Oh the joys of having no clue what's wrong with you. As you know, I'm still having issues with my back. I'm now getting those terribly painful spasms. Well, now I noticed that shortly after that happens I get a huge headache and feel very nauseated. It sucks.
Still haven't called the doctor about it. But it's not easy to do that. Making an appointment with him is hard, on my end. No long waiting list with them. But when I go to make an appointment I confuse them. I always have to tell them "I can't do it on these dates, can't do it on this day of the week no matter the date, can't be any earlier then 10am, but no later then 1pm". Not easy. It's a 1.5 hour drive to the office. So I have to wait until after kids have left for school. If I wanted to be home by the time they get off the bus I have to LEAVE the doctor's office no later then 1:30pm.
Oh and still having issues with my ankle. It's hard to explain the pain. If you start at one side of the ankle, go across the front and then stop at the other side (so from ball bone to ball bone), that's where the pain is at. It's mostly in the center of that general area. When the pain intensifies it goes UP my leg, the shin, the front. There is zero pain in the foot anywhere. Zero pain at the back of the leg/ankle.
I did see a doctor for that. He told me I have tendonitis. I'm not sure if I believe that or not. The ankle pain is actually what caused us to discover that I have a back problem. So you can image how frustrating it is to go through a promising back surgery only to discover the ankle problem wasn't related (as they thought).
The pain started 2 years ago. I didn't hit it. Wasn't injured. Nothing. I was putting Miles (oldest and tiniest of the twins--he wasn't even a full month old yet) into bed when the pain hit my ankle so bad I nearly dropped him. Never had any bruises around. No rash, or swelling. Nothing visibly wrong. When I seen the doctor for my ankle (as mentioned above--the one after the back surgery), I had some high hopes. But those were dashed. He was quick to claim it was tendinitis. That's fine, that wasn't a problem for me. The problem was that he wants me to do physical therapy. I just can't.
He wanted 6 months of PT, and to do it 3 times a week. To start, that's more visits then my insurance will cover. I'm only allowed 25 visits per year. And I had already used up 8 visits when doing PT for my back. So that left 16 visits. Just a little over a month's worth of ankle PT available. Well, that isn't the only problem. The PT for my back cost me way too much. I don't know how they figured out the price, but for those 8 visits, I owed them $400. That comes out to be $50 a visit after insurance. If insurance even covered all the visits.
Now let's do some math here for the 6 months of ankle PT--
One month--4 weeks--3x week--
So..one week of PT--$50(per visit) x 3(visits per week) = $150
Since there's 4 weeks to a month--$150(weekly cost) x 4(weeks in one month) = $600
That's just one month. For one month of the prescribed ankle PT it would cost me $600!! Which means to do the entire 6 months, it would cost $3600. Hell, my back surgery cost less then that ($75). See why I don't jump to do the PT? I can't even afford one week worth of it.
He also gave me some other medicine to take in combination. I did take that daily as prescribed. It was a different type of NSAID. You would think if it was just tendonitis, things would be normal by now. I have it in my knees and those are just fine.
Another thing that's troubling about my ankle is nothing takes the pain away. Nothing even takes the edge off. Not even a tiny bit. I know this because I'm taking pain medicine and muscle relaxers throughout the day for my back. Right now it's Tramadol on most occasions, sometimes the pain is so bad I take a Percocet. I don't remember the name of the muscle relaxer. I want to say it's Flexeril. Yep it is, just Google searched it to be sure I had the name right. Anyway...Taking those daily, it does nothing for my ankle.
My ankle hurts more when standing or walking. I can't balance on that side. I can't shift all my weight to that ankle (as you do sometimes when standing for long periods, generally people will shift their weight to one side). I can only shift it to my left side.
Ugh I just want these pains to go away! Heck, I'd be happy just to know what's causing it.
Signed,
Super Mom
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