it’s not about you

So I’ve been asked by several people how I am doing.

I’m doing much better, thanks. This new chiropractic office I’ve been going to for the past few weeks seems to be helping a lot. The numbness/pain/tingling/pins-and-needles feelings in my arm are gone. My neck feels much better and my shoulder isn’t hurting as bad. I’m still a little frightened of doing something mundane and wrenching myself out again, but I’m feeling 95% better.

Joshua told me I was definitely feeling better because I’m not bursting into tears every 30 minutes.

My pubic bone still hurts quite a bit, which might be partly due to running on the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday hand-in-hand with Mary Judah. The chiropractic care seems to help with some maintenance, though. When I had gone without any for a couple of months, it got really bad, but now the pain is back to its regularly scheduled programming.

Most importantly, I feel like the chiropractors who are working on me now are empathetic and are listening to me and validating what I’m saying about what I’m going through. I’m not put through any guilt trips or implications that this pain is somehow my fault as if I’m not doing what I’m told. So I feel much more comfortable there. They also don’t pretend to have the magic touch and and expect that as soon as I’m adjusted, my pain will instantly disappear. They are also open and encouraging when I talk about other therapies I’m considering. They don’t get huffy and act like it’s a personal affront.

Woo-hoo!

So I also went to my primary care physician this morning, to talk to her about all this and see if she had any suggestions. I have the numbers of some physical therapists to check out and a prescription for some Vicodin (I think Mom called them “happy pills”), for when the pain gets bad. I can’t wait to get that filled.

In other news, the appeals court has officially reversed its earlier decision and has stated that parents DO have a right to homeschool their children in the state. Hopefully I will have a separate post up about that and maybe - MAYBE - that long ago promised series on what was wrong with the ruling.

So I know I’m late to the game, but I have finally signed up for a twitter account. You can follow me at twitter.com/kristenrudd.

Also, thank you for all your comments, e-mails and phone calls. I feel very loved, and determined to get to the bottom of all this.

So.

Sometime in April, Killian feel asleep on the way to the grocery store and I did something very stupid: I carried him around the store in my arms while I hunched over pushing the shopping cart.

That was a VERY BIG MISTAKE. The next morning, I woke up and could hardly move. I waited it out a few days, figuring I would feel better and when I didn’t, I made an appt. with my chiropractor. She wasn’t in the office that week, so I saw someone else, who came up to adjust me. I was very out of sorts.

After that visit, I felt much better and a week later, went in to see my usual practitioner and got adjusted. I kept having pain in my arm, neck and shoulder, and was experiencing some numbness in parts of my arm. During all this, something else happened at my chiropractor’s office that I shall just describe as:

DRAMA.

So I broke up with my chiropractor. It took two months and lots of stress and no returned phone calls, but finally, that whole mess is over and settled and I never have to go back there ever, ever again. PRAISE JESUS.

I hurt my neck last week. Now keep in mind that this problem with my arm, and the numbness and the mild pain, has never really gone away. Last Monday, I was toweling off my hair after my shower and felt something in my neck go funny. Taylor was in town and I had him massage my neck a bit. Sometimes, this trick works.

But it didn’t. By Wednesday, I was in some serious pain, and could not feel two of my fingers and part of the back of my arm. I looked on yelp and found a chiropractor in my neighborhood that was well-reviewed. I called, spoke to the doctor and made an appointment. They got me in that day, took some X-rays, did some massage therapy, some ultrasound therapy, and what I think was muscle stimulation therapy with a TENS unit. I began to feel better.

Friday, I went in again for an review of my films and an actual adjustment. I received some of the same therapies I had received on Wednesday. I thought I would start to feel better. Then I woke up on Saturday morning.

I went to a conference that day, and by the after-lunch session, I was in so much pain, that I couldn’t even focus on what the presenters were saying and I was having trouble moving my head at all. Despite downing Advil, my neck hurt, my shoulders hurt, all the muscles in my back were in spasms and I was losing feeling down my left arm again. I went home, took some Extra Strength Tylenol and took to bed for a couple of hours. The pain was excruciating and completely debilitating.

I woke up, ate some protein, took some more Advil and went back to my conference for the keynote. Sunday was also very bad, but I spent as much time as I could laying down without trying to hold my head up too much. Joshua, my better half, didn’t complain and took the kids out for half the day so I could rest, even though I had been gone the whole day before.

