The Tale of the Left Half of My Left Foot

Last weekend was Opening Weekend of the Bristol Renaissance Faire!

[wait for audience roar]

I KNOW! And it was just as awesome as I knew it would be, despite certain people not being there when they totally usually ARE there.
(yeah, I'm looking at you, Loki or, I guess I'm NOT looking at you right now. Dammit, Loki!)

The weather was hot and humid, so my asthma was SO NOT HAPPY, but that's why I carry an albuterol inhaler in my pouch. I'm not going to die of asthma for the sake of authenticity. Besides, have you see what I wear? I'm definitely NOT authentic. Well, that and the fact I whip out a DSLR at any given second.

Speaking of that DSLR, I chose to wear my cross-body strap on Saturday. I thought that by wearing the camera instead of basket-ing it, I'd take more photos. Well, I didn't. All it did was make BOTH my shoulders tired. See, I usually carry my basket on my right arm and I carry my mug in my left. If I get completely fatigued, I'll carry my basket in my left hand for a while. But mostly, it'll be on my right arm (crooked into my elbow). Well, by having the cross-body strap on, all I did was create drag on my other shoulder, so by mid-afternoon, my shoulders were just killing me. I went back to the basket-ing for Sunday.

Surprisingly, I didn't have any extra pain. My body wasn't in agony (I was a little itchy from the humidity, but no extra pain). And on Sunday, I even forgot to take my Vicodin before the final joust. (Just in case you don't remember or didn't know of this blog, this is what happened 3 years ago when I forgot to take my Vicodin before the final joust). I remembered about ten minutes after the joust ended, so I took it then (because I STILL had to walk up that damn hill). The only pain I was suffering from was in my left foot. That stupid, stupid left foot. Not even the whole left foot, just the left half of the left foot.

I finally figured out a way to describe the pain in the Left Half of My Left Foot. You know when you're sitting down and your foot falls asleep? And then you get up to stand and your leg crumples under you and suddenly your foot is on fire with a thousand white-hot sewing pins and knitting needles burning through your very bones? THAT. That's the feeling I have in the Left Half of My Left Foot almost all of the time. Right now, I'm seated at my desk with my foot resting on top of my man-sandals, so The Top Part of the Left Half of My Left Foot isn't so bad. But the second I slip into my man-sandals, that white-hot agony will be there.

The Monday and Tuesday that followed were normal days, except for the Left Half of My Left Foot. I wasn't in any extra pain like I've been for years after a faire day. Even my human knee didn't hurt. (my shoulders were a bit achy, but that's because of the camera/basket thing I talked about above). In fact, I wasn't in any real Not-Foot-Related pain till Wednesday, but that pain was the tendinitis in my shoulder letting me know that rain was a-comin'. Yes, "a-comin'" because that's how you say it when you have a body part alert you to its arrival.

So, I'm going to mark this up as another success for that Generic Cymbalta for fibro. So far, so good. I'm not going to be excited or overly complimentary. This is good. That's all I'm sayin'.

And now, let's talk about photography OPENING WEEKEND!! And there just so happens to be photos. As usual, ~here is the link~ to the entire album of Opening Weekend photos. And below are a whole bunch of them. Just take a look at whichever you want- the link or scroll down. How can I NOT love the faire? These people are awesome.

OH!! SIDE NOTE- I nagged convinced my son to come along to Bristol finally! He's going to come with me on Sunday!

Now, on to the photos!!

Sir Mauldron, Baron of Blackburn! (FACEBOOK)



Sir Maxmillian, the Jousting Earl of Braden! (FACEBOOK)



Duchess Anastasia of Warwick! (FACEBOOK)



Sir Edgeron of Aquataine! (FACEBOOK)



Don Vincenzo di Scicilia! (FACEBOOK)



Squire Archer!



Squire Freya!







Awwww, yeah... I missed this!



Squire Savvy and Squire Murley!



Dandelion fairy!



By the Sword!







