One step forward, two steps back

August 15, 2018August 15, 2018 ~ msgracefulnot ~ 27 Comments

Do you ever feel like for every step you take forward, you take two backwards? That is the best I can say to describe the events happening in my life right now. I did think of using a hurricane or other storm as an example, but while those things ONLY cause disaster the things happening in my life are only causing me grief, and I haven’t given up just yet. So what’s been happening here….

Instead of re-writing, or copying and pasting things from previous posts, I am going to add links to my previous posts if you want the back story.

Walking a minimum of 4000 steps a day

On July 13th, in the post let’s get moving. I talked about making it a point to walk everyday to increase my endurance, strength, and stamina, even though I am afraid to walk alone and have had some pretty bad experiences. The positives are that I have finally reached my goal of walking for a full mile at a time, and have had some days that I have reached more than 8000 steps (not at one time though). I was doing good with the whole weight loss thing, ( I haven’t written about that yet), until Birthday week hit….yah cake? My neighbor (who works nights) even started setting an alarm to wake up at 8 am and walk with me everyday. I bought a rollator walker to help with my balance, which I used in the evenings to try to get a few more steps in.

One day after getting lots of steps in, I came home, took off my shoe and saw this…

Awww, shit. I had broken my foot a couple years ago, and had attributed the pain to “an old sports injury”. The fact that it was so discolored told me that I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I reluctantly called the podiatrist I had been referred to in the past. I don’t want to be “one of those people” that claim that doctors treat patients without insurance differently, but after the office visit I have to be.

The doctor physically examined my foot, said it felt warm to the touch and was obviously very inflamed, but since I hadn’t suffered an actual injury “this time” he was going to call it GOUT.

He sent me to the lab for a uric acid test, gave me a prescription for indomethacin, and told me to keep ice on it for a a couple days, then to start doing stretches for it.

NO Xrays?!?!?!? That’s it?!?!?! Not even an order to stay off of it…..

I went to the lab and had the uric acid test done, which came back as negative for gout. Ya think?!?! I did not take the prescription because NSAIDS, cause my blood pressure to go through the roof, and make me sick to my stomach. I instead have been living on advil and tylenol. (also not good, but the pain got to be pretty bad even at rest).

Yesterday, I broke down and went to an immediate care center. The first step while there was to do XRAYS.

GUESS WHAT

It’s broken AGAIN!!!! Is anyone really surprised?

So now I am back in a boot, yah that it’s a short boot this time, but a boot nonetheless. I have an appointment Monday to see a surgeon. If I end up spending any real time in the boot again, I will be ordering an “Even Up” from Amazon this time.

I don’t have the time or the patience to figure out why the link to amazon isn’t working, but if you want to see what I am talking about please click the link below or google “even up”.

Basically, it’s something you attach to your other shoe to help not cause further injury by walking “crooked” or unevenly when you are stuck in a cast. IMO well worth the $20.00.

When I began writing today, I had envisioned telling you about all the fun ( said very sarcastically) I had trying to switch to self hosted, and updating you on Me and my shadow, but this post is pretty lengthy as it is so I will write separate posts….later.

It’s good to be Back…. I have missed interacting with everyone and feel like I have alot of catching up to do.

So THIS happened today

July 26, 2018 ~ msgracefulnot ~ 24 Comments

The other night, I was making a pork chop on the stove, and my smoke detector went off literally saying. “FIRE, FIRE, FIRE”. There was no fire, there was no smoke, but because it was 10 pm at night, I did have an angry kid who had to be up for work at 5 the next day, running into the kitchen yelling at me. WHOOPS…

I kept hitting the button to turn it off. It did stop yelling Fire, but then it started saying “Carbon monoxide warning”. Thing 2 got angry and took the batteries out before lecturing me about making food so late etc and then she went back to sleep.

Yes I did 😛 when she closed the door. I ate my pork chop and that was the end of it, so I thought…..

This morning I woke up, made my normal path to the bathroom and stepped in dog vomit. SMH….cmon really? Why do animals always have to puke on the rugs or carpet areas?