I had another appointment this morning, and spent the entire morning until then watching the clock, hoping and praying that the chiropractor could help me. I also noticed, that in addition to my neck, shoulder and arm problems, the the uppermost rib on the right side of my chest, just underneath my collarbone, was bulging. That area is also sore and tender to the touch. I know this is all connected somehow, but I’m not sure how or what to do about it.

I told the chiropractor about how much pain I’ve been in all weekend, and he seems hopeful that this is my body getting used to the adjustment. I’m pretty skeptical. I felt like the adjustment on Friday did more harm than good. I had been feeling better, and then exponentially worse after the adjustment. I told this to him as well.

He felt my spine and my neck, and started some adjustments. I began to cry. I cried throughout the rest of my visit.

Now, I am still sore, but I am hoping that today’s adjustment will begin to help. My arm, neck and shoulder have that pins and needles feeling. Is that good? Because I know that’s the feeling I get after my foot’s been asleep, and I’m hoping that with all the numbness I’ve been experiencing, this is feeling returning to those parts of my body. If not, then I’m going to completely freak out. The rib on my chest is still bulging and is progressively more sore. I just hope that tonight I can sleep.

People, I have been in SO MUCH PAIN. I CANNOT LIVE LIKE THIS.

I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I can’t take a shirt off without gasping, because it hurts. I can’t pick up my children without pain - or without fear that somehow, my attempt at taking care of them is going to debilitate my body. I can’t turn my head to the left or look up without pain, and I can’t talk on the phone without using my hands. My shoulder pops almost every time I lift my arm - which is quite often, so I can shake it about in attempts to get the feeling back in it. It’s my left arm and I am left-handed.

I have been irritable and cranky and I have zero appetite. OTC pain relievers don’t seem to be helping me at all. And I’m terrified.

I’m so scared that I am never going to get better, that I am never going to heal. It’s been three months since this started and I am only getting worse. Joshua tells me that I will get better and I want to believe him but I just don’t know that I do.

When I was pregnant with Killian, and I started experiencing the pubic symphysis pain, all my health care providers told me that it was due to pregnancy hormones and that after my birth, I would begin to feel better. My (former) chiropractor told me that I had the worst case she had ever seen.

And you know what? Killian will be two years old next month and the reality of my life is that, aside from this neck pain, I have dealt with pubic bone pain EVERY DAY for the past two and a half years. That is usually mild and under the radar, as, sad to say, I’ve gotten used to pain being a part of my life. It flares up quite often and I have a bad several days, but lately, THAT has also gotten worse - two weeks ago, I couldn’t sit and last weekend, I was limping when I walked because it hurt so much.

I’m 29 years old and I’m so scared that I’m going to be a chronic pain sufferer for the rest of my life. I can’t do the things I want to do and I can’t be the mom I want to be because I am PHYSICALLY UNABLE to do things I used to take for granted - like chasing my daughter through the park, or lifting my son up to touch the ceiling. And that petrifies me.

And I haven’t written about it much on here because I feel like when I was pregnant I wrote about it SO MUCH, and in the midst of all of that, I was treated TERRIBLY by people who were supposed to love and support me, but instead tore me down during an extremely vulnerable time in my life so they could teach me some lesson. And I’ve never gotten over that. And that has kept me from continuing to write about things here.

And that adds to my fear, that if I write about how scared I am and how I feel like I’m spiraling into some black hole because of the physical pain in my body, that people will take advantage of that to make an example of me.

So there.

I said it.

And I think I’m glad I did. Clearly, I need to find a good therapist out here.

I feel like quitting.

Dick Cavett writes a blog for the New York Times and this past Sunday, I found a piece he had written on depression. A few things popped out at me that had so much truth and understanding in them, I thought I’d post them here.

While speaking to a group of mental health patients:

“I know that everyone here knows that feeling when people say to you, ‘Hey, shape up! Stop thinking only about your troubles. What’s to be depressed about? Go swimming or play tennis and you’ll feel a lot better. Pull up your socks!’ And how you, hearing this, would like nothing more than to remove one of those socks and choke them to death with it.”

Some advice for those NOT struggling with depression:

Another tip: Do not ask the victim what he has “to be depressed about.” The malady doesn’t care if you’re broke and alone or successful and surrounded by a loving family. It does its democratic dirty work to your brain chemistry regardless of your “position.”

