Arthritis

What I Learned About My Body This Week

/ Robin / Leave a comment

(aka: The Week My Skeleton Filed a Formal Complaint)

Good morning.

How are you all today?

I hope this finds you better than a lot of people are. And if you are having a good day, don’t feel bad about it. Tomorrow might be your turn to struggle, so if today is good, take the win. Thank the universe for it. Glory in it. Use that energy. Get some rest. You never know what tomorrow is going to bring.

As for me, I’ve had a morning.

I woke up sometime after three. Maybe two. Maybe four. Definitely not five. One of those hours when the world is quiet and your brain decides that now would be a perfect time to wake up and start thinking about everything.

But here’s the thing.

Despite all that, I decided I’m having a good day.

I walked in the rain. I had a cup of coffee. I’m about to do my occupational therapy for my arm and hand. And after that I’m probably going to take a nap.

That counts as a good day.

Of course, my body and I have been having a rather intense conversation lately.

It all started when I fell on January 31 and broke my right arm. A radial fracture, which is doctor language for “this is going to be annoying for quite a while.”

During the ER visit, my muscles decided to join the party by going into severe spasms, which forced my hand into what can only be described as a claw. I responded by screaming. Every single time the spastic cramping tried to snap my hand off I screamed.

Not metaphorically. Can you scream metaphorically? Huh. I’ll have to think about that. Still, my hand struggled and pulled and drove me to screaming again and again while making a literally a claw. Imagine a hand sized turkey foot, which is a claw and I happen to be a Robin who does not happen to have a claw. Not normally. If you heard the scream you’d see the claw.

Evolution? Hardly. Jumping ahead a few hours I asked the “nice” doctor if I could have something for the screaming because he was trying to discharge me while I was still screaming and never mentioned the claw or the screaming.

The ass-hat with the medical degree asked me if I wanted a Valium. He seriously could have stopped me screaming, which I’d been doing for HOURS, with a chill pill? Was he serious? Why? Why!?

Back to our story…

This was not ideal, especially considering I’m right-handed and typing is one of the things I do most in the world. I even buy a smaller sized keyboard for my PC just so my short fingers don’t have to get up and jump so far around to find the next key.  So naturally the universe decided this would be a good time to run a series of medical tests and scans to see what else might be going on.

And that’s when things got interesting.

Since breaking my arm, I’ve had what I can only describe as a parade of imaging technology.

Here’s the current list.

Injuries and Events

• Fell on January 31, 2026 and broke my right arm
• Severe muscle spasms during the ER visit forcing my hand into a painful claw
• Ongoing pain in both legs and lower body since the fall

Hand and Joint Imaging

• Left hand X-ray – no fracture or dislocation found
• Significant pain in the finger joint despite the clear X-ray

Which is one of those moments where modern medicine says, “Nothing is wrong,” while your body says, “Oh really? Because I disagree.”

Then came the spine MRI. Why was I having one of those? Because I’d had a full spine X-ray recently and it showed a bunch of sticks and kindling and someone wanted to investigate further to see if aliens were using it to communicate in code or something cool like that. You never know. I’ve had sever lower back pain since my teens and finally a doctor decided to look at the weird looking things commonly known as “bones.”

This is the part where they slide you into a machine that sounds like someone is building a washing machine factory around your head.

The results:

• Disc bulges at several levels in the lower back
• Disc protrusion at L3–L4
• Mild narrowing of the spinal canal and nerve openings
• Changes in spinal curvature between L4 and S1
• Mild spinal canal narrowing at L4–L5

Apparently these are the areas where nerves travel down into the legs.

Which may explain why my lower body has been staging a protest.

But wait.

There’s more.

While they were examining my spine, the MRI casually discovered something else entirely.

They found a small exophytic mass on my right kidney. “Exophytic” is a weird word, isn’t it? I always thought that the word “mass” was the word to worry about. I’m sure you know what I mean. Is this like one of those alien monsters that burst out of your chest after growing to the size of a small pit bull?

