Category: perspective

Relentless

Isy / / activity, adaptation, care team, CRPS knock-on effects, marathon, perspective, self-care

My pain psychologist is very insistent that 90% of my day has to be predictable. This allows my nervous system to heal and re-stabilize to the extent that it can.

I cannot even fathom that. 90% of my day? Do any of you have those kind of days, ever?

matchgrins-horsenwoman_decamps-pauline_4blog
Pauline Decamps? I’d love to credit this fantastic shot. Correction invited.

She’s been right about everything else so far, so I’m working on it.

Trying to bring stability to any single part of my life brings the inherent instability of life into high relief.

  • Every commute to the doctor’s office is a crapshoot. There’s no knowing just how long it will take, if there’s parking on the other end, whether anything unpleasantly LA will happen along the freeways on the way.
    .
  • Every trip out of the house, with all the neighborhood dogs and the roads being under construction here, puts the rest of the day on hold until further notice. Especially when my judgment is in the hopper because of pain, dysautonomia, or not being able to eat enough to prevent hypoglycemia.
    .
  • Every day is a mine field of discovering things I’ve forgotten and have to find a way to deal with, trying to clean up the past while coping with the present and preparing for the future.

poison_skull

It’s heartbreaking trying to keep up with this, but I can’t stop. This disease never quits. It never gives a break. I must try to keep up.

I thought I was stubborn. I thought I was adaptable. I thought I could be relentless. I have to say, this condition puts me in the shade.

This is one of those articles I wrote to help myself find the nugget of gold. I’m still looking…

George_Goodwin_Kilburne_Writing_a_letter_home_1875

I’m in a very small glass today, but that doesn’t change the scope of work — just what I admit I can do.

This relentlessness, this bitter intransigence, is part of any chronic disease. We find ways to cope, or we don’t make it.

  • I deal with the dietary restrictions by focusing on the wonderful things I can eat;
    antioxidant_foods
  • I deal with weakness by learning to ask for help;
    .
  • I deal with the pain by focusing on what gives me joy;
    Crab_Nebula-crop
  • I deal with bouts of forgetfulness and confusion by automating as much as possible and using external aids like a whiteboard, checklists, post-its and the apps in my smartphone;
    200px-Check_mark.svg
  • I deal with the heart, lung, and endocrine issues by finding new ways to do things, and rehearsing constant self-control in every single freaking aspect of life.

It just wears on me sometimes. It’s a lot to expect of myself day after day after day after DAY.

Perhaps the nugget of gold is simply taking credit for my imperfect, ongoing attempts to manage an impossible body of work: staying alive and on the right side of the ledger, and trying to make it bearable. It takes some doing, and yet I’m here now. The future terrifies me, but so it goes.

Marathon update:

A bloody pair of athlete’s feet, with ringworm that’s trying to consume my right foot, both fungi profoundly resistant to treatment… Have been joined by an ingrown toenail which looks like a grandchild of The Blob… Which itself is hosting cellulitis.

So I’m off my feet for the most part, wearing slippers when I must walk. I have to knock the cellulitis back by Friday, so the ingrown (which is an outgrowth) toenail (though it’s really the flesh) can be cut away, and part of my nailbed stripped. All those loverly nerve endings…

old_school_surgeon

It’s going to be a rough weekend. Perhaps I should just have it all cut off, ha very ha. Too bad that makes things worse in CRPS.

It’s a different world in here

Isy / / basics, critical thinking, CRPS knock-on effects, food allergies, humor, massage/bodywork, nutrition, perspective, realpolitik, self-care

TRIGGER WARNING: Body image. With a twist.

I feel like I’ve been inflated. If I get any larger, I may collapse in on myself and form a neutron star — possibly even a black hole.

"Portrait of the Quasar as a Young Black Hole" from NASA's Hubble telescope
Charming, eh? And round.

My pain psychologist isn’t worried. She thinks there’s nothing wrong with “a little comfort weight”, especially as I’ve been making such progress in her area.  Of course, she has a slender elfin figure herself.

This isn’t the usual rant about weight and health, or the girly American whining about fat. This is about living from the inside out, and what happens when my physical vehicle takes up a whole lane.

Nursing has a diagnosis called, “Body Image Disturbance.” Take a look at that phrase for a minute. It’s very telling.

Body
Our physical interface with the world; the medium we use to communicate with others; the first sensory impression we get of our surroundings; the complex organism that gets us from one place to another; the thing that gives others their first sense of who or what we are.

