It’s been another not so great day. The weekend, on the whole, wasn’t horrible. The 10 MTX did hit me hard but it wasn’t totally unexpected and a little extra nappy poo helped. Tea helped. Hot bath helped. It wasn’t … Continue reading
I love work from home Fridays… especially this time of year. It isn’t too hot to actually sit outside and it is warm enough for sun tea and birdies singing. I am wearing one glove because for some stupid reason my … Continue reading
The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Robert Cushing
Today was yoga day. The last two yoga days were great. The first one was too fast but not bad. The second one was dead on. This morning when I got up, my ankles and wrists and knuckles hurt more than “normal”. I took the new medicine (anti-inflamitory) and it is NOT what I was hoping for. It did take a bit of the edge off… but not a whole lot… By the time yoga was over, I wanted to rip the instructor’s skinny little head off. It wasn’t her fault, it was mine. I was trying to keep up and my body just wasn’t cooperating. My bad.
It was really hard on my woohoo… because I’m really liking yoga.
And I’m nothing if not a typical Type A… as soon as I liked Yoga, I went out and got a used Let’s Yoga for the DS, I downloaded a Yoga app for Squirrel’s ipod touch so I can learn (when he isn’t using it) the poses and what the poses help with… and a book from the half price book store…
What I’ve learned is…
Yoga is for everyone… even if you aren’t flexible. That means it is great for RA… you can modify poses and you can do only what you can do.
There is no success or failure, no good… no bad… just be true to yourself… true to your practice. You can only make yoga your own if you are being true to yourself.
Three things to remember…
Move Slowly
Breathe Deeply
Work at your own pace
If you do these three things, any movement can be yoga. It is 99% breathing.
Remember, yoga is like just about anything else you do, it is difficult before it is easy.
Sit down in a chair, put your hands on your knees, breathe deeply… fill your chest… fill your your chest clear down to the bottom of your stomach.
Today, yoga practice kicked my butt. I totally modified my poses and went into child’s pose several times when I just COULDN’T keep up with the class.
There is a girl in my class who has arthritis in her toes… not RA, which she said she is forever grateful for… no $*^t… but she says what she finds absolutely most important is to do things for herself. Do things that she can do and make time for herself to be gentle with herself, to be good to herself, to do what she needs to do.
Hello… wow… okay, I can listen now!…
Posted in Fitness, rheumatoid arthritis, yoga
Okay… something is definitely wonky on wordpress for me (thank you, Scotty for giving me the heads up…)… so I will try again…and again (I only had to publish this one three times…
Okay… so it is a Mary Sunshine kind of day yesterday. It may not last, but I’m enjoying it while it does.
Went to Rheumy today. I spent the majority of the day taking stock of myself and of how I am feeling both physically and emotionally. I have known that I’ve been feeling some better. After the last doctor appointment I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to be too optimistic, but hey… I am terminally optimistic and a disgusting morning person so… it is hard to get away from. I know the bump on my knuckle is smaller and I can almost make a fist even first thing in the morning without aleve. And I know I haven’t taken prednisone in almost a month. I walked 9 miles Sunday (I really enjoy our weekly walk in the park) and I even made 3 miles at lunch yesterday at the gym (the hot shower felt fantastic!).
Doctor confirmed that I’m not sniffing something good… not even sharpie… When I started this ‘adventure’ I was up to 26 joints affected. Today (even in the rainy weather) I was only achey a 2 and she only found 7 joints still swollen. My right hand, of course, will be my problem child. IF YOU ROLLER BLADE WEAR WRIST GUARDS!!!
She said that my body is running right now on the 6 MTX level… while I’m taking 8 a week… so I should keep getting better and better (especially when I will be starting on 10 pills Friday). And I don’t have to go back until May.
She did start me on an anti-inflamatory med for days (like while Squirrel was in the hospital and stress was a 14 on a scale of 1 to 10) and aleve doesn’t really take the edge off and suggested zantac 150 to keep from the anti-inflamatory eating holes in my stomach. But I don’t think I will really need them much. Will carry them just in case, but will think very hard before I take them.
I got an ‘atta-girl’ for taking Yoga class and she said that, even after the class, keep it up.
AND she told me that I need to push for blood work for Squirrel because Keppra tends to mess with blood counts.
I was thinking a lot about why I have all of this going on… and I was thinking a lot about how there is a purpose for everything and there is very little “chance” in life… and I realized that I can honestly say to Squirrel (not just a mommy saying it but really meaning it) that pills can be truly crappy but your body does adapt to the new meds and the side effects get smaller and smaller and you will eventually realize that the feeling better is just there and not always the crappy feeling.
Am I mary sunshine? Probably.
Posted in Journalling, motivation, rheumatoid arthritis
Tomorrow afternoon is yet another Rheumy appointment. Today was lab day (oh joy). Now, I sit and take stock of how I’m feeling. I have a nice hot cup of Chai White Tea (it was on sale this morning on the way to the lab and tea is becoming more and more of a staple) and I’m listening to the wind chimes singing through the open windows.
It is spring in central Texas.
I’m chilly (that, I think, is the biggest down side to feeling better from the MTX and my biggest complaint to the meds side effects… I’m TERMINALLY cold… I can fight the tummy yukkies… I feel like a dork at 77 degrees curled up with a blanket and wearing a hoodie).
Today, I’m counting my blessings. My toes aren’t hurting (even after the 9 plus mile walk yesterday), not my ankles or my knees. My knuckles are a little stiff (maybe a 2) but not hurting too much and my bumps are going down. I have music to listen to (love streaming dtuneslive.com). The sun is shining. The windchimes are singing. Tea feels wonderful. Squirrel hasn’t seized yet and her month is just about up (January 26, February 21… one more week until maybe I can take a deep breath). Yoga is helping my mood and my breathing.
