Chronic Pain

Chronic Pain

A few months after breaking my ankle, I noticed that whenever I touched my right leg and foot from about 2 inches above the incision down to my toes, I would get an electric shock/tingly/bump-my-funny-bone-type feeling. In other words, a tender ouch.

I asked the doctor and he said he had to move a nerve out of the way when he did my surgery. He said the nerve is usually on top of the shin, but my nerve traveled down the outside of my leg. I now have tingly feelings in my foot and ankle, the result of nerve damage. He said it should take a few months to subside. But they never did. In fact, they got worse.

So, on January 25^th I had the plate and screws removed from my ankle. I was not certain that the plate was the cause of the rubber band tightness around my ankle and the intense prickly sensitivity on the top of my foot and toes, but I was willing to take a chance. I had decided that I could not live with the wincing pain every time I put my sock or shoe on or took them off, the thorny, scratching sensation I had if anything brushed against my ankle, and the dull, throbbing pain in my ankle before a storm.

(By the way, I looked “bone ache before rain” up on the internet and found out that it is real.  Before a storm, the barometric pressure drops and decreased air pressure causes tissues in the body to expand, thereby putting pressure on a sensitive area, such as an arthritic joint or injured nerve, and causing pain.) 

After they wheeled me out of the surgical room, the doctor stood at the foot of the gurney and asked me how I was feeling.  Although still woozy from the anesthesia, I could already tell that the pain had diminished considerably.  And now, 10 weeks later, we had a rain storm yesterday and my “bone ache before rain” is also gone!

It turns out my nerve had been pinched between scar tissue and the plate.  It had also branched, which is considered unusual for that particular nerve.  This information led me to do some research on nerves. Basically, nerves are made up of cells with long fibers called axons that are bundled together inside insulating sheaths, like wires in cables. Since the nerve had been undergoing pressure for over a year, it could not transport nutrients and messages properly and was becoming more injured over time.  No wonder I wasn’t healing.

Which brings me to the subject of chronic pain.  I didn’t realize I was experiencing chronic pain in my ankle and foot until the cause of it was removed.  Maybe that's because I seem to have a high pain tolerance.  After all, I walked five miles out on my broken ankle (and probably injured it more in the process) because all I could think about was the expense of calling a helicopter to fly me out.  And, a few years ago, I walked up about 1,000 feet from the Colorado River to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon with two broken toes.  Not to mention childbirth.   

But those instances involve acute pain—pain experienced for a short duration and then—poof!  It’s over.  Thinking back, I can remember experiencing the pain and can describe it—sharp or throbbing or raw or a dull ache—but I can’t feel it again.

Chronic pain seems to be difficult to define.  Some doctors say chronic pain is any pain that lasts longer than 3 months at the onset.  Some say 6 months and some say over a year.  Perhaps the best definition is:  pain lasting longer than the expected time of healing. 

And what is pain, anyway?  And how can it be rated?  On a 1 to 10 scale with 1 being no pain and 10 being the strongest pain imaginable? For me, Ms Pain Tolerant, I’d give my pain before surgery about a 5 out of 10.  For someone else, it may have been a 8 or 9.

Nevertheless, subconsciously enduring that pain put a layer of tension beneath everything I did.  All the things I dislike—stinky smells, bright lights, loud or rumbling noises, annoying distractions—magnified and stressed me out so much that I felt on edge most of the time.  I gained weight, I didn’t sleep well, I snapped at my husband, I lost patience a lot more easily, I couldn’t concentrate, and I got the worst cold I've had in years.  In fact, I had to put the surgery off for 2 weeks because I wanted to get over my cold and build up my immune system first.  My quality of life had bottomed out and I didn’t even realize it until after the plate was removed!

Uproar in Utah's Dixie

I get the local paper on Fridays so that I will know the true movie times, which can be wrong online.  I know this by experience. 

The top two stories on the front page in last Friday’s paper were about the agony created in St. George by renaming Dixie State College (DSC) after it merges with the Utah University system. 

