just a scratch

My last thought before waking up was wondering if I had died because everything was going so perfectly right that I couldn't imagine any other reason. It was one of those mall/church/lots of people dreams that feel like I'm in between lives or something. Those are really rare dreams.

click for a runner's story

Pretty sure my latest foot problem is extensor tendonitis, and I'm pretty sure it was my shoe being laced up way too tight at the shoe store followed by heavy shopping at Walmart and no time to stop and get shoes off before Bunny after school. Then yesterday I was back in those shoes for several hours, and even though they were heavenly comfortable and I had loosened the laces, that area just couldn't take any more. I've done a lot of things to my feet, but I've never seen them look sprained on top and inside just from wearing new shoes. I kept reading (here is a search list), and I also ran into a lot of fibro and feet pain on another search. 10 years ago there was *nothing* on feet with fibro. A rheumatologist even told me point blank fibro doesn't cause foot pain. Guess that's all changed, it's apparently well known and accepted now that fibro can wreak havoc with foot pain because it's a nervous system disorder. At any rate, I'm sticking with this one.
Control Fibromyalgia Foot Pain - Living smarter with fibromyalgia

I'm having a better year (very challenging, but way better), and I'm on my feet a LOT more for lots longer at a time. I've been slamming my poor feet around and ignoring them, mostly just getting my shoes off and kicking back and hoping it all works itself out. 8 months of that- maybe I need to pay more attention. I'm putting myself back on intermittent bed rest through the weekend (I'll still be cooking and cleaning, of course), so that means hauling the laptop back to my bed and pouring my focus into gaming so I won't feel frustrated all over the world at large. But not till I get back from town today. Sorry, feet.

Oh, yeah, punkin spice was in my dream last night, too. I remember telling my sister I was going to buy her some cloves for her birthday, and then I went Christmas shopping because I had money to blow. The strangest part was near the end, people from long ago (? not in this life ?) finding me and telling me I did really well. If I had told you the really creepy dream from earlier this week all your hairs would go up. Pretty sure there was an abrupt fork in the road we successfully made it past.

Shia LaBeouf latte to go. Yes, definitely spike it with something.

Super thrilled that my fasting blood sugar is still coming down to 86 in between being spiked up a bit all day long the last 3 days on the prednisone. Even avoiding carbs my blood sugar has been staying up near 200 for 10-12 hours, usually doesn't do it that long, so by the time I can finally have a little salad dressing on some real salad, I'm pretty sick of nibbling cheese. Even the $20 a pound cheese. Losing weight again is nice, though.

Still fighting with my phone trying to get a single picture to my laptop. Still falling for the old nvidia card blackout when lappy plays tricks on me. Hello, Monday. This is me staring at my tech. Click it for more Monday fun on pinterest.

Oh, here we go, me on the prednisone.

@bonenado would like this one.

Ok, where was I originally going with this? Oh, yeah. I have a list of internet grunge chores to do today, and I better get on them because they are backlogging the same way the long countertop in my kitchen is getting buried under everything I keep moving every time Bunny comes over. Oh, here we go, finally got ONE picture through since last night. She felt pretty big in her new life vest.

Work music. This?

Or this?

Neither one is doing it, I need something stronger.

that's a twofer!

It's the little things that keep me gripping the ledge like a crazed ninja who slipped on a banana peel.

I might be back to normal, aka up at 2 a.m. doing housework because PAIN. As long as I'm not throwing things or doing something drastic like staining the house, I'm sure I'll be ok. Laundry is sufficient for now. Ok, I'm lying. I made myself stop and work on the laptop because I couldn't stop cleaning.

In case anyone thinks I'm bluffing about WORK, I allowed myself to obsess over an inventory yesterday, and I'm guesstimating that I'm about a quarter of the way done on final revision at 24,000+ words so far. One of my goals is to make this project available on my own work blog with a password, besides actually publishing, so I'm double formatting everything, blah blah. My biggest hang up has been approach- anyone out there who runs into me in print knows I easily blather on forever and never shut up, so everything I do on an actual project feels like summarizing to me. Which is fine, summarizing is fun, it's like a word game. And on stupid days where I don't feel like I'm getting anything I really want to work on done, I obsess over proofreading and tweaking, note jotting and wandering around hunting down spiral number 23 and whatnot, and if I'm not doing that I'm probably looking up proper/acceptable word and phrase usage. You'd be surprised what a person can get away with, and I'm thinking once I myself am satisfied with this project, I may as well skip having the publisher proof it because I'm so OCD that any mistake that slips through will laughably cause me severe anguish to my dying day, and that might be fun to chuckle about as I grow older. Remember the time I, yeah yeah, we've all heard about your stupid typo, shut up and give me the remote.

I need to get some focus before I spring back out into the jungle and start cleaning out drawers or something. I'm in this crazy mood to start pitching stuff, which I know would freak Scott out pretty badly, so it's time for distraction and a plan- make a list, decide on today's menu, schedule out execution, and then pace myself. No desperate frenzies today. I think I made my pain level remarkably worse yesterday trying too hard, MY BAD.

DUCK!

From a private post written on November 5, 2008.
If there is chaos and destruction coming, I believe most of the problem will be various media inciting 8 billion people to panic.

Here we go, have finally unlocked brain fail. Usually starts before the holidays, so since I made it through January without even a hint of it, thought I was home free. I'm as scattered now as a squirrel running out into heavy traffic dodging buckshot and three dogs.

