More Surgery

Amazingly enough, this time it's not me having the surgery. My daughter, Arielle, received more than her stunning good looks from me, she also inherited the painful lipomas that grow all over my arms, legs and spine. Thankfully, hers aren't as large or as many as I get. She had a small one removed from the top of her left knee yesterday.

She goes back to the doctor tomorrow to make sure the wound is healing and then the doctor will decide when she's allowed to go back to work and when the stitches will be removed. She's not happy missing work for the 2 1/2 days. She's use to working all day sorting parts for several automobile companies. She has started paying for her own expenses (insurance and cellphone) and it makes her feel so good to be able to do that. The first day she gave her dad her month expense money, the smile on her face could literally light up the world. I'm so proud of her! She said she finally feels like an adult being able to pay for her expenses. She's 21 years old and this is the first time she's had a job that paid enough to do more than put gas in her car.

Rather than spending every penny she earns on junk, she's saving up for the trip to Mexico we're planning for at the end of August. It's the trip we've been hoping to take for several years since my son's girlfriend's parents live in Tijuana. I can't wait to meet them. Her mother and I write on Facebook and have talked on Skype before. It feels like I've known her forever.

I'll post a photo or two of the surgery when I figure out how to move them from my cellphone to my Surface 2. Night ll.

Nerve Conduction Torture Test

Yesterday was the dreaded nerve conduction test that I have been worried, well scared is a better word, about for the past few weeks. I had one done two years ago next month and it was just as painful as I remember. I wasn't able to sleep at all the night before.

It started out with a little electrode being placed on my arms and zapping me with electricity. My hands curled on their own with each touch. All I pictured was Frankenstein lying on the slab, covered with the sheet and his hand starting to jerk after being zapped with lightning. Once the doctor got the information he needed from that torture, out came the needles. He put them in at certain points and then even more electricity. It has changed my thoughts on the death penalty. While I completely believe in the death penalty, electricity as a way of death, I feel, is now cruel and unusual punishment. When a person is sentenced to death, it should be painless or it should be done in the exact same way as the person they murdered died, that should be the rule for anything who kills an innocent child.

Dr. Baker is a nice man and we spent the time talking about old-time movies like Casablanca, Frankenstein (with Boris Karloff), The Wolfman (Lon Cheney), The Invisible Man (Claude Raines) and of course The Rocky Horror Picture Show. By the time we were done, he was actually singing The Time Warp!

He said I was a good patient and didn't even fight. What use is it to fight? I had to have the tests to see what's wrong with my arm. He said he'll have the results sent to my doctor on Monday. I'm worried that it's carpel tunnel syndrome for sure. I'll need a MRI to see if my rotator cuff is torn, the muscle damaged and my elbow messed up. He even laughed that I'd be a terrible poker player because all my feelings show on my face. He could see how badly my arm hurt and what the test was doing to me. I was wearing my red contacts and it took him about 20 minutes for him to decide to ask about them. He thought they were like the Frost Giants in Thor. I had to explain they were really vampire eyes. That's when our talk about monsters, Gods, the paranormal and movies really started.

Like most doctors know, I'm a different type of patient and even he admitted it when I explained what migraines feel like. I think the person who wrote about the birth of Athena was experiencing a migraine. Zeus was feeling stabbing and banging in his head and it was so bad he couldn't take it anymore. He had his head cracked open and Athena sprang out, fully dressed in battle gear with a sword and shield. The stabbing was her sword and the banging was her shield hitting his brain. That's exactly how I feel during the level 10+ migraines I get constantly. I spend so much time around doctors and nurses, that I no longer have even a bit of "awe" for them. I realize they are just people with a little more education. Some doctors appreciate that I treat them like equals, while others get very furious that I don't bow down to their God complex.

I asked him about a bionic arm transplant, but again, he can't help with that. They don't have them available. Maybe someday? My next doctor visit is at the end of the month to an orthopedic surgeon to check out my knee and now my arm. I'm sure he'll want MRI's of off them to make sure he can see if there are any tears, rips, etc.. I'm not thrilled at the thought of having another surgery or three, but I can't keep going on with the pain. I'm use to living in constant pain, but this is even worse than ever and I'm not sure I can tolerate it much longer. I cry myself to sleep every night and quite often through the day as well.

As a treat, we stopped at Four Sons' Texas Hotdogs. Trevor loves their slovaki dinner and I always get their fish dinner and share it with Arielle. They are beyond delicious and it's a HUGE piece of fish. Last night, Randy tried a tiny bit, then he wanted a little more. I think he'll order the fish next time. :) He and Arielle took hotdogs in their lunchboxes for their lunches today.

Until next time

Happy New Year 2014

Here it is, another new year has started. Sure hope it's better than the last one because it really sucked royally! I think I spent more time with doctors, either in offices or in hospitals, than I did with my family. That has to change this year. I only have 3 scheduled appointments so far this month. I go on Thursday for a very horrid nerve test. The doctor inserts electrodes inside left my arm (where a lot of the current pain is, aside from the never-ending migraines), then will zap me with electricity. If you've never had it done, I suggest you skip the offer. The last time I had this torture er test done was three years ago. I can still remember ever minute.

My shoulder is still killing me. Actually, the entire left arm is ready to be exchanged for a bionic one. That would be nice. At least the pain would stop!

I'll post more after we get the results of the tests. Think happy thoughts. I can't take much more pain.

G

More Rotten Health Issues

It's no surprise I've been back to the hospital again. My daughter and I went yesterday morning. My left shoulder, elbow and arm have been killing me lately, but I've been trying to ignore it for as long as possible. The pain finally got to be too much and after about a dozen x-rays for me, I find I have a possible torn rotator cuff, damaged biceps muscle and injured elbow. I fell trying to get out of bed the day after my last surgery and caught myself by putting out my hand. BIG MISTAKE!

