Health Posts

01Apr
0

What Is Happening Here?

I had my last physical therapy session today. Thank god, because this was costing me $35 per session. In a previous session, I had a different therapist. She taped my food, and OMG it felt wonderful. I think this was supposed to be something to help me out until my custom orthotic arrived.

Today my physical therapist thought she would be helpful and tape my foot again. Only it was clear she didn’t have the slightest clue what she was doing. I would see her tearing off tape, tearing it in half, then haphazardly sticking it to my foot. In weird ways, not in a coherent pattern like the other chick did. Keep in mind the other woman put absolutely 0 pieces of tape over the top of my foot. It completely covered the bottom, and went up the back of my heel and a tad up the sides of my feet. Yet it felt SOLID.

This is what I ended up with today:

What in the world is going on here? There’s all kinds of asymetrical tape going in all sorts of ways. Whereas the previous taping lasted 36 hours (apparently it’s OK to keep on in the shower!), I had to remove this one about 2 hours after I got it because it was restricting my movement and actually causing additional pain. It took like 15 minutes to take off cuz I didn’t even know where to start. Seriously, WTF?!?

Posted by Caro in Health, Life, Random, Sports
30Mar
1

Butter

Yeah, that’s exactly how my skin feels at the moment!! Talk about glory, especially when my skin had previously been having some alligator-like dryness issues.

A friend of mine is getting married in less than two weeks, and I have the honor of being a bridesmaid. The story of how I came to be the one responsible for throwing a bachelorette party is not relevant at this time (although it was stressful!), but I’m quite satisfied with the outcome.

My friend decided she wanted a spa day…. at Burke Williams (she had a gift card). Quite expensive to say the least, but in the end it was so worth it. While the other girls decided they all wanted massages, I decided to do something different. After all, J gave me a membership to a different spa for Chrismakkah, and I still have 2 massages left on that! I ended up going with the Parafango Treatment, mostly because the first sentence describes it as “The ultimate moisturizing experience.” Yes please!

(more…)

Posted by Caro in Discoveries, Health, Life, Shopping, Things to do, Weddings
22Mar
0

The Devil Made Me Do It

“The Devil” of course referring to Ambien.

“It” being oversleep this morning….By almost an hour and a half!!

It’s been a while since I’ve taken these little magical happy sleepy pills, but after a few weeks of  increased sleeplessness, I decided it was worth a try to dabble into my prescription once again. I passed out hard. I woke up, a little dazed, knowing immediately something was wrong.

Yep, 8:29am. Checked the alarm just to make sure I had actually set it last night (I’ve been known to do stupid things like not turn it on, or choose PM over AM). Sure enough, it was set to 7:12am, ON.

Ah how I had forgotten the power of the Ambien. Alarm went off and I didn’t even flinch.

2 cups of coffee later, kinda awake. I see why I stopped taking these things. Don’t think I’ll try one again for quite some time!

Posted by Caro in Discoveries, Health, Life, Work
18Mar
2

Alligator

This is how my knuckles were described last night.

They’re SUPER dry. Like cracking. I’ve been feeling the need to lotion them constantly, but of course forgot to bring lotion with me to work(s) on Tuesday and Wednesday. Today I finally remembered the lotion and am on my third application. Is it helping? Yes.

For about 20 minutes.

Then they want to crack again.

They’re scaly. I see hard flakes trying to peel off. Alligator-like truly fits the feel of my knuckles.

How do I make this better? Cuz it’s really starting to be painful, in addition of course to the horrible aesthetics of it.

Posted by Caro in Health, Life, Things to do
15Mar
2

Trial and Error

I got my annual vision check up earlier this year, and was pretty surprised when they told me my horrendous prescription hadn’t changed. Really? Cuz I was certain you were gonna up the size of the coke-bottle lenses I wear. I don’t see that well!!

I finally decided this wasn’t right and I needed to get my full money’s worth. I went back to the “low vision specialist” and told her I can’t see. I’m sure that’s not a new thing for her! I was able to get in that same day even. Amazing! Rather than just rushing me out the door or telling me I’m fine (or worse yet, “good enough” – I hate when people say that!), she actually took quite a long time trying to fix the problem. Everything from giving me a fresh pair of lenses, to examining the fit in my eye, and even re-doing the assessment (“which is better – 1 or 2? ok how about 3 or 4? lol).

Down side: my left eye isn’t cooperating and at the present moment cannot be fixed to better than 20/30. OK I cried about this at home, but that’s a different issue altogether. The right eye has issues too. Specifically, I have an astigmatism. I have one in both eyes, and they correct the other one. They’ve never corrected the right one before. Here’s the deal: the astigmatism is slight. The lowest amount of correction is too much. But if they give me no astigmatism correction, it’s not enough. So which is the worse evil: contacts that are too powerful or contacts that are not quite powerful enough?

I’m finding out this week. I picked up new lenses this morning. She gave me two lenses to try. So now I have choice A) the old lens; choice B) Toric lens 1; and choice C) Toric lens 2.

I’m wearing option B today and it’s kinda strange. (more…)

Posted by Caro in Discoveries, Fears, Health, Life, Things to do
11Mar
1

OK I’m Awake!

