8/3/06

New logo, created by the wonderful Angie. Thanks, Angie!) Happy, happy birthday, Janie-Jane! I swear, I didn’t forget your birthday – I’m just a little slow this year. Things will be headed your way soon!

* * * Good lord, this has been a busy week for me! Let’s see, when did I last post? Monday? Man, I SUCK and y’all should beat me. Tuesday morning I got up when Fred left for work at 6:30 (still haven’t exercised this week; I’m still unable to force myself to get my ass out of bed at 5:20. I’m giving myself the rest of the week off and then I’ll be back out hitting the road next Monday morning if I have to train the cats to jump on my head and meow loudly to force me out of bed). I took my shower and got dressed, and left the house a little after 8 to run to the post office and then go to my first physical therapy appointment. I ended up getting to the physical therapy office right on time instead of the intended ten minutes early (so I’d have plenty of time to fill out the paperwork), because I thought it was in one location, but after I showed up at the location where I thought it was, the office was nowhere to be found, and I remembered that I can’t read a map to save my life. I finally figured it out and found the right place. I filled out the usual ten pages of paperwork, then sat for a few minutes until the physical therapist – Bridget – came out and got me. We went back to her office and talked for about half an hour while she filled out more forms on her laptop. She said that they usually request 16 sessions to start and see how it is toward the end of the 16 sessions; if I needed more, they could request more. Once the forms were filled out, she tucked my shirt up in the back and had me walk away from her. I walked to the end of the hallway and back, and when I reached her, she looked completely baffled. “Okay,” she said. “Walk like you do when you’re walking for exercise.” I made the same walk, only faster, and when I reached her, she again looked baffled. “Your thoracic area doesn’t move at all when you walk,” she said. I preened for a moment, sure that that was a good thing. Because your back isn’t supposed to be moving willy-nilly all over the place when you walk, right? “I mean, at all,” she said, sounding appalled. “Is… that a bad thing?” I asked. “Yes!” We went back to her office and she had me take off my shirt. “The first thing you need to do is be professionally fitted for a bra,” she said. She moved the bra strap on my right shoulder and I looked down to see a dark red mark o’ pain from where it’d been digging into my shoulder. “That’s half your problem, right there. You need a supportive bra.” And here I thought I’d done so damn good picking out a bra at Lane Bryant while I was in Maine. It lifts and separates, and it’s so pretty! She had me bend down slowly and touch my toes (actually, she said “Bend down like you’re going to touch your toes”, and so I bent down and touched my toes, and she laughed and said “Whoa! A little slower than that, please.”) and marveled some more about how my thoracic spine area didn’t move at all. Then she had me put my shirt back on and lay down on the massage table in her office. She lifted up the back of my shirt and started poking around, pushing hard in several spots. “Does that hurt?” she asked. “No,” I said. “That?” “A little.” “How about that?” “HOLY GOD IN HEAVEN WHAT EVIL ARE YOU PERFORMING UPON ME!” I about levitated off the table and hit the ceiling. “That is just horrible,” she said. “You’re so tight right there.” And she kept pushing and rubbing. I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t scream long and loud like that boy in the Accepted trailer. When she was done pushing and rubbing the left side, she moved around the table to the right side. “That was your good side, right?” she asked. “No, my bad side,” I said. “Oh good!” she said, sounding relieved. “I was going to say, if that’s your good side, I’m scared to see your bad!” She pushed around on the right side of my back for a few minutes, then sat and made some more notes on her laptop. Then we went out into the “common” area (for lack of a better word) and she had me sit on a stool in front of a mirror. “Sit in a position you think is a good position,” she said. So I did. Then she had me put my hands out and said “Don’t let me push your hands down.” She pushed, and as hard as I resisted she had very little difficulty pushing them down. So we went over the correct way to sit, a way that involves considering the different parts of your body to be comprised of different “blocks”. When I was in the correct position, she tried