Not Built for Healing
Hello World!
I am back. Where have I been? Here.
Alone.
Bored.
Lonely.
Miserable with my broken foot.
Uninspired.
Drained.
Getting nothing done.
Finding nothing funny.
Feeling rotten.
Reminded that:
I am not built for healing.
I broke my foot climbing out of a limo at 2:00 a.m. after a wild Tuesday night on the Sunset Strip.
I wish.
Truthfully, I was rushing to get to work, stumbled over my shirt I’d left on the floor and landed so strangely, I shattered a bone yet didn’t even suffer a sprain. F*ck! a shattered bone. No sprain is f*cking awesome!
Cold Therapy is . . . DANGEROUS!
I had iced that foot before my fall, as it was already the most painful part of my body.
I have long been an ice-evangelist, in love with my collection of cold packs, encouraging all EDSers to do it. I hope you did not listen to me.
Did you know?
Cold therapy inhibits healing. It diminishes nervous system function, making you prone to injury. Huh? I never knew.
F*ck! How much healing have I slowed with my icing?
F*ck! F*ck! F*ck!
Read more on Dr. Hauser’s site about the dangers of RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevate) here.
Yes, I blame the ice. My body couldn’t figure out fast enough WTF to do to protect me when I stumbled. It should have.
I keep my nervous system toned by doing ballet exercises. I do them to rest, when I want to let my heart rate come down during my workouts. I always wanted to be a ballerina.
I let my heart rate come down so I can force it back up immediately, rather than keep it consistently high while working out. This is how to get the most out of your efforts.
I do skater hops all the time, so my body can manage a jump and quick response, so I can stay safe.
I do lots of single leg balance exercises, such as free weights standing on one leg. Why not multi-task.
Single-leg balance work improves proprioception immediately. It wakes up your nervous system and forces your body to figure out where it is and what it is doing, something we EDSers innately suck at.
So yes, that sad day I fell, I should have only stumbled, maybe sprained my ankle, and gotten on with my life. But the ice blunted my nervous system response. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
However, my training worked: When I tripped, my foot hit the ground and stabilized itself, like it learned to do automatically from my jumping at the gym. Unfortunately, because the ice packs blunted the information coming into my sole (which is full of receptors), my foot couldn’t figure out how it was landing.
I have removed my ice packs from my freezer — which freed up a lot of room — and vowed never to ice again.
I only do modalities that heal.
Or ones that do not make things worse.
If something will make my problems worse,
I’ll just skip it and keep the misery I have, thanks.
Healing Delayed
Due to complications from surgery, I had to do six weeks on crutches no weight on my poor foot allowed!
When I started walking again it was extremely painful.
Why?
Read Dr. Hauser’s article linked above.
As soon as a joint is immobilized, tendons start to degrade. F*ck! F*ck! F*ck!
Movement heals. Immobilization damages. But sometimes you have no choice.
Oh yes, physical therapy was agony.
When they really got me going with re-learning to push through a stride, I had a week of so much intense pain, even crying at PT, I thought something had gone horribly wrong.
Good news.
“No problem,” the surgeon said. “Perfectly normal.”
The stress of that week of pain wore me out.
Drinking a glass of water in my own kitchen, I aspirated, which is hard to do if you are not in a coma.
My swallowing mechanisms malfunction when I am overwrought. Sometimes liquid goes down the wrong pipe. Sometimes I have esophageal spams that make me feel like I am choking to death, but really I’m not.
This is how we end up on feeding tubes, in case you follow the glamorous #ehlersdanlos on Insta. The gastrointestinal valves can’t get the timing right. D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.
I tried to hold onto my health during my convalescence. I doubled, tripled and sometimes quadrupled my Ascor dose. I slept well. I did endless reps with dumbbells, kneeling on my piano bench. I did leg lefts with ankle weights lying down, and put on muscle, yay! But this injury overwhelmed my remedial EDS body because I am not built for healing. I felt intractably depressed and rundown.
Hello Pneumonia!
I’ve had enough.
I had a day of severe chills and what I thought was the start of a bad cold.
Then the next day I could hardly breathe for the thick green mucus in my lungs. At urgent care, a lung infection showed on the x-ray right on the spot I felt the burn when I aspirated. I knew it!
Pneumonia, again! Wasn’t that the cherry on top.
I used to get bronchitis or pneumonia once per year. If you don’t get it treated right away, you can be sick for months. I’ve done that many times, too.
It’s been 2 1/2 years since my last bout, so I’ll take that as a win. Low dose naltrexone has done so much to improve my immunity and sleep and sanity. Do get on some, it’s just about the safest drug around. In low doses, it causes a cascade of healing in the brain and body.
Moving On
I finished my course of Amoxicillin. Don’t ever take Cipro or any antibiotic in that class because it can cause a tendon rupture. The urgent care doctor tried to give me that. No! No! No! I made the pharmacist call him and get the prescription changed.
I am back to walking with two feet, although not in a straight line. Still have some swelling and pain.
Finally, the day came when I got back to my beloved Turkish Get-Up with my light 5 lb kettlebell.
I was afraid I would have to spend months re-learnIng it. But it came back just like riding a bike. And just as wobbly.
Nothing, nothing, nothing makes me feel better than doing a Turkish Get-Up.
Many fitness enthusiasts think the Turkish Get-Up is the greatest exercise ever. I agree.
It tones the fascia which stabilizes joints and organs. It teaches you how to move with control, how to move with your spine stable, how to move using your big joints, how to move with your body working as one unit. What could be better.
It cranks up your heart rate, pushing circulation. Circulation heals. Circulation relieves POTS.
The Turkish Get-Up strengthens the scaffold of supporting fascia and muscles on the front of your neck and torso. This is essential to core stability and ends neck pain.
The kettlebell position held throughout the Turkish Get-Up stabilizes the shoulder joint and teaches the joint correct placement.
I can only exercise like this because I have been injecting Vitamin C daily (for eight years now). That made me able to rest, heal, recover and get strong. I got off heavy pain meds and went back to work. Before injecting ascorbic acid, I was totally disabled by my EDS symptoms. This was pretty much all of my life, as I was born very severely affected.
Getting off the ground and that kettlebell overhead from a fetal position is quite a rush, and the very best antidepressant.
