Scattered Thoughts . . .

M y right eye is back to feeling normal again so I guess my scratched cornea has healed.  It was quite painful for a while! In the beginning of the pain, I didn't remember doing anything that could have caused a scratched cornea.  Then one evening when I was tending to my eye in front of the bathroom mirror, I did something that reminded me exactly of what caused my scratched cornea.   I had picked up my eyeglasses with one hand because the eye drops were in my other hand.  Usually I use two hands with my eyeglasses so that I don't cause bent lopsided eyeglasses.  This time I had the eye drops in one hand and tried putting my eyeglasses on my head with the other hand.  I suddenly remembered that I did the same thing a few nights previously... Back a few nights previously, I had something else in my right hand when I attempted to place my eyeglasses on my head with my left hand.  Unfortunately, I misjudged distance and I poked my right eye with the right temple tip of my eyeglas

T he few who actually follow this blog probably think that since I haven't mentioned my ankle injury lately that my ankle is back to normal.  That is not true.  No news isn't always good news. While it is true that the swelling is down and the pain has subsided quite a bit, I am still walking delicately on that ankle and my range of motion is still fairly limited.  When I do too much walking, it still swells a bit.  Then the ice packs come out and  I'm still resting with the ankle elevated too.   The pain, for the most part, isn't nearly as bad now.  I do get twinges of excruciating pain when I do something stupid like put too much weight on it or trip when working in the yard but, overall, the pain is just a dull ache most of the time.  I'm also getting weird tingling in my ankle like I have one of those useless, torturous TENS units attached to my ankle.  Sometimes it develops like pins and needles.  I assume these types of sensations and pain is a sign of my ankl

I didn't get any sleep the night before last.  I awoke early in the night during a dream about having a throbbing scab on my eye.  When I awoke from my couple of hours of sleep, I quickly realized that the painful eye was not just in my dream.  My eye was actually throbbing in my waking life. I shouldn't really call it "throbbing" because the frequency of the throbs was much slower than you think of when you hear about throbbing pain.  It was really a ten second extremely painful period followed by about 30 seconds of very little pain.  Although a slow throb, it continued at this frequency and severity which made sleep impossible. I got up immediately when I awoke from this dream so I could check my eye.  It was all red, irritated, but I saw no obvious problems.  For a little while, I assumed that perhaps I was developing Conjunctivitis.  I washed my eye with eye wash and then used some Natural Tears.  Both of these products stung terribly.   After lying in bed, awak

O ther than writing about my badly sprained ankle, I haven't written much about my health lately so I figured I should attempt to write some stuff down.   Overall, my typical mast cell disease stuff has been 'typical'.  That means occasional anaphylaxic symptoms, breathing difficulties, dizziness, lightheadedness, and a lot of joint and bone pain.  Plus, regular gastro-intestinal problems, nausea, and too much time spent in a bathroom.   What has been worse for the past year...  far worse...  is the brain fog.  This may have been compounded by fighting off COVID-19 a year ago.  I have had brain fog throughout all my mast cell disease but it has been far, far worse in recent months.  I become non-functional for anything other than simply surviving from day to day.   While fighting off the virus last year, I also had consistent problems with vision and hearing.  My eyes were swollen and it seemed like I had a torn retina but that was probably due to the swelling in my eyes. 

I t has been about nine weeks since my old ankle injury flared and I'm still limping around wherever I go.  It is slowly improving but, as expected in any recovery, I keep getting set back in recovery whenever I attempt to do anything that requires a bit of weight to be put on my left foot.   On the positive side, I'm now doing some light exercising in an attempt to get back some flexibility in my ankle.  Actually, my whole left leg needs daily physical therapy at this point.  My left leg is now noticeably thinner than my right leg due to lack of use over the past nine weeks.  I have been slowly and carefully getting back into some very light exercising (mostly stretching) to get back to "normal".  Unfortunately, this sets me back by causing a bit of pain, inflammation and swelling again.  I sort of cycle back and forth between feeling "okay" and limping around in pain which is normal during recovery.  We're now assuming that I had a severe case of sprai

