at night is 32.
The highest temp at night is going to be 43.
One of the things that I loved about living here during the winter is that it never really got too cold.
It has been, and will be, so cold this winter that it hurts me to even get up and walk to the bathroom and try to sit down on the toilet just to go pee.
I had to use our portable heater last night, all night, because it was far too cold in here.
I slept on the couch so I could be in the same room as the heater, and I had 2 blankets on me to try and stay warm so that I would be able to wake up at 6am to wake Sebastian up for school without being in too much pain.
It didn't really help me much at all.
I woke up in horrible pain and have been in pain all day long even though it "warmed up" to 52 degrees.

I am hoping that maybe next week it gets warmer.
I need my usual winter weather to come back.
Winter is usually about 70 during the day and in the high 50s to 60s at night, that's perfect.
I usually love the winter weather, I mean, who wouldn't love to have the temps at a perfect mid-70 all day long and a perfectly slightly cool 55-65 at night?
That's usually what our winters are like, they are never like this.

Global warming my ass.

Those are the expected temps for the Tampa Bay area this week.
It's 44 degrees outside right now and the temp is going to drop down to the low 30s like you see in the 7-day forecast to the left there.

My body is absolutely hating these super-cold-for-Florida temps let me tell ya.
My titanium-fused spine is so freaking cold, OMG, and it has not warmed up at all.




This is Florida for crying out loud!
It is NOT supposed to be this damn cold outside!
It feels like it's cold enough to snow and take a ski vacation.

I mean, it's almost as cold here as it is in Maine where my parents and family live!
It is currently 23 degrees in Maine and here we are in Florida, the "Sunshine State", and we will be in the low 30s over night.
Tomorrow, on Sunday, Florida and Maine will be having close to the exact same temps.
It will be 34 degrees here, and it will be 30-37 in Maine.
Isn't that just nuts?!
It will be as cold here as it is there, that's just wrong on so so many levels.

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'm really having a heck of a time lately.
A few things have gotten totally screwed up in the last 24 hours, 1 being that my doc called in another new med, (getting sick of the constant switching of meds) I can't go get it, really irritated about that but not much I can do, and then this morning, all of the lights went out in Sebastian's bedroom, and none of the outlets will work either.
So I went outside to the fuse box to flip the switch, and nothing happened, so I opened up the fuse panel to try and see if something was wrong with it, and that's when I saw that the fuse holders for that room were all loose, so I tried to wiggle them back in place, it seemed to go back in, so I closed the panel and flipped the switch again.
Nothing.
So I flipped it again.
Nothing.
So I came back in the house and checked the lights and outlets again, nope, no juice, so I called the landlord to ask him if he could come by and check it out, replace the burnt out fuse or the fuse holders, whichever is the cause, and he said he would try to get here today but he's really rather busy with work, so it may be tomorrow before he can get here.
Luckily, the washer and dryer, which are in that room, are on a different fuse, so at least I can do the laundry.
I'll be doing it in the dark, but at least it will be done.

I just got a call from the insurance company about what happened to me back in October with the DA& Pharmacy.

Because I don't have a full Medicare supplement, just a part D drug plan, I only pay a small co-pay for my prescriptions.
This pharmacy that I went to told me that I had to pay an extra $20.00 on top of my $2.40 insurance co-pay or I couldn't have my medication.
Read the blog post I linked to see what went down, but I am so very happy to report that Humana, my insurance company, is going after this pharmacy.
They are not only going to revoke their contract, but they will also be pursuing other legal options, they will be calling other customers of Humana who have used this pharmacy to see if anything similar happened to them, and then doing whatever they can to get this pharmacy dealt with legally.
I have scanned and emailed them the receipts and everything else that I had including the whole story so that they can refresh the pharmacists memory if she claims that she doesn't remember or that it never happened, they can show her that she did do it.
Totally freaking awesome.

Dr. Dorociak is the dentist who gave me a new front tooth for Christmas, and I cannot thank him enough.
For the first time in 14 years, I have a full front tooth.
Before, my right front tooth was broken off completely in half, it looked absolutely horrible.
In just 1 hour today, Dr. Mike and his nurse Janie, were able to give me a new front tooth.
They made it so well that you can't even tell that it's a new tooth, it looks exactly like my other teeth, there's no rough edges, there's no outline on my tooth, (my old cap only went halfway up, you could see that there was a cap on it) they matched the color perfectly, it looks so awesome!
I am so happy right now!
I can finally laugh and smile without having to cover my mouth, without feeling embarrassed, I have a full tooth again, I look normal again, it's really amazing.
I cannot thank Dr. Mike enough for his generosity in doing this for me absolutely free of charge.
On Saturday, Dr. Mike was taking part in Sarasota Smile, he was only going to be doing it from 8am to 1pm, but a few of his colleagues offered to come to his offices and help out so that they could help as many people as they could.
They were open from 8am until 5pm, hundreds of people showed up, they had 6 dentists working in 6 different rooms, with Dr. Mike working in 2 rooms on 2 patients at a time, with all of the nurses and dental assistants helping out and doing as many things for people as they could, they were able to help 159 people.
159 people!!
159 people who otherwise could not afford to get their teeth taken care of, got their teeth fixed absolutely free for Christmas by Dr. Mike and his colleagues.
That is just amazing. Wonderful. Awesome.
I love my new tooth, it looks great and feels great, I can rub my tongue over my teeth and not feel a jagged edge and gaping hole, I can smile and not have people stare at my broken front tooth.
This is really just so amazing, I started crying when they handed me a mirror so that I could see it.
It was so beautiful, I don't have to be embarrassed any more, and that is really just so awesome, no one will stare at it anymore, no one will wonder what happened, I won't have to ever tell the football game story ever again.

You can click for bigger.
Go ahead!
It looks awesome!!






















I can smile again!!

I called Bounce today after having a horribly itchy night again thanks to the Bounce Dryer Bar, being allergic to it but finding out I wasn't the only one.
I called and spoke to one of their health people, they are the ones who take complaints like this and pass it on to the investigators and makers to look into, and then they figure out how to resolve it so it doesn't happen in future versions of the product.
They are going to send me a check for my money back, $5.99, a coupon for free Bounce dryer sheets, and a coupon for a free bottle of Tide because I had to re-wash all of the laundry that I had done with the dryer bar.
I had removed the bar from the dryer a few days ago, and today I  washed 5 loads of laundry today to try and get rid of the stuff from our clothes.
I re-washed all of our towels, shirts, breeches, underwwear,shorts, t-shirts, dish towels, sheets, blankets, everything that I had done with the bar in the dryer.
I wasn't able to get a good picture of the rash, and hopefully I've gotten rid of it completely now between doing all of the laundry and taking several showers.
The rash, hives, and welts really sucked, so I really want it to be gone for good.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, my entire family used to go to all of my big brother Mike's football games both at home and away, on the weekends, as sort of like cheap family entertainment.
There were a lot of us kids, Mike, Jo, me, Frankie, Benji, and all of the other many foster kids that came and went over the years.
We'd all pile into Dad's station wagon with the way-back seat, which was where Jo and I used to sit, that was ours, we claimed it on every single road trip because it didn't face forward, it faced back, directly into the face of whatever car and driver were directly behind us.
We loved that seat because we could make faces at those drivers, stick our tongue's out, pretend to pick our noses and fling 'em, stuff like that, we were kids, it was our entertainment on those many and very long road trips to go to games, camping trips, and the holiday visits to see family in Pennsylvania.
Anyway, we would all have to go to the football games, Mom would pack a couple coolers with food and kool-aid, most of us kids wouldn't watch the game, we'd play on the playgrounds that most of the football fields had because the games were usually held at high schools.
There was this one game where there was no playground so we had to make our own fun.
There were these metal poles on like these circular cement things, they used them to hold up ropes to mark off the parking lot and spaces.

So Jo and I were playing on those things and we were sorta swinging back and forth, the cement parts were kind of round so they wobbled, it was sorta fun, and there was nothing else to play on, so yeah, we swung around on those things.
Jo had the fun idea to get it rocking back and forth and then jump off, see who could jump the farthest after getting dizzy.
We were both on the same one, we had it rocking and spinning around, and then she yelled jump and let go, I let go a second later, but I didn't get far enough away from it, my jump sucked basically.
The bad part of it though was that the cement block and metal pole had swung in my direction when I jumped, then it swung straight back the other way, I stood up and it came swinging back and the pole hit me right in the mouth.

The metal pole hit me in the mouth with incredible force, it split my lips open and smashed my right front tooth.
Mom and Dad were pissed of course, it meant a trip to the very expensive for our family dentist, and having to get my broken tooth fixed, save the nerves, and cap the chipped front tooth.
It wasn't the type of chipped tooth you could just ignore, a huge piece had broken off, so a cap to make me have a tooth that looked like the other front tooth, was pretty expensive.
That first cap lasted a very long time, until I was like 15 or 16 at least, and then it just fell off, back then caps weren't meant to last a lifetime, so Mom and dad had to buy me another one.
That one lasted until after I was married and had the kids, it fell off, I mean broke off, when I bit into an apple around age 25.
I was now on my own, totally, I was divorced and raising the boys on my own and I didn't have any dental insurance, so I didn't replace the cap.

In all of these years since, I have never been able to replace the cap on my broken front tooth.
It's been 14 years that I have gone around with a broken front tooth.
I don't ever smile in pictures, I rarely ever open mouth smile when out in public either, I am a closed mouth smiler because I am so self conscious of the broken front tooth, it looks terrible, and it's incredibly obvious.
 People try to tell me that they can't even notice it, but they say that to be nice, I know this because I took a picture of myself with an open mouth smile, and that huge chip is just *BAM!* smiling with my mouth open, showing my teeth in a big toothy smile, there is a big hole showing because of that chipped tooth.

This coming Saturday, local area dentists are doing what they call "Sarasota Smile" for about 4 hours starting at 8am.
A lot of local area dentists will see people on a first come first serve basis, doors open at 8am, close at noon, they will fix just one tooth per person, so if someone needs a tooth pulled, they will pull it.
If someone needs a drill and fill, they will drill and fill.
If someone needs a cap, they will cap it.
The problem is that it's first come first serve, and the dentist said that last year, people started lining up at 3am, by the time the doors opened at 8am, there were over 400 people standing in line starting at the door and snaking down the sidewalk and through the parking lot.
He said they are expecting even more people this year with the economy the way it is.

The dentist doing it is my sister's dentist, she called him to ask about the Sarasota Smile on Saturday, to ask what time I would need to get there to be in the first 10 people in line, he said that I would need to be there really early, like probably no later than 2am, and he asked her why she was asking, he was going to see her on Wednesday the 16th at 1pm, who was she asking for.
Jo told him that it was me, her sister, and he asked what the situation was, so she explained that I am disabled and can't afford to have my front tooth capped, that it's been broken for the last 14 years, that I have kids and just could never afford to get it fixed after having kids.
Jo told him  if it was fixed that I would probably feel better about myself, finally feel comfortable smiling normally like everybody else, be able to laugh out loud without covering my mouth with my hand so no one sees the giant chipped front tooth.
She told him that I was more than willing to go down there Saturday morning at whatever time, I would just bring a folding lawn chair with me so I didn't have to stand up or sit on the hard concrete for all of those hours, but that I would definitely wait as many hours as it took to be among the first in line so I could get my front tooth fixed up.
 
The dentist told Jo to pick me up and bring me with her on Wednesday to her appointment at 1pm.
She asked why, she told him that I couldn't afford to get it capped, that she can't afford to get it capped for me either, it's too expensive, and as it is, Jo is struggling to pay for the work that he's been doing to her for the last few weeks and this Wednesday is the final appointment, but she'll be paying off her dental bill for the next  8 months to a year once the bill is finally tallied for the root canal, 3 drill and fills, and 5 filling replacements to get rid of the old mercury fillings that she has for new and safer fillings.  (When we were kids, fillings were silver and made of mercury).
He told Jo not to worry about it, that neither she or I would have to pay for the cap, that his office will cover it.
She asked him to repeat it, she wasn't sure she heard him right, and so he said it again.
"Bring your sister Kat with you on Wednesday at 1pm. His office will do the cap on my front tooth at no charge to her or me, it will be a Christmas present from him to me."
He made my sister promise to bring me on Wednesday, she said she would, they hung up, and she called me straight away to tell me what was going on.
Here I was going to wake up and go sit down there at 2-3am and wait in line to be in the first in line to be seen and get 1 tooth worked on for free, and the dentist said that I don't have to do that, that I can go on Wednesday at 1pm with my sister, and he and his office will do it for free.
Can you believe that?? How freaking awesome is that dentist?!
I can't believe it, he and his office are going to fix my front tooth for me, wow, it's really amazing.
My front tooth has had this big huge chip for the last 14 years, I haven't smiled in a picture for 14 years, if I'm out with friends and having a good time, i will cover my mouth with my hands while I laugh so no one sees the big chipped up mes.
For the first time in 14 years, I'm going to have a full smile with fully shaped teeth.
After I got off of the phone with my sister, Mark asked me what was going on so I told him, and as I was telling him I started to cry.
14 years, 14 years I have hated the way my teeth look because of a stupid mistake that I made when I was 8 or 9 years old and bored at my older brother's football game.

The dentist said that he couldn't believe that I've gone for 14 years with a broken front tooth, job interviews, work, shopping, everything that people do every single day with a big chipped tooth, hating the way my smile looks so I just haven't truly and freely smiled in 14 years.
He said by the time I leave his office on Wednesday afternoon, I will be smiling big and free for the first time in 14 years, and it will be a beautiful.

I am so freaking excited!!

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!

It may not be an industrial computer, but I finally (been thinking about buying 1 since school started up back in August) ordered the netbook that I've been wanting to get for Sebastian, and I have been talking about it on my other blog, and debating with myself for months and months and months.
YAY!!!
I Twittered about getting the really awesome deal that I got thanks to Verizon, I mean, really, it's a totally sweet deal, how could I not publicly thank them?

The netbook is actually a really great one for the price.
HP Mini 110 series

• • Black Swirl
• • Genuine Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3
• • Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor N270 (1.60GHz, 512KB L2, 533Mhz FSB)
• • 1GB DDR2 System Memory (1 Dimm)
• • 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• • Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with a 5-in-1 Digital Media slot
• • 10.1" diagonal WSVGA LED Anti-glare Widescreen Display (1024 x 600)
• • HP Mini Webcam with HP Imprint Finish (Swirl)
• • Wireless-G Card
• • HP Color Matching Keyboard
• • 3 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• • Microsoft(R) Works 9.0

When I got Fios installed back in July, Verizon told me that in 3 months, if I paid the bill on time and in full for those first 3 months, I would receive a gift certificate for $299.00 to buy anything that I wanted from a certain website, so my gift certificate came about a month ago, and I finally used it tonight.
The netbook's price was exactly $299.00, and then I bought a mouse and a carrying case for it.
The mouse was $12.79, the case was, $11.99, they had 20% off of them individually, not 20% off if I bought both together, but 20% off of them by themselves, and then I had to pay for shipping for all 3 items.
The subtotal was $324.77, shipping was $19.00, Florida tax was 24.07, making the grand total $367.84.
The $299.00 gift certificate was applied and so I only had to pay $67.85 in total.
I LOVE an awesome bargain like this!
W00t!! W00t!!


Today like around 9am or so, I am going to go to the pharmacy and pick up the scripts that are waiting for me, then go do the grocery shopping, and then tomorrow, I get to go see my other doctor and tell him about the issues that I am having with my feet and hope that it isn't diabetic neuropathy, because if it is, I know that he's going to put me on insulin and I don't want to be on insulin.
I don't have a problem with needles, no problem with needles at all.
It's that having to take insulin will further restrict me and what little freedom I have left.
Because of all of the health issues that I have right now, I am truly a prisoner in my own home because of my own freaking messed-up body.
Having to take insulin will just make me even more of a prisoner.
I know that calling myself a prisoner isn't good, but it's how I feel, my life is so restricted, I can hardly do anything because of the constant pain that I am in, being forced to watch myself, test my blood sugars constantly, will just make that feeling even stronger.
It sucks.

I have just been feeling like total crap the last few days, so crappy that I have not gone anywhere further than my own couch, haven't been outside much at all, maybe got the mail like twice.
You wanna know what the absolute best fat burner is?
In my opinion, the best fast burner is being sick.
When I get sick, I cannot eat.
I don't mean just being sick like a cold or flu, I mean even just feeling kind of blah, blue, tired, achy sore.
If I'm not feeling good, I cannot eat.
The sight and smell of food just makes me feel even worse.
I can't wait to see my doc Wednesday morning so I can talk to him about my feet swelling up.
They've been swelling up off and on all weekend, and it's horribly painful.
I hate it when it happens, it makes it hard to walk, sit, sleep, everything when they get all swelled up and painful.
Mindy was here on Friday and she saw how bad my feet were, my left foot was seriously huge, they were both red and swollen all of the way up to mid-calf.
I really just can't wait to see my doc and talk to him aout how bad I have been feeling all weekend long and my feet issues.
I just wish it was Wednesday already.

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'm so tired, so so tired.
Every single day is a struggle, things just coming and going at me, arguing with the teens, trying to get help so we can cope with it as a family, try to heal this family of mine that started falling apart months ago.
I lost control of my life months ago.
I know when it happened, I know exactly when it happened, I was severely depressed, not talking to anyone about it, just leaving it all sit in there because I didn't want to be seen as weak.
But I am weak and I need to stop and ask for help every now and then.
It's ok to ask for help.
And some one of these days when I get that break that I need, I'm going to get away from here, go on a vacation, go to some new state and have a real vacation.
No computers, cell only for emergency calls, just me and the teens, or me and my best friend Shell.
Then the 2 of us could just take off for like a week, just be girls again, not employees, not moms, not housekeepers, cooks, cleaners, but just be girls.
Go some place beautiful and peaceful like South Carolina and stay at one of the many Myrtle Beach hotels.
I just have so many things going on, I'm carrying like 20 plates and they are all full and terribly heavy.
I'm struggling here, just struggling to even put a coherent thought together for more than 5 minutes.
Hell, it took me over 20 minutes to just write this one post
I'm just flapping around like a goldfish that got dropped on land, struggling to breathe, fighting to stay alive, and it will either die or someone will pick it up and put it back in the aquarium bowl.
I feel like that goldfish, I need someone to pick me up and carry me at least half of the way.
I'm so tired, there are days that my life is just too much for me to handle, I want to just quit, go back in time and fix all of this crap before it ever even started.

I just don't know where my life is heading anymore, I just feel like I don't know anything about myself anymore.
Once upon a time, I was strong, both physically and emotionally, and now I feel like I'm just a big pile of mush. 

I am still fuming mad at the counselor that we are trying to see, trying to get some help from because we all need to speak to someone outside of our situation so we can try to heal our fractured family.
She had made an appointment with me and then showed up really late and acted like it was no big deal because hey, I'm disabled and never go anywhere, so why should it matter if she's late, that's pretty much what she said, I posted what she said in the link up there to my other blog.
So we've now made a new appointment for tomorrow afternoon, the same time as our appointment on Thursday last week.
If she's late or calls me and says she's going to be late, I am going to tell her that I will be going with someone else.
She needs to be professional about this, it does not matter if I'm disabled and always home, an appointment is an appointment no matter what the situation is, and when using a counselor, you have to have trust, you're telling the counselor private family issues, and if you can't trust them to even be on time, then how I am supposed to trust them with our family's issues?

