Another Day in the Life
So for those of you unfamiliar with my history of broken-ness, I have this really bad knee. It developped as a result of dancing for years and years and eventually caused me to quit training. Though, on a general basis, it no longer gives me too much trouble, I am the "proud" owner of a knee suffering from patella femoral syndrome, or in laymen's terms, a knee cap that doesn't always stay in its track. It sucks but I survive. Usually....
A couple of weeks ago the weather in Edmonton changed really sharply, going to -35, it seemed, overnight. My knee started to hurt and I grumbled about the fact that apparently I was going to be one of those old people who could tell the change in weather from the ache in their bones. I did all of my usual fix-the-knee stuff, like icing it and taking painkillers and seeing the chiropractor, but nothing helped. It just kept getting more and more painful. Friday night of this past weekend, I really didn't sleep well as I was in so bloody much pain. Come morning I went to work (or "retail hell" as I like to call it during this season of giving and love) where I had to stand all day. But by 2:30, I couldn't decide if I wanted to puke, scream, or pass out from the pain and they sent me home. I tried some more ice and some more painkillers but it was really really bad. So my mother came and picked me up and took me to the Medicenter. After waiting for an hour to see the doctor, he told me, and I quote, "Hmm, your knee hurts. That's wierd." Given my past experiences with doctors telling me the pain was all in my head, it was all I could do not to throttle the man. But he gave me a topical anti-inflammatory cream to put on it and some T3s with codeine and off I went home. Saturday night before I went to bed, I took a T3 and settled down for a lovely, drug-induced sleep. Sadly, it was not to be. I spent the night on the bathroom floor puking and crying and wishing to god that my wonderful boy wasn't there to see me looking so pathetic. But he was and he picked me up and put me back to bed each time, rubbed my back and made soothing "It'll be alright," noises. The drugs finally wore off around 6:30 in the morning and I finally got a couple of hours of sleep.
The next morning, unfortunately, I had to get up to go to rehersal for Gypsy. Now usually under circumstances involving heavy drugs and extreme pain, I would have skipped rehersal but the choreographer was going to be out of town and had asked me to finish teaching the Broadway sequence and I also had the key to the building we were rehearsing in. So on the way there, after drugging myself with regular tylenol, Lori (the other dance captain) and I discussed ways to not injure myself while teaching and figured we had it pretty well set up to be okay. But again unfortunately, the best laid plans and all that, I ended up doing a lot of dancing and oh god oh god the pain. That night, before bed, I took another T3 and tried to go to sleep. As you might have guessed, not so much...
At around 6am Monday morning, I went to the U of A hospital in the hopes of them making it stop. At around 4pm, I was allowed to go home. It was a long day, to say the least... And needless to say, I suspect that I will be steering clear of codeine for a while after this fun fun experience. Which kind of screws me over, actually, since I also can't take NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) so when it comes to pain, there's basically nothing I can do to get rid of it. And since this is me we're talking about - as always *grin* - I have this nagging suspicions that pain is not something that's just going away in my life.
And since it's now taken me two days on and off to write this post, I think that I will actually publish it, finish my dinner (yes, I know that's it's almost midnight!) and go curl up in bed with a handsome man who loves me. Night!
So for those of you unfamiliar with my history of broken-ness, I have this really bad knee. It developped as a result of dancing for years and years and eventually caused me to quit training. Though, on a general basis, it no longer gives me too much trouble, I am the "proud" owner of a knee suffering from patella femoral syndrome, or in laymen's terms, a knee cap that doesn't always stay in its track. It sucks but I survive. Usually....
A couple of weeks ago the weather in Edmonton changed really sharply, going to -35, it seemed, overnight. My knee started to hurt and I grumbled about the fact that apparently I was going to be one of those old people who could tell the change in weather from the ache in their bones. I did all of my usual fix-the-knee stuff, like icing it and taking painkillers and seeing the chiropractor, but nothing helped. It just kept getting more and more painful. Friday night of this past weekend, I really didn't sleep well as I was in so bloody much pain. Come morning I went to work (or "retail hell" as I like to call it during this season of giving and love) where I had to stand all day. But by 2:30, I couldn't decide if I wanted to puke, scream, or pass out from the pain and they sent me home. I tried some more ice and some more painkillers but it was really really bad. So my mother came and picked me up and took me to the Medicenter. After waiting for an hour to see the doctor, he told me, and I quote, "Hmm, your knee hurts. That's wierd." Given my past experiences with doctors telling me the pain was all in my head, it was all I could do not to throttle the man. But he gave me a topical anti-inflammatory cream to put on it and some T3s with codeine and off I went home. Saturday night before I went to bed, I took a T3 and settled down for a lovely, drug-induced sleep. Sadly, it was not to be. I spent the night on the bathroom floor puking and crying and wishing to god that my wonderful boy wasn't there to see me looking so pathetic. But he was and he picked me up and put me back to bed each time, rubbed my back and made soothing "It'll be alright," noises. The drugs finally wore off around 6:30 in the morning and I finally got a couple of hours of sleep.
