✔All-over body pain. Every bit of movement causes stabbing pain through my muscles. Every bit of absolute stillness is met with a dull ache throughout my entire body.
✔Skin-on-fire. My skin is hot to the touch and I feel slightly swollen all over. Add to the skin-on-fire the whole a million hairy-legged spiders attempting to burrow out through my skin, because being hot, but not sweating isn't as much fun if you don't have random and deep-rooted itching through it all.
✔Painful numbness. Which is the stupidest thing ever. If it's NUMB, why is it also PAINFUL? Doesn't the word "numb" negate the word "pain"?
I dozed off twice in the hour and a half that I was in bed.
Now, let's move on a bit... I have some news to update the previous blog post. In that one, I mentioned that the doctor wants to put me on a Vitamin B-12 supplement (and folic acid). I got a letter from her on Wednesday and on Thursday, she called. It was weird. I'm not used to being treated like a human person by the faceless organization of the VA hospital.
So, basically, I'm on a daily dose of B-12 and folic acid now. That's supposed to help with the painful numbness from the neuropathy in my foot. . The previous blog mentioned the generic version of Cymbalta as our next step in the Fibrofuckingmyalgia Roulette Wheel of Fuck You. The call on Thursday was to let me know that the Assholes in Charge of Bullshit and Disappointment denied her request to put me on Generic Cymbalta. Instead, she's sending me Amatriptyline.
I sent this info to a friend who is in the real world and doesn't deal with the Wheel of Fuck You and the Bullshit and Disappointment department. As it is after midnight, I'm not going to text him for his actual job title, so I'll make one up as close as possible. He's the Head Wizard of the Ministry of Biological Medical Testing and Fancy Science-y Words. There... I'm pretty sure that's exactly what his business cards say.
His response to that above information, with my closing sentence of: "So we're just going to keep throwing shit at it till something sticks and doesn't make me swell up" was this: "For Fuck's Sake". There's a reason I love that guy.
Sometime this week, I realized that the reason I feel so utterly shitty is because I'm back to unbridled fibrofuckingmyalgia. Taking Vicodin on a schedule that would impress the train guy with the watch. Hey, it's almost 1 AM here, that's about the crux of my creativity. I'm getting all the pain, all the swelling, all the fatigue, all the bullshit, all the disappointment. I'm also incredibly emotional. If you say something nice to me, I might cry.
In the last post, I shared some photos of my swollen calves and mentioned that my feet and ankles were small because I'd just taken off my boots. Well, I took a couple photos the other day. This is what my ankles look like about an hour after I take my boots off.
This is the infamous Flipper Foot. I could propel myself through the water with the grace of a dolphin with this goddamn thing.
And this is the Not-Flipper Foot. It isn't as swollen as the other one. Not sure why, because they have the exact same type of swelling.
So, now we wait... we wait for the new drug to come in the mail. We wait for the B-12 and folic acid to start doing whatever it is they're supposed to do. And then we wait to see if the new drug is going to help me or push me a little toward the Dolphin Transformation. If I suddenly start balancing a ball on my nose, I will definitely take a photo of that for you.
Would we like to end on a high note? Because I can totally do that right now. On Sunday (September 14th), I accepted my friend's offer to step outside my comfort zone and photograph her daughter's wedding. I spent the afternoon taking my usual style of photos (ninja, on the sly, trying to blend in and not be noticed even though I was the largest person there) and the usual posed photos. And then I spent the next four days thinking I was the world's worst photographer. All I could see was things that were wrong and how I should have done them (this was the first time I've shot a wedding- which my friend knew up front, before I accepted her offer).
The families love the photos and that's all that matters (I have to ignore the naysayer that lives in my brain). The comments from both family members and people not associated with them at all make me teary-eyed.
And here are a few of those photos- Josh and Kat's Wedding, September 14, 2014 at Parkway by the Lake, Ingleside, Illinois.
There was a strict "no bride photos on Facebook" before the ceremony. But Kat got to see Josh on Facebook before the wedding.
And this is Josh seeing Kat for the first time- walking down the aisle.
Directly after the ceremony, we tried to get some posed shots on the lake. But the sun was so bright and almost directly overhead.
I created some shade, using the Promaster 5-in-1 reflector thing I have.
Without all my gear, we had to improvise. I told him that his high school counselor told him he could be anything, so he was a shade tree.
The groom (reflected in the mirror behind the ladies) took this photo with the bridesmaid's phone, so I took this shot.
We went back out a few hours later to get better posed shots with the setting sun. Kat asked Josh to carry her, so of course he did. And of course, I took a photo of it.
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