When moving here, I think I was one of the few new people who understood where the name “Dixie” came from.  In 2005, when we put our Fairfax, VA house up for sale to move to St. George, Utah, our realtor handed us a recent Washington Post article about Dixie State College.  “You have to read this,” she said in a shocked voice.   Here it is:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/04/AR2005100401349.html

In summary, this article describes the Confederate symbols on the DSC campus:  a statue with 2 Confederate soldiers, one holding a flag; the Rebel nickname with a Southern Colonel mascot; a recently eliminated Confederate flag as the college flag; slave auctions as fund raisers, etc. etc.  It was a play on the word “Dixie,” which originally referred to the warm climate in SW Utah, the soil color (instead of being southern red mud, it’s red sand here), and the fact that the original Mormon polygamous pioneers grew cotton.  Among these pioneers were a few southerners.

We moved to St. George right after DSC changed the Rebel mascot from a good-old-boy southern Colonel to a Hawk (a red-tailed hawk, to be exact).  With a new college president came another change.  The nickname, against popular vote, changed from “Rebel” to “Red Storm.” 

As one student put it, the nickname "Red Storm" reminds her of “that time of the month.”

The new mascot became a cross-eyed bull coming out of a tornado as the mascot.  The doe-eyed bull costume failed at its introductory game.  Here is a link that may give you a chuckle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnxe_eeqIis

So, seven years later, the town is once again divided.  The locals want to keep “Dixie” in the name; most of the people from outside the area want to eliminate “Dixie” from the name.  And the college is now spending tons of money on a consultant who is gathering data and opinions about the new name. 

It’s true that this area also has a Dixie National Forest and many businesses named a “Dixie” this or a “Dixie” that.  But I don’t think any of them ever raised a Confederate flag or held slave auctions.  Nevertheless, remaining on campus to this day, is the Confederate soldiers holding a Confederate flag statue, which shows that the college still hasn’t completely rid itself of negative Confederate symbolism.  I’m surprised how many people don’t understand that. 

It will be interesting to see what happens. 

Horoscopes are a bunch of hooey

I don't know about you, but I always read my horoscope to see how my day is rated.  I then compare it to how I think my day will go or how my day went.  It usually coincides with my mood, but I know it's all a bunch of hooey.

That point was brought home to me on Black Friday.  My Salt Lake Tribune horoscope read:  "As you set out to do some Christmas shopping, allow your creativity to emerge. You could be overwhelmed by everything you have to do. Nothing can ease the pressure like diving right in, but remember to maintain your budget. Tonight: Be naughty and nice."  4 stars.

But I didn't participate in Black Friday.  I had a Green Friday.  My hubby and I went south out of town to Blackrock Mountain on the Arizona Strip.  We hiked on the northern part of the Parashant National Monument and came upon a gigantic bull skeleton.  We reasoned that he probably had a good, long life and died under a huge ponderosa pine.  No feed lot for him. 

The only people we saw the entire day (including the drive out and back) were 5 seniors from Mesquite, Nevada who were out exploring the back country on their golf-cart ATVs. We were greeted with:  "I'm not lost, but I don't know where I am."  So my husband explained the roads to them while I chatted with a husband and wife encased in a plastic breathing mask--did I tell you that the Arizona Strip is almost all dirt roads?  It was all rather strange.  But I digress.

On my birthday, I got the worst "day you were born" horoscope ever. This is also from the Salt Lake Tribune.  "This year you often become angry and frustrated if you feel that others are not being as sensitive as you would like them to be. Recognize that you are more dynamic than in past years. People could be taken aback by this new strength and energy."

What kind of horoscope is that??  Should I just undergo a lobotomy and get it over with??  Start psychotherapy?  Take valium?  Where is the helpful advice in that? 

But I like my sign:  Sagitarius.  And my purpose:  make a difference in the world.  It also fits in nicely with my personality, which is INFP or INFJ depending upon the day.  (This is from the Myers-Briggs Personality Profile.  If you want to learn your own personality profile, here is a great website:  http://www.mypersonality.info/ ).  Again, I digress.

Way back in the Dark Ages I had my personal Star Chart done by a Czechoslovakian gypsy I met at a youth hostel while traveling in Greece.  After days of analysis and discussion about what type of person I was and what I would become, he finally realized that he did not figure the hour of my birth properly.  It was an hour or two off, which made everything different.  He was too frustrated to go back and re-do it but I still have a copy of what  I could have been if only I was born at the correct time.