Image
Our mental framework, or paradigm; the belief or understanding we have about our presence or effect in the world; the way others tend to think of us; the way we think they think of us.

Disturbance
Something awry — probably disturbingly so. Not good.

Do we need to address the usual social issues? Yes, skinny people get treated better, all across the board; fat people are far more likely to get abused and overlooked, and not just for sex — for everything. Lots of people have made lots of money writing lots of books about that, so read them if you’re confused.

Let’s move on.

I’m in a different sensory and physical world from what I’m used to, and it’s a really strange one. The experience of physical life from this different shape is, yes, disturbing.

My feet are pressing so hard against the ground that my shoes fit differently.  When I carry something, it pushes my weight over the tolerable limit and threatens to bring the CRPS in my feet back to life — and I had just about gotten rid of the pain symptoms there. The circulatory symptoms are another matter — zombie-foot is a regular event.

My cat floats above me by quite a few inches, when he should be lying more or less on my abdominal muscles plus a blanket of padding.  It’s weird to have to reach so far up from my spine to pet him — my shoulder rotates much further in my cuff than I’d expect. I’m getting better at feeling my joints, and this is not exactly a positive feedback loop.

My upper arms keep catching against my sides. This is rather disorienting, since I’m improving my sense of my body in space and usually, when my arm catches on something, it means I need to increase the space between me and foreign object. There’s no foreign object. It’s just more of me. Weird.

I had a sway in my lower  back which I managed to straighten out awhile ago. Better spinal posture means less pain overall. So now I have a substantial, unstable weight hanging in front of my spine, which means I have to work my abdominal muscles really hard to pull it closer to my center of gravity so I can just stay in balance.

My abs are killing me. If I don’t use them, my lower back hurts me worse, so those abs are constantly on duty.

I give them a break and relax them when I sit down — and it’s like being on top of a balloon that inflates, as my stomach takes over the lower horizon.

balloons-innflating

I poke it curiously, wondering how far down I have to go to find the original outline. I give up at the second knuckle. Too discouraging.

When I sit in my car, my right hip brushes against the driver’s armrest.  First thought: I’m over too far to the right; my hip shouldn’t be near that. Wrong. I’m dead center. It’s my hip that has travelled far.

But there is an up-side. When I fold my hands together, I have a perfect armrest. Soooo comfortable. It’s like it was made for me!

And the stares I used to get — or rather, that my endocrine-disrupted DDD cups used to get? Gone. No wolf-whistles or dribble on the sidewalk from creepy slimebuckets who seem to think I should be delighted at their lack of self-command. Nobody’s goosed me or grabbed a feel in ages!

It’s very peaceful. Makes it a lot easier to feel at home in my own skin, not to be bracing for the next random invasion of privacy.

I’m no longer constantly holding a sharp elbow at the ready, to fend off some suddenly-clumsy dude who goggles briefly, with a word-balloon appearing above his head that says “are those real?”, then says “oops” and bumps into my pneumatic (and sensitive) form as if by mistake. I got so freakin’ tired of that!

Perhaps a leather vest with spikes all around…

myvest_front_med

This, incidentally, is why so many women feel  comforted wearing a burka. It makes the wearer more sexually invisible and insulates her from much of this random predatory crap.

My fleshly burka. Take that, right-wing-nuts — of any religion. You don’t even WANT to control this.

And, in a huge relief to my CRPS-riddled body, nobody wants to slam into it now, either. Yesssss!

I’ve got to get that vest. I can’t, and don’t want to, keep the fleshly burka, but I have to find a way to manage the body-slams. Never again.

As for food… Here’s what I’ve learned for the current incarnation of CRPS endocrine/digestive ballyhoo:

– No grains of any kind. No lentils or beans.
– No dairy, except small amounts of hard cheese — the protein sufficiently altered that I can handle it in small doses.
– No sugar at all, but more unrefined stevia.
– I’ll have to get kefir “grains” and make my own water-kefir. I have some ideas for that.

I still have most of the world of nontoxic produce, nuts, and meat from healthy animals to sit down to. There are worse things… It isn’t cheap, but I’m learning where to shop. And it sure tastes good.

P.S. You want what?? Measurements, weight, photographs? They miss the point. I’m not looking at me, I’m looking from me.

