The toll

A mind that it anxious about future events is miserable - Seneca

At the end of my last post I asked the question: "If you had come to truly believe that you would not be physically competent to do all the things that you're currently planning for your later years, your retirement, what would change for you, right now?"

This question hits at the heart of what chronic pain does to you: it takes away hope. It makes your future uncertain, worrying even.  But this doesn't even begin to address the different ways that 7 years of chronic pain have impacted my life.

First, there are the practical things. 

For more than two years, I have been unable to sleep under the covers in our bed. I have to sleep on top of the covers with a loose, warm blanket over me. Why? Well because the pressure/restriction of a sheet and duvet on me make it hard for me to turn over or shift positions in the night. With my pelvic instability problems, I have to move a specific way in bed: every part of my body has to move along the same plane, at the same time. I can't twist or push off with one foot or things crack and pop or sometimes even seem to "dislodge". Laying under a blanket that moves with me makes things better. I've also taken to placing a pillow under my knees, to keep my pelvis slighting tilted and to relax my knees. And no, this is not sexy nor the ideal situation for your husband to reach across the bed to request an impromptu night of intimacy. You know, should either of us have the energy for such things at thee end of the day.

I find it hard to sit at a computer and work for more than a few minutes at a time without experiencing acute shoulder and neck pain. Unfortunately, my job often requires that I do exactly that - for sometimes hours of focus at a time. I have tried multiple positions and ergonomic solutions (including eliminating my office altogether and working from my bed) but with limited success. Trying to sit in an "ergonomically correct" way just tired my muscles in just a minute or two - they're just not ready to be in that position and they don't want to be "convinced". What relieves my shoulders irritates my lumbar spine. 

Walking and performing every day movements requires thought and constant awareness. I almost am never stationary or moving without constantly being aware of my posture and positioning.Folks have tried to tell me that I focus on it too much, that I've created a situation of hyper-awareness, which may be true. But my reality is that to "ignore" these things usually results in injury or at least hours or days of pain.  Just walking up stairs requires bracing my pelvic floor muscles and watching that my knees stay in alignment. With all the physical therapists I have seen over the years and the multiple diagnoses, it's like a have constant, running commentary in my brain. I'll give you a literal example of something that happens almost every day:

I'm standing at the cook top making dinner. I suddenly feel a "twinge" down my leg. Immediately I check in with myself. I realize I have transferred all my weight to one leg (a no-no) so I switch to both feet. Then I realize that my back is too arched, so I correct by tucking in my pelvis. Then I realize that this adjustment has resulted in increased shoulder pain so I lift my chest and pull my shoulders back. Which calls attention to the positioning of my head, so I try to tuck my chin in a little but not too much. All of this happens in a matter of seconds in my brain and body but this mental dialogue between brain and body is almost constant in my day. And then a moment or two later, after my mind has wandered, I realize all those adjustments have come undone and I go back through it all again. Just standing still is tiring both mentally and physically. I feel like I am constantly trying to fight what my body "naturally" wants to do.

Even clothing can be an issue. The latest craze for skinny jeans have left me writhing in agony, trying to get inside them - pushing and pulling with my pelvis is an issue. I can't wear high heels anymore and racer-back sports bras put too much pressure on my lower neck to tolerate.

My ability to do housework has incrementally diminished. Vacuuming is a killer for my pelvis, laundry kills my neck and shoulder and knees, making the bed yanks my back around in every way possible. Forget about trying to get on hands-and-knees to clean the shower so I've learned to live with gross shower mold. All of this is if I can find the energy to tackle any of it. I'm a zombie by 8pm, when my daughter goes to sleep. I usually try to tackle chores on Saturdays, which gives me Sunday to recover from whatever damage I did. My house is a disaster area. While I have never been a perfect housekeeper, I have also never been this slack either. Just looking around me most days only adds to my stress and disappointment. I don't enjoy living in a dirty, untidy house; disorder seriously messes with my mojo.