I cleaned the house really good for that appointment too, but it's now gotten dirty in here again.
I need to open up the vac and see where the clog is so I can get it cleaned out and running again so I can vac the rug.
I really hope that it's just a clog and not the central vacuum motor burnt out or something like that.
That would totally suck if the motor is burnt out and that's why it's not sucking like it should be.
I am so really hoping that it's just a clog.
Please let it be just a clog.

I'm sitting here right now with the front door open allowing the cool night air to come in.
It's not really cool, like up north Maine cool, but it's very nice outside right now.
It's currently 69degrees, that's awesome, I LOVE it!
By next Monday and Tuesday, the nightly temps will be down to 59/58 degrees.
I can't wait!

I really can't wait for December through the end of February.
That's when the daily temps are going to be mid-60's, and the nightly temps in the low 40's.
I love that kind of weather, it's perfect for me, but the teens get cold at night.
They have lived here since they were little kids, so their bodies are totally adjusted to the weather and they get cold in the winter.
I already dug out the portable electric heater and cleaned it all off, dusted it, dusted the coils and the fan blades, and wiped it all down so it will be ready for use on those nights when the teens say they are cold.
The only thing I have left to do to it is to wash out the furnace filters under the tap in the bathtub. It has the same kind of small thin filter that my AC unit does, it's just a small, well 2 small thin filters that you just rinse out, flap dry, and put it back in.
I usually set it up in the dining room and aim it towards the center of the house, towards their bedrooms, and I close my bedroom door so the heat bounces back and just heats up the back part of the house where their rooms are.
I don't sleep in my bed much, I rarely sleep, but if I do sleep in my room in the winter, I sleep with the door closed anyway.
My room stays cold if I keep the door closed, I don't like sleeping with all of the heat that the heater blows, way too warm for me.

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.

When I went for a walk to 7-eleven last night, it's now Saturday morning, so Friday night, I saw that one of my neighbors up the street from me was throwing out all kinds of stuff.
I think they bought the house, so this is all probably stuff left in the house from the last owners.
They bought the house as is, I do remember the for sale sign, the house was really cheap because of all of the problems it has.
The sign said it was just $89,900, and it also said in big red letters, "AS IS".
It has been through like 3 owners in the last 4 years, there's something really wrong with it to go through that many owners in so few years.
I do know that a few years ago, one of the big trees in the backyard fell on or through the roof, so maybe that's the reason or one of the reasons, the house sold for so cheap and why it's been through so many owners.

Anyway, I couldn't help but notice all of the stuff being thrown out because there was so much of it.
Boxes and boxes of magazines and books, a couple of cabinets for what looked like the bathroom, a weight lifting bench that was seriously beat up, some weights to go on it, a box of old sneakers, a big broken wall mirror, and one of those roller weight thingies, it has a handle on each side, a weight in the middle, it looks like one of those industrial hand wheels thingies except that it has a handle on each side, not just one side, and you are supposed to get on the floor, face down, grab the handles and roll back and forth, like doing a push up with it, but rolls.
I guess you use that when doing push-ups because it makes it easier to do push-ups with it, you just roll back with it underneath you to move your body up, roll it forward to go back down.
I've used one of them before, it does make push-ups easier.

I wanted to take it home with me, it was in good shape, not all beat up like the weight bench is, and I wanted to grab some of the small hand weights that I saw in a box too, but Mark was with me and he's not supposed to carry anything heavier than 10lbs, and so tomorrow if the stuff is still there, I'll have Sebastian take a walk with me and grab it and the hand weights too.
Both Mark and I can use the weights and stuff to help strengthen our cores up.
He's not supposed to lift more than 10lbs, but he can use some of the smaller hand weights and that roller weight to do push-ups, and he can start doing some exercises to strengthen his core muscles.
He's going to need to get his abs in shape for his surgery when they decide to do it, so we might as well take those weights that other people are throwing away and put them to good use getting our bodies in shape.
I need to do core exercises myself, and so sitting in a chair with some small hand weights, tightening, flexing, and releasing my stomach muscles with each rep can help tighten up my ab muscles.
I can't do traditional ab exercises anymore, haven't been able to do a real sit-up or crunch in years now, but doing some small but simple ab flexing muscles can tighten them up, I've done it before, but adding some weights in my hands and raising them up and down, doing curls with them as I flex my ab muscles, can help tighten them up even faster because of the added weight.
I can teach Mark how to do this, how to get his abs in shape without trying to do sit-ups or crunches which hurt the lower lumbar area really bad, hell, just bending over to pick something up off of the floor hurts the lower back, so he will be happy to see that he can exercise his abs without the pain that is usually involved.
And this reminds me, I need to teach him how to do an ab workout while lying in bed.
I did this for months after my first surgery because they said that I needed to tighten my core up so my muscles would be able to support all of the new hardware, but I couldn't do regular workouts, so I would lie in bed on my back, suck in my stomach as tight as I could while inhaling, and then on the exhale, push my stomach muscles all of the way out, as far as they would go, it would make me look like I was 9 months pregnant, (hahah) and then inhale and suck in my abs again.
I would do as many reps of those as I could until it started to really hurt my back muscles or feel like it was starting to tearmy muscles or tear at the stitches, and when I'd get back up after putting my back brace on, I could really feel the difference.
After about 6 months of doing that, I could tell by looking in the mirror that it was working very well.
No I didn't end up with a set of rockin' 6-pack abs, but my stomach was definitely flatter and leaner looking.
It felt really good too, it physically felt good, I could really feel that both my stomach and back muscles were tighter and stronger, and it also helped to relieve some of the pain in my lower back.
I really need to teach him that exercise, it may help relieve some of the lumbar pain that he has.
I wish I had remembered this sooner, it could have helped him be out of some of the pain that he's in.
Well, better late than never right?
I can teach him this exercise now, and he can start getting his abs in shape and tighten up his back muscles so he can be ready for surgery and be out of some of the pain that he suffers from.
I should start doing it again too, I'm starting to get flabby looking in my gut again, and it does help with the lower back pain.

You know that saying?
"What's the matter with you? Ya gotta hair across your ass or something?!"
I literally do.

My hair keeps falling out with every shower, it just falls out as I wash it.
Get it wet, hair falls out.
Massage in the shampoo, hair falls out.
Rinse, hair falls out.
Massage in conditioner, hair falls out.
Dry with a towel, hair falls out.
Brush, hair falls out.
*sigh*
This is what happened again today, my hair just keeps falling out and it is so frustrating, but what is even more frustrating is that a single strand of my fallen out hair, has lodged itself between my ass cheeks, and I cannot get it out!!

Seriously, I have wiped and wiped, I have tried to grab it, I can feel it moving as I wipe or grab, but no!
I cannot grab or wipe it enough to get it out!
I literally have a hair across my ass!

No no, we have food, I just can't eat anything.
Between not feeling right, (I'm feeling all weird-ish so I can't eat) and stressing out and feeling bad over Mark's situation, I just have no appetite.
I have weight loss pills, some new ones, just a small sample pack the doc gave me, but I haven't needed to take any at all since he gave them to me.
I just haven't felt like eating much of anything in a few weeks now, so I've definitely lost weight, but I also know that not eating properly is bad for me.
I'm sure that I'll get my appetite back, don't know when, but when I do get it back, I know that I'll pig out on some Ben & Jerry's Phish Food.
Man, I love that stuff, I could eat it by the gallon.

Just about every January or February, I buy new contact lenses.
I buy 4 boxes, each box contains 6 lenses, so I end up with 24 contact lenses, and they are the extended wear ones, the monthlies.
I end up spending about $200 a year on new contacts if they don't have any specials or instant rebates.
Like if I were to re-order my lenses right now, 4 boxes comes to $199.96, and they have an instant $30 savings, like a coupon, so the total would be $169.96, and standard shipping is 5-7 days and free.
If I only buy 2 boxes, 12 lenses, I wouldn't get any instant savings, and it would cost me $99.98, and I'd still get the free shipping, but it's a much better deal to buy 4 boxes.
Ya know, just in case I tear a lens or 2, (it's happened a few times) lose a lens, etc, so when I do decide to order come January or February, I'll get 4 boxes unless they don't have the instant savings when I do my re-order.

I've often wondered how much it would cost to get Lasik, my eyes aren't so bad that I wouldn't qualify, my prescription is rather easy, and it would be totally awesome to never have to order lenses again, take them out, put new ones in, all of the hassles about wearing contacts.
I'd probably have to do the whole lasik surgery Mexico style in order to be able to afford it.
I've heard that it's extremely costly to get Lasik here in the US.
I saw a commercial the other day where a husband and wife were talking about her getting lasik, and she told her husband that they were spending that much on contacts anyway, but I know that lasik costs well over $1,000 per eye, and sure lasik is usually a 1-time deal which is probably way less than the cost of purchasing contacts over the course of a lifetime, but it's still really expensive here in the US to get them done.
I found this info about the average costs of lasik in the US as of July 2009.

* $2,140 for all laser-based vision correction procedures (including LASIK) in which a single price is quoted.
* $1,748 for non-customized LASIK using a bladed instrument (microkeratome) and excimer lasers that are not guided by wavefront analysis.
* $2,314 for wavefront-guided LASIK using a laser-created flap.

I don't know what half of that means, but my contacts cost me way less than that, and I know better than to fall for any eye specialist who claims that lasik will only cost $499.99 per eye.
Those prices are for people who have very minimal eye correction necessary, the real prices are usually between $1,500 to $3,000 per eye, that's the general going rate, so yeah, I'd probably have to go to Mexico to get lasik done on me for a super low price.
Now, if only I could afford to take a vacation to Mexico. ha ha

I posted on Thursday about a friend who needs to see a specialist really soon but is having trouble getting in because of what kind of medical insurance she has, Medicaid.
She just recently found out that she has cancer, she doesn't know what kind it is yet, but at least we do know that it's not mesothelioma, the one that there are all of those lawyer commercials for on tv so much lately?
Yeah, it's definitely not that one.
But she still doesn't know what kind it is, or how serious it is, how it can be treated, or if it can be treated at all.
She finally got the call from the new patient coordinator at the cancer treatment hospital, after a week of waiting, and has an appointment for November 4th.
She needs to go and get all of her records for all of the tests that she's had so far, and all of her catscan films and slides they did several weeks ago.

She is definitely better off getting them and taking them herself, there have been many times that I was told that my records and films were going to be sent to my surgeon, and I would get all of the way up to his office, hours and many miles away, and find out that they were never sent by courier at all, which made me have to reschedule my appointment for when he got the films.
My surgeon would still see me that day, basically to ask me how I was doing, what his thoughts were, and talked about all of the possible treatment plans, but without the films and written results from the radiologist, he wasn't able to give me many specifics.
After that happened to me 3 times, I made sure to always wait after I had an MRI or catscan for the films to be developed and the report to be printed up, and then I would also ask that they be sent by courier too.
On the day of my appointment, I'd bring my records with me just in case I got there and they didn't have them yet, or at all in most cases.
I also started keeping my own medical file, and I suggested that my friend now do this for herself.
She may have to pay $1-$5 at some doctor's offices for copies of her records, but it's well worth it.
If you have your own copies of everything, of every single appointment notes, every test result, every MRI or catscan film or slide, and all of the written radiologist results, you have a better understanding of your own health, you start to learn what all of those big medical terms mean so that if you go and see a new doctor and he starts talking really fast to you in medical terminology, you're not sitting there all baffled and confused, you can actually keep up and understand what's being said to you.
There's nothing worse than having some doctor talk to you like that, like you're just supposed to know what he's talking about, and you have absolutely no idea, but the way he's talking, and the words he's saying, all sound incredibly scary.
If you have all of your own medical records and doctor's notes, and you go home and read through them, look up all of those scary sounding words on the internet, you learn all about it and are now an active participant in your own health care, not just a patient who just does whatever the doctors tell you to do.

So anyway, I really hope that her type of cancer is nothing super serious, that it can be treated quickly and easily with the least amount of pain and discomfort.
She has a very young family to care for and live for, she's young herself and has the rest of her life to live and look forward to.
Plus, I'm kinda selfish, I want my friend around for a lot more time, a long time.
I don't have many people in my life that I consider really good and true friends, I really only consider 3 women as my best friends, and she's 1 of them, so yeah, I want to see this be the kind of cancer that can be taken care of as fast as possible without too much pain and suffering for her, she doesn't deserve to suffer.
She's good people ya know?
She's truly a good person, she has no ulterior motives for anything that she does, she wants nothing in return for helping someone, she just does it because it's the right thing to do.
Her whole family is like that, just really good, honest, kind and caring people, so I'm really wanting this to be quickly treated and gone so that she can be around for her family and her friends, for a long, long time to come.

I had been battling a couple issues the last 2 days, a migraine that wouldn't quit, and a swollen foot.
The swollen foot thing is always bothersome, it (left foot) swells up so much that it hurts to try and walk, it turns red, it feels like it's going to break, or the skin is going to pop open.
So I spent all of last night laying on the couch with my foot elevated and trying to get rid of the migraine.

I also spent some time being very concerned for a friend who really needs some really good but super low cost health insurance because of a health issue she is now faced with, and her doctors are only able to do so much for her with the Medicaid that she was forced to go on after her husband got laid off from work.
She really needs to get in and see a specialist, and fast, but Medicaid does things when they want to, and if they want to.
The only advice that I could give her was to be pushy with them and the doctors.
This is her health, her life, and if you wait on them to call you back, you could end up waiting weeks or months, so you really have to start being a total nag and start demanding that your health issue be treated and now, not next month, but now.

I wish there was more that I could do for her, but she's caught in the system now, and really, the only way to get help is to start demanding it, be pushy, call them every single day, start asking for the phone numbers for the specialists yourself instead of waiting for your doctor to call you back with appointment dates, call and set the appointment yourself.
It sucks that she has to do that, but if she wants to be seen and treated, then she needs to be proactive and pushy.

Today has been a much better day for me, I got the chance to talk to someone about how I was feeling, about how I let things people say affect me to the point where I end up not just feeling upset, but physically ill over it.
The person was able to understand what I was talking about and help me by just listening to what I had to say, how I was feeling, and offered me some advice on how to handle it all.

Then when I was reading this month's "O" magazine, on the last page it's always Oprah's own words in a column she calls "What I know for sure", and she wrote the following;

"Often we don't even realize who we're meant to be because we're so busy trying to live out someone else's ideas. But other people and their opinions hold no power in defining our destiny."

I read it a couple of times and then put the magazine on the table and went about the rest of my day and the things that I needed to do around the house.
As the day progressed, I started to get feeling sad again, and I remembered only part of that quote, so I went and picked the magazine back up and read it again a couple more times.
It's finally starting to sink in and mean something to me for my current feelings.
I have to stop letting other people's opinions and ideas of me, affect me so much.
Easier said than done for me most of the time because I have really become an emotional person these last few months, but it's definitely something that I can work on and think about when stuff starts getting to me.
I know that it will take time, I need time to adjust to new ways of thinking and doing things, and when things start to get to me, I need to walk away from whatever is causing the bad feelings to come up, and stay away from it until I can calmly handle the situation, or just ignore what is being said altogether, and only dealing with what absolutely needs to be dealt with.

I'll get there, I'll get to the point where I can ignore the negative personal stuff from other people, and just deal with what has to be dealt with.

I have had another absolutely horrible, totally horrendous day, I am sitting here with a pounding migraine and  in tears, and I have been crying  off and on for several hours now.
I wish so much that I could talk specifically about why I'm so upset, but I can't, I am a woman of my word regardless of what other people seem to think and say.
I really wish that I knew why some people are so cruel, why are people so cruel??
Can't anyone tell me why??

I have had a really crappy week,  just wow, so freaking crappy, and I was hoping that after this morning's grocery shopping disaster, that the day would get better, but nope, it didn't.
I feel like my entire life is just me walking in one place, or walking on treadmills, I just keep on walking and walking and walking,  but never seem to get anywhere.
I never seem to go anywhere at all that is a good place to be.
I am just stuck walking in this place where a good majority of the people are full of drama and being wrapped up, mixed up, and in everyone's business.

I'm not a bad person, i live and let live, I try to do right by everyone who comes into and out of my life for however long they are in it, I try to treat others right, the way that I would want to be treated, with kindness and compassion, understanding, and caring.
But I hardly ever get treated back the same way.
I know that all of that karma stuff is so made up and so absolutely not true, because if it was, the people who come in and out of my life on the daily, would treat me just even half as well as I treat them.
I don't even really understand the how or the why over the reason for this, how it even began, 
I just don't even have the slightest clue.
All I know for sure is that someone, or several someones, really, truly, believe that I would try to destroy their ability to earn a living.
???
Yeah, that's exactly what I said!
I don't have the answer to that one at all, and believe me, I so wish that I did.
But I can tell you and know it to be true with every single fiber of my being, that I have not ever, would not ever, could not ever, interfere with another human beings ability to earn a living and provide for themselves and their families.
That's just not something that I am capable of doing.
 
Even way back when I was an assistant manager at a store and had to hire and fire people,
I had to practice my "I'm so sorry, but you're just not working out" speech for an hour or more before I could even walk into the office and do the deed, and no matter how many times the manager made me do it so that I could "get used to it"  before she would consider promoting me from just the assistant manager to either 2nd or 1st assistant manager, after doing it and waiting for the terminated employee to leave, I would run to the bathroom, close the stall door, start crying my eyes out, and then puke.
It was just so emotionally upsetting to me, it made me physically ill to do it.
I would have all of these thoughts and images in my head about their life, if they had kids to feed, if this job was the only way they could have a roof over their heads, if there was a member of the family who was sick and this job paid for their medications that kept them alive, all of those kinds of thoughts would be flooding my head, and I'd get dizzy and nauseous over those thoughts.
I am still the same way, I hate to hear about people losing their jobs, their homes, their insurance, I get upset just hearing a story about someone losing their job.
To know that there's someone out there thinking that I would in some way try to kill their ability to earn a living, is just really upsetting me.
It's my assistant manager job all over again, dizzy and queasy, that watery mouth feeling, swallowing hard, my stomach is in knots, and I keep crying.

I need to just go lay on the couch and zone out, watch a movie, or listen to music or something, anything at all, to get away from this situation, to make it stop, but anything that I do, I'm fearful that it could escalate an already tense situation and make it even worse.
I'm just stuck, stuck walking in the same place, just walking and walking, and going absolutely nowhere. 

I betcha that  bcbsnc would be just as furious about what happened today at the pharmacy as Humana is.
I've been posting about my pain medication saga on this blog and my other blog, for the last couple of days now, and had found a pharmacy with the very last of the generic medication in stock, all of the way down in North Port today.