Looking at it rationally, why should a daily horoscope fit one out of every 12 people on the earth on that particular day?  Or the birth date horoscope fit one out of every 365 1/4 people (I'm looking at Leap Year when I say that)?  Isn't the lining up and pull of the planets different on various places around the world?  

And why should that particular arrangement of faraway planets determine my life's journey?  Don't the effect of barometer highs and lows surrounding us every day have any say in the matter?  Now I'm really digressing.

In spite of all my ranting, I just checked my horoscope.  It has nothing to do with what I am going to do today, but it least my day is rated 4 stars!

How I Beat Sleep Apnea

It's been about a year since I stopped using the CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) machine.  In fact, I don't know whether I really needed it to begin with.  My story:

Over the past few years, I had found it increasingly difficult to swallow pills and sometimes felt like my throat was closed up, making it difficult to breathe.  My husband told me that I was snoring a lot, especially when sleeping on my back.  At the same time, one of my brothers had been diagnosed with sleep apnea and was put on a CPAP machine.  My family has long suspected that our father, who loudly snored and snorted his way through the night, also had sleep apnea.  But what drove me to the doctor was waking up with my heart pounding and gasping for breath.

My doctor found that my blood pressure was sky-high.  I had never had high blood pressure before--but I was fairly freaked out about the panic attacks I had been experiencing.  Finding nothing else obviously wrong, she referred me to a sleep doctor.

The sleep doctor put me through 2 sleep studies: the first one without and the second one with a breathing mask.  In both studies I was hooked up to wires that measured leg movement, sleep position (back, side, stomach), eye movement, brain waves, breathing and a microphone for recording snoring.  I got copies of both studies, which I compared.

Without the breathing mask, I had several episodes where I stopped breathing for 10 seconds or longer.  Most of these happened when I was sleeping on my back and were labelled as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).  That type of sleep apnea is from blocked airflow and is common in obese people.  It also becomes more common as people age.  My results indicated that I had mild sleep apnea.  However, my sleep quality was good because I went through all five stages of sleep, including the dreaming REM sleep.

With the breathing mask, I did not have any OSA but I did have central sleep apnea (CNA), "which results from a problem with how the brain signals the breathing muscles. This type of apnea can occur with conditions such as heart failure, brain tumors, brain infections, and stroke" (Web MD).  That's scary stuff!  My sleep quality was also poor and I did not attain REM sleep.  Nevertheless, the doctor prescribed me a CPAP machine.  He also gave me speech pathology exercises, which I performed daily.  They didn't seem to make a difference, however.

So, I used the CPAP machine for at least 4 hours a night over 90 consecutive days, as required by the insurance company.  However, that machine never agreed with me.  First of all, I looked like a monster!  Talk about a self-esteem killer.  And almost every morning I woke up with a bloated feeling and burped all day.  I tried a face mask but it was too tight and uncomfortable.  I then tried a nasal mask and slept better, but still felt bloated the next day.

The doctor had started me off with a pressure setting of 7 (the machines go from 4 to 20).  I told my neighbor, who uses a CPAP machine, about my bloating problem and he said the air might be blowing into my stomach.  So I called the doctor and he lowered it to 6.  Same bloating problem.  Then he lowered it to 5.  By then I also had an upset stomach all day combined with burping. The doctor prescribed Nexium, but I didn't want to take drugs to combat the side effects of a machine that I was really starting to hate.  Instead, I tried eliminating coffee, then wine, then anything acidic I could think of--to no avail.  That CPAP machine was ruining my quality of life!  So into the box it went.

I turned to the internet and found the website http://www.ihatecpap.com/  After reading through that, I decided to try using Sleep Right strips (since I have a deviated septum), and sleeping on my side only.  (I absolutely love sleeping on my back, so that was difficult to give up).  Both of these changes decreased my snoring and enhanced my sleep quality, but I still couldn't swallow big pills very well and had trouble breathing sometimes, even during the day.

