Cooking…

Well friends, I have a question for you all! I like to cook – maybe liked to cook is closer to the truth?

The last year I’ve had a really hard time cooking DINNER because I can stand for 10 minutes, but 15 minutes of standing and my back is starting to spasm.

So I’m hoping that you, my friends, will have some great ideas for me. I can do some prep and then put it in the oven, but most of the recipes I know and have used in the past are prep and then standing over the stovetop for 20 minutes or so.

I know you’ll come through for me, right?

*fingers crossed*

Books of 2009

I kind of forgot about this list – but then I found it again! Here are all the books I read in 2009, in general chronological order. And of course I had to look at last year’s post along the same lines. It looks like I read fewer books in 2009, which surprised me. And I have to mention a few favorites; the Uglies series, The Time Traveler’s Wife, A Christmas Carol, and Unexpected Blessings.

If you want to read my thoughts on each book, find me on goodreads.com! I’d love to be friends. Goodreads is awesome because I get so many ideas for books to read. And more importantly, I have a list so I don’t forget what I want to read!

1. Papa Married a Mormon
2. Mamma’s Boarding House
3. A Much Married Man
4. Giovanni’s Room
5. The Red Badge of Courage
6. Life is Just What You Make it: My Story So Far
7. False Impression
8. The Importance of Being Earnest
9. A Christmas Carol
10. The Code of the Woosters
11. Mozart’s Ghost: A Novel
12. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
13. Uglies series
14. Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain
15. The Strangler
16. No Country for Old Men
17. Something Borrowed
18. Black Boy
19. But for a Small Moment
20. The Body Broken: A Memoir
21. The Wednesday Letters
22. The Time of Our Singing
23. The Killer Angels
24. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time
25. Patience With God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us
26. Unexpected Blessings: Finding Hope and Healing in the Face of Illness
27. Pay It Forward
28. Inés of My Soul
29. To Siberia
30. The Lost Garden: A Novel
31. The Westing Game
32. Thirteen Reasons Why
33. The Time Traveler’s Wife (a re-read)
34. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
35. The Wet Nurse’s Tale
36. In Cold Blood
37. Speak
38. Their Eyes Were Watching God

A very strange day, indeed

Well yesterday was such a crazy day, I had to write about it. No pictures, you’ll thank me later.

I wanted to make some crystallized ginger. It is SO GOOD in ginger cookies, and it is also really expensive. So I was thrilled when I found this tutorial for making it at home!

I began peeling — this took a while, as I figured it would. During the peeling, I managed to peel off a little skin from my knuckle. Oops! But got a bandaid on that and stuck a fork into my ginger while I peeled it — keeping it further from my hands. This worked great. Finally it was all peeled, and time to cut up the ginger into smaller pieces. I had a few done when all of a sudden I cut part of my finger! It is my left ring finger and I cut part of my nail and some of my skin. My stomach sank and I started feeling nauseated. It started bleeding.

Iwent to get a rag and covered it, put pressure on the cut, yadda yadda. Now I started feeling dizzy. I was worried I was losing a lot of blood and decided I’d better call my husband – I didn’t know if it needed stitches, and couldn’t get a good look at the actual cut. I called my husband and he said he’d call some of our neighbors, because it would take him 1/2 and hour to get home. I hung up with him and was feeling really dizzy now. I knew I should sit down. On my way to doing that, I hit my head on the corner of the fridge and passed out. I came to in the dining room (no idea why or how I got there) and was feeling yucky. I had that cold sweat come over me, and I started out to the front room with my shoes (in case I needed to leave?), when I lay down and puked on the floor.

I can’t remember the last time I puked and DIDN’T puke in the toilet. So that was weird, and gross. A few minutes later Spencer called back to say that our neighbor was coming over. She’s a nurse. I told him I didn’t think my cut was that bad — didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore. I also told him (I think) that I passed out and threw up. He said he was coming as quickly as he could and that I just needed to let our neighbor (let’s call her C) in when she knocked.

C came in and got things taken care of. She looked at the cut and said it’d be fine – then wrapped it up in the rag again. I couldn’t believe the nonsense that this cut had caused, especially when it wasn’t even a bad cut. She got me up on my couch and laying down – gave me ice packs for my head. I was starting to feel better. Then she proceeded to clean up my puke. Yikes, I tried to tell her to leave it and my husband would clean it up when he got home. She said, ‘No, no, I’m a mom, this isn’t a big deal.’ What a sweet neighbor.

And so – I apparently don’t like to see my own blood. Learn something new everyday, right?

Happy Valentine’s Day

a lengthy update!

Thanks for your great ideas on nausea. Things are improved — I met a woman recently with hypoglycemia. She has to eat a small meal every two hours. The more we talked, the more animated she got, saying that this could really help me! I thought it was worth a try. So I eat my normal meals, but eat a snack every two hours. Doesn’t help the headaches, but it does improve the nausea most of the time. Hooray!

I was talking to my sister the other day and she said it had been a while since I wrote/put up pictures on my blog. It’s true. I feel sometimes as if telling you the events of my life is a little depressing. The last five years reads a lot like this ‘We tried _____, it didn’t work. Now we’re going to try _____.’

