Tag: Pain

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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
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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.

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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.

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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.

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Medical

Day 336 and Inaccessible

I’m probably still in shock. The last 24 hours have been a whirlwind of favor trading and phone calls and begging as we try to figure out the extent of the damage to my ankle. Something is broken but still need an ultrasound and an MRI to assess a full recovery full protocol. We are mostly hoping I can avoid surgery. But we will know more once I meet with the orthopedist tomorrow.

The only upside to this mess is living in Boulder Colorado we’ve got access to the best sports medicine on the planet. We were able to get excellent recommendations on in orthopedic specialist and thanks to wonderful friends secured an appointment within 24 hours.

I’ve also got an incredible primary care physician that has spent the day putting together all of the basics for healing and recovery. She thought of everything from bandaging to mobility aids to supplements. And she makes house calls.

I am however pretty shook up and in a lot of pain. I misjudged crutches this morning and took a terrible fall trying to get to the bathroom. You never notice how inaccessible the basics in life are until you need help getting onto the toilet. I am going to need round the clock help for a bit until we figure out how to install things I can lift myself up on. So maybe my upper body still will improve? But otherwise it’s pretty dehumanizing.

I’m also stuck on the top floor of our three story townhouse as the only way to get down the stairs currently is on my ass with the scoot and lift method. Thankfully Alex doesn’t seem to mind me using his office desk as a dining room table for a bit. They are too narrow to carry me down so this will be a bit tricky for the time being. We can’t have me on the middle floor as there is no bathroom and the downstairs doesn’t have a bed so this will have to do for now.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 335 and Ankle

I was going for a walk and misjudged coming down a stair. We’ve got tiny stairs of rock and wood and hand poured concrete in the courtyard of our complex. They aren’t the most even. I don’t know how I came down so hard but Alex said he heard something as I came down. I tried to get back up and put weight on my foot and immediately collapsed. I must have screened loudly as everyone came running.

I couldn’t make it up the stairs to get back into the house. I had to scoot myself up the stairs using my arms to lift me and shimmying my ass. I kept trying to test if could manage any pressure on it. I had tears running down my face and my iPhone giving me tachycardia warnings.

I initially crawled myself upstairs to get in bed so I could elevate and ice. We weren’t sure if it was a sprain or an actual broken bone or ligament. We called around to see if anyone had doctors who made house calls. The last thing I wanted was a four hour emergency room visit while I was in excruciating pain. But eventually the feedback from a virtual visit was I needed X-rays as it’s not a good sign that I can’t apply any pressure to it.

The urgent care center got me a boot and crutches and I’m waiting on the X-ray results. I am so angry as I don’t want a random health thing requiring surgery and physical therapy and months off my feet. I feel like I just got to a great place with my health recently. To have a set back with my existing issues would have been more of the same. To have something new feels profoundly unfair.

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Emotional Work

Day 327 and Suffering Gives You Choices

I perceive suffering as a positive and even necessary thing. Discomfort is part of any growth process. Learning is often painful. Work is suffering. The act of enduring opens our lives. I believe suffering creates choice. Thanks Calvinism?

I’m not suggesting my belief that suffering is choice is a good belief. It’s quite likely a self limiting belief for me. I am a workaholic after all. I’m just noting that I believe in the benefits of suffering. I will punish myself even if I don’t always deserve it.

But if I continue in a black and white view of suffering I’m not living my live in freedom. Ironically I lack choice. I need to ask myself Can I get what I want in life if I do not suffer for it? I feel like I see a river in my life that I call choice. One bank is the border of suffering county and the other is easy land. I’d like to feel free to ferry across the river when it suits my needs. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a hard border. Maybe I can have a country in my mind of expansion and possibilities that sees the benefit of the occasionally painful process but also enjoys an aside life because of it.

What I am saying is it is ok to pull it back. Do less. I mindfuck myself into needing to suffer because I believe it will bring progress. But what if progress is possible when things are easy and joyful?. I need to see that choice is freedom. The freedom to choose what makes sense at the time.

Every time I feel like I have no choice I need to stop. Breathe. Say I’m trapped. And I can shift it. I can have choice without suffering. I can have choice without sacrifice. And you can too.