January 25th, 2012 -- Posted in EZ-blog Oven, domestic engineering, family, knitty/stitchy, life as a mom, pain / disability |
So not only have things not improved in the past 2 months, they have gotten much worse…
In December, I tried my best to give my kids a “normal” Christmas, but of course, I overdid it. Even though I kept cutting back my ToDo list, I couldn’t keep up. Of all my ambitions, many weren’t realized. For instance, I had planned to put an adorable hand-knit hat (or scarf) on the head (or neck) of many many a close friend’s young child! But I only ended up finishing 1 scarf in time to give for the actual day.
I did most of my shopping early, I did a lot of it online. I started wrapping early. I set lower standards for myself (like “only” making 12 handmade cards). I tried to “pace” myself as much as I could (I still have not learned if that’s an official thing you can learn and apply to pain in a unique way, but I just spread things out in a common sense way!). But still, I totally crashed…
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October 29th, 2011 -- Posted in pain / disability |
As a “multiple years” chronic pain sufferer, I can no longer count or keep track of the number of times I have been asked to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10. I have done so at doctor’s appointments, hospital ER visits, etc.
And you know what I have discovered in this time?
One to 10 is not good enough!
I mean this in many different ways…
* It can be argued it doesn’t go high enough. If 10 is defined as being “the most pain you have ever felt in your life before now”, then your scale could go beyond 10. I really enjoy the comical pain scale depicted in the blog Hyperbole and a Half (it’s funny because it’s so true!!):
Emergency Room post with better pain scale
* Since different people have different pain histories and experiences, maybe not everyone should have the same starting (and maximum) end points. Kids who had experienced nothing but a bee-sting could rate from 1 to 10, but should this be the same scale for say, people who had been shot? Their 5 could be extremely excruciating whereas a child could be at an 8 and be fine.
* Not only that, but if one individual person changes what her or his “10″ is, any previously tracked pain becomes hard to compare to what is tracked from there on in. Someone could be experiencing the same actual pain, but it would have a different number now because something more painful has been experienced which bumps everything else down the line.
* Most importantly, the scale of 1 to 10 does not give us enough variation to notice sublte changes. When you are a chronic pain patient and your pain regularly sits at 7 to 9 out of 10 (I have not felt an average body pain level of less than 6 since March 2nd, 2008!), having just 3 numbers to rate your pain changes is totally inadequate. You start getting into halves and quarters and wanting to use decimal places, which people don’t expect.
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October 8th, 2011 -- Posted in knitty/stitchy, pics |
So after knitting my very first baby garment (an adorable hooded sweater), the next baby gift I wanted to make was a pair of knitted baby booties…
I know it seems a little backwards, having done a really difficult project and then moving to a more simple project like booties, but for me it was just about the order of the babies being born and just going ahead with what I wanted to make! I didn’t want to be limited or slowed down by a difficult pattern. If I see something cute, I want to be able to make it, and I’ll try to just learn whatever techniques I need to learn to do that. It’s just the way I’ve always been and so far I haven’t hit too many road blocks in accompishing anything I set my mind to. 
My first pair of booties turn out very well, although I found they didn’t go up as high as I would’ve liked. So I ended up modifying the “Small” size version of all future patterns to have higher sock sections. Since knitting that first pair of booties, I’ve now created a half dozen more pairs!
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