Tag: Pain

Categories
Chronicle

Day 449 and Lost Time

I lost some time this week. I was living on someone else’s schedule and it cascaded into a wash of hours where I felt like I was completely out of sync with the wider world as I struggled to get back in my own time.

I’m not at my best when I have to push myself to live on other people’s time. Everything shrunk down to my bedroom and my body and my own myopia about righting my sense of reality. I was in a lot of physical pain which pushed me mentally as well.

I started to feel genuinely better and on track around 5pm in Frankfurt. Technically that meant I still had a half day in California to work. But I’d lost the will to push. I needed to regroup. I am telling myself that it’s ok because it’s not as if I work a standard 9-5 job. I can take the weekend to find my way back to the timeline. And if I’m honest some of my best work gets done on Saturday night.

Categories
Chronic Disease Medical Travel

Day 437 and A Mood

I’ve been struggling with allergies ever since I arrived in Frankfurt last week. The stress of travel and the constant itching affect my mood more than I’d like.

It’s a weird situation if I’m honest as I’m so happy to be traveling and on my own after two years or being in the same place and with the same person. I love my husband and I love my home but I’m sure everyone can relate at the end of the pandemic for the need to be alone.

My mood has largely been buoyant except for the constant low level misery that is these damn allergies. My eyes water. The skin around them is red and raw. My skin keeps finding new intermittent patterns to express hives and eczema. And I’ve built up quite a tolerance to Benadryl.

The allergies stress me out and then my spinal pain worsens and then suddenly I’ll find myself in just a miserable sad mood. I’m grateful I can write it all down so I can get the mood out. I just want to be comfortable in my own skin and smiling again.

Categories
Internet Culture Medical Startups

Day 415 and Accessibility

I don’t think of myself as disabled or requiring special accommodations, though I have a well controlled medical condition that swells my spinal cord called ankylosing spondylitis. But for the first time since my diagnosis I really felt like I was handicapped. And I am feeling so much sadness over the idea that I might genuinely be disabled.

I’m attending ETHDenver and it’s wildly over capacity. No consideration has been given to any kind of basic accessibility. I didn’t think it would effect me though till I got here. I can walk without a mobility aid and if you met me you’d never know I have an issue. But I can’t stand in line on cold concrete for two hours. It turns out I would need a wheelchair for that kind of activity. And even if I had a wheelchair the first two days were in the cold and snow so I couldn’t have wheeled over or around the slush and water.

So I have only attended private parties and small events and group outings. This is great for me as I’m a well networked established member of the startup ecosystem. I’ve got a popular Twitter handle and can easily reach out to people. But I’m noticing just how much a bit of inaccessibility will gatekeep the crypto and web3 community. If you don’t have my heaps of privilege there is no way you could navigate this conference.

And we really need web3 to be welcoming and accessible. To build a better future with infrastructure and economies we all collectively own and benefit from we need an order of magnitude more people participating. But if no one can get in and experience things first hand than web3 will just be a repeat of the oligarchy of web2. It’s honestly my worst fear for crypto. We will accidentally exclude the people who will benefit the most from our innovations.

Categories
Background

Day 411 and Good Day

I’m flat on my back in bed waiting for my Advil to kick in. I’m the kind of satisfied tired that only comes from a good day. But I’m also in pain as I did so much today that eking out this blog post is a bit intimidating. As with all good things they become bad when you over do it.

I am that stage of tired where I can’t even work myself up to go wash my face. I’m in bed texting and scrolling Twitter and hoping I’ll get a surge of energy to do what needs to be done. Alas it’s been an hour so I think I’ll need to go with sheer force of will.

I packed a lot in today as I’m headed for my first in person event since the pandemic started. I’ll be at Ethereum Denver through Saturday. And in March I’ll be in Europe for the whole month which is another whole thing. Having travel plans means more errands and more preparations than I’m used to incorporating. Which is just such a foreign feeling. Remember when we all traveled a ton?

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 396 and Drowning

I’m a big fan of the show Bojack Horseman. It’s got all the emotional depth of Ted Lasso but with all the trauma of remembering your never felt loved by your father. Yeah it’s not really a comedy.

For whatever reason it’s a show I typically watch after therapy. I’ll watch an episode or two when integrating all the feelings from paying attention to my inner child for an hour and a half. I know it’s kind of a weird choice but it’s a really straight shot of feelings.

When the star goes on an epic bender, his ex-girlfriend recounts a story about being a life guard.

“The first rule of being a lifeguard is knowing when you cannot save someone. Some people they will splash and thrash. And try to take you down with them.”

I’ve got someone in my life that is drowning. I know it. I knew it before they did. My instincts were like the lifeguard trainee. I wanted to help. But they are splashing and thrashing and all that would happen if I tried to help is that I will drown along with them. I know this to be true. But I am so willing to be cruel to myself and ignore it. I’d let myself drown. And what good would that do anyone?

Categories
Biohacking

Day 374 and Intolerable

I’ve always been prone to extremes. I don’t like to do things half way. Half-assing things is pointless when you’ve got a whole ass. But sometimes this tendency to pull a “Peaches” and go full on even if it physically harms me.

I’ll look for any excuse to push myself. If a diet app tells me to eat whole foods I’ll stress myself on the perfect blend of clean eating. If it’s good to walk 7,000 steps a day I’ll set a goal for 12,000. If I want to write more I’ll commit myself to writing every single fucking day for a whole year. Commitment isn’t my problem. Excess is my issue.

On Friday I had physical therapy for my ligament tear. The therapist was working on evening out the tension points I had from overcompensating. She told me to work a lacrosse ball into my muscles until the pain wasn’t tolerable.

