the end of my winter blues

May & June were difficult months. Not only was there wrapping up at work for my surgery and recovery, there was also the anniversary of Tiffy's death and family difficulties and traumas surrounding it. Through it all, summer has been creeping slowly up on us, until we are suddenly basking in 70 degree weather and wading through lush, flowering yards -- just in time for me to return to work.

"Late Autumn" with Hyun Bin,
filmed in Seattle, WA

The surgery went very well this time.  Less pain, less recovery time, less time on crutches and, therefore, less grumpy me. I was even escorted out by Johnny and my fellow drama-watching co-worker to see a Korean movie, Late Autumn, at the Seattle International Film Festival two weeks after the surgery, with my pimp cane. The movie was, not surprisingly, a little oppressive and sad. A little slice of life, per se. Only... for those exceedingly unlucky.

Mary's wedding to John's younger brother is approaching fast. It's not often that one is lucky enough to have your best friend marrying into your family. But trying to prepare for the bestest-ever bachelorette party is sooooo outside my realm of experience it's not even funny. We've got three minds working on it, and fingers and toes crossed.

So it's really late, but I did want to share some pictures of the house that I've been capturing. We had no idea how the yard--which was bleak and muddy when we started renting the house--would bloom in the spring sun. We just resigned ourselves to it not being anything to write home about.

Depressing, ain't it?

A couple months later...

But through the last couple months, we've watched it bloom into a peaceful, pleasant place. We were happy to discover that we have a lilac tree, just off our porch, and the huge tree on the corner of the lot is a Horse Chestnut, which rivals all other trees in the neighborhood for sheet immensity. A million flowers came up in a flower bed (middle picture, above) that we thought was just an ugly rock dump!

Our bench needs a little tender care...

April twentieth

April twentieth may go down in infamy for any ol' number of reasons, but one of them has got to be my sheepish performance in my last post. Wow, drama queen much, eh? Especially considering how the cortisone shot took all of one minute, and as the doctor slapped a bandaid over the injection site, like every other bad cliche, I said:

That's it? You're done?!

I thought he was just inserting the local anesthesia, and he was already pulling out (har har). In comparison to my previous experience -- be it time, pain, trauma and all around fuss -- it makes me want to check the prices to see what the other place was charging me. Let's see:

Last time:  There were four people hovering around me the entire time, working the machine, the needle, trying to calm me down (people watching?)...
This time:  There was my surgeon and his assistant in the room, but she never even approached us.

Last time:  The cat scan they kept pushing me into to check the angle of the injection was ancient and huge, taking up half the room.  
This time: The scan was the size of a dinner plate that just hovered over my hip the whole time. No stopping and starting, stopping and starting.

Last time:  They tied up my feet to keep them from twitching, which made me feel extremely vulnerable and uncomfortable in a room full of people.  
This time:  No bondage for me.

Last time:  The injection took about 20 minutes of slow inching deeper-and-deeper into my joint. 
This time:  The injection of both local anesthesia and cortisone took one minute, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am.

I am... disgusted.

I got all seriously worked up. I got Valium, for gawd sakes. I was so freaked out about the idea of repeating that procedure that as soon as I stepped off the table, I burst into tears of sheer relief. That was really it?! 

And to top it all off, the nurse went and got me a boxed fruit juice drink. 

Did I get a boo boo?

 ~ * ~

So much for Valium. I have to wonder if they actually gave me a placebo, because I noticed no difference except perhaps a protracted morning fuzzy head. Every emotion you'd think Valium was supposed to innure you to, I experienced in full color that morning:  anxiety, fear, tears on several occasions, and actual rage. There's nothing like a good spot of rage to make you feel young again. You know the kind:  fire in the eyes, chest aching, drooling through clenched teeth and the top of your head shooting off towards Mars.

So I say, again; wtf is this Valium shit? Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

another jab of the needle for me

I'm not sure if I've shared this here, but I've been told, as a result of that lovely Arthrogram I underwent recently, that I need the same surgery on my left hip that I had just last year on my right.

Since I maxed my auto insurance's Personal Injury Protection almost a year ago, I've been paying for my medical expenses resulting from getting run over by a truck in downtown Seattle with my personal Medical Insurance... which is to say that, because of the lovely High Deductible plans, I've been paying for much of it out of my own pocket.  I can only hope that whatever settlement I eventually get will cover all the medical debt we've racked up in the last year+. 