pushing my hands down and wasn’t quite as successful. I was quite amazed, really. But I also felt like I was about to tip over backwards, which she explained by guessing that I’d “developed” early (I did), and that girls who develop early tend to kind of hunch over. She, on the other hand, developed late, so she had the opposite problem – when she was taught the correct way to sit, she felt like she was leaning forward too much. After the sitting instructions, she had me stand in a stance with one foot slightly forward and said “Don’t let me push you over.” I braced myself, but she had no problem at all pushing me out of my position. We discussed where I’d felt it first, and then she had me lay down on the floor, and said “Don’t let me push down on your stomach.” Then she pushed down, and I have such a weak core that if she’d wanted to poke her fingers into my guts and pull out a string of guts to wear around her neck, my (nonexistent) ab muscles would have parted and said “Be our guest!” People, I was SO thankful I hadn’t had anything to eat that morning, because if I had? She would have pushed the poop out of me. I guarantee it. We did an exercise that works your core wherein you basically lay on the floor with your spine in a neutral position, brace one knee against the hand on the same side of the body until you feel your abs tense up, and then start picking up one knee and then the other, keeping your abs braced and REMEMBERING TO BREATHE (very difficult). I did it a few times, then lost the ability to brace my abs while breathing at the same time (I kinda sound like Nance doing Pilates, don’t I?) and would have to start all over again. She showed me another exercise that involves placing two tennis balls taped together under my spine and moving my arms back and forth. I’m not sure what that particular exercise is supposed to do, but it hurt like a motherfucker. Then there was another exercise involving putting a single tennis ball between my back – where it hurts – and the wall, and rolling it back and forth to kind of produce a massaging sensation. I kind of liked that one – at least it didn’t hurt, and it was easy to do – and the last exercise was the camel/ cat stretch, which probably anyone who’s ever done any kind of stretching at all will recognize. You get on your hands and knees, stretch your back upward and your head down like a camel (or a stretching cat, I suppose), hold it for 30 seconds, then lower your back and lift your head and hold that for 15 seconds. Bridget gave me copies of all the exercises, then gave me my checkout sheet, and after an hour and a half – she told me that next time there’d be more “mechanical” stuff, and I was a little afraid to find out exactly what that might entail – I made an appointment for 7 this morning and for Tuesday and Friday next week, and I was on my way. I had a grocery list from hell, so I ran to the grocery store to get groceries, then ran home and had fifteen minutes to put all the groceries away, make a 3-bean salad for dinner (for Fred, because he’s the only one who likes the stuff anymore), found that the green pepper I’d had him buy on Saturday (for the 3-bean salad; since he’s the only one who eats it, I put the green pepper in it. When I’d eat it with him, I didn’t like green pepper, so didn’t put it in the salad) had gone rotten, so made a mental note to pick one up at some point in the afternoon. I had just enough time to go to the bathroom and grab a bottle of water, and I was out the door again. I had an 11:15 appointment at my doctor’s office to have my thyroid ultrasounded. Apparently there’s a company that employs ultrasound technicians who travel around to doctor’s offices on certain days to perform ultrasounds. I ended up waiting about ten minutes, and the ultrasound itself took maybe twenty minutes. The ultrasound technician told me that what she was seeing looked like goiters with some calcification (I’ve never had an ultrasound tech tell me what she saw), and when I asked if they usually did anything about that sort of thing, she said some doctors like to yank out the thyroid at the first sign of anything, and other doctors prefer to wait and see. I suspect my doctor’s a wait-and-see-er. When I left the doctor’s office, I drove out into the country a bit to our favorite farm stand (Is0m’s, for those of you in Madison – go out 72 toward Athens and you’ll see it on the left after a big car dealership) for tomatoes and a green pepper. While I was there, the peaches looked so good that I bought a container of them. I headed home, got there around 1:30, ate lunch, and finally got a chance to