Tag: fall all all all all

Surreal

tragerstreit2 Comments

Man, what even IS my life anymore.

I got a voice mail the day after that last post from my awesome nurse. “Hi, I read your blog, and I have some ideas about the AVAPS.”

Uhhhhh..hi there. I forget that people read this, sometimes. I have the best freaking care team ever, you guys. I got contacted from three different folks to ABSOLUTELY ASSURE ME that the machine would get paid for, the rules are more bendy for folks with ALS so please don’t stress about it. And then thanks to Nurse Awesome, I was contacted yesterday by Providence Respiratory to adjust my settings remotely to ramp that sucker down.

OMG SO MUCH BETTER GUYS.

It had previously been forcing air down my throat so hard my ears were popping. Seriously. I can handle it now. I might even get compliance on my own without my awesome peeps having to argue for leeway. It’s still not exactly comfortable, but it’s so much more manageable.

Thursday was noooooooot a good day, there were a million things going wrong, including hurting myself by trying to lean over in the chair to pull something out from under my wheels. I felt and heard something go POP, and owowowowowow. Not a crack, though, and breathing was still ok, so I just rode it out and after a few days’ soreness I’m alright. Then Thursday night someone said something a bit unkind and I kinda completely lost my shit for awhile. Occasionally there’s a trigger and I mourn the person I don’t get to become. Five years ago, I had my very own house, I had just lost a lot of weight and was fitting in all my cute clothes again, I was going to school to further my career, I had all my shit sorted out and my life was pretty fucking great, actually. Thursday night I let myself grieve for her, because that future is dead, and I let myself be angry at people who say really stupid shit.

Friday I had the distinct displeasure of taking the sodding van in for repair. It cost me $919. I’m extremely grateful to Intel for their short term disability benefit easing me out of the workforce, because fortunately I HAVE that money. For now. Although now the brake light’s coming on. So that’ll be fun.

Saturday I did nothing but sleep and fuck around on the internet.

Sunday I did something SUPER COOL but is not my story to tell, so just believe me when I say it was amazing.

This morning my cat woke me up because I could hear him chewing on plastic. When I located him, he had a huge long piece of cellophane coming out of his mouth, and was choking on it a little. I could not get him to come to me for ANYTHING, and when I stood up and tried to get to him, of course he backed away. I took another step towards him and fell right on my ass. It didn’t hurt, even though I’ve kinda got no muscle in my ass to cushion the fall anymore, but it knocked a bit of breath away.

And then since I was on the floor, my fucking cat decided to come check me out and I was able to get the plastic out of his mouth.

Motherfucker.

The fall didn’t hurt, but getting off the floor did. I wound up sitting on my foot rests and using that wheelchair lift feature to get myself up off the ground, but even with the grab bar on my bed, the chair to push off of, and my walker on standby, I wasn’t able to get over up on the bed. I had to lower myself back to the floor and let myself catch my breath before I tried again, and was very, very grateful to the Depends company for their fine product and my forethought to start wearing them to bed otherwise I’d have exacerbated my situation by having to catch my breath sitting in a puddle.

Welcome to the TMI Show.

Now, I have my awesome watch, so I was never stranded. I always had options. I’m just stubborn as fuck. I texted J but he was not immediately responding, so I tried the wheelchair lift again, and used it to ALSO steer myself right up against the bed this time, and was able to get in bed. And then after catching my breath, getting up to go to the bathroom to change my disposable shorts. I cried for like half a second, but realistically I know this is definitely going to happen again. Probably not the cat part, but there will definitely be another fall, and next time I very probably will not be able to get myself up. It’s twelve hours later and even though I’ve been in bed all day I’m still exhausted from the ordeal. So that sucks. If I hadn’t had such a huge meltdown Thursday, it would have happened today.

So that’s my life, this last week. Kinda a shit show, but there were definitely some good bits in there.

Also I wanna restate that my care team is amazing, especially my nurse. <3

The Week in ALS…

tragerstreit2 Comments

This should probably be a vlog post, but I don’t feel like putting on makeup and sitting in my hot office to record one, so you get a micropost update.

So to sum up:

1) The orthotics appointment for testing various knee braces was stressful and awful. Traffic was horrifying – it took us literally an hour and fifteen minutes to drive a 35 minute distance. When I called to give them a heads-up, she was AWFUL and rude to me, “Well HOW late.” “I don’t really know, maybe five to ten minutes?” “Well where ARE you.” “Two exits away, but traffic is unpredictable.” “I’m going to check with the doctor and make sure that he even has time for you.” I was literally ON the exit when she came back and told me I’d have to reschedule because they really needed EVERY MINUTE of my appointment time to work with me. “How about this. I’m on my way in RIGHT NOW. If I show up too late, I’ll reschedule in person.” When I showed up seven minutes late, they cheerfully had me fill out the paperwork and wait in the office lobby for five minutes. So I guess I’m not allowed to be late, but they can delay all they want.

And then, they had me try on a brace that didn’t help at all, made walking even NOISIER, and when I tried to take them off, I had to shove the velcro between my palms and push them hard together while I pulled at the strap in order to get them unhooked, because my hand strength wasn’t enough. And then they told me that anything sturdier would make sitting and standing nearly impossible, so they have nothing that can help me.