At my next dentist appointment, I told her my story.  First she suggested using dental appliances and then she looked in my throat.  She told me my soft tissues were sagging in the back of my throat!  She gave a mirror.  I looked at my almost closed throat and then at her completely open throat.  No wonder I couldn't swallow pills.

She recommended that I should see an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist about surgery to remove the excess tissue.  Although I did get as far as making an ENT appointment, I did not want surgery.  Then--what do you know--I broke my right ankle and had to cancel my appointment.

Stuck at home with an elevated foot and the laptop on my lap, I began to explore other options, such as learning the didgeridoo.  Several explanatory youtube videos later, I knew that I did not really like the sound of the didgeridoo, did not have the desire to learn how to play it, and would never be able to master the circular breathing required to play one.  So then I turned to exercises.  I knew that the speech therapy exercises hadn't worked for me--but would there be other exercises that targeted the throat?

I read that singers rarely had sleep apnea because singing kept their throat tissues tight and then happened on a website that advertised a 3 CD set of singing exercises "specifically designed to reduce snoring caused by lax muscles in the upper throat." Just what I needed!  The website is:  

http://www.singingforsnorers.com/  

I ordered the set but wasn't ready until April to get started on it.  Once started, I sang the  exercises daily for one month before going on to the next CD.

These exercises have made a big difference in my life.  My throat tissues have lifted--I can even see the top of my throat again when looking in the mirror.  I can swallow pills again, too and I sleep a lot better (still on my side, unfortunately).

I finished the daily singing of the third CD in July.  I had emailed Alise in June, told her my progress, and asked her how I should maintain my throat muscles after finishing her program.  She said that I would need to continue to sing the exercises a 2-3 days a week for the rest of my life.  That's OK with me, but my poor husband!  I try to sing when he's out of the house.

The Animal Parade is published!!

Hi Readers,

I just discovered a free publishing and distribution service that is part of Amazon.com that was called CreateSpace when I wrote this post and now called KDP.  I used the process to published my first ever children's book!  It took me days and days to get it set up but I am very pleased with the result. Here is the book and its description:

The Animal Parade 

An illustrated animal alphabet book. 

Poem and pictures by M A Florence, poem with Lynnette Smith. 

8.5" x 8.5" (21.59 x 21.59 cm), Full Color on White paper, 30 pages

Juvenile Fiction / Animals / General

"Follow the animals as they dance to a Samba beat and form a parade on a city street."

 

The Animal Parade can be found at:

 https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Parade-M-Florence/dp/1479170488?ref_=ast_author_dp

I can also buy it in bulk directly from KDP at a reduced price and try to sell it on my own. 

 

My co-author Lynnette sent me the following comments from The Animal Parade readers:

 

Andre (1 1/2 years) loves the colors.
Brendon (5 years) loves the rhymes.
Anton (7) liked it more when he heard it read to him but had trouble reading it himself.
Byron giggled but lost interest in the middle of the book (letter M).
Elena (Croatian, aged 53) was tickled pink.
Octavio's father told him the three things he must do in his life:
1) write a book;
2) build a house;
3) get married. 
Jerome thought I was teasing when he saw the warthog.  "No way, there's no such thing."
Coletta (a nurse from Kenya) had never heard of a mongoose or a jackal.
Kylie calls it "My animal book" but only asks for it when Grandma is there.
Raymond think the snake is "cool.'
Jon thinks I made up the aardvark.  He says, 'No way, Nett.' "

Cooling down the garage

Hi all,

When we built our house, we kept costs low by putting cheap carpeting in the living room and bedrooms, doing our own landscaping, and not insulating the garage.   That was the only way we could afford to build our own home because we couldn't sell our old house, had to rent it out, had to get an home equity loan to avoid a jumbo loan, etc. etc.

However, we did put some energy saving features in the house when building it:  a radiant roof barrier that reflects heat, passive solar windows, and a geothermal heat pump (a 200 foot loop of pipe in the ground that uses the earth to heat and cool).  We love these features and have found that our energy bill is half of the local, smaller, Energy Star house that we finally sold!  And we're still waiting for the next electric bill that will show us how much energy we have saved by putting in the solar panels.