So my friends drove me down to the pharmacy in North Port this afternoon in a massive thunderstorm and heavy rain that lasted the entire drive down there, and half of the way back home, in order for me to get the last remaining stock of the generic Oxycontin HCL 40mg ER, which is Oxycodone HCL 40mg ER.
The pharmacy that I found it at didn't have my full prescription of 90 pills, but they did have 80 of them, close enough.
So I went for it because my doc had said because of that whole mess, that he was not going to write me a new script until he figured out what would work best for me because I am allergic to the equivalent med which is morphine sulfate, (MS Contin) and I am severely allergic to morphine, and also because Fentanyl patches don't work, and the Fentanyl injections are too dangerous and I refused them.

I went into the pharmacy and handed over my script and the pharmacist filled it, ran my insurance for it, and my co-pay was going to be $2.40, and that's when the pharmacist told me that she was losing money because of the insurance.
"What?" I asked.
"Because I am accepting your insurance for this medication," the female Indian pharmacist said, "I am losing money on it."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Let me explain. I pay $40 for the medication, Humana is only going to pay me $20 for it, you are only going to pay me $2.40 for it, so I am losing $20.00 by accepting your insurance and giving you this medication" she said.
"Ok, what does that mean for me?" I asked.
"It means that unless you pay me $20.00 for the medication, I cannot let you have this prescription" she said.
"Uh, ok, um, I haven't gotten paid yet, let me go see if I can borrow it from one of my friends" I said, and I went out to the truck to ask Deb and Nic if I could borrow $20 until I got paid Friday night.
Nic let me borrow it but told me I was being yanked.
I said that I knew that and would deal with it later, but right now this was the last pharmacy in the whole damn state with my med, I needed to get it and would report the theft and insurance fraud when I got home.
I went back in and instead of paying the legal amount of $2.40, I paid the theft price of $22.40, got my med, and we drove back home to Sarasota.

What the pharmacist did is called price gouging for one, theft for another, and insurance fraud for a solid third.
It is against the law to accept and charge an insurance company for the medication, actually charge the patient the real co-pay amount, and ask the patient to pay another price on top of that.
I know by going to the Humana website and logging in to my account, that I can see how much the medicine costs, my co-pay amount, and how much Humana pays the pharmacy when they submit the claim to Humana.
The medication costs $670.62, my co-pay is $2.40, and then Humana pays the pharmacy $668.22.
 
That is actually what it says on the My Humana page for today's (Friday October 16th, 2009) prescription fill at the pharmacy I went to today.
At my usual pharmacy that I had been getting it at for a full year before this whole Purdue lawsuit mess, the price of the med was $789.95, because they were getting the generic version from a different pharmaceutical company than the one I got today.
My regular pharmacy was getting them from Watson Pharmaceutical, and they were round and orange-ish-yellow.
Today's pills were manufactured by Dava Pharmaceutical, the pills are round and purple.  
The different pharmaceutical companies all make their pills look different, and they charge different prices for them.

But that's really neither here nor there, what this pharmacy did was illegal.
And she knew it too.
It is an independently owned pharmacy, the husband and wife own it together, she's the pharmacist, he's the cashier, 1 cash register, 1 tiny little store.
She so totally knew that what she was doing was illegal, and she took steps to prevent being caught.
On the patient medication print-outs, there is always a strip at the top that says the name, address, and phone number of the pharmacy, it says the medication name, how much it costs, and how much the co-pay is.
This little strip is perforated to be torn off for the patients use.
The pharmacist tore it off so that I wouldn't have access to the truth.
She made 1 mistake though, she let me keep my cash register receipt that clearly says that I paid $22.40 for 1 prescription, and the receipt has the name, address, phone number, and the name of the pharmacist right at the top.

When I got home, I immediately called my insurance company to report what had happened.
The Humana rep was aghast at what I was telling her, she placed me on hold while she got a supervisor and asked what she was supposed to do for this kind of thing, and then she told me that they had all of the pharmacy's information in the system already because the pharmacist had submitted the claim, I really did pay the legal co-pay amount of $2.40, and she told me that they were sending me a form to fill out, that I would need to photocopy all of the paper work that I did have, like the receipt and the patient print out showing that she tore the patient use information strip off, and that I would need to explain exactly what happened, what the pharmacist told me, and then she told me that I needed to report it to my state's price gouging hot-line, and the police in North Port, which I did.
I left a voice mail for the hot-line in Tallahassee because that's what you're supposed to do, and I spoke to a detective at the North Port police department who told me that I would need to go back to NP and file a report and bring the evidence and my witnesses with me.
Both Deb and Nic said that they would be happy to go to NP with me and fill out the report, especially Nic because she's the one who loaned me the $20.00 to pay for it, and was just as shocked as I was that the pharmacist did that.
All 3 of us were in shock that she ripped me off for $20.00 when she had submitted the claim to Humana for the full price of $668.22, claiming that she was going to lose $20.00 by accepting my insurance.

Can you freaking believe the week I have had just trying to get my freaking medication?!?
Totally unreal right?
I mean, who the hell else would have this kind of luck?
This is the kind of stuff that happens to me all. of. the. time, and this pharmacist knew that she was the last pharmacy to have the medication, she knew that I had to have it, so she totally took advantage of those facts and she stole $20.00 from me, lied to me, submitted the claim to the insurance, so that's fraud, and she totally, illegally, price-gouged me!!
Seriously people, this kind of crap only happens to me.

Because I don't want any other person in the south west Florida area to be ripped off, I am telling everyone right here on my blog, to never, ever, go to D & A Pharmacy in North Port Florida, located at 3015 Bobcat Village Center Rd. in the Bobcat Village Shopping Plaza.
This is a picture of their store front happily provided by the pharmacy to be listed on Google.

Never go there folks.
Ever.

As I posted on Tuesday, I was having to wait for my insurance, Humana, and my doc's office to agree on either paying for my pain medicine or forcing my doc to write a new script.
Well, neither happened.
It seems that Purdue Pharma won in federal court, to be the ONLY manufacturer of Oxycontin HCL 40mg ER.
Actually, Purdue Pharma now has the patent on ALL controlled-release oxycontin until April 16, 2013.
That's right, they fought and won the right to be the only maker of all controlled release oxycontin until 2013.
That's total crap.
I was taking the generic, oxycodone HCL 40mg ER, but seeing as only the brand name is being produced, my insurance refuses to cover it because of how expensive it is.
Because the only equivalent alternative medication is morphine sulfate, my doctor did not write me a new script for medication.
He was going to write me a script for Fentanyl, either the patches or the injections, but I refused based on the fact that patches do not work for me, I have damaged nerve endings in my back still, I cannot even feel it when being touched by a hand, stung by a bee, anything on my back, so without nerve endings, the medication in the patches would never be absorbed and be able to work.
I also declined it based on the horror stories of that medication that I have heard about and seen on tv programs like Dateline and 20/20.
People suck on the Fentanyl pain patches and have a heroin like experience, and it is also highly addictive because of how strong it is when used in the liquid injection form.
I do not need a highly addictive heroin-like medication in this house.
I am already physically addicted to some of my pain meds, I don't want to be emotionally addicted to something like that, I've never done heroin, and I certainly don't want to take a medication that is like heroin.

So anyway, I do not have my regular medicines, and I am in quite a bit of pain.
It is amazing just how bad the pain is without my usual regiment of medications, all I want to do is stay curled up in a ball on the couch, every single part of my body aches, all of my joints ache like crazy.
Just doing the grocery shopping this evening was a test of sheer will power to make my body walk there, walk the aisles, and walk home.
As soon as I got home, I put everything away and curled myself up like I was sitting in an egg chair.
Curling up is the most comfortable position right now, my other pain meds are not even touching the arthritis pain that I have, it's horrible right now.
My ankles, knees, hips, pelvis, lower back, and my neck, are just throbbing in pain.
We're heading into a cold spell, well cold for Florida, and I am so feeling it.
I'm really kind of ticked off at my doctor for not trying to find an alternative medication that I can take.
I also can't believe he wanted me to take 100mg of Fentanyl, that stuff is like heroin man, I don't want that crap.
I don't want to take it, I don't want it in my house, I don't want anything at all to do with it, but he thought it was a good alternative.
I think I'm going to call Purdue Pharma tomorrow and ask them for help.
I cannot get my insurance to cover the medication, and I cannot afford to get my script filled for their name brand product.
It would take me 2 months of SSDI payments to pay for just 90 pills, it's very expensive like I said on Tuesday.
It can't hurt to ask them for help seeing as their little war over a patent has caused me to be without my meds right?
Their greed has caused me to be in pain since Tuesday, maybe, just maybe, they will help me and cover the cost of it or send me some.
I've heard stories about some of the pharmaceutical companies helping people that way, maybe they will help me.

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. 

I absolutely hate being sick, it sucks for everyone of course, but ever since having spine fusion surgeries, getting sick is absolutely freaking miserable.
I'm pretty sure that Sebastian has the flu, or something resembling the flu.
He's had a high fever since late Friday night, he's been exhausted, achy from head to toe, no appetite at all, and just plain miserable feeling and miserable to be around.
I started to feel like crap on Saturday afternoon, I blew it off at first, blamed it on my back, but by nighttime, I felt like he did and I had a fever to boot.
My fever seems to have gone, so maybe I don't have what he has, (because he still has a fever as of bedtime) but for the entire day on Sunday, I was downright horrible.
I had a massive migraine, my entire body hurt, I was coughing a little bit, my nose was a bit stuffed up, and I didn't want to eat anything at all, not even look at food.
Mark went and bought him and Sebastian some subs from Publix for dinner, Sebastian only ate half of a half of it before puking that up, and just smelling their subs made me puke.
3 times.
I felt so freaking horrible, felt like I was going to die at any minute, that once I started feeling like I could sit up, I went to one of those get free instant life insurance quotes here websites.
I still have not bought any life insurance.
I talk about getting it all of the time, I've even made quite a few phone calls to insurance companies about it, but I just have never actually taken the time to buy it.
I know that I need it, I know that it is something that I absolutely have to have for my sons in case something bad happens to me, but buying it just freaks me out.
I don't know, it's like if I actually purchase a life insurance package, it's like I'm going to jinx myself or something.
I don't believe in jinxes and stuff, but a part of my brain says 'if you buy life insurance, you are going to die much quicker than you wanted to/plan to, like tomorrow.'
Seriously, my brain gets all stupid like, I just start thinking completely irrational.
I know that buying it is not going to cause me to die soon, but that's how my brain reacts.
Totally stupid huh?
I know it is, I know it's stupid, but I can't help it.
I know I can't be the only one who thinks totally crazy stuff like this, or am I?

The whole process will kill you.
Or at least make you want to choke someone.
A friend of mine is currently going through the disability appeal process right now, for the 2nd time, and she is not happy.
Applying for disability and going through the whole process is a really rough time, it's hard.
You go to doctor after doctor, get test after test, you can have 20 doctors all saying that you are permanently disabled, and if just one of the governments approved doctors says that you're not disabled, then that's it, you get denied for disability.
I swear the absolute best way to even apply the first time, is to get an attorney.
Just get a lawyer right from the start, they know how it works, they do it for a living, trying to do it on your own is nearly impossible.
I tried telling my friend Nicci this, she didn't think she would need one, now she is desperately looking for one to help her.
The paperwork is just overwhelming, the whole thing is really, you need professional help to apply and get approved.

Monday was just one of those days, the kind of day that makes you just want to rip your hair out and start shooting people.
I hadn't gotten any sleep since like a few hours on Friday, my period started, I pulled a muscle in my right side lower back, and things were happening that just made the whole day even more miserable.
Things started to go wrong on Sunday about mid-day, and just progressively got worse from there on out.
I had to spend the whole day dealing with those things that had started to go south on Sunday, and then I had to deal with other people complaining about that and other things, all of the day on Monday.
It's a job and I do my job, but man, some people seem to forget that I have a life outside of that job, and that nowhere in my job description does it say that I am allowed to be verbally abused and treated like garbage.
My job is to answer questions that I can, that I have the answers to, and to help with the work that we do if I can.
I answered the same questions repeatedly, for the same person, for 3 hours on Monday afternoon.
I just kept repeating the same answers because the same questions were being asked repeatedly, just in different ways.
 
The person was really aggravated with some things, and it is my opinion, that I took the brunt of this person's anger and frustration simply because I was there, because it's my job to help and answer questions, because it's what I am supposed to do, but taking anger and frustration out on me is not ok, that's not part of my job description at all.
But I took it, I dealt with it, I simply kept repeating the answers that I knew in the most polite way that I could.
And I was polite, I was cordial, I just kept trying to help the person with their issues, tried to help them understand why things are a certain way, and they just kept getting angrier, my answers were not good enough, but even when I explained how they could get the answers they wanted from the only people that could give them those answers, they just continued to get angry because they wanted those answers now, from me, and I am not capable of giving those answers.
I really felt like I was being stepped on because I was there, available, someone to dump on.
I even said a few times that I needed to log out, that I needed to go make dinner for my kids, they just kept going.

When I was finally able to log out, I had to rush to get dinner going, and I was washing a spatula in the sink, didn't see the big carving knife, and I cut my left index finger.
It kept bleeding and bleeding, 3 bandaids couldn't stop it, and I didn't feel like going to the ER for stitches, so I superglued it.

People need to realize that I was asked to do it because I paid attention from day 1, and I have an excellent memory for pieces of information, I'd be great on Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit.
I can recall an exact bit of information or a message and approximately when it came out, and people are able to find that message in the system during the time frame and title that I gave them.
Keeping me tied up for 3 hours to have someone to yell at, is really, truly, not fucking ok.
I'm not a punching bag, I'm not the one you can yell at, but come on, we all know that when given the opportunity to yell at the people that are the intended targets of this hostility and anger, instead of yelling, it all ass kissing and brown nosing.
There's a ton of "You're so awesome Txxx!" and "This company rocks!" and "I love you guys!"
No one ever actually tells them the thingscomplaints that get said to me in the way that they are said to me, because the people who complain with their left hand, and ass kiss with their right hand, don't want to get fired from this job.
I see it every single day on the forums.
Complain, bitch, moan, repeat until the owner shows up, and then suddenly it's all thank yous, and I love yous, and all kinds of assorted ass kissing.
They leave, and it's right back to complaining again.

Some of them have one face that they show to the boss and everyone else on the forums, and one that they only show in private messages to me.
The one on the forums is all nice and sweet, polite, kind, trying to be helpful, and the other that they show to me in private messages when they feel like complaining, is a really mean, nasty, angry and frustrated face with anger lines instead of laugh lines.

I'll tell you what though, I'm really tired of being dumped on like that.
My job is to answer the questions that I have the answers to, and to help with things people need help with, that's it.
I am not the one that anyone is allowed to just pour out all of their anger and frustrations on.
I am not the doormat or the punching bag, I am the one who takes time out of my days and nights, out of my life, to help other people and answer questions.

I do have a life ya know.
Yeah, it may not be a glamorous one, it may not even be one where I am going out with friends all of the time living it up, but I do have a very busy and hectic, very stressful life.
I have a ton of pretty major health issues, and now I have a son who I have given some of those health issues to as a genetic gift.
I have my own doctor appointments every month, and now I have to schedule his in-between mine. 
I had to cancel his MRI on Monday at the last minute because our ride had an issue with his car,  we were outside waiting for him to show, and he called my cell to tell me the car was dead, dead battery or something, wouldn't turn over, so I had to come in and cancel it.  a
And now I have to reschedule it when I can find another ride or come up with the $15 each way to take a cab.

I'll probably end up doing that on payday this week once I see how much pay I'm going to have.
I lost a lot of work this past week due to my son's medical appointments, and my own ear infection last week, and because I spent a great deal of time helping people, doing my job.
I was busy helping people, the system flipped over to the next time period or whatever it is that it does, and all of the work I had, completely vanished.

I spend so much time, like I did on Sunday and Monday, on the work forums helping other people and answering questions, that I have to scramble and race to get my own work done on time.
I highly doubt that anyone even thinks of that, as a matter of fact, I'm like 99.9% positive that nobody thinks that I have my own work to do, so it's not a big deal to them to keep me there asking question after question, or like today, keeping me there to have someone to yell at for 3 freaking hours.
There's only 3 people who know that I have my own work to do and that I end up racing to get it done almost every single payroll period.

I mean would you just look at the freaking time that I made this post?!
I spent almost all day Sunday on the work forums, I spent almost all day on Monday on the work forums, minus the time mid-morning on Monday that I took a shower, made Mark take a shower, and then waited for our ride that eventually couldn't make it, all of the while going through medical documents to make sure that I have everything, filled everything out, crossed every 't', dotted every 'i', and signed by him because he's now 18 and considered an adult, legally old enough to deal with his own medical procedures, yet he doesn't have the slightest clue what any of those papers say, so I have to go through everything with him and get him to understand it all and then sign his name, and all of the while I'm doing all of that and waiting for our ride, I still kept hopping on the work forums to help people.
And because of how things went on Sunday and Monday dealing with an issue that everyone was having, and then dealing with that 1 person for 3 hours on Monday, I never got to post to either of my blogs until now, almost 5am on Tuesday.
It's extremely frustrating.
 
Please don't anyone mistake this as me hating my job and maybe I shouldn't do it anymore, don't even think that, not even for 1 stinking second!
I LOVE my job, I LOVE what I do, I LOVE helping other people, it is soooo gratifying, it gives me a sense of purpose, it makes me feel like I'm doing something good for others.
But when people take what I do for granted, or treat me bad, or speak to me so dis-respectively, it really hurts.
I give of my time, my life, to help other people every single day for hours and hours and hours, so to have someone spend a lot of time, my time, talking to me negatively because they are upset about something else, or at someone else, or yelling at me for things which I have absolutely no control over or any power to do anything about, really, really sucks.
And it hurts, it hurts a lot.

I think people just assume that because I am a disabled stay at home mom who does this job, that I must have no life and nothing to do, so they totally take advantage of me, they take advantage of my time like it's not a big deal, they rarely ever say please when asking for help, and they like never say thank you when the help has been provided. 
Not too many others say thank you for the help either, it's like manners don't exist anymore.
If someone helps you, say thank you, if you need help, say please when asking, and try not to be a total jerk-face to the person who's trying to help you.

If you're mad about something or mad at someone, try really super duper hard to NOT take it out of the person who has been helping you as much as they possibly can.
Try to remember that they are not the reason that you are so angry and frustrated.
Try to remember that they have a life too, but they are helping you because it's a good thing to do, because helping your fellow man is the right thing to do.
It feels good to help someone who needs help, it feels really good, but when you don't get a please before or at the start, and a thank you after, or if the during the time you are helping them, they are being a snarky freaking jerk to you, it can totally drain all of the good feelings that you had and instantly make you feel hurt, sometimes sad, sometimes angry, betrayed, upset, and stressed out.
But mostly, you just feel bad inside, and taken advantage of, used as someone's emotional punching bag, and that feeling sucks the big time.

I felt that way on Monday night, I felt that way while it was happening, I felt that way when it finally ended, and I have felt that way all night Monday and now here it is Tuesday morning at 5:30am,  (I started posting this at about 4am Tuesday) and I still feel totally beaten down and drained from that whole thing, I feel like an emotional punching bag that totally got the stuffing just kicked and punched right out of it.
In other words, I still feel terrible.

