Stupid Arthritis

I’ve been in a foul mood all week.

I don’t talk much about my physical issues on here.

But I decided it’s time to do so.

My physical pain makes my mind bounce off the walls.

It helps my darkness surface.

Because I really hurt.

Physically, I’m miserable a lot of the time.

And it’s really bad this week.

I’ve had a hard time staying asleep because I’ll move into a position that my joints disapprove of and I wake up and have to gently move my legs into a slight and forgiving bend.

My knees feel like someone took a baseball bat to them most days.

Not just right now.

But this week they’ve leveled up.

They’re sore to move and sore to the touch.

They tend to pop all the time too.

My left knee is worse than my right.

My kneecap chronically gets knocked out of place on my left leg.

Patella instability is what it’s called.

On top of tricompartmental arthritis and several other issues. 

The last time a bigger pop happened in my left knee, my eyes started watering and I got very close to getting sick.

My ankles and back are creaky too.

Both of those areas are degrading a little slower than my knees.

Thank fuck.

I’m just totally, completely drained.

I’ve been laying on the couch, and cuddling with my dog this week.

Sitting up hurts because my knees are bent.

Putting my feet on the coffee table is a no-go because my knees don’t have support under them and they start biting quickly.

Sitting up also sucks because my lower back has a tendency to spaz a lot when sitting.

I got a RFA done on my lower back a couple of months ago.

I think I talked about that a bit.

But they weren’t able to do more than two facet joints within a six month period.

For some awful reason.

So I’ve been getting epidurals in my L3 area for the past couple of months.

I get another one in about ten days.

*sigh*

My right ankle is becoming more painful as the time goes by.

I had to have a “clean-up” type surgery last summer on my left one.

They went in and cleaned off the bone spurs and smoothed everything off for me.

It’s a night and day difference.

But it’s worrisome because my right ankle is starting to act up bad now.

In the same way my left one started a few years back.

I know that my body is riddled with arthritis.

I was first diagnosed at age twenty six.

I have a hard time thinking properly because of my chronic pain issues – as well as all of the mental trash.

I never take it seriously until I can barely move without immediate and lingering pain.

Until it gets to be so intense that I can’t wrap my head around it anymore.

I ignore it.

Because it’s a constant thing.

Every second of every day, I am in physical pain in some area.

It’s completely unavoidable for me.

My physical pain leeches into every aspect of my life.

But I ignore the bulk of it because there’s only so much that can be done.

This is where I’ll use that lovely phrase, it is what it is.

The doc’s didn’t want to touch my knees for years because they weren’t totally fucked yet. 

Now they are but they won’t do two total replacements for another five years or so.

Due to my age.

I’m too young they tell me.

Too young to be having stage 4 loss in both knees.

They’re bone on bone already.

And have been for about two, three years now.

I’ve been told by many doctors over the years that my knees look about thirty years older than I am.

My knees have been my main physical issue in my life.

I remember even in middle school they ached fiercely.

The PE teacher would make us do squats.

I had to get a doctor’s note to be able to do another activity instead.

Because my eyes would water when doing squats or lunges.

So fucking painful.

My knees just ache.

The pain is miserable.

No matter where in the body it surfaces.

It permeates through every thought and I just have to sit and be miserable for a while.

Until it fades again.

It’s the story of my life.

Being forced by my carbon based water sack to stop in my tracks and be surrounded in it.

How fucking miserable.

I plow through.

I do.

But good lort, what the hell did I do to deserve all of this?

How did I get these horrid pain levels in my life?

Mental and physical?

Like, c’mon now…

It’s awful to have the same pains in the same places that are so spread out in my lower body.

From my tailbone area to the tips of my toes.

I don’t usually talk about this, but I also had a huge bone spur on my left foot’s big toe.

I have been in pain with it easily for 8 years before the surgery.

It grew in size until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

That was the main reason for the ankle surgery last year actually.. 

They were gonna tear up my toe.

Might as well do the ankle really quick too.

I had a bone spur on my big toe that was over eight millimeters long.

And arched up from the first MTP joint in my left foot.

From the outside, there was a giant red bump on the same area.

And it’d burn when I’d touch it.

My doctor, the head of foot and ankle surgery at University of Colorado, hadn’t seen one that big yet.

You can read more about the procedure that I had here. 

They gave me specialized corrective insoles to wear in my shoes after I could walk again, post surgery.

Well, i don’t seem to read directions that well.

So before I knew it, my toe couldn’t handle it and I stopped using them.

I think it’s time to start using them gradually, as intended, now..

Because now I know what to do.

I gotta do something because I just can’t get comfortable this week and it’s so annoying.

It’s making it impossible to focus on anything.

I’m impressed I was able to write coherently today.

Well, back to the dog cuddles.

– Keren