I just realized there are polls in this and wanted to check it out. So here we go:
Monthly Archives: June 2010
Neuropathy
Today I just wanted to touch on something that’s a daily thing for me. Neuropathy. The reason I wanted to touch on this is pretty simple: I want to know if anyone else has similar issues as me. I don’t expect anyone to have the same conditions as I do exactly. I’ve already been told that it’s unique for me to have all these issues. So I’d like to hear from other diabetics and non-diabetics who have similar conditions to mine.
To start off, I have one of the most common for diabetics, peripheral neuropathy. Basically, I have issues with my nerves in my feet and hands. These damaged nerves in turn cause serious pain. It’s sort of like your foot falling asleep, and the tingling sensation you experience afterwards. Except for me, it’s all the time. On top of that, I get stabbing pains occasionally in the extremities. Well stabbing might not be accurate. It’s more like sharp pains. Like someone is sticking a needle repeatedly into my feet or legs or wherever.
I’m also experiencing numbness in the bottom of my feet. That just means the nerves have died at the most extreme tips. That’s the reason of course for me to walk with a cane because of imbalance. But the imbalance isn’t entirely because of the numbness. But that’s another story.
Next, I also have autonomic neuropathy. This means a various amount of things. Basically in myself, the brain gets confused a lot. How this happens in me is my sweating. When I eat food, I sweat. Yes, it gets to be a crazy thing. It could be 20 below while I’m eating, but I’ll start to sweat while I’m munching on my favorite grub. It can get pretty tiresome after a while.
I also have the same types of pain I have in my extremities in my stomach and chest areas. Basically the entire trunk of my body. Obviously this doesn’t Really fall into the peripheral neuropathy since it’s not peripheral. But hey, it’s still the same. Basically for me, at times it just feels like I’m rolling a vat of needles. The movie Saw comes to mind.
I think I’ve touched on the major things I have due to neuropathy. I’m sure there are more that I never thought were because of neuropathy.
For those of you who are experiencing neuropathy I’d love to hear about your experiences and pains. Perhaps we could compare notes and get some home remedies from each other. Of which I don’t Really have any. I’m just loaded up on Gabapentin (Neurontin).
100 Facts in 100 days – Fact 33
I know I haven’t done this in a Really long time. But I’m trying to get back into blogging so I can get distracted.
Fact 33: I used to work at Earthlink Network. I was a Technical Support Representative, Tier 2. I took care of escalations yes. It was a crazy job. You’re pretty much a slave to the phone and I remember after call time was pretty much your break time. I have so many crazy technical support stories. I think I’ve submitted a couple of them to various sites on the internet that take in crazy technical support calls.
I don’t miss those times, but I definitely miss the people (well most of them), and the good times I had. When I worked there, Earthlink wasn’t Really the super giant company it is now, and was based in Pasadena, CA. I also remember Sky Dayton’s offices being right across from my cubicle, and he’d look out on the TS floors once in a while. He was pretty cool. He also had an Earthlink Network surfboard in his office as well. I’m sure there were days he just took off to go surfing. “It’s good to be king” hehe.
So. yeah.
It just seems like everything in this world is going crazy. With the oil crisis in the gulf, I just don’t know what to think of anything anymore. But I won’t talk about that here. This place is all about me.
What’s been going on? Well since I last posted, I’ve steadied out on my gabapentin. It seems that the medication has had enough side effects on me to cause some weird issues. Remember I was talking about my balance and the right side of my body? It’s suspected that the gabapentin is affecting that. Basically, what we’re talking about is that it prevents my brain from doing stuff. Therefore the weird things such as my right side of my body acting slow, the imbalance I feel, and so on. I understand it could be a cause of my headaches as well, but I don’t Really see how. But hey, I’m not the doctor.
Other than that, because of the imbalance and numbing of my feet from neuropathy, I have to walk with a cane when I leave the house. Only when I leave the house because outside the pavement and ground isn’t always level, and I don’t Really have much of a hold on anything out there. Pretty sucky. But my dad got me a cane, and it’s very cool, as you can see from the image to the left.
My neuropathic pain has steadied out to be painful only some of the time, and when I say that, I mean I only get the sharp pains every ten to fifteen minutes. At night, it’s still bad, and I have to get distracted by music in order to get to sleep. I’m sure there are others that must have this extreme neuropathy like me, and I’d love to hear from you. We could compare notes.
The quest to grow my hair for Locks of Love is still continuing. I don’t think it’s quite 10″ braided yet, but it’s getting close. I’m very anxious to get my hair cut back to it’s shortness.
Other than that, recently I got X-rays of right shoulder and right hip to see if there were any physical issues going on with them, since I have pain in my major joints, especially the right side all the time. However, they didn’t find anything at all, so I’ll probably end up getting a shot of steroids in my shoulder so I can heal that with Physical Therapy. Who knows what they’ll do for my hip.
The biggest concerns right now is my sugars. They’ve been running higher than normal, and I haven’t been doing anything different. I’ve gotta get together with my doctor and see what is going on with that. We shall see.
Other than that, we’re coming up on year one of the kidney transplant. It’s quite amazing. Life after transplant has been a bit different. But I’m getting used to it. Sort of.
WordPress 3.0 and Expression Engine 2.0
I’m very happy to say that my WordPress sites are all upgraded to 3.0. But I have to admit that as a major point release, it doesn’t show much. I’m not saying there weren’t major upgrades, because there were. The merge of WordPress and WordPress MU is a major accomplishment. Kudos to the Automattic team for this. I’ve been waiting for this since I started using WordPress back in 1.2. However, it’s a disappointment that I will probably have to reinstall my WordPress on my websites to get it working the way I want. While this is not a big deal, it does pose this question:
WordPress 3.0 or ExpressionEngine 2.0?
I’ve gone and upgraded my license for EE 2.0 only because Leslie Camacho, President of Ellislab has said that the release of ExpressionEngine 2.1 is “near”. That’s very encouraging to me. So I’ve set up my test site and I’m familiarizing myself with all the new features of 2.0. There are some things I won’t Really know how they turn out until I go live, (such as spam comments and how well EE 2 handles them), however it seems pretty encouraging.
The control panel for WP 3 is pretty much the same as 2. There are no real big surprises here. This is a good thing in my opinion. The control panel for EE 2 is very different from 1, but at the same time, very familiar to veterans of 1. I’d say there are improvements, and there are things that probably didn’t need to be changed. I have yet to explore a lot of the new version.
More to follow.
My soundtrack: Honky Tonk Women…
Way back in 1989 or so, The Rolling Stones released Steel Wheels and went on a worldwide tour. I was one of the ones lucky enough to go to one of their concerts. I remember this one pretty clearly except some of the people who happened to go with me. I do remember a couple of my friends, Steve and Mark, coming with us, mainly to see the opening act of Living Colour. Who were awesome by the way. However, when the Stones came out, they must have gotten bored and not known the songs (how can you not know their songs?) because they fell asleep. Yes, it was rather shameful and I tried to deny I was with them.
Anyways, one of the songs I remembered the most was Honky Tonk Women. When the music started, these giant balloons of women on both sides of the stage blew up. It was awesome. I just remember the entire stadium (the old Vet Stadium in Philly) was in an uproar and we were singing the song as loud as we could. I have to admit I think that was the most fun I had in a while.
I was trying to find a good video, unfortunately I couldn’t find a good one. You’ll have to excuse me. I’ll update this post when I do find one.