While maintaining balance isn’t quite on the horizon yet, walking without tripping, falling, shuffling and general exhaustion is on the far horizon ... I finally have an appointment with an orthotics place for an AFO brace. I’d never heard of those before. Apparently, their sole purpose in life is to hold my left foot up as I can’t seem to manage that on my own, and make the whole “struggling to learn to walk again” a bit easier. The neurosurgeon is the one who is supposed to figure out why I can’t feel my lower legs anymore and struggle so hard for balance when I try to stand unsupported. Once I get the brace cast to my left leg, it should take 2-3 weeks to receive it.
And naturally, I’m looking at yet another road trip on May 9th that may knock me for a loop if the brace doesn’t arrive before then.
FUN WITH NEW HAMPSHIRE EZ PASS. (NOT): I have never used EZ Pass. Simple reason: never needed it; used the commuter rail. Now, looking forward to May 9th, I realized I needed one. Simple enough, right? Dead wrong!No matter what variation of my address I put in the online application, it came back as a non-recognizable address. I tried every variation I could think of, and it continued to reject it. Tried the mailing address. Tried the house address. Tried “Rd” instead of “Road”. Tried omitting “Road” altogether. New Hampshire EZ Pass didn’t recognize any of them – and I think I should know what my own address is; I get mail at that address every day! It’s not as though I was mis-typing the bloody thing! By the end of this hour-long exercise in blood pressure-raising frustration, I was ready to throw heavy objects at the computer screen. Who writes these online applications??? Fire them immediately!
As it was, when they open in the morning, they are going to get railed up one side and down the other. Idiots. Flagrantly ill-bred, illiterate, malformed idiots. Nothing like wasting hours of people’s time, is there? I could have waited in line at 2,000 “CASH ONLY” toll booths in all the time they wasted singlehandedly on their idiotic website.
FUN WITH BLOWING UP BALLS: So I had two exercises I was supposed to also do at home ... exercises with leg weights (5 lb. each) and the balance exercise ball (56 cm diameter). The ball exercises were actually beneficial during physical therapy ... for one, they loosened and elongated the spine area, and two, they helped me learn how to balance my lower legs on top of the ball, which required a certain amount of abdominal control. Went to a local department store sporting goods area and bought them both. What I hadn’t realized is that I would need to use a hand pump to blow up this rather large ball. (I’ve never blown up balls before – what did I know? I must have thought it self-inflated or something.) Started around noon ... and was still pumping air into that thing when I went to bed that night ...! Woke up the next morning and went, “Ow!” – apparently, my elbow joint was a little cranky from the workout. I fully expect to do major damage to myself with this ball, so stay tuned for future emergency room visit details ...FUN WITH JEANS: So once I started getting the blood sugar under control ... I was going from normal to hypoglycemic in mere seconds; it was frightening ... I stopped needing to use as much insulin as I was taking ... and the weight started dropping off of me. Part of me was thrilled with that ... the other part was looking at the doctor’s weight loss records in some concern and suspecting that the weight was coming off faster than it should have, because at some point, it is definitely NOT a healthy development. Meanwhile, the level of exercising I was doing increased, in an effort to get my legs working again. Combination of the two: I started running out of clothes! I’d really had no idea how fast inches and pounds were dropping – I don’t have a scale at home since I learned that you come to depend way too much on a scale, and even the slightest variation can drive you nuts. I did know that nothing I had in my clothes closet fit me anymore. I had been thrilled a month or so earlier when I’d unpacked my skinnier clothes from the storage shed and they fit perfectly again, but even they were looking baggy now.
Fortunately, the weight loss slowed down to more reasonable levels, and I now had to find some clothes that fit. I had thought at one point of sewing my own clothes, and even that wasn’t working. I started a test sundress in the size I thought I would need ("test dress" meaning a dress made of muslin, so I wouldn’t waste good fabric on it if it didn’t work out) – and when it came time to try on the thing before finishing it, it was too big! Stared at it. Said, “You have GOT to be kidding me.” Am now going to have to take it in, before I can even think of making it for real. Was thoroughly annoyed at the time spent with nothing to show for it, and went about measuring myself again, mumbling under my breath.
Unfortunately, the loss in inches was not consistent ... as always, I tend to lose inches from the extremities first and the core last. And that meant: I was two different sizes, depending on which part of me I was buying clothes for. Jeans that fit perfectly in the legs and hips didn’t close at the waist; jeans that closed at the waist were too loose and baggy in the legs and hips. Drove me nuts, trying to find anything that fit. Was all over the place trying to find some decent jeans. And finally found them – at Walmart of all places. Was shuffling back to the register on my rollater with my exercise ball and ankle weights and passed right by the jeans area. Stopped. Said, “Hmmm.”
Came home with a pair of Levi Strauss Signature “Modern Skinny” jeans – and discovered they fit!! No way I was trying to fit into a dressing room with the rollater – had to wing it. Finally – a pair of jeans that fit. Don’t know how long that will last ... like I said, I’m still losing weight and inches ... but for now, you’d be amazed how happy a good pair of jeans can make a person feel, after they’ve been shuffling around in loose, baggy and unflattering ones for so long.As I said, being taken on a road trip on the 9th to Summerfest, which is on the beach ... I truly needed a good pair of jeans for that. Ahhh, life’s simpler pleasures.
NOTE: No, the photo is most decidedly NOT me ... you couldn’t put me in heels like that and expect me to last longer than two-tenths of a second with my balance issues, trust me (can we say ‘Wobble, wobble, wobble, CRASH!’, boys and girls?) Those are the jeans, though. Now ... if I could only find them in a boot cut, I’d be in ecstasy: reason, I’m worried that the lower leg brace won’t fit under those. Argh! Wouldn't that just be my luck?
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