That means I wear a brace on my left hand for carpal tunnel syndrome, pain patches to let me deal with the pain and a sling to keep the weight off my shoulder. I have to take it off every few hours and move my shoulder around to keep it from freezing. Not a fun thing. Been there, done that, have a massage therapist in the family to fix it. I've already had surgery on this shoulder back in 2006 to remove excess cartilage and had this arm and elbow broken in 1996, so it's about time to just replace it with a bionic shoulder and arm. That would be fun, I think. :).

If the steroids I'm on don't make a pretty significant difference, I'll have to go see a bone doctor and get an MRI and maybe another surgery. Not looking forward to that. I do go for a nerve conduction test in 2 weeks on this arm. That is one of the worst tests pain-wise I've ever had done, so I'm not looking forward to it.

Better get my arm back in the sling, it's starting to hurt a lot.

G

A Post~Christmas Gift

The UPS guy was just here and dropped off a little late gift. It was scheduled to be here yesterday, promised to be here yesterday, but arrived today. Ah well, we're all use to these delivery companies NOT living up to promised delivery dates. I'm amazed it arrived this soon. If it were Fed EX, I'd still be waiting.

So what is my gift? I'm typing on it now ~ a purple keyboard for my Surface 2 tablet!! Purple is my favorite color, so I had to have this one. I don't mind using the built in, on screen touch keyboard, but this is so much easier on me. I was trained to type on a real, honest-to-goodness typewriter back in the Stone Age, not to keyboard like people are taught today. When I was working as a legal secretary, I could type and take shorthand (not even taught anymore since digital voice recorders were invented). I still used shorthand when I was working as a reporter at court because in the State of Penna., electronic recording devices and cameras aren't allowed in court. Without shorthand, I wouldn't have been able to get the proceedings almost word-for-word.

This tablet is my favorite gift for Christmas. For Yule, my favorite is a gorgeous sterling silver pentacle necklace with a ruby at the tip of each point in the star. I love having two holidays to celebrate every December! Anyone else here celebrate Yule?

G

Christmas Eve

This year is different for us. Both of our children are adults and have decided to open presents tonight, rather than getting up at our usual 5 a.m. tomorrow. We're going to my aunt's house to celebrate with my family. Sadly, Randy's brother & his wife have decided they are too good for us & refuse to even let us see our niece. All our gifts to her are thrown away. The worst part, the brother is my son's godfather. They can't even be bothered to email them a happy birthday. They told my kids when they were 10 & 12 that they were disowning them. Nice, huh?

My Brother's girlfriend has a young daughter and she has already started calling us Aunt Gretchen and Uncle Randy and our kids are her cousins. We aren't related "yet", but she's allowed to stay with us and we take her places. I so love that little girl!!

Anyhow, I'm looking at even more surgery. The stitches were removed yesterday from my last one 2 weeks ago. Now, my left shoulder is torn and needs repaired. I'm also looking at nerve torture tests in 2 weeks, then the possibility f knee surgery.

Randy was being super sweet and bought me a Surface 2 tablet to make it easier on me to play games, blog & surf the net when I'm attached to an IV. I also have Kindle software downloaded with almost 300 books on it. He let me have it early since I've spent half of the past three weeks in hospitals or doctors' offices or driving to one or the other.

I'll upload photos from the gift opening soon.

To my Christian friends, I hope your Christmas is a truly wonderful one, filled with lots of love and family.


G

Have a Blessed Samhain == AKA Happy Halloween!!!

Today is the one day of the year when the young and not-so-young get to let their true faces show during the only time it’s acceptable to be seen in costume and masks. Once again, it’s Halloween, or more accurately, Samhain (pronounced SOW-IN), which means summer’s end and is celebrated at the end of fall and beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. It was a final celebration of the harvest before the earth slumbered through winter. The day also marked the Celts’ version of the New Year and the time when they believed the dead came back to walk the earth once more. The holiday has been with us for centuries in various forms.

The day was a time to honor ancestors, but also ward off evil spirits by wearing costumes to confuse them. Turnips were carved with faces and placed in the windows to scare off the dead. People would go “a-souling.” They would pray for the household’s dead relatives in exchange for food and drink. In Scotland, the dead were impersonated by men who would wear all white and cover their faces with a veil.

Halloween as we know it today can be traced back to the early Christians. In the 800s, the Catholic Church wanted to wipe out pagan holidays and convert the heathens, so they would create a holy day to coincide with an established pagan festival. The Roman festivals of Feralia and Pomona’s Day were merged with Samhain and the new holiday replaced all three. Pomona’s day was a harvest festival in honor of the Roman Goddess of fruits and trees. This could explain where the tradition of bobbing for apples came from. Feralia was a day of mourning and remembering the dead.

Early Christians began celebrating All Saints Day on Nov. 1. They began their observance at sunset the night before. Some of the ways they celebrated were to dress in costumes of Christian saints to scare away the evil spirits and then they would go door-to-door, begging for food. Eventually, All Souls’ Day, which commemorated the dead who were not saints was added on Nov. 2. Soul cakes (currant buns) were given out when those celebrating went from house to house, offering to pray for their dead, similar to the a-souling.

Less than a century later, those two early Christian holidays merged into Hallow Time (Oct. 31-Nov. 2). Most of the celebrations took place the night before All Hallows Day on All Hallows Eve. Halloween quickly became the name.

Today, the holiday has grown so popular, it is second only to Christmas in the amount of money spent on decorations. Many Christian churches discourage their members from celebrating, saying it is evil; however, simply reading up on the history tells a different story.