What a doozie?! What’s up? What’s down? What repeats and goes round and round?… 

“Little Miss S in a mini-dress”

What can I say? I’m a hot mess this week. Physically, mentally, emotionally. Monday was a holiday and I was already so done with “taking care” of the household I just wanted to be left alone. So when Tuesday arrived and everyone else had to go back to work and school I felt relief but was already a day behind on my work week and that caused me to be super grumpy. 

Litter boxes, laundry, dishes, cats, cleaning, cooking, groceries, trash. And a few “honey could you please” requests from my darling husband on his way out the door. 

All needing to be done by 2pm so I could make it to yet another doctors appointment. Another new doctor, for yet another professional assessment of what the hell is wrong with me. 

The symptoms? Afternoon fatigue (bordering on sheer exhaustion), brain fog, lack of motivation, low libido, waves of sadness, unexpected spikes of anger. What’s new? None of that but in the past few weeks a new physical symptom has been added to the list. 

My right hand and fingers go numb and tingly for no apparent reason. Or at least it seems like no reason. It happens and then I move about a little bit and shake it out until it goes away. Quite literally thinking of T-Swift’s song “Shake it off” right now. 

I deal with this new development lightly on my own for about a week and then consult the doc. My doc. His quick assessment is that I’ve got compressed discs C6 and C7 is what I think he said. He shows me a diagram about how the nerves in your hand are connected to the spine and when those discs are “pinched” it’s just like cutting off the circulation. 

This makes a lot of sense to me. Sometimes it goes all the way to my pinky finger and I think that’s C8, but mostly it’s my thumb and palm and first two fingers. And also predominantly my right hand.

He’s quick to this assessment because he also has compressed discs which he’s told me for years will eventually require surgery. Surgery of the spine? No thanks!! 

Right now he treats his own issues with traction. It’s an apparatus hanging in the bathroom on the closet door and it’s self administered. He urges me to try it and shows me how.

It operates with a weight and pulley system. The weight is a bag of water you can adjust easily and that’s connected by a wire to some straps you fit around your noggin to pull you head up when you let go of the safety bar. The idea is pulling apart the spine gently thereby releasing the pressure caused by compression. 

Five minutes, once a day and it should help. Unless you are me and you don’t hear the part about five minutes and you start with too much water in the bag. I didn’t feel it right away, but it totally fucked my neck up in one shot. 

That was Monday or Tuesday and so by Wednesday I was in serious pain and could hardly move my head around at all. Especially side to side. Then Wednesday night it got so bad it messed with my sleep and I hardly slept at all. This resulted in Thursday (yesterday) being an absolute shit show.

After scrambling at the beginning of the week trying to get caught up on chores, I had naturally pushed some meet-ups and to-do items down the line and all this culminated in the perfect storm of misery. I literally could not make it to 9am before I started panicking and cancelling and self administered pep-talks about how it was going to be ok. 

The first casualty was my dad who I have been trying to visit on Thursdays on a regular basis. I pushed that to the weekend. Then it was J who I promised to play pickleball with but have been putting off for several weeks now, and then finally… when I realized I needed sleep and would not be able to make it through the evening without a nap, I dipped on my friend M, who I was going to take tomatoes and salsa. 

Now I’m on a steroid for my pain and my hand and, like I said, waiting for my next follow up doctor’s appointment to get the results of the labs taken on Tuesday. Hopefully there’s a clue there. But I honestly doubt it. I’ve had all these labs, thyroid, hormones, cmp, etc done before (about a year ago) and it was all normal. 

I might try to log into the patient portal of that last office to get those labs so I can see how these compare. Modern medicine… good grief! 

I’ve got other stories to tell. Lots more on my mind suddenly but the day is waiting and all the nonsense this week has caused me to be dreadfully far behind. 

Stay Frosty My Friends! 

~Little Miss SugarCookie in a Mini-Dress

PS. I’m not at all like the little Miss S in that New Bohemian’s song. The lyric just works cuz I love mini-dresses. 🤷‍♀️