Despite the fact that the High Deductible medical plan feels like we're paying for it all ourselves, in the interest of reaching that deductible and catching a financial break, I still have to jump through whatever hoops my insurance company decides I have to jump through to obtain their approval for the cost of the surgery to count against my deductible. The first hoop my insurance is demanding I jump through before they'll even consider approving the surgery is a cortisone shot into my left hip.  This is very familiar -- I had a cortisone shot in my right hip, prior to the last surgery, with barely more than a week of relief before it wore off.

Do I seem unhappy?  I am unhappy.  Extremely so.

Imagine this (which is a scan of a cortisone
shot to a shoulder joint, rather than a hip) only
it's coming in from the front of my hip, right
next to my groin, instead. And tell me that
doesn't make you cross your legs, and cringe.

This is the fourth time since the accident that I've had to lay down so some doctor can tie up my feet so I don't twitch wrong, then shove a needle so deep inside my hip that he has to constantly screen it through a cat scan to make sure he's on the right path. During the arthrograms, they then inject contrast dye into the joint so that the MRI can do its thing. For the cortisone shots, they use an even thicker needle--omg, I'm making myself nauseous remembering, why am I doing this to myself?!--because they have to insert this cortisone cream (read: steroids) into the joint. And, I'm just going to share here, there is a ring of tissue through which the needle needs to punch to enter the joint, and it makes me stomach flutter just thinking about it. Ugh. It's not just that it's really painful, it's more that I hate needles, hate the idea of it entering my body... and even if they inject enough local to make you sick afterward, there is no way they can numb you enough that you don't feel that pressure punching through, invading really deep inside.

What's fucking Valium,
am I a hysterical,
Georgian wilting flower?

I haven't managed to get through any of these procedures without crying all over the stupid table. I'm just too afraid of needles. I spent all morning last week negotiating with the Dr.'s office, begging for anesthesia, gas, anything to just knock me out so I don't have to experience it again. I want to hurl my lunch just thinking about it. But apparently, Valium is the lowest they will go.

Damn them. 

on hands and knees in public restroom... even worse than you're imagining, you sicko

Little did I know, when I posted about the accident in which a truck hit me while I was walking across the crosswalk, that the medical shit flung at the fan-that-is-my-life would literally take over that life for years to come. 

Check me out:  it was just a funny story; I was all ho-ho, off-hand, laughing it off... I had no fucking clue. It's been a year and a half now since that crosswalk, and I'm still undergoing scary, painful medical procedures and am now facing the possibility of another surgery, on the opposite hip of the one I just had surgery on last June.  To find out just how "possible" that second surgery is, I had another arthrogram, on my left hip last Thursday.  And can I say...

Ouch!!

shrine of germs

They force a huge needle into the hip socket from the front, and inject dye, pain relievers, etc. into the joint so they can get a really clear picture of what's going on in there (MRI).  Between:

1.) Me being needle-freaky (read:  ready to cry upon the sight of that big long needle), and;

2.) The doctor injecting extra local anesthesia to keep me from feeling the needle too much and freaking out (according to the doctor, he really didn't want me to cry like I was threatening to, because he said it'd make him cry, and all kinds of awkwardness and retardation would ensue)

 ... I ended up crouched over, with a hip full of various liquids, hugging a public toilet and trying not to puke 5 minutes after trying to stand up. 

GROOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

When I came out of the bathroom -- because they just wouldn't stop knocking! Give a girl a chance to clean the smeared mascara from under her eyes after collapsing over a public toilet, why don't you!?? -- and reported that the nausea was fading, the nurse looks alarmed and says:

"Well, if you're feeling like fainting, I think we'd better get you a wheelchair!"

Who said anything about fainting?! If my husband had been there, he would have been rolling on the floor. My voice isn't overly loud like his, so the word I hear most is "What?" and "Huh?"  John characterizes my quiet voice as "booping".  I only get one "What?" from his direction before he looses patience and responds with:

"Boop, boop-boop-boop?"

Bastard.

Anyway, protestations aside, I ended up in a wheelchair.  And then I ended up developing a cold that very same night...hmmm, I wonder where I picked up that bug.  YUCK.

stir-fry, stir-crazy...

If I snap at one more person today, I'm going to have to put an end to my misery and stick my head down the toilet to drown. It's been 23 days since my surgery, and I am still house-bound, facing another week before my doctor re-evaluates whether or not I can escape these crutches I am consigned to. I am so irritable and stir-crazy, I could scream.  I can't go out strolling, walking, see the beach, take pictures of the beautiful flowers finally blooming in our yard... can't go basic shopping for real food (sorry, Johnny, no offense, but I want something besides ramen, rice and stir-fried whatever-is-in-the-fridge!), can't go to work, can't see a movie or meet with friends... I am officially sick of it! 