I’m not comparing myself to anyone or anything. This is simply the view from inside. Hope it’s worth a laugh or two 🙂

Marathon update

Isy / / activity, CRPS knock-on effects, imp-possible, marathon, mortality, perspective

For weeks, I could hardly move outside without injury. It was maddening. I completely ran out of arnica pills, my best tool for keeping soft-tissue injuries from turning into flares or spreads of CRPS.

At the same time, I couldn’t make myself do the meditation exercises I’d been assigned, where I’m supposed to let some strange man tell me what to relax. Getting anything but my appointments done has been nearly impossible.

Today, I walked half a mile, half of it uphill, and most of that at around 15 degrees’ slope — really. And so far, I’m just fine. It seems  a bit miraculous, after the past few weeks.

For the past few days, I’ve also been wrestling with my dead… and at the risk of appearing to complain, I’d probably better explain that.

I’ve been interested in re-remapping my brain to a more useful cartography (so to speak) for years; that’s what holds the most promise of moving CRPS aside and leaving more room for life.

Sheer gall, determination and bloody-mindedness can only get me so far. Pretty damn far, but I think I’ve hit the limit. I need to move beyond, because frankly, life is barely worth it and I won’t stand for that.

To gain enough mastery over my brain that I can really push it into a different shape means getting my conscious mind and subconscious mind to play well together. Sooner or later, THAT means coming to terms with a few things I’ve shoved under the floorboards. Then I can put them in their proper place, and make a reliable path around them. It’s no good trying to build new paths in a brain that’s booby-trapped.

It’s impossible to discuss these losses and bereavements and horrors without sounding pathetic or whiny, so I won’t. Tell you what, though, I’ve stopped editing them out, when they’re relevant.

Something’s come loose. It’s true. It does seem to be working.

I’ve finally gotten myself scheduled into my meditation exercises, PT, and cleaning up… and I’ve walked half a mile today, much of it really steep… and I seem to be fine.

Every marathoner knows… you really run it from the inside.

Recipe: Even Brain Food Shakes evolve

Isy / / basics, nutrition, perspective, recipes, self-care, what works
As my digestion has gotten more frail, I’ve had more and more trouble with my Brain Food shake.
 
I went to a powder, because organic kale was hard to find and unwieldy,  and the nonorganic kind smells like a chemist’s armpit. And was still unwieldy.
 
But those shakes still hit my stomach like a cannonball.
 
J listened to me complain for the second day in a row and said, “Don’t eat fruits and vegetables together. Of course it’s impossible to digest.”
 
I stared at him a moment. “I used to know that,” I said with chagrin.
 
That was over a month ago and I think I’ve finally figured out how to make the greens taste like something other than pond.
 
So here are the current incarnations of my Brain Food Shakes, the simplest way to get maximum nutrition with minimal effort:
 
Morning Shake:
 
– 1/4 pound Trader Joe’s frozen Wild Boreal Blueberries (high anthocyanins, low toxins)
– heaping soupspoon almond butter (good oil, protein, minerals) (TJ’s is cheapest)
– Cal-mag supplement (for nerve transmission, teeth and bones; 1 tablespn Lifetime brand, blueberry flavor)
– 1/8 tsp clove powder (massive antioxidants, calms nerve pain, and I love clove)
– ~3 oz apple juice concentrate (malic acid helps clear cellular detritus)
– stevia (stabilizes blood sugar, cuts any lingering bitterness)
 
Whizz it until the flakes of blueberry skin are more or less uniform and quite small.
 
I’ve recently added:
 
– fat pinch of schizandra berries (massive antioxidants, seems to stabilize neurotransmitter behavior; whole berries take extra time in the blender)
– lecithin (improves digestibility and oil uptake)
 
Once everything’s whizzed down smooth, I add at the last minute:
 
– 1/2-3/4 cup blueberry kefir (I really like Lifeway brand, blueberry or plain)
 
The point of blenderizing is to chop open those cells so the nutrition is easy to get to, but with kefir or yogurt, the cells only work if they’re intact. So I whizz in kefir just until blended, maybe 2 seconds.
 
I mix in blackberries and fresh local berries when I can. On the road, I use dried currants, which are an overlooked “antioxidant powerhouse”, in modern marketing lingo. They can make the sweetness overwhelming, though.
 
