My Second Shot Scheduled

Tomorrow I'll be having a second stellate ganglion injection in my neck. I haven't a clue if it'll be as painless as the first one, or if it'll provide more, less, the same effects as the first one. More, please...lots more.

My Second Shot Scheduled

Catch-Up Links

While I was on medical hiatus, I stopped writing for Heroes & Heartbreakers. I continued my work for Publishers Weekly and, as I felt well enough, wrote some brief reviews for Amazon and Amazon Vine. Here are the links you missed, beginning with a link from my return to the H&H rotation:

• Kindle Magic (or How to Organize Your Kindle) article by Laurie Gold for Heroes & Heartbreakers
• Vine review of Lustfully Ever After by Kristina Wright (Erotic Romance)
• Vine review of Dermacontrol Foam Wash by Cetaphil (Skincare)
• Vine review of Apron Anxiety by Alysssa Shelasky (Memoir)
• Vine review of Paris in Love by Eloisa James (Memoir)
• Vine review of Curly-Q Dinnerware Set by Rachael Ray (Housewares)
• Review of Women's JB-6210-F "Victory" Pink Stainless Steel Diamond Watch by Just Bling (Jewelry/Watches)
• Review of Colored Gemstones by Paul Deasy (Reference)
• Vine review of Mio, Mango Peach by Kraft (Water Enhancer)
• Vine review of Fruit Design Post-It Notes by 3M (Office Supplies)
• Review of Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie (Biography)
• Review of Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (documentary) DVD, directed by Rodman Flender
  

Catch-Up Links

RSD

When I checked in during January, I'd been put in a cast for a broken hand. Well, the cast came off, I went to Occupational Therapy, but instead of recovering properly, I was diagnosed with a rather rare malady called RSD, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome, AKA Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome. Here's what that means: When injured, the sympathetic nervous system clicks on like an automatic light switch. Occasionally, when the injury involves an extremity like a hand or foot, it doesn't turn off. That's what they believe has happened to me. If you've got allergies you know that your body thinks it's fighting something dangerous, releases histamines, and you get allergy symptoms. RSD is kind of like that, only with the nervous system.

After diagnosing me, my hand doctor sent me off to a pain management doctor, who put me on Lyrica, which has an unfortunate side effect of causing some patients to lose vocabulary...not a great thing for a writer. She thinks it will abate, and I believe it is starting to do so. Forgetting the word "cord" or how to spell "who" scared the crap out of me last week.

The problem with RSD is that it's a race against the clock; you've got about six months to get it under control or it can get really bad...with symptoms jumping to the other hand, permanent changes in skin texture, my hand turning into a claw, and, quite frankly, a lifetime of pain.

My RSD was diagnosed fairly early, although I'm guessing the unforgettable pain I felt in my fingers while in the cast is when it began, which means the clock is really ticking now. So far I've had one stellate ganglion injection, and am going to have a second on Wednesday of next week.

The shots are administered while under heavy sedation. The needle goes in about two inches to the left of the voice box, and for most people, the doctor is led to the correct spot by first injecting iodine dye. Unfortunately, I am allergic to iodine dye, so apparently during the first shot she brought me out of sedation and asked me questions to help her administer the medicine in the right place.

I did not have the immediate, rock-star results some people experience. Whether that's because she didn't quite hit the sweet spot, I don't actually have RSD, or that it's going to take a lot of injections, I'm not quite sure. All I know is that my flare-ups are no longer three days. They last one day instead (I had one yesterday and I was a useless human being because I lost all ability to cope). I can bend my pinky all the way so that the it goes into the "fist" position. My ring finger no longer feels quite as much like a log as it did, and I can actually get a ring over my knuckle, which means the swelling that causes a lot of the pain has gone down. My pinky and ring finger don't shake quite as much. My joints don't seem to be turning blue and filling up with blood as much as they did either, another good sign, but I have a small niggle at the back of my mind: Am I the victim of wishful thinking?

With the exception of yesterday afternoon, I have not taken any of the hydrocodone prescribed because how can I tell if I'm getting better if pain meds are covering up the pain? My husband understands the logic, but both he and the doctor think I'm wrong to not take the medication. She assures me I won't end up like House, but I'm just not going to get back on them after taking so many between November and March.

If the shots appear to help at all, I'll have more, possibly up to six, and the doctor might actually go in and burn the nerve. I don't want that. As I told my mother, who is increasingly anxious on my behalf, so far the treatment is not as bad as it sounds. Yes, the prep for the shots is much like what happens before a general anesthetic, and there's no doubt if I didn't have that fucking iodine dye allergy (discovered in high school when they injected it via IV for a brain scan while looking for tumors to explain headaches) that I'd feel more confident in the efficacy of the shots, and the efficacy by degree as well: Are the shots working at all? Would they work better if she were visibly able to place them?

Meanwhile, all my editors--at PW & H&H--are very patient and understanding. A couple of days ago my first H&H blog entry in about seven months was published. It's called Kindle Magic (Or How to Organize Your Kindle Library. It's had about 700 views, not great, but not horrible either. It's amazing how easy it is to get used to low expectations.

