Still ugh

I thought that things were improving over the weekend. I made it through most of Saturday with no problems and while Sunday wasn’t as good, it wasn’t as bad as it had been during the week. Right up until I was kept awake for two hours on Sunday night with cramping and, er, other issues.

I had physio yesterday and, as the physio’s office is round the corner from my office, I elected to go to work afterwards. My doctor’s office is just across the road from my building so it was a good plan. Apart from spending most of the day in the bathroom and not keeping any of my food in my stomach. Argh!

The physio was disappointed that I’d been ill and thus unable to work on my core much. As working on my core tends to set off cramping, I’ve not been getting very far with my exercises. He wants me to try harder this week. Yay?

My GP left the practice in March of last year. At the time, this didn’t seem like the end of the world because I was fine, nothing was going on and the practice staff assured me that she was being replaced ASAP. My new GP starts on 7th February. Argh. So I’ve been relying on duty doctors at the walk-in clinic at my practice, which isn’t good when you’ve got active issues.

Yesterday I managed to get lucky yet again, by seeing the doctor who was leaving the practice at the end of the day and thus was reluctant to do anything that would require paperwork. Like referring me to a rheumatologist. That will be my battle when the new GP starts. The duty doc said that it will take months, maybe years, to get me a rheumy so what is a few extra weeks in the grand scheme of things?

I think she may be missing the point, but there’s nothing that I can do about it apart from trying to get an appointment with my new GP the moment he arrives.

The big reasons that I was there was to discuss my meds and discuss my stomach issues. We got nowhere on the meds, her suggestions being counter-intuitive in light of what’s causing the pain and my other issues, and she was rather less than helpful on the stomach thing.

She did, reluctantly, fill out a requisition for some lovely invasive testing because I’ve been having issues on and off for years and it may be a good idea to rule out some form of colitis. She also signed the requisition for some bloodwork to check for anaemia. I’m getting tested for a whole bunch of things, in fact, so it’s fasting bloodwork. Somehow I have to get myself to the doctor’s office tomorrow morning having consumed nothing, including my painkillers, since tonight’s supper. This may be interesting.

For my current problems, she suggested peppermint tea and a trip to the emerg if things don’t resolve in a week or so. Argh.

This morning I’ve been having flashing lights, dizziness and extreme exhaustion which I’m reasonably sure are due to my inability to process food properly for a week. I’m giving it another couple of days before I think about the ER. Just not quite sure how to drive to get my bloodwork done tomorrow if I’m still like this…

On the up side, this is a great weight loss program. I didn’t need to lose weight, but I’m going to look so sleek and slim by the time this is over. That’s got to be a bonus, right?

Ugh

Since Tuesday evening, my digestive tract has been in full-on rebellion. Argh. I made it to physio on Wednesday, went to work afterwards and then faced with the prospect of Eating Lunch made a tactical withdrawal and went home.

Yesterday I didn’t even bother with the work thing.

By the evening, I was feeling quite a lot better and rather hungry. Supper treated me well and I was feeling confident that I was better.

I decided to work from home today because I was feeling wobbly and light headed still, so being on the roads with a storm on its way in seemed like a silly idea. Breakfast seemed OK…until about an hour later when breakfast suddenly seemed like a stupid plan.

Argh.

Problem is, there is a variety of possible causes:

1) Exhaustion from sustained back pain and lack of sleep making my digestive tract partially shut down
2) My meds finally upsetting my stomach enough to cause issues
3) Exhaustion from blah blah causing an IBS flare (although I don’t think it’s ‘true’ IBS that I have)
4) An actual stomach bug

I have to admit, 4 seems the least likely. Sleeping for most of Wednesday afternoon and a lot of Thursday has made my back even more painful than normal and having to eat in order to take my meds is not making me feel happy.

I’d be able to cope with either my stomach or my back, but both together is just making life suck. Also, the not feeling safe to drive thing means that today’s planned trip to the doctor to discuss meds and insist on investigations and referrals has been postponed to Monday.

The bright spot is that the girls think it’s lovely having Mummy home all day. I just have to get through their little fluffy brains that standing on Mummy’s tummy is not a good plan.