I have had to give up many activities I love: swimming, hiking, skiing and yoga being the main ones. Physical activity has always been my stress buster, my personal therapy and yoga was the ultimate form of that. I also enjoy the challenge of new things, especially when they take me to new places. I have skydived, parasailed, horse-back galloped, skiied and zip-lined around the world, climbed thousands of steps on historical monuments, hiked through rainforests, swam in beautiful oceans, and whooped with joy on some of the world's scariest roller coasters. Now I just don't know if I could put my body through that without damage. Some things (like skiing) I know I just could not do right now and have come to accept that I may never do again. Other things I'm just afraid to do in case I hurt something "for good" this time. I live in constant fear that I'll put myself in a wheelchair with some kind of mundane activity, let alone something physically taxing. Bottom line: I've lost confidence and trust in my own body to support me.

Yet, at the same time, I am unable to stay at home and just "relax", something which drives my husband crazy. Part of it is that I work from home and have cabin fever in my personal time but a lot of it is that, unless I stay busy both mentally and physically, all I can think about and feel is the pain. I need constant distraction to take my mind off of whatever hurts in any particular day. 

Financially I estimate that I have invested around $10,000 over the years in treatments and diagnoses: doctor co-pays 2-3 times a month, physical therapy co-pays (some of which were out of network and required full payment) sometimes 2-3 times a week, and frequent massages, to name just a few of the out of pocket expenses. 

The attitudes of other people don't always help either. On more than one occasion by more than one person, it has been suggested to me that:

1. I am suffering from hypochondria
2. I have a low pain tolerance
3. I need to just "accept" my situation and the acceptance will allow me to "let go" of the pain
4. I need to have a more positive attitude
5. I need to stop talking about it because words make my world and, of course, nobody wants to be around a negative whiner. There are people out there with much worse physical ailments that me.
6. I need to just "meditate" and take time for myself; I am too stressed out and this is causing the pain

I admit that, at some points during this journey I have indeed wondered if I really was oversensitive to pain and should just chalk all this up to getting older. You know, suck it up and all that. But what I realize now, 7 years in, is that is just bullshit. I don't just have one issue, I have multiple issues. I don't just have pain I have pain that has changed the way I live. And so let me address each of these points one-by-one. 

Allow me to vent here, k?

1. Hypochondria does not cause pelvises to rotate, ribs to dislodge, labrums to tear, and knees to run "off track".
2. This may be true but what's the point here? The level of pain I feel is the level of pain I feel. It's not "relative".
3. Hahahahahahahaha. **ck off. I will NEVER accept that pain is inevitable.
4. ARE. YOU. KIDDING. ME!? If I did not already have a positive attitude, do you think I would have been able to spend the last 7 years chasing down specialist after specialist, potential treatment after potential treatment? No, I would have crawled into a corner, downed some Vicodin and cried about how horrid my lot was in life. Anyone who tells me that 7 years of never giving up on my body is not a positive response to my situation is an idiot.
5. Fair enough. Maybe you're tired of hearing about my aches and pains. Maybe you need to be around people whose lives are all rainbows and roses all the time. Good luck with that. You always find out who your real friends are in these situations. I'm ok with that. And yes, there are people with terminal illnesses and chronic pain issues that are absolutely debilitating. All I have to say to those folks is: I am so, so, so sorry for you. Any measure of positivity and hope that you manage to retain makes you a superhero in my book. But here's the thing: their pain, no matter how bad, does not stop me feeling mine. See #2.
6. Which came first? The chicken or the egg? Am I in pain because I'm stressed or stressed because I'm in pain? Certainly I am in more pain during the week when I am at work, which could be a combo of time at the computer and the stresses of my job. But the reality is I don't have much latitude to change the stress level in my life in that department. What I do know is I WILL feel less stressed if I'm not worrying about my body falling apart all the time. Maybe my life will not be stress free but pain is my #1 cause of stress right now, so I'm starting there.