Because I work such long hours, I’m forced to schedule my physical therapy sessions at like the crack of dawn. It minimizes the amount of time I have to take off from work. The main problem with this, aside from the fact that my sessions sometimes start a full HOUR before I’m used to starting work, is that I have to drive about 20  miles to get there. 20 miles + rush hour traffic = about a 45 minute drive. So I leave my house anywhere from an hour to almost 2 hours earlier than I “should” on physical therapy mornings. Needless to say, I’m pretty tired – tired like I was during the Olympics. Exhausted really.

After waking up at the crack of dawn yesterday and sort of zombie-ing through my morning, I decided that I MUST get to bed early last night. Yet despite my best efforts, I didn’t make it to my bed until around 11. Alarm starts chirping just a few short hours later, and I’m NOT a happy camper. I think I snoozed for like 35 minutes before finally giving in to the little voice in my head telling me I need to get up, leave my warm bed, and face the day. Ugh. Fine.

Again, eyes don’t wanna open. It’s cold. I don’t wanna leave my house. So I throw on some jeans (and not exactly my nicest pair either lol), running shoes (the physical therapist wants to check them out), a shirt, and a sweatshirt. It’s not the nicest of outfits, but it works OK for work, and it’s comfy. I then quickly throw my hair up in a pile on top of my head, and really it’s not too polished looking, but I simply couldn’t care less at this point. Obviously I’m also wearing my glasses. Let’s be honest – if my eyes don’t even want to open, jamming contacts into them just isn’t a choice. I figured I’ll just clean up a bit after physical therapy when I’m more awake.

Thankfully I made a pot of coffee this morning. A strong pot of coffee. Started chugging that before I even got into my car lol. It was kinda sorta maybe kicking in a little bit the more I drank. I’m about halfway to PT at this point, and starting to feel a little better. Got some good music playing…it might end up being a good morning after all.

Then the morning gets interesting.

About 3 cars in front of me I see this truck kinda sway/drift over to the right. He compensates my cutting to the left. Only he over compensates. Big time over compensates – dude spins out. So I see a spinning truck, hella cars slamming on brakes, people swerving in all kinds of directions (think parting of the red sea but with vehicles), the car in front of me (also slamming on brakes, clearly) is quickly approaching. FOOT ON BRAKE ON FLOOR…PLEASE LET ME STOP! Check the rearview mirror, yep car behind me is quickly approaching, fuck I’m about to get sandwiched here. FUCK PLEASE STOP CAR.FUCK FUCK FUCK. I’m gonna hit this SUV. Goddamnit I was JUST in a sandwich accident, please don’t let this happen AGAIN.

(more…)

Posted by Caro in Fears, Health, Life, Random
09Mar
1

BRUTAL-ly Honest

I had physical therapy today. My usual physical therapist was sick so I got a substitute today. A brutally honest one. I guess I should talk about physical therapy in general since I haven’t done that yet.

About a week and a half ago I went in for my consult and evaluation. It was kinda odd, but based on past physical therapy sessions for other problems, I was expecting odd. She needed to observe and measure all kinds of things related to my foot, so I took off both shoes and socks. She looked at my feet while I just stood there. She had me raise up to my toes while standing on both feet. She had me stand on one foot at a time so she could look at something else. Then she made me walk up and back the room so she could see stuff when I walked. Then I laid down.

Here’s where it got really sad: she measured my calf/Achilles flexibility. When you’re laying back and you pull your toes up to a 90 degree angle (toes to the sky), that 90 degree angle is considered “0″. Pull your toes in toward your shin more, and every degree beyond 90 is +1. So you want the 80 degree angle: +10 on their scale. Ok so when I first got measured a week and a half ago, I was at -5. MINUS 5. So that’s 15 degrees of flexibility that I’m lacking. OK people, it turns out this isn’t bad; it’s ABYSMAL. Apparently the average elderly person has more flexibility in their calf/Achilles. Heck even my “good” foot is only at a +5. OK fine, my ankle and calf aren’t flexible. Whatever — fix me!!

(more…)

Posted by Caro in Fears, Health, Life, Rants and raves, Things to do
10Feb
0

I want to post Chicago pictures…

…But I feel like crap :(

One blog is enough for the day. I can say that Chicago was absolutely spectacular though. I ate too much, shopped a bit, drank a little, and saw not nearly enough. I got to wear all my warm clothes and had a great time in the freezing cold. It snowed too!

Hopefully I will feel better tomorrow and put up a picture or two. If not, Monday for sure!

Posted by Caro in Food, Health, Shopping, Things to do, Travel, cool, fun and tagged with
04Feb
1

Lesson Learned

Ok so those super cute shoes I bought on Tuesday. The ones that were a half size too small but didn’t feel that tight. Yeah those. Those are going to be sold or given away.

I made the mistake of wearing these babies yesterday. It’s usually never fun breaking in a new pair of shoes, but add a busy day to that equation and you’re in for a mess. I worked 12 hours yesterday – recipe for a disaster. (more…)

Posted by Caro in Health, Life, Money, Shopping, Things to do, Work
02Feb
3

Marla

I’m not even sure where to start with this. I guess I could start just by simply stating that I hate Marla. Passionately.

You might be wondering who the F this Marla person is. Well she’s not a person; she’s a part of my foot.

(more…)

Posted by Caro in Fears, Health, Random, Things to do
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