Random Tuesday stuff

Many random things:

– BossBoss has been feeling so guilty about watching me be in pain all day that he organised an ergonomic assessment for me. The occupational therapist came in today and confirmed that my workstation is pretty much perfect (I had one of these around eighteen months ago) so there isn’t much she can recommend. BossBoss will probably still feel guilty about being powerless to help me, but hopefully this will let him know that he’s doing everything he can.

– The OT told me that it’s totally appropriate to start insisting on investigations and referrals to a rheumatologist because I should not have to be in this much pain 🙂 She also made me feel better about insisting on ruling out inflammatory arthritis because if that’s what is wrong, there are excellent drugs out there that will help me. Again, I’m far too young to just live like this. It was nice to get that validation.

– Yesterday I had monster Greek food cravings.

– I ate my healthy wholewheat pasta with lentil sauce anyway.

– I’m planning to drag some knitters to the Greek place for supper soon. I dream about the kolokithia (fried zucchini) and would mug someone for dolmades.

– In the midst of my terrible cravings, I got desperate and started Googling for some fried zucchini recipes. I found some oven baked ‘fried’ zucchini recipes and one of them is going to get tried this weekend. Before anyone asks why I can’t make them tonight, there is no zucchini in my kitchen. Argh!

– The pizza place just round the corner from my office sells fried zucchini sticks. It’s so tempting sometimes to just go over there and indulge. Canada is an evil place for introducing me to these delights.

– The water company sent me an overdue notice for a bill that I’d paid weeks ago. For once, I got mad rather than scared and immediately commenced with the telephone calls. Twenty-four hours later, they’ve found the payment and it’s all sorted out. I feel so productive! And brave! And proud of myself!

– It would be really bad to plan on experimenting with the fried zucchini and some baked shrimp toast (the closest I’ll get to prawn toast here) on Saturday, wouldn’t it? There must be a law somewhere about not eating an entire meal of appetizers. It just sounds so awesome and yummy…

– I’m trying to comfort myself with thoughts that at least I don’t crave sweet stuff. It’s savouries all the way. I suspect this is no healthier…

Not quite the snowpocalypse they were predicting

Yesterday we were supposed to get a snowpocalypse.

I left work at lunch to spend the afternoon working from home. It’s a good thing that I did because the snow and winds were just picking up as I left and by the time everyone was trying to come home, it was a nightmare out there.

Thing is, the worst of it died down much earlier than expected and it was rain-snow mix stuff at my place from around 5pm. It still made a mess, but nothing like as bad as expected.

I still lost power for the evening, though. Unfortunately before I’d cooked the pizza that was going to be my special treat last night and it was pretty late when the power came back. Damn you, NSP!

*shakes tiny fist*

This morning things are slippery and horrid outside. My driveway has been cleared a bit (not by my) but not well and the snow is coming down sufficiently to make me nervous.

I have also been banned from snow shovelling. As my back kept me awake most of the night, I’m not going to argue with that. Hopefully I can get my cousin out later today to do something about my drive. If he’s not around, I’ll see which friend can lend me their husband.

I’m very much hoping to be cleared out and have good roads tonight so that I can get to knit nigh, but if I’m not then an evening with pizza and DVDs wouldn’t be bad either.

This winter is going to involve a lot of me going nowhere if I’m banned from snow shovelling for long. Argh.

A Year in Review (knitting, fandom and RL edition)

This has been one of those years that wasn’t specifically awful and wasn’t specifically wonderful either. There were some good high points, some nasty low points and the end of the year hasn’t been what I wanted. Overall, I’m hoping that the memories of the high points will overwhelm the memories of the low points.

Some yoga ramblings

Week four of my intro to yoga course and I’m loving it more each week. It’s hard work (sweaty, needing to breathe a bit harder type of hard) but also very relaxing and I come out of the class feeling great. I’m already starting to notice that I’ve got a tiny bit more strength in some areas (particularly my arms and shoulders) and it seems that my core strength wasn’t as bad as I’ve always thought.