Johnny is trying, but I'm a real burden, at this point. He puts roses in my grandmother's vase for me, takes pictures of it to post here when I ask; tries to keep me fed and even pampers me with chocolate, and I repay him by snapping and moaning constantly.

Life is barely worth living. I don't want to see anyone. The phone battery is never charged when I need it for work---why the hell did I ever decide to have kids and who said they could be teenagers at the same time?! I can't bring myself caffeine. I can't pick up trash around the house (and that pisses me off). Whine whine, grouse grouse.

 Honestly? I'm bringing it online so I can get it out of my system, and hopefully leave my poor family alone. 

100th post

I am happy to publish my 100th blog post stating that I have survived hip surgery, and am anticipating--based on little other than real nice narcotics--a complete recovery. :) Though it's been less than a full week since the surgery and therefore I have to be quite careful, I have still noticed that I can flop my legs, bent at the knee, over to the right and to the left (oh so carefully).  I wasn't able to do this before the surgery, so I am excited.

I am currently scuttling around on crutches, and looking forward to moving on to a cane soon. I am in bed for the most part, but beginning to see the signs of stir-crazy. I have another week off work, and I've spent the last 5 days convalescing in my daughter's room, which is right next to the bathroom. My own bedroom is down a flight of steep stairs, which has--until today--been unassailable for me. I still don't look forward to tackling that in the middle of the night when in need of a bathroom break, so I think I'll be staying where I am right now.

Actually, I think I'd have a mutiny on my hands if I decided to move back into my own room.  Mae and John have been camping out on her floor since the surgery (John has been regulating my medication, etc., and insists on being next to me), which basically comes down to watching movies until 4 am and generally "camping out".  It's been a big spring-break, with Judah gone at my sister's house.

Better get back to bed, though.

a day of lasts

Today is my last day of work before hip surgery, resulting from my accident last year.  It's also (hopefully) my last day with a screwed up hip, and my last day without an attorney to represent me.  Johnny and I had a consultation and signed a contract, if only for the sake of not having to deal with all the medical bills until after the surgery! Who'da thought it was as easy as signing over a third of any settlement I might get? ^_^;;;;

I also had my last interview for the Marketing & Sales job I've been working toward within my company for the last (there it is again) 3 years. But now I have to wait until after the holiday to hear what the next steps will be, or---if I'm incredibly lucky---any outcome.

In other words, today I see the last of numerous stress-factors that have been weighing a great deal on my mind. Is rising like a pheonix from the ashes too X-men?  *crosses fingers*

more whining

The benefits received from physical therapy have plateaued (after readjusting my off-kilter pelvis bones, which did minimize the pain to some degree). I've therefore been referred to one of two surgeons in Seattle who are "really good" at the type of hip surgery I need. My consultation isn't for two more weeks, but my understanding is that they'll be shaving down some excess bone (a spur) on my femoral head (pictured right) that is grinding against my pelvis bone, and probably damaging my articular cartilage in the meantime (my "possible labral tear" according to the arthrogram). They'll also try to repair the labral while they're in there.

The spur is said to likely be caused by trauma when I hit the sidewalk (since it's on the opposite hip as which was struck).  I'll know more after the 17th.

Can I say?  I'd rather do this!  Stem cell repair on joints, and no surgery needed! That would be so... nice. :P

Anyway, I have to say that not having a working car for about 5 months, and commuting 100% by bus through my daily commute and all these Dr. appointments, is getting increasingly painful and dispiriting. But then I imagine trying to operate a manual shift with my hip protesting at the most unexpected times and the achy, old feeling that lingers through the day... and realize I just can't be pleased. :) Both sound depressing. I just really, really want this over and done with.

dialing in from the borderlands

There are so many things going on in my life now that I don't feel comfortable displaying here. That's the only way I can account for extended silences, or the shallow touch of subjects I visit here. I can't upset anyone with some pictures I took around the yard or neighborhood, my commute sunset or random facts about me. Even I cringe at my shallowness sometimes, but when I get the urge to talk about anything real, I am struck with the awful chance of someone I know or love stumbling across it and being hurt or offended. And not offending one of the many, many people in my life has become a major theme of this past year. It's becoming suffocating, honestly.

You might have noticed I've determined my injury to be a fairly innocuous subject, all around. ^_^;; So. Since I'm a hypochondriac of the most lovable type, and all my bodily hiccups are utterly fascinating to one and all...

I've been getting some acupuncture done to help manage the pain and anxiety I've been dealing with recently. It's my first time going to an acupuncturist, and has been a strange experience; a needle/wire accidentally left in once for me to discover as I was getting up, a couple of bruises caused by the needle/wires (hip and forehead! D'oh.) I'm not sure how long the acupuncturist has been doing this line of work, but don't think too long! :) But her bedside manner and patience keeps me coming back.