But nonetheless, there is so much good to tell and I need to continue to update my family on my health (one of the main reasons for starting this blog), but I will also try to write about other stuff going on. Thanks for sticking with me.

What is happening now in the world of doctor’s appointments…I went in Tuesday and we were going to do more trigger point injections (in the back), but talked about it and since they hadn’t been working we didn’t do anymore. So that was good, and we just made it into a followup appointment  about the Botox. The Botox worked for two days and then…nothing. I caught him up on that and we made a game plan for both the head and the back. We wanted to attack the back first, and so this morning we did injections into my sacroiliac joints. I don’t know if you know what the sacroiliac (SI) joint is, but it’s where the sacrum (the very bottom of the spine) meets the pelvis…the bottom of the pelvis are the ilium. Anyways, it’s the biggest joint in the body (interesting, right?), and takes all your weight when you walk and sit. Which is why those things hurt me so much. So he did some tests and found that my SI joints were inflamed and dysfunctional in some way.

The injections went well – these have to be done under Xray, and while I was under there he could see arthritis in both joints (more in the left) and the left was over-rotated. And so, I am hopeful that we have finally hit on something that will help. This should help with the pain and physical therapy should help get my back into better shape. Time will tell!

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So I have two really good friends – we get together for lunch every couple of weeks. Last weekend (Wednesday to Sunday) we went to St. George, Utah. Those of you out of state are probably not familiar with St. George. The most important thing to know is that it is 4 hours SOUTH of Salt Lake City. So… warmer.

Nausea — any ideas?

Hi guys! I’m rolling along with the same old here. There have been storms every day (seriously!) for the past week. I haven’t been feeling the effectiveness of the Botox. I’m hoping that’s just because of the weather.

But in other news, my nausea has returned over the past month. What a bummer! It was basically gone, we found a medicine that helped and I had hardly any nausea. Now….it is back. It seems I’m nauseated unless I’m eating. 10 minutes after I eat I’m pretty good, too. Ay yi yi. I don’t like to drink soda (so 7up and ginger ale are pretty much out), but I do drink club soda with lime juice or ginger tea.

I have nausea meds but I don’t feel think it’s a good idea to take them everyday. Anyone have any other good ideas?

How about an update?

Well it’s been long enough! I’ve still been around, reading friends’ blogs. Just haven’t felt like blogging for whatever reason.

So you all know I’m seeing the pain clinic for back pain, but that the Dr. feels he can help with my headaches. I’ve been doing physical therapy (for my back) since the treatment plan. It’s been a couple of months of PT and I’m not seeing any results yet. But that’s not the good part.

The good part is this – my pain doc is working on the headache angle and I think we have actually hit on something.

I KNOW!

So we did some (more) nerve blocks, these in the back of my head on the right side. So those were about like the previous nerve blocks, only effective as long as the local anesthesia is working. But that led my doc to think that Botox in the same locations might work. And so last Tuesday we did Botox injections in 3 locations, around the back of my head on the right side. So he said it would probably take a few days to see any results. I waited hopefully… and then on Thursday I woke up, and my headache was much better than normal (on the right side). It still switches back and forth to the left side (where the pain is its normal bad-ness). As the day progresses, my headache gets worse and gets back to its normal levels. It also seems to be affected by not enough sleep and weather (worse before storms). So I’m still figuring out how much it has helped.

But clearly it has had some effect. And that is really good news!

Here is an overdue update on my hair…this summer and fall my hair was normal on top (blondish) and then purple on the bottom half. Here are some pictures for you…

Least favorite Christmas song…

I think this year it’s gonna have to be Christmas Shoes.

Anyone have any songs grating on your nerves?

More on the pain clinic.

So again, I have taken kind of longer than is necessary to post about my pain clinic appointments. I have no idea why. I find the whole situation a little depressing. I am frustrated by these new limits; not being able to walk much without pain, stand long without pain, and chairs I used to find quite comfortable I can now get so much pain sitting in. Blah blah – on to the hope and the plans.

I went in last Friday to hear what my pain doctor, Dr. D., had in store. What his treatment plan was for me. I brought Spencer along, for two reasons. 1, so he could hear the whole thing straight from the horse’s mouth and 2, he could ask any questions right then. So Dr. D said that after talking with everyone (pharmacist, therapist, physical therapist), he thought that the headaches were even more of an issue than the back pain. Yes, I said. Well, he believes he can help and would like to work concurrently on the headaches while trying to improve my back. I have my doubts, but I’m game. Of course I spent more than a year at this clinic, trying to help my headaches. There was no improvement, but lots of exploration. Dr. D says he ‘does things differently’ — he would like to try some injections in different parts of my head. Actually sounds a lot like what I did with the last pain clinic doc, but we shall see.

So that’s something I hadn’t anticipated, and while I’m not at all looking forward to the injections (they are incredibly painful), who knows? It just might help.

