truelove's ramblings

Right, so. With actual treatment and changes to my work schedule and workout efforts, my general pain levels have gotten a lot better! It's been great. Yay increased physical and mental functionality.

(It's amazing how goddamn much mental bandwidth pain eats. It's amazing how people, including A FUCKING TERRIFYING LOT of medical professionals, don't get that if you live with pain either you stop doing things altogether, or... pain stops being something that you factor into whether you can do something in and of itself. Like, sure, sometimes the pain is too much, but the fact of ANY pain is... not sufficient to stop you from doing stuff. Because the alternative is to lie in bed and do nothing and still be in pain. This is why I have hell's own time evaluating pain levels usefully. Like, "trouble" with a task? I would assume that means my body physically is unable to complete the task or that it takes a long time. Apparently, uh, most people would consider "it causes me ANY pain" to be trouble with a task. HOWEVER, the thing is, the pain still eats away at your mental bandwidth. It takes a lot of mental effort to screen it out so AS to function, and even more so to do so while still listening for input that says "okay but that's actually probably real damage happening right now" which, uh, is a good idea if you can. So dropping the pain levels, even if it's not to pain-free but just less pain, can buy you back a lot of brain.)

Anyway, with the decreased overall pain levels, I... actually began to register how much my hands, specifically, hurt? I mean, I did actually know my hands were much worse than everything else before that, but like when everything's on fire: it doesn't actually matter that the bedroom fire is a great deal hotter than the rest of the house fire, because the whole house is on fire. It's not until you douse the rest of the fire and the bedroom's still burning that the difference is more than academic.

So, I went to my PCP to ask for a referral to a hand therapist to investigate whether ring splints and/or physical therapy would be useful and got referred to... a hand surgeon, whose offices did x-rays and determined I have nothing wrong in the bones, he poked my hands briefly and declared me not hypermobile because my DIP joints on the fingers aren't especially capable of hyperextension, and told me to strengthen my hands and maybe yeah go buy a paraffin dip since they have historically helped (it's a good way of getting heat into the hands), and was otherwise useless because I did not need surgery.

...I was not impressed, okay. But hey, the x-rays showed no bone damage, so there's that at least. I mean, I would've been surprised if there had been, but it's nice confirmation.

So then I asked the SIL where she'd gone to get fitted for ring splints, called them and made an appointment, went BACK to my PCP to get him to refer me to that place, and went to that place. Except the actual person she went to is apparently no longer with their offices or something? I got routed to a different office entirely, which, okay fine.

The hand therapist there also declared me not hypermobile. In his assessment he checked damned near everything for active range of motion, but he did not check the passive range of motion on the MP joints which is the set of joints I was complaining about. Or, actually, the passive range of motion on hardly anything. His conclusion was tendinitis and/or muscle strain, from overuse. He gave me some gentle stuff to do for strengthening the intrapalmar muscles, did some trigger point work, some ultrasound, made me a temporary splint for the left thumb that hyperextends and gave me some buddy tape velcro for the fingers that have serious passive abduction issues, and my hands did in fact feel quite a bit better. So, okay, fine.

I haven't really done the PT, despite the fact that I agree it's probably a good idea, because I was feeling pretty fucking mixed feelings and I haven't had the energy to slog through my brain being stubborn and pissy and contrary. But I did make a follow-up appointment.

So anyway, I also hit up the silverringsplints.com contact page to get them to cough up people in the area who have a fitting kit and a therapist who can, you know, fit you. Because, apparently, I couldn't possibly just order a fucking fitting kit for myself, I have to have a ~facility number~. And I don't think my private practice as an LMT probably quite qualifies me as suitable therapist and facility. :|

A week and a half later, I did the follow-up appointment, which was heat and trigger point work on the shoulders and ultrasound, and it did also help knock the pain levels down, but also I got the message that both the hand therapist and his tech felt I am a malingering idiot who just needs to give up, you know, everything she does because it's clearly just all the result of overuse, as if even if that were true that would in any way be a practical fucking solution. (I'm an LMT, I do aerial, my primary hobbies are online social media, and knitting.) Also as if I am fucking imagining or over-emphasising the relevance to the nature of my pain of the fact that buddy taping and the oval-8 thermoplastic splints I laid hands on via the magic of Amazon having pretty much dropped my pain levels down from 5-6 to 3-4 which is... a bit high but in line with my background pain levels for the systemic joint pain I live with? This past week, despite frankly excessively overdoing it with work and other stuff, my hands... haven't hurt much! They're sore, but they don't hurt.

PS THIS IS FUCKING CLASSIC FOR HYPERMOBILE BULLSHIT, OKAY. Sorry, I just. What the fuck, I've had multiple rheumatologists agree very readily that I'm hypermobile based on the rest of my body, but we're going to fail to account for WHICH JOINTS I'M SPECIFICALLY TALKING ABOUT BEING HYPERMOBILE if we're just talking about the hands? Because no! My wrists aren't! And my DIP and PIP fingers joints aren't! I have never claimed they are! But my MP joints and my IP thumb joints fucking well are!