The Royal Falconer (Flight of the Raptor)





On Sunday, Mauldron's horse had a bad hoof, so instead of "on with the show" and causing further harm, he opted not to ride in the joust. Instead, he sat in the stands with the audience, walked around to other areas, talked to kids, and was otherwise genuinely hilarious. This is my favorite shot from that whole thing.



This is Alexx, Sir Maxx's new horse. The Lady of Chivalry is riding him at Bristol while he continues his joust-horse training.

Some kind of update... (and the pun was intentional)

Hi there. I know it has been over a month since I updated. Not much has really been going on around here. I never did call my knee surgeon about my stupid knee. It started to feel better and now it only seems to bother me if I spend too much time standing or walking. The good thing about the faire is that I can absolutely go at my own pace and sit down a lot. (faire starts next weekend, by the way. July 11th is opening day).

I had a six-month followup at the VA hospital today. My blood tests look good and while a couple things are a little elevated, that'll change as soon as I get my ass moving next weekend. The Disabled Guy came home from his yearly Trip of Stupidity in May, then left again three weeks later. He got back on Monday (four days ago). On Tuesday, we had an extremely heated discussion (if by "heated discussion" means "all-out shouting match") about our central AC (heated discussion... AC... yeah). It seems that he's cold. I told him I can't have the house over 72° because the summer humidity sets off my asthma (which is mild) and exacerbates my fibro issues. And not even the pain issues, that's being pretty well controlled at the moment by the Generic Cymbalta. I'm talking about the under-the-skin itching, swelling, and general lack of sleep... that sort of stuff.

He kept yelling at me about how cold he was and I said that he could just put on a hoodie or something. He yelled again about how he was cold and I said- surprisingly not yelling- "You honestly cannot be mad at me for having a medical condition!" I had to repeat that a few times and added a few terse: "Fibromyalgia is a legitimate medical issue. So is asthma!" I get the feeling one of his less-than-reputable relatives (not naming names, but my kids would know who without me even saying) told him that fibro was fake.

Trust me- it isn't. And not just basing that on my own experiences, I say that because it is damn near impossible to get the VA to diagnose anything that is considered an "invisible illness" or even just a chronic illness (like, say, arthritis). So the fact that the goddamned VA hospital went through all that it has to actually diagnose me with it, well... that's a fucking legit thing. (I also found out today that my doctor had to jump through hoops, promise her firstborn, and sacrifice a small animal to get me on that Generic Cymbalta. Apparently, the VA is a dick to fibro patients *ding* (that's a CinemaSins joke)

Anyway, the I told the doctor about the conversation- minus the actual asshole behavior, because nobody really wants to hear about The Disabled Guy not being funny- and she said: "When it comes down to 'being cold' versus 'possible death', you win. When it comes down to 'being cold' versus 'severe physical discomfort', you still win." and we joked about it. Then she added: "Even though we're using a joking tone, even mild asthma isn't funny. Make sure he knows that."

I told him. He wasn't very responsive because he was watching old war movies and then eventually he was catching up on "Game of Thrones" episodes. (when he comes back from his visits to his family, he's cranky and extremely well... asshole-ish. There's a lot of extremes in living with a stroke person. Especially since his stroke is of the old-school variety. A few minutes after our blowup, he was back to normal and talking about me having two feet). I don't know if anything I said to him sank in through all the talk of dragons, random soft-core sex scenes, and whatever the hell else goes on in that show.

But, I did learn something good at my doctor appointment- the reason for my ridiculous amount of fatigue is that my thyroid has yet again gone a little wonky. So my Synthroid dosage is going to be tweaked a little. That's good news because it means that it can be fixed and it ISN'T the fibro! And that means that the Generic Cymbalta still seems to be working.

I am very awake right now- at 227 AM as I type this- because when I went to bed at 10 PM, my legs and lower back/abdomen area decided those millions of hairy-legged spiders wanted to set themselves on fire and crawl out through my skin. I'm pretty sure that was caused by the fact I had a fasting lab today (which meant no caffeine, no food, and no Vicodin in the daytime) and I had to speed-walk through the VA hospital. For some reason, I have to go in, walk halfway down one wing of the hospital to the lab, then trek all the way to the other end of a different wing to pick up a piece of red card stock with my name on it, and then go all the way back to where the lab was to the clinic where I see my doctor. Today, I said: "It'd be nice if you'd move this office, I dunno, a little closer to the clinics." They agreed, but of course, that's not going to happen.