Since we moved in, my attention has been on improving the house, including cooling down the garage.  Since our mojave desert climate consists of regular temperatures over 100 degrees from late June through August, the garage doors face southeast, and the outside wall faces southwest, our garage cooked during these months.  If it was 100 degrees outside, it could also be 100 degrees inside.  It also doesn't help that all the approved home and garage colors in our HOA are dark ones!

For my first attempt at reducing the garage temperature, I had solar screens installed on the 3 square foot diameter windows.  I don't know if they did much good although solar screens are supposed to reduce 75% of the heat (or thereabouts) while still letting in light.

Second, I contracted an insulation company to blow in insulation into the outside walls.  That procedure resulted in about a 5-8 degree heat reduction compared to the outside temperature. One drawback--the garage doesn't cool down as much at night.  One other plus--the garage temperature is very comfortable in the winter.

Third, we planted some trees that will eventually shade the outside wall.  "Eventually" is the key word here, which can be translated into "the trees are still small."  

My last trick, just completed about a month ago, involved painting the garage doors with Hy-Tech insulating ceramic paint.  I found this paint on the internet when I was actually searching for sound insulating paint because--although I love our geothermal heat pump--it is mounted on the garage side of the second bedroom wall and pump noise travels through the wall.  More on that some other time.

Anyway, I bought a bag of Hy-Tech ceramic microspheres to stir into a gallon of flat outdoor paint for only $15--much cheaper than the blown in insulation, I must say.  From the brochure:  "Hy-Tech insulating ceramics are a result of the NASA technology developed to combat the extremely high temperatures that the Space Shuttle experiences during re-entry . . . ."  It is "a ceramic insulating additive, that when mixed with the paint creates a barrier to heat."  


The ceramic microspheres look like talcum powder but are in fact little hollow ceramic balls.  The additive should be stirred into paint that has been poured into a larger container because it expands a bit.  Also, the additive makes the paint thicker so I added about a cup of water to it.  I painted on 2 coats with a roller, which resulted in a suede-like surface.  So far it's holding up well.  The best part of all is that it reduced our garage temperature about 3-5 more degrees.  I tested the heat barrier theory by touching the garage door when the sun was shining on it--and it was extremely hot.  This stuff really works!!

Self-publishing--I'm finally doing it!

Hi all, I decided it's time to publish my third and best manuscript, Red Flag Warning.  Since my writing group, The Writers of Chantilly, has used Infinity Publishing to publish their anthologies and I am happy with their work, I downloaded their "how to" book last week and made an appointment to talk to a representative.  He called today and I gave him my credit number.  So here I go!

Below is a brief blurb, synopsis, biography (of me) and possible front page photo:

Title of Book:  Red Flag Warning

Author Name:  M. A. Florence

Blurb: 

An arsonist at large.  A coworker murdered.  A forest fire out of control.  What began as Sophia’s first field job in years quickly became an inferno of trickery and intrigue.

Synopsis:

Sophia Davis had trepidations about her new field job in a tinder-dry forest.  Add eccentric co-workers, wildfire, arson and murder to the mix, and her misgivings turn to alarm.  Increasing suspicion and distrust from her colleagues and the local community push Sophia to search for the real culprit.  As she uncovers secrets and traces clues, a strong storm system pushes through and a red flag warning, unknown until too late, puts Sophia’s life on the line.

Set in the precarious mountains and wide-open valleys of eastern Oregon, Red Flag Warning showcases the realities of wildfires in our western forests today.

Author Biography:

M. A. Florence has an MA in Biological Science and currently teaches classes for the University of Phoenix.  She has worked as a botanist on field crews for the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service in Wyoming, Nevada, California and Oregon, as well as botanical contract work in New Mexico.  Her previous publishing credits include short stories and poems in numerous anthologies and literary journals.  She now lives in southwestern Utah with her husband and two cats.

Book Excerpt:

With growing apprehension, I stared at the wispy, caramel-brown smoke column surging up from deep within the Dragon Mountains.  I hoped it was not another arson, like the one we had in these same mountains a few weeks back.  Fire investigators had traced that fire’s origins to a campfire deliberately set at the edge of a forest thicket.  Upslope winds, or perhaps the arsonist’s own breath, had fanned the flames into the bone-dry forest, burning over two hundred acres of pine, a few squirrels and at least one fawn before it was brought under control.

