Now, I need to hear from all of my chronically ill and chronically tired people out there. Is it just me, or do you ever find yourself getting random, extreme bursts of mania? Bursts of energy to do things like clean, rearrange things (like entire rooms), and tackle huge projects on a crazy whim.
Because it happens to me more often than I would like to admit. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much pain I’m in, or how sick I’m feeling at the time. I just have to do something. That something, of course, almost always tends to put me in more pain and make me feel worse but, it also makes me feel better. It makes me feel like I have accomplished something.
For example, on Tuesday, I decided to clean my room.
Now, I know that on the surface, that doesn’t look or sound like much but, lately, I’ve let my depression get the best of me, and it’s been hard for me to do just about anything. Still, I got out the vacuum cleaner, and I started vacuuming the floor when I saw that the rats had been throwing bedding out of their cage and behind it. So, I moved the cage, vacuumed up the soft, paper bedding and cleaned behind it. I cleaned the rug that the cage sat on, and then I decided that it wasn’t good enough.
I decided that I’d like the cage to be somewhere else, somewhere that it would be easier for me to clean but, at the same time harder for the rats to throw the bedding out of the cage. So, my little brother helped me get rid of a bookcase that had literally just been a crap catcher. A place to put things that didn’t have a home, things I didn’t need, and didn’t want. So, we got rid of the shelf. We also got rid of the stuff I didn’t need. The rest of it found homes.
From there, I decided to get Angel’s desk out of the hallway closet where I’d been storing it since getting the new, bigger rat cage. Without the bookcase that I didn’t need or want anymore, it made room for the desk to go right back into its place. I folded my laundry, and then I did some more. I remade my bed, and by the time I was done my legs were on fire and in so much pain.
But I kept going. I didn’t want to give up before the job was done, so I went about putting all of Angel’s things that she couldn’t take home with her back on her desk. I put a few of the small gifts I’ve found for her since she left there too, since I currently have no trust in the mail system. I sent out two cards, one for Christmas and one for Thanksgiving both in the month of November 2020 and she never got either of them. Once things calm down again, I’d like to send them to her and her mom.
But, that’s what I have to do. I have to keep going. I can’t stop just because I’m in pain. Because I’m almost always in pain right now. My pain level has been insane.
Absolutely, 100% insane. Now, I don’t know if that’s because it’s been 8-months since my injury. I don’t know if the nerve problems in my legs are getting worse. I just don’t know. I know that I have CRPS. The specialists are able to tell me that much but, I should hopefully know more tomorrow. I had my first appointment with Pain Management in Oak Park today, and that brought me answers that I did not want… Answers that I swore I would go crazy without.
Has anyone ever told you that you can’t always get what you want? Yeah, this was one of those times where you don’t get what you want. I know I haven’t spoken about my leg lately, and the reason for that is simple. Most people would’ve been healed by now. They would’ve been able to walk normally and function like a normal human being by now. The BREG boot and the physical therapy would’ve worked for them. But I don’t have that luxury, and I’ve been worried that some of you out there might think that I’m just “milking it” for whatever it’s worth. I’m not.
So many people at work tell me that- that I’m milking it, and using it to my advantage. That I use my injury as an excuse to not have to do things, or to get special treatment, or better tips, or this that and the other. But, that isn’t true at all because I wish I was better. I wish I was back to normal. I wish I’d never fallen down those stupid stairs in the first place.
I wish I wasn’t in so much pain all the time. I wish that I could stand up on my own for more than 5-minutes in going from the car to my brother Matt’s Jeep and then into a doctor’s office without my leg turning into an awful, angry, swollen, and throbbing mess. I just want to be okay again. Because, what no one seems to see or understand is that no one wants to wear one of these boots around for five-seconds longer than they have to. It’s heavy and hot, it’s uncomfortable. And I’ve worn it so long now that it’s started causing me hip pain and problems thee too.
Like I told the doctor today, the list of things that I cannot do is steadily growing larger and larger, and I’m afraid of what happens when I run out of ‘space.’ What then? Because right now, I feel like if I listed all the things that I can’t do, or the things that I have to force myself to do it would take hours, or days. I don’t think any of us have that kind of time.
So once again, I got the confirmed CRPS diagnosis. I knew I would but, it still felt like a kick in the teeth. The doctor says that it’s severe, and stubborn, and the only course of action is to try to aggressively combat it. So, starting on May 5th, every Wednesday for the next 4-6 weeks, maybe longer, I’ll be going to Rush Hospital to have a sympathetic nerve block done. That sounds frightening. The description that the doctor gave me doesn’t sound much better. He said that what was going to happen was that they have to put me under anesthesia, put me in an x-ray, and then inject a numbing medicine around the sympathetic nerves in my lower back. By doing this, the sympathetic nervous system in the area is essentially switched off in hopes of reducing or eliminating the pain. Kind of like turning a computer off and back on again or jumpstarting a car battery.
Just… sigh.
I guess that’s all for now… I’m going to get back to reading on my Kindle for a little while. Like with most doctor’s appointments, today’s put my pain into hyperdrive, and I still have to sit at work for another 5-hours minimum. Wish me luck. I think I need it.
-Sky
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