Despite my answer to #4, the last 7 years have worn me down and it has got harder and harder to hold out hope that I can affect my situation. I defy anyone to spend that amount of time dealing with undiagnosed chronic pain, to go through the emotional roller coaster of successive, incorrect diagnoses, and not come out the other side feeling doubtful that help will ever really arrive. 

One of the hardest parts of this to deal with is the grief: grief of the things I begin to realize I may never do like teach my daughter to ice-skate or ski, climb Machu Pichu, or even just have the simple joy of getting through a really hard workout. Coupled with that is the anger: why have all these doctors and physical therapists failed me? Why have I spent thousands of dollars on health care only to never have found someone who truly listens and wants to find out what's wrong with me? 

Then there is the fear. And this is how I started out this post. Fear of putting a foot wrong and hurting something else all the time. Fear that whatever is wrong with me is only getting worse and, at 37, this doesn't bode well for retirement. 

Here I am working my patootie off in a stressful job that is not stimulating to me (and which probably increases my pain), to continually increase my income and hopefully build a nest egg that will enable me to retire and do all the things I neither have time nor $$ for right now... but what if, by the time I've reached this nebulous financial goal, I'm physically incapable of living out any of those dreams? What was it all for? What was the point?

Chronic, increasing pain, has made me start to re-evaluate my life choices at the most fundamental level.

At some point it leaves you wondering if you shouldn't just throw the towel in and, instead of killing yourself working for tomorrow, take a step back to try and enjoy what you have today. I continually, mentally war with myself on this subject. To give up everything I have worked so hard for now - my house, my career and income (and everything that allows me to do, not least of which is spend $10k trying to fix myself) - seems almost unfathomable, heartbreaking even. Without money I cannot travel the world and just the thought of having that dream yanked away from me makes me want to hyperventilate. I LIVE for the prospect of my next trip, my next adventure, for seeing the world, experiencing new cultures, for the moment of stepping off a plane in a foreign land and soaking up the new smells and sounds. (The only other thing that makes me feel this way is photography. Thank God I have that at least.)

Yet, at the same time, what if I never get to the end of the rainbow? How much will the "prospect" of all those things matter 10, 20 years from now if I don't have the ability to enjoy them anyway? 

Then, as I mentioned in my previous post, there is the memory loss and the lack of bandwidth to be "there" for my husband, my daughter, and my parents. They get the worst of me all the time because they get what's left at the end of the day, the end of the week. These days that's not a lot. I know they love me, understand, and forgive me for it for the most part but I would like to enjoy my time with my family, not just "get through it" in the hours before I can go to bed and finally exhale.  

For the first time in my life, I find myself seeking the ear of a good therapist. I have almost never been as uncertain about the direction of my life as I am right now. It's an unusual and uncomfortable place for me, not being able to sort through, and make sense of, my various thoughts and feelings. I have always felt sure of myself, hopeful, and empowered. Even that has changed for me. I feel a little lost in life right now and perhaps some of this is being "30-something', certainly pain is not the only thing contributing to my unease, but it is most definitely the most defining element of my life right now - like it or not (I'm leaning toward NOT.) 

Maybe all of this sounds a little dramatic to you.  If I was an outsider looking in, I might agree. But it is what it is. Clearly, I'm not all that happy with the status quo either. I never imagined this "place" for myself. I don't want to be here. I'm trying not to be.

And to be clear, if you didn't read my last/first post on this issue, I'd like to reiterate after all of this, that I am NOT seeking sympathy here. I appreciate the support of friends but don't need a shoulder to cry on. I am looking for answers, not condolences.

Which leads me to my next post. My latest diagnosis. 

Stay tuned...

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself - Mark Caine

Catharsis

Before I begin, let me start with a brief apology to those of you have read this blog for a while or who stay in touch with me on Facebook: yes, I'm sorry, this blog post (and some subsequent ones) is going to be about my pain. If you're pretty sure that you don't want to hear me talk/whine/complain or however you want to characterize it anymore, now's your cue to navigate away because this is the last time I will apologize for it. I'm not Tony Robbins and this is not "The Secret". If you're looking for flowers and rainbows and positive affirmations, you may need to look elsewhere.