Which was not what anyone was looking for, but there it was anyway, waving hello in the scan.

So now a kidney ultrasound has been ordered to figure out what exactly that is.

Modern imaging technology is very thorough. Sometimes a little too thorough. And just to make things extra festive, we’re also mixing in a few long-standing health factors:

• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Fibromyalgia
• Ostioarthritis
• Sleep Apena
• Panic Disorder
• Hypothyroidism
• ADHD
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Bipolar Disorder Type 1
• Recent fall trauma
• Total Knee Replacement
• Partial Knee Revision
• Total Knee Replacement
• A broken arm that still hasn’t gotten the memo that I have things to do
• Stop writing! Novel writing happens elsewhere. Not here. -Right! Stopping.

In short, my body and modern imaging technology have been having a very honest conversation this week, and I’ve apparently been invited.

Despite all the strange exotic lumps, the pain and exhaustion, regardless of… I forget again. Wait! The important part. I remember that now. Here it is:

I’m still here. Ain’t no doubt about that. And I’m not going anywhere and you can count on that.

I walked Bailey in the rain this morning. I had coffee. I’m going to do my occupational therapy exercises, and then I’m probably going to take a nap. Healing broken bones is exhausting. This is my second radial head fracture or something like that in the last few years. I’ve gone all my life falling out of forts and off horses, and I finally break stuff when I’m too heavy and out of shape. Talk about bad timing.

And I’ve decided something: I’m the only one who gets to decide whether I’m having a good day.

I asked myself the question: “Am I having a good day?”

And the answer, sometimes surprisingly, is yes. Yes, everything is fine.

Friends, you all have a great day.

And sometime during your day remember to ask yourself: “Am I having a good day?“

Then go have one. Today is never too late to decide to have a good day until it’s tomorrow.

Peace to you all.

Reach out if you want to say hi. I’d love to hear from you.
Honestly, I really do love hearing from each of you.

P.S. I’ve been working on revamping the blog, and while I’m not finished yet, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new look so far. Since we started adding the cartoon illustrations and have finally completed those for this post, I also decided to create a new header. From now on, you’ll be greeted by me, my son Kyle, Bailey—my Kelpie dog—and Savvy, the amazing cat/dog who truly believes that Bailey is her mom, along with a cozy blanket and my nose warmer.

Legally Disabled, At Home, Unable to Work. And I FEEL GUILTY

/ Robin / 2 Comments

It’s too late for me to tell you a story about how this came about. I do want you to know about it though because it has completely changed the way I look at my life.

I’m legally disabled because of a very difficult mental health diagnosis that I deal with all the time. More than one, actually.

I feel pressured to do all sorts of things during my days, but I never do them. Not much anyway. My mental health sticks me like a very long needle, making doing anything so very difficult.

Clean, read an instructive book, blah, blah.

I don’t have to. This is what I realized today. I’m not getting the things done anyway so why don’t I just do what I, want to do? It’s my life. I’m LEGALLY disabled. This proves to ME that it’s ok to have such a hard time. Weird, okay. That’s me.

I can do whatever I want to.

Generally, people who assume that they do not struggle with mental illness view me, as a self-appointed representative of all people who should improve their mental health; both those who have been diagnosed with a mental illness and those who are not diagnosed, and those who want to improve it.

So yeah. Try it. You choose what you want to do.

Want to turn out better work at your job than you have been doing? Then do it. You don’t need anyone’s permission.

Want to blow up a balloon and pop it behind your annoying son? Do it.

Do not use this as an excuse to quit your job or leave your partner. Don’t be daft.

I going to have to go now. I want to read a bit more about George Orwell’s “1984” and a really fantastically written book by Kate Quinn called “The Rose Code.” It’s about three women meeting and doing life together at the code braking center at Bletchley Park in the UK during WW2. Remember the Enigma code and Alan Turing?