Seems like the exercises that the physios gave did some good, at least 😀

It helps that my teacher is really great, encouraging us all and making the class fun. I’m a bit sad that she doesn’t teach the next class level, although she’s the studio owner so I’m sure that everyone who works there will be up to her standards of being awesome.

EDS and asthma

I really need to register at PubMed so that I can read some of the articles and journal entries because there is a fair bit of interesting research being done on the various forms of EDS. This one had me particularly interested:

Asthma and airways collapse in two heritable disorders of connective tissue.

From the abstract, it appears that people with EDS III and HMS have a much higher incidence of respiratory disorders such as asthma. No big surprise to me – I think that even the NHS leaflet now says something along those lines.

The interesting bit (and the reason that I want to read the full article) is the hint that EDS-ers also have a higher than normal lung volume despite the resipiratory issues. And reduced exercise tolerance.

My peak flow results (when my asthma is OK) always boggles my doctors because it’s so high. Nearly double my mother’s, in fact. This also makes it hard for them to grasp the severity of an attack because I’ll be choking and struggling to breathe with peak flow results that aren’t as low as many asthma patients at that stage. The ER doc who saw me in my big, scary attack a few years ago only started to get concerned and reach for the steroids and nebuliser when mum told him (I couldn’t talk anymore) what my ‘normal’ results are. Two nebulisers and a big dose of prednisone later…

I was only just starting to get back to what my mother’s ‘normal’ peak flow is. Heh.

More than half my attacks have been triggered by exercise. The rest happened when I had viral illnesses and when my breathing gets bad, I know that I’m probably coming down with something. Unless there has been a trastic weather change, which is my other trigger.

It’s always been difficult to track some of this because my asthma (and my mum’s) behaves quite differently from my sister’s and my paternal cousins’. They had asthma as children, grew out of it in their teens and had environmental triggers in addition to the traditional viral stuff. I grew into mine as a teenager, have no environmental triggers (apart from barometric pressure) and used to need to take my inhalers before I did any exercise. Now I just try to avoid the forms of exercise that my lungs dislike 🙂 My mum’s history is similar.

If my high lung volume is related to the EDS then my asthma and its odd behaviour would finally make sense – I really want to read that article. And also the one on hand and wrist involvement with EDS. And the one discussing whether EDS-ers must always have X-rays to disagnose dislocations (hello radiation poisoning). And maybe the one discusing obstetric complications for Hypermobile EDS.  But mostly this asthma one so that if I have another hospitalising attack  I can explain to the ER doc why my peak flow is so high and they can be aware of it the next time they see another patient like me. Or at least, I’ll explain when I can breathe enough to actually talk to someone.

Sometimes I wonder whether EDS-ers should have medic-alert bracelets, then I decide that we have so many potential oddities that it would take the ER docs longer to read the info than to treat us.

Ooh, decisions

I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on my tunic, and it isn’t from the train 🙂 Only three more inches of moss stitch and then I do the shoulder shaping and bind off. Then it’s some garter edging, seaming and a ribbed belt. This is one of the exciting bits in knitting: the bit where I’m nearly there and I have all this new energy for the project because I can see the goal-post getting closer by the moment. In fact, there is good reason to think that I could have a cute new tunic to wear within the next couple of weeks. Yay!

The lace shawl is also getting there: 12 rows (four of them plain knit) and then bind off and block. It should be comfortably ready for it’s intended recipient.

And then, for the first time in a long time, there will be no WIPs. I am ignoring the second sock syndrome on my Fountain Foxgloves. They will get finished (one day).

So I’ll have to make a decision: what to cast on next?]

I have a skein of Ranco Multy that had been bought with the intention of socks but the Ravelry comments makes me leary of that idea. But I have seen a nice, simple lacy stole that would be perfectn and I don’t mind having to be careful in my washing of a lacy stole.

I want to knit up my KnitPicks Felici into a pair of amazingly soft socks.

There is my sister’s replacement cardigan in DK Rowan Cashsoft. I love the yarn and the pattern was a simple, fun knit.

I want to make my Trillium in Rowan Fine Milk Cotton, which will be pretty but has a lacy body so may be a little complex for TV knitting. I’d need to have a second, simple project on the go for knit night and relaxing TV nights during those sections.