I definitely have less pain in my hip, but whether it's attributable at all to the acupuncture treatment is unverifiable, because I also had a cortisone shot around the same time that I started acupuncture. But the areas that I definitely noticed its effects are:

1. Sleep (I sleep better for about 3 nights, after my treatments, than I have since the accident)
   
2. Knot of pain in my stomach from stress (I feel it fading as I lay there on the table, and it doesn't come back for days. It's such a relief.)
3. Anxiety

The latter is probably the most nebulous, but the one I feel the most gratitude about these days. My anxiety is caused not only by my worry over the injury and what the long term affects may be on my health, but many other personal issues. It gets scary when my chest starts to feel constricted, and I notice every breath, regulate it. It begins to take effort to breath deeply, and hurts to expand my ribs. When I went in to the acupuncturist last week, and told her I was feeling incredibly anxious and stressed, she put a few needles in and I inexplicably began sobbing.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I turn my stress inwards and turn it into a bellyful of wanna-be ulcer. It's sad when you need to have the dam burst by a pin-prick. But burst it did, and I was a wet, bedraggled mess. I think the acupuncturist's understanding and bedside manner was incredible. I went on to sob for the entire hour on her table in the dark (hence, I think, the bruise on my forehead, from the needle in it!) And it's not like it fixed my problems or anything, because I went on to sob myself sick again the next night. But I think it may have helped force me to start the process of dealing with these dammed up emotions that were strangling me. And I feel a little bit stronger for it.

It sure was sheepish crawling back into her office the next week, though. --_--

teen angst

Less than 24 hours before I am scheduled to undergo a cortisone shot in my hip joint (to help with the pain caused by the labral tear in my right hip from being hit by a truck last June), I find myself chasing my 3---I mean, 14-year-old daughter Mae through the park on the beach at dusk. Dodging dogs and joggers, neighbor folks and skateboarders, as she tries to lose me by darting up hills and down paths...

Who thought this little cutie would end up trying to do me in? Teenage angst, what did I do to deserve you?

~*~

"I'm full of music, huh?" --Mae, 5 years old

I had just undergone my first acupuncture treatment for the pain yesterday, and for the last 24 hours had definitely felt some relief. So much for that.

I am pretty nervous about tomorrow's cortisone shot. Reading different people's experiences with it last night was definitely a mistake. Not to mention, the arthrogram I underwent a week or so ago was pretty painful, and I humiliated myself by crying like a baby when the needle punched through the tender ring of (muscle? tendon? I don't even know) surrounding the joint. And this procedure is supposed to be basically the same thing... with a bigger needle.

Gah.

global warming makes ninjas of us all

This morning, I slunk down the street to the bus swaddled to the eyes against 17 degree crystal-clear hell. I took a note from my brother T. and executed a Ninja-Arctic-Suspension move, as pictured -->
You can't see me. I am not even here.

In fact, I looked just

like this, nah-ha.

I lived to tell the tale, despite the suspicious looks of bus-riders and building security. I have made it; I am in the building. The weather will determine whether I leave it again this evening or not.

What the hell is with weather in the teens in the Pacific Northwest? This is bullshit. Grr.

Speaking of ninjas and doing good and saving the world, (which we were, yes) check this out. Patrick Rothfuss, author of the wonderful world I like to visit called The Name of the Wind, is offering some really cool prizes to help raise some money for Heifer International. If you are unlike me and have anything to spare after the economy stopped treading on you, check out the amazing things you could win by helping him hit his goal.

And also speaking of ninjas, I am not one. A real ninja would not only have seen that truck coming (which I did), she would have successfully dodged it (which I did not). So I admit freely that I failed it; wanna-be ninj-ette, that's me. The result of which is apparently a spinal lumbar disc injury, which is "incurable", as well as a potential hip labral tear.

All kidding aside, stop reading here if you don't feel like reading protracted whining and complaining.

I thought I was disgruntled about the lumbar disk injury. I mean, the chiropractor says it's incurable, and the best I can hope for is that (with daily exercises and hanging-upside-down-in-strange-traction-thingies, pictured to the left) I will be 'asymptomatic'. But if I fail in doing these daily, time-consuming and vertigo-inducing exercises, then I will be 'symptomatic' and in great pain. By which I mean so much as a cough will send a spasm of significant pain through my lower back. I'm 32! And I walk and sit and sleep like I'm in my 50s or 60s.

