Tag Archives: physical therapy

the pits

My life feels like it sucks right now.  I need, want more activity.

When I came back here to California, some part of me felt it would be easy to reconnect with old friends.  It’s clear I don’t know how to.  It’s certainly hard for me to see my friends lives progressing and mine stuck in the tar pits.  I don’t want to sounds selfish, people have their own lives to live.  Is it that hard to include someone else?

I don’t like feeling reclusive, and trapped in my home, but I am.

I’d rather not be a charity case.  I want friends that enjoy my company because I enjoy theirs and we have common interests.  I’m not a perfect person.  I just want friendship with others.  I can’t begin to explain how hard it is for me to admit, even here on my blog, I feel so alone every day.  It’s not healthy, I’m sure I’ve said this all before.

Even when I’m around other people in public or the few parties I’ve been invited to, I feel awkward.  I’m a nice guy, but seem to have lost my interpersonal skills when dealing with others, every interaction is overly difficult it seems.  Every sentence with a stranger, an uncomfortable task.  Drowning in a sea of conversations.  An outcast. Everyone but me is some how connected with someone else, via their SMS on a mobile device, iphone, or sidekick.  I missed out on all that it seems.

I long to be needed, to be productive, and feel useful again.  I want purpose.  My life feels so empty.

I was going to physical therapy 3x a week, which was at the very least something positive to do.  I got [tag]SCIF[/tag] to authorize a 6 month gym membership for me.  It’s something that will keep me moving this time.  The 3.5 months of PT was good, and just using the recumbent bicycle again has improved my walking.  The place where I was going for my therapy will also let me come in and use their equipment like a gym for $80/month plus more if I want help from a trainer.  I have no idea if that’s good.  I need to shop around.  The people there are nice, the place is relatively close as the birds fly.

I had an MRI today of my left shoulder.  The technician was alright, kinda pushy as he shoved ear plugs in my ears, which I would have preferred to do myself.  It was the first one where I had headphones and had a choice of something to listen to via the internet.  So I asked for KCRW.  While in the machine, my left arm arm numb, and then eventually there was a nice burning sensation on the outside of the shoulder traveling down the arm.  The middle finger, index, and thumb blank with feeling, switched off like a light bulb.  I did what I normally do when I am getting a MRI.  I just kinda tune out the noise, defocus my eyes, close them, anything to make the cramped quarters feel larger.  I’m not that claustrophobic, but if I were in the machine long enough I would be quite mad.

So SCIF finally authorized a consultation with a psych.  The catch is, it’s only so that they could get an idea of how much therapy needs to be authorized.  Retarded as it is I just have to go along with it.  So the place they want me to goto, IE friendly to them, and in their network, soonest appointment is July 7th, 2008.  As you can see I won’t be seeing any help during the foreseeable future.  This only makes me sadder and furiously angry inside.  Only my sadness shines.

I’m tired of crying to my blog, but no one near cares about me it seems.  I’ve been back here in California for almost 5 months, I’ve made no new friends.  That’s 161 days or ~231840 minutes spent alone.  I could spout off all kinds of numbers regarding my loneliness, but that still won’t help me feel better about myself.  Gah, I’m such a fucking retard.

forced upgrade cycle, how bored must I be?

R.I.P 2006-2008 - 2nd hand Pentium 4 2.4Ghz CPU and ASUS Motherboard.

This morning I awoke to the peculiar sounds of my home server turning on and off rapidly. I didn’t have time to do any digging into the issue before physical therapy so I just flipped the power switch off. When I got home, fearing that my somewhat new and very expensive Antec super efficient power supply had failed, I got out my trusty power supply tester. Luckily the tester showed everything was fine, which means it’s the motherboard. *sigh* more rubbish. I guess I need to start shopping for a new(to me) one. It is about that time when all my computers start to walk off the cliff like lemmings. Hopefully I can salvage the RAM to sell and or determine if the CPU is still good and reincarnate the system again. Maybe it’s time I round up all the hardware I have and just get rid of it all in order to buy brand new stuff and make it a complete upgrade cycle. With hard drive density soaring and Moore’s law continuing to show no mercy, my aged technology is whooping my ass. The most rugged piece of technology I own is a 15″ Mag Technology DX1595 Color Monitor which I purchased in 1996. 12 years isn’t bad. Hopefully this year I will replace it with a LCD.  Who can say they’ve had a piece of technology for that long which still works.  I’d like to know.

blah blah blah

It’s been several days since I last posted. Nothing post worthy has come up, but I felt like doing an update because today went pretty good.