That whole thing made me cry to be totally honest about it.
I did my best, I gave up 3 hours of my time and life, I looked for answers, sorted through my emails, through threads and posts, I did everything that I could to help that person, and they still kept coming at me with some hard left hooks and some painful right uppercuts.
It really is so not ok to take out your anger and frustration that you have for someone else on the person helping you.
It's just not.

*Raises can of cold Diet Coke*
Here's to hoping that Tuesday is a much better day.

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. 

Ha ha ha!
I was just saying to a friend in email that if I believed in all of that past life stuff and karma, I would say that I was a serial killer or something really wicked bad in a previous life because I am sooo being punished in this one.

My AC died for the 3rd time in 2 years on Sunday, I got a wicked bad ear infection on Thursday and am just now really starting to feel better, and when I woke up this afternoon after not being able to even fall asleep until around 9am this morning, I realized that I lost a freaking filling.

When my sons went out to dinner with their aunt, I had them stop at Walgreen's and get me some Dentemp so I could put that in the giant and gaping hole in my way back right side molar.
I can deal with a lost filling, at least it's not as bad as when I was a kid and got smacked in the mouth by the seat from the swing sets at the school playground, and totally broke my right FRONT tooth.
Yeah, I ended up having to have a cap put on it, and that cap lasted me from the age of 11 up until about 8 years ago when it finally fell off.
I haven't had the money to have that fixed, there's no way that I can afford it.
I asked a dentist about 5 years ago when I was having a tooth pulled how much it would cost to repair that, and he told me that I was looking at about $1,000.
Yeah, I just really do not have that kind of money to spend on 1 thing, a tooth.
1 grand can pay all of my monthly bills and buy groceries for 2 weeks, so yeah, getting my front tooth fixed is not going to happen any time soon unless I win the lottery.
But you gotta play to win, and sorry, I just can't even spare $1 for a single ticket these days.

Because I was sick from an ear infection since Thursday of last week and just now really starting to feel better, I am just now starting to try and clean up the house.
When I get sick like that, I really can't do much, so the dishes pile up, the carpets don't get cleaned, things just fall apart around the house basically.

A few people have asked me why I replaced and am always replacing the AC when something goes wrong, how come my landlord doesn't do it, so I thought I would answer.
My landlord is a sheriff, he works 6 days a week and has a very young family that he goes home to every single night, so the agreement that he and I have is that if I can replace things or do the repair work myself so he can go home at night to his young kids, he'll take the receipts and deduct both the cost and labor off of my rent.
We've been doing this ever since I moved into this duplex 10 years ago, it works for us.
It just so happens that when the AC died on Sunday, he was out of town, actually out of state, so he told me to go buy one if I could, he'll take the cost off of the rent, and if I couldn't buy one, he'll replace it when he comes back on the 23rd.
There is no way that I could survive until the 23rd without the AC, it died on Sunday morning, and by 2pm, this house was as hot in here as the heat index outside, 110 degrees.
I had windows and doors open, 3 large box fans running too, and it was like living in a sauna.
So I bought a new one, I'll give him the receipt, and he'll take it off my rent along with the labor for installing it.

The next thing that I AM going to do and soon I hope, is to replace the bathroom faucet.
I found some great prices at a wholesale housewares store down on Cattleman road.
I can get a really nice faucet for under $20, so I am going to go down there with my friend who told me about the store, next month, and then my friend is going to help me install it because it involves getting down on teh floor and shutting off the water and stuff, and I definitely cannot get down on the floor. LoL

I am finally starting to get tired after being awake all night long, so I went in the bathroom to do my nightly cleansing ritual, and after washing my face really good with my face scrubbie, I found a big, huge, nasty looking  blackhead!
Yeeuuucckkkk!!!
I haven't had a blackhead in years man, heck, I've not had any zits in years, not even little ones at that time of the month, so where this blackhead came from, who knows.
All I do know is that I attacked that icky thing with my little blackhead removal tool, and got that nasty thing right outta there!

I hate zits, pimples, whiteheads, blackheads, those raised, red, and painful ones that just never pop no matter how you try to get rid of them, I just hate that kind of stuff.
It's funny, I can watch horror movies all day long, blood, guts, gore, even stuff in movies where something explodes and it looks like a zit, but I can't stand real zits on my face.
They make me gag man.

I don't mean that in a snotty way, not at all, but I am lucky that I have a good part D  Medicare supplement or else I'd be like a few of my friends, broke and unable to pay for prescriptions.
I have a friend, well a couple of friends, who don't have the best medical insurance, and some who have none at all, and they get stuck paying full price for all of their medications.
One of my friends takes the exact same pain medicine that I do, and she has to pay full price for it every single month.
It costs anywhere from $589.99 to $699.99 depending on which pharmacy you go to, and she struggles like crazy every month to make sure that she has enough money to pay for just that 1 medication.
And that's just 1 of the 5 that she takes.
I'm better off than most of the people that I know in that regards.
My co-pays at the doctor's offices are fairly low, my prescription co-pays are really low on most of my medications, between $2.50 and $9.00 depending on the medication and amount.
There's only 1 of my meds that I have to pay full price for now, and it costs me about $45.00 which is a lot better than I did have to pay about 8 months ago when I had 4 scripts that I had to pay full price for.
My monthly premium for my insurance is just $21.00, which is great because it's not that expensive and it helps keep my prescription costs as low as they are.
I just wish that everyone that I know had good insurance, reasonably priced, low co-pays, and good medical care.
Health insurance should be available to everyone at an affordable rate.
I haven't read up too much on the health care plan that congress is debating over, but whatever they end up agreeing on, they need to make sure that everyone has good health insurance at affordable rates.
It's only right that people can afford good health care.

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.

Hey, it could happen! Ha ha
But no, really, if I ever own my own house, the master bathroom in the master bedroom will have one of those walk in tubs for me to use because I totally miss being able to take baths.
Ever since the first spine fusion surgery, I have not been able to take a bath.
My back doesn't bend the right ways anymore to allow me to get in, sit down, and take a bath, and then get back out again.
I've tried and couldn't do it, and it was quite the struggle to get out of the tub let me tell ya.
I couldn't twist my body around to get in a standing position to get out.
I couldn't even get in a kneeling position, never mind standing.
It took me about 10 minutes to get myself out, I had to let all of the water drain out so that I wouldn't slip and fall, so I let the water out and then scooted myself up a little bit so I could get my feet on the no-slip mat that's in the tub, and then pull myself up and push myself over the tub wall and swing a leg out onto the floor.
I ended up in a kneeling position on the floor, but at least from there I could use the sink cabinet to stand up again.
And I had forgotten to take down the hand-held shower head so that I could wash my hair.
If I had a walk in tub and a hand held shower, I could sit and take baths again, I miss being able to just sit and relax in the tub, just sit and let all of the stress go away soaking in the tub.
Someday I will own my own house and have a walk in tub so I can soak my stress away, relax, lay back in the water and read a book or magazine, or just lay back and have some candles and some music on like I used to do.
I loved doing that, just chilling out with some music and candlelight, it was always so relaxing.

Another long, long night/day with no sleep again, and now I have a headache.
The headache is not due to not sleeping, it's due to stress.
Stress over how Sebastian is doing at school today, I'll find out in like 10 minutes, stress over washing all of Mark's bed sheets/blankets, and his back, I need to call the doctor about that tomorrow.
Mark is having a ton of back pain lately, and I feel terrible about it.
All of the spine issues that I have, are all genetic, they can all be handed down, passed on to children, and I'm so afraid that Mark got one of the things, or what if he got all of them?
Something is seriously wrong with his back, he's in pain almost every single day for hours at a time, and I'm so afraid that I passed onto him one of my spine deformities/issues.
I don't want either of them to have to go through even a quarter of what I've been through with my back all of these years.
I feel helpless, I can't help him until I know exactly what is wrong, but what if it's something super serious and they think surgery will fix it?
And what if surgery doesn't fix it?
I'm really afraid that he ended up with one of the bad issues, one of the painful for life issues.
About age 18 is when I started feeling the pain in my back all of the time, that's when I started taking Tylenol like I owned stock in the company, seeing chiropractors, sleeping on heating pads, and having all kinds of back massagers and stuff, all of those things that I tried to relieve the pain, and none of it worked, nothing worked for years, and I ended up so bad that I had to have surgery, and then another, and here I am, still in pain.
Please don't let him have any of my issues, please don't let anything have been passed onto him.

I was up all night long again, I still haven't been to sleep, so when things got a bit slow on Twitter and I couldn't find anything on tv to watch, I decided to go looking some stuff up that I've always been curious about or interested in.
One of the jobs that I've always been curious about, is the IT field.
I think it's fascinating to know all of the ins and outs of computers, the internet, how to fix them, how to stop hackers, how to prevent hackers, all that kind of stuff, and while I do know a little bit, being in IT is not for me, there's just so much information, and that information is always changing, so you always have to be up to speed on all of it.
So I went and looked up what all it would take to get a Masters of Science in Information Security, basically, to be an IT specialist.

There's a lot to it whether you want to be doing the technical concentration, the actual IT work, implementing the security fixes, stopping hackers, keeping the information secure, or the managerial concentration, be the one who keeps an eye on the technical security of individual lives, people's personal privacy, and the ever growing information security risks facing the safety of people's personal information, and the risks for businesses and government.
The more technologically advanced we get, the more at risk all of the information is, and it's up to the IT managers to find ways to keep all of that information secure while having to deal with the laws, public policies, and people's rights to privacy, and how we keep all of that information secure without trampling on people's rights, but stopping the bad guys from accessing all of that information.

It's a pretty complicated job, and getting a masters in it would be some serious hard work, but for the right person, someone who has the patience for it, gets excited by the risks and works just as fast at stopping security attacks as the baddies are at trying to access the information, it can be quite a fulfilling and rewarding job.
I know that I don't have the patience for it, I get very upset when my internet goes out and I can't fix it within 30 minutes, so I know this isn't the right path for me to take, but someone else may be just the right person to do this and help keep all of our government's information safe and secure, as well as regular everyday people's information.
The more technologically advanced we get, the more IT people are going to be needed to keep everything safe, it could really be a great career for the right person.

That's making myself pretty, not petrifying myself..LoL
As I said, Sebastian and I have to be at the high school at 8am for orientation and a tour of the new building, and I've had insomnia again, so I decided to do some beauty stuff to make myself look a little better.
I found another box of hair color that I must have bought quite awhile ago, (found it in my bedroom IN my dresser drawer) checked the expiration date, it was still good, so I'm sitting here right now with some hair color in and playing on the internet, Twitter mostly.
By the time it's ready to be rinsed out, (40 minutes) it will be time for me to take the shower that I needed to anyway, so I'll hop in, let some water soak my hair, lather it all up and let it sit for a minute, then rinse it completely out, add the conditioner in and let that stay on for the whole rest of my shower, then rinse it all out.
It will be beautificent looking again!

I'm also going to throw some Veet on my legs so that I can wear my nice dress shorts and not be a hairy beast. (Shh, don't tell anyone, but I haven't shaved my legs in almost 2 weeks!!)
I did the laundry yesterday evening so I will have my nice black dress shirt to wear too.
Heck, I may even throw on some earrings and a necklace, maybe even put my rings back on!
I haven't worn any jewelry (or makeup) at all since the last surgery in September.
The 1st reason was because the earrings I wanted to wear were dangles, and with my head tilted down like it is, they looked silly.
The second reason that I haven't worn any jewelry since then is that I didn't want to draw any attention to myself.
I hated the way that I looked so much, that I didn't want anyone to notice me, then notice that I couldn't move my head and start asking questions.
I didn't want to deal with other people talking about it because I couldn't deal with it at all.
I don't feel like that anymore, thank goodness, it was miserable being in that place that I was in for quite a long time.
I am finally feeling like myself again, I'm still stuck like this, but at least I am not so sad and depressed anymore.
I think the combo of antidepressants and the therapy is really working.
I only go once a week, I found some free transportation as long as I give them a couple of days notice, they get me there at no charge. I think they have some sort of mileage deal worked out with medicare or something, because after every trip, I have to sign a paper on their clipboard. The therapist is the one who gave me the number, so don't anyone worry, it's a safe ride with a total stranger every single time. Ha ha ha

Ok, in 15 minutes, I need to go rinse this hair color out and take a shower so I can go to that 3 hour long orientation on absolutely no sleep, but at least I will look pretty.
I hope the principal is there and sees me, she hates me, when she sees me coming, she quickly turns and practically sprints the other way to not have to talk to me. ha haha
I heard that this is her last year, that she's either retiring or moving to a different school.
Thank goodness for that too, she's a horrible principal who says 1 thing, and totally does another.
She knows the school board's policies on bullying and such, and she says that she enforces it, but she doesn't.
She turns away from things that happen right in front of her.
The teens used to come home every day and tell me about that days main attraction right outside the cafeteria which is directly across the hall from the main and her office, and the attraction was usually a fight, usually involving a weapon of some kind, and she'd ignore it, the teachers would ignore it, and the security team would be too busy stuffing their 300lb faces in the caf to notice it.
I really hope that this year is better in the new building that they said was partly designed for security reasons, so let's hope that it cuts down on the fighting, and if it doesn't, that they at least try to do something about it.
Sebastian won't have his big brother to walk with him and protect him at school for the 1st time in his life, so he's really nervous about it this year, said he's scared, there's so many bullies, he's always seeing kids get in fights.
I really am hoping that this year is better for him, he's my boy, I worry about him.   

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.

When Mindy took me to the grocery store on Tuesday afternoon, we had Sebastian with us and we were talking about the economy, jobs, and how hard it is for people to find work right now.
Both the teens have been trying to find jobs for awhile now, and even Mindy's husband has been laid off for now.
We started talking about what Mindy currently does for work, and what I used to do for work.
At the time, it was a really great top home business for me.
Back when we lived in Maine, I had my own house cleaning business, and used to clean the houses of the very wealthy who lived right on the beaches.
Their homes were so large, it would take me an entire day to clean just one house.
One of the houses I cleaned had 8 bedrooms, and each bedroom had it's own full bathroom.
Even the pool house had it's own full bathrooms.
They lived directly on the beach and had a huge olympic sized swimming pool with a pool house that had 5 changing rooms, 2 full bathrooms, and 2 full showers and tubs.

I used to be really great at cleaning houses, I was paid great for it at the time which was the early 90's, $10 per hour, and I had a house to clean 5 days a week.
I started with just the one house, and then she told her neighbors who each hired me after that.
I used to love doing it, I loved cleaning those houses, that feeling of doing a great job and being told at the end of the day what a great job I had done.
Now, I can barely clean my own house.
At Christmas they all gave me bonuses, at the end of the day when it came time to pay me, they paid in cash and in full, and they sometimes would throw in some extra cash as a tip or something like a bottle of wine or a gift certificate to a really expensive store.
I really miss doing it, I realy wish I could work again, I really miss it.

Sebastian and I went to the store tonight after I got paid, dropped off my second prescription that I needed to pick up, and then bought some groceries and other things that I needed to get.
You know, the usual, toilet paper, cat food, food for us humans, and I had some coupons with me as I always try to do when I go shopping.
I had a coupon for $2.50 off 2 Dove Ultimate Go Fresh deodorants, and Publix had them on sale for just $2.29 each, so  it was $4.58 before the coupon, and just $2.08 after the coupon for 2 full size deodorants.
I chose 2 different scents because when we opened them to check them out, we instantly fell in love with how they smelled.

The Ultimate Go Fresh Energizing deodorant is absolutely fabulous smelling!
It is grapefruit and lemongrass scented, and OMG, it is so seriously the sweetest but softest smelling deodorant I have ever laid my nose upon.
Sebastian insisted that I buy that one, he said it smelled so good, that I should definitely get it, so I did.

The other one I chose is the Ultimate Go Fresh Cool Essentials, it's cucumber and green tea scented, and just like the other one, absolutely to die for scented!

The great thing about both of these deodorants, well the whole line of them, is that they stay on you, not on your clothes, they don't rub off on your shirt, it says so right on the lids, and I tested it after getting back home.
I put some on, one of each scent under each arm, rubbed my arms around a bit, and then took my shirt off and flipped it inside out.
Not a single spot of deodorant on the underarms of my black t-shirt.
That rocks!

These smell incredible, they are smooth rolling on, good for your skin, and provide 24-hours odor and wetness protection, so if you're the type who gets nervous easily, may have trouble speaking in public, sure, you could take a speech pill to help make talking to people easier, but using these new fabulously smelling and smooth deodorants, at least you won't be sweaty or smelly, people will actually comment on how great you smell.
I know this because after testing them both out, when I was in the kitchen making dinner, Mark came in to see what I was making, and he gave me a hug and said "Wow, Mom, you smell really great. Are you wearing a new perfume?"
I said nope, just new deodorant, and he was all wow, it smells awesome.
And they totally do.
So look for them at your local grocery or drug store, see if you can get them on a good sale price or use a coupon like I did, and you will be very pleasantly surprised by how awesome they are.
I can't hardly wait to shower every day and put on either of the new scents every day.
Wetness and odor protection, plus a really beautiful smell.
You can't beat that in a great deodorant product from a company that you can trust, and you can also print out coupons so that you can try them for a bit cheaper!

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.

When I saw my counselor the other day, we forgot to set up an appointment for next week, so I just called her and left her a message about setting up a new appointment.

It's really helping me to have someone on the outside of all of this big huge mess to talk to.       
I can just dump out everything, all of my feelings, all of my thoughts, and start to unload some of the guilt that has built up over the last 10 and a half years.
I can also talk to her about the big family mess that is going on, see what she thinks I should do, if there even is something that I can do.
It just kills me to have this be happening, I hate it, but I'm at a total loss of what to do about it.
Hopefully when I have my next appointment I can talk to her about it and see what she thinks of it all.

I took my 9th dose of Elavil tonight, and I think that it IS starting to work.
I am starting to not get as emotional as I have been over the last few months, and I know this because while Mark was playing his game, WoW, the person who is part of the problems I am currently having with my family, popped up in the private chat system and started talking to him about it again.
Mark knows that she is lying about what is going on, so he decided to test her, to see if she would lie again.
Mark had read the email from my parents that said if we go to Maine, that we are not welcome to stay with them at their house while we are there, that we can only visit for 1 day, it was my mother's words, her email sent to me, and he knows exactly what that email said,
so he wanted to see if she would lie about me/it again, and she did.

Mark asked her why Ninny and Pop-pop do not want us to stay with them, and she replied back that they never said that, that I am twisting my mother's words around.
Mark replied to her that he read my mother's email, that I did not twist anything around, that is what it said, and that they also said it to Sebastian when he called to ask why we couldn't stay with them.
She then told Mark that Sebastian is lying, that my parents never said that, but he hung up on them before they could finish what they were trying to tell him.
Mark then told her that wasn't true either, that he was listening to Sebastian on the phone, he heard his grandfather say that we could not stay when we visit, and that Sebastian did not hang up on them. Pop-pop said that he needed to go take a shower and then get ready for bed, Sebastian said ok, I love you, and Pop-pop said it back to him, that he loved him, and good-bye, Sebastian said good-bye, and they both hung up together.
She did not reply, so Mark asked if she got the message, she said yes, but still insisted that I twisted my parents words around and that Sebastian did hang up on them, and then she logged out of the game.

