Chronic Pain Sucks

I don't often use this blog to discuss personal issues. I am a pretty private person, and talking about myself is actually uncomfortable for me.


However.


I suffer from chronic pain. A lot of people do. And if you really want to see some interesting chronic pain numbers, look here.


There are many, many causes for chronic pain. Mine is due to a ruptured disc in my neck



The last few weeks have been pretty miserable for me. I see a pain management specialist (let's call him PMS), taking his prescribed meds regularly, and having occasional epidural steroid injections (ESI). (MY chronic pain stems from a ruptured cervical disc.) I had another ruptured cervical disc surgical fused in 11/08, but this second one herniated just a few weeks after that surgery, and started to bother me about a year ago. The surgeon and the pain management physician both felt it was in my best interest to try to treat the newly herniated disc medically (meaning "nonsurgically") at the time, rather than hitting me with a second major neck surgery so soon after the first.



Anyway, I had been doing fairly well with the prescribed meds and injections until about 3 weeks ago, and something changed (we don't know what, except that the fragmented and herniated disc fragments are now impinging much more on my cervical nerve roots than they had been.) My PMS saw me immediately (bless him!), gave me another ESI, and prescribed some much stronger narcotics, plus a powerful muscle relaxer, in addition to my usual pain management prescription.



The ESI worked for 8 days. And I woke up this morning right back where I was 9 days ago - just absolutely unable to get into a comfortable position due to the pain in my neck and left arm. I have taken all the prescribed narcotics and muscle relaxers that I can (OK - I have taken more than I should have). Up until about 30 minutes ago, I was too loopy to put coherent thoughts together, but these meds have a paradoxical effect on me - rather than making me groggy, or letting me sleep, they make me agitated and hyper - so I can't sleep off the pain - I just kind of walk around the house, or toss and turn on the bed, until they finally take a little edge of the pain, which is where I am now. And I apologize if this post is nonsensical - I am very much MUI (Mentally Under the Influence) from these drugs, and having a really difficult time concentrating. I have some moist heat packs on my neck and shoulder, and decided to sit here and blurt out personal stuff, which is so unlike me, and probably totally not interesting to anyone who is still reading this.



But if you ARE still reading, here is a real gift for you, at least that's how I felt about it.



My friend Pam Brisse posted this on her blog, and I just wish everyone in world could read it. It is so well-written, and offers great perspective on what it is like to live with chronic pain.

[And Pam's blog is a nice read, too - and look at her gorgeous blog banner, while you are over there!]

When I woke up this morning I felt like I had no spoons. After finally getting out of bed (the need to pee overtook the need to stay in bed) and taking some drugs, and writhing around until they started to kick in, I felt like I had 1 spoon - and I used that to feed Bailey. I now feel like I have 4 or 5 spoons, and my heating pads are starting to cool down, so I need to get up to go microwave them again.



I want to give a huge shout out to this microwaveable heating pad that I splurged on about 3 months ago at Bed Bath & Beyond: The Original Bed Buddy Body Wrap. Over the years, I have bought probably 20 different kinds of microwaveable heat wraps, but this Bed Buddy Wrap is the best. EVER. It has a velcro tab that lets you wrap it around your neck, or your shoulder, or a knee, thigh, or whatever, and it will stay there. No kidding - all my other ones fall off or shift if I turn my head or lean forward - I know a lot of you know what I'm talking about. And it holds the heat a long time. And this is a huge plus as far as I'm concerned: it is unscented! All the other ones I have either have lavender, or some kind of herb, or rice - and you heat them up and wrap them around your neck and are smothered in smell. I know that the manufacturers of these wraps consider that to be "aromatherapy", and relaxing, and a big selling point. But when you have allergies, or (like me) fragrance-induced migraines, no thanks. So I am loving my Bed Buddy.

And the Bed Buddy Wrap is available on Amazon, too. I have provided a link over on the right there -------------------------------------------------------------->
to a lot of my recent favorite finds on Amazon.

Good grief, I am really rambling.

Evidently, it is NOT just me

I continue to receive spammy comments, and so does Bailey.

Mousing over the comments (without clicking! Never click!!) shows that they link to a sordid array of porny sites.

Obviously, I do not, and will not, be moderating these comments through - they just get rejected.

But my research shows that this is a known Blogger issue, and that Blogger doesn't care. Freedom of Speech, and all.

Is it just me?

Or should I say, "私がそう思っているだけでしょうか。/気のせいかな。"

Bailey and I have been blogging for a few years, and starting about six months ago, we both started getting comments in Japanese on both of our blogs. While neither of us can read Japanese, the comments always seemed to be different, from our admittedly non-professional analysis of the characters. The commenters' names were composed of 2 0r 3 of these characters, and the comments were usually 2-3 lines long, and ended in a really long ellipse, like this "......................................................."

And to be fair, the language may not be Japanese at all; it may be Korean, or Vietnamese, or another similar Asian language.

But I have run a bunch of them through the translator at dictionary.com, using every possible source language I could find on that site, and none of them translate to English.

It started with 1 or 2 comments per month on each blog. Now I am getting 1 or 2 a day, and Bailey gets 3-4 each week. And starting today, some of mine have dispensed with the foreign characters in the commenter's name, and now use our alphabet (albeit in nonsensical combinations).

