When your body lets you down

It happens to all of us - you reach for something and your back twinges, you get a bad cold, or whatever, they are part of life. But then sometimes your body really lets you down.

This became very clear to me one day when I was skiing about ten years ago. I was having a wonderful time and then I fell on one run. I thought I was fine but some man stopped and said he friend had gone for the ski patrol. I thought he was crazy but since he insisted on waiting with me, he could help me untangle my skis. Then when I put weight on my knee it bent side ways and I knew he was right. I ended up with a torn meniscus and a partially torn ACL which meant knee surgery and the beginnings of knee problems.

My body has since let me down in other ways. I seem to have collected ailments that won't go away. Tennis elbow, lymphedema, bad back, rheumatoid, fibromyalgia, and that cancer crap. They just keep piling up. Yesterday afternoon I got very frustrated with myself. I try to be a normal person and then my body protests.

Sometimes I feel I should be in a geriatric ward some place with all my aches and pains. But then I try to tell myself that I got through cancer twice so I can cope through all this. But its the continued emotional spiral of coping with aches, pains and scars that is difficult.

I haven't been getting enough rest recently. Nor enough sleep. This makes it harder for me to physically and emotionally deal with life. And since we are at the worst part of the chaos of putting our house on the market (which means I will take our toaster oven with us today so it will not be in the way while they take pictures of the house). I will bring it back tonight so we can have toast in the morning and then take it with us again as they show the house. This is on top of the list of everything else I have to do today to make the house picture perfect.

My biggest problem is with everything I cannot do. I can't carry stuff around (one of my doctors told me that I cannot pick up everything after I told him we were moving). I have to wait for my husband to be home to carry stuff around for me. I get stuck and have to wait for help so often. My body is failing me too soon. And it drags me down and I constantly have to fight back.

Okay, enough whininess this morning. I will go back to being positive.

World Arthritis Day

I missed it. It was yesterday, October 12. Obviously it must have been  hidden behind a cloud of pinkification.

Let me be clear I didn't even know there was a World Arthritis Day. And according to their website, there were only four events in the US and six in North America. The rest were in Europe and Middle East.

I think if there was one giant calendar of all the awareness days/months, it would probably contain a million event. The problem with these 'awareness' events is that there are just so many. Do we really even need them?

I like the idea behind them - to raise the awareness for an illness or ailment. And to help fund research for better treatment options or cures. But when every day is a different awareness day they become to blur together and lose their emphasis.

With my list of ailments and interests, I have too many to choose from and pretty much ignore them all. I do voluntarily attend specific events which focus on fundraising or awareness for different ailments but do not choose to make a big deal out of any one.

This is a case where less is more. If there were many fewer, I would probably be able to find a couple that fit my interests.

I can tell its Pinktober

Yes I admit I can be a news junkie. I also like to follow information on my (many) ailments. I get daily Google Alerts for most of them so I can be one of the first to know about the latest treatment options.

I can tell its Pinktober. All my breast cancer news includes the words 'awareness', 'pink', the s-word, or other related terms. Yesterday's alert included these items:

"Harford observes breast cancer awareness month"
"Breast cancer survivor finds comfort in delivering flowers to other patients at Texas hospital"
"WATCH: 29 year old beats breast cancer, gets featured on Pink Ribbon Connection"
"Breast cancer awareness chili cookoff Saturday"
"Breast cancer survivors event"

This drives me crazy. Please stop spending money on pink and spend the money on more important things like research.

What were we thinking?

We had a 'great' idea to move. Now that our house is almost ready to go on the market we are packing like mad. Everything is going into boxes to depersonalize the house. Which means we cannot find anything.

Including the big bin of all the knitting projects I did last winter, spring and, summer for craft shows this fall. All the stuff I got ready is now missing. Its lost. Totally.

We started unpacking the pod in the driveway. I even climbed up on top of all the boxes with a flashlight to see if I could the missing bin. My only hope is that we get a new house and move in so we unpack and I can find it. Otherwise, I have to start knitting like mad to make more stuff to sell.

I have been looking at pictures of houses for sale on line and look how empty they are. I have no idea how we are going to do that. I have friends who are coming over to help pack. Including one friend who has weeded and mulched all the gardens. I only got hurt once so far, when I fell over the bags of mulch yesterday. I have a booboo on my elbow from landing on the cement patio but do not feel any other damage (which is a good thing because I can't deal with any more issues right now).