I took the 73 Toll Road this morning for an appointment in Newport Beach with my [tag]Primary Treating Physician[/tag]. It’s been several months since my last visit with him, so I got him up to speed on where my progress was currently and had him fill out his portion of the Handicap Parking placard application. I asked his advice on a reimbursement issue I was foreseeing and about getting psychiatric help since I’m now living in state again. I thanked him dearly for all his help on my case. It’s almost been a year since his taking over my care and considerable progress has been made over that time.

On my way back to Laguna Hills, I again took the 73 Toll Road, and on the way back I realized I forgot to ask for a receipt on my way to Newport Beach, oh well $4.25 lost forever never to be reimbursed. I wonder if they will ever change the 73 into a freeway. It really seems like a waste of gas to take the 5, 405, 55, 73 just to get to the Fashion Island area from where I now live.

Anyways, traffic wasn’t bad coming home only took about 20 minutes. Once I got home I debated the finer points of whether or not to mail in the disabled placard form or to just go to the [tag]DMV[/tag]. I decided to go, and I took [tag]Negative[/tag] with me for a car trip. It only took about an hour once there. I spent the first forty minutes waiting in my car because the person behind the directory assistance desk said that was about how long my wait would be. So I waited with the dog for a while, going inside every once in a while to check on the progress of the queue. When it got close to my number I stayed inside and waited patiently. The person who helped me even remembered me from when I got my license renewed just over a month ago. Crazy eh? Suffice to say I’m glad I took the time and went, because they gave me the placard today. Last time when I mailed in the form, it took almost a month to process.

So as the adventure continues, on my way back I decided to go shopping at the [tag]Trader Joe’s[/tag] by my house. In the parking lot happened to be the cute cashier I mentioned several posts back. She was on cart duty. She impressively maneuvered and pushed around about 15 carts through the parking lot. I commented on her powerful strength, unfortunately I didn’t catch her reply. But I did notice a smile. Ten seconds after the smile I realized I forgot to bring bags to use so I could get a raffle ticket. Next time I go I need to remember to recycle the collection of bags I have amassed. Shopping didn’t take long I focused on just getting the essentials, some quick dinner stuff and got out of there.

I got home, took the dog inside, unpacked the car, and re parked it in my spot. Came back inside, put away the groceries and munched on some grapes. I took the dog for a quick potty walk, then brought him back inside, put his backpack on, and then we went to the mail box. The new mail box they are building is almost finished. Soon there will be less walking involved with retrieving the mail. I kinda want a treadmill. Went through the mail, and had more time to kill before my 4:30 [tag]Physical Therapy[/tag] appointment. I was a couple minutes late getting there, On my way I went into the wrong shopping plaza. Luckily I had their number in my phone and got some direction to their office. Once I found the place, I filled out the obligatory paper work and waited for my therapist, Matt. To make a long story short the evaluation went OK, he gave me three neck exercises to do once a day, and I have an appointment again this Friday at noon.

Now that day is over, I can only hope that tomorrow the [tag]cable card[/tag] issue will be resolved with my [tag]TiVo[/tag].

1st post of the year

I haven’t felt like posting anything relevant, or irrelevant as nothing of interest has happened to me. So I’m just going to ramble or rant about whatever comes to mind and shove everything into one post.

It’s been a few days since beginning this New Year. The New Year’s Eve’s bash at Egon’s was sweet. It’s always great to chill with good peepz. Thank you for hosting!

Not a lot has changed with my [tag]Workers Compensation[/tag] bullshit. It took one full month, but my physical therapy is now authorized as of yesterday, I just need to find a place to begin treatment. I can only hope that won’t take as long and is within close proximity to my home.

My sister and 3.5yr old nephew were visiting me for the past couple weeks, and they left yesterday too. I’ll miss my sister and the lil guy. Right now he tips the scales at 35 lbs. The next time I see him he’ll be a lot bigger I’m sure.

