Well friends, I’m not going to lie: I’m exhausted. For the first time in a long time, I have an excuse for being exhausted, and it’s a surprisingly good, fulfilling feeling. That said, I’m going to have to make this fairly short. I’m also going to have to apologize for the fact that my posts are going to be made a little less often, because I’m working on THREE big writing projects, all of which have NOTHING to do with this blog, nutrition, or health in general. (So any time that I spend not writing is time spent doing research…my brain is exploding from all of the information it’s trying to absorb, interpret, and feed back into the world…)
I did, however, want to give the concerned among you a couple of quick health updates:
In re: my acne, things have gotten horrible again. Maybe it was good old Murphy and his not-very-awesome law, but as soon as I posted about my face clearing up, I broke out again. This probably has to do with the fact that I stopped my hormone replacement therapy (more on that later), so my body is freaking out because it doesn’t know where to get estrogen if I’m not popping it in pill form every morning. I’m hoping that things calm down soon.
Frida wants my feet to heal.
As for my ankle, according to the doc everything checks out structurally; it’s just the pain that’s a little worrisome. (I also still don’t have full range of motion or the ability to stabilize–watching me try to do a squat is kind of sadly hilarious.) Not only does my ankle still ache, but now I also have crazy, burning nerve pain that makes it difficult to do things like wear shoes or touch my ankle at all. My physical therapist, who happens to be all kinds of wonderful, has made some great suggestions for helping to rewire my brain so that it stops focusing on the “pain” message that my ankle keeps sending, however erroneously.
So far, I’ve stuck my foot in a bag of rice, tried doing ultra-light massage, exposed it to various different textures of blankets, macguyver-ed a mirror box, and identified left and right feet in rapid succession using an iPad and Google Image.
This is exactly as silly as it looks. (But much more painful.)
It’s been a weird couple of weeks.
I’m trying to start building up some strength by walking a bit every day, but I still spend more time on my butt than I’d like.
I’m still just taking baby steps and allowing myself to go slowly. My PT gave me some reading to do about how our brains create pain, and it’s allowed me to forgive myself a little; there is nothing more frustrating and confusing than chronic pain, and some days the lack of change or progress can get really overwhelming.
But for now I’m going to just keep pushing through, and hopefully I’ll be past this plateau soon…
That’s all she wrote…
It’s almost like I have two normal ankles!
Now back to writing!
- K.
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