It has been warm the past two days and today is looking to be a beautiful, sunny, warm spring day too.  I had planned to utilize the good weather to start working on things outside where sawdust is not an issue.  This week is looking good for that and I have a bunch of small projects that need to be accomplished.  Actually, I've been waiting months to be able to pull out woodworking tools to accomplish a few things. Unfortunately, once again, my health is being a bit uncooperative.   My ankle is still healing.  Sheila and I wandered outside yesterday to take down wreaths and Christmas lights.  I stepped up on the first step of a stepladder and quickly realized my ankle was still in no condition for climbing a short stepladder.  I instantly fell off and onto unlevel snow on the ground.  This hurt both of my ankles again setting me back a couple of days.  I have no need for my cane now but getting around is still a bit painful and slow-going.  I'm taking small steps and taking th

After a month of significant pain in my ankle, hobbling around and residing on the couch with very little relief, this morning was the first morning that I awoke feeling halfway decently.   My ankle can finally support a bit of weight and I am limping a bit less this morning and even without the use of my cane.  The pain has significantly subsided too.  There is still a bit of pain but I'm no longer in the 8-10 pain scale range! I'm going to continue taking it easy on my ankle for the next few days...  continue with some icing occasionally...  at least through the weekend.  At that point, I'll start a physical therapy period by slowly and carefully increasing my range of motion with no weight on my foot.  Then, over the course of days, I'll slowly add a bit of resistance and weight to the therapy and exercise.   Considering I've already had one significant set-back that set me back about a week, I'm only cautiously optimistic and I'm convinced I need to take

At this point, I've completely lost track of time.  This ankle injury is taking forever to heal and one day is blurring into the next and the next and the next. Something that has happened a lot is that I get up in the morning and my ankle is feeling "fair".  I'm still limping and there is still varying amount of pain but, first thing in the morning, it is feeling far closer to being normal than being injured.  Then I shower... I don't know if it is hobbling around the shower that causes my ankle to get worse.  Of, maybe getting in and out of the shower causes my ankle to get worse.  Or, maybe the hot water from the shower that causes my ankle to get worse.  Or, maybe it is a combination of all of the above.  Whatever the cause, I feel quite lousy after I shower.  My ankle and foot is always swollen again and hurting to the point that I need my cane again.   This happened again this morning.  I felt pretty good this morning and, as a result, had some plans to acco

Working on the refrigerator for five hours yesterday clearly placed my ankle injury a step or two backwards in the recovery process. I had difficulty sleeping last night due to the pain in my ankle.  It is abundantly clear that I did far too much standing on it yesterday.  At rest, I am back into the area of three on the ten point pain scale.  While walking...  well, hobbling, really...  the pain is in the range of five to six and I am back to needing the use of my cane.  Today, I'll be residing on the couch again with my foot up.  The ice will have to come out of the freezer again and get wrapped around my ankle too.  It will be a day of sleep (hopefully) and movies. It's bad enough when you cause a step or two backward because you did something you enjoy.  I had no desire to work on the fridge yesterday...  I needed to work on the fridge and, honestly, I don't enjoy having to fix things.  Not at all.  I enjoy designing things and building things but it really annoys me to

It has been a rather lousy week so far, after a lousy few weeks, after a rather lousy year of lousy health.  Actually, I should go back a few weeks...  I spent the past three weeks trying to get a prescription refill for one of my most important drugs.  This drug has made the most positive impact on my health since procuring this insidious illness.  A few weeks ago, I got a call from the pharmacy looking to get approval to charge my card.  I thought that was a little odd so I asked why I was being asked this unusual question.  The customer service representative pulled up another screen and suddenly exclaimed, "Oh my!"  She then explained that my copay would be $8700 for my 90 day refill.   I sort of chuckled and informed her that even if she tried to charge my card, she would get nothing with a bill so far beyond what I have in the bank so, approval from me or not, they wouldn't be getting any money.   I went back and forth between my doctor's office and the pharmacy