If you’re curious about Bletchley Park and code breaking you might check out these sites begin with: (Why am I telling you this? Isn’t this site about mental health and mental illness? *See the end of the post.)

Hut 8
Code Breakers
I’ll stop now. Do you know how excited I get?!

Tonight and from now on, I pledge to try to do what I want and claim that bit of peace that comes with being in control for a moment.

But don’t come for me if I’m only human… and I fail at sometimes, but sometimes I fly.

Bipolar Disorder |  When Stress Becomes Danger | 4 Hours Left

/ Robin

I’ve been meaning to sit down and talk to you about this but, you know how it is. Stress sidelines the DOING bit after the brain thinks of something to do. In my case (this time), I have an excruciating surgery tomorrow morning, and I’m not looking forward to it. I’m not looking forward to the pain. Being able to use my thumb without debilitating pain aim definitely look directly at it. You see, I had the same surgery done on my other thumb two years ago, and I know how horribly, terribly, and frightening that pain was.

Let me quickly bring you up to date. We’ve since discovered that I have the nasty illness commonly called Fibromyalgia. I refer to it as Fibro because that’s just too long. We think that the constant pressure of the cast sent the pain level of a routine harrowing hand surgery above the charts. And no, pain meds didn’t work.

Ah yes, what’s the surgery? I’m having something put between the bones in my thumb joint. I have Osteoarthritis; this disease eats away at the stuff that keeps your bones from grinding against each other and causing intense pain.

Since it is now 2:45 a.m. I’m going to move on quickly. Leading up to today, life has been chaotic, emotional, and expensive beyond our means to pay for.

Bailey, my Kelpie (She’s a cattle dog. Google Kelpie, they’re pretty great dogs.), has struggled with severe skin issues all spring and summer. Our regular vet is booked out for months. Covid hit, and all the vets disappeared. I’m completely serious. In this area, Puget Sound in Washington State, veterinarians have been scrambling to find staff. While we waited to get in, the problems worsened. This leads us to take her to a doggie dermatologist. This is all so expensive. This is also so stressful and is especially so because of my surgery being tomorrow today at 7:30 a.m. PST.

We have a radioactive cat. Maks has growths on his thyroid and had to have feline hyperthyroid radiation treatment. I think I got that right. Anyway, he’s on the mend and zooming around the house. He’s gaining weight, and I think he’ll do really well. While he’s healing, we have to put all the dirty litter in bags, and those bags have to go in buckets, and those buckets have to sit around for 80 before we can take them to the dump. Apparently, they don’t want radioactive waste in landfills.

All these things combined with life in general, Bipolar Disorder, ADHD, PTSD, RA, OA, and Fibromyalgia, and I’m a sitting duck for a generous helping of losing control. I’ve stopped saying that I’m super stressed out because these life events are painful emotionally and overwhelming financially. Marriages and partners break up because of money. Imagine me and my underemployed family (I’m on disability so I’m broke all the time.) We had to borrow money from my mother and charge the rest. She suggested that we put the animals down if we couldn’t afford to get them help. Seriously?

Anxiety, stress, anger… entering the danger zone. And now it’s 3:03 a.m. I think we should add fear to that little list.

I need to post this now. I’ve run out of time to catch you up. Stay tuned to see how this mentally ill woman deals with family members not too willing to stay with me for a while. I won’t be able to do so many things. This time it’s my very dominant hand. My left one thinks I’m dumb if I think it’s going to do right-hand stuff. Self-righteous little bugger. This is a team effort. That hand better get with the program.

I’m going to attempt to get on Twitter and tweet updates on how things are going since blogging are iffy for the time being. I’ve never used Twitter more than a tweet here and there, so this should be interesting. I hope you’ll follow along! Join in my mad life and all the fun and bonkers ways I manage, primarily, to live my Bipolar and highly complex life.  I need to learn to do voice-to-text. (I’m too tired to edit this, so I hope it makes sense.)

