serafaery

In an ungodly amount of hip pain. Walking with a limp. Makes me kind of want to die.

I knew I shouldn't be jumping back into all of this activity (namely: skating) without guidance and help. But I was so enjoying skating, and just didn't have the money to pay for more PT. I'm still paying off the $300 I still owe (it was over $700 for the 9 visits I had).

My doctor hasn't responded to the referral request I put in on the 12th. I re-sent it again yesterday. I think I need to find a new doctor. This guy is too flaky. I had to wait two weeks last time, and there's no reason for it. All he has to do is fax it in and email me.

I thought I could go back to my old physical therapist in the meantime for some temporary help or possible relief, but it turns out referrals expire if you haven't seen someone in 60 days for the same condition. This is unfair and frustrating in a hundred ways. It's like the insurance companies are trying to make me suffer. They are actively trying to let my hip build up scar tissue until I'm crippled and have to go on disability because I can't walk anymore. That'll show you, for not continuing with therapy that you can't afford and wasn't correct for what you were trying to accomplish.

My HR rep lady suggested this little clinic up the road from our office, who are friendly and take our insurance. I might check it out, ask them if I can get a new General Practitioner that might actually respond to my requests and help me when I need it. It's a $20 copay to see a doctor just to meet and say hello and get a referral, but I need. help.

Made a gigantic batch of whole grain spelt pasta. Seared some chard and garlic to throw into the organic tomato sauce. One little brave mushroom from my kit in the basement.

Second beer doesn't sound so appealing, now.

But the first one got me here. Thanks, beer.

Now if I can jut make myself do my hip stretches/exercises before bed, I'll be, like, fully functional. Or something.

Poking around doing research on PAOs (the kind of surgery I had on my hip) for the first time in years, it's SO COOL to see the online support group I started back in 2002 ("Hip Women") referenced so often. I stopped being a part of that group in 2004 or so, but I'm so happy to see that it's still going so strong.

Didn't sleep much. Hours of sobbing.

My left hip, the one that has not been operated on, is giving me increasing pain at night. With both of them angry at me last night sleep was hard to come by.

Part of this is from scrubbing the tub yesterday, I'm sure. I can't even do simple household chores anymore.

My left hip is deformed, but not as badly as the right was. It's in a "grey zone" of deformity, where some people are crippled and unable to walk by age 19, and some go their entire lives without any problems.

It was thought that after it came through my surgery on the right hip with no symptoms, after so many months of bearing all my weight while my right hip healed, that the left would probably be okay.

It might still be okay. Seven years of compensating for chronic pain and weakness on the right have been hard on it, I'm sure. 12 years if you count from the time the right hip started hurting. If I could get proper physical therapy, I might be able to maintain the left joint and not need to have it corrected.

Getting proper physical therapy has proved to be impossible, though, over the last seven years.

Getting it corrected isn't even an option. It wouldn't be covered by insurance, and the only doctors that do the procedure are out of state. I can't afford to travel. I don't know how much my procedure cost in Boston, but the hospital mistakenly sent me the bills for anesthesia for a few months. The anesthesia alone, for a 7 1/2 hour procedure, cost $17,000.

(The Commonwealth of Massachussetts has a "free care" system for large procedures that are not covered by insurance. Hence that state's lack of concern over health care reform in the US.)

I have always been in too much pain, and too ill from lack of exercise because activity causes pain, to get any job other than the one I'm so fortunate to have right now. One where I can take breaks before the migraine hits, rest and take deep breaths, turn down projects if the effort is too much and will make me sick, and never bring anything home. But it covers nothing beyond rent, bills, and school loan payments.

I'm not sure what to do.

I sort of want to lay down and die.

I feel completely alone. I don't have parents to turn to for help. My siblings can't help either. My friends are kind, and good company, but they can't save me, and I would never expect or hope that they could. It's their job to hold my hand and remember me when I'm dead, but not to save me.

I have Willow to fight for and that's enough for now. But what about when I lose her?

One step at a time, I suppose.

It just all feels like far, far too much to try to deal with alone. I have absolutely no resources. If I had a little cash, or someone to lean on, to hold, I could handle it.

I'm going to end up one of those decrepit wheelchair people out in front of the McDonald house that I walk past every day. Hanging out on the corner with crack dealers, alone, no one to dress or feed them or take them out or give them hugs. If I'm lucky. They're the lucky ones, who waited years on a housing list and somehow got in before they died. Some of them seem vaguely content. I couldn't do it without a pet, though.

...

Headache.

Got so worked up about healthcare problems in the shower that I ended up sobbing for quite some time.

At least I can still do hip stretches while sobbing.

I need to restructure my priorities.

I need to focus all of my extra energy on healing my hip.

It fucking sucks. It hurts. It hurts constantly. Thinking about doing strengthening exercises makes me cry.

But, I can't keep living this half-life, distracting myself with face painting and wings and stupid creative bullshit that doesn't mean anything while I'm dying inside because I can't skate or hike or live life the way I truly want to and should.

No more distractions. If I can't do my hip exercises, I can sit there and do nothing and think about how much I wish I could do other things. (Maybe I'll take up reading if I really can't/refuse to work out or stretch.) If it takes an hour of tears and tantrums to get me to do one rep of strengthening, then that's what I'll do.

If I want anymore costumes or face painting gigs, I have to get through this first.

Getting through the pain is a psychological problem. It nauseates me to think about doing things that cause my hip more pain, when I've felt constant pain for twelve years and I know that working out is going to make it hurt more. I'm so fucking sick of hurting.

But I have to push through this and deal with hurting more if I'm ever going to get through this, get to a point where I'm not crippled all the time.

If two hours of every day for the rest of my life has to be devoted to stretches and strengthening routines in order to not hurt the rest of the time, then I need to figure that out and work that into my life now, instead of ignoring it and putting myself in a wheelchair when I'm older because I never learned how to take care of this chronic problem.

I'm broken. I'll never be fixed. But, if I can make myself do the work, it doesn't have to constantly hurt like this.

I guess.

The hardest part is that I don't actually know if this is true.

But I have to try. I have to find out.

So fucking pissed off from hurting all the time. It's destroying me from the inside out. I'm not fit enough to be truly healthy, and psychologically it's just as crippling as it is physically, to always hurt.

I've got to do something. It's all up to me. Physical therapists can only point the way.

FUCK.