Ok, you still there? Hey, thanks.

So, we've established that I'm going to talk about my pain. I want to be clear, though, why I have decided to start writing about it again because, truth be told, with the exception of my previous declaration of war and some thinly-veiled references on Facebook, I have actually not written, at length, about what is going on with my body for some time.

This post will start from the beginning of my issues. For those of you that know me well and for some time, this will be repetition. For those of you who are fairly new to my life, this may be enlightening. Many of you think I have a "bad back", which is not entirely untrue but is certainly not the whole story. Either way, the point of the "rewind" is not to generate an outpouring of sympathy for poor ole me (which is entirely unneeded) but rather for three main reasons, some of which will become clearer in successive posts:

1. For me personally. Writing is catharsis, like a cleansing ritual. I want to write all I have been through down, one last time, to get it out of my head and into words and then let it go. I don't just want to, I need to. Think of it like therapy. I am also hoping that I am coming to the end of the mystery of my issues (more in an upcoming post) and so I'm looking at this post like a clean break.
2. For anyone else who suffers with unexplained, chronic pain. While I realize the dangers of what I call "Googlenosis" I am forever thankful for the power of the internet in helping me piece-together the issues my body has faced when my doctors and therapists have failed to. I wish I could reach through the computer screen to thank every person who posted their "out of the norm" experiences on a blog or in a forum so others could learn. So, if there is anybody else out there who suffers from chronic pain, I hope that, by sharing my experience they will find this blog and not feel so alone in their search for answers. I hope my story will encourage them to never give up trying to find help and to never accept what the medical community tells them when every other fiber of their being tells them that it is wrong.
3. To highlight the inadequacy of the medical community and systems in diagnosing chronic issues. We are brought up to think that, with some high profile exceptions, modern medicine has pretty much seen it all, done it all, understands it all, and has a solution for it all. Even that which we know it does not cure we are at least confident can be diagnosed. Yet my experience has been that doctors and therapists are, in general, woefully inadequate in diagnosing multi-facted and deep-rooted chronic problems. The entire system is built around acute needs. Even the famed "Dr. House" only steps in to solve the puzzle once you're at death's door. Personally, I'd rather figure stuff out before then.

In many places these posts may sound negative and hopeless and in some places defiant and hopeful. I set out to make them, as a whole, neither. What I will be, and always am, is real. Bring to it what you will. At the end of it all, I hope to end on a positive note, a positive outcome, as you follow my journey through therapy for what is now, I hope, a diagnosed set of issues. But that ending has not been written yet. 

So let us start at the beginning...

----

Before the fall of 2005 I was a fairly fit and healthy 20/30-something girl. I got up at 4:30 in the morning almost every day to go to the gym where I would work-out HARD, lift weights, and pound the cardio machines. Once upon a time in my 20s I did a stint as a personal trainer and so I knew what I was doing. I was in great shape. I did yoga, weights, swimming, hiked, and skied. My thighs were notorious with my friends for their power and muscles, folks would always comment on them. I was strong and happy - for me these two are closely connected. Working out was also my therapy, my stress-buster. I was one of the few people who actually liked going to the gym.

Then, in the middle of a stressful period at my job at the time, I began to have muscle spasms in my neck and upper back. Like everyone, I put these things down to too much time at the computer, bad posture, and the stress of my life. I would often say, in excuse "I carry my stress in my neck and shoulders." I took a couple of ibuprofen and soldiered on. That was until it got so bad that I couldn't sleep at night without a heating pad and a ton of medication. So I went to my doctor at the time and he sent me to physical therapy.

After 6 weeks of physical therapy, my pain was all-but gone. Hallelujah! I was discharged with a series of exercises and a deep sigh of relief.

