Uppity-up-up and Downity-down-down! in A New Beginning

Today I feel GREAT!!!!! And I’m might thankful to be sating that, because the last six weeks have been pretty sucky for me, with the really horrible cramps I’d been having in my leg! And I feel like I was sortuv a “victim” (as much as I ever am, which admittedly isn’t much) of medical people just not having any idea what’s wrong with a person! First Dr. Nash said it must be my sciatic nerve. He wrote me out a prescription for eight sessions of physical therapy. I went to the physical therapy; the therapist said it must be a hamstring injury. Well, whatever....it’s definitely SOMETHING; please help me fix it! Friends, I faithfully went to physical therapy every time, and I did my exercises at home, and ya know what? IT REALLY WAS NOT HELPING. In fact, at times I felt like it was making it worse. It’s like going to a dentist because your tooth hurts, and he pokes and prods and scrapes and makes it hurt worse! I’d WALK in, and limp out! They said, “Well it took a long time for it to get this bad, so you have to realize that it’s going to take a long time of stretching and doing these exercises to fix it!”

But lemme tell ya, this is how it REALLY was.....it didn’t take hardly ANY time for it to get the way it was!! One day I was FINE; the next day I was hurt! I have no idea what caused it, but it didn’t take much time!! So, y’know, I think that if I actually do all this stuff for a month, I oughta be seein’ some darn uphill progress!!

So anyhow, I had my fill of physical therapy. But what HAS helped, is doing some stuff I just thought of.....putting first ice and then a heating pad on it multiple times per day, and trading sides of the bed with Joe for the time being. Also, Joe suggested that if I get up (from bed, or from sitting) and it starts to cramp, do a few deep knee bends. That actually HELPS!! So, I am doing better.....I’d say, 80% better. I went for a myofascial massage yesterday. That was a nice experience, though I don’t know how much it helped. But it was a nice soothing way to spend an hour, that is for sure!

Meanwhile, I need not have been concerned about my mammogram, because it came back fine. :o) !! Now the dr. is concerned because my blood tests show I have high calcium. He already has had me stop drinking milk for weeks and then get another blood test. But that made no difference. Now he says that my blood pressure medicine might be causing it. I take mycardis-HCT, and he says the HCT part can raise a person’s calcium. So now I’m on mycardis with no HCT. He also had me get a chest x-ray. He didn’t want to say this, but high calcium can also be a symptom of lung cancer. But I read about common symptoms of lung cancer, and I don’t have ANY of the common symptoms, so I am sure I’m ok! It probably has been the blood pressure med, is all. Or he said it could be parathyroid disease, which is pretty easily fixable and very rarely anything but benign.

What I am learning is that getting older really ISN’T for sissies. Nor is it for sticks-in-the-mud. It challenges us to find new ways of doing things, and keeps us mentally active as we search for solutions and things-that-work. It wasn’t easy being young, either! The difference, for me anyway, is that when I was younger I had emotional challenges, not physical ones.

But speaking of challenges! I think I might mentioned this before. Our Assembly of the Sacred Wheel has a quarterly newsletter. It was first run by a woman named Terri Foster Gray, and was called The Water Wheel. She moved away and for several years we had no newsletter, ‘til Paul LaPosta resurrected it and renamed it The Spinning Wheel. By the time our Assembly got to eleven covens, Paul needed help, so I joined him as an assistant about two years ago. Events in Paul’s life have caused him to be too busy to keep doing it, so I was asked, and then appointed to be the new editor-in-chief. I, too, have renamed it The Wheel Turns. We went three quarters without having a newsletter!! A big problem Paul faced was people dragging their feet and not getting articles turned in on time, even though he always gave them plenty of notice about the deadline. I determined that this was NOT going to be MY problem! I will badger them if I have to! And if a coven can’t be bothered to turn in news, then it just won’t have its news in the newsletter; but The Wheel Turns is going to appear in print on time.

And this is how it worked out. I told everyone the deadline was December 5th. I had ALL COVENS REPORTING by December 6th, and The Yule 2014 edition of The Wheel Turns appeared on Monday December 8th! Lots of people have complimented it and me, on doing an awesome job and turning out a beautiful 25-page newsletter. :o) !! So I feel very proud, and also pleased to be able to do this service for our Assembly. :o) !! But what’s additionally awesome iiiiiiiiis.....I put this office document program on my computer, which Paul said is what he used to do the newsletter.....and it’s VERY cool, and essentially, what I’m doing is formatting!!!! Which means, the next book I write, I can format myself!!!!! And that saves hugely on self-publishing costs!!

Well, my dear friends, supper is almost ready, and if I don’t post this now, I might not ever! ;o) !! I look forward to doing some catch-up reading of your entries now!

hugs and blessings,
Nicky