This afternoon (fruit is more appropriate in the morning, veg in the afternoon) I tried something like this:
 
Afternoon Shake:
 
– Vegetable juice (TJ’s Garden Patch, but I’m open to suggestions)
– Scoop of green powder (I get distinct results from Garden of Life brand Perfect Food Raw; brain really perks up)
– 1/4-1/2 an avocado (cleans up blood vessels, great oil)
– 2 handfuls chopped kale (most nutritious veg per calorie; thanks to TJ’s for taking the work out of prepping organic kale)
– 1 handful sliced cabbage (sulfur for brain, glutathione precursor; also, does something magical to the kale so it tastes smooth and mild)
– salt (reduces ANS/POTS symptoms of dizziness and wonky bp)
– lecithin
– 1-2 individual grains of Epsom salt, a.k.a. magnesium sulfate (sulfur for the brain, magnesium for nerve transmission and electrolyte balance)
– water enough to make it go
 
Has a wonderfully fresh, pleasingly grownup flavor. A bit of cilantro, onion and lemon, and you could call it gazpacho.
 
I’m considering a pinch of curry powder, for the antiinflammatory circumin and that wonderful taste. It doesn’t need it, but it could add a bit of variety. 
 
I’ve often said that it HAS to taste good, or I won’t be able to keep doing it. And, since I test regularly (that is, try to do without), I know I have to keep doing it.
 
And as long as it tastes this good, I’m happy to do so.

Half-glassed — a metaphor for flexibility

Isy / / adaptation, basics, loved ones, perspective, radical presence/radical acceptance
We all know the old trope: half full, or half empty?

I worked at Borland, which means, I worked with highly capable engineers who were accustomed to doing things right. I once got a very friendly, but very earnest, lecture about the half-glass phenomenon: the point is not whether the glass is half-full or half-empty.

The problem is, the glass was not designed for that amount of water. You either have to fill the glass,

… or use a vessel that’s designed to hold that quantity.

The whole half-glass thing drives them crazy. It’s not a matter of attitude, it’s just bad design!

I love engineers. There’s something adorable about the way they storm the gates of Accuracy, convinced it’s the same as Truth.

At first glance, that attitude looks silly at times. On deeper thought, they’re usually right.

I was thinking about the engineering approach to the half-glass issue, while my subconscious was still bathed in reflections on Rosalie.

I realized that the engineering approach is exactly what those of us with crippling disease have to do: our glasses, our outward lives, were designed to hold a lot more than we’ve got right now.

We either have to build up what we have to put into it, or we need to use a smaller glass. A significant disparity between what our lives can hold, and what they do hold, is depressing. They need to match up better.

Rosalie alternated, and I think all of us with chronic disease (and determination) do that as well. Sometimes we can build ourselves up, and expand what we can put into that glass; sometimes we adjust our expectations and commitments, making the glass smaller so that the contents fit.

I like this image, because it reminds me that I can do either thing. When pushing against my limits doesn’t work, when I really can’t get another drop of water into that glass, I can pull back my expectations and switch to a smaller glass.

By now, I have mental cupboards full of wildly mismatched drinkware – a glass for every occasion, for every level of function so far.

The one on the right is for when my hands don’t work.

“My cup runneth over” takes on a new meaning now, doesn’t it? When it does, I’ll reach for a bigger glass.

Rosalie’s gold

Isy / / adaptation, CRPS knock-on effects, loved ones, perspective
I met Rosalie about 15 years ago, when she put me up for my dad’s second wedding. I fell in love with her on sight, when she threw open the door and bathed me and my brothers in such warmth and delight that even awkward, dorky I felt completely welcome in her life.

I stayed in the little den next to her bedroom, overlooking the pool. Her house was built in the 50s, when her neighborhood was inexpensive and remote. It has an endless view across the whole valley of Los Angeles.

She was a spring chicken, only 83 years old. She had already had two back surgeries to fuse vertebrae, and scooted around – with characteristic energy – in the distinctive crow-backed shuffle of post-fixation chronic back pain.

About five years later, my CRPS journey started. Rosalie was my first model of how to handle increasing pain and disability with a degree of grace and poise. Whenever I came to visit my stepmom or her mother, I’d see if Rosalie’s and my schedules would allow a visit. In all those years, I don’t think she failed to raise a smile more than once or twice, despite some brutal trials.

She had several more surgeries, implanted devices, physical therapy, and she swam laps in her pool whenever she could possibly manage it, inviting whoever came over to swim with her to have a glass of wine and tonic water (or gin instead of wine, for my stepmom) afterwards.

She kept love in focus: for her offspring and her dear friends, she had a seemingly bottomless well of love and regard, regardless of the vicissitudes of life and relationships.