check my email. I was so wiped out from my busy day (I know y’all are like “Busy day? THAT AIN’T NO BUSY DAY! LIVE MY LIFE FOR A DAY, WOMAN!”) that I ended up snoozing on the couch for a good hour before Fred got home. I continue to be thankful for electric blankets, by the way. That electric blanket keeps me so damn nice and warm that I’m thinking about marrying it. Also, that night my back was hurting so much (not the muscles, but the skin where she pressed so hard and I had to move around on those GODDAMN tennis balls) that I made Fred look at my back and tell me if I had bruises. He claimed I didn’t, but I swear to god if my back looked like it felt, it’d have to be black and blue. * * * Wednesday morning I woke up earlier than I’d intended – 7:00 – and ended up puttering around the house for a while, doing some sorely-needed vacuuming (I hadn’t vacuumed since LAST THURSDAY. ::shudder::) and then I spent the next fifteen minutes or so doing the exercises the physical therapist had given me to do (the cats gathered around and stared at me like I was the world’s biggest freak). I cleaned out the litter box, cleaned up the kitchen, then took my shower and got dressed. I left the house a little before 10, because I had an appointment with the GI doctor at 11:15, and I wanted to go to the mall first and be professionally fitted for a bra. The physical therapist had told me there was a woman at JC Penney who purportedly did a good job with the fitting of bras, so that’s where I headed. I located the lingerie department in JC Penney, found the woman who worked there, and told her I needed to be fitted for a bra. And this is where I get annoyed. Because she measured me and came up with the size 40C. I figured okay, she’s the professional, what the hell do I know, right? So we went out and picked out five bras in that size, and she told me to go try them on and she’d check on me in a few minutes. I’m sorry, but my Aunt Fanny am I a size 40C. The band was too big and the cup was too small on every single bra. How do I know that the band was too big? Because I could easily fit my fist between the band and my body. How do I know that the cup was too small? Because my boobs were MELTING OUT OF THE CUPS IN ALL DIRECTIONS. Maybe it’s harder to fit someone who’s lost a lot of weight and whose boobs are more skin than anything, I don’t know. I do know that I came out of the dressing room to ask her to try again, and she was busy with customers, and I thought “Fuck this”, put the bras away and left. I headed over to Dillard’s, grabbed up a bunch of bras to try on (I didn’t see a salesperson anywhere), and went and tried them on. And by the time I was done with THAT little exercise, I was thisclose to just buying some goddamn sports bras and going around with the uniboob look for the next year until I’m cleared to start looking into plastic surgery. Except that Jane told me that if she ever sees me with a uniboob she’ll personally come down and kick my ass, and I’m sure she’d have no problem kicking my ass from one end of Alabama to the other. Anyway, by this time I had to leave, because I wanted to get to the doctor’s office in time to fill out the paperwork before my appointment. I managed to get their about five minutes early, and as I pulled into the parking lot, I realized that I’ve actually been to this office before, a few years ago when it was first discovered that I had elevated liver enzymes. So I didn’t have to fill out any paperwork, aside from providing a list of my current medications (which, luckily, I had thought to write down before I left the house, so all they had to do was make a copy of it), and update a form with my contact information on it. I didn’t have to wait at all in the waiting room before the nurse was taking me back to be weighed, take my blood pressure (106/ 63) and my pulse taken (67). I waited a few minutes in that room (luckily, I’d brought a book) before I went back to the exam room, and I was only in there for a few minutes before the doctor came in. If the two doctors I’ve seen in this practice are anything to go by, Gastroenterologists are quite personable and easy to talk to. The doctor I saw yesterday appeared to be about 12 years old (a sign of my growing old, I’m told), and he talked to me pretty extensively about what was going on. He said that it could be a blocked duct or I might have had a gallstone that passed, but he wanted to do a recheck of my blood and see how the bilirubin (the only thing that’s grossly elevated) level was, whether it had increased, decreased, or stayed the same. He also said he wanted me to have an ultrasound