Tag: the human body is made of bullshit

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the human body is made of bullshit worldcon

Heading to Worldcon. I guess.

Yes, I’m going to Worldcon this year. I haven’t really been talking about it much because… well, I’m going to be honest. I’m having a lot of anxiety and while I’m looking forward to doing vacation-y stuff in Scotland, I am dreading the convention more than a little.

I’m a writer, so I guess I’ll write about it.

A large source of my dread is, in all honesty, that I’m on business meeting staff this year. And while I really love the rest of the staff team and am excited to be working with them, there’s also the 100 fucking page long agenda (available from this URL if you want to give yourself sympathetic anxiety: https://glasgow2024.org/whats-on/wsfs-business-meeting/business-meeting-agenda/). I don’t feel like I’m talking out of turn to acknowledge that there are some controversial things on the agenda, thanks in no small part to a previous business meeting I did not participate in, and I’m also well aware of some of the shit that’s being said out there in the community.

I don’t have any programming at Glasgow other than the business meetings. Because they’re going to run so long, and because I had to take a hard look at both my mental and physical health and concluded that there is quite literally no way I could do more programming as an author and guarantee that I’d be even marginally pleasant and energetic for it.

I can’t really blame WSFS entirely, however, and it would be very unfair to do so. The rest of it is of a piece with the physical and adjacent mental health issues that I’ve been struggling with since November 2022. Things are improving (I’m still in remission! I’m finally starting to taper off immunosuppressants!) but I feel like I am not even living in the neighborhood of my old self yet, and who knows if I ever will again.

This is the first large convention I will have gone to since all of this bullshit started. Up until now, I’ve basically been living like a recluse in my own basement, because I’ve been taking my nephrologist very seriously when he’s told me how fucking bad it would be to catch even a cold while I’m on cyclosporine, let alone COVID. (Having had a single cold and a resulting sinus infection during this time has only highlighted how right he is.) So I’m incredibly anxious about the plane flight and the convention, since those are the times when I’m going to be around a lot of people in enclosed spaces. You can bet your ass I’m going to be wearing a mask all the time!

And frankly, I’ve never been really great with crowds, though I do a decent job of pretending when I’m “on” and being an official, friendly author person. But now, it’s been over a year and a half since I’ve been around any kind of sizable group of people that I’d like to actually interact in and that’s kind of freaking me out, too.

There’s one other thing, too, which feels vain and stupid but here we are. I’ve gained a lot of weight in the last year and a half, thanks to long-term high-dose steroids and being at times just very physically unwell. I’ve always taken pride in being a very natty dresser, and I know it’s how people tend to find me in a crowd. All that’s gone out the window; frankly, my old, nice clothes no longer fit me satisfactorily, and I haven’t had time, energy, nor budget to remedy that situation. So approaching this Worldcon now feels like heading for a battle without any armor.

Bonus author anxiety: I haven’t really done any writing (other than some tie-in work that I am proud of!) in a year and a half. Feels bad, man.

So yeah. I wish I could say I was looking forward to Worldcon, but I really can’t at this point. I’m hoping that once I’m there I’ll be able to relax and have some fun and see people I haven’t gotten to see in a while. Please, if you’ll be there and you’d like to hang out, let me know! I’m not really in a place to go to a party or barcon it, but I’d be up for grabbing lunch or sitting outside and having a tea* or going for a walk. Something low key.

On the other hand, if you see me and I look weird or am being unusually quiet or seem really anxious, I promise it’s not you. It’s me, and the fact that my kidneys tried to literally murder me a year and a half ago and I’m still not over it.

Also, please wear a mask at the convention. In all indoor spaces, really. I know I’m not the only immunocompromised person around.

 

* – guess who’s going to Scotland and can’t drink alcohol right now. Me. I’m talking about me.

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health the human body is made of bullshit thinking out loud

“Normal”

On advice of the workers comp doctor, I’ve been going to the pool, to try to do some walking without my full weight on my foot. My rec center has a little lazy river thing, and I walked with the current of it today.

It felt almost normal.

Except as soon as I thought that, I realized that normal was the wrong word to use. What I really meant was that it felt something in the neighborhood of how I used to be able to walk, before the surgery, before the injury. Normal back then was a moderate gait with a slight limp that I’d developed over 35 years of walking on my terrible arches and chronically spraining my left ankle. That normal wasn’t the best gait in the world, but it got me around at a decent clip and meant I could average 5 miles of walking a day between work and playing Ingress or Pokemon and feel pretty good about it.