Mark called me into the room to tell me what just happened, and he was really angry that she lied again, and he wanted me to read their exchange.
I couldn't read the words on the screen, the font is too small and it's in pink, so he read it to me, his words to her, her words back, I followed along the screen the best that I could, and then he said he couldn't believe she just lied again, he was really hurt and really angry that she is lying, like super pissed off that she lied again.
Then he said that he was really sorry for doubting me about the lies that have been going on, that he wasn't sure who to believe, but now he saw it with his own eyes, she is lying, she lied to him when he knows the truth about what my parents said in the email, that I did not twist their words around, and that Sebastian did not hang up on them, he knows the truth and he is really sorry that he ever doubted me.

A week ago this would have torn me up pretty bad, I would have begun bawling my eyes out, I would have started yelling and screaming about it all, but I didn't this time.
Instead, I asked him to stand up, I gave him a huge hug and told him that I am so sorry that all of this is happening and that if I knew a way to make it all end, that I would stop it immediately, but I don't know how to make it stop, I have no idea how to make everyone else see that lies are being told.
He hugged me back and told me that it was ok, he wiped away the few tears that were falling down my face, and he told me that someday everyone will learn the truth about all of this, that they will see that I am not the one lying, that I am not doing illegal drugs, that I and not the cause of all of this.
Then he said that he was really sorry for ever calling her, that all he wanted was just a few days away from me, a break from it all because I was a mess, I was crying all of the time for days, that he and Sebastian just wanted a break because they didn't know how to help me feel better, they were scared, and tired, and worried, that is all, they never wanted what is happening, that if they knew that wanting a break was going to cause all of this, make my parents not want to see me or speak to me ever again, that they never would have asked for any help, that they would have just hung in there until my doctor's appointment a week away. 

I could see that he was really upset and really sorry, he was all teary eyed and hugging me so tightly I thought he was going to break my ribs.
Last week this would have really ripped me up, I would have been screaming about how this is all just so wrong, I would have been crying like crazy, but tonight I just hugged him back and told him it was ok, that it was all going to be ok eventually, and that I do NOT blame him and Sebastian for any of this, it's not their fault at all, and that I loved him very, very much.
He stopped hugging me, wiped away his tears and then mine, and told me that he loved me very much too.

I am just so sorry that all of this is happening, I really do wish that I knew a way to make it all stop, but I don't.
I just have to wait it out, hope that someday everyone will realize that these are all really vicious lies, and that none of it is true at all.
I want my sons to stop hurting, I want them to be ok, to be loved and welcomed by their family, but until the lies get cleared up, that we are just going to have to forget it all, just do what we need to do as a family, keep our little family together and going.
It's all that we can do, it's all that I can do, I need to be here for my sons, and so yeah, I do think that the antidepressant is really starting to work, I am not as emotional as I was, I have a better grip on the situation, and so that is a good thing.
I'm still not "happy", I am still carrying a lot of anger and guilt, but with the counseling and the antidepressant, I think that those things will get better in time.

Ok, so, the Elavil isn't totally working yet.
I don't know why I expected it to work quickly, I think I was hoping it would work quickly, but it definitely isn't.
When the shower head got broken this afternoon, I had a major blow out.
I just fell apart, I cried, I yelled, I just lost it and started bawling my eyes out.
I am so totally overwhelmed with everything that is going on, and I do not have a grip on it all yet.
I don't have a grip on any of it yet.

Having a problem with my tooth isn't helping matters either.
I called Humana, and they said that my insurance does cover part of dental stuff, like it will cover extractions, but not root canals, no cosmetic stuff, just basic teeth stuff.
So I called around to some local dentist offices and holy crap, I had to control myself from gasping extremely loud over how much it's going to cost to get that tooth extracted, even with the insurance, I am still going to end up paying some hefty out of pocket expenses.
And just because I was curious, I asked how much it would be to get my front chipped tooth fixed, capped or whatever it is they do, and damn, that is even more expensive.
If I lived in New Jersey, I could get $100 bucks off at least.
I was surfing around and saw an ad on MSNBC, for an orange nj cosmetic dentist who is offering anywhere from $100 off, up to $300 off, his dental services and depending on what it is you need done.
None of the dentists or cosmetic dentists here, are offering any kind of discounts on any of their services.
You would think that they would be considering how bad the economy is, and people still need their teeth taken care of, but paying full price is really tough, it's always tough paying for dentists, but even harder now with the economy in the dumper.
If dentists offered even just $100 bucks off on even the most basic service, people would feel better about going and paying to get their teeth taken care of.
Oh well, I'll just keep filling my tooth with Dentemp until I can find a dentist who will take care of it cheaply, or I'll just go down to the clinic and get it yanked out and then worry about getting my chipped tooth taken care of at a much later time.
It's been chipped for quite a few years now, so a few more years won't really be a big deal.
The pain in that one tooth is a big deal though, so I have to get it taken out very soon before it becomes abscessed.
If it gets infected, it causes all kinds of new problems that will be even more costly.

I took my 6th dose of Elavil, the antidepressant, tonight, and I'm not totally sure it's working yet, but I do feel better, like I have more energy, a want to get things done.
I still don't feel different emotionally, I am still sad, still angry, and just plain ol' fed up.

My life is an open book, I have 2 blogs, I put it all out there, and whatever I don't put out here, I verbally tell it to someone else, so it's really all out in the open, and honestly, I'm tired of people looking at my life and judging me for how I live.
I didn't choose this, I didn't choose to live with 32 inches of titanium attached to my spine, I didn't choose to live in chronic and constant pain, I would give anything to not have to live like this.
I'm sick and tired of being watched, judged, and having people think they know better than myself or my doctors, how my life should be.

I've spent years and years being nagged because I smoke.
I never nag anyone for how they choose to live, be that smoking, drinking, or whatever it is that people do to get through their daily lives.

I stopped being the one to answer the phone about 7-8 months ago.
The only time I answer the phone is if I'm home alone, but if the boys are here, they answer it because I'm sick of hearing other people complain about my life.
There have been many times that I told the boys to say that I was sleeping, in the bathroom, at the store, whatever, just so I wouldn't have to talk and listen to people say things about my life.
I know smoking is bad, I know that it causes cancer, I know that it kills, but everybody dies, everybody will die, and I am not afraid of dying and death because I've accepted that it happens to everyone, and I might as well smoke and be happy until the day that I die.
If smoking kills me, then so be it.
I got tired of hearing how I should be farther along in my recovery, or why haven't the doctors done something else, or telling me that the pain is all in my head, I got tired of it so I stopped answering and talking on the phone.
I got tired of hearing how imperfect I am from people who are so far from perfect themselves it makes me want to scream.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
That is so very, very true.
Or how about judge not lest ye be judged?
Yup, that one is true too.
I am filled with rage and a burning desire to lash out and retaliate, I so want to just say every single thing I've kept a secret for years.
I want to just scream out about all kinds of things, but I won't, I can't, I am not that kind of person.
I am not a hateful or vindictive person, I know that if I say all of the things that I want to say, that it will really hurt someone, it could cause some major problems for them, and as angry as I am at them, as much as I want to hurt them, I don't want to see them hurt, I don't want to see their life ruined.
Does that make sense?
I do but I don't want to hurt them.
I'm sure if they keep going the way they are, that they will eventually hurt themselves anyway.
The truth, all of their truths, will eventually come out without me having to do a single thing.

I thought that I would/should start documenting how it's going with the new antidepressant.
I want to keep a record of how it's going so that if any bad or weird side effects happen, I will know what day they happened, and so that I can tell my doctor how I am doing.
I don't want to have to ask my sons or my friends to keep an eye on me like the drug information page says for them to do.
Keeping a record of how I am doing and the side effects, will also help me determine if I am losing or gaining weight, one of the side effects of Elavil is weight gain, so I want to keep an eye on myself.

I am at 170lbs as of tonight, so if I start gaining weight, if I balloon up to 200lbs, for example, I can then ask my doctor to help me lose the weight or change the antidepressant.
If I gain too much weight too soon, I could ask my doctor to change it and also to give me something to help me lose weight, maybe something like some ephedra diet pills that will suppress my appetite as well as give me a boost of energy so that I can lose weight quicker from moving my body more and moving it faster.

Of course, moving my body more and moving it faster,will cause my body to be hurting pretty bad the next day, and it will take a day or 2 of laying down on the couch and taking it easy until I can get the pain back under control again.
It seems like a lot of things in my life lately are of the damned if you do, damned if you don't type of things.
I really am just so lost and confused on what to do about so many things right now.
*sigh*

But anyway, I took the Elavil on Saturday night at 10pm, and just like the previous 4 nights, instead of making me sleepy like it's supposed to do, it wakes me up, gives me a ton of energy, so I went and did the dishes and then cleaned the bathroom.

I don't feel much different yet, no change in emotions or thoughts yet, and I hope that it doesn't take 4 weeks like the drug information page said it might take.
I really hope that it will only take a week, and that I don't have any bad side effects.
But so far, nothing has changed emotionally.

I will keep documenting how things are going as I go.

Well, it looks like I'll be back on the hunt for the best weight loss pill again very soon.
One of the side effects of the antidepressant that the doc put me on is weight gain.
Just doing a Google search for various side effects like I do for every new medication I get put on, I came across a lot of search results for weight gain when I was searching for weight loss.
My doc put me on Elavil for my depression.

Anytime I get put on a new medication, I look it up.
I check multiple sites too, I want to make sure that they all say the same thing as far as what it does, side effects, long term effects on the body etc.
Just reading up on Elavil now, and look!
Now people can really freak out!

You may have thoughts about suicide when you first start taking an antidepressant, especially if you are younger than 24 years old. Your doctor will need to check you at regular visits for at least the first 12 weeks of treatment.

I wasn't suicidal before, but I might just get that way now that I'm taking a medicine that is supposed to help me get happy. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Oh, this is really just great, I wanted to stop these things from happening, but this drug might make these things happen, and might make them worse.
Awesome!

Call your doctor at once if you have any new or worsening symptoms such as: mood or behavior changes, anxiety, panic attacks, trouble sleeping, or if you feel impulsive, irritable, agitated, hostile, aggressive, restless, hyperactive (mentally or physically), more depressed, or have thoughts about suicide or hurting yourself.

I swear, the side effects of the drug are just as bad as the reason I'm taking the drug.
Elavil can cause you to be suicidal.
That's really fantastic.
I wasn't suicidal before, but I might just get that way now, that's really great
I will have to be monitored for up to 12 weeks from the date I first start taking it, which was on the 14th, because it can cause me to become more depressed and feel suicidal during that first 3 months.
That really stinks.
I am taking this so I can get better, stop being depressed, and it can actually cause me to get even more depressed in the first 3 months of using it.
I'm supposed to warn my family and friends to be alert to the changes in my mood and behavior so that they can tell me to tell my doctor.
My sons have been through enough, they don't need to be watching over me to see if I get worse.
Why the heck do the side effects of these drugs that are supposed to make us better, have to be just as bad or worse than the reason we take them?!
And my doc's PA was wrong, it can take up to 4 weeks to start working, but it could possibly be a rough time during the first 3 months due to he possibility of feeling even more depressed.
Just read through all of the side effects and possible side effects of Elavil, it's really kinda nuts.
I want to know why it says to tell your doctor if you regularly take other medications that make you sleepy, like pain meds or muscle relaxers.
It doesn't say why you should tell your doctor, it just says that you should, and I do, I take pain meds and a muscle relaxer every single day.
Elavil is supposed to make you sleepy, but so far after taking it at night for the last 4 nights now, it is not making me sleepy, it's having the opposite effect, I am wide awake for hours after taking it.
So wide awake in fact, that I have a ton of energy and could start cleaning the house at like midnight.

I don't know, I just don't know.
All I do know is that I don't want to feel worse, I do not want to get more depressed, I do not want to start thinking about suicide, it has already been a horrible 3 months for me, watching myself get more and more depressed, knowing that I was getting worse but still holding it together, I cannot get any worse, I just can't.
It would not be a good thing people, it really wouldn't.

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 posted a few days ago about having a yard sale sometime in the near future and also selling off all of my jewelry.
I don't have a lot, exactly 23 pieces went into the envelope, but it's all I have and I hope it brings me at least some decent amount of money, $400-$600 would be great even though I know there's at least 1 piece in there worth at least $1,000.
It'd be great if I had like some Ferrari parts for sale to make some money super fast, but I don't, so this is my only option.
I don't trust any of those places that are advertising to buy your scrap gold jewelry right now, I have heard way too many bad things about them, and if you do a Google search on each of their names, you find not only their site, but sites where people talk about being completely ripped off.
They don't even come close to half the value of your jewelry, barely a third, and in some cases, downright stealing from people for mere pennies.

There's a local place in Tampa, I thought that I would actually have to go to them to trade in my stuff for cash, but they have a "gold kit" too, so I requested one.
It came in today's mail and I have gone through every single piece of jewelry and packed it all up to stick in tomorrow's outgoing mail.
The Gold & Diamond Source in Tampa, is where I am sending my jewelry.
From the FAQ's about their buying services, "We accept ONLY precious metal jewelry and genuine precious gems & diamonds, including broken gold. Please do not send costume jewelry as we cannot return these items."

Nothing I am sending them is costume jewelry, it's all gold, a minimum of 10k, .925 sterling silver, and jewelry with real gemstones in them, and some of them even have diamonds.
A few of the pieces are broken, so I know I won't get a lot of money for them, but my finances are in really rough shape right now so this is something that I have to do.
They say they they will mail a check within 24 hours of receiving my envelope, and so because they are right in Tampa, I know that I will have a check in my hands probably no later than Saturday, probably by Thursday.

I really hate to sell my stuff, but like I said, things are really super bad right now, I am having panic attacks for like the first time in years, panic attacks so bad that my heart is practically exploding out of my chest.
I know that's not true, but that's how it feels.
It feels like I'm having a heart attack, and I know that it's the stress over money issues that is causing it.
For quite a few years now, I've been on a good track, paying all of my bills on time every single month, really doing ok, and then the surgery in September happened, depression happened, I wasn't doing as much work as I should have been doing, used to do, the AC had to be replaced in October 2008, and then again this past February, so almost $1,000 on the AC, my health, prescriptions not covered by my insurance, yeah, things just kept coming and coming, and before I knew it, I was buried under money issues again and now it's at the point where I can barely freaking breathe from the panic attacks.
I mean, I'm sitting here right now, and my heart is beating so damn fast it's unreal.

If the Gold & Diamond Source gives me at least $500 for my stuff, I'll be in a way better position than I am right now.
It's not what I need of course, and it's certainly not what everything in that envelope is worth, again, 1 item alone has a value of $1,000, never been worn, mint condition, but I have to take whatever I can get right now.

Even though neither of the teens are spending a good amount of time outside so far this summer, the heat is definitely affecting their skin and acne.
I've been working on finding just the right mix of treatment for acne for each of them.
They both have very different skin and very different acne, so I've been using different products for each of them, different techniques too.
It's taken a bit of time, but I think we are well on the way to getting a really good regimen and product line-up for each of them, because after just a few weeks, their skin is both starting to clear up a bit.

I've been up all night again, I knew it was going to happen, I even said so yesterday right before I went to take a quick 3 hour nap that turned into an all day sleep fest.
I seriously meant to only sleep for just a few hours because I know myself really well, sleep more than that, I'd be up all night again, not be on a good sleep schedule, and that's what happened.
Oh well.

At some point this weekend, I'm going to have to go back to the grocery store for all of the things I forgot.
I did have a list, but I forgot to put things on the list.
I hate it when I do that.
Sebastian won't mind though, it's another chance for him to poke his head inside the camper they have parked inside the store.
As soon as he saw the pop-up camper, he wanted one, he now wants to go camping and have that thing because then I could go camping too.
He knows that I don't like tent camping, I hate it, but I always said if we could go  rv camping, that I would totally go.
So now he wants one of those so that we can all take a cheap family vacation.
He knows we'll never afford to go some place crazy expensive, but camping is super cheap, so he's got his mind set on getting an rv at some point in his life.
He's a totally funny kid.

After my surgery in September, we had to cut some of my hair out because it was so matted and knotted up, we could not get a brush or comb through it, so the scissors had to take care of it for me.
Then for several months, from September 2008 to about February 2009, my hair just kept falling out.
I was losing a lot of hair during those 1st few months that it was coming out, then it started slowing down a bit, I only lost small amounts of hair every time I washed or brushed it, and then it just stopped falling out for good in February.
But instead of falling out, I got some new problems with it.
It started getting really, really dried out, like brittle, and I did everything I could to try and help that.
I used a couple of hot oil treatments and leave in conditioners, I only used conditioners that were for really dry or color treated hair, but nope, it just stayed dry as a bone.
Then the other morning after showering and brushing my hair, about an hour or so later when it had totally dried, I caught a quick glimpse of a silver strand on the top of my head, so I grabbed my hand mirror and took a closer look.
I saw a TON of gray hairs!
Hundreds of them, I grabbed my tweezers and started plucking a few and then remembered that old wives tale that says if you pull out 1 gray hair, 10 will grow in it's place.
Not that I believe such things, but I stopped plucking. ha ha

On Monday afternoon, I took a shower and then a wild hair crossed my ass.
I cut 6 inches off my hair.
Even though I cut off 6 inches, my hair is still past my shoulders, and now that whole mess that my surgeons made with their uneven hair cutting in September, is finally starting to even out.
I don't want to cut my hair to where the growth is from what they cut because they cut me so uneven, it was shaved on 1 side, and cut short on the other, I don't know why they did that, but that's how it was.
So yeah, I don't want to cut it to that new growth, but at least that mess of a hair cut is growing out after 10 months.

So now my hair is 6 inches shorter, dry as a bone, and I have a ton of gray hairs.
Plus it has not been colored since June of last year, a whole year has gone by and it clearly shows in the coloring of my hair.
When I did color it last year, I bought the dye on sale, buy 1 get 1, and I only used the 1 box, so I have a whole box that's been sitting on my shelf for a whole year just begging to be used.
I think today is the day that I get rid of the gray, even out the color, and because the conditioner in hair dye is the best conditioner ever, my hair will look fabulous when I get done.
I swear, if Loreal were to produce and sell the conditioner that they put in the hair dye boxes into full size bottles, women everywhere would probably pay $20 or more per bottle for the stuff.
It's that good.
When I get done coloring my hair and done with the 2 minute conditioner, my hair looks and feels like the hair of a 4 year old.
It's super shiny, super soft, full of body and light, it's just really incredible stuff, they should just sell it to us in regular full size bottles.
I think I'm going to send them an email and beg, and if they say no, I'll start a petition and get women everywhere to sign it. ha ha

But erm, yeah, got totally sidetracked there didn't I?
Today I am going to dye my hair, it will look great once it's done, and maybe it's the kind of little pick-me-up that I need to start feeling better.
Oh! I did talk to my pain doc yesterday about how I've been feeling, and he did not put me on any antidepressant medication today, but he said that when I come back in for my 1 month appointment, if my moods and emotions have not improved or have gotten worse, he will put me on something then.
He asked me if I had taken any before, if so what kind, did they work, did a particular 1 work better or worse, so I answered all of his questions, he wrote it all down, and so we'll see how it goes in a month.

