Trust Tommy

Photo owned by Daquella manera (cc)

I’ve been given a wheelchair for the period I’m in a cast for maneuvering through the school, which even I must admit makes some sense. There are 1,200 students at my school and the corridors at lunch breaks are quite hectic – I don’t know how anyone manages, actually.

I took it for a spin in school earlier today to get a feel for the ‘chair around the corridors. Whatever about my legs getting weak, my upper arms will be like rocks by the end of the 6 weeks. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a wheelchair so I’m relearning some old tricks I used to know.

I’m not talking about anything so drastic as wheelies but I totally had developed some knacks for turning corridors without stopping, turning 180 degrees and going through narrow doors (backwards, and then you use your hands to push yourself through). I’ve also dug up some gloves from the utility room which should stop my hands getting ripped to shreds.

I kind of mind having to use the wheelchair because it’s so annoying and intrusive. Then again, you know what else is annoying and intrusive?

Slipping somewhere, breaking your leg and winding up in hospital for a few weeks.

I think the wheelchair, therefore, is a good idea and I’ll definitely be using it.

Especially if it does what it’s supposed to — allow me to sleep the whole night through without waking up in pain. I miss sleeping well. The cast’s been on a week today and so far I’ve had one night of not-bad sleep. That night, I went to bed at 4am – not something I can really continue doing when I’ve school at 08.30 the next morning, is it?

6am starts have never been, are not and never will be welcomed in TommyLand. If I could pay money to never have to be woken early, I would.

I was awake that early because I was due in Cappagh Hospital at 9am for surgery. The car journey up passed in a haze of trying to sync videos to my iPhone and listening to music.

We arrived into the hospital around 08:45 and were shown to the day ward where we waited for the surgeon to call me. I changed into their hospital gown and passed the time watching Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (about halfway through now — very good movie) At about 11:20, I was called by the nurse. In true House style, I was brought down to the OR on a gurney. Not at speed though and not while Foreman, Chase, Cameron, Thirteen, Kutner or Taub briefed me about my condition. Hrrmph.

I waited outside the OR for a moment and slipped off my shoes and socks. Then it was time to go in. I was due to get cortisone injections into the patella tendon to relieve pain. I’d also have that leg put in a cast to prevent me from using it too much in the weeks following the injections.

The injections themselves made me really nauseous for a few minutes until one of the nurses brought me a glass of water, then it subsided. Apart from that, I’d no ill effects. I was wheeled back to the ward where I had some bread and jam and got dressed. After that it was learning what was the most effective hobbling method on the two crutches.

I slept a bit on the way down from Dublin (am home now) which was nice and should reset my body clock somewhat. I have all of tomorrow to get used to the cast and then it’s Wexford for the weekend! Seriously looking forward to that.

The cast is for 6 week and extends from mid-thigh to ankle. I can still wear the same clothes and shoes while it’s on, which is handy.

I’m going to miss drumming for 6 weeks. :( Although I do have a solution in mind it’s a bit of a pipe dream. It involves double bass pedals and bricks.

Shall also miss swimming, but that’s harder to work around.

Since Saturday night last, I’ve been dealing with very bad knee pain — the worst in several years of pain.

We had a meeting with the physio and a surgeon on Wednesday morning who told us that since we’d exhausted other methods of relief (painkillers, ice, electronic stimulation), we should try cortisone injections into the knee joint. I recognized the name from somewhere but didn’t place it until afterwards: corticosteroids, from House M.D.

That was fine with me. I’d realized long ago that life was simpler if you just got over fears of needles. Even them talking about putting me under anesthetic for a time didn’t bother me. Indeed, the only spanner in the works came later.

“Oh, if we give you these, and you go back to walking as you did before, the stress on your knee will negate some of the effects of the injections, so I think we’ll put you in a cast to force you to rest it.”

That seemed fine once again. I’d had casts before – it was no big deal, until I remembered RENT

The local drama group that I’m a member of are doing “RENT: School Edition” in April, and I was dearly hoping to audition for it. Would being in a cast hinder my attempts to get in the cast?

Eventually though, I decided to take the injections as soon as possible — the sooner I’m in the cast, the sooner I’m out of the cast. The brief thoughts I had of waiting were quickly dashed when I thought to myself “I haven’t been able to go to school because of this pain.. how do I think I’ll survive until April?”

So all I can do now is rest my leg as much as possible until 8am on Thursday. I’ve got my new crutches. Surprisingly, I didn’t find it too difficult to adjust between having two crutches instead of a cane — the most annoying part is the fact that I can’t text and walk at the same time!

Recently, I’ve noticed that my old cane (picture) had been getting a wee bit small for me — to be expected; I’m in that age of rapid growth and the cane was fitted for me in June 2009.

So I went ahead and ordered a new cane from my cane website earlier this week. Thus followed the usual XKCD-style package tracking madness.