The plan for my back is this; start out with physical therapy and possibly onto injections (more?!). The problem appears to be two-fold, there is the herniated disc and in the same region, problems with my facet joints. I’m still reading up about this and learning what they are, what is wrong with them, etc. But they are at least part of the problem. How big a part remains to be seen. There are more options (which we discussed) for after PT and injections — implants and other scary type things. Those are off in the future if we can’t find pain relief from the PT and/or injections.

Sorry if this is rambling and/or doesn’t make sense – I slept poorly (again) last night.

His other thoughts about my headaches were…not impressive. My husband mentioned he seemed a little overconfident. I think that’s supposed to inspire confidence, but sometimes doctors actually make me feel less confident about their capacity to help. Also, the winking? What the heck. Ok, so his thoughts were that my medicines were that they were ‘random’ and that there were some that aren’t doing anything and we should discontinue some. Wellllll, subject the first, I feel like maybe he’s forgotten that he’s jumping into a 5 year ongoing situation. This isn’t new, and the reason the meds seem random are that they’ve been added by different doctors – most of them treat symptoms of the problem (nausea, sleep and pain) and not the problem itself BECAUSE we have tried so many preventative meds without success. The few that I’m on now actually help me. I just got off half a dozen meds that weren’t helping me. Pfft. I’m sure we’ll have more discussion on that later.
So then this last Tuesday I went to my first PT appointment. I like my physical therapist, she’s nice and she realizes that I have some idea of what’s going on. I have dealt with the back pain for a long time, and I feel like she understands the importance of my symptoms as well as my limitations. That said, we had our first session and she taught me a few very gentle stretches. I mean gentle, easy. I’m supposed to do them three times a day. After I got home from my PT session, my neck and upper back was hurting. Also, the headache across the back of my head (tension HA that goes with my back hurting) was worse. But I figured that maybe I just needed to keep at it and things would improve. This turned out to be wishful thinking, and a day and a half into it, I was still dealing with this extra pain. No relief; extra pain. Soooo I called and left a message for her Thursday, she hasn’t returned it yet. I decided on my own to discontinue the stretches and hope the extra pain would at least go away in time for my *next* appointment, this coming Tuesday. My neck still hurts quite a bit.

That’s it! That’s my update!

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On a COMPLETELY unrelated note, have you seen the Droid (phone) commercials? I’ve only seen a few hundred. They are pretty good, as far as cell phone commercials go. I was going to put a video in,  but I can’t find one that includes the section I’m talking about. At the VERY very end, in tiny print at the bottom of the screen, it says that Droid is trademarked by Lucasfilms. Lucas trademarked the WORD droid. That is pure awesomeness. Do you think that means they are getting royalties from the sales of the Droid?

Wow.

I’m totally impressed by that.

the pain clinic, round II

Hello, internets, it’s me, Emily.

So Tuesday I went to see the pain clinic – this time for my back. And things are going to be very different this time around. Hopefully that means we make some improvements! Ha. But seriously, I went to the appointment, and my first appointment was with the physical therapist and doctor, then I had an appointment with the pharmacist.

So there was a doctor there who was interning with Dr. D (my doctor), but Dr. D. himself did not appear until later on. Apparently his time is valuable. Fair enough. There was also a pharmacy intern and a medical student. Also, the physical therapist, Tami. Of course, I put on the gown right away, and if it didn’t feel like Grand Central station before, it sure did then! They tried to keep me as covered up as they could, but basically there’s not a lot to be done. So for the first hour I was ‘evaluated’ by the physical therapist. Of course this involves testing my pain, when it appears, when it doesn’t. There was a lot of poking and prodding of my back, as well as twisting and measuring. My right leg is 1 cm shorter than my left leg! How do you like them apples? Apparently, anything up to 2 cm is still considered normal. The PT felt that the leg thing combined with the accident may be causing the perfect storm of pain in my back. No mention yet on why this started last October. I’m pretty sure we’ll never know that.

So after that, I got dressed again and we talked – she warned me that PT is very different in the pain clinic. I figured. And then Dr. D made his appearance. He went over the broad strokes of things (often making mistakes, which I corrected), and said he thought they’d be able to help me. He cautioned that he was not a pain eradicator, but a pain manager. I think he was just trying to make sure my hopes weren’t *too* high. Then it was off to the pharmacist.

The pharmacy intern took me and we went to a room with a comfortable chair. HALLELUJAH! That was the best part of this appointment. We basically went over all the meds I’m taking, why I’m taking them, when I started taking them, and how much I feel like they work for me. 90% of the pills are for my headaches, so we talked a fair amount about that.

And there it is. The appointment. I felt good about it, I’m looking forward to working with the physical therapist and hopefully figuring some stuff out. I would LOVE it if we could improve or do away with the back pain with just exercises; more or different exercises. The needles, I’m hoping to stay away from as much as possible. The pills….we shall see. The one I’m on now isn’t helping and is causing side effects. Brain fog, myoclonic jerks, etc. I want off this ride!

All the people I met with (Dr. D, the pharmacist, the PT, and the therapist) will all get together and talk about my case. Then I’ll see Dr. D Friday, November 6 to go over their plan of attack.