I kind of hopped into the bathroom to clean my foot off, only to step in cat vomit. You have got to be fricking kidding me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( well at least in the bathroom it was on the newspaper that is still down on the floor from my last incident).

After cleaning everything up, I walked into the kitchen to start the coffee…. want to guess what happened there?

I am not kidding….. MORE animal vomit!!!!

When I finished cleaning everything up, Thing 2 came into the kitchen complaining of a headache and feeling like she wanted to be sick as well. You know, come to think of it, I have been feeling nauseous myself which I just attributed to taking wellbutrin to quit smoking….but what if…..

I googled what to do if you suspect a gas or c02 leak and called the number for our utility company. They advised me to take all the people and animals outside (2 dogs and 3 cats). Within minutes, emergency vehicles started showing up from all directions.

It turns out, my stove is broken and there is indeed Carbon Monoxide leaking from it. SMDH!

Go Big or Go Home?

July 16, 2018 ~ msgracefulnot ~ 17 Comments

Last week I posted that in one day I had received 370k comments in my spam folder in the a 24 hour period. Things have slowed down a little bit, this morning I have 564K. SMDH!!!!!

When I contacted wp support, they suggested that I activate the comments option that makes name and email required. Ok did that.

I also added almost 100 individual ip addresses to the block list

I have added all the repeating words that I found in the posts (ty SDC for the tip)

I have blocked anyone using an email from outlook (as that was a huge portion of addresses)

I went through the 1.8k comments that I have approved in the past and removed any from an anonymous user as was suggested by another blogger. (thank you Ralph)

Tom and Tanya both suggested bot blockers and upping my spam control. Whatever version on wp I am using only allows me to use askiment, and it says it have blocked another 300k in spam.

I switched back to all comments needing to go through moderation ( sorry for this guys), but after my phone going off ever 2 minutes with notifications for an hour, I have now removed WP from my phone. Which means I will be checking it less frequently.

I want to apologize in advance if I miss something you have commented on, I am deleting spam in bulk, and although I do scan it first, there are literally thousands of comments.

The only other thing I can think to try is switching to self hosted. I have heard of sites like godaddy, siteground, bluehost. Would anyone mind sharing what host you use? I need a site that will “hold my hand” so to speak . Thank you in advance!

Getting a blood patch for CSF leak

July 12, 2018July 11, 2018 ~ msgracefulnot ~ 15 Comments

This is the last part of A very long walk.

For those of you who have been reading along and commenting…there is a happy ending and an even better future

The PLAN was that my dad would drive me in my van with the seat laid flat, and my mom would follow in their car. Decatur Memorial advised my local hospital that I would be arriving later that day and that I needed a BLOOD PATCH. They even printed all my records for me to take with me. Yah should be pretty simple right?!?

NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT!!!!!!!

While we did make pretty good time getting there, ( a little over 4 hours) the hospital could not just admit me because I had declined the ambulance transport, instead they tried to seat me in the waiting room.

When you go to the Emergency Room, they take patients in the order of the severity of their injuries, I get that… Unfortunately a “headache” doesn’t rank very high on the list.

I don’t know if you have ever had the kind of headache that comes with a spinal fluid leak, but I promise you, it’s enough to make you think you are losing your mind. I still can’t quite explain it either.

Maybe kind of like the spins, after a night of too much drinking combined with someone smashing your head between two symbols while trying to speak to you in 3 different languages at the same time?

I really think I must have looked like I was losing my mind because I literally laid on the floor in the emergency room to try to stay horizontal. I’m really not a germaphob, but even I would draw the line at that normally.

I was frustrated, my parents were frustrated why couldn’t you just do this blood patch thing?!?!? I don’t remember all of the details that followed other than, I left and went home. Well my dad drove me home and they both stayed at my house with me.

I think some of the difficulty was that it was a holiday weekend. Another issue was that they were not sure where I was leaking cerebral spinal fluid from, and doubted the effectiveness of a blood patch if they didn’t find the right site.