I decided not to order the same cane again for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I wanted something different, simple as. Secondly, there are times when a cane with flames on it is unsuitable, and something more reserved is called for. Finally, experience played a part — the flamey-cane scratched a lot when it fell or brushed against a wall, so I wanted to go for something that wouldn’t mark so easily.

From the brief bit of walking that I did today, I can tell that I was pretty on-the-mark with the height (from your wrist joint to the floor — mine’s 35 inches) of this cane, and that the sturdier material (wood versus carbon fibre) will be a bonus. The website tells me that the wooden cane is .2 of a pound heavier than my old cane — though it feels more.

All in all, a great success :)

If you could get all your Simon Cowell facelift jokes out of your system right around now, it’d be just great, thanks :) Botox is also a muscle relaxant, which means that a rigorous stretching system of the muscles involved could yield greater motion in said muscles, which is why I got it.

We left for Dublin on Tuesday evening. I didn’t get any sleep on Monday night so didn’t go into school the following day but needed to finish writing a speech for Wednesday’s debate (that we lost :( which sucked) the following day. I spent most of the journey in the car listening to loud music, which I’m certain helped my productivity. Once we got to Bewleys, I was delighted to find out that they’d finally got their wifi sorted, which meant that their (heavily sandwiched by air quotes) “working” wifi actually allowed one to connect to the internet. I got it send off to some friends and my debate teacher for comments. My teacher had also graciously offered to print it off and stick it on cards for me.

The next morning saw me heading over to the clinic where Wednesday is actually botox day. A lot of kids with CP and other musclier problems find it very effective. There, the chirpy nurse showed me to a cubicle. Normally, chirpiness appeals to me – birds of a feather and all that, but today, my mind was on obscenely large needles, so no matter how much she smiled, it still annoyed me. I always maintain that life would be awesome if people’s enthusiasm matched yours – no more, no less. And regardless of much cream she actually put on, it seemed like too much – ‘what’s the ratio of square centimeters of anesthetic cream versus centimeters of the length of needle?’ I thought anxiously to myself.

She gave me the option of being a man and getting the injections sans anesthetic, or getting the cream, but having to wait 30 minutes for it to wear in.

Of course, I went with the obvious choice..

Yep, I’m a gigantic scardey cat when it comes to needles, I opted for the cream. :P

The surgeon herself is actually rather hilarious. The flames on my cane brought us onto the subject of House, whom she didn’t know. I summed him up by quoting one of his team, after announcing his plan to leave in one of the earlier seasons: “You’ll save more… but I’ll settle for killing less“. I thought her reaction would mirror the one of every other doctor I’ve talked about House to.. but it wasn’t.

“Well”, she began. “If you’re in say, a car crash, it’s the first hour that’s critical.. so if you have some nancy boy of a doctor who comes in and is all apologetic and all, you’re probably gonna die. However, if you have someone like House who’ll do anything to save you, jump MRI queues and all that, well then your chances are good!’

How right she is :)

Anyway, the injections (all 5 of them; four on the leg, one in the forearm) went grand – cream reduced a needle penetrating my muscles into a sensation that someone was squeezing my leg/forearm tightly. I didn’t see any of it because I was suddenly very interested in the metal joining between the blinds and the wall of the little cubicle I was in. Book of Endings blared out of my iPhone through headphones so loudly that I was sure

I know ‘Hello, how are you’ don’t seem like much to you
But I wrote you this song and I owe it all to you

could be heard by everyone.

Luckily, the loud music blocked out her saying those words I hate surgeons to say – ‘now, deep breath’ or ‘we’ll be done in a second’ or, to complete the awful trinity: ‘you’ll feel a slight pinch’. Because Adam Pascal’s rocky voice was the only thing reverberating around my skull, I didn’t hear which one she went for.

After about 15 seconds, Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-NinjaSuperFastSurgeon had administered 5 shots of Botox (5? in 15 seconds? I hear you ask. Yarly!) and I was dazedly sitting up, reaching for my jacket and pulling my headphones out of my ear all at once. I was given some gummy sweets (which tasted terrible) to keep the blood sugars up and sent on my way.

Once we’d got into the car to head home, the old debate started. The Irish Blogosphere probably are well up to speed with my mum’s love affair with Avoca, and it’s always a necessary stop on the way home from Dublin. I felt that getting 5 injections from a Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-NinjaSuperFastSurgeon merited getting to choose the food of choice, but I eventually caved at the prospect of free wifi – I had gotten some emails that needed replying to. Not wanting to lose the battle entirely, I negotiated one Eddie Rocket’s visit voucher, to be redeemed whenever we were in Dublin or Limerick City next.

The quickest way to end a war is to lose it? Nah, the quickest is to appear to cave, but include your own strings for the future :)

Image is of Botulinum Toxin, from Wikipedia

Woo, Bewleys’ hotels finally have actual working wifi in their hotel rooms. This is a big step forward.

I wrote my emergency, last-minute debate speech during the car journey up. It was rather excellent actually. All my thoughts flowed coherently and I’ve discovered the awesomeness of WriteRoom, after I managed to get a free copy of it from MacHeist.