Ok, time to go find something for breakfast.
I've been up all night and now I'm hungry for breakfast.
Later days!

Even though we've decided to not do the surgery right now, my surgeon still wants me to have a bunch of tests done.
I need to call and schedule an MRI, I still have the referral paper he gave me last week, good thing I didn't throw it out after deciding to not have the surgery huh?
After he gets the results of the MRI, he may, but will more than likely he said, have me go do a Myelogram.
I hate that test.
Hate it.
That page and every other page that describes the test, makes it seem like a piece of cake, but it's not.
You lie face down on this table, they strap you in so you absolutely cannot move, and they inject a contrast dye directly into your spinal cord.
Then the table rotates, up, down, side to side, and upside down, holding each final position for about a minute and a half while they watch the dye move through your nerves and blood vessels.
It's very unnerving being upside down for a minute and a half, all the blood rushes to your head, and the table is not soft, it's a hard xray table because they are doing xrays or CT scans to see where and how far the dye goes.
Then after the test, you have to lay in a bed with your head slightly elevated for 6 straight hours, you cannot move, you can't lay on your sides, you can't get up and use the bathroom, you have to lay there for 6 straight hours while the hole they made in your spinal cord closes up naturally on it's own.
They can't stitch it up for some reason, all they can do is put a small band-aid on it, but if you get up, even to just use the bathroom, your spinal fluid can drain out and that is apparently really bad.
I have a major issue with this part, well the whole test, but having to lay there in bed for 6 hours and not be able to use the bathroom.
I cannot pee in a female urinal.
I just can't.
There's something about it that my brain simply refuses to let me pee in the damn thing, so by the time they finally let me get out of the bed, the very 1st thing I do is run straight to the bathroom and let the flood gates open. ha ha
And hospital beds in the recovery rooms are awful, they are very hard, so it's painful for me to lay there perfectly flat for 6 hours. It's not like hospital beds are comfy anyway, it's a hospital, not the Riviera hotel.

They do this test to look for nerve damage, and my surgeon thinks that I have some nerve damage somewhere, but he's not really sure where exactly.
The nerves in the skin on my back have not fully regrown from the 1st surgery in 2006, I still cannot feel it when someone touches my back, I can't feel anything on my back at all, and he said that is very rare that after 3+ years, that I still do not have any feeling in my back.
He's also concerned about the random tingling in my hands and feet.
Both right and left hands, and right and left feet, randomly go numb and tingle, that fall asleep feeling, but it just happens whenever, nothing physical is causing it like it does when you fall asleep on your arm the wrong way, it just happens.
He wants to see why this is happening, and where the damaged nerves are.
So, even though I'm not having the surgery, I'm still going to have to go through all of the pre-surgical tests, that really sucks, I hate that damn Myelogram.
I always end up with a wicked bad headache after, probably because of the whole spinal fluid thing, but the headache takes hours and hours to go away.
I hope that he sees what he needs to see in the MRI and we don't have to do the Myelogram, I just really hate it and never wat to have to do that test again.
 

The surgery, not right now anyway.
My surgeon is someone I trust so much, you have no idea how much I trust that man.
He has never lied to me about any of the risks, how I would be after the surgery, any difficulties I would face when I came home, anything.
He always looks me dead in the eye and tells me the honest truth about everything, so when he looked me in the eyes on Wednesday and told me all of the risks, no matter how small, and then asked me to consider not doing and his feelings on why, I knew, I know, that I have to trust him.

Even though he would be operating above me and his surgeon partner below me, and the same entire surgical team that has been in there with my previous surgeries, measuring and adjusting, and doing everything that they can to try and make my head be straight, something is telling him, worrying him, that it would over correct and I would end up facing upward.
I could see it in his eyes, I have had so many talks with this man over the years, I know how to read him, and I know that look in his eyes was genuine worry that it would have over corrected and come out facing up.
I am going to call him tomorrow and tell him to cancel the operating room, for now, and for him to keep looking for a way to fix me with less risks, to keep talking to other surgeons in this field, maybe one of them will know how to do it better some day, maybe one of them will know how to do it without all of the risks.
Medical science is constantly changing, they are always finding new ways of doing things, so maybe they will find a new way to do this in a year or 2, or 5, who knows, I just have to hang in there and wait.
And he said he will always help me, if I end up having too much pain, he will help me, he'll do whatever he can to help me until the day comes that we find a way to fix this without so many risks to my body and life. 
Facing up would be a thousand times worse than facing down, I would not be able to live that way, there's no way, I wouldn't.
Facing down has been a nightmare that I can't wake up from, facing up would push me over the psychological edge and that would be the end of me, I would never mentally recover from that.

So now I can stop searching so hard for the best term life insurance quotes , I have time to find a good plan at reasonable rates that I can afford so that when they do find a way to fix me, if something goes wrong, there will be money to pay for my cremation.

I posted to my other blog what is going on with the surgery, and my friend Shannon asked the following question;
Is there a reason, other than the obvious, choking and looking down always, that the surgery needs to be done?
The choking is a huge reason, I choke on food while I'm eating if it's a meat and not cut up into itty bitty pieces and I don't chew it to death, I choke on it if it decides to come back up and out, but it's a major quality of life issue.

For the last 9 months, I have been looking down.
My line of sight is down, I see things at knee level and below, I am always looking at the ground, the floor, the carpet, and when I go places, the ground, the dirty ground, the dirty floors of stores etc etc.
On the day that Mark graduated, I wanted so much to be able to look into his face, into his eyes, and tell him how very proud of him I was, how much I loved him, and I couldn't.
I couldn't see anything above his chest and I was straining so physically hard to see that much, leaning back as far as I could, using my cane for stability, and I still could not see his face.

When I go grocery shopping, I cannot see anything above the 3rd bottom shelf.
If I need something above that, I have to back up against the other shelf, find it and either tell 1 of the teens who is with me to get it, or find it exactly, and then walk to it and blindly reach for it and hope that I grab the right product.
I cannot lift anything heavier than 5lbs, if I do, I hurt terribly for the next several days.
Straining my neck to try and see things or people, or road signs, whatever, puts incredible stress on my neck and shoulders and lower back, and I am then in pain for the next several days and unable to do even basic things around the house.

The teens can and do help me with everything around here.
They go grocery shopping with me, they do the laundry, dishes, they help clean the house, they help me cook, everything, but there will come a day when they are grown up and gone and they will not be here to help me with all of those things.
My house will slowly become a disaster no matter how much I try to stay on top of it.
Just trying to stay on top of it daily, causes a ton of pain.
Standing to do dishes for just 5 minutes, causes me to be in immense pain for hours.

I called my surgeon and spoke to him about what if I don't do this surgery, will he ever be able to do it without so many risks, and he said that he will always help me, that he will continue to search for a way to fix me so that my quality of life improves, so that the always present risk of choking to death on food will end, and that medical science is always changing and improving, but he has no idea when it will come up with a way to fix me.
It could be a month from now or 10 years from now, there is simply no way to know, but he will always keep looking for a way, and he and his staff will always help me.

The last 9 months have been extremely depressing, always looking at the ground, not being able to see my son's faces or anyone else either unless we are all sitting down.
People think that I am being rude when they are talking to me and I don't make eye contact, and then I have to explain to them that I cannot raise my head, and then the questions start and I have to explain everything.
Then the pity comes.
The I'm so sorrys, the oh you poor thing, the it will get better, the keep your faith, the god loves you and is giving you what he thinks you can handle bullshit, and the never ending I'm praying for you fucking shit.
If 1 more person tells me that they are praying for me, I might fucking explode.
People have been praying for me and my back issues to be fixed for years, and has it ever done any good at all?
Has it!?!
Tell me!!!!
What has any of that never ending fucking prayer accomplished?!?!
Not a fucking thing that's what!!!
All of those prayers have never gotten anything done, it's all been wasted time and breath, so just fucking stop it, just stop it.
And I really don't want to hear that people pray and god does it in his time, on his time, when he feels it's time.
There is no god, that is evident but all of the world's ills around us and the years upon years of endless unanswered prayers, so just stop, it's a waste of time and it does nothing but piss me off.

The thought of being like this possibly for the rest of my life is overwhelming, it is too much to think about at times.
The last 9 months have been so hard, and I have been sinking further and further into depression.
I know that I need to talk to my doctor about it on Wednesday when I see him, I need to tell him what my surgeon said, let him know that I am still deciding what I should do, but I need to tell him that my depression over this is getting much worse.
Yesterday, I was an absolute wreck, I cried off and on all day long thinking about being like this for possibly for the rest of my life if they never find a way to fix it without so many risks.
Thinking about what my life is going to be like when the teens grow up and leave, how alone I will be, how hard everything will be.
I was so hopeful that eventually I would have a somewhat normal life again, be able to see people's faces, be able to go out again, sit in a movie theater and watch a movie, go out to eat in restaurants, do normal things again, but all of those normal every day things that people take for granted are slipping away from me again.
I am a prisoner in my home, a prisoner of my own body.

Friends and family, my own sons, keep telling me that I could find a nice man some day who would understand, who would be able to deal with all of this, and fall in love with me.
But I don't think so.
Once that man learns the real truth about it all, he wouldn't be able to deal with it, and he would leave.
I am in pain 24 hours a day 7 days a week, I take a crapload of pain medications that I am physically addicted to.
I am physically unable to do a lot of things, normal every day type things, never mind do relationship type things, sexual relationship type things.
Doing any type of physical activity leaves me in pain and can take hours or days to recover from depending on what that activity is.
Just going to Mark's graduation left me in agonizing pain for the next 3 days, and we didn't even stay for the entire event.
Going grocery shopping for just 1 hour takes me 3 hours to recover from.
You see what I'm getting at here?
Having a normal, loving, sexual relationship with someone is going to be something that causes physical pain and then long recovery periods.
My future is not looking very bright at all.
It's looking very lonesome, very painful, and very depressing, even more depressing than it already is, and so I need to discuss this stuff with my doctor, I know that I have to.
I hate the thought of having to take a medication for depression, but it's getting worse, I am having thoughts of just quitting when the teens grow up and leave.
No, I'm not actually planning anything, but the thoughts are there, the thoughts of they will be grown up and on their own, they will be ok, and I can go, I can end my suffering.
I am not as strong as everyone keeps saying, and that is something else that I am sick and tired of people saying to me, that I'm such a strong person.
No I'm not.
There's a huge difference between being strong and just going through the motions because you have no other fucking choice in the matter.
I have had no other choice in the matter for the last 10+ years.
I am a single mother of 2 teenagers and I have a really bad back.
I have had to get up and keep going because there has been no other option for me, not because I'm strong.
I stopped being Superwoman many, many years ago.

I'm tired, so very, very, very tired.
I'm physically and emotionally drained, I honestly do not know how much more of this life I can take.

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.

Over the last 10 months now, I've been losing weight through a variety a ways.
One way has been because I was afraid to eat during the day when the teens weren't home because if I got sick, I was choking on my own vomit and almost dying, so I lost weight by not eating.
Another way has been because of the medicines I take, they just decrease my appetite, and some of them make food and drink taste absolutely terrible, so I don't even bother trying to eat when everything tastes like crap.
And since February, I've been cooking with the NuWave Oven Pro which drains off excess fats and oils, and I've lost 15 lbs.
After this next and hopefully last spine fusion surgery, I really want to get serious about my weight and lose even more weight to get down to my ideal weight which is about 140-145, so I've been reading a lot of diet pill reviews, and one that I've been reading has a lot of potential.
I read some Decaslim reviews, and it sounds very promising to help me get to my goal weight.
I look really good at 140-145, not too thin, no bones showing, but not fatty either, my face looks really good at that weight, my frame looks good, I can fit into nice clothes at that weight, and I feel good at that weight.
So, after this next and hopefully last surgery, I am going to get super serious about my weight and take off as much as I can through diet and exercise, and if I need any help, I will check out any supplement help that my doctors recommend and give it a go to get down to 140-145 and finally be at my ideal weight again.
I'm not getting any younger, I've got to get down to a good weight and stay there. 

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.

You know what the best fat burner is?
Watching a cat lick at an abscess for days on end until it pops, and then watch it lick the nasty bloody puss away for the next 3-4 days.

Carmine had an abscess on his right side, at first we didn't know that's what it was, we thought maybe it was his gallbladder and that he was doomed to die.
He stopped eating, he just laid around, he was hot to the touch and miserable.
Then he started licking at the bump over and over, and then right in front of me, like right in front of my chair, he licked it until it popped.
I thought I was going to puke.
It just exploded with this like gallon of nasty bloody puss, and he kept licking and licking and licking, it was so gross.
I totally lost my appetite, I couldn't eat anything at all for a couple of days because Carmine seemed to be following me around, and then wherever I was, he would lay down right in front of me and lick at it until it started draining again, and then he'd lick the puss up.
I wanted to vomit every single time he did it.

He's finally all better, the abscess has healed up completely, he's back to eating again, running around, and chewing the crap outta his play mouse.
Man, I need to get another one of those, he's totally destroyed this one.

I think I am going to have to start asking around and get some health insurance leads because I need a secondary insurance.
I have medicare as my only medical insurance, and they pay 80% of everything, and then I pay the rest, my co-pays.
I have Humana as my part D drug coverage, but I think I need another insurance.
My surgeon's office called me on Friday about the upcoming surgery, and asked me if I had a secondary insurance, I said no because I don't.
She said that my co-pay was going to be about $2,600 after medicare paid their 80%, and I'd be responsible for the rest.
I have no idea if I could even qualify for any health insurance right now because I have some pretty extensive pre-existing medical conditions, not too many insurance companies would take me on, and if they do, the monthly premiums would be very high.
I'm thinking I'd be better off without another insurance, and just make payments on the balance forever until it's all paid off.
I can't afford expensive premiums every month.
I just don't have that kind of money.

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 am really glad that scientists and doctors are making great strides in Mesothelioma treatment for people who have it, but man, there are like a gazillion lawyers out there trying to make a profit from all of the poor people who have it.
If you just do a quick Google search for Mesothelioma lawyers,  you get a ton of results!
As soon as this disease started making the news, all of these lawyers suddenly started popping up.
Every single day, I see no less than 10 different Florida lawyer commercials, advertising for this.
They all want to help the victims of this disease sue the pants off of the factory or whatever industry company that may be responsible for causing them to get it.

When I was a kid, I had no idea what was so funny about people calling lawyers ambulance chasers.
Now I do, I totally get it now.
But instead of finding it funny, I find it totally sad and pathetic.
I think it's disgusting just how many lawyers start advertising with their sincere sounding messages of wanting to help these people, but lawyers for the most part, are money grubbing jerks.
I'm sure like 1 out of the 10 different law firms that are advertising for this, actually do care, but the rest of them must be seeing dollar signs because the statute of limitations on mesothelioma here in Florida is so long, the people with the disease have many years that they can file a suit against whoever they feel is responsible for it, and because it can take up to 20 years to even be diagnosed with it.

It makes me kind of sick to see all of those commercials.

I have not been doing so well over the last few days weeks because of all of the stuff going on in my life right now.
Mark is graduating high school on May 30th from 9am-1pm at the local arena.
Over 950 students are graduating, that's why it's going to be 4 hours long.
4 hours in what I am sure is a very uncomfortable chair, I have no idea how I'm going to physically deal with that, but I AM going to deal with it because my baby boy, my 1st baby is graduating from high school.
I postponed my surgery so that I could be there to see him graduate, so I will get through 4 very long uncomfortable hours no matter what.

Then Monday, June 1st, is Sebastian's birthday and the start of hurricane season.
Sebastian has been feeling like everyone forgot his birthday because of all of the talk about Mark's graduation.
NO ONE has forgotten his birthday at all, it's on Monday, Mark's graduation is on the Saturday before it.
Trust me, I know when his birthday is, I recall that day crystal clear.
But he's worried that people will forget his birthday, that he won't get any birthday cards in the mail from all of his relatives like his grandparents, his aunts, etc.
He just thinks that everyone will forget because Mark's graduation is such a big deal.
I keep trying to tell him that no one has forgotten, that he will get his birthday cards filled with handwritten words of birthday wishes and love from everyone, to stop worrying.
Yes, we are all excited about Mark graduating, but we have not forgotten his birthday.

And I'm just really stressing about the upcoming surgery big time.
I always get like this for weeks before the surgery, and then I'm ok about a week before it actually happens.
Like, I suddenly snap back and suddenly able to deal with it all, I get mentally prepared for it, I become positive and ready, but until that morning when I wake up ready to just do it, I'm an absolute wreck.
That's how I am right now.
I am a total freaking wreck.
I know that I will be ok, but for now I'm just one giant ball of stress and worry about everything.
And I have so much to do.
I need to make sure that all of my papers are in order again, my DNR, my sound mind and health statements about where and who I want the teens to live with in the event that something goes wrong.
And I know that those papers don't constitute actual custody papers, but a judge would take them into consideration when determining custody if something should go terribly wrong and I don't make it back.
I do not want my ex-husband, their father, to have them, and they do not want to go with him anyway.
They are old enough to tell a judge where and who they want to live with, and that is who is written in my papers.
There are 3 people/families, written in order of who we want them to live with 1st, and if that family can't do it, the next, and so on.
The teens have made it very clear that if something does happen and I die, that if a judge orders them to live with their father, they will run away and not go back no matter what.
And then Mark will file for emancipation, and then file for custody of Sebastian.
They absolutely refuse to live with their father.

All of this stuff and more is on my mind and stressing me out, it all has to be dealt with, and I will deal with it, I just am struggling right now, I need to get to that mental point where it just clicks and I'm ok.
But I am not there right now, I am nowhere close to that right now.
I am a mess 24/7, I cry at the drop of a hat, I can barely sleep, I can barely eat.
I need to get to the good place but it's just not happened yet.

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.

I had my appointment with the cardiac doctor on Tuesday morning at 11am, and surprisingly, it went very well.
I was surprised it went well because I had not slept on Monday night at all, I was wake straight through from waking up Sunday, and I didn't much sleep that night either.
I only got a few hours on Sunday morning from 10:30am to 12:30pm, so yeah, I was going on very little sleep.

My friend Dustin took me, and Mark came along.
He was released early from school because he donated blood this morning.
All seniors age 17+, were allowed to donate blood, and if they did, they were allowed to be dismissed early.
He was quite pale when he came home at 10:15am, so I took him with me so we could grab something to eat on our way home that was loaded with salt, calories, and would fill him up quickly.

The cardiac doc ran all of the usual tests, BP, pulse ox, heart rate, and he listened to both my heart and lungs, and said I looked good to go.
I said what does that mean? I'm good to go for the stress test?
He said, "No, you're good to go for the surgery. You don't need another stress test, they are good for a year, and even though you had some problems during your last surgery with your heart, that had nothing to do with your heart really. After reading the surgical notations, it appears that your heart stopped because the tube used for intubation nicked your right lung on it's second run down your throat, which caused it to fill with blood, your lung collapsed, and you lost some blood. There was nothing at all wrong with your heart. Tell Dr. Moreno, that he'll have the letter for surgical clearance within 1 week. When is the surgery?"