ANYWAY.

On top of all that, the hand therapist doesn't have a fucking silver ring splints kit and doesn't seem to know shit about them, really, other than that they exist. I cancelled the follow-up I'd made because on contemplation I am really just... not inclined to keep going and fight with getting him equipped to order me silver ring splints while being vaguely patronised as being a very silly, probably exaggerating her pain little woman. I mean, it's not severe as this shit goes in the medical fields but I'm still not really into that, thanks.

Instead, I'm going to find someone on the fucking list the web-site gave me and call the make sure someone there is in fact familiar with fitting for silver ring splints.

I honestly I would not even bother since, while it's not pretty, the thermoplastic + velcro tape combo is working... but I would like silver because there's passable odds that I could wear at least some of the silver splints while doing massage and that would be incredibly helpful. (If I could at least splint the IP joint on my thumbs while doing massage, that alone would be amazing.)

Today i swam ~120 meters. It's an improvement? But yeah. I look forward to being able to swim actual distances and not want to diiiiiiiiiiie.

It continues to be fucking weird that I swim best when I relax the most and am not trying to swim hard for distance or whatever. I mean, I get it, I do, but it's. Counter to most of my prior athletic experience. Relaxation is not a good thing in gymnastics. :3

so guess who went down with a migraine last night around about, oh, 8pm?

i woke up this morning still with the migraine, rather baffled as to the source of the thing as normally they're triggered and also i haven't had one in months and months and the last one was a contact migraine from a friend rather than my own.

eventually i realised that, oh hey, right side of my jaw's been pissed at me for the past day and a half at least and started poking at my jaw and went holy shit that's a mess. and then i called SWIHA and scheduled an appointment before work and the nice man worked on my face and neck and shoulders and he poked my feet for the reflexology effects but mostly it was my face and neck and shoulders.

my face and neck and shoulders were very sore and achy and misery-inducing afterwards (no, he didn't do a lot of deep pressure, just a lot of working points and energy work and getting the muscles to relax a bit) but on the bright side the migraine had ratcheted down about, oh, 85%! i could be functional indoors without sunglasses and a headscarf!

oh my god though my neck and shoulders and face are a mess what the hell even. my face has never been like this, i do not even know what i did -- i don't clench my jaw so wtf what even. dinner was interesting. though despite the soreness? chewing was still less painful than my meals yesterday were.

i am contemplating drowning myself in a hot tub at my next opportunity, just so i can get my face and neck too. #dreamwidth suggested a snorkel? that could work.

i have scheduled an appt next week at SWIHA as well and i guess i will sort my damn health insurance out and see if i can schedule something with my chiro and... try to take better care of myself. eesh. /o\

Reading through some fat-positive and body acceptance related blogs right now. Stumbled over into that part of the blogosphere via a link to this lady's blog and found myself particularly enamoured of this post addressing the bullshit statistics of obesity, along with helpful photographic illustrations.

Having a lot of thoughts, not least of which is: jesus christ the unhealthy messages are embedded so fucking deeply in our culture. I actually really like how my body looks lately, and I keep going "...but I could stand to lose some weight, really," and then stopping and listening to myself and wanting to shoot myself.

When I was a teenager I was very thin; thin enough people commented on it. I had trouble staying warm, it hurt to sit on hard seats. (Well, it still does, but for different reasons.) Even when I was 16, and quit gymnastics I was still quite slender. I thought weighing yourself was bullshit, too, because I weighed 140 and people still thought I was on the thin side and chronically under-guessed my weight at least 20, if not 30 pounds.

Then puberty finished hitting me upside the head, ages 16-18, and I had a hell of a rack which in all honesty is probably where most of the 10 lbs I gained after quitting gymnastics went. I was still pretty damn slender, though. When I moved when I was 18, I gained weight again. Stress, I am sure, and probably my body filling out that last little bit.

I remember when I was thinner and stepping on the scale was a pure curiousity and I didn't give a shit whatsoever what I ate. And -- mostly I've kept that. Except how I haven't. Now I think about diets and have to actively reject that kind of thinking. Now I think about how much bullshit the BMI is in a very personal, and not abstract way.

And, you know, I think so much of it has to do with clothing and fashion. I managed not to give a shit much one way or the other when I could find clothing that fit me. But these days? Clothing and clothes-shopping tells me, you are too fat, too busty, too curvy, too hour-glassed. Too too. Stay home and hide yourself, there's nothing for you here.

And it's just about impossible not to start internalising that shit.

I've been struggling with myself to not worry about my weight, about dieting, about being slender and perfect, for my cosplay for Club Vivid at vividcon this year. I'm cosplaying T'Pol and, and -- god knows, I know, that everyone there isn't going to give a shit that I'm probably at least fifty pounds heavier than Blalock. Except maybe me. And I'm working on that.

Right now my project is: eat healthy, nutritious foods (you know, all the ones that I actually do love), and eat at the right times. And eat enough protein. Because my energy levels are a hell of a lot more important than some fucking meaningless number.