She was always herself: whatever her opinion, and whether or not you agreed with it, she would let you know. No energy and no words were wasted on making things seem nicer than they were. You never had to wonder what her agenda was. And she managed that without ever being pissy or the least bit mean. Conservation of energy, including emotional energy, is a big issue for pain conditions, because pain is so exhausting; she didn’t waste a drop.

Yet she was famous for the radiancy of her outlook, not to mention of her smile. As soon as she had answered the question, “How are you?” with customary honesty, she visibly put that aside, turned her bright eyes on her visitors, and got them talking about more interesting things. She kept her focus where it belonged: on the rest of life.

As I said at her memorial service yesterday, she always looked for the nuggets of gold, whatever else was going on. She always looked for a way forward, whatever held her back.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I hardly ever write about anything until I’ve found the nugget of gold. You know that I always look for a way forward, whatever holds me back.

I can find this in myself, in large part because Rosalie gave me a living, breathing, occasionally querulous but never unfair, always loving, always real example of how to do it. I need those living models. I can learn only so much in theory.

This is real life. And sooner or later, it ends. I’m slightly bowled over by this intensely personal realization that the true radiance of a life can outlast the grave. Rosalie’s radiance is with me still, reflected off these nuggets of gold.

Marathoning, murder, and masses

Isy / / activity, ANS and fight-or-flight, brain care, imp-possible, marathon, perspective, sheeple
Who the hell would bomb a marathon? The shock and fury make my eyes hot and narrow.

Second thought: what a way to go – accomplishment, adrenaline, euphoria, and a quick blast.

Yesterday, ironically, I realized I was fully recovered from overdoing. That only took 11 days… I took careful walks around the park while recovering, so as not to lose much ground.

Leading myself along, and minding my posture.
Today I roughly doubled my walking distance and I’m back up to ~18 min. On a flat.

I’m grateful.

I grew up in Egypt, a Middle Eastern country. We were there in the relatively tranquil days of the late 1970s: Sadat was secure in power, a secularist who stood no nonsense and could be bought – excuse me, persuaded – into a peace treaty that ended several thousand years of war. (For the meantime.)

Islam was a thoughtful, neighborly religion. Guests were treated like the loveliest royalty. A blonde 13-year-old girl with a forward figure could (at least, did) walk the streets in daylight fearing nothing more than vile remarks and, in a crowd, a vile grope.

That was the key to life in a tourist country: avoid the crowds.
 
When terrorist attacks happened, and they were rare then, they happened in crowds. My family was constitutionally adventurous and put off by mob thinking, quite apart from the (really tiny) chance of bombs, so we just did what came naturally and took off on our own.
 
We saw crowds the way a sailor sees sandbars: a lot of work, and not much fun to get stuck with.

Moreover, I’ve always been an introvert in the Myers-Briggs sense, meaning that I recharge in solitude and that I find society in large doses simply exhausting.

Now, with CRPS, this distaste for crowds has become a deep aversion. The physical dynamic of being in crowds is unbearable: when people bump me unexpectedly, it’s horrific; the noise overwhelms my sensory brain, which, let’s face it, is overworked already; and, of course, my hotwired autonomic nervous system is ready with the fight or flight response… with nowhere to go that isn’t in the crowd.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I was reading Angela N. Hunt’s book about living while training for a first marathon, and her description of the starting crowd was appalling. For me, it would be like being inside a tiny electric fence, cattle jostling around against the outside, bashing and zapping me mindlessly and endlessly.

Not do-able. Not even think-able.

But that’s just a problem, and problems are meant to be solved.

There are several possible solutions: invoke the ADA and start in my own class behind the crowd; rustle up about five good buddies — preferably large, sturdy types — to run around me for the first half, and be a better fence until the crowd thins enough;

run a different marathon course over open country, with only a handful of others; or abandon the whole thing.

I can hear some strenuous votes for the last option. In the wake of the Boston marathon bombing, I’ll ignore them. Completely.

I will go on. If distance is not an insuperable barrier, then neither is willful fear. I’m a woman, weakened, disabled, and rather poor; I have enough to be afraid of. I don’t let it stop me. Why should this? I’ll wear the names of the dead, if it helps. I won’t let it stop me.

I will go on. I’ll find a way to avoid the crowds, in some creative and tasteful fashion.

I will go on.

“Watch me go.”