The next morning, unfortunately, I had to get up to go to rehersal for Gypsy. Now usually under circumstances involving heavy drugs and extreme pain, I would have skipped rehersal but the choreographer was going to be out of town and had asked me to finish teaching the Broadway sequence and I also had the key to the building we were rehearsing in. So on the way there, after drugging myself with regular tylenol, Lori (the other dance captain) and I discussed ways to not injure myself while teaching and figured we had it pretty well set up to be okay. But again unfortunately, the best laid plans and all that, I ended up doing a lot of dancing and oh god oh god the pain. That night, before bed, I took another T3 and tried to go to sleep. As you might have guessed, not so much...
At around 6am Monday morning, I went to the U of A hospital in the hopes of them making it stop. At around 4pm, I was allowed to go home. It was a long day, to say the least... And needless to say, I suspect that I will be steering clear of codeine for a while after this fun fun experience. Which kind of screws me over, actually, since I also can't take NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) so when it comes to pain, there's basically nothing I can do to get rid of it. And since this is me we're talking about - as always *grin* - I have this nagging suspicions that pain is not something that's just going away in my life.
And since it's now taken me two days on and off to write this post, I think that I will actually publish it, finish my dinner (yes, I know that's it's almost midnight!) and go curl up in bed with a handsome man who loves me. Night!
A couple of weeks ago the weather in Edmonton changed really sharply, going to -35, it seemed, overnight. My knee started to hurt and I grumbled about the fact that apparently I was going to be one of those old people who could tell the change in weather from the ache in their bones. I did all of my usual fix-the-knee stuff, like icing it and taking painkillers and seeing the chiropractor, but nothing helped. It just kept getting more and more painful. Friday night of this past weekend, I really didn't sleep well as I was in so bloody much pain. Come morning I went to work (or "retail hell" as I like to call it during this season of giving and love) where I had to stand all day. But by 2:30, I couldn't decide if I wanted to puke, scream, or pass out from the pain and they sent me home. I tried some more ice and some more painkillers but it was really really bad. So my mother came and picked me up and took me to the Medicenter. After waiting for an hour to see the doctor, he told me, and I quote, "Hmm, your knee hurts. That's wierd." Given my past experiences with doctors telling me the pain was all in my head, it was all I could do not to throttle the man. But he gave me a topical anti-inflammatory cream to put on it and some T3s with codeine and off I went home. Saturday night before I went to bed, I took a T3 and settled down for a lovely, drug-induced sleep. Sadly, it was not to be. I spent the night on the bathroom floor puking and crying and wishing to god that my wonderful boy wasn't there to see me looking so pathetic. But he was and he picked me up and put me back to bed each time, rubbed my back and made soothing "It'll be alright," noises. The drugs finally wore off around 6:30 in the morning and I finally got a couple of hours of sleep.
The next morning, unfortunately, I had to get up to go to rehersal for Gypsy. Now usually under circumstances involving heavy drugs and extreme pain, I would have skipped rehersal but the choreographer was going to be out of town and had asked me to finish teaching the Broadway sequence and I also had the key to the building we were rehearsing in. So on the way there, after drugging myself with regular tylenol, Lori (the other dance captain) and I discussed ways to not injure myself while teaching and figured we had it pretty well set up to be okay. But again unfortunately, the best laid plans and all that, I ended up doing a lot of dancing and oh god oh god the pain. That night, before bed, I took another T3 and tried to go to sleep. As you might have guessed, not so much...
At around 6am Monday morning, I went to the U of A hospital in the hopes of them making it stop. At around 4pm, I was allowed to go home. It was a long day, to say the least... And needless to say, I suspect that I will be steering clear of codeine for a while after this fun fun experience. Which kind of screws me over, actually, since I also can't take NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) so when it comes to pain, there's basically nothing I can do to get rid of it. And since this is me we're talking about - as always *grin* - I have this nagging suspicions that pain is not something that's just going away in my life.
And since it's now taken me two days on and off to write this post, I think that I will actually publish it, finish my dinner (yes, I know that's it's almost midnight!) and go curl up in bed with a handsome man who loves me. Night!
2 Comments:
At 1:49 PM, James said…
So I'm a little late commenting. New jobs suck for that; they really put a damper on the keeping up on the insanity that is other people's lives. That said, though, hopefully the knee behaves itself soon... I'd ask if you've got time to get in to see a specialist or something, but given the time you're having getting any kind of answer that isn't, you know, the obvious, I'll stay away from that.
And, yay people who love you! ;)
At 4:12 AM, Shani said…
GRAVOL!!!
It makes the painkillers work without making you puke. And it will help you to sleep.
If you can't have gravol, get your dr to write you a script for stemital (sp?)
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