I'd like to talk about photography, but all I got is the same old stuff. Macro flowers, raindrops on leaves. I've been adding text to photos from last season at Bristol and doing my "countdown" by uploading two to four photos at a time. If you'd like to see it, here's the link to the Facebook album. And since I don't have much else going on at the moment, here's some photos of bubbles I took last week. The pink-tinted blob in the bubble is a reflection (refraction?) of the extremely bright pink shirt I was wearing.












This is my 365 self-portrait from day 121 of Year 6. I'm blowing bubbles while being back-lit by my flash. It took a lot of attempts and a lot of dripping bubble solution on my shirt to get this shot.



And, for funsies, here's my 365 self-portrait from day 125 of Year 6. People were sharing the article about how zookeepers and such were "Pratting" with their animals. So, I did the same with mine.



And I did take some macro water drops, so here are a few...

Well... insert frustrated swear words and sobbing here-

I have to call my knee doctor tomorrow. More on that later. I know you've been waiting to hear about how the Janesville Ren Faire went, so I'm going to do that first, because I was happy there... it was a nice place to be...

The cortisone shot I got in my knee twenty-three days ago (which was about a week or so before the Janesville Faire) worked fantastically through the faire. My knees did not hurt. My only hurt was from my feet and all the standing and walking I had to do. My only hurt on Sunday was from my feet and a little of my lower back because my back was all whiny about having to stand and walk all day.

~Link to the Album of Janesville Faire Photos~

The first day, the heat was somewhat oppressive. It was humid as fuck out, too. I wore my blue "over-archer" bodice with one of the new blue skirts I sewed the previous week. (one skirt is mine, the other is Christine's). The over-archer style of bodice/corset has a collar on it (making it more Victorian than Elizabethan) and it meets in the back sort of in a halter-style (there's a row of grommets, laced like a tiny corset), so the collar bit just LAYS on your neck. Or, my neck. I had four layers of upholstery-weight fabric laying on my neck in the mid-80s temperature and one-billion intensity humidity. That pretty much guaranteed that I won't be wearing it to Bristol this summer.

But, here's a photo of me in the blue medallion over-archer.



And the back view of both my over-archers (blue medallion and "Captain Blood"- with the matching tie-on peplum).



Now, they're gorgeous and I love-love-love the fabric and how the corset/bodice accentuates my curves (because, daaaaammmn, I have a great hip-to-waist-to-bust ratio, even as a fat girl). But with all that humidity, it was uuuugh. And, because it was supposed to rain on Sunday (spoiler, it didn't even rain!) I wore my burgundy courtier.  (here's a photo of me with Jeff, the super-awesome dude I know from the historical reenactor group called GSM-Bristol. They "host" the Janesville Faire).




So, the faire itself was great. Sunday's weather was absolutely gorgeous and it was windy as hell, so the humidity wasn't an issue (I'd have worn my other over-archer had I known it would be that nice). My feet were the usual amount of tired and sore for a faire weekend. But, my fibro wasn't. I told many people that the "new" medicine "seemed to be working" because every time I rave about how good I feel, the medicine stops working. So, at the moment, generic Cymbalta for fibro seems to be holding its own.

On Sunday evening, when I got home from the faire, I had to carry in all my stuff. At the end of a faire day, I take off my bodice and my overskirt, so I end up having to carry my camera basket, my corset/bodice, my overskirt, and my utility belt (I call it that, it's the leather belt with pouches we all almost wear to faire, so we don't have to hand-carry every-fucking-thing). As I went up the steps, I felt my human knee twinge. It was like it was trying to twist itself.

Fuck.

I've spent the last week-ish gimping around, using my goddamn cane sporadically and generally being pissed off about the whole thing.