Once the weekend was over, my mother was able to contact the neurosurgeon that had performed my thoracic laminectomy from a few years prior, and he said to bring me right into his office and he would do the blood patch immediately.

So what is a blood patch?

An epidural blood patch is an injection of your blood into the epidural space. The epidural space is not an injection into the spinal cord itself. The spinal cord and spinal nerves are in a “sack” containing clear fluid (cerebrospinal fluid). The area outside this “sack” is called the epidural space.

This is a great link explaining it in more detail. What is a blood patch?

I remember being terrified to stand up after the procedure. I had the doctor on one side of me and the nurse on the other, and I slowly stood up….. Nothing happened!!!!! My head DID NOT explode, there was no projectile vomiting!!! I was still sensitive to the light, but I could handle that. OMG it worked!!!! and almost immediately too!

After going home, I still continued to chug coffee and laid in bed for the next couple of days….just to be sure.

For the next month or so, I would continue to get migraine like headaches, but they were not positional and could be managed with medication.

While I thankfully no longer suffer from those headaches, I plagued myself with the fear of walking alone. When I walk in my house, I grab everything, walls, furniture, people. When I walk outside, I always have someone with me. What I did was to make myself a prisoner to my fear.

Prisoner no more

If you have been reading my blog posts for the last month, you know that I have been in a dark place both emotionally and physically. I don’t want to feel that way anymore!

So I started to force myself to “hit the road” again…. God let’s hope not… I mean walking again.

A long walk (part 3)

July 11, 2018October 5, 2018 ~ msgracefulnot ~ 19 Comments

This is a continuation of A long walk parts 1 and 2

When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t stand the light…in any form.

Okay now I was getting really scared.

I asked Einstein to take me to the immediate care center. His license was suspended, and he refused to risk it, so I drove myself. Before I left though, I called my parents and told them what had been happening to me, just so someone else knew.

By the time I arrived at the office, my head was spinning again, my vision was blurry, and the nausea was overwhelming, so I just laid in the car for a few minutes. Even with the air conditioning on, the car was too hot to stay for long, so I forced myself to walk in the front door. I made it to the counter to register, uttered my name and collapsed on the floor. When I came to, I was in the emergency room at Decatur Memorial Hospital.

Thankfully I carry a sheet of paper in my wallet (right next to my driver’s license) with all of my medications, surgeries, doctor’s names, and emergency contacts on it. The hospital found the list, and had already called my parents. They were on their way down. The doctor was performing a spinal tap on me in the emergency room when my parents arrived. Several MRI’s were performed, the Lumbar puncture, and it was concluded that I had a CSF leak.

I was in the hospital in Decatur for a week, receiving a continuous supply of caffeine and sol-medrol via iv. I didn’t feel like it was helping at all, in fact pumping that amount of stimulants in my body while telling me I had to lay completely flat was making me homicidal. The hospital listed me as a fall risk (no surprise there) and set alarms on my bed to prevent me from getting up to use the bathroom on my own. After wetting the bed a few times while waiting for assistance, I suggested that they put a foley catheter in instead. They didn’t. Instead they put a ‘GPS tracker’ on me.

I was livid! So much so that I really began to show my ass. I informed them that I was leaving their backwoods, no brain hospital, and going home to where doctors actually had some brains. (I didn’t know how I was actually going to do it, but I was leaving)

In fact, just to show them they couldn’t “hold me”

I slipped the tracker off my wrist without breaking the band and threw it at the nurse when she finally came in to respond to another alarm I had set off.

Yes I CAN be quite the asshole, when I feel trapped. and NO, I am not proud of that, but it is true.

The hospital began trying to arrange an ambulance transport back to Chicago…. like insurance was going to cover that…. No no, just sign my discharge papers and I will be on my way.

I called my neurologist in Chicago, and he asked, “Why don’t they just do a blood patch?” I responded, “because they are idiots”. (not that I knew what a blood patch was either or where I could “pick one up”)

I would soon find out……