I built a dog kennel pad for them yesterday. This project included
the following:
2. Buying
and hauling 15 bags of pea gravel for the base.
3. Getting
78 stone pavers from a friend (while avoiding the earwigs, worms and
rolly-pollies).
4. Carting
them 10 at a time with my wheelbarrow from the truck to the yard avoiding
dog-made land mines because I was too lazy (?) to interrupt my project to pick ‘em
up.
5. Swearing
a wee bit when I came up short 10 stones.
6. Driving
back to the green house for 1 more bag of pea gravel and to Lowe’s for 10 more
pavers.
7. Seeing how
the new stones are a brighter red and having 2 rows together would make me
flipping crazy.
8. One-by-one
taking out already laid stones to scatter the newer colorful ones about.
9. Swearing
more than a wee bit when I realized that I dug it a tad too low and now can’t
open the gate.
10. Avoiding
my despair with chocolate covered raisins and beer while Bob sympathizes.
I’m pretty sure one leg is shorter than the other this
morning. My femurs are touching my kidneys. My hamstrings are tighter than bow
strings, and if my neck & shoulder muscles could speak, their shrill
annoying whine would make Fran Dresher’s "Nanny" voice seem like a soothing
lullaby.
I just got online and booked a massage for Wednesday. Oy.
That’s so far away.
I met Tina two summers ago after a freak accident. I mean…
freak! I’d boarded a travel bus with my middle school math club and as I side-stepped
into the aisle, I hit my head on the overhead bin. The swiftness of it caused a pinch and a tear
in my epidural lining around the front of my C6-C7 vertebrae in my neck. I didn’t
realize it at the time, but I started leaking Cerebral Spinal
Fluid (CSF). I went on about my merry
trip to Boise with these kids to kick some math.
I developed a headache about two hours into the trip. I figured
it was the just busload of middle schoolers, and as the head chaperone, I
needed to have my game on. I scrounged ibuprofen and forged on to the mall, a
movie and then the hotel for pizza, boards games in the lobby, and time in the
pool. The headache persisted but I
noticed as soon as my head hit the pillow that night, it disappeared. (CSF headaces go away when you lie down.)
I got up the next morning to hit the treadmill. (Good girl!)
I only lasted 10 minutes though and decided to just stretch. I didn’t have a headache, but something in me
knew that something was horribly wrong. I had a couple extra cups of coffee—unbeknownst
to me at the time, caffeine masks CSF leak pain—and we boarded the bus for
Boise State.
I don’t know how I made it through that day. On the bus ride
home, I called a friend who took me to the ER where there were a lot of
shoulder-shrugging doctors.
I ended up self-diagnosing the CSF leak after a friend
talked about having one after an epidural during her pregnancy.
The body’s response to a CSF leak is to tighten your neck
muscles so you can’t move your head easily. With no cushioning fluid in there,
you can give yourself a concussion with the slightest of head turns. My neck was sore and immobile At one
point, I had lost so much fluid, that I could feel a tugging behind my eyes which
was my brain sinking due to so much fluid loss. EWWWW!
The ordeal lead to three ER trips, a cortisone shot in Idaho
Falls when they thought I had a dislocated disc, four days in the hospital in
Pocatello, seven days over two trips to the University of Utah hospital, six
blood patches and missing NINE AND A HALF weeks of work. (A blood patch is where they draw blood from
your arm and then inject it at the sight of the leak so it will clot and clog
and allow it to heal.) Suddenly middle school math seemed more dangerous than college
rugby.
When we got the leak sealed and I returned to work, I still
had a headache. It wasn’t the debilitating
leaking-spinal-fluid kind, but it was still severe and interrupting my life.
After five months of head pain, three different friends
suggested I see a massage therapist named Tina Clayson.
I had a massage therapist I liked, but as they described Tina's
treatments, I relented and scheduled an appointment.
SWEET CREAM BUTTER, SHE DAMN NEAR KILLED ME!!
The things she did to my neck and my jaw rivaled the pain at
the worst of my leak. I left teardrops on her little face holder. She said “wow”
a lot and told me over and over to drink water after I left and to come back. Yeah—OK.
I’ll bring a cattle prod and riding crop with me next time to make her infliction of pain easier.
The next morning when I woke up… no headache. This was my
first headache-free morning in over FIVE MONTHS!! I wanted to call my attorney
immediately and add Tina to the will.
 |
| Ok. Ok. Her stuido is really called Renew You |
She renewed my moo!!!!
Wahoooooo! I see Tina regularly
now. She can tell when I’ve been biking. She can tell when I haven’t been stretching,
and she can tell when I’ve eaten too many Girl Scout Cookies. She’s like Santa
for crying out loud. The woman is a
gifted massage therapist and if you’re in need of a little Moo Renewal… Check
out her new yoga and massage studio on the corner of Maple and McKinnlely. http://www.renewyoulmt.com
No comments:
Post a Comment