of my liver. He rejected the notion of Dr. Fred and Google’s suggestion that I had anemia, told me that my case of jaundice wasn’t a bad one at all (“Just enough to give me a healthy glow, right?” I said, and he laughed and agreed), and said that the fact that I looked so healthy and wasn’t having pain indicated to him that whatever it was was probably not too serious. I went out to see the scheduler, who scheduled me for a liver ultrasound on Friday (that makes two ultrasounds in one week, which is a personal record for me), which means that I have had an appointment between 11:00 and 12:00 every single day this week. I’d like to get back to my normal, boring life, please. Anyway, I can call on Friday to find out about the blood tests, and Monday about the ultrasound. I left there and thought about going back to the mall to try on more bras or throw myself on the mercy of another bra fitter, but I was in a crappy mood since I hadn’t had anything to eat, so I just went on home. Where I ate too much for lunch, answered a couple of emails, and then landed on the couch and watched the three episodes of My Fair Brady I’d taped and never gotten around to watching. I’m thinking Christopher Knight drinks too fucking much. He gets drunk in, like, EVERY episode and acts like an asshole to Adrianne. I mean, don’t get me wrong – I think she gets off on the unending drama; I think they both do – but if he treated her with a little respect instead of always telling her she’s being childish and trying to control her every move, I think he’d get one hell of a lot further with her. Peter was always my favorite Brady, but Christopher Knight is kind of a controlling asshole stuck in his old-man ways. I suspect the next season starring these two will be one of three things: My Fair Baby, My Fair Divorce, or My Fair Rehab. Last night for dinner I made Buffalo Chicken Salad (a recipe linked to by the fabulous Julie). It wasn’t too terribly difficult to make, and it was quite a hit with Fred. I liked it, but I think that next time I’ll do a little batch of less spicy chicken for myself. It was even a touch too spicy for Fred, and that’s saying something. I didn’t do two whole stalks of celery, because I’m not that crazy about celery, and I cut up a tomato, because what kind of salad doesn’t have tomato in it? I would have added cucumber as well, but we didn’t have cucumber in the house, so there you go. Last night I was so tired I ended up falling asleep for the entirety of CSI (taped last week) under the electric blanket. I barely made it upstairs, brushed my teeth, and fell into bed. Maybe when I lose a little more weight, I can demand that Fred carry me upstairs when I’m that tired! * * * This morning I had to roll out of bed at 6, because when I was making my physical therapy appointment for today, all they had available was 7 and 11, and I have an 11:00 appointment in Huntsville with the nutritionist. So I managed to get up, showered, dressed, make the bed, and get out the door by 6:50. I got to the office with five minutes to spare and sat in the car for a few minutes. I saw Bridget for my physical therapy again today. She had me lay down on the massage table and she worked on the left side of my back forEVER. I thought I was going to cry, it was hurting so bad. After she tortured me for a while, she tried stretching out my back, but my back refused to cooperate and wouldn’t give in. She showed me several different exercises to add to my repertoire, mostly stretches, and BOY did they feel good! I go back next Tuesday and Friday at 8, which was kind of a dumbass time for me to pick, because that’ll be in the worst of the school traffic, and no doubt I’ll have to leave the house at 7:30 to get there by 8. I need to remember to schedule for a little later in the day after next week. And now y’all are caught up on what my week has been like! I have to leave in about an hour to go to South Huntsville, where I’ll meet with the nutritionist for a while, then come home and hopefully whip the house into shape a little. There’s so much housework I’ve been neglecting this week, it’s not funny. At least the downstairs is vacuumed, so it’s not TOO nasty. Or so I like to tell myself. * * * “Daaaaaad! I don’t CARE if it’s raining outside, I want OUT!” Snoozing Suggie. It’s exhausting to be a Sugs. All of today’s uploaded pictures are hither. * * * Previously 2005: I suspect people as beautiful as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have to be a little bit nuts, anyway. 2004: WONDERFUL. 2003: No entry. 2002: No entry. 2001: A Day in the Life of a Bitchypoo. 2000: Maine recap.]]>