I've had this ankle issue for two weeks now.  I'm still doing very little on my feet and keeping my foot elevated most of the time.  I haven't used any ice in a couple of days.  At this point, two weeks in, my ankle feels like it did on that first day of limping exactly two weeks ago.   Each day this week, my ankle has felt a bit better than the previous day so that is good.  This morning when I got up out of bed, my ankle felt like I had a hot nail driven into it for about an hour but that has subsided to a dull ache at rest.  I'm still needing to limp and occasionally use my cane but at least I am able to put a little bit of weight on my foot now.  Showering has been difficult and dangerous.  Fortunately, I haven't slipped in the tub but I honestly don't know how I have managed that feat.  Try getting in and out of a wet tub without putting any weight whatsoever on one of your feet...  try cleaning yourself without putting any weight whatsoever on one of your

My ankle is slowly healing but I am still hobbling around the house with a cane.  Actually, most of my time is spent on the couch and I'm only on my feet when absolutely necessary.  I'm getting the impression that this is going to take some time. On the positive side, I slept in our bed for the first time in a week this past weekend.  It was nice to get back to the comfortable bed.  I still need to be careful about how I position my feet but I've been sleeping better since being back in bed at night. Showering is still a difficult and frustrating task.  Actually, it is a bit dangerous too.  Getting in and out of the tub/shower requires some creativity and a bit of acrobatics to keep from slipping and falling.  I've been managing to shower the past couple of days though so that is good. The pain, at rest, is around a three now.  The pain when hobbling around without my cane reaches a five or six.  I'm really looking forward to zero pain at rest!  Most of the time, I&

Sheila and I were discussing something about Worker's Compensation over lunch the other day and I suddenly remembered the one time I attempted to file a Worker's Comp claim a few decades ago.  The reason for me filing a Worker's Comp claim as well as memories of this painful incident also came flooding back to me in an instant.   In hindsight, this Worker's Comp incident is the likely cause to my occasionally recurring ankle problems.  I only experience this problem when I do something careless with my ankle about once every four years or so but I've always wondered about its cause.  I've always just chalked it up to having a physically demanding career and being active in a lot of different sports.  Having been reminded of this incident while actually in an exceptionally painful recurring flareup, however, it all makes a little more sense now. For a very brief period of my life (a short period I would choose to forget for far too many reasons to get into here),

I am still residing in the living room on the couch with my left leg elevated, icing it every few hours, and trying to keep the pain in check.  This is now the end of day five on the couch.  Fun times. Yesterday morning, I was finally feeling like my ankle was beginning to heal.  I was able to put a slight bit of weight on my foot again so I figured it was a good time to attempt to shower.  Getting in and out of the tub so I can shower has been an impossible task so I was ripe for a shower by yesterday morning.  I managed to shower and then headed to the kitchen to make something for breakfast. I hobbled into the kitchen and spent some time upright preparing breakfast for myself...  back and forth in the kitchen...  back and forth between the kitchen and the couch with food and water while still hobbling with my cane in one hand...  in all, I think I was upright for about an hour. After all that standing and hobbling around with my cane, the pain was beginning to return.  After breakfa

I slept for a total of three and a half hours the other night...  I was having a dream about doing electrical work on some house but I wasn't having much success...  wires were exposed and lighting fixtures were hanging from ceilings...  nothing seemed to be working correctly...  then I started having great difficulty breathing in the dream.  I was calling out for help but it seemed as though nobody really cared that I couldn't breath and were even acting as though I wasn't even there...  maybe I was stuck in some other dimension...  at this point, I awoke and realized that I was indeed having great difficulty breathing.   I then grabbed my inhaler...  two puffs...  no improvement.  There is nothing new with that...  my inhaler rarely helps more than just slightly.  I took two more puffs about five minutes later and I finally was able to get a halfway decent breath of air after another few minutes of waiting for some improvement.   It was time at add more medications to my