I told him that I postponed it until June, because I wanted to be there to see my oldest son graduate high school, not be in the hospital, or if I was already out, not be wearing a halo brace to the graduation.
He said to give Mark his congratulations, and told me he would be thinking of me and get in touch after the next surgery to see how I was doing, and if we needed to do any more heart testing, or refill my BP meds again.

Yay!
I have surgical clearance from the heart surgeon!
Now I just have to get clearance from my primary care physician, pass a full physical, and I'll be good to go for surgery in June.
The nurse Cindy did call me yesterday, she has to get with Doc Moreno about the schedule for June, and she'll call me back, but it looks like possibly June 10th according to what she can see, but she needs him to tell her if I'll be an all day surgery, or a half day, and that will determine the day because of other surgeries he has scheduled for the month of June.
She said that Doc Moreno totally understood how important it is to me to be there for Mark's graduation, and to tell him congratulations.

So it looks like May will be a relaxing month, I only have that one last clearance to get, and then the week before surgery is where it gets hectic doing all of the pre-surgery blood tests, xrays, and final MRIs and CTscans, but at least the beginning of the month will be peaceful and relaxing.

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.

We women that is.
What are we obsessed with?
Losing weight, being super skinny.

When Stacey and Dustin were here the other night, Stacey and I had some alone girl time, and we talked about a ton of stuff, but one of the things that came up, that always comes up when girls get together, is our weight, and fat, being fat, thinking we are fat, and always asking each other if we know of a diet pill that works.

I did tell Stacey about the one that I was taking for most of last summer before I had to have my last surgery, and I did tell her that it worked for me, but it was kinda pricey.
62 capsules for about $50 I think it was.
I have not been able to start taking it again because I'll be having another surgery, but it did work for me.
I told her that my last bottle that I bought, still had about 40 capsules in it, and if she wanted them, she could have them, then if they worked for her, my new pain doc also sells them, so I would be able to keep getting them for her, she'd just have to give me the money before my appointment every month.
She took me up on my offer, and said she'll let me know if they help her or not.

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.

Sometimes I think I just need a really long vacation to somewhere secluded, to be all alone and not have to deal with anything or anyone.
I've even thought of being trapped on a cruise ship, locking myself in my room, only venturing out to eat, maybe taking walks on the decks late at night when other people are dancing away in the nightclubs or sleeping soundly.
I just want some major alone time, and I don't think I'm going to get any very soon.
Why?
I fade in and out of depression a lot, especially in these last few months.
I rarely sleep anymore, often lying awake all night long in my room just waiting for the alarm to go off, or laying on the couch watching mindless tv all night just to pass the time.
I need the surgery, I can't stay living like this, but I also don't want to go through another surgery again, I don't want to put my family through another one again.
It's hard, so so hard on all of us.
I don't have a date yet, but now that I know when Mark's graduation is, I want to wait until after that to have the next surgery, I don't want to miss it by being in the hospital, and I also don't want to miss it because I just got home from the hospital, and I also don't want to show up at his graduation in that terrible halo brace.
I think I'm going to call my surgeon on Monday morning and request that we do it in June.
That way I won't miss his graduation or have to go to it that brace, plus, both teens will be out of school for the year, they won't miss any school, they won't be in school worried about me either.
I think that's the best plan for all of us who have to deal with this.
But it also means another month or so like this, with my head stuck down, with not being able to eat unless other people are home because of the risks of choking, and being in so much pain.
But it really is the best plan I think, even if it means having to wait a bit longer.

Sorry, I just don't see it.
I logged into Myspace a couple days ago, and had 3 messages from 3 different guys.
Each one of them said I reminded them of Meg Ryan.
I really don't see the resemblance at all.
Here's one of the messages;
"Has anyone ever told you that you look similar to Meg Ryan , who I think is they sexiest woman alive ... I had just ran across the picture of yours and thought I would let you know."

The picture of me is the exact picture I use as my main profile pic on Myspace, so that is the one they are seeing to make the comments.
I honestly do not think I look like her.
At all.
Don't get me wrong, I think Meg Ryan is beautiful in these pics, not so much anymore since she had all that plastic surgery and has major fish lips now, but I just don't see how people can think I look like her.

I'll take it as the compliment it was intended as, but I still don't see it.

I was clicking around and saw an ad for a product called Stemulite.
So I clicked on it, read the site, watched the video and read some of the testimonials, and this may be what I need.
As most of my readers know, I rarely sleep at all, I'm lucky if I get an hour or two a night every single day of the week, and then for like one night a month, I will actually get about 6-8 hours of sleep.
I am always tired, I can't even lose any weight, and I'm sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.
I know that my immune system is shot from all of the surgeries and medications I take, but also because my body is not getting enough restorative rest.
Without sleep, your body cannot repair itself.
Stemulite and the people who have used it, say that within a few days of taking it, they are getting a full nights sleep, they wake up feeling better, they have more energy, and they are able to do more and work out longer and harder.
This may be what I need because I've tried all of the over the counter sleep aids, I've even taken prescription sleep aids, and nothing has helped.
This product says that it's all natural, and the people who have taken it seem to love it.
I may have to try this at some point.
It couldn't hurt, I've tried so many products and they haven't worked.

Mindy didn't want to come over when her husband Chris comes to take a look at the AC tonight because she has been sick, and she doesn't want me to catch it.
I told her not to worry about it because if I tried to avoid people who are sick, I'd never be able to leave my house, or I'd have to live in a bubble.

My immune system is just shot, surgeries, medications, it's just wrecked, there's not much I can do about it.
I mean, I'd probably have to take pills the size of horse supplements for antibiotics, or some sort of antioxidant or something like that, to try and help my immune system fight off catching stuff or killing an infection when I get them.
I catch everything, nothing I can do, and I'm not going to spend my life avoiding people in order to try and avoid getting sick.
If I get sick, I get sick.
Heck, i'm sick like every other week any way.

There are times that I feel like I should be taking more nutritional health supplements, and trying even harder to lose weight even though exercise is totally out of the question for me right now.
Why?
Because shopping for clothes is a total nightmare for me.

Someone had linked to some plus size fashion website this morning on Twitter, and while I hate that term "plus size", I guess that's the term that fits my size.
I'm not huge or obese by any means, I run between a size 14 and 16, but that's considered plus sized, so those are the kinds of clothes I have to shop for.
Did you know that even size 12 is considered plus sized?

So anyway, I click on the link, (not going to link it, just search for plus size women's clothing, and you'll find many sites like this one) and everything I see is either the women in huge blowy dresses, or covered up in duster jackets, and bathing suits called swim-dresses, because they are made with a whole lot of material.
All of the tops and blouses, are also tons of material and huge, wild, and flowery bold prints, nothing has any shape to it at all, it's like they took a big piece of material, cut it a bit, made arm holes, and a head hole, called it a billowy-sleeve tunic, or a ruffled tunic, or a Georgette tunic, slapped on a big price tag, (gotta make up for all of the fabric used to make it so "billowy") and set it out for sale.

All of the clothes are the same way, dresses, sweaters, evening and formal wear, even the lingerie is big, has no shape to it, huge prints that draw even more attention to the amount of fabric you have on your body, and sorry, it's all just hideously ugly.
I mean, just look at this blouse, it's called a "boho blouse", the site I found it on says it's a top seller.
Are women really buying and wearing this hideous thing?!















Every single plus sized blouse I found was like that one, huge, no shape, big and bold prints, just ugly in my opinion.
People wonder why I am always wearing black, it's because it goes with everything, for one, you can dress it up or down simply by adding a few pieces of jewelry and doing your hair and makeup, and because anything else in my size looks like that blouse above!
I can't stand those prints, I can't stand those loud colors and patterns, they are just awful.
The sad thing is that women who are plus sized don't really have a whole lot of options when it comes to clothes.
You either have to hunt around for all solid colors, or you end up with stuff like that, and I've seen so many women in them, and I have to look away.
Really beautiful women in really ugly clothing because there's no options for us.
We need shirts with some shape, just a bit of color, some nicer patterns and prints, not stuff like that, and we don't need yards and yards of fabric.

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 woke up this morning at 5:45am, sent the teens to school, and then went back to sleep until my alarm went off at 10am.
I try to give myself as much sleep as I can because I usually am not sleeping.
Well something happened during going back to sleep and waking up again.
I don't know if it was a bad dream or what, but when I woke up, I didn't know what day it was, where I was, what time it was, nothing.
I was completely lost in my own house.
I didn't recognize anything at all, I didn't feel like I was in my home, I called out, no one answered, I started yelling because I didn't know where I was or time, or day, and then suddenly, like a light switch being hit, I knew all of the answers.
It was very weird.
Maybe I was still sorta sleeping or dreaming, not sure, but it scared me that I didn't know anything.

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 went to my surgeon appointment this afternoon, I didn't see my surgeon, he was in surgery, so I saw one of the other surgical team members.
She went over my CT Scan results, text and the films, and we talked about everything, what the plan is, what they will do, what they can do, and what may happen.

The plan is to completely remove the vertebrae at C7, you can see where that is on this chart, and then after removing that vertebrae, they would pull C6 down to meet up with T1, or pull T1 up to meet up with C6, whatever.
In order to do this, all of the rods that are currently installed from C1 to T3, would need to be taken out, they would leave all of the screws in place because they will need those later to attach new rods again.
By removing that vertebrae, it would straighten my neck and head out.
My head isn't totally collapsed down on it's own, it's actually the fault of C7, that my head is facing down.
Right at C7, my spine starts curving forward, and so my head looks tilted down, but it's actually my whole neck they said.
Yes, C1 and C2, are congenitally fused from birth, there is no disc between them at all, and they did bend forward a bit, but it is C7 that is causing the forward bending and downward tilt.

Once they remove C7, pull up T1 to meet up with C6, they will decide if they need to fuse me all of the way up to the base of my skull, the occipital bone,  which would prevent any movement at all, forever.
I would never turn my head left or right, or up and down, ever again.
That is something I have come to terms with, and I am ok with it because right now, looking down all of the time, is very depressing, and it actually causes dizzy spells, I lose my balance a lot too.
It is not a definite that they will have to do that, so until it actually happens, I am not going to worry about it.

Because of the new CT films, they have a much better look at what's going on, they know better now what they are facing, and what will more than likely happen.
Because of the new films and what they can see, the risk percentages have come way, way down, and the trach tube, which I have been in an almost panic over, dwelling on it constantly, if they have to do it at all, it would NOT be in for 3-4 months at all.
It would only be in for about 2 weeks total, and it would only be put in if during surgery, my neck muscles started tightening up on the breathing tube (intubation tube used during surgery to keep you breathing)  causing the tube to get squished which would prevent me from breathing, so a trach would have to be put in below my vocal cords so I would be able to talk by covering the hole on the trach tube.
But again, it would only be in for about 2 weeks, just long enough for my neck muscles to heal up and then they would remove it, stitch me all back up, and I'd be all good to go breathing through mouth and nose again.

As for the feeding tube, it also depends on what happens with the intubation tube during surgery, so that's another wait and see, but if it does happen, and depending on what they had to do, either a feeding tube would be placed down through my nose for a short period of time.
If it ends up being needed for a longer period of time, they would do a stomach feeding tube.

We don't have a specific date yet, we are looking at a couple of dates, but my surgeon will decide on the final date.
So far, the possible dates are April 10th, or April 24th, or wait until sometime in May.
He may want to wait until May, give me just a little bit more time to heal up a bit more, but they said that so far, my bones are fusing really, really good.
That's probably due to the insane amount of calcium I take every single day.
Normal people take 1 calcium tablet per day, I take a Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc tablet 4 times per day to help with new bone growth and fusion.
I don't recommend this amount, nor even half of it, unless you enjoy being really gassy.
Ha ha
Seriously though, all of that calcium has a gassy side effect, so you're either constantly burping, or constantly farting.

I will definitely be in a halo brace for 3-4 months, and they have told me this will probably be the most frustrating part of my recovery.
It is screwed into your skull, 2 in front, 2 in back, and as you can see from those images, a big contraption attached to me 24/7 for the entire length of time he decides I need to wear it.
Sleeping, eating, everything, will be extremely difficult, and feel like living in a prison, so a lot of patients get very depressed within a few weeks of living with it, but they have medications that can help with the anxiety and panic attacks that come from feeling all closed in and trapped.
It's screwed into your skull, attached to your shoulders and chest, there's zero chance for any type of movement at all, so it becomes a lot for people to mentally handle.
I really don't know how well I'll deal with it.
I hated wearing the turtle shell brace on my body after my first A/P spine fusion in 2006, and I hated the neck brace from this past surgery in September 2008, so this big thing attached to my skull with no way of ever taking it off myself to give myself a break from it for even an hour, may drive me slightly insane.
I just won't know until it's on me and I'm at home away from the morphine drip machines that numb out any feelings and thoughts, having to take oral medications, or however they will have to do it if I end up with a feeding tube.

Tomorrow, I have to call my heart doctor, get an appointment to have him clear me for surgery, so another cardiac stress test, and then my primary care physician to have her clear me as well.
I'm setting these appointments up ASAP so that my primary care doc can't try to cancel my surgery at the last minute like she did in September.
 
So anyway, that's where I'm at, we have a plan but no definite date yet.
I have stuff to take care of to get the surgery ball rolling, and take care of everything around my home, for my sons, all of the same stuff I always do for every surgery.

Below is an interesting CT Scan image.
This is me, it was taken on 3-19-2009, and it's a front view of me from the chest all the way up to the top of my skull.
I know it looks like it's from behind because the rods and screws appear to be in the front, but it's not, it is a face front view, but the rods and screws stand out like crazy.
This shows you just how high up the fusion goes.
C1 is basically at nose level, and all of that metal goes all of the way down to my tailbone.
Kinda freaky looking eh?
Click it for biggie size to really see how freaky it is.

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.

After years of my body being crooked, like the majority of my life, I adjusted to how I saw things.
When your spine sets your head slightly off center, your vision adjust to that position.
Then I had the first surgery in 2006, my line of sight corrected itself, my head was now placed in the center of my body, so it took about 6 months or so before my vision adjusted to the correct line of sight.

I had the second surgery in September, my head dropped down, so now my line of sight is off again, and at times it's ok, I have adjusted for the most part, but if I do a lot of walking, standing, bending, my line of sight goes off center, and I end up dizzy, my vision is off, and there have been a few times I've actually gotten nauseous from not being "right".

I'm having one of those times right now.
I didn't think I overdid it today, but apparently I did, because I am dizzy, my vision is way off, it's tilted to the left, so my line of sight is off to the left and sort of spinning, and I'm having trouble correcting it.
If I close my eyes, it actually gets worse, look down, I get dizzy and nauseous, look right, my visions starts spinning wildly, I can't get it to adjust tonight.
 

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.

Apricot trees.
Heh.
I made a rhyme.

I thought I was back on the mend yesterday, but when I woke up this morning, my hip and knees were still killing me, I had a migraine to boot, my brain was like in "off" mode too.
I couldn't think a good decent thought for more than 2 minutes, so I spent the day watching stupid stuff on tv, reading Twitter, and just generally annoyed with myself.
I have work to do, I'm letting people down.
I'm letting myself down, and that annoys the crap outta me.

I hate when I get like this, when I can't focus, when I can't think, when I can't do what I am supposed to do.
I'm already in a funk, and then not doing everything that I need to do, puts me in a deeper funk, I start dwelling on it, and then that's all I can think about when I am thinking about any 1 subject for more than 2 minutes.
Like right now.
I've had all day to do work, I've had all day to reply to emails, but no, I couldn't do any of it, so now I'm sitting here just aggravated with myself and hungry.
I just want to eat and eat and eat, and nothing is satisfying me at all.
Why?
Because emotionally I'm not satisfied.
I know this about myself.
I know that when I am an emotional mess, I want to over eat, I want to eat sweets like cake, ice cream, cookies, but once I have it, it doesn't taste right, and I try finding something else to fill the void.
But it's a void that cannot be filled.

My brain is a total mess lately, and I know what's causing it.
I know that the things my surgeon said to me on the last visit have entered my head and never left it.
Halo brace, 3-4 months.
Possible paralysis.
Possible trach tube for 3-4 months.
Not eating, not breathing through nose or mouth, no speaking.
No speaking.
It is weighing so heavily on my mind, no speaking at all, no speaking to my sons for several months.

That thought consumes me day and night, I'm drowning in it.
I know he told me the possibilities so I could be prepared, but I am drowning in those possibilities, those thoughts, those what-ifs.
It swallows me from the moment I wake, when I do finally sleep for any amount of time, until I sleep again, which is like non-existent these days, because those thoughts are just there, they aren't going away.
I lay awake in my bed listening to music, trying to drown out the thoughts, and they power out the music, I picture myself with that trach tube in my throat, not speaking to my sons, not telling them daily that I love them, not asking them how their day was, not helping them with whatever, not answering what's for dinner, not telling them to stop arguing, and so many more stupid mommy things that I say to them on a daily basis.
I don't see the surgeon until the 25th, I don't know the surgical plan until then, I don't have any more percentages of things that could go right and wrong, and so I drown in the information I do know and I can't let it go.

Just make it go away, I want it to go away.
I want to be empty-headed, upbeat, happy,  and "ok", but instead, I am consumed, and drowning, and letting myself and others around me down with every passing day.

If any of my doctors asked me to sign a contract to not post any reviews about them anywhere online, I don't know if I'd want to sign it.

There are new radical changes in the doctor patient relationship.

While more and more people use the internet to find a doctor, they are also reading patient reviews of that doctor.

There are now dozens of websites with comments on more than 200,000 physicians across the country.

But some doctors are sick of this, saying the sources are often anonymous - and they are unreliable.

Some are going so far as to insist their patients sign a contract that they will not post any reviews online.

I love my doctors, I think they are great, I finally have a pain management doctor who understands my situation, isn't making me take crazy medicines like weekly testosterone injections like the last guy did, he doesn't freak out over the high white cell count or the high blood pressure like the last one did either, and he is the doctor who found the thing wrong with my neck, the vertebrae closing in on my spinal cord killing me, he saved my life.
And my surgeon, he continues to be one of the most caring and compassionate doctors I've ever been a patient of, and I've seen literally over 2 dozen different doctors and surgeons in the last 10 years before finding him.

If they asked me to sign a contract to not talk about them online, I'd have to ask why because I have nothing but glowing praise for them.
I understand that others may not and that's why some doctors are now wanting these contracts, but wouldn't a doctor want a patient like me who has nothing but good to say about them on a possible forum where others may be badmouthing them?
I'd sign it if I had to choose between signing it and being allowed to see them anymore, but I don't think it's right that doctors may be forcing patients do sign these kinds of contracts.