After my family left I sped off to eat lunch with Ic3b3rg at [tag]Pho Bo Vang[/tag]. It gets busy there for lunch so we got there early at 11:20. I had the Pho. It was good. I will eat there again, frequently I’m sure.

I got some Sear’s gift cards from my dad for xmas, so I purchased myself a [tag]TiVo[/tag] HD last week. It requires a [tag]cable card[/tag] to work with the digital system and to get the HD channels over cable, so for the last week I’ve been enjoying basic cable with my TiVo. For some reason Cox has to send somebody out to “install” the card into my TiVo. I say “install” because, all the guy did was shove the card into a slot on the front. Not too difficult. Oh ya, he did read some numbers off the TV to a person over the phone . They wanted to charge me money for this. Good thing when I called I got them to not charge me a dime. Otherwise I would have been more pissed off last night when HBO HD wasn’t working, and every other HD channel was pausing after tuning in. So after spending more time in phone hell last night after calling to get info on what to do with the now useless cable box, which I had to either… oi I can’t rant/type fast enough to say how much bullshit cox is. charging for every damn thing, picking up a cable box $20 because they don’t do this by default when changing service, installing a cable card $44, x 2 money grubbing assholes. So anyways, I have an appointment Saturday for someone to come out and see what’s up with my cable card. I’ve had my HDTV for almost 5 years and this is only the 2nd time I’ve seen an HD signal on it. I’m kind of excited to get caught up in that respect. So I stayed up late last night, and caught Conan O’Brian who’s been back on the air for 2 days now without writers. He has a strike beard, and it was pretty well defined in HD.

Well that is all for now…

Terrific Tuesday, take 4 3/4

This is now the 6th time I’ve attempted writing this post over the last 2 hours not including breaks. I was fighting some bad behavior, a funky Wordpress plugin which had become outdated and needed to be updated.

I had the first post-op visit with my [tag]surgeon[/tag] this afternoon. After waiting in the waiting room, and then a briefly some x-rays of my neck were taken, then more waiting. The surgeon, Dr Jon White, came in and took the tape off the wound, and said it looked great, and proceeded to show me the x-rays on his laptop. Very neat. He discussed the hardware that now occupies my neck, and said that I will begin physical therapy soon. I hope soon is the operative word here. Ahh progress is still progress, which is nice. I ask him if I could drive and how much I should move my neck, and was then on my way back home.

A week without shaving left me with a full beard. Shaving with a new thing on my neck was a task to get used to. The wound just feels funny to me, so I avoided it while shaving in the shower with out a fog free mirror.

Outside of my neck feeling a bit stiff, and the low back I’m feeling great.

PS.  I got the new Futurama Movie today in my Netflix if anyone is interested in seeing it on my big screen.

back, back, back, neck!

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the longer this goes on, the more i think about back surgery.
the more i think about back surgery, the more i think about how as time goes by the technology gets better, and possibly less invasive. how many surgeons do u know that have had back surgery? for that matter how many people do you know that have had back surgery, or knew someone who did, and after the fact, things got the slightest bit better? this chiropractor i have out here kinda scared me the other day. ive seen her twice now, and each time she has spent an extraordinary amount of time talking with me. she was explaining my 3 year old lumbar MRI to me for about an hour. something no one has done from what i can recall, well if it was done three years ago it wasn’t as hammered into my brain. it’s some quite fucked up shit to say the least. she also said that eventualy, it will get to a point where surgery isnt an option. how long is that? i dont know. i dont think that it is very plausible to figure that out until another MRI is done, so there is something to compare. now 3 years later, in general i feel worse, so im very afraid of what a new ones may tell. i really try to enjoy what mobility i have, although i wish theyd let me continue in some form of physical therapy so that i can strengthen my back and increase mobility. any kind of procedure thats been done to me has left me flat for a month minimum. something more complicated, could be months of actual rehab, or worse learning to walk again. maybe im just nuts. but it still flows through my mind, the many possibilities and reactions for every possible action. i should try and be positive atleast and remember the real reason why i named my dog negative.

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>>>>>>> .r246