I am just rejecting all these comments, and writing them off as spam. I am afraid that the ellipses might actually be a link to some sort of spammy page or virus, so I am just not letting them through. But I am really interested in hearing from you guys - is anyone else getting these, or are Bailey and I suddenly the toast of Asia?

And on a side note, I have actually had a lot of time for jewelry design and creation lately, and have finished some neat stuff, and have a lot of other partially finished projects (as usual). I am just horrible about taking the photos, uploading them, editing them, and posting them to my blog. I will try to do better.

I don't know what Bailey's excuse is. He does sleep a lot.

If anyone else is getting these weird comments, please tell me about it! Thanks!

EDITED TO ADD: Bailey & I are both still getting these comments, and I have been able to determine definitely that there is embedded HTML in the ellipses. Something strange is definitely going on....

EDITED YET AGAIN, TO ADD: Oh, goodie. They contain embedded links to PORN.
I will try to cut and paste the non-porny part here - the sender of today's comment is:
瑜吟, but unfortunately the entire comment (besides being in Japanese, apparently) is just a clickable link, and I can't highlight it to copy and paste here. But merely hovering over the comment showed some really interesting-sounding sites. I'll just be sure and check those out. And so will my dog.

Good grief.

Kumihimo

Kumihimo is my latest venture. I took a class 2 weeks ago, and instead of choosing to do the 18-inch necklace that the other students chose to do, I had my mind set on a lariat. A 60-inch lariat, to be exact. Naturally.

If I had fully understood the implications of this, I might not have been such a rebel.

Kumihimo is a lot of fun, and though it was a little difficult to get the hang of at first, once I figured it out, it turned out to be relatively easy. And it is completely portable once it is set up on the disc.

This is the kumihimo disc - it is made of foam, and is maybe 8 inches in diameter.

The most tedious part of Kumihimo is the set up. At least 8 different strands of seed beads have to be pre-strung and then wound onto something that will hold them - plastic bobbins work well. The number of beads needed on each strand to complete a necklace varies with the length of necklace desired and with the size of the seed bead, and when using size 8 seed beads, it takes about 10 beads per inch.


So for an 18-inch necklace, I would have needed to string about 180 - 200 seed beads on each of the 8 braiding cords. But for my 60 inch lariat? Yeah - I could not even start learning the technique until I had strung almost 600 seed beads on 8 different cords. That's a lot of seed beads!

The other students finished stringing their cords, and there I sat, still trying to fit the tiny beads on the thick braiding cord. Ultimately, the other students pitched in and helped me get set up, and we all started braiding.

And here is my finished lariat, with the fringe I added at the ends.

And back to my point about portability: once all your beads are loaded on the bobbins, the whole shebang fits in a Ziploc bag, disc and all. And the notches on the disc keep your strands in place, no matter what. Trust me - they do not come out of the notches, even when thrown in a tote bag with a bunch of books, or tossed around in a car, etc. And once you are all set up, there are no needles, no tools - so this is an ideal project for air travel, or car travel: you hold it in one hand, move the strands with the other; it is lightweight - I love it. It doesn't hurt my hands at all!

Of course, you can also do Kumihimo without beads, or with a combination of fibers and beads - so I love its versatility.

I've purchased some pretty textured fibers to try, and I am anxiously waiting for my square Kumihimo disc to arrive. The square disc supposedly makes a flat braid, and I already have my colors picked out for my first project on the square disc. A 60-inch beaded lariat, of course. Because apparently, I never learn.

Custom Design

A good friend dropped by the shop about 3 weeks ago, carrying a garment bag.

Inside, she had a gorgeous, peacock-blue satin evening gown. Just below the plunging neckline was a diamond-shaped beaded design, about 3 inches square; the design had a hematite-colored background, bordered with peacock-blue bugle beads, with a beaded flower in the center.

My friend wanted a necklace and earrings to match the dress.

I took a photo of the beaded design, and gathered some beads together, and started stitching. I didn't have any peacock-blue bugle beads, but I had these size 8 delicas, which I figured would substitute nicely, once I got them lined up on the sides.

20 hours later, I had the beaded pendant stitched, and set out to design the necklace and earrings.

I chose 2 Swarovski square rings to bling it up, and hung them so that they mimicked the pendant.

My friend was really happy with the end result, so Yay!

Snow in Aiken

This was taken at 6:15 PM.

The snow had started falling around 3:30 PM, and it is still coming down. Fast.

But it's dark outside, so Bailey and I are in trying to get warm again.

View from my kitchen window.

Any weather is soccer weather!

Snow bunny.

Snow bird.

We're supposed to get about 3 more inches, and then it is all supposed to melt tomorrow.

A couple of completed projects!

Just a little bit about 2 of my latest designs, both available in my Etsy shop:

This is a pendant I designed a couple of weeks ago:
It was largely created using various cold connections techniques, although I had to make the fused glass pieces in the kiln first. I then worked out a pattern on paper that would allow the glass to peek through a window in the copper, with a big focus on asymmetry, which I really love to play with.


This is a bracelet I created over the weekend:
I wire-wrapped hundreds of beads, including freshwater pearls, glass seed beads, and large aquamarine rondelles, to a sturdy bronze-colored frame. I love the blue, bronze, pink, and white palette - it is very soothing. The bracelet is easily adjustable to anywhere from a size 6 to a size 7.5 wrist.

And I actually have time this week to bead-weave, something I have really missed. I'm working on a freeform peyote bracelet, which I hope to showcase here this weekend.