The day after I was discharged I woke up and went to the gym as usual. I got on the eliptical trainer to warm up and practically leapt off in pain. My right hip seemed to be "stuck" or "locked" and every time I tried to push down on it in that plane of motion, it was incredibly painful. I found I could not lunge or squat, although I seemed to be able to walk fine, and my hip suddenly began to pop or crack for the very first time in my life. I literally sounded like popcorn as I moved. (Little did I know back then!)

Back to the doctor. Back to physical therapy.

Again, physical therapy seemed to help out quite a bit. Went through the motions, left with some stretches. But something lingered that I couldn't get past. The popping/snapping never really went away and I was left with a feeling of tightness in my hip/groin. Trying to move my right leg toward the center line of my body was uncomfortable and, in my cases, painful. I left it for a while and then went back to my doctor. 

At the tender age of 30, I was told that my symptoms were the result of getting older. After picking my jaw up off the floor, I left for one of those prerequisite 6-8 week periods that all doctors seem to think will "cure" everything. You know "give it 6-8 weeks and see how it feels then."  Nothing changed and so I went back to the doctor and insisted that he refer me out to someone else. Reluctantly he did and I got an x-ray and an appointment with an orthopedist.

The x-ray showed what looked like a very small tear in the labrum of my hip socket. I was sent for an MRI of the area to confirm, which it did, and referred to an orthopedic surgeon who, of course, recommended surgery to remove the torn soft tissue, which was impinging on my hip socket. I had just got engaged and was planning a wedding, so the last thing I wanted to deal with was a surgery, so I decided to put it off until after the wedding, continuing with my physical therapy exercises to see if I could address the pain that way.

Unfortunately, the issues remained and so I went back to the doctor. By this time I had changed medical groups and so I had a different doctor. Which meant another set of x-rays and a different orthopedic surgeon. This time he diagnosed me with not only a labral tear but an acetabular impingement, which changed very little except for the scope of the surgery.

In March of 2008, I had surgery to repair my labral tear and to "debride" my right femur, which is a fancy way of saying that the docs went in there with some medical sandpaper and re-smoothed the top of my leg to fit better into my hip socket. I recovered quickly and was walking in record time. Unfortunately, I was left with more issues than I started with. 

The physical therapy my insurance covered focused on getting me back to walking without a limp but that was about it. If I had any desire to get back to the kind of shape I was in before the surgery (and I had still managed to stay fairly fit despite some limitations) I had to pay for a private P.T. Which I did because I still had the popping/clicking, continued to experience pain and discomfort in the same plane of motion but now worse, and, in addition, had a very tight and very painful I.T. band as a result of the traction they placed my hip in during the surgery.

By August of 2008 I was doing a little better but still was not as good as I had been pre-surgery. Unfortunately, just about that time I got pregnant. 

I say unfortunately but truly it was a blessing. I was one of the lucky women who got knocked up on the second try. The "unfortunately" came from the fact that I had expected to spend many months trying to conceive, as it had my mother before me. So just 5 months after my hip surgery, I was about to put my body through one of the most taxing physical experiences of its life. In hindsight, not the best timing.

Despite the usual morning sickness in trimester one, I had a fantastic 6 months of pregnancy. Sure, I did not like being pregnant one little bit but from the perspective of health, I was picture perfect. I remained active, working out, and my hip seemed to have stopped hurting.

Then, in January of 2009, at 7 months pregnant, I slipped during a mild, pre-natal yoga routine at home, felt a sharp pain and "crack" in my pelvis and hit the floor. Fortunately, I did not land on my stomach but I could barely walk. Lifting my feet off the floor made me wince in pain and sitting down for longer than a few minutes at a time left me almost unable to get up. As I came to find out, I had separated my pubic bone, something actually not uncommon in pregnancy and known as S.P.D. I was told this would go away fairly quickly after I gave birth.