And quite possibly the best quote on the subject I’ve ever heard:

Apparently one thing I said on “Larry King” back then hit home hard. It was that when you’re downed by this affliction, if there were a curative magic wand on the table eight feet away, it would be too much trouble to go over and pick it up.

You can read the whole piece here.

There.

I said it.

This makes me so mad, I can hardly think straight.

Can you say “sexist?”

This is nothing but outright discrimination against women. Perhaps they should deny their husbands insurance unless they get a vasectomy, since these women are only worth insuring unless they are sterilized. Just like the drug company is only targeting Gardasil to adolescent girls when they get HPV by having SEX which usually involves SOMEONE ELSE, and more dominantly, a BOY.

OR just like all the main symptoms for heart disease we are told to look for are predominately found in men, while the symptoms women face are hardly understood or studied as much.

Or just like how women used to be diagnosed with female hysteria and subject to ridiculous, harmful, and demeaning treatments because some “had a tendency to cause trouble.”

I don’t know, or just like how women are told if they nurse their babies longer than six months they’re abusing their children.

Or how stay-at-home moms are pitted against working moms as if we’re all a different breed from each other.

Or, you know, how the rumors about the casts from Sex and the City or Desperate Housewives are always cat-fighting, but no one starts rumors about the Sopranos, because you know, women just cat-fight and men are rational.

I’m effing sick and tired of the establishment discriminating against us just for being women.

How ’bout that pay raise now?

So, for some reason, I can no longer post photos to the main page from my Flickr. I have no idea why, since I’m about as tech-savvy as… someone who’s not tech-savvy. Anyway.

I’ve posted a couple of new photos since the one that appears on the site. Just click through to see them. As soon as I find my card reader and upload photos from the Nikon, I’ll have post-haircut pictures and pictures from our camping trip this past weekend with some friends.

It’s still nice and warm here. I woke up sticky this morning in my sheets and for a minute, thought I was in Texas. I went downstairs to get some things out of the car, and when I stepped on the brick right outside our front door in the hallway, I cringed, waiting for my bare foot to touch cold brick, since the stairwell is always cool. When it didn’t happen, and the brick stayed warm under my foot, I cackled a little bit.

There’s always a chill in the air here - everyone carries a bag so they have a sweater and a scarf available at all times. A comment on the weather article on the Chronicle’s web site that said “I don’t even know how to dress for anything over 65 degrees” made me laugh out loud. Everyone has been practically basking in this heat - it’s been a welcome respite. I’ve never seen so many people wearing black at a beach.

A woman visiting from Florida who was quoted in last night’s article was recounting her cab ride where the driver refused to turn on the air-conditioning even though it was in the 90’s outside. She was baffled.

At one point in my life, I would have been, too. Now I understand. Everyone here is trying to soak it up and store it, just like Vitamin D.

The temp in San Francisco right now?

94 degrees, baby.

I am loving this. The kids and I hit the beach this morning with some friends and we got there early enough to not have any trouble finding a parking spot. Of course, it was mobbed with hot and cranky people when we left. Nancy and I were at the water’s edge with all the kids, when a couple of really skinny, tanned women in skimpy bikinis sauntered by. I told Mary Judah to stop throwing sand so one of them could pass and when she was out of earshot, I turned to Nancy and said, “Maybe I should have let her keep throwing it.” Neither of us are by any means obese, yet we lamented the deterioration of our bodies anyway, when another skinny and tanned and skimpy-bikini-clad woman walked by, leaving Nancy and I speechless again. I turned to her after a few moments and said, “Well… I’ve given birth! TWICE!”

We’ve got the kiddie pool set up in the backyard soaking up warmth from the sun so we can go out there after Killian’s nap. My kids are running around mostly naked and I’m sweating.

I’m just sure glad I’m not pregnant right now.

If you’re gonna eat meat, don’t be a pussy.

link.

this one’s good.

Lauren’s a vegetarian. I’m not. I have been, periodically, and I don’t eat much meat anyway - mostly chicken, hardly ever beef. I gave up meat for Lent this year, which meant my family also gave up meat by default, since I’m the one who does virtually all the shopping and cooking.

Found this photoset from my husband’s blog, and had to post. Enjoy!

Anyone up for a bacon bar?