Follow me on Twitter @etiquetteofmad

See you on the other side.

Mental and Physical Pain – Mental Wellness

/ Robin / 2 Comments

Last week I was feeling down, frustrated and I suppose a little angry. As in all of life, not one thing is contributing to these feelings. I know a major one is that my dog is sick. She’s in pain and, I can’t do anything more for her. Our veterinarian is short-staffed, so they’ve closed the urgent half of the clinic. A month ago, I made an appointment for her and it’s finally arrived. Its been agony watching something that has been consuming her and is growing worse every day. We don’t know what’s wrong, but we can see the results. She’s tearing her skin off. She itches so badly that she passes the pain from earlier scratching and digs deeper, trying to stop the itching. Next month, she’ll see a dog dermatologist. Thankfully I made this appointment with her regular vet. I’m hoping that they will give her something for the pain, reduce the itching, and help her heal. I don’t see any infection, but I’m not a vet. 

This is Bailey.

I think I know how she feels. In the past, sometimes my skin itched so badly I couldn’t resist the urge to itch it. I’ve woken up the night with blood on my fingers. The despair and anxiety that come with that are immense. (No, I don’t have OCD.)

Those horrible emotions appear in various places in life. When my Fibromyalgia flares up and my Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis flare simultaneously, they invoke those same horrible feelings in my soul. I want to withdraw and lay in my bed until I feel better. But, sadly, that’s the worst thing I can do. (One of our cats just went to the bathroom, and I think I’m going to die. Be right back.) I’ve been learning about Fibromyalgia, and one of the first and most important things I MUST do is be active. Physical activity is one of the major and only things it seems that I can do to help me, hopefully, have less pain. 

Pain, this is what I want to mention today. Mental and emotional pain can easily be as crippling as physical pain. I might believe I just can’t get out of bed, but I must. I must move around and not stop. Not doing so can let the anguish take hold and cripple me further. 

I’m also learning that Fybromyalgia causes something referred to as “brain fog.” Let me just say that I have strategies that I’m trying to use to fight my already beat-up brain from Bipolar Disorder and ADHD. (Thanks brain.) The treatments for those two things are in direct conflict, so we had to choose one to address with medication, the other I try to work within other ways. I’ve chosen my Bipolar because adding a stimulant for ADHD would make the mania so much worse. I’m already so manic that I easily drive my family bonkers; I just don’t need more stimulation. And I’m aware now, that Fibromyalgia also makes things messier.

So, where does that leave me? I’m not exactly sure. So far, it seems that brain fog is a mysterious thing. None of my doctors have offered me a solution or even a way to cope with it. I don’t hold this against them. This illness is very debilitating and, like Bipolar, it is lifelong and I must find ways that work for me to cope. Cope. I hope I can thrive, not simply cope. 

I want you to know these things about me because life sometimes sucks for each of us. I can’t possibly understand your frustrations anymore than you can understand mine. Pain, mental and physical is unique to us all. We know that already.

However, let me assure you that I am not alone and, neither are you. As people, as humans, we all struggle with unique things every day. This, as you can imagine, makes the advice that we can give each other very hit and miss, and it misses more than it hits. Why? Because we are as unique as our illnesses or combination of illnesses are. 

They say that our uniqueness makes us special; I believe this is true. We each grow with our individual strengths and weaknesses and these things make us special, unique and wonderful. I choose to believe that these thing are true.

Saying that we’re special always makes me feel a bit frustrated. When I’m feeling crushed beneath the weight of life I don’t feel special. I do feel unique in that sometimes I think that no one understands, and no one can help me. 

Do you ever experience these things? I’d bet all my money that you do. Okay, I have no money, so that’s not a real bet, but I think you understand. We may have illness(es), and sometimes they make us feel crazy. At least, sometimes I do. But, thankfully, I’m not crazy. And honestly, what does being crazy mean?