Today the smoke appeared to be coming from the Rock Creek area, where we worked last week.   The forest there was also dry and thick as dog-hair, and the narrow meadow straddling the creek had already turned to straw.  Rock Creek itself barely trickled.  It wouldn’t produce enough water to put out a campfire, much less a forest fire.

This summer comprised eastern Oregon’s seventh year of drought.  Our normally lengthy growing season had consisted of a dozen weeks in early spring and now, in early July, the parched meadows and heavily littered forests had become tinder-dry, primed for a spark. Under conditions like these, a stiff breeze could turn even a tiny blaze into a raging inferno.

I called out to our crew leader, “Hey Debra, it looks like there’s a fire over by Rock Creek.”

“That’s nice,” she said, hunkered over her foot square study plot.  Without pausing, she plucked out a grass-like plant from the cracked earth and examined it.  I watched her identify the plant, write down its abbreviation on the data sheet she had secured by a clasp on her clipboard, and then calmly reach for another plant.

Irritated with her dismissive attitude, I thought again about how much I didn’t want to deal with Debra on top of all the problems arson and a possible early fire season would entail, and added to it my new burden:  Jackie. Jackie had been hired to replace our crew’s soil scientist, Tom.  Today was Jackie’s first day and she already seemed to be rubbing everyone the wrong way. 

I glanced at the smoke column again, noting how much it had thickened and darkened. The fire was growing.  I sniffed.  Yes, wood smoke was definitely beginning to overpower the usual fresh pine-scented breeze.

I called out again, louder this time.  “Debra, I don’t think we should wait on this fire.  If you’re not going to call it in, I will.”

She expelled a long, exaggerated sigh and then squinted up at me.  Her stiff, wide-brimmed straw hat hid her slanted, dark brown, East Asian eyes and most of her short, thick black hair.  But it didn’t hide her frown.

“All right, Sophia,” she said, speaking with a slight lisp on the letter ‘s.’  She could never pronounce my name quite right.  ‘Sophia Davis’ came out ‘Thopia Davith.’  

“I get the message,” she continued.  “I’ll make sure it gets called it in as soon as I finish this section.  It’s almost time for lunch, anyway.”

“Good,” I said, happy to have at least that settled.  Bending down to count plants again, I tried to push out the fretting that had been casting a shadow upon my thoughts all day.  I was working on a soil-vegetation inventory crew miles away from my two teenage children and a husband who loved to fight fires.  What if he was called away to fight this one?  How would I manage everything then?

As the familiar feeling of dread crept over me, I told myself to stop it right there.  This was just a solitary smoke column, for gosh sakes.  And it might be a natural fire, not arson. 

I visualized a single lightning strike on the talus slope above the creek, a fire that wouldn’t go anywhere, and I consoled myself with such platitudes as ‘you’re making good money, you can finally be a botanist again, you should be grateful you even have a job.’ Then I forced myself to focus on the reason I was out here to begin with.

On hands and knees now, I baked under the unrelenting sun and swatted at biting insects while classifying, counting and tabulating the meadow vegetation before me.  But my task couldn’t keep that growing fire far from my thoughts.  When was Debra going to call it in?

Finally, Debra stood up, dropped her equipment into a tidy little pile, and stomped over to me across the brown grass. I sat back on my feet and looked up at her.

With a scowl on her face, she snapped, “Okay, I’m done.  As soon as you reach a stopping point, get Tom and Jackie and meet the rest of us at the road for lunch.  I’ll tell Luna about the fire on the way up.”

Relieved, I nodded my acknowledgement and took a brief break to watch slender, long-waisted Debra stomp off through vegetation so dry that it crackled with each step.

I soon completed my last entry and laid down my clipboard and pencil.  Standing up, I stretched the kinks out of my back.  It’s no fun getting old!

Possible front cover photo:

Image from the website article:  http://dels-old.nas.edu/climatechange/mountains.shtml

Title:  A wildfire sweeps through Bitterroot National Forest in Montana.

Image courtesy of John McColgan, USDA Forest Service.