Believing in Miracles

My fella got talked into a bodywork class at the gym. He hated it, except for the part at the end where they lay on Miracle Balls. I looked them up on Amazon and was intrigued, and hey, Amazon Prime free shipping plus two whole dollars off. I like the kit, it's like a Klutz press gift book with toy for the crippled.  Yes, I am crippled so I get to call myself that. I don't call anyone who is not family that, so relax. I do wish the tiny adorable book were a little larger or easier to keep open, it's an adorable four inches square with big print and you have to flip, like, ten pages, to do one move. But the balls under my back and hips do seem to relieve some pain at the moment right after use. Perhaps with more use the effect will last. Meanwhile it is very entertaining to the fluffy cat, she sits on the shelf under the coffee table and watches me closely to see if I am dying and need to be eaten.

He Who Plans Makes the Gods Laugh

How is this for WTF: a girl who I used to work with fb messaged me yesterday asking if I was interested in a job in the field I'd studied so hard and spent so much money certifying in, only to not find a job it was practical to take. Ummm.
Yes, I am interested in knowing more.
Boom, her boss called me an hour later.
She says she wants me to come talk to her about it in person when the HR gnomes post the opening.
We will see about this. I'm reluctant to give up the state retirement but it's hard to overstate how much my job sucks. 

I love my new endocrinologist

She is tiny and lovely, and asks very good questions. And has patience with my bad memory. She seems rawther smart as well, and is of the opinion that my big health disaster of 09 was caused by the iodine in all the CTs setting off my Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Something about all that iodine triggering my immune system to attack my already feeble thyroid with renewed ferocity. That's the first time a doctor has told me I had Hashimoto's instead of garden variety hypothyroidism. Supposedly the lab work I did the other day showed it. She is changing my thyroid medicine up and giving me more of it, and has scheduled me for more labs and a remote followup. There was some harrumphing on her part about my TSH being at the high end of normal, she doesn't think the lab normal is right and wants to bring it right down. So we will see. She does think the weight gain is post starvation syndrome and that the no-starch plan is a good one but wants me to supplement with mega doses of Vitamin D and B12. A girl after my sister's chiropractor's heart.

Today's Win and Fail

The win, I guess, was that I found this to be funny: Worthless supposed co-worker listens in on a phone conversation. I tell the person on the other line how his goal would be achieved, what I can do to help, where I am putting the paperwork, and the caveats on whether or not it is possible. I take his number and promise to let him know what I find out after he leaves me the paperwork.
I hang up, reach for my portfolio to take his paperwork out and start to fill it out.
Worthless supposed co-worker, whose job this actually is but whom I have stopped asking because she won't do ANYTHING, says, "Oh, I have three things to do upstairs so I will let you handle that."
Hahahahaha hilarious. Hilarious because her job description is basically to handle six to eight things a day, not three for fuck's sake, I have three besides my job description. Also hilarious because, how the fuck is she letting me handle anything when I was ALREADY DOING IT ALL.
Win because I let my face say it all and refrained from any speech, gesture, nod, or eye contact. She just finally walked off.
Today's fail was walking outside and seeing a lady in a pink housecoat smoking twenty feet from the front door. Yeah, that's against the rules, so what, the security guards come out like twice a day and run off the foul Newport addicts. The fail part is that she was sitting on a wall and had something sitting next to her. Actually, it was sitting by her, all green and shiny, with a tube going to her nose. Yep, she was smoking, outside the hospital doors, on oxygen. Our oxygen. We are a gazillion million dollars in the hole and some goofy nurse hooked this idiot up with a nasal cannula, a twenty-pound oxygen cylinder, and a rolling cart to go outside and play demolition grandma.  Good thing it was windy today.

Snake oil and woo

I'm pretty skeptical about all medicine and most herbals. I've tried just about everything in the literature for my arthritis; because of my sulfa allergy, I'm not allowed Celebrex. Vioxx worked for two weeks and stopped, about four times from different MDs. Plus it tends to make people's hearts stop and they don't quite know why, not a good quality to me. The docs have given me SSRIs, SNRIs, big huge Cox-2 inhibitors, Elavil, and about seven other things. The effects are, flat don't help, make my head fog worse, screw up my insides, and make me feel groggy and crippled simultaneously.
So a couple of weeks ago I decided once again to suspend disbelief because I was just hurting so freaking bad, with a wicked RSD flare that was starting to affect my guts again with the pain in my SI joint spreading to my belly. I plopped some money into Amazon for some 400mg Italian Sam-e and some cheapo Swanson Magnesium oil.
I got some relief, not like turning off a switch, but gradual. The mag oil is tricky though, if I don't rub it in very well, it starts burning like a motherfucker about five minutes after application. I was able to pilot my nused lawn tractor bought secondhand from a neighbor around the huge expanse of backyard, though, with minimal (five joints) pain consequences.
We will see if it keeps working. My legs still start the horrible pain screaming and purple coloration when I try to stand around or walk the whole distance of the Lowes.