Painkillers do absolutely nothing for it and there's no comfortable position left that I can get into to alleviate it. There was one, which placed my foot on it's side, resting on my nice new, soft, comfortable mattress, but the skin on my feet has become so sensitive recently that the side of my foot is sore, red and inflamed and I'm doing my best not to irritate it any further, or I'll be unable to put any shoes on at all, nor walk even a few steps.
And if I find a comfortable position for my hip and foot, my knees hurt. They're already both still burning in pain and feel (but don't look) swollen from Friday's walk and from time to time I have to bend them (and my ankles and my hip) and then straighten them again to make them "crack" noisily, which temporarily relieves the "locking." Yet despite the burning sensation and despite the temperature reaching a relatively decent level today because of some morning sun, I've felt absolutely icy cold.
I bought some more long socks to be able to wear my boots without them rubbing painful red marks on my shins, or causing blisters so deep they take great gouges out of my heels, but that's not a permanent cure. Clearly, one can't wear ski-boots all year round and I'm finding them too heavy for anything but a short walk anyway. I also bought some Velcro (can't bend to fiddle with laces and they'd dig in anyway) Reebok trainers recently, but without support round my ankles, those are no good for walking further than a few yards either. I wore them when I went out on Friday and my ankles still feel "broken", swollen and painful.
Because the pain, particularly in my left wrist, has been unbearable since I came home Friday (I walked, but not on my hands!), I've had to try supporting it to ease the pain. Once again, the neoprene support has caused my skin to resemble that of a decomposing lizard. It isn't just dried, it hurts like really bad sunburn; feels like it's stretched too far and will rip apart. And I have a mysterious bruise on the back of my hand, which, unless I hit something in my sleep, I have no recollection of getting, except that it's just appeared above my wrist where the pain is already.
For no apparent reason too, this morning, I was up at 3 a.m. with the "irritable" out of Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) - which I was diagnosed with as far back as 1980. Actually, I'd rather have that than be clogged up and, I always hope I'll be losing weight ... but this repeated itself when I woke up again at 8 a.m. and through most of the morning, leaving me feeling tired, weak, nauseous and with horrible cramps in my stomach. I felt too ill to do much more than lie still and really couldn't concentrate on anything other than the simplest of banal tasks.
Of course I want to feel annoyed at not getting things done, but I dare not overstep my capabilities to do them, or I slow down my recovery time from days to weeks or months. And I cannot either allow myself the "luxury" of the stress.
Is this a particularly bad day? No, not really.
Probably 1 in 10 are this bad and 6 in 7 are not far off. Nothing life-threatening, you say, but imagine feeling this bad, that often, day in, day out, for years.