Normal is normal for you. It’s the place you settle after the healing and the physical therapy and the retraining to about as good as it’s going to be. Normal is made of hopefully good habits, but some bad. And normal changes. That’s the thing that trips me up. Normal isn’t a static value. It shifts with the circumstances, gets modified by the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune.

After you get injured, or sick, or anything else, on the other side you find a new normal. Sometimes it’s the same or close to the old normal. Sometimes it’s going to be really different. The hardest thing to accept is that it is what it is. Your normal is going to be your normal. You can push it this way or that with physical therapy, with dedicated time and practice and good technique and mindfulness. But at some point, you hit the border where you can go no further. The normal doesn’t move that far from its center unless it’s traumatically shifted again.

We like to pretend that mind over matter is a thing. But eventually, the matter wins. It’s what we’re made of, whether we acknowledge it or not.

I’m mostly thinking about this now because the workers comp doctor told me something else: I’m not progressing as fast as they would expect for someone my age and relative level of health. That could mean nothing, or it could mean everything. You can’t dictate the way your body heals. But it’s making me wonder if I’ve already arrived at my new normal and now I’m just trying to push the center of it as far as I can. Is my new normal always walking with a cane? Is my new normal chronic pain in the arch of my foot? Is my new normal a much more pronounced limp than I used to have, one that everyone can see and not just trained professionals? Or is this not my normal, and instead a symptom that something else has gone wrong, a nick in a ligament or a bruise on a bone?

There’s no way of knowing right now. Time will tell.

Which as you can imagine, I’m just overjoyed about. I’ve always been such a patient soul, right? I want a set reward and a guarantee, and I get none of those things. All I can do is put in the work and keep hoping. And while I work on my matter to try to build its normal, I also need to work on my mind. I have to be able to accept wherever I end up.

That’s the part that’s harder than fighting my nemesis, the two-inch-high step, or attempting calf stretches, or the other things that only just hurt. I have to reshape my expectations of myself, my habits, my life. Because I have to keep going on the other side of it. I have to find a new normal for my life, just like I have to find a new normal for my gait, and that’s the scariest part of all.

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the human body is made of bullshit

Adventures in Anesthesia

I had surgery again today. Yay me. To get a bone spur shaved off of my left big toe and get the joint cleaned up. (Old kung fu injury, blah blah.) I’m looking forward to being able to run again once I’m done with the PT.

Though for now I’m sitting on the couch, wishing I could take this damn dressing off because I swear it’s making things hurt worse. I’ve got my foot propped up on a mound of pillows. I also only really woke up at 2130 even though my surgery was at 0800. If you follow me on Twitter you know I was all over the place this morning before crapping out. And incoherent.

Basically, fun with anesthesia.

I didn’t do the greatest with the anesthesia when I had my shoulder scoped. But it wasn’t too bad. I had (I think) something like a panic attack when I first came out, so they put me under again. After that I was fine. But I also had a nerve block done that time, so I think they didn’t put me on so many painkillers. Once I was out of the hospital if I remember right I went to Jack’n’Grill and had something both greasy and spicy and was fine.

Well, this time I elected to not go for the nerve block. I wasn’t offered one originally, so I assumed it wasn’t needed. Then the anesthesiologist came back and told me another anesthesiologist had texted her to suggest she do a nerve block. But hey, it was only a toe. She didn’t seem to think I needed one before, right? Just more pain medication during anesthesia, with pepcid so I wouldn’t get so sick.

Next time someone offers me a nerve block, I’m saying yes. Hell, I’m asking for one.

It’s not a pain issue. It’s a being incoherent and vomiting every time I stood up issue. Finally after 12 hours I seem to have gotten out of that, thank goodness. I’ve had two bagels and they’re sitting okay. In a bit of pain but not too bad. Have to use crutches to get around right now though.

I don’t think I had a panic attack this time. But instead when I woke up, I was paranoid. I kept telling the nurse that I needed to leave and go for a walk. My legs wanted to move and I couldn’t hold still. Then I realized that the surgeon put a tracking device in my big toe and I needed to get out now or they wouldn’t let me. Good thing the nurse and Mike wouldn’t allow me to get up And then even worse, I knew that the doctors were reptoids and I needed to escape.

I’m not even joking. It’s weird and hilarious now, but at the time I was convinced that my doctors were aliens and they were going to do terrible things to me.

