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Sunday, March 9th, 2008
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6:21 pm - My circle of pain (medical update)
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Well, while I now know a couple of things it is not, I still do not know what it is. The only parts of me that have remained pain-free at this point are my right foot, my stomach, and the left side of my chest. The blood test results I got on Friday determined that it is not arthritic, but that I do have a high... something that starts with a "C"-levels, which have something to do with muscle inflamation. I have to get more blood drawn tomorrow for some more tests. "Fibromyalgia" is something that has been mentioned, although I don't know what that is exactly, but it seems that it is diagnosed by exclusion, so we don't know yet. "Chronic Fatigue" is another possibility, along with a few other things that I can't remember (and a bunch of others that weren't mentioned but obviously exist as well). My doctor actually took out a big medical book and started flipping pages and asking me questions, looking through various lists of symptoms for various types of conditions. I'm a medical mystery! (please note my abundance of sarcastic joy)
My left hand is starting to hurt again, so I'm going to end this here. Again, if any of you find any of this familiar, please drop me a line? All other comments are, of course, also appreciated.
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| Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
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9:26 pm - My own personal greatest hits collection
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Early Saturday morning, around 2 or 3 AM, as I sat on the couch on my computer and contemplated going to bed, I noticed that the muscles of my thighs and, well, backside area, were becoming rather sore. I figured I'd just been sitting for too long and so turned off the computer, got up, walked around the hall for a bit, and got ready for bed.
It didn't get better. If anything, it just got way worse.
I never really considered it before, but really, the worst place to be in pain when trying to sleep has got to be in your hip/leg area. I could not find a position that gave me any sort of relief. Even on my stomach, which ended up being the best I could do, it was still impossible to ignore. I ended up taking one of my sedatives to sleep, but amazingly (seriously, I could not believe this), the pain still woke up me about two hours later. The sedative is supposed to last for at least four to six hours.
So, I was in pain. The strange thing was, that despite the numerous pain killers, late Saturday afternoon, my right arm started hurting. It was strange, to say the least.
I was prepared with the sedative Saturday night, and managed something resembling a normal amount of sleep (note the emphasis on the word resembling), but the pain still caused interruptions. Sunday I woke up with my pains from Saturday morning feeling much better (though the leg pain was still there), but my arm was much worse, and then my left knee started throbbing.
Now, two summers ago, my left kneecap fell out (it didn't actually detach itself from my leg or anything, but it fell out of place, pretty much without anything happening to cause it). I ended up using a cane for over a year, which luckily necessitated in my having purchased one of my very own, as I had to take it out again on Sunday in order to get around, as the pain was scarily that day was scarily like it had been back then.
Strangely enough, about two months ago, I banged my right arm rather hard, jarring it pretty badly, and the pain, again, was very similar to that. I felt like I was experiencing my own sort of "greatest hits" collection. The pain was excruciating, but it wasn't staying in the same place. Later that evening, my right hand started killing me (my right index finger had been aching all day, but up until then the rest of the hand was fine). My mom managed to get me a small perscription of Tylenol 3 (with codeine), because I was convinced that was the only way I was going to be able to sleep.
Instead, apparently, it decided to have the complete opposite affect. I ended up totalling about two hours of sleep (not all at once) before giving up, completely wide awake. My hand felt better, but my right arm, all the way up to and including my shoulder, was hurting again, unbearably. I also noticed a couple of bruises that I couldn't account for - at least one in a place where it would've been pretty much impossible for me to have not noticed receiving it.
So, naturally, I was getting kinda scared, particularly because of that last event. My mom's boyfriend is a family doctor and he recommended me seeing someone, since every painkiller I'd tried had done pretty much nothing (the only difference I'd noticed was that while on it, I wasn't actually about to burst into tears from the pain). So, Tuesday morning, after approximately an hour (collectively) of sleep, I went to the walk-in clinic. Blood tests were ordered, though the doc did say that there weren't enough strange bruises for them to mean anything alarming (and I haven't noticed any more since then, so yay). I did the blood tests, and I have an appointment to go over the results on Friday. I also got a prescription for a new sort of painkiller (which I confirmed today I could take at the same time as a sedative, and so tonight I will actually be going to sleep!), which... so far, so good, I guess.
So... yeah. I had another practically sleepless night last night, as I'd forgotten to ask the doc about the sedatives until today, so I'm pretty much exhausted, and at present, the only parts of me that haven't been in intense pain (at some point) are my right foot, my left arm, my stomach and chest (I would also count my head, since I haven't had anything more than my normal migraines on occasion, but since that's still pain, I'm leaving it out). My present pain situation includes my right index finger (which makes typing... interesting), right shoulder, and both of my legs. I have no idea what would cause such an intense pain in such a rotating way, but I'm hoping that by Friday, I'll not only know, but also be able to fix it.
I don't really know why I'm typing this all out (especially while my finger hurts), but I'm thinking that this is something that I probably want to have a detailed record of somewhere. And maybe I'm also sort of hoping that someone who reads this might have some sort of clue about what's going on.
To be clear, I've had a bad back and neck for over ten years now, I get migraines and there was that thing with my knee... Sadly, I'm pretty much always in some sort of pain. But this is like nothing I've ever experienced before. I can't sleep, I haven't really been on my computer in days, and even laying down comfortably can be problematic. I don't know what is going on. I'm really worried, and yet at the same time, I can't think of anything particularly frightening that this might resemble. If it wasn't so intense, and so weirdly pattern-esque, I would put it down to muscle strain. But it's too much, it's lasted too long, and it's way too repetitive for it to be something so simple. Sigh. I guess that's it, I don't know what else to say about this.
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| Friday, February 15th, 2008
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9:49 pm - Font of questions (heh)
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Does anyone happen to have a font named "carbon14" (or something similiar)? It's part of the Coniglio Collection, if that rings a bell... Oh, and it's also the official typeface for the new show Chuck.
Here's a tiny picture for reference:
I've been looking everywhere for a free version of it, but it doesn't seem to exist, and frankly, I can't justify the expense to myself. I just figured if someone already had it, they might not mind sharing - and I'd totally be willing to trade for it (I have over 2GBs of fonts on my harddrive). Even if you only have a variation of it (like, outlined, or with a background, or something like that), I'd still be thrilled to bits.
So... if any of this sounds familiar... please let me know? Thank you!
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