Where to start?

I think that the socks and the stole will be next, due to the immediate gratification side of a simple, fast knit. The cardigan and the sweater are bigger projects and not so transportable. Either the socks or the stole will be going to Denver with me.

The big debate is whether I get my sister’s cardigan out of the way first, leaving me free to knit selfishly for the rest of the year, or gratify my want for a pretty summery sweater and still have my sister’s cardigan hanging over me. Hmmm….

Maybe I’ll defer that decision until I actually get to it!

In other news, I am shattered beyond belief and being woken up by Kate in the middle of the night scratching at my door didn’t improve matters. I’ve got a round-trip of 200km tomorrow evening to attend a graduation ceremony so I suspect that a lot of coffee will need to be consumed during the journey. Unless I can bribe my aunt to drive!

The facilities guy came around and got my fancy new mouse/wrist-rest thingy to fit onto my keyboard tray (turns out the wrist-rest on the tray is detachable with a screwdriver) so I’m now test driving it. So far, I’m favourable impressed particularly as it puts the cursor controls right where my hands fall naturally on the keyboard. I’ll try to sneak the camera in for a photo soon 🙂

Spoke to Best Friend in America and she’ll be picking me up from the airport in Denver – phew! So that makes things a little easier, especially as I just realised that I have her address at her old apartment but not her new one. Must rectify that! She sounds a little frazzled about all the wedding plans – it’s turned into a full-time job now, apparently – which is why a weekend in Belize with no ability to call or email anyone is apparently exactly what she needs! I suspect that when she gets back on Sunday, she’ll be even more frazzled.

I’m really looking forward to seeing her and being there on the biggest day of her life.

Other than that, I am quite boring and looking forward to catching up on my sleep at the weekend. I’ve got a few small bits to do, but mostly the weekend will be about recuperating.

So, about that shoulder

Saw my GP today about my stupid shoulder. She thinks that I dislocated the scapula both times (I was right!) and is sending me for an X-ray to see whether there is anything going on there. We’ll see where we go from there – she wanted to investigate properly before referring me anywhere to get a clear picture of what’s happening first. The X-ray will get sent on to Dr. O the rheumy as well to keep her in the loop.

I’m starting to feel better about Dr. M.

The pain on breathing had her concerned due so she listened to my chest and then needed reassurance that my heart is fine and the last echo proved it despite my murmur. She concurs with me that the pain is coming from muscle damage due to the dislocations.

The nice part was that she remembered that I have EDS and felt that investigations were still definitely needed. Also she respected that I know what I’m talking about when I say the pain was pretty darned bad. Er, I forgot to get anything for the pain but then I do feel weird about about asking for ‘just in case’ meds. She even asked me what I normally do for dislocations and trusted me that this was not a regular shoulder dislocation. Hooray!

So, overall it was a positive visit and I’ll be going over to the hospital shortly to queue for my X-ray. Then we’ll see what we want to do. It’s possible that I’ll be getting an early appointment with Dr. O although Dr. M was also discussing getting me an assessment with sports medicine to see whether there’s anything they can do to strengthen that shoulder. Bridges to cross later and all that.

Hey, ho, it’s off to the hospital for me. My first X-ray of the year – I made it all the way to April this time!

Sleep now?

I picked up a copy of the season opener for Lewis and watched it last night. It’s really quite good, isn’t it? Why did no one tell me that it’s quite good?

Also, House was rather awesome 🙂

Note to self: substituting a fair bit of the cheddar for stilton in cauliflower cheese is a very good idea. Nom. However, about half the quantity of cauliflower cheese would have been better. How did it multiply? I’m sure I used the same quantities of everything that I normally do, and yet I had about double the normal amount. It was quite excellent but, er, rather more filling than it should have been and I’m not sure how good re-heated cauliflower cheese would have been.

Also, please to be remembering that preparing food with sore shoulder is not easy.

Tonight’s veggie curry has been replaced with beef stroganoff because I had some in the freezer and thus it simply requires reheating, a spoonful of sour cream added and some noodles cooked. Yes, lazy, but I’m not feeling like spending time cooking today 🙂

And now I’m going to whine for a while…