Overdoing…the first time

Isy / / activity, CRPS knock-on effects, imp-possible, kitten, perspective
My walking time in PT went from 5 min. to 10 min. when we decided to start training for the marathon. My walking at home took the 10 min. up to nearly 20 min., a third of that uphill.

That was nearly a mile. In a burst of what I thought was genius, on Friday I decided to walk down to town (0.8 miles), run a couple of errands, sit down on a sunny bench if need be, and walk back (0.8 miles, all gently but steadily uphill.)

Then, I thought bouyantly, I’d throw necessaries in the car and take off for my two week vacation.

Well, I got as far as making it back to the house. I knew, as I started back from town, that this had been a bad idea, and that there were three outstanding questions: would I have to find a place to sit down en route, exactly how hard would it hit me, and how long would it take to recover.

Saturday was a dead loss.

Sunday, I packed in small loads, resting for an hour or two between each trip to the car. No kidding: an hour or two. By Sunday around 4pm I was beginning to recoup a little. I left at 5.

I had forgotten what a mitochondrial shriek-fest felt like. An almost devastating feeling that my flesh turns to rot when I try to get up. I don’t recommend it.

Mitochondria are the wonderful little hitchhikers that house our bodies’ energy factories, in return for a warm place to live. They are most thickly concentrated in nerve cells and muscle cells. I knew all along that rebuilding my mitochondria was going to be perhaps the most essential part of training, but after my stellar success on the Hill, I thought I had more to draw on than that.

A delightful piece of training advice I got years ago was, “You can do all the cardiovascular you want.” Perhaps that was true at the time, although I noticed I did better when training four days per week than five or six. Perhaps I should’ve remembered that last week.

I think I should’ve rested for a day after my Hill expedition, for one thing. More importantly, I should’ve had a backup plan on my “adventure”, so I wasn’t stuck with the hike back. And I probably shouldn’t have done this around the excitement of going to see my sweetie.

My kitten just typed $. I have no idea…

Perhaps he’s telling me that overdoing doesn’t pay.

Marathon — second thoughts

Isy / / activity, biofeedback, care team, CRPS knock-on effects, humor, imp-possible, loved ones, perspective
I’ve gotten some interesting responses to my marathon proposal, some of them very worried, bless their excellent, loving hearts. I feel I owe some explanation.

My tiny handful of fellow “imps of the possible” are all for it, completely understanding the uncertainties and sidetracks and possible (even probable) different endings in store – and knowing that it’s the reach that’s important, that spreading

Back in the saddle again

Isy / / brain care, imp-possible, kitten, nutrition, perspective, quest for a cure, reiki/meditation, self-care
The grip of the last round of the Yucks started to break right after posting my last. I hate it when I have to go that far to get past a bad spot, but hey, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep heading in the right direction.

Dignity is optional. Progress is not. Words I live by.

My new kitten has changed apparent gender twice, and is back to being a boy kitty — not that it matters in any practical way. I was looking for a name as elegant, good-natured and playful as he/she/it, while treating an upper respiratory infection that made that left eye look like a mouse:

My cat’s mouse

But then, with returning health and strength, his natural energy and violence reasserted itself. He has exactly two gears:
1. Unconscious (or nearly so)
2. Full-tilt, greedy, grasping, and spikily impulsive (as the scratch-marks around my blinked eyelashes attest)

So I’ve named him Siddhartha, in the hope that something will rub off.

Siddhi playing hide-n-seek.
(“Siddi” is an Arabic address used towards a respectable gentleman.
Another fine malapropism from the chronically punny.)

All of his front nails are trimmed now…

In health care, we call this “desensitization”

As for my own care, I’m up to 2/3 of my reiki time and 2/3 of my basic qi gong routine, and hope to get some t’ai chi in today as well. This is tremendous progress.

Vegetables are once again a chief component of my diet, thanks in no small part to an enormous bag of frozen “Normandy style” blend from Costco and our local dollar store, which sells cheap organic produce out of cardboard boxes.

I actually did laundry yesterday.  Today, I hope to take a shower and — gasp — wash my hair!

 

I realize only a minority of you will find that truly inspiring, but the rest can have a good laugh… and then think for a minute 🙂

For me, life with CRPS is indeed a matter of tiny triumphs and great goals. For the record, I’m still bound and determined to advance the search for a cure, and yes, I’ve gotten slightly more concrete in my ideas about that… More to come in time.

And now, just for the deliciously hokey yodeling at the end…

Links list:
Here is a recap and explication of the links used in this post: