Day 101

[truepenny]

So my little cloth lace-up brace is my new best friend. Not only can I wear TWO shoes again, I can wear pants. (Pants! I have a whole new appreciation for pants, let me tell you.) And on Saturday I was actually able to ride Milo. It was for fifteen minutes, and it was the most boring lesson ever, and it was AWESOME.

However, some verisimilitude notes for writers. I still can't go downstairs normally; it's bad foot down one, then good foot to join it, then bad foot down one, then good foot to join it. Although I can walk relatively normally, and even fairly fast (although not without pain), there is a point beyond which I simply cannot go faster. There is, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, no there there. Also, I cannot run. (As we discovered on Saturday night, I cannot even jog to cross the street ahead of oncoming traffic, and rarelylynne, I'm sorry for scaring you.) Uneven surfaces are hell. And this is with the brace. Without the brace, I can sort of limp/shuffle around on the nice flat floors of my house.

The RLS continues to be bratty and abysmal, and now that I'm off the narcotics entirely, it's harder to sleep. Sunday night I was up every two or three hours; last night, I was up at least once. (The difference between RLS and insomnia: with insomnia, I'm just not sleepy; with RLS, I'm desperately sleepy, but I've got the invisible goblins poking me and I can't sleep. I'll take good old-fashioned insomnia any day.) I'm starting magnesium supplements ("it might help," said the doctor's office), and on Thursday I have an appointment with an acupuncturist. I will of course report back.

Comments

[rarelylynne.livejournal.com]

I'm better now. Glad your ankle is ok.

...I definitely did NOT want to break you!

[eiriene.livejournal.com]

I've never broken an ankle, but I have had some pretty bad sprains, and been in the same situation as you regarding rehab. I literally feel your pain.

Out of curiosity, is your lace-up brace made by a company called Aso? I have two recovering sprained ankles now (yes, both), and a matching set of lace-up cloth braces with velcro from them.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Both ankles? OW. And OW some more.

And, yes, the company is Aso. It's the first time I've been size XS in anything for a very long time.

[eiriene.livejournal.com]

Yep, two at once, although at different times. The right one was a Grade II sprain in June, and is mostly healed. Mostly in the sense of it doesn't do standing very well because an uneven gait has given me plantar fasciitis and if I work it too much (variable definition of such) it starts sending shooting pains up my ligaments.

The left one was also a Grade II sprain, but it was in mid-October, and is significantly worse. It, too, has led me to suffer from plantar fasciitis.

So it boils down to months and months of physical therapy, since August, and I must try almost a full year of therapy before my doctor will even think about surgery. He remains confident that my decade of ankle injuries will be fixed by the months of therapy, and I'm hoping he's right. =)

[topknot.livejournal.com]

i believe i must have missed something along the way. Who or what is "Milo"?

And yes, i am making a concerted effort to brush aside any number of naughty mental pictures. Yes, i really AM that pathetic.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Milo would be my horse.

[rarelylynne.livejournal.com]

ICON <3

[libskrat]

So did I ever tell you my London story?

Long story short, I sprained my knee badly in London the day before the biggest talk of my professional life to that date. The talk turned out great, partly because I was so distracted by pain that I couldn't worry that I was talking to a roomful of high-powered CEO-types in scholarly publishing.

But the bit that will ring true to you is that at the end of that day, I was in my hotel room with my husband trying to decompress and cope with the knee pain when -- the frickin' FIRE ALARM WENT OFF. And since I'd only just sprained my knee, I hadn't been able to arrange for a first-floor room.

So, yeah. One foot at a time down the stairs? You betcha, on account of my knee wouldn't bend at all. The people behind me trying to escape a possibly-burning building? NOT PLEASED.

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

Just after reading your post, I got one of my various and sundry health letters, talking about the two major nutritional causes of RLS are lack of folic acid and lack of iodine. So you might check to see if any of the pills you were on impact those nutrients.

And I don't know what kind of Magnesium supplement you're on, but Magnesium Calm is wonderful stuff taken right before bed. Make it with hot water and you've got a cup of fizzy herbal tea goodness. Our nutritionist prescribed it for my husband, along with melatonin and GHB, since he had the nasty insomnia/narcolepsy combo.