Unfortunately, it did not. In fact, when I tried to so much as walk around the block after my daughter was born, I was faced with pain that shot around my body in sharp stabs. Up my back, down my legs, into my feet, around my lower back. Trying to do something as simple as turn around or lift my daughter would result in me putting my back out to the extent that I would have to lie in bed with a heating pad and heavy painkillers for a few days at a time. I tried repeatedly to return to the gym but, each time, seemed to hurt some other area of my back. 

Back to the doctor. She recommended Osteopathic Manipulation, sort of a combination of chiropracty and massage therapy. The Osteopath diagnosed me with Pelvic Instability, a rotated pelvis, and pelvic girdle pain. She identified that my ribs would repeatedly pop in and out and would, on a weekly basis, "fix" them, as well as doing some manipulation to try and encourage my pelvis to rotate back. She also did massage therapy on my pelvic girdle muscles, which is as intimate and invasive as it sounds.

After about 3 months of this, I was doing better and discharged. Yay! We're now in late 2009.

Unfortunately, as seemed to be the pattern, I decided to try and start back on an exercise routine and, every time I did, all but my pubic-bone pain returned.  I had the shooting-stabbing pains coupled now with a burning in my sacrum and just general feeling of displacement in my pelvic area in general. Just so much as a foot out of place as I exited my car would result in days of pain and discomfort. My daughter was trying to walk and I would often find myself crying in frustration alongside her as she all-but begged me to bend over to hold her hands and helped her but I could not. Getting her in and out of the car was awkward and painful and I routinely crossed my fingers that I wouldn't make a wrong move and wind up back in bed again. I remember many summer days watching my husband and daughter in the back yard while I sat on my zero-gravity chair with an ice-pack on my sacrum, downing NSAIDS. I just couldn't imagine what I would do when she became even more active. I was heartbroken to be sitting on the sidelines and the pain seemed to be getting worse.

I changed Primary Care Physicians to get out of my restrictive network and decided to get a second opinion. Again, another referral to another physical therapist. This one was, again, outside of my network, but I was assured by my new doc that she was "the best", so I paid out of pocket. There was no amount of money too much to get rid of the pain.

This P.T. diagnosed me with S.I. Joint Dysfunction. Basically my pelvis was hyper-mobile and unstable, causing everything to be out-of-whack. This was pissing off my nerves, not only in that area but now in a spreading pattern, which was the shooting pains in seemingly unrelated places I was feeling. I was told there was really no fix and that I would forever have to modify my movements and behavior to accommodate. No skiing for me, for sure and I had to give up yoga, something which I had come to love.

Again, more new exercises (all of which I did, routinely, every time at every stage in this process, I might add. I never phoned them in) and more ice and more massage. This time, there was limited impact. I felt I had more understanding but no results. In fact, if anything, the experience with this P.T. had caused me to feel more despondent about my physical outlook. Part of me refused to accept or believe that, at 35, this was the best I would now ever be. 

We're now in late 2010 and I was beginning to get desperate. My daughter was going to turn 2, I couldn't return to exercise, couldn't lose the baby weight, and couldn't really enjoy my time with her. Everything with an infant requires lifting and sitting on the floor, both of which caused me significant pain and discomfort. I was getting despondent, grouchy, tired, and a little depressed.

During this whole time (from pre-surgery and until today), I had been seeing a massage therapist who managed to help me address some of my symptoms through her mix of massage techniques. She recommended that I try accupuncture with the lady in the same office suite as her. Despite having a fear of needles that is almost unrivaled (I faint when having my blood taken unless lying down) I decided to give it a go. I had 24 needles inserted into my back and lay there for 90 minutes while they vibrated. When I got up I found I could not focus my eyes for almost 24 hours. Needless to say (or should I say needlelesss to say) I never went back. It's a testament to my level of desperation that I even tried it.