It wore off quickly, though. Then it was just fatigue, dizziness, and vomiting. So if I was tweeting/texting with you and I suddenly disappeared, sorry. I kept falling asleep. They’ve got me on vicodin this time instead of oxycodone so hopefully that will not make me randomly throw up as well. Just makes me sleepy. I think I’ll jut be sleepy all weekend. Loki was a sweet boy and kept me company all day in bed, and now Tengu has figured out how to dock on my lip even though I’m laying out across the couch instead of sitting properly. The kitties are being such helpers. And Mike and Kathy have been great, too. I feel super guilty having to ask them to carry everything for me and making me sandwiches and stuff. (I made my own sandwich around 2200, to prove I could, but now I’ll let them feel useful. That’s totally why.

I have to call in the morning to set up my followup with the doctor (I have to keep the dressing on until then god I think it’s crushing my foot) and I think I’ll ask what I got put on for the anesthesia. I really don’t want to ever go back to a drug planet where I believe in reptoids.

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the human body is made of bullshit things that are hard to write

The hardest part of discipline

So last week, I let a doctor jam a needle into the proximal joint of my big toe. Then pump cortisone into it. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt pain like that. The only reason I didn’t haul off and punch him in the arm was because he was holding a needle. Stuck into my fucking toe.

Today, it actually feels pretty good. I can wiggle the big toe on my left foot. Which is more than I could say this time last week. I’m doing physical therapy exercises now, which means picking up marbles with my toes, after first retrieving those marbles from the far-flung corners where Tengu has put them when I wasn’t looking. That cat loves marbles.

So I guess this another installment in my ongoing series on how the human body is made of flimsy bullshit.

I ended up at the doctor’s office last week because my back has been bothering me off and on since August. The big toe on my left foot has been almost immobile far longer, and I thought I’d have the doctor look at it while I was there. The x-rays on my back came out fine, thanks for asking. My toe, not so much. The joint is badly narrowed and I have extra bone growth, which is a bad thing. This lead to the cortisone shot and the exercises, and hopefully that will work because otherwise I get to look forward to foot surgery in the near future.

Though I guess, having made it through shoulder surgery, foot surgery can’t possibly suck that much.

But it’s also incredibly upsetting. Because I feel like I did this to myself. Over a year ago, I hyperextended my toe pretty badly while I was practicing kung fu. (Which means, by the way, I screwed up when I was practicing, since that isn’t something that should normally happen.) It hurt like a bitch, so I went to the doctor after a week and got told it was a sprain. I just needed to wear one of those immobilizing shoes for three weeks and give it time to heal. But it didn’t heal.

I should have gone back to the doctor when it didn’t stop hurting. But I figured I’d just work through it. The pain steadily got worse, but just a little at a time so I didn’t really notice. Until I started tap lessons.

I should have figured out already that working through the pain when it’s that kind of pain is a stupid move. Look how it turned out with my shoulder, after all. Maybe some day I’ll figure out that these aren’t the kind of problems that can be cured with tenacity.

I’m big into discipline, into making things a habit so you feel weird if you don’t do them. For me, it’s worked for writing, and it’s worked even better with exercise. But with writing, there’s yet to be a time when doing daily wordcount could hurt me. Maybe that day will come. With exercise, though, there are times when exercising can and will hurt you. Exercising injured may sound like a badass thing to do (keep going on your broken leg! win the game!), but it’s not. It’ll likely just get you more hurt. And while I don’t think you get any prizes if you get buried with all of your original parts, you also don’t get any prizes for breaking yourself into non-functioning pieces because you were too damn obstinate to just pause.

One of the hardest emails I’ve sent in recent memory was the one to my tap instructor, when I told her I wouldn’t be able to continue with lessons until my foot was better. Just like when my shoulder blew out, one of the most upsetting conversations I’ve ever had was telling Shifu that I had to drop out of class for a while. Good teachers, good coaches, are always understanding about these things. Good teachers don’t want you to hurt yourself. They understand.

It’s a lot harder to give yourself that kind of understanding. First off, there’s the disappointment of it, but I’ve had my fajitas (and a margarita) now, and I’m over it. It’s more that I’ve never been any kind of fucking athlete. After fighting so hard to be able to run or do kung fu or dance when once upon a time I could barely climb a couple flights of stairs, I’m just so afraid I’m going to lose it. After going so many places and doing so many things powered by sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness, maybe I don’t know how to deal with a problem that I can’t just wear down. I’m lucky I have friends who are willing to tell me over and over again to stop being stupid and rest.

I have to believe in myself, that when I get injured it isn’t the end of the world if I have to stop and rest. That I will recover whatever ground I might lose, or that I’ll be able to find new ground to cover. But that’s the hard part. The scary part. It’s easier to do something than not do something. It’s easier to stay in motion when you’ve been in motion.

And that’s why this is another part of discipline that I have to learn.