Happy Pelvis Redux
The Burgeoning Fang Is Subsiding
Nope, nothing like slouching toward Bethlehem. I have a Quad-Helix (dental appliance fun woo! boy I’d never wanted to say that before the age of 65) cemented into my mouth to spread my upper arch further apart. Its purpose is to correct a left-side cross-bite, making room for the toofs that want to live up there before any of them break. I’m about halfway through the 6-month period my dentist said I’d need to wear it before he installs braces (which means I might be in anime schoolgirl form in time for Halloween!). Forty-eight hours ago he yanked the appliance out (okay, unbolted it from my upper molars more-or-less gently), adjusted the wires to make it more spready, and re-cemented it in place.
I am of mixed mind about the wonderfulness of said operation.
On the one hand, my upper right canine was getting pushed steadily outward by an errant wire such that the tooth had started to resemble a burgeoning or proto-fang, as if a quarter of my mouth were vamping. This tooth has already had a hard time in life - it originally grew in at an angle, as the baby tooth it was replacing refused to budge. Thus my pre-adolescent fascination with vampires. Now that the wire snafu is handled, the fang-ish tooth has moved almost all the way back to its proper angle and my lower lip is no longer snagging on it when I smile.
On the other hand, the rest of the wires are more spready… bones are moving in my head and have already moved enough that my bite is no longer what it was - all my chewing surfaces are askew. This is awkward enough in the absence of pain. But since teeth have already moved a little bit, the extra-super spreading power of the newly adjusted wires is able to take full advantage of the situation. The sockets of my teeth are not happy. I can’t chew anything, not even a little bit of squishy pasta. I can either process food by nibbling it to mush with my incisors, or squashing it against the roof of my mouth with my tongue. Or mashing it to hell and gone with my fork, then slurping up the mess. Ah, pasta and peas in garlic cream sauce. As liquid diets go, you rock.
The pain is getting better and I’m sure by the time I hit National next week I’ll be able to eat like a normal human again. If not, there’s always the Cherry version of a liquid diet - it comes in a flask and is peach vodka, Jamiesons, or brandy-flavored. Hee. Proto-fang, I salute you.
Not Broken, Merely Bent
This is fucking upsetting - I was rambling about the blogosphere this morning, merrily tripping down a thoughtpath from writing to writers to other writers and ended up on a blog I’ve never seen before but really liked. Checking out the sidebars, I see that this blogger did a blogathon last August to benefit the National Fibromyalgia Research Association through her Zazzle store. This is a cool thing, I think, because I have fibro and am getting better and it’s amazing how much people don’t know about it so research and public education are all to the good, so I look at the Zazzle store and there are tee shirts and I feel like I’ve been slapped across the face.
The first 5 tee shirts I get - either Fibro Friend or Fibro Caretaker or Hug Gently (gods I know that one - I hate it when it hurts to be touched) or Friend in Pain are all messages that inspire questions and thus are opportunities to raise awareness. The last two I have a major issue with - they proclaim, respectively, that the wearer is Disabled or Broken. To which I can only reply, despite the no doubt best intentions of the person who created these shirts for sale and most certainly not directed at her specifically, but more at the universe and at the mindset that this sort of abject labeling is okay…
Fuck You.
I am not broken.
I have never been broken and I will never be broken. I’m not a clay doll or some other subhuman overobjectified girlthing that can be taken out of its shiny pink can and rattled around and banged on the floor then stuffed back inside when cracks start to show, when chunks split and flake off, when juice starts leaking out. I am a human being, and parts of me have been broken, yes - bones, specifically, and my internal thermostat in general after getting severe heat stroke, and on regular occasions a fingernail or two - but I as an entity, as a human being, am not broken with the implied semiotic associations of defective and disposable simply because I have chronic pain and fatigue and many of the other fun things that go with fibromyalgia so have to take vitamin and mineral supplements and get enough rest and eat right and pay attention to my body in a culture that asks me to deny it to the eradication of self if it’s not Barbie-perfect.
I have to wonder at the mindset of someone willing to assume the label of “broken.” Are they asking for a lifetime hall pass for whatever they don’t feel like dealing with? Are they genuinely convinced that it will never get any better and this is what their life is relegated to? Is it tongue-in-cheek, ironic or sarcastic? What the fuck?
When I was first diagnosed with fibro back in July I had a problem with the diagnosis - mind you, I’d gone to my doctor with the comment that all my stuff sure resembled fibro, but argued that it couldn’t be because of course I was in constant pain, I’d broken too many bones and had osteoarthritis in my neck and knees and and and… she gently pointed out to me that bodies heal and that it’s not normal to have constant pain at the site of an old break years later. Much less at the site of every break. And at other sites that were not directly associated with broken bones or soft tissue damage. Or to have to sleep 12 -15 hours a day to feel clearheaded and able to focus. She was right. It’s not normal. But it’s also not a permanent state of being, despite Western medicine’s lack of a cure. She offered me prescriptions for antidepressants and NSAIDs - an SSRI would help somewhat with the constant pain and the NSAID would help somewhat more. The thinking in Western med is that fibro is somehow triggered by a sleep disorder - they have no cure for the disorder, don’t fully understand its causes yet, but the bandaid logic is that if you lessen the pain you can relax enough to sleep, the body can heal and refresh, which lessens the pain some more, relieving some of the fatigue, and so on and so forth. It doesn’t work for many people, and I wasn’t willing to dope myself up on the off chance it wouldn’t totally fuck me up, so I refused the meds. Instead, I went on the internet, my source of all things wacky and informational.
First thing I found were support groups. I get that as they stand, they work for some people, but after skimming the posts for a few days on the couple of groups I joined, I was suicidal or homicidal, take your pick. I’ve rationalized that everybody there was using the forum to vent to others who got it, but what it felt like to me was a big whine-fest. Some of the most vocal were also some of the most helpless by choice. It’s a vicious cycle - in pain, nothing works to relieve the pain, feelings of hopelessness and depression set in, pain becomes the focus so feels worse, still nothing works, etc. That’s a cycle I can never let myself fall into. It’s a place I simply will not go. I bore the pain for years, back into my teens as long as I remember it was always there - between one injury and another sparking pain into a slow burn that accelerated into a conflagration I ignored because it was one more barrier between me and a life I wasn’t having any fun in. I like my life now and am no longer willing to live with the pain, to bear it like a dumb animal with no hope or realization that there can be another way. Those support groups don’t see that there can be another way, they accept what is as what must be. Fuck that too.
I’m doing better now, taking one day at a time and experimenting with some new boundaries around what I am and am not willing to tolerate for myself. Sleep, enough sleep as represented by enough time to lie down and rest because I am not cramming my day full of busywork or running so fast I can’t feel anything but pain nipping at my heels or clawing into my spine, has become my lodestone. With enough sleep, anything is possible. Without it, I’m a bombed-out shell of myself. Cutting down on sugar and caffeine has been amazing - when I go for the fudge or the double latte at 4:0 p.m. I pay a price within 48 hours - not instant feedback but pretty damned close. I cried when I first came home with the eight bottles of vitamins and minerals and supplements that, by group and preliminary scientific consensus, seem to be effective in treating fibro. Never mind that most of them - the multivitamin, the mineral supplement, the glucosamine/chondroitin horsepills - are things I feel better taking anyway. The others are optional, and a few I’ve stopped as they seem to have no real benefit, but that first day that I stood at my dining room table and took the wrapper off each bottle felt like I was capitulating to something insidious.
I’ve come to realize that it’s just maintenance, like sleep and exercise and real food - taking care of myself. I’ve been getting regular acupuncture treatments at the doctoral pain clinic at my school and have had entire days with no pain for the first time in years. My energy is returning as well… maybe I’m not quite at my Type-AAA personality zoom levels, then again, maybe I should never go back there whether I am able to or not. Maybe it’s not the best way to go through life - running as fast as I can to avoid being present. I’ve been down the last week with the flu from hell that’s going around, but if I hadn’t been laid up, I would have been going for walks. That’s how healing works for me. One foot in front of the other and keep moving. When it gets overwhelming, which it sometimes does, I remind myself that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time, and since it’s a big fucking elephant, I’ll eat while I walk. I have been folded, spindled, mutilated and bent, but I am not broken.
Life Sucks, Then You Die… Waaaaah
So I’m driving into work this morning thinking about how much I hate fibromyalgia, how fucking exhausted I am and how much my body hurts - as if a thousand pissed off Marines hopped up on PCP and coke were beating me with sticks backed up by a couple of dozen really pissy dwarves with great huge pointy metal bits and good aim after keeping me awake for a week just to get me in the mood - and I realized that life sucks, then you die… so waaaaah.
I have a friend who just got out of the hospital after falling off his roof and breaking his pelvis, elbow, shoulder, and leg. Thankfully not his neck. He was already full of metal from multiple back surgeries, and now he’s got a few new plates and pins to add to his collection. The man’s got such a great attitude that he’s been accepted into a very packed and exclusive rehab program as one of their potential star patients. Go Sarge.
I have another friend who’s spend the last week praying with his partner that their baby isn’t born at 23, now 24 weeks… she’s holding her breath and crossing her ankles, on total bedrest in the same hospital the first friend just came home from. They are under strict orders not to deliver any time soon, not only because the baby would have a piss-poor chance at a normal life this early in and because an 8-week-early preemie is a happier event than a 16-week-early preemie, but because I just can’t get a baby blanket crocheted that fast, and Little Doode will need something soft to be snuggled in that doesn’t reek of antiseptic. I add my prayers that Little Doode will quit head-butting her cervix and enjoy his next four months safely in the womb. Go Nicole, Jerel, and Little Doode.
I have not a goddamned thing to complain about. So there’s some pain. Nothing’s broken, I can walk, and I have no pins or plates. So I’m tired. Not as tired as a 6-month pregnant woman fighting for her baby’s life, or as tired as the man who loves her and can do nothing but go to work every morning and come home to her side at the hospital every night.
Life does not suck. Above ground, outta jail and not on fire. It’s all good. The Sarge is gonna be fine, Little Doode is gonna be fine, Nicole and Jerel are gonna be fine. I’m gonna take some Advil and quit whining.
On a slightly more surreal note - my quiz results:
You scored as Special Ops. Special ops. You’re sneaky, tactful, and a loner. You prefer to do your jobs alone, working where you don’t come into contact with people. But every once in a while you hit it big and are noticed and given fame. You’re given the more sensitive problems. You get things done, and do what has to be done.
“VULCAN NECK PINCH!!!”
“owww…….(slump)”Which soldier type are you?
created with QuizFarm.com
What’s really scary is that right below it is another quiz called, “Are You Normal?” I’m afraid to take that one. Sticking with the Vulcan Neck Pinch, thank you very much.
Ugh
Cold sick flu thingy. Not pretty.
School starts in a few days. Pretty, but not if cold sick flu thingy ridden am I.
Going to Hawaii in ten days. Pretty, but not if cold sick flu thingy ridden am I.
Cold sick flu thingies tend to turn into walking pneumonia for me. Not pretty. Ugh more.
Home Again, Home Again
Kim du Toit has posted Captain Steve’s last message from the sandbox.
Too bad not all our people can come home yet, or ever will. I’ve gotten all the names from Adopt-A-Platoon for my soldiers (Army Engineers in Baghdad), and am slapping together care packages with a little help from friends and family, in and around not babying my right elbow nearly enough. For all three of you who haven’t heard me whine about not being ambidextrous, my right elbow was squished a while back when I was viciously attacked by my kitchen counter (a conspiracy was afoot - it was clearly in cahoots with the pile of laundry I was carrying). Lots of phone calls to local nail salons later (I was in a little bit of shock from the pain so it made sense at the time) I figured out where the closest ER was and how to get there. The kind folks at the ER mocked and irradiated me, then informed me that I have contusions (no fucking shit!) and a teeny hairline fracture (yay me). Gotta love the blunt force trauma stuff. DayngerGrrl is so in da fuckin’ house. I now have an impressive array of Ace bandages I switch out with much muttering and creative cursing when I get too bugged by the way I last wrapped my elbow, and am working on an ulcer from popping more than one Advil every three days (I declined a cast, as I’m right handed and live alone - not always the brightest bulb in the lamp, now am I?). Hey, at least there’s no meatflap to release into the wild this time around.
Gravity Listing To Port
Gack. Gravity was listing to port in my head, but now it seems to have gone completely offline. I’ve got a flu thing going on, feels like I’ve been beaten with a horse. Not trampled by one, beaten by one. Wielded by a large ogre with a penchant for punishing blondes. Gonna go get horizontal now before the bastard comes back for another round and I have to kneecap him. Hmm… maybe I should erect a punji-stick perimeter around my bed in case he approaches while I’m passed out and feverish. Nah, I’ll just end up hurting myself. Oh well. My teddy bear will have to keep me safe.
My Kabob Has Been Sheeshed
Ouch! My kabob has been sheeshed!
Lemme say, did I mention, OUCH!!! Yup, the doctor took tissue samples (note the plural) and now I get to wait and bleed and heal and see if I have cancer. Joy. (Did I say ouch yet?) Not to mention I got a little too brave and white-knuckled it all the way to the pharmacy before I passed out. Gads, am I a fucking wimp! Disembowel somebody else in front of me and I want spaghetti and meatballs for lunch, but prick my finger and I swoon. Poor pharmacy lady - she was just happy that I didn’t puke on her. We’ve all got to be happy about something, I suppose…
OK, so word up, if anyone ever says they want to do a colposcopy, run or demand drugs first. But it’s better to have chunks snipped out of my hoo-hoo so that I can find out that I don’t have cancer of the cervix than to have my whole small intestine spontaneously invert and drag behind me on the ground. Not that that ever really happens in real life… tee hee. Did I mention I used to work in trauma surgery? Probably why I’m such a wuss - I KNOW what a rongeur and a curette are for. Gotta hurt ya to heal ya - surgery is a societally condoned form of violence, practiced by mutual consent, but violence nonetheless. So let’s all hear it for fluffy pink styrofoam bunnies and sparkly, yummy Peeps. (They come in purple kitty form for Halloween, too. Yay.)