I did everything I could to get read to go out today. I went to bed early, I wound my mind down, and when I was laying down to go to bed, my body panicked. Each time I experience new levels of chronic pain, I wonder: How is this even possible? The human body is not meant to endure this level of pain so flippantly and with such little regard for the patient’s long-term care…
Ever since my spine flare-up at the grocery store, my energy levels have been tanking overall. It makes sense. I pushed myself to get home after having maybe not a life-threatening amount of pain, but enough to impede my healthcare recovery. I didn’t even do all that much. I walked around about as many aisles, maybe a few more but nothing substantially more, than I have over the past months, so it’s frustrating, but… acceptable.
2021 September 26 1:43pm – As part of my commitment to self-betterment, through finding ways in which I have faulted, I will be trying a new experiment. For these rowing essays, particularly when I haven’t been able to row, I’ve used them as maybe one-off rant spots for writing about my health. I’ve let my weight get the better of me over the past two weeks, so instead, I’ll use this space to write about my fitness daily-ish.
Late into August 2021, I had my second spine injection since experiencing disabling, chronic pain in April 2020. My first injection, covered mostly by insurance, helped increase mobility and decrease pain; temporarily. I’ve written plenty about injections so I don’t feel like digging up my specific experiences, but generally, this second injection of the sacroiliac joint helped – but not as much as the doctor wanted. So we went with another injection – and the results were good enough…
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I’m writing this sentence at 10:55am in the hospital where I took some inspiration to write my first novel. That inspiration was more window dressing around the many sets I’ve found myself in. I’m here for imaging related to something tangentially wrong with my spine. I’m in a waiting room with red seats, beige backs, and lightly-lacquered wood armrests, wrapped up and clearly labeled to prevent social distance from being broken. I’m exhausted from crutching.
I’m following up with my doctor tomorrow. My doctor gave me injections that have admittedly helped with my overall physicality, but have not been substantial enough for me to feel like that’s all I need. I feel like another injection in my lower back might be helpful, but I will leave that up to my doctor to decide, and there is the question of physical therapy – along with infrequent headaches I’ve had since the injections.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt a separation between my mind and body. The two work in tandem, but the two are not united. Sometimes, this means when there is a disagreement, my mind has to hyper-focus to get my body – my meat puppet – to perform an action. When the two are closer to working together, then “I” can do good things. Yesterday’s mind wanted to get groceries. Today’s body said no.
It is just before 8am when I’m writing this sentence. I’m in my car, parked near the wheelchair ramp leading up to the clinic where I will receive an injection maybe before 9am to help decrease the pain I can mostly avoid through a sedentary lifestyle which will help increase my mobility so I can live a more productive lifestyle. It’s overcast and soon-to-be Fall. I arrived early – I hadn’t driven in maybe weeks?
“Never count on it until you can count it out.” I’m paraphrasing a quote someone who I no longer associate with once told me regarding money. This person ran a business and taught me this important lesson with business that applies to healthcare as well: until it actually happened, don’t count on it happening. My doctor needed to defer a week because, apparently, no one else at the location is qualified to do an injection?
The platform that Zdiscord runs on recently implemented a new feature where channels could have sub-channels, basically, and at first, I thought that was going to be needlessly complicated. After some test runs, we’ve found uses for these threads. I, for example, have a channel in Zdiscord called #Health-ZP to document my health information. I have a thread for spine flare-ups inspired by, well, a flare-up that happened about 2 hours ago that reminded me: ouch!