Saturday, a group of my son's friends asked if I'd take photos of them on their motorcycles, so I did. I was on my feet for almost two hours- my knee was so not happy about it at all. But, the photos were awesome and I even made a couple of the guys do my 365 with me. I haven't uploaded those photos to my Flickr yet, but here's a ~link to the Facebook album~



And then there's today. The "Get to that later" part I mentioned in the first part above.  At around 4 PM, I was walking upstairs to go to the loo (our bathroom is upstairs, and it's the only bathroom in the house and there's nowhere we could add a second one downstairs), and since the Twinge-Knee Incident of May 17th, I've been going up the stairs using only my cyborg knee. I got to the landing and shifted my weight to the human knee to put my cyborg leg on the step and BAM! Sheer, agonizing, blazing-white-hot pain shot through my knee like I'd slipped on the ice and wrenched the shit out of it. I started swearing and sobbing instantly. I shrieked to the Disabled Guy to get me my cane. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything but sob and gasp in pain. And swear. I swore a lot.

After sobbing off most of my mascara (waterproof my ass) and actually getting to the loo, I managed to gimp my way downstairs where I starting icing my knee. A bottle of frozen-solid water behind my knee and a smooshy, bendy blue ice pack over the top and sides of my knee. I've also since taken a bunch of pain meds (because it was close enough to my usual time). There's still pain, but at least I can breathe now. Unfortunately, I'm too fat to know if my knee is swollen or not. I assume it is, it feels like it is.

So, tomorrow morning, I have to call and make another appointment. Clearly the cortisone didn't work.

Now... about those photos...

Here's a few favorites, with my absolute favorite first.



The rest are in no particular order of favor.

These are things that happened today...

I had a long day. It got to the point where I could no longer wait... the lawn had to be mowed. It was 18 inches high in some areas. The chis would disappear for several seconds and then emerge on the other side, slightly confused and a little scared. Jasper would bound through it like a tiny,
derpy gazelle. So, I did it. I decided to mow the lawn. And these are some things that happened today.

My hair is long enough now that it can go into an actual all-up full-on ponytail.

I used the 110 SPF sunscreen that I got for this year's faire season.

Surprisingly, the lawnmower actually fired up. After six months of sitting in the shed, it turned over on a single pull.

The grass was so thick that the lawnmower stalled. A lot. I lost count at around twenty times. I couldn't go too slow, it would choke to death. I couldn't go too fast, because it would choke while not cutting anything.

When it stalled the second or third time, I couldn't get it to start again. I was sweating profusely. The sunscreen that boasted itself as "sweat-proof" and "won't run into your eyes" was sweating off my face and burning my eyes right out of their sockets. I took off my sunglasses and actually walked from the middle of my backyard into my house with my eyes closed. I knew exactly where the steps were, where the loose boards in the deck were, and the door inside. That's when I decided to take a break.

I went back outside, wearing the O'Hare Towing baseball cap that I stole from the Disabled Guy (to help control the sweat pouring into my eyes, bring all the sunscreen with it).

I did a few more slow passes in the deep grass and out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement on the deck. But it wasn't anything like birds or a squirrel. It was the goddamn flock of dogs! Somehow, smartypants Gypsy got the door open and all the dogs came out onto the deck to see what I was doing. I got them back inside (there was very little shade out there on the deck, I don't like to do that to them).

I managed to mow the lawn, despite the intermittent stalling.

I discovered with the inside of a golf ball looks like. Oh, and I found almost a dozen golf balls in the tall grass. I only saw the inside of one of the golf balls.

I was actually able to turn off my photographer's brain after the first ten or fifteen minutes. Every time I saw something, I thought: "I should get my camera before I mow this..." But, dammit, the lawn needed mowing and art would have to wait.

After another stalling, I took another break and drank two 16.9 ounce bottles of water.

In less than ten minutes, three different people showed me that I was in their email (they posted screen caps on my Facebook). Earlier this week, I was informed via email that I won the "Action Photo of the Week" for ThinkGeek! I won a $100 gift code for their site and they used my Steampunk Wonder Woman T-shirt photo in their email newsletter.
(scroll to the bottom!). Having been outside most of the day, I hadn't checked my email associated with that newsletter and didn't know it was out yet.