I haven't written here in quite a while because I simply have not had the energy to accomplish anything including even writing a simple blog entry.  I assume my main problem is that I am still fighting off this virus that has been coming and going since May.  January to May was miserable with a solid fever for four months, breathing difficulties, sore throat, congestion, vision problems, cognitive difficulties, and absurd levels of fatigue.  These symptoms have been coming and going in waves since the fever broke in May. I'd say my biggest complaint is the viral fatigue.  The fatigue from my mast cell illness is debilitating and what I would call "overwhelming" at times but this fatigue due to this virus is far worse.  Just standing for any amount of time is too much to do.  I don't even have the energy to simply stand long enough to stop and say just a short sentence to Sheila.  I need to sit down.  By the time I get cleaned up and brush my teeth first thing in t

What a miserable, lousy day today has been.  Sheila did a fairly quick and, thankfully, very uneventful recovery from her colonoscopy yesterday but my health crashed sometime between yesterday and today.   I spent the morning sleeping on the couch because I had absolutely no energy and I was overwhelmingly fatigued.  Then I awoke around 2pm having great difficulty breathing.  I took some extra medications, used my inhaler but neither seemed to make much of a difference.  My inhaler rarely helps and today was no exception.  Personally, I think it is because the cause of my breathing problems is not related to asthma but related to anaphylaxis.  Then again, I don't really know the specifics of what happens in the lungs with this illness or with asthma.  All I know is it becomes very difficult to breath at times and my inhaler rarely, if ever, helps my breathing.  Anyway, today, my breathing was poor and the inhaler did not help at all.   I'm just feeling lousy.  I'm havin

Not a day goes by when I don't turn a certain way or lift something incorrectly or simply breath incorrectly that I am instantly slammed with spinal pain that is enough to trigger my body to involuntarily buckle at the knees.  In those daily instances, I manage to catch myself before hitting the floor.  This morning, I awoke with spinal pain in my lumbar spine.  I got up out of bed and instantly fell to the floor, a heap of red-hot nerves in excruciating pain... wedged between the wall, the nightstand and the little step-stool to help get in and out of our rather tall bed.   I've had a nasty cold...  perhaps the flu, I don't know which nor do I care...  for the past three weeks.  I still have nasty, thick phlegm running down my throat at night so I try to sleep propped up on three pillows to keep me from choking.  This helps me breath, typically, but it is terrible for my spinal injuries.  Anyway, the cold is still lingering, causing problems, and getting my abnormally ex

Another lunch in the hospital cafe. Sheila has moved into a new stage of side effects. This new stage of side effects has appeared only about a week before she moves into a new stage of radiation treatment. More on the additional change in treatment another time because I want to write about the current issue... burning, peeling and itching. At this point in radiation treatment, Sheila's skin is showing some burns. She has already been showing signs of a "tan" for weeks and we have known that the tissue beneath the skin has been getting irritated but now she's getting into burn territory.  Sheila has been a little bit swollen since her surgery and the radiation isn't really allowing the swelling to go down. She had already been feeling "tender" in the tissue under the skin and that continues to slowly worsen. Sheila says it isn't bad but it is obvious by her guarded reactions to things that she does feel tender in various areas.  The other

My health often resembles a see-saw... my health swings upward and I experience relatively good days... then swings down and I experience rather miserable days... back up... back down... sometimes it balances in the middle for a relatively short period if I managed my health effectively and luck was on my side but, more often than not, it seems to move up and down like a pendulum moves side to side. Yesterday afternoon the see-saw started moving downward... after a little bit of dinner (I didn't eat much because I was feeling poorly), I had hoped that my health had leveled out in this short period before bedtime though... no such luck... Apparently, this see-saw continued on its downward swing through the night.  I was quite sick and in the bathroom for far too much of the night when I preferred to be and needed to be sleeping. Actually, I was overwhelmingly exhausted and struggling to keep my eyes open even while I was sick as a dog.  I really hate these nights. It takes a