Now for most people this would be good advice. You’ve got to release the tension and work out the tenderness in the fascia. For me it ended up being terrible advice. I pushed so hard I have enormous bruises up and down my leg. But the poor therapist had no idea I’m so dedicated to extremes I’m willing to hurt myself to follow advice. The average person probably shies away from the necessary pressure. Me on the other hand? I’ll push till my body gives up on me.

Categories
Medical

Day 361 and Once More For The Cheap Seats

I was starting to feel pretty good on Saturday and Sunday. I thought maybe I’d kicked the worst of my breakthrough Omicron Covid case. I went down a crypto rabbit hole with the SOS token airdrop and it’s implications. Then on Sunday I was getting excited to launch a fun new project my bff Phil and I have been working on called Vibrations on Solana.

But I had a difficult night. I got woken up multiple times with tachycardia. I tried meditating at 1am. An hour later I was back at 140bpm while asleep. The heart rate alert woke me up. I tried some Wim Hoff breathing. Still couldn’t get it down. I took an Ativan I was getting so concerned. That knocked me out but it didn’t do much for my heart rate. I woke up to these readings on my Whoop.

Whoop capturing 125bpm heart rate at rest. Elevated respiratory rate. Elevated RHR

It seemed clear that all the fun and games I had planned for the day were not going to manifest. I went to get additional readings. My pulse oximeter gave me a 94 reading which isn’t awful but it’s not great either. I then went to Welltory and did a long HRV reading. So I’ll be in bed if you need me.

Welltory reading of my HRV suggests my Covid case requires rest
Categories
Medical

Day 355 and Not That Bad

I made one of the rookie mistakes in coping with illness today. Yesterday I came back positive for Covid. It was pretty mild. So I didn’t cancel any of my appointments. I went to therapy. I still had an on and off work day with a few obligations. And now I feel like shit

Basically I ignored my own advice. I wrote a post about how to effectively beat back an illness in a post I called “How to be sick.” And just a few days later I forgot everything I said. I feel very on my own bullshit.

My experience of Omicron has been quite mild. It feels much more like an inflammatory condition than a respiratory one for me. My whole body aches. I ran a slight fever. I’m exhausted. And I have awful brain fog. Like my normal speed of thinking has slowed ten fold. I can still recall the topics or even general contours of what I want to say. But then I can’t quite get the specifics to form in my mind. It really is like living through a fog.

So I need to wrap this post up and go to bed. I am sick. It’s mild but it doesn’t mean it’s not there. So I need to treat myself gentle and make sure I help myself get well. If you get sick don’t push yourself. It will only extend the experience.

Categories
Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 343 and You Don’t Have to Feel This Way

Modernity is tough on our bodies. We sit hunched over glowing screens for hours and we call that necessary. We rationalize ignoring our meat sacks as logical. Cartesian logic like “I think therefor I am” is a convenient an excuse for disembodied living. Except eventually it will catch up to you. Maybe not for a while but it will. Maybe you’ve noticed feeling shittier recently.

I’ll tell you how it starts. You feel sluggish. So you stimulate your system. Maybe you drink more coffee and eat more sugar. Then you notice you don’t sleep as well. That makes you even more tired. So you stop moving as much as you did before. You don’t track any of this so it’s hard to notice till the effects compound. Then you notice aches and pains and you think well maybe it is just getting older. Maybe you start to have a back problem and friends tell you they have the same problem.

It’s the slow downward spiral of misery and it’s probably happening to you. It happened to me fast and hard but the path is the same. We accept feeling badly. We accept that deterioration is a fact of life because we’ve got to work and take care of the kids (if you are lucky enough to afford a family). We just accept lower standards of living because we get worn down.

It just doesn’t have to be like that. This shitty quality of life doesn’t have to be the new normal. Fuck the doctors who can’t diagnose you. It’s systemic. You’d be lucky to find one things so broken because it’s a place to start. Most people are justly subtly broken. But it’s not reached the acute stage where our medical system finally kicks in. Doesn’t mean what you feel isn’t real.

The shitty part is next. You’ve got to do the work. You’ve got to change your life. No doctor or health practitioner is coming to save you. They an give you a piece of the puzzle but you’ve got to assemble it. If you commit to getting well it’s going to cost you willpower. Because the path out is hard work. It’s nutrition, sleep, lifting heavy things, going outside everyday, taking supplements and vitamins, meditation and mindfulness. Frankly it’s a lot. I spend a third of my day on it so I can live what’s left well. But I no longer feel subtly shitty all the damn time.

Categories
Medical

Day 337 and Good News

On Wednesday afternoon I had an accident. My husband heard a snap and I was on the ground. I fucked up my ankle. X-rays and urgent care visits ensued and we begged our way into an orthopedist to assess the damage and get an MRI and ultrasound. The initial shock was wearing off.

The mobility aids dropped off by my concierge doctor had me feeling much more optimistic that whatever the diagnosis I could manage. A walker could easily get me to the bathroom on my own power. A shower chair was arriving from Amazon so I could finally wash up with something other than wet wipes. We’d also acquired an infrared sauna, a number of supplements to supplements to support ligament recovery, and some cold compression devices. I’m hoping it get an electro-stim device as well.

The orthopedist we’d begged our way into first thing this morning had good news for us. I’d torn two ligaments but it was pretty run of the mill. For once I didn’t have an exciting diagnosis. It was boring and simple. It wouldn’t require any surgery. It would be two weeks of keeping all weight off my ankle and then a slow introduction to physical therapy. If all goes well I’ll regain mobility in a month.

I’ll be wearing a boot and using a walker for a while but we can slowly introduce weight bearing activities at physical therapy within a few weeks. Maybe by Christmas I’ll be able to get myself up and down stairs. Since I don’t want to miss our Christmas tree being upstairs for the entire season.