But really, what were we thinking? Moving sucks.

Gym class

True confessions time: who failed gym in high school and went on to exercise regularly? I admit I failed gym in high school because I would 'forget' to go. I ended up taking a summer class to make up for it.

Yesterday I was at the gym talking to two women probably in their late 70s or early 80s. One said she flunked gym in high school and had to take it again in college. She wanted to take fencing (because it was like dancing) and was forced to take field hockey I think. She hated field hockey so she failed it.

I ended up telling them about the John F Kennedy physical fitness test. They did not know about it at all. I told them we had to run the 50 yard dash, the 600 yard run, and the standing broad jump. They were appalled. They never had to do anything like that.

We were all generally amused by our previous lack of interest in gym class and how we all go to the gym regularly. We never ended up talking about gym suits but I think their experiences with them were probably just as awful.

In elementary school, gym was fun. Except when I had to play soft ball because I could never hit the ball. Even when the gym teacher slow pitched to me over and over again. Today the gym at my elementary school is being dedicated to Jim Banks who was the best gym teacher ever.

So did you fail gym? Forced exercise was never fun.

Early detection and saving lives

Laurie over at Not Just About Cancer blogged about the myth of early detection and linked to a very good article on the same subject in Psychology Today. Early detection is supposed to be a good thing meaning they caught your disease (whatever it maybe) before it got really nasty.

Amy Robach and others say 'my mammogram saved my life'. But is this really true? I am not saying that they are lying but the question is did their mammogram really save their life? I have friends who believe the same thing. They attribute their still being alive because of their 'life saving mammogram'.

Let's take a look at this. First of all, as the Psychology Today article points out, if we were detecting more cancers earlier wouldn't the numbers for late detection or deaths be decreasing? They aren't.

"But this dramatic increase in "early-stage" diagnoses has not been followed with a decline in advanced breast cancers, as would be expected if early detection was the key to stopping progression."

Next, breast cancer is not a linear disease. There are many types which are more or less treatable and some it doesn't matter when they are caught, they are still going to kill you. And others are never going to be fatal and will resolve themselves. We just aren't very good about telling them apart. 

"For all we do not know about breast cancer (i.e., what exactly causes it, how to prevent it, how to keep it from recurring, how to keep people from dying from it if it spreads), there are things we do know. Breast cancer is complex. It stems from multiple causes, some of which include radiation, carcinogenic chemicals, and cancer promoters such as endocrine disrupting compounds(link is external). There are at least ten subtypes of breast cancer that behave and respond to treatments differently. One-size-fits-all treatment does not work. Mammograms do not prevent breast cancer; nor do they guarantee that the cancer found on a mammogram (if it is found on a mammogram) is indolent, lethal, or somewhere in between. Acknowledging these complexities would not only help to shift the breast cancer paradigm, it would serve those who want to be well informed."

So if you feel your mammogram saved your life, you may or may not be right.

When I do something I do it right

So back at the end of July, I fell and my knee bent sideways (or my knee bent sideways and I fell). I was told at that time that the x-ray showed no bone issues and it was probably all ligament and tendon. I was later told by my knee doctor (yes I am amassing doctors for each body part) that it was probably not that bad and PT was the first step. The PT guy thought it was probably only my meniscus.

I went back to the knee doctor after PT and he sent me for an MRI to find out more about my knee. I had a follow up yesterday.

Well, it turns out when I do something I do it right. It turns out I tore my ACL and I have an edema on the top of my tibia. Basically that means that I have a crack in the bone that is not impacting the function much (think of the coffee cup you have with a crack in it that still holds your coffee - my knee doctor asked me if he could quote me on that because it was pretty much an exact description).

So now the plan is to wait another four weeks and have more x-rays and then decide what to do. He wants my tibia to continue to heal before anything and for me to step up my PT. He said the pain is caused by the bone and the lack of stability is caused by the ACL. I said I don't care about the pain but do care about the stability issue.

I told him I don't want to even think about surgery until after the first of the year.

Now I can say it, to quote Charlie Brown:
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!