Next up in the list of tried-and-failed treatments was seeing a specialist in The Alexander Technique. I had felt for some time that I was finding it increasingly more difficult to find "center" with my body. I knew my posture was getting worse but I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Everything I tried - from ergonomics to biofeedback - didn't seem to work and a friend who had similar hip issues had tried, and found useful, this technique. Although this was a helpful process in making me more aware of my body and it's movements, it did not relieve my pain. At $80 a session and a 30 minute, one-way drive during business hours, it was emptying my wallet and cutting into my workday so I called it quits after 5 or 6 sessions.

And then I saw a news segment on a physical therapist who trained athletes and specialized in getting them back into shape after injury. I convinced him to treat me for a reduced cash fee and it was the best thing I ever did because, for almost a year after I started seeing him, I had virtually no pain and felt the best I had felt in years. Unlike every other physical therapist, he worked on getting me back to peak performance, creating a grueling regimen of exercises that had me lunging and squatting (two things I thought I should never be able to do again) and jumping and leaping. I was absolutely overjoyed. I actually started plotting when I would take my daughter skiing and ice skating for the first time. 

Then, in summer of 2011, my shoulder and neck pain resurged with a vengeance. I did all the P.T. exercises I remembered from years past and managed to mitigate the pain. However, right after I did that, I stood up from my spot on a Tahoe beach and felt my left side spasm. Back to nursing back pain again.

Not long after that episode, I started to feel pain in my right knee when doing the plyometric exercises that I had been doing for the past year or so. I rested up for a while, thinking it was an overuse injury or strain but the pain got worse until, finally, I could not walk up stairs to my bedroom without using all fours.  Since many of my P.T. exercises of my back involved my knees, I had to stop doing those too, resulting a resurgence of my S.I. and pelvic pain.

You guessed it... back to the doctor.

An x-ray of my knee revealed nothing amiss.

Guess what? 

You're right... back to physical therapy. 

Physical therapists gave me a non-specific diagnosis of a knee that basically keeps "running off the tracks" causing degeneration and pain. But don't worry, it could be mitigated with... more exercises.Although, of course, the pain would never go away entirely.

By this point, I had about 2 hours worth of physical therapy exercises that I should be doing in any one given day. Forget a "workout" I was on "full time" physical therapy.

Let's pause here for a second because, before you ask, I should share that I did, throughout these interactions with doctors and therapists, try to give them the history of all my issues in an attempt to inquire if something more fundamental was going on with my body that was causing me to repeatedly injur myself. However, nobody listened or was interested. Each successive person wanted to hear about only the acute issue at hand. I was repeatedly cut off mid-sentence, ignored, or told my information was irrelevant when I tried to bring up what seemed to be, to them, unrrelated issues. The closest I had got to any kind of explanation of my multi-faceted pain symptoms was the one from the two therapists ago that said I had inflamed, "pissed off" nerves. However, that did not explain how I was experiencing successive structural issues in different parts of my body.

The knee physical therapists' exercises helped/help with my knee pain meaning I can now at least climb stairs but the pain is not all gone. I'm left with lingering pain and instability in my right knee that pops up inconsistently and constantly leaves me with concern that one wrong move will result in me needing knee surgery. Oh, and I now have snapping in my left knee when I walk up stairs. I'm not even going to bother mentioning that to a doc.

However, since late 2011, I have not been able to shake the pain and stiffness in my neck and shoulders.  My thoracic spine is often in a lot of pain, only momentarily relieved by being "popped" while I roll over a foam roller. The muscles around my neck, scapula, and thoracic spine feel sore to the touch, spasm, and constantly ache. The P.T. exercises I was given back in 2005 no longer work and the pain has been getting increasingly worse. Unlike the knee pain or the S.I. joint pain, these pains don't let up no matter what position I am in - sitting, standing, laying down. In fact, some days it's hard to get to sleep without a process of deep breathing and meditation. Driving was/is painful because of the static position. Working at a computer was/is painful. Sitting on the floor painful. Light exercise seems to make it better but that is a fine line too - try to step-up the routine in any way, shape or form, just makes things worse. Even rest doesn't really help. I wake up in the morning with pain and stiffness and I go to bed with pain and tightness. Shooting pains migrate throughout my body, down my back, my arms, my legs, into my feet on any given day and at any time, seemingly without cause, rhyme or reason. The other day, my heels began to hurt like crazy. Went away after a few days inexplicably.