My lower back was getting a bit achy after the first hour, but I was expecting that, really.

While mowing the front yard, passing drivers stared at me like I was some crazy person. As if a fat chick wearing a neon yellow baseball cap and tattered jeans and mowing a lawn was a weird thing.

I was finally at the end of the mowing. There was about a six foot by... oh, four-ish feet rectangle of grass in the very back part of the yard. And the goddamned lawnmower stalled again! AGAIN! And after four pulls on the start cord, I said: "Fuck this noise... I'm done! That's it!" I put the lawnmower away, locked up the shed, trudged inside, and drank two more bottles of water.

The baseball cap was almost entirely soaked with sweat. The very outer edge of the brim was still dry.

I got an awesome gift in the mail from an awesome lady named Tricia.

I sat here in my chair for almost an hour and a half without doing anything. Well, I drank more water and caught up on Facebook and so on.

I took the dogs out and fed them. Then I took a shower (finally) after 5 PM.

When I pulled my ponytail out, I found a stick in my hair. And some pine needles (there are pine trees in our yard).

When I got undressed for my shower, I found grass clippings, a few pine needles, and dandelion fuzz in my bra.

After my shower, I discovered some new tan lines on my shoulders. "Sweat-proof" my ass.

I ate my dinner, took that photo of me wearing that awesome bracelet, and as I sat down to start typing, one of my favorite movies came on cable. (it's called The Baytown Outlaws and it's stupid action with a mix of humor. I love it). And now, at the end of this typing and link-pasting, my muscles are only mildly achy. Like you'd expect for spending hours mowing the prairie in the backyard. My feet are sore too, because I wore my old, worn-out boots to mow.

But, you know what didn't happen today?

My knee didn't hurt. Not at all. Still doesn't.

That's what I call a good day.

"Life's funny sometimes"... but Life is also a jerk sometimes

So, 'sup? Been over a month now. Any news?

*waits*

*waits more*

Oh, wait, that's right. This is my stupid blog and I'm supposed to be sharing news.

I wanted to write some stuff a week or two ago, but I was putting it off because I had a problem. My problem was this- my human knee started to hurt. At first, I couldn't tell if it was a "fibro hurt" or if something more was going on. So, I did what I do best- I tried not to think about it. Guess what? If you guessed "nothing happened", you're right. The pain in my knee varied in intensity. Some days were just a mild ache. Some days were so blindingly painful that I cried from it. Driving became a horrible chore. Pressing down on the gas pedal wasn't so bad, but holding down the brake pedal because so painful I'd white-knuckle grip the steering wheel and contort my face into some pretty epic expressions in an effort to not scream: "OW!MOTHERFUCKINGSONOFABITCHCOCKSUCKER!" (because swearing helps ease pain).

Last week, my daughter asked me to come to her college (a 90 minute drive, made mostly with cruise control and a few cooperative stoplights) to take production photos of the play she's stage managing. So I did. And it was fun (and the play was cool). But, I was up and down and standing and walking for several hours. I didn't really feel the full impact of all that till the next day. The next day when every single moment was agony and I cried and I was in so much pain I couldn't even sit here to process the RAW files. And if you know me, you know that I never let a photo sit without processing. It ended up taking me almost four days to do what should have taken two days. Because of this goddamn human knee. It was that day that I called and made an appointment with my knee doctor. I didn't bother to go through the VA first. If I had, I'd still be waiting for that appointment.

I hate using a cane. It pisses me off. I used a cane for three years and a huge chunk of that time was spent with two canes (I named them "George and Gracie"). So, because I was doing this more often than I wanted, I made that appointment.

My worst fear was that I'd have to get another knee replacement. I had my left knee replaced in 2009 and while it was the best thing that ever happened to me (because it opened up my life and I got to go "out" and do "stuff" and have "fun" like "all the normal people do"), I don't ever want to go through that again. I've given birth to three babies. Without drugs. Two of them in Army hospitals (the middle one was at a civilian hospital because the Army is a dick to families). Three babies, no drugs, and one of them was 11 pounds even and 22 1/2 inches tall. And the knee replacement pain was worse. Much worse.

