. . . And there are a lot of them. Sometimes I stop and think, "Wow, I'm really doing a lot."
The majority of my recent posts have been related to my novel, City of Secrets, which will be released on JukePop Serials in early July, in case I haven't mentioned that. It's a bit of a big deal, so of course that's what I've been talking about, but there's been a lot of other non-writing stuff going on, most of it stressful, that I figured I'd get off my chest.
First, I'll be moving in two weeks. This is really nothing new for me. I've moved a lot over my adult life, but mostly in the same general area, so that's nice. I've only been living in my current apartment for a year and a half.
My rent is being increased by $300 a month. Yeah. That's the price, literally, of living in Boulder, or Colorado, really. It just keeps getting more and more expensive. It's insane. Studio apartments go for about $1100. It upsets me, because not only am I a Colorado native, but I'm a Boulder native. I'm here because this is my home. I'm not here because an article told me to come here, or I want to buy into some fad, or pretend that I'm outdoorsy by driving into the mountains five times a year.
All right, I'm risking going off on a rant, so I'll stop now. The point is, I have a move coming up. Good news: I'm moving closer to my family and a number of my friends. Bad news: I will soon be doing lots of packing, though not any of the actual moving. We're hiring people for that. My cat is already just as stressed about it as I am. He can sense it. But at least the moving part is temporary and once it's over it will be over. Until the next move.
And of course (I hate that I have to even write "of course") there's my ongoing worker's comp injury that started in July of 2014. I've mentioned this before, though not often or recently because I don't really like to talk about it. I fell and hurt my ankle at work and got a diagnosis of a minor ankle sprain. When it didn't get better after two weeks I was sent to an orthopedist and diagnosed with a high ankle sprain (which is more severe) and given physical therapy. When this didn't work I had surgery in October of 2014 to repair a torn ligament and a torn tendon.
After one month in a cast I went back to physical therapy and was put in a walking boot. After about three months I was regaining strength and starting to do better when the pain and swelling returned. I was sent to a podiatrist and had another MRI. It was discovered that one of the tendons had had a bad reaction to the internal suture from the surgery and that another tendon was torn. So I had surgery again in June of 2015.
Again I was in a cast for a month. Again I went back to physical therapy. After several months, I regained much of my strength and range of motion, but my pain was much more several than it should've been, and it was constant. So I was sent to a pain specialist. I was starting to develop nerve pain, which is rare but can happen after surgery. I may have a condition call Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) which is nerve pain in a limb. This nerve pain can spread to the entire limb and even to the other limb, which is called mirror pain. This is what has happened to me, and it really is awful. I'm in pain all the time, and it's horrible, hot, burning, smashing pain that's down in my foot and up my leg and into my good leg. It's sensitive to touch, which means it's often difficult to find a comfortable position to lie in. It also hurts to wear socks, leggings, and tight jeans. Thank goodness it's summer.
Nerve pain needs a good balance of rest and walking. I started doing more around the house and getting out of the house, which really felt good--physically and mentally. I gradually started walking more, by slowly increasing my amount each day and doing more chores. Unfortunately, I slowly realized that I was feeling more pain in my left ankle: the site of my original injury. It's possible that because I started walking more, I may have torn another tendon or ligament--it's very common to re-injure soft tissue. Right now, I'm just trying to scale back the walking--which makes the nerve pain worse. So, it's quite a conundrum. The solution to one issue is the opposite solution to the other.
So, throughout all of this ongoing pain I'm trying to prepare for the move, continue to get CoS ready for release, work on my blog, deal with my doctors, and probably do some other things that I can't quite think of right now. Oh yeah, by the end of June I have to write an essay so I can apply to go to a writer's conference in September. There's a lot to do. Hopefully I won't implode.
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