WriteRoom’s a full screen text editor. It’s great for eliminating distractions and just knuckling down and getting whatever needs doing done. An added plus is that the black background (only optional, but what I use) means I can can turn the brightness of my MacBook’s screen down to 1 and still be able to see anything. Battery conservation for the win!

Getting back to the debate, we’re proposing the motion that rising unemployment at home is too high a price for overseas aid. It’s a grand old motion that provides plenty of arguments and chances for rebuttal. It’s on tomorrow evening in school, but I’ve plenty of time to get home.

The reason I’m up in Dublin is I’ve got a meeting with a surgeon tomorrow who’ll be giving me Botox…

* pauses to allow the jokes about Simon Cowell and face lifts to abate *

…into my left hand, because Botox functions as a muscle relaxant, and my left hand’s been tight all my life, because of the Cerebral Palsy. Increased hand movement can only be a plus on the drumming front though!

I’ll be conscious for it, of course. I’m debating asking whether I can film it or not.. something you as a reader would be interested in seeing? Lemme know in the comments!

I’m afraid I’m becoming hypocritical.

Everyone (especially after the Times) now knows my cane has a name, Aislinn. That’s fine. It’s a very pretty name and if naming it makes me feel better about having to use it then that’s what I shall do. I did it with my old walking sticks, when I used 2. I called them Pongo and Perdi, after the lead stars of 101 Dolmations. I even procured a set of stickers from the film (I was 6 – just let me be) and plastered the two sticks with them.

However, my hypocritical-ness comes in as a friend of mine has got the idea into his head that it’s a good idea to name his pool cue. Why do I feel this is silly?

How is this any different to what I was doing? I wish I didn’t mind this, but it does strike me as a little odd. Wow, things really are different when it’s not you!

It’s also weird, because although I give quite original names to my walking aids, our favourite Teddy Bear has an abysmally generic name. It seems that my originally wasn’t passed down to me, a fact that hurts my inside feelings. The family teddy bear is called Brown Teddy. The second teddy I got from the hospital when I was 9 was called Brown Teddy Junior. I think this blog has unearthed my originality, because I’ll admit I named the second teddy. I was 9 though. I’m allowed, right?

Just out of a meeting with the doctor who operated on me in 2004, and also the doctor who would have operated on in 2010.

Best possible news: what’s causing my knee pain isn’t going to be able to stick around after I’m fully grown.

Quite relieved it’s not longterm :D

Firstly, okay guys, the House jokes were funny at the start, but c’mon, give them a rest, will ya?

Last night I had between 3.5 and 4.5 hours sleep.

Knee pain, which is chronic at this stage, was worst it’d been in a long time, so sleep just wouldn’t come. I finally drifted off some time between 01:30 and 3, finally.

At 4:30, I was woken by the pain. No, this wasn’t me waking naturally, or by some bird calling outside, this was the pain waking me.

I tried to get back to sleep, but eventually resigning myself to staying awake somewhere around 5.

I listened to a mix of audiobooks and music through headphones for a while, until about 8am, when I decided I probably shouldn’t fall asleep during physio, so I tried one last time to fall asleep.

I think my sleep soldiers found a vulnerable weakness in the knee pain’s relentless machine-gunning, as I fell asleep until 09:45.

That was the knee pain interfering in my normal workings. I never took anything for my knee because I said I’d just work through it. It wasn’t stopping me doing anything, so I ignored it. However, if it’s stopping me doing something like sleep, then I’m going to take something for it.

And now of course, despite what I said up top, you’re all comparing me to House with his Vicodin. Two things. I’m not on these full time. This morning was exceptional, because the pain was incredibly bad, stopping me functioning, and secondly, the meds aren’t a solution. They’re keeping me at a tolerable level of pain while we find out what’s causing it.

That’s what I find frustrating about all this. No one seems to have any idea what’s causing this. I’m getting an MRI on Wednesday in Dublin which *should* tell us the cause, and that should give us a treatment.

So, reiterating, the pain meds aren’t permanent. They are for the time being, as I continue to strengthen up the muscle, which should ease the pain. A natural painkiller.

**

I finished writing this at 20:47 on Monday night, but I’m publishing it at 3am on Tuesday as a little nod. I wonder if I’ll be awake when this goes out..

I was talking with Sinéad on Monday night, and we got talking about the new cane, of course. She asked if I’d spoken to Aislinn 2. I replied no, but I would. So this is kinda what this post is about!

WANTED: Someone who talks with canes/walking sticks (think Dr. Dolittle with less fur).

To basically explain to my previous cane that while 3.0 is cool with all the flames and whatnot, you were a great cane who was quite literally with me all the way.

OK, this is a lie. We got the cane because Aislinn 1 and 2 were too weak. But, I’m sure any guidance counselor worth their salt could invent some sort of spiel, couldn’t they?

Now I’ll probably get someone giving out to me. “No Tommy! Aislinn is dealing with severe feelings of inadequacy right now, you’ve got to be serious!” Oh well. I was never taught that.