Behold, my bwainz. The guy at the end looks stupider than the squirrel, cracks me up. I don't feel this cute though.
I think it's a matter of readjusting all my brain chemicals again. Heavy duty benzo loads last week really screwed the ol' protracted withdrawal aspect of being a chronic low dose user for twenty years, which in Better Call Saul speak is like a cleaned up meth user shooting up out of the blue a couple of times for pain/anxiety management, as if that could work. Took me two years to clear off my own stuff, so imagine the rebound I'm going through. And before the inexperienced say anything, I have a cousin who made it off meth (only 3% successfully do that, and I bet there are a lot of you out there starting up for relief from stuff like spinal injuries, like he did) and he confirmed that benzos are basically the same thing. Going cold turkey off benzo meds is so dangerous that it requires medical supervision and oftentimes a 'rescue'. I went through a rescue after a cold turkey in 2009.

Med addiction is really common, and many people have no idea it's a real problem complicating other problems in their lives that get covered up with even more meds. My doctors initially shrugged me off and even laughed when I first brought up the possibility of med addiction because my doses had always been so low, but it turned out to be no joke getting off these meds. Fixing brain chemicals is a good thing when people need it, but keeping chronic patients on low dose chemicals for years as part of a pain management program without reviewing the possibility that they're covering up daily low dose withdrawal symptoms with other meds can become a nightmare. I wrote in 2009 that even though I had the medical history giving me a right to legalized med addiction that had me more screwed up than a Hollywood star scamming for vicodin and not showing up for work (I never missed a day of work in years until I just couldn't work, period), I wanted OFF.

I did it all wrong at first, it got scary, went through rescue, did my research, made a PLAN, and over two years I got off the remaining tail end of handfuls of meds. I should have taken pictures, my daily regimen was impressive. I drove 'drunk' to and from work for years, sometimes got pulled over, once was driven home by highway patrol at 10 a.m. Try explaining ~that~ to your boss. I got so good at being covert and timing my meds that coworkers came to me all the time asking how and when to mix this and that. I got to know the deeper culture of legal addiction and 'carried' all the time, making me everyone's friend behind closed doors and the wizard of medical jargon.

The links below were my journey to independence from big pharma and government/insurance controlled dosaging. They are lengthy and technical, so I don't expect anyone to actually read them, but that is how desperate I got trying to find my way out of that terrible maze (and look at me NOW, I'm HEALTHY). You guys need to question why govt is part of legalizing drugs and alcohol and how it's part of the whole big picture of proletariat control. Ask yourself why it's ok now for 'nice' people to be avid fans of a TV show about a meth dealer and support that show by buying toys for your kids (but you'd probably freak if there were a meth house on your street). I won't go so far as to say the government or anyone else wants you all accepting ideas of self medicating and surviving alien invasions and threat of worldwide death via virus, but I think it's pretty weird that show after show after show is profiting from slowly turning many of us into organized live response knots of shellshock before bedtime every night. How many of you can go to sleep and wake up rested without some kind of adult beverage or scripted sleep aid?

Taking vitamins won't save you guys. I'm not FDA approved regulating health care Librax withdrawal, are we having fun yet? (this was my most popular post EVER on any blog I ever created until I made it private) surviving health care (I'm not afraid to say this) IF you actually read through all that, please to note that even on full disability now, my monthly out of pocket insurance costs come up to about $300 a month. There is no such thing as 'free' health care. If I weren't married I'd be extremely destitute. Since I know someone my age in exactly that position, I know what I'm saying.

From 6-9-11. Have been dinking on facebook this month, mostly just filling in the profile stuff.  My religious preference is the cult of cthulhu.  That one has really struck me funny ever since it was on South Park and the Goth kids were so disappointed in his return because nothing really changed for them.  I keep trying to think of oddball people who have inspired me, today I put in Snake Plissken.  Already getting really bored with facebook again.

Ok, down to business. Things I have learned in the last week, thanks to benzo loading so I could be still in MRI tubes without exploding back out like a space alien-possessed astronaut in a syfy original movie. 1- Got the serious talk this time about pain clinic and surgery. It's there whenever I need them. Personally, I'm holding out for an opium patch first, but I have a feeling I won't be as lucky as a couple other people I've met on opium patches. One chick actually rides a motorcycle around town wearing an opium patch. Dang, I want an opium patch. I have really missed vicodin ever since the big acetaminophen reaction thing blowing up on me. Anyway, I'm going to try something else first before I let it all go invasive, because there's no going back once the shots and surgeries start up. I know too many spinal surgery fail stories to think that's my answer. 2- Unofficial cancer watch still goes on. I may as well accept this is how the rest of getting older goes. I've been cleared for defcon (again, how many times now in the last two years, geez), but told to keep an appointment in March with another doctor, so vagueness continues to rule my starz. 3- I will probably be a protracted addict the rest of my life. Going through withdrawal symptoms all over again sucketh mightily and right now the only thing stopping me from throwing a chair through a window is the thought of Scott having to replace it and then me feeling bad about it later because it's a really nice window. Oh, and maybe also that it's only twelve degrees outside and I'd freeze, but that was only an afterthought. The thought of Scott coming home every night keeps me sane. Scott is my rock, and aside from nearly pitching him through the window a few times (I'm so lucky he doesn't spontaneously reciprocate, given his ADHD nature), he's been extremely tolerant of me going Sarah Connor on his butt every little bit.

If you think you or someone you care about might have a medication addiction problem, click this.

Always remember. Anyone, any time, any place. It's real. last time survey

Sorry about all this. Sometimes I just gotta dump the crap out and yell DUCK!!!!


Time to lighten up again.