How much worse? Well, allegedly, women "forget" the pain of labor to go through it again. My kids have 2 1/2 years and 1 1/2 years between them, so I guess in my case, that's true. I had my knee replaced SIX YEARS ago and I STILL remember how much it sucked in the three weeks that followed. Pain and agony and so much work to just get normal enough to get out of the hospital. I stayed for two weeks for in-hospital physical therapy and then I spent two weeks at my parents' fully-handicap-accessible house before coming to my own house. Well, I don't have that luxury anymore (since my parents passed away).

So, I did not want another goddamn knee replacement. I've gone through scenarios in my head on scheduling it after faire season because I'd have six months between Teslacon and Janesville Faire. I only needed five months the last time (I had my knee replacement five months before my first trip to Bristol). But... instead, this is what has happened.

I took two photos of my X-rays. One from pre-replacement in 2009 and one from today.

You'll notice that they're leaning (I did them backwards, they're leaning in, not out). That's partly because I'm so overweight that my thighs are pushing them and partly because I hyper-extend my knees, well, all my joints. Christine hates it when I hyper-extend my fingers, it grosses her out. Jason likes it because he can do it to his elbows and he used to do MMA (mixed-martial arts fighting) and his opponents couldn't make him tap-out with an arm bar. I'm not sure how my oldest- Kat- feels about hyper-extended joints.

So, let's zoom in on these bad boys and I'll show you some things.

Here's the right knee. The yellow arrows are pointing to two bone spurs that have started to grow. The blue arrows are pointing to the bright white line, which indicates that the bones are rubbing and starting to wear down. The purple arrows show the gap between the bones, which means I still have a little bit of cartilage in there.

This is my left knee, from 2009, about a month before my knee replacement. The difference here is that the gap is much smaller. The blue arrows are pointing to the white line (which was all around the entire bone, not just those bits on the edges). The yellow arrows are pointing to the bone spurs that were growing, including a third one on the edge (I could feel that one. I remember that quite vividly).  Those bone spurs were worn down, and one of them may have been broken off. The green arrow is pointing to a folding-over-like edge. Like an ice cream cone is just melting a little, the edge of the ice cream is just holding on. That was all around the bone as well. I have a plastic model of my knee joint around here somewhere and it has all the flat spots and overhang of bone. I didn't point out the gap. As you can see, there's a lot less gap there.

So, it is obvious to me (and the doctor, because he explained it to me) that my right knee is in no way as bad of shape as the left one was. Probably because I saw him within a month of the pain starting. When it happened to the last one, I had to wait for almost two years before I was given the consultation letter to see the surgeon away from the VA. (I can see this doctor now, because my knee replacement was done by him, so everything that happens to my knees now falls under his umbrella of care- that umbrella thing is my own analogy, not the insurance's).

Instead of terrifying me with another total knee replacement, we're doing the cortisone shots. I have "significant arthritis", but not enough for a total knee replacement. He said if it works out, I'll be fine for up to six months. So, what's happen next is a photo of a two-inch long needle. And the one after it is a photo of him pressing the syringe into my knee. I didn't feel it at all. He just jammed it in and there was no pain, no anything. I felt a little tingle when he hit the plunger bit down, but other than that, nothing. And, I know if I end up not feeling any relief in the next week or so, to come in again and we'll do something else (I assume the next step up would be "rooster injections", which are so named because they're made out of rooster waddles. Yes, your "what the fuck?" reaction is entirely appropriate).

So, here's the warning, if you don't like needles or what it looks like when a needle is inserted into the knee to the point you can't see the needle anymore, don't scroll down.

This is the end of the blog for you, as far as your needle hate is concerned.

I'm not going to add any photography stuff to this post because it's already laden with photos. So if you stop now, you won't miss anything but needle stuff.

...

Last warning. 

....

One more warning. 

....

FINAL WARNING!! 

....

Okay, you were warned. Here are the two photos-

And this one- I might use this as my 365 for the day.