I'm trying to get on with my life, whether or not this treatment succeeds. I'm forcing myself to use my hand and wrist as though the pain were not there because lack of use makes it worse. I'm typing. I'm carrying bags that aren't too heavy, although when I last did that on Thursday, my hand shook for a day. I put on earrings, bracelets, rings, and a necklace each day, even if I'm staying home, not only for the therapeutic value to my small motor skills, but also to remind myself of beauty. And I do my best to make sure my mother and daughter understand I'm not scared, so they can chill out until I tell them to worry.

That's all for now

RSD

Offline Again

Since my last post, I've exchanged one cast for another, larger cast. When my doctor removed the original cast, my hand still felt wrong, and my suspicions were confirmed when X-rays revealed a broken bone. He put ma in a larger cast, further delaying my recovery from shoulder surgery in December. Worse is that my finger--the break is in the area of my index finger, around where carpel meets metacarpal--feels better elevated, which, depending on where I'm sitting, causes pain in my shoulder to kick in. At times I need to lie down simply not to hurt. I'm spending a lot of time that way. It sucks.

I see my shoulder surgeon tomorrow. I last saw him three days before hurting my hand, so it'll be interesting to see his reaction. As for me, having only the use of my thumb makes even the most rudimentary of skills almost impossible, but it's stretchy pants and camis with shelf bras for the foreseeable future...and as little time online as possible.

Offline Again

What's Going On?

I started having pain in my left arm this summer. I thought I had pulled a muscle, so I rested it for a couple of weeks. It didn't help, so I saw a shoulder specialist, who took X-rays and explained that it was referred pain from my shoulder. He gave me a shot of cortisone and sent me to physical therapy. Though the physical therapy worked to an extent, my second visit to that doctor showed me he didn't really understand what was going on with my shoulder.

My physical therapist recommended another specialist, whom I learned was in partnership with the shoulder specialist my husband saw a couple of years ago when he had trouble with his left shoulder. (He had had shoulder surgery shortly before we got married because his shoulder kept dislocating. Though his surgeon had long ago retired, he referred his patients to the specialist my husband saw a couple of years ago.)

Although I didn't know it at the time, it turns out it's my husband's doctor is the top shoulder specialist in the city. Luckily he saw me right away, looked at my older X-rays, and gave me a 2nd shot of cortisone, one which actually worked for a few days. Both my physical therapist and I noticed an immediate improvement in my shoulder, but a week later it had started to regress. So I went back to the doctor, who indicated that the shot had been as much for diagnostic purposes as it had been for pain. We talked about it, he sent me for an MRI, and after getting those results, scheduled surgery for a few days before Christmas.

Everyone in my side of the family has a very low threshold of pain, so after surgery when the doctor said my shoulder had been really messed up, I was actually relieved. Not only was there a tear in the rotator cuff, but the bone spur he had expected in my shoulder had actually broken off, leaving everything inflamed and disgusting. I had just started physical therapy again, a week after my surgery, when my husband, daughter and I went to see A Dangerous Method. I missed the last step going down a large flight of stairs and landed directly on my left wrist. After trying to ignore the pain through lunch, I noticed a huge blood clot had developed on my wrist, and we ended up at a nearby doc in the box. Two hours later I learned nothing had broken but that my left arm, hand, and fingers were badly sprained. They splinted my hand and wrist and sent me on my way.

When, a few days later I realized I kept re-injuring my hand, my husband suggested I see a specialist. He agreed that nothing was broken but I left his office with my wrist hand and fingers in a cast. I am supposed to have the cast removed this week, and I hope most of the swelling, pain, and general ickiness will be gone. I did take a break from PW duties for the last week in December, and have muddled through my last three reviews using DragonDictate, a voice recognition program I am using to write this very blog entry. I wish I had had Dragon Dictate back in November when I researched and wrote my 1st publishers weekly feature article, which required me to interview 20 authors, then writes eight hours a day for two days to complete the piece.

All of this explains why I've not blogged in months, but this weekend, when I went to look something up in my old blog, I discovered it was gone. Blog-city.com apparently went off line on December 31. I did not know they were going bye-bye, because all their e-mails to me must have been sent to my old AAR address, which has been defunct for 3 years.

This had a very disheartening effect on me; that's more than 6 1/2 years of writing, including probably 100 reviews. Even worse was discovering that I did not have complete archives for the blog. When I switched from PC to Mac this summer, I needed to jettison old files, all of which I had backed up. Unfortunately, the process of transferring files did not go entirely as planned, and not everything made it through the process. Among the lost files was a huge XML file containing the old blog in its entirety. I contacted blog-city.com's owners this weekend, and have requested they try to send me another backup. In the interim, I decided to upload here on blogger the files I did retain, which includes everything from the original blog's inception in 2002 to early 2007. There is simply too much good stuff for me to let go entirely, and it's a shame that all those links from AAR and Heroes and Heartbreakers are now useless. But by my uploading the blog here--each month is a single entry--I will feel better. I can only hope that those missing months can be accounted for. As for the password-protected portions of blog, I have no clue whether or not they were/are included in the archive files, but I'll soon find out. So far I've uploaded August, September, and October 2002.

As for my injuries, I plan to work through any remaining discomfort associated with my shoulder and arm in trying to get back into online writing. The hand may slow me down, but now that I know that anything I do to my shoulder cannot damage my shoulder, I'm going to grin and bear it.

See you here and there!

What's Going On?