I have not been around much because on Wednesday afternoon, I slipped on the floor in the kitchen, came down hard on my knee, and pulled something in my back.
It is really painful, my lower back is like on fire.
I am trying to sit up more, walk more, but it really hurts.
I am hoping that rest, meds, and heating pad are working, and I'll be back up soon.

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.  

Here it is, a little after 4am on Saturday morning, and I'm still wide awake.
I honestly haven't slept much even though I was completely worn out from doing too much on Wednesday, and then feeling like I came down with something.
But I think I know what it is that is making me feel like complete crud, the cat urine.
Carmine's been peeing repeatedly on the carpet under my bed, it's just been soaking in, marinating if you will, and stinking like ammonia.
Ammonia can make you feel sick, it can clog up your nose, make you cough and gag, and yup, that's how I've been feeling for a few days.
I'll be so glad when the teens and I rip out the carpet in there today.

Here's the plan for today.
Wake up.
Eat something for breakfast.
Take a walk to CVS to get Sebastian his new migraine meds.
Come home and start tackling the bedroom carpet. To do this, the teens and I will need to dig out all of the boxes of stuff I have under the bed, salvage anything that can be saved if it's not all completely soaked in cat urine, and throw away anything that can't be saved.
Take off all my bedding and start the washer.
Take off and stand up the mattress and box spring up against the wall/closet doors.
Stand up the frame against the wall/closet doors too.
Move the alarm clock. table lamp, and filing cabinet/nightstand.
Move the bed risers to the tub to be washed in bleach.
Get the box cutter and garbage bags.
Start cutting away the carpet and padding underneath.
Bag it all up and throw it out in the trash cans.
Get a bucket of hot water with a combo of bleach and Clorox Green all purpose cleaner.
Scrub the bedroom floor.
Scrub it again.
Scrub it again.
Wash the floor 1 last time with the bleach/green cleaner combo, then let dry.
Then wash down the floor with Urine Gone and Pee Gone.
Let dry and do it again.
Re-wash bathroom and kitchen floors with the combo of Urine Gone and Pee gone, as well as Mark and Sebastian's bedroom floors after they clean all of the junk out from under their beds, throw away anything that may have been peed on, clean all of the floors thoroughly with the combo cleaners and let dry.
After all the floors are dry, set my bed back up.

The bathroom needs a deep clean again too after our mini-flood this past weekend.
I need to get in there and scrub the floor, the toilet, the tub, and the sink.
I think I'm going to have to replace the bathroom sink faucet really soon.
The "hot" knob, is starting to have to be turned really, really far to get it to shut off.
This is a sign that the threads are wearing down, and if I don't replace it soon, we're going to have a big problem.
I'm wishing I could afford to get a nice new Hansgrohe faucet set, but may have to settle for the clearance bin at the local hardware store.
Yes, I know, the landlord should replace it at his cost, but if I just go ahead and do it, don't bother him, he deducts it from the rent if I give him the receipt.
I like to not bother him with stuff I can do myself, he's a sheriff, a father of two young kids, his weekends are important to him, plus, he's been spending almost every weekend for the last 6 months trying to repair the damage my old duplex neighbors did so he can rent it out again.
Anyway, this is the faucet that is in there right now, and I'm pretty sure by looking at it, that it's the exact same faucet that they installed when they built the house in like 1979.
You can click it for bigger if you really want to see how bad it is.



















Oooh! I found a whole bunch of them on sale!
W00t!
I like this one, and this one, and this one too!
Those prices aren't too bad at all!
For some reason, I thought they were going to be crazy high prices, I've seen faucets before that cost well over $200, and there's no way I'd spend that much on a faucet in an apartment that I rent.
Now if I owned my own home, yeah sure, but not a rental.

Oh gosh!
I started writing this post at 4:10am, and it's now 5:02am!
I got so busy looking at all of the bathroom sink faucets, I completely lost track of time hahahah!

I have been going through a rough patch these last few weeks, I'm stressed out and worried about the upcoming surgery whenever that will be, I had lost trust and faith in people due to some nasty people with nothing better to do than harass me online.
I'm no stranger that, but it's still never fun to deal with.
I've been tired but not sleeping, then sleeping when I should have been awake, having blood pressure issues, and just all kinds of stuff.

I lashed out at everyone around me, my kids, friends in the off line world, friends in the online world, I lashed out on the forums for my job.
I blew up, just absolutely exploded on everyone around me, I had reached my breaking point and exploded.
I felt terrible after I had done it, I deleted the thread on the work forums, I apologized to both my friends online and off, and have been trying to find other ways to deal with all of the issues that have come up in my life recently.
I've been doing a lot of laying down and listening to music, playing games, watching movies.
Maybe those things aren't exactly the way to deal with things, but they take my mind off of everything.

And then just when I needed to know I was cared about, that everything I do IS noticed, that people really do want me to be ok, people showed me that I was.
 
I told you how some friends all got together and sent me the NuWave Pro Oven that I had been wanting to get so that the teens won't have to eat junk food, and take-out or delivery food, while I recover from that upcoming surgery, and it really does rock, it's freaking awesome.
And then about 10 minutes ago, the FedEx guy knocked on the door.
Mark got up and answered it because I was laying down on the couch with 3 of the 4 kitties, (another stress reliever for me) and it was just an envelope.
The sent from address was from Publix, my local grocery store.
Inside, I found 3 gift cards for $100 each, but no note, no sent from name or address.
I laid there on the couch asking out loud, "Who sent these?!"
I couldn't figure out who sent them, I laid there racking my brain as to who could have sent them, and then I remembered an email I received earlier today in reply to 1 I sent out this morning, and this was written at the end of it;
       "Be on the lookout for something we sent over also."
So I *think* I know who sent it, I did email them, no reply yet*, but it has to be them.
They know who they are, so thank you, it helps me so so much, you don't even know.
Now I can go ahead and start stocking up on any meats that are on sale and stick them in the freezer so that the teens can cook for themselves with the NuWave oven, as well as get regular groceries too.
Money and food is always a source of stress in my life.
I have so many doctor's appointments to pay for, medicines that aren't covered by my insurance to pay for, and transportation to all of those appointments, that money left over for food is tricky.
I don't have a car and no license either, (Thanks State of Florida!) so getting everywhere I have to go is either by cab or friend with helping to pay for gas.
I swear, money issues is one of the things that keeps me awake at night.

So yeah, just when I needed it, just when I needed to know that people do care, that I don't have to lose all my faith in people for the stupid things other people do, people showed me that they do care, that I am not dealing with all of this stuff alone.

By the time I finished typing this, the people who sent the gift cards responded, it was them.
Thank you guys and staff, it is so very much appreciated.
 

I got sick this morning around 10:30am, nausea and dry heaves because I hadn't eaten anything at all, and so I was standing over the porcelain god dry heaving my guts out for like 5 minutes.
Because of the way my head is stuck, I have serious issues with being sick, I choke on my own vomit, but like I said, I hadn't eaten anything, so it was just dry heaves.

But I was standing there hovering over the bowl, and the blood was rushing to my head, and my chest started to feel like it was on fire.
When I finally stopped, I stood up and looked in the mirror, my entire face was red, my eyes were red and watery, and my chest still felt like it was on fire.
I was wicked dizzy and suddenly exhausted.
I pulled the neck of my shirt down to take a look at my chest, and it was like all the little veins and arteries had like exploded in my chest.
It was all red, splotchy, little dots everywhere, and I was literally passing out.

I made it to the couch, managed to get the blanket on me, and then I just fell asleep.
I didn't wake up till the teens came home at 2:38pm, and I told them that I just needed to sleep.
I didn't wake up again till a little after 4pm, Oprah was on, that's how I knew what time it was.
But I slept the entire day, I was just absolutely drained, had no energy at all.
My chest is all clear now, same as my face, but I don't know why that happened to begin with.
I've been taking my blood pressure meds every day like I'm supposed to, but I have a feeling that whatever it was that happened, happened because of my blood pressure and heart issues.
I need to get it looked at and taken care of so that it doesn't interfere with my next surgery.
I don't want to go through that whole no surgical clearance mess again.

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 hope that when I go back to see my surgeon on the 25th of March, that he's picked a date for the revision surgery, and that it's as soon as possible.

I know I've been complaining a lot lately, posting about all of the things that are going on with me, my health, the pain I'm always in, the stress of all of my health problems, and the things that people have said about me.
I know it's all too much, I'm sure that people are sick of reading about it all, I'm sick of posting about it all, I'm sick of thinking about it all, sick of dealing with all.
That's my biggest problem, having to think and deal with it all.

I can't do it anymore, I'm about ready to explode.
I just want to scream, I want to rage and lash out at everyone, I'm so so sick of all of it.
I've lost my faith and trust in people, even people I've known for a long time.
I'm feeling anxious and stressed out, almost becoming paranoid, I don't know who to trust anymore.
I feel like I'm just steps away from a complete mental breakdown.
I'm not sleeping, I'm barely eating, and when I do eat, it's just small bits of junk food, sugary things, I'm comfort eating and I hate doing that because it's so bad for me and my health, but I don't really know how to cope with all of it anymore.

I have so much going on, so many things to think about, worry about, make decisions that will affect my son's lives again in a big way, and I don't think I can do that to them again.
I don't want to put them through it again, but I can't live like this anymore.
I'm not ok, I'm just not ok.
And I feel like I can't talk to the usual "friends" I would normally talk to because I don't feel like I can trust them anymore.
I'm falling apart and have no one I can talk to, I don't trust anyone anymore and I hate that!
I just want to go away, just get away, all by myself, or just take a wicked long break, but I can't.
I can't afford to take a break, I have to stay and keep working, and working, and dealing with all of it all of the time.
I have bills to pay, doctors to pay for, tests and medicine.
I work just to pay for doctors and medicine, just so I can get by, so I can try and get better, but every minute of every day that I'm sitting here working and having to deal with everything and everyone, I hate it more and more, and I am starting to feel hatred welling up inside of me.
Hate for everything and everyone.
I'm falling apart and I can't stop it from happening.
I've tried, I'm still trying, but 1 minute I'm sitting here getting angry, and the next minute I'm bawling my eyes out over it all, because I can't trust anyone, can't talk to anyone, and I can't stop it, I have to just keep going, just keep doing what I have to do to take care of my sons and work so I can pay bills and doctors.
I'm so tired of everything and everyone, and I can't stop, I can't take a break, I can't not keep going no matter how badly I want to, and the anger, hate, fear, worry, stress and tears, just keep piling up inside of me and there's nothing I can do.
Nothing I can do about any of it but hope that this all passes, hope that somehow I get through it all.
I hate you, I really truly hate you, and I hate that I hate you, and I hate feeling like this.
It's so ugly, it's ugly and nasty, and I don't like myself for feeling like this at all.

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.

I went for my first walk this morning without my neck brace.
It was really difficult because I can't lift my head up, but interesting because when I was wearing the neck brace, it was like wearing a huge flashing piece of digital signage that told car drivers to give me some walking room, slow down, don't expect me to jump in the ditch to avoid being hit by a car.

We don't have sidewalks on my street, so yeah, it can be dangerous going for a walk, and this morning I regretted not wearing the neck brace and came back as quickly as possible.
Drivers did not give me any walking room, I could barely see where i was going, barely see oncoming traffic, so trying to get out of the way of jerky drivers was kind of scary.

I came back as quick as I could get here, and have decided that even though my surgeon told me I could stop wearing the neck brace all of the time, that when i go for walks, I'll wear it.
It kept drivers from trying to run me down.

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 was asked to try out a new hair removal product, and because of all my spine issues, not being able to bend, I said sure, why not!
I have such a difficult time shaving my legs due to my spine fusion surgeries, so I'm always on the lookout for new, easy to use, and good working hair removal products.

When the package showed up last week and I opened it, I had to laugh, it was a product that my teens and I laugh uncontrollably over every time we see the commercial for it.

In the big padded envelope was the product Smooth Away Hair Removal  with 2 Applicators + 24 Pads + Hair Inhibitor Moisturizer to use after your remove the hair.

Why do the teens and I laugh every time we see the commercial?
Because it's high grade sandpaper.
The Smooth Away pads are "covered with superfine crystals that buff away unwanted hair leaving your skin so soft and incredibly smooth."

Years ago, like when I was about 17, maybe 18, there was another product exactly like this put out by Sally Hansen, and I bought it to try it out.
I hated shaving because I was always nicking myself, I hadn't mastered the technique yet, and I lived in Maine where if you took a shower longer than 5 minutes in the winter, you would run out of hot water, and as most women know, cold water closes your pores, which pretty much makes sure that trying to shave your legs would be difficult.
The pores would be closed, my legs would be covered in goosebumps from the icy cold water, and so yeah, I'd nick my legs to death.

But when my Dad saw my purchase of the Sally Hansen product, he giggled, and said to me, "If you had told me you were going to buy some sandpaper to get rid of your leg hairs, I could have saved you some money. I have a whole box of sandpaper in the basement in all grades, I'm sure I've got one just like this down there, could have saved you your money."
Then he started laughing again.

But I had agreed to try out the Smooth Away and do a review of it, and so, I have tried it out.
I got it last week, and wanted to try it out for a whole week to be able to do a proper review of both the Smooth Away and the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer that came with it.
The Smooth Away does work, it really does, but it takes a bit of time to do it, much longer than shaving or waxing, much much longer than using Veet, but it does indeed work.

You take the handled buffing pad, and then remove the sticky backing from one of the Smooth Away pads, and stick it to the buffing pad.
Place about 3-4 fingers inside the handle, and start rubbing in a circular motion on the areas that you want to remove the hair from.
You have to rub in small circles several times in 1 area to remove the hair, so it does take a bit of time.
If you want to use this, I would suggest doing it the night before you need to be hair free, and set aside about an hour to do it.
I would suggest taking a shower, do not apply any lotion to your legs or arms, (if you remove your arm hairs) and then dry your legs thoroughly before starting.
The places you want to remove the hair from must be completely dry or it won't work, and it definitely doesn't work if you have any lotion on your skin.

I also tried out the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer lotion after removing the hair, and it's very silky, it leaves your skin feeling very soft and smooth, it has a very pleasant smell, and is a terrific moisturizer.
As for helping to stop new hair growth, it does an ok job as far as I can tell.
You have to apply it every day for several days after removing the hair with the Smooth Away pads, in order for it to get into the hair follicles and work, so after every shower, I applied the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer instead of my usual moisturizer, and I would say it doesn't stop new hair from growing, but it does slow it down.
I would wait about 5-10 minutes after removing the hair before applying the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer or any other lotion, so the skin has a chance to "calm down", or you may end up with a slight redness like I did the first time I tried it out.
My skin was slightly irritated, and so adding the moisturizer right away left it looking a little red.

As for exfoliating your skin, I suppose it works, it is a high grade sandpaper, so it does remove some dead skin from the top layer leaving you feeling a bit smoother after.
As for how long it lasts before you have to do it again, about the same amount of time as shaving, maybe a little less, because it's not lifting and cutting the hairs off, it's simply sloughing them away from the surface only.
You do get stubble when it regrows, but if you use the hair growth inhibitor lotion, they take more time to grow back and slightly less course hairs grow back, but there will still be stubble.

The kit I received comes with 2 handled buffing pad applicators, 1 for large areas like legs, arms, men's backs or chests, and 1 small handled buffing pad applicator 1 for the bikini line or upper lip and chin areas, 24 crystallized buffing pads, 12 large and 12 small,  and 1-4 ounce tube of of the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer, and 1 case to hold the pads and handled pad applicators, and it retails for about $29.99
They also offer smaller kits, with just the 1 large buffing pad and 1 small buffing pad, and only 10 crystallized hair removal pads. 
 




















This product does work, but it's not a good fit for me.
I cannot bend all the way down to reach my lower leg areas with a long handled razor, so trying to bend and reach down with my hand inside of a buffing pad, was impossible for me to do.
I managed to get to just above my calves with it, and then had to use my regular razor to remove the hairs below it. 

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?!?

Ok, not all of the crazy drivers live to the north of me, but I'd say a very large majority of them do.
It always makes me glad and feel a bit safer to know that Mindy has good car insurance when she drives me to my appointments in Tampa and Safety Harbor..LOL

I know I just laughed, but seriously, when we were lost and driving all over half the state, other drivers were just all over the road, speeding, swapping lanes with no blinkers, motorcycle riders not wearing full gear, taking off from red lights doing wheelies, people zooming through traffic on the interstate only to end up exactly 1 car lentgh in front of us.
The people out there were crazy!

Honestly, I do not understand how people can live in Tampa and the surrounding big cities like St. Pete, Clearwater etc.
I love big cities, I love being in big cities at night, the lights, the sounds, the millions of things to do, but I do not like living in them.
I like going home at night to my nice and super duper quiet street that I live on.

I used to live in a fairly big city in Maine, Portland, but I was much younger, I was only 19 and 20 when I lived and worked there.
I loved the hustle and bustle, the constant movement of people at all times of day and night, but I lived in a really nice apartment building that was well insulated.
Once inside, you couldn't hear all that noise outside at all.
It was peace and quiet indoors, and I loved that part of living in the city.
I could go out and enjoy all the sights, sounds, and smells, and then go back home to my peaceful apartment and feel like I was far removed from it all.

But Tampa?
OMG, that place is insane!
I simply cannot stand how it is there trying to drive somewhere.
The traffic is just insane, and so so many cars I saw had damage to their front or back ends, or a door smashed in, and it's really no wonder the way that people drive there. 

I met with my surgeon again this afternoon, it was a hellish adventure even getting there.
I missed the exit by 2 exits, called people for directions, and ended up going all over fucking Tampa, Hillsborough, Land O' Lakes, Ocala, and several other places before finally arriving there over an hour late.
Lucky for me my doc is a super understanding guy, and that Mindy has the patience of a saint, because I was thisclose to murdering the next person who gave us fucked up directions.


The good news is that he can fix my neck issues, but no date yet.
He wants to wait 2 more months, talk with some other specialist surgeons in this field, he's sending me for another MRI, another CT scan, and back to my pain manager doc until we pick a date for the surgery.

The bad news is that fixing my neck comes with a great deal of risks.
I have to decide if I'm willing to take those risks, and it's a great deal to think about, actually, it's overwhelming.

He has only 2 possible ways of fixing me, and they both come with the exact same risks.
There is a 10% chance of total paralysis, about a 10% chance of not being able to breathe on my own for about 3 months, I would end up having a trach tube installed, that hole thing they put in people's necks.
Other patients who have had this type of revision surgery have had the breathing issue, but after a few months, they are able to breathe on their own again.
And I WILL be in a full halo brace for a minimum of 3 months.

If things go wrong, I would end up being cared for by others for either just a few months, or for the rest of my life.
This is a lot to deal with, it's a great deal to take in, absorb, so I'm really hoping that after he talks with other specialists, that they will have a better idea of how to proceed, maybe another idea with a little less risks.
He did multiple xrays, he also took some still photos and a short video with his cell phone camera, so he can show the other surgeons my range of motion issues that I'm having, just how far my head is stuck down etc.

So anyway, forgive me if I'm not super miss happy go fucking jolly for a few days, I need some time to take this all in and adjust to what I learned today, and be hopeful that he can come up with a better plan, a better way to fix me with less risks.

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