600mg of ibuprofen at a time stopped impacting the pain at all some time ago so I basically stopped taking them altogether (not that I really took them except on really bad days.) Muscle relaxers take the edge off a little but turn me into a bit of a zombie for a few hours. Bottom line: I don't like taking pills because they don't "solve" anything and Lord knows what other issues they create.

Further, an overly-ambitious massage therapist I went to for a "fun" massage, managed to dislodge my pubic bone again in January, meaning I had to try to repeat some of the therapy I remembered back from 2009 to ease it back into place. Another thing I was forced to realize is always just one wrong move away from going "wrong" again.

As a last shot in the dark, I recently resorted to pulling my I.U.D. because I had found that some women online had been experiencing some undiagnosed shoulder and knee pain that was alleviated after theirs was removed. That was back in early December and, if anything, the pain has got worse not better since then.

We're pretty much up-to-date now... early 2012. Physically, I feel like my body is caving in on me. I feel like I can never get comfortable. Mentally, I am despondent and frustrated. Both emotionally and physically, I am tired, dead at the end of the day. I feel like I could sleep for 12 hours every night and still never feel rested. Unlike the days when I used to bound out of bed at 4:30am, I now find it hard to rise by 7am. I'm irritable, short-tempered, and unable to absorb the regular stresses of everyday life that used to just roll off my back. I've got very little left to give to the most important people in my life any more. I spend all day just trying to push the pain to the back of my mind just so I can work and then I fall apart in my personal time. My not-yet three-year old daughter is already so tuned-into Mummy's problems that she drags a pillow and a bean-bag to the area she wants to play with me in, before even asking me to hang out with her. She often asks me why I look so sad and then rubs my back and tells me "It's going to be ok, mumma," It sounds sweet to an outsider but to me it is the most heartbreaking thing in the world. I wanted to be a positive, strong role model for her, not a broken mother who sits on the sidelines throughout her life. This is not the legacy I wanted to create. It's far too early for her to be caring for me.

My memory seems to be impacted too. I forget things with a frequency that is alarming, causing my husband to ask me "who are you?" at one point in Kohls after I forgot, dropped, or left behind a succession of things.  People tell me things and I quickly forget them if I don't write them down, something which I almost never did before. I forgot my parents' anniversary last October for the first time in my life (something I am just owning up to now because I was too ashamed to admit it to them at the time - sorry Mum and Dad.) I double-schedule things on my calendar, forget appointments, and, in general, have become to feel like a basketcase.

I feel like the shadow of the person I was just five years ago. And while I have not lost any of the determination to keep fighting, I had lost most of the hope in actually being able to change my situation. Pain and limitation have begun to feel like the norm and all I can think is that I'm only 37 - this is the best it's ever going to be, it will only get worse from here as my body ages. I can't imagine being 60, the regular aches and pains of old age, coupled with my current pain and issues, which only seem to be getting worse. I have been increasingly worried that I have some kind of major, undiagnosed issue that is degenerating my body bit-by-bit and that, at some point, maybe 10 or 20 years from now, it will all come home to roost.

And this kind of worry impacts how you live your life, let me tell you. Not just in the here-and-now but also in your plans for the future. If you had come to truly believe that you would not be physically competent to do all the things that you're currently planning for your later years, your retirement, what would change for you, right now?

I will talk more about the impact to my life and psyche in the next post because, honestly, it's just as degenerating in it's own way as the pain and dysfunctions themselves.

Then, I promise, I'll move onto the diagnosis I recently received and the path forward.

Until next time....

Dear Body... this means WAR!

Dear Body,

So, here's the deal: I know you're feeling pretty cocky with yourself right now and you have every reason to.

For the last seven years, you've won battle after battle, getting more