While we were on our walk yesterday, I was checking in with my body and realizing that I’m breathing better than I had been. I’m not sure if I can put that down to any of the meds or not but I’m feeling better that way too. It might be due to actually taking my singular every day too… something.
Posted in Uncategorized
It was a wonderful Sunday. I love Sunday walks and today was almost 10 miles. The park is beautiful with the spring flowers. Only one bluebonnet yet that we ran across, but lots of other wild flowers starting to sneak out.
Today felt really good. I think the MTX is actually working. My knuckle bump is just about totally gone, I can make a fist with only a couple Aleve. There is still some stiff, but not nearly as much. Now I look back on the last year and wonder how I could have really been so stupid.
What a way to start the ‘spring’ weather.
I splurged on 2 DSi “games”… one Let’s Yoga (new) one Let’s Pilate’s (used and only $8). After the 10 mile walk, I copped out on a simple 5 min yoga session, but I also did my 15 min stretching at the tail end of the walk.
I also “celebrated” with donuts (I love Sundays). a dozen mixed… six cream filled. Heavenly. And the coffee is really good today. Tomorrow the clean tea jar will make its happy sun tea on the back porch as I work from home before and after Lab time.
Life doesn’t seem quite so down today.
DS got 2 used games for his PS3 so he is in Spring Break heaven. DD went for a walk (all by herself, I am SO proud of myself for not freaking out for the whole 3 hours she was at the park).
Pizza for dinner, and it is almost bed time… at least wind down time… time to listen to the birds sing in the back yard through the open back door.
Posted in Fitness, Journalling
Okay, I have started to not like this game, at all… Man… got up this morning and hurt… everywhere.
Yesterday, I probably should have seen it coming, but I’m still not always remembering that I have RA and sometimes RA hurts when you don’t expect it to and that sometimes it hurts when you should expect it to and that I can sometimes affect when it hurts.
I should have realized and taken steps to try to counteract it ahead of time.
I didn’t.
Yesterday was a forgetful day for my kid. I don’t know if it is the epilepsy or the meds to treat the epilepsy but she totally zoned out yesterday. She went from telling me to remind her that she needed to go to tutorials after school to two min later not knowing why she had to go, not knowing she missed a test, not knowing she was failing because she missed the test…. not knowing who the teacher was she missed the test for… not knowing we had a dog…
If it wasn’t her (she just isn’t “with it” enough for long enough to come up with this on her own for 3o min so I don’t think it was her playing and it seems to follow a pattern) then it is something and we need to find the something.
She got caught in a lie… and this lie is a big one for the current situation… and she knows it.
DH was screaming at her. She was screaming back. I was trying desperately to get my albuteral out of its box so I could actually breathe. She thinks everyone except her friends (FRIENDS? really? don’t get me started right now) suck totally and she wants to move in with them because we are mean and don’t let her have a life and don’t let her do whatever she wants and we put a roof over her head and provide food she refuses to eat most of the time and provide her with an IPod and a cell phone plan that lets her talk all the time to everyone and surf the net when she wants and go out and put the extra hundred or so dollars to the money she has for clothes to buy her the extra couple pair of jeans just because she wants new jeans… but we are unreasonable because we want her to turn in her homework so she won’t get -0- and fail and we want her to not lie all the time and we expect her to let us know where she is so if she has a seizure we know where to find her…
We are horrible parents.
She thinks “Shadow” has the right idea and that maybe emancipation would be a GREAT thing (at 15… she can’t carry the bowl of peanut butter down the steps when she comes down stairs so we don’t get ants in her room or mice but she is going to go out and get a job and an apartment and handle her own medical situation when OH Hey she can’t drive because of the epilepsy is so new).
So… long rant finally getting to the point. With all of the drama and the fact that I went down to the park and cried and threw rocks at the creek and cussed under my breath in the rain… this morning I hurt. My knuckles hurt. My wrist hurts. My ankles and toes hurt and my chest hurts… kind of inside breathing kind of hurts.
So, back on the aleve and maybe I will have to cave in and take a prednisone just because I have to drag her butt to the doctor today…
Oh, isn’t that a scary thought… ah well.
I have two days comp time coming (starting t
Posted in Uncategorized
Well, yesterday was my first day of yoga. Sixty min a day once a week is going to be the perfect amount to get me started. I tried “taping” the class… but my nano won’t pick up enough to make it very useful. I will try with my little voice recorder next time. It seems to do better.
The class made me sore, but sore in a good way. The teacher gave us a pretty thorough amount of information on poses… and after class people were kind of pulling together into a team to talk about how NOT a total beginner’s class it was and how fast she went and how they thought everyone did.
There were some people in class who were WAY good. I followed along with the lady next to me. Apparently that made me seem to be a better than average person. interesting.
A couple people commented on how far I could take the poses since this is my first class. I figure my Rheumy will kind of comment somewhere along the way. She already made the comment that I should, based on where I am in my disease, hurt way more than I do and be less limber than I am but the stretching that I do in the morning after I work out (which I SO have to get back to…) is having its effect. I’m glad it is. Maybe if it wasn’t… I would have gotten help sooner… but it is what it is.
Now… I need to get a listing of all of the poses that we did and start looking them up and getting a better idea how to do them RIGHT and how to move from one to the other.
Posted in Fitness, Health, rheumatoid arthritis, yoga
Tagged rheumatoid arthritis, yoga
Wow… there is something to be said for not starting to feel better… If you stay hurting and feeling like crap for the most part… you don’t notice so much when you have a day when you feel way worse. … Continue reading
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