I can say that I understand depression, anxiety, frustration, anger, physical and mental pain, and the struggle to think straight or think at all. Those things I can promise I know about. You’re not alone in your struggles. 

You are not alone. Not ever. We all feel crazy sometimes. 

Be well, 

Robin

  • Savvy and her mom, Bailey. Unconditional love.

Everyday Life and Bipolar Disorder – How to Thrive

/ Robin / 1 Comment

I’ve been lying. I’ve tried to stay very close to talking about mental illnesses, like Bipolar Disorder, without going into all the rest of the messiness that is me. I’ve felt that if I talked about other things in my life (other health issues or family stresses for example) you might focus on me and those other things and, god forbid, feel pity for me. I don’t want that.

Together we stand… or sleep.
Apart we flounder.

I want to always be BETTER. Always Better!

I want this for you as well.

You and I working to always be better.

I believe that we can.

I also believe that it’s time I share with you how I navigate my brain in the actual world and honestly tell you how that does, or doesn’t, work out.

I’ve always been honest with you, but now I want us to walk together and learn about what happens when things are painful and when things are wonderful.

Life is very messy. Mental health is challenging. Let’s walk and learn how to be better together.

My goal is to strive to be vulnerable with YOU.

Life is strange. It challenges me to sit on my brain and figure out how to not only survive but to THRIVE.

I Want Always… to Be BETTER. Always better.

My desire is to teach, through examples from my life, how to be MORE. I want always to be more than my struggle with my mental health challenges, don’t you?

I have decided to talk to you about mental health, from my perspective and experiences, in the context of real life. What this means is that you can expect to see:

Successes
Stories
Ideas
Musings
Failures
Whims
Challenges
Knowledge
Understanding
Humor

You can still expect the same me, only I’m going to bring it all. ALL of me and my actual life. I hope you’re ready. Things are going to be wide and varied just like our lives are. As I like to say, “I’m Un-Niche-Able.” I bet that you are too.

Here is a small example of one of the things I might talk about:

My arthritis causes me pain. It sometimes limits my ability to do things I want/need to do. Sometimes the pain is too much. All this “non-Bipolar” stuff greatly affects my emotions. There are times when I’m driven to despair. It is exhausting to constantly fight against chronic pain.

How do I deal with pain? How does it impact me and my emotions? Do my emotions, my moods, dictate how I deal with severe pain?

It turns out that I’m not a big fan of pain.

Things change. I change. I deal differently with myself all the time. As I learn new things I can apply to myself and make me a better person I put into use right away. Why?

I believe that I can BE BETTER. I believe that I can DO BETTER.

And I know that I can easily stumble and face-plant. Then, when I can collect myself, I’ll figure out how to get back up, no matter how awkwardly, and decide what to do next.

A topic that I feel passionately about is that I believe that who I am as a person, my character and core beliefs directly impact everything I do while I’m Bipolar… which is all the time. Every day.

I’ll be exploring all these ideas and much more in the coming days. I do hope you’ll feel welcome to drop bye for a visit.

I’m working on a way that we can chat with each other and find fellowship, acceptance, positive talk and even funny stories. My goal is to have a safe space for us to hangout. I’m not considering Facebook because too many people go to some of the mental health groups intending on dumping or unloading on the other people in the group. Some give terrible advice while others belittle those who ask honest questions that need answers. They don’t deserve to be chastised and compared to others.

Build up. Encourage. Fellowship. Laugh. Silly stories. Ideas for survival and SUCCESS.

When I find a place that I’m comfortable with I’ll invite those of you who are interested to join in. It will be a closed group and people will have to ask permission to be a part of the group. More will come on that as I continue to develop it.

Be well my friend.

Robin

Click on the clicky thing to subscribe so you don’t miss the next post. It’s up there…. Over on the right. Yep, those buttons.