2) Dr. Goslin called and then emailed me yesterday (because I didn’t answer the phone) to tell me that I was disqualified for the new research trial. I did not take it very well; about as hard as I took the initial diagnosis, actually, because it felt like hope for SOME good to come out of this had been pulled out from under me. Again. I spent the entire day sleeping.

3) I woke up this morning still in a funk, and while getting ready for work, I had a fall. Just, knees gave out while I was coming out of the bathroom, and I landed very solidly on the linoleum on my knees like I’d just had a religious revelation. It hurt a LOT, and I resisted crying, but let myself just lay in the bathroom doorway for a little bit while Ianto very nervously sniffed me. Falling and getting up while wearing my braces makes everything suck worse, because it holds my ankles in a fixed and uncomfortable angle while I’m crawling. Usually when I fall at home, the first thing I do is yank my boots off if I’m wearing them, to make getting up easier. But I was already running late.

So, it’s been a terrible week on the ALS front. This is not to say the week has been terrible; I saw my favorite radio play live, with some of my very favorite people, had an awesome Saturday showing off Portland to a friend I hardly ever get to see because she lives far away, and my elderly cat is actually recovering quite well from his sickness. So yay for all those things. Yay.

And now you are updated!

“The only thing sadder than a cripple… Is a hobbled cripple!”

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Some things are bound to happen. Even if you don’t want them to, you know they’re coming. And so it is with a sense of inevitability that I write this post about the time that I fell down and actually hurt myself. I was trying to pick up a pile of laundry off the floor to carry it to my bed – THREE FEET AWAY – and went down like a rock in a small space and sprained my stupid ankle.

After every fall, every misstep that almost results in a fall, there’s a period of reflection and reconstruction of the events that led up to it. How could I have prevented that? There was no period of reflection this time, there was me, writhing in pain in the hallway screaming FUCK FUCK FUCKING FUCK OW FUCK OW OW OW OW WHAT THE FUCKING FUCKHEADED FUCKING SHIT FUCK

See also: Lalochezia.

Right about when I ran out of swear words and began repeating myself, it occurred that I’d probably done something bad this time. The swearing went on longer than usual and the pain wasn’t going away. Now the swearing and OW OW OW was joined by YOU STUPID BITCH WHY DIDN’T YOU BE MORE CAREFUL TRYING TO LIFT THE FUCKING LAUNDRY WHAT IF WE BROKE SOMETHING FUCKING OW GODDAMMIT FUCK SHIT FUCKING STUPID BITCH IT WAS THREE FUCKING FEET AWAY YOU COULDA JUST PUSHED THE FUCKING CLOTHES ACROSS THE FLOOR WHY DID YOU TRY TO PICK THEM UP HOLY FUCKING GOD OW OW OW OW FUCK

Eventually, the pain let up enough that I could breathe, and I tried propping my foot up against the wall to elevate it as I lay on the floor, whining a monotone mantra of ow ow ow ow ow the whole time, but my leg didn’t even have the strength to keep my foot up. So I did the next best thing! I curled into fetal position and sobbed my eyes out! With a whole lot of feeling sorry for myself and fuck this disease and it’s not fair and ow ow ow and do I need to go to Urgent Care or not. I eventually got myself up, found that I could in fact put pressure on it but if I turned it any way from there it was suffering city. I fetched an ice pack from the freezer, a soda, and made a little nest out of my bed with my ankle elevated on ice and cried.

It sucked a lot, is what I’m saying. It has been a super shitty stressful week, and it was just the icing. And I lost my shit for awhile, took ativan, made contingency plans to work from home the next day if I needed to, and went to sleep. Eventually. Sort of. In pieces.

So today my ankle is twice its usual size and very tender, but still has full range of motion, even if some of those motions are owwie. So I don’t believe it to be broken, so I decided I didn’t need urgent care to tell me what to do, and took anti-inflammatories, iced my ankle and elevated it and stayed off my feet as much as possible. Cause that’s what they’d say and then charge me money after costing me hours of my life and having to put on real clothes.

And despite all of the crying and hurt and bullshit, I am grateful that I had an army at my disposal at all times. Even though I never reached out to them. If I’d decided to go to the ER last night, I’d have had a handful of available rides. If I’d needed anything today, I’d have had several people willing to bring it to me. Once I announced my stupidity to Facebook, I had many offers of help. At no point did I feel helpless and alone. I was very crisis-management mode once the writhing was over, and even in the writhing I was mentally giving myself a time limit before I called someone for help, and I knew it would be there. That’s awesome and can not be understated. GO GO GODZILLA SQUAD.

I’m giving it another night, and tomorrow I’ll see if I can hobble along with the walker or something. Cause I favor my right foot when walking with the cane, so of course I hurt the left one. And walking with the cane on my left hand feels weird as it’s not my dominant hand. So maybe the walker for a bit. We’ll see. But for now, I have a nest, an ice pack, chemicals for the pain, warm cats, Good Eats on TV, and a friend bringing me dinner later. I’m sitting pretty.

Even if my ankle ain’t so pretty.

You can blame Jack for the title. It’s how he reacted when I told him what happened.