But after reading up some on this hip labral tear, I'm upset in a whole new, I-see-needles-and-pain-and squick-in-my-future kinda way. I've been dealing with this worsening pain in my groin area that kept me from rotating my right leg outward or inward. As this article states:

Typical symptoms of a hip labral tear include:

• Groin pain
• Clicking and snapping sensations in the hip
• Limited motion of the hip joint

I got all those, baby. Sprawling in bed is impossible for me--I have to lay very carefully with my legs stretched straight, because though I can lift my leg straight up all I want, the second I let my foot flop outward or inward, or shift as though I'm going to turn right, or try to cross my right leg over my left? yeeee-OUCH! (There's that clicking and snapping sensation.) Trying to tickle my son is increasingly out of the question. So is shifting every day to get out of the bus seat, crossing my legs in a business meeting, leaning down to fetch something from under my desk and last but not least, sleeping. I cannot even search subconsciously for a comfortable position without being jerked awake from a jolt of pain. And the worst part? I've been mentioning this to my chiropractors for months, and they only started taking me seriously about 3 weeks ago... 5 and a half after the accident. And only then because I threatened to go to my regular doctor because I was in so much pain.

But enough of whining. I've reached my tolerance quota for the day. I need distraction.

hematoma is the ick...

My tangle with the truck broke no bones, and my Dr.'s comment was "Wow, you're a tough one, aren't you? Get hit by a truck and get up and go home." Of course, I didn't just stroll there, and I've been regretting my instinctive desire to head for home and privacy ever since.

Though the insurance of the driver of the truck has accepted all liability and I am covered 100% for medical, I have been turned away from 5 medical establishments in the week following the accident, many of them well-respected and hospital affiliated, who "weren't set up for third party billing" and expected me to pay out of pocket for my medical expenses, and then try to collect from the car insurance. As if I'm stupid enough to put myself in that position! I actually had to limp out of two of them, after setting up appointments, because even though I advised them it was a motor vehicle accident and was paying through car insurance, they didn't see fit to advise me before-hand that they wouldn't accept payment (100% coverage!) through 'third party insurance.'

I'm sorry, how is car insurance coverage more third party than health insurance? This is the best medical coverage out there? This is ideal? It took me a week to get seen by a Dr. after being thrown to the ground by a truck. I was weeping with sheer frustration outside building of the second doctor's office I was turned away from until the office security came over to assure me 'everything would get better, whatever it was'--maybe he thought I'd been advised I had cancer or something, rather than being overcome with sheer frustrated rage.

Our doctor offices and hospital affiliations are so small, or understaffed, or cannot afford to go through all the red tape to bill for my coverage? This is Seattle, for gawd's sake, not some backwater place with few healthcare options. What this really is, is bullshit. Healthcare reform now, please, thx.

my nerd-like art

My sister-in-law wrote the beautiful poem pictured above, so for her birthday I drew it out for her and affixed it to the inside of an old, torn-off hard book-cover. I love the process of making up different lettering styles and combining them for a unique feel. And lucky me, my locally owned and operated book store allows me to comb through their selection of used books that they will be donating for old, broken hardbacks to recycle. Since I am a fanatic book-lover who can't stand the idea of cannibalizing a perfectly good old book, I have to hunt down already doomed ones for my pieces.

And, of course, the Harry Potter quote for a friend who is a huge fan--and slaves for accountants day in and day out.

Now to find the perfect one for my sister's birthday this week. All you Gemini babies are killing me; I'm wounded, here!

bad truck

Was sent flying about 5-6 feet before doing the tumbleweed act by a (may I say it) huge truck whose driver didn't see me crossing the crosswalk last night during rush hour.

This was downtown Seattle, absolutely packed with pedestrians--one way streets and paranoia abound. The driver was new to the city, unfortunately for me. The painful end of my short flight saw me sprawled on the sidewalk--my original destination, success! At least I was jogging and was knocked violently away from the vehicle, rather than going over it or under it.

Also, I managed not to hit my head at all, just my upper thigh (bumper) and shoulder (grill? lights? Ask someone else, it's a blur.) So though it's nice not to be in a coma or anything, I sort of regretted being conscious for the humiliation of being physically held down to the ground--"No! Don't move, miss!"--by pedestrians, then EMTs and police once they hit the scene, and all in front of my co-workers who got off just in time to witness my undignified take-down.

I am Jill's effusive tear-ducts.

My life didn't flash before my eyes or anything, not even while I was waiting to hit ground. It was just a confused jumble of flashes--streetposts at odd angles, bits of leafy greens and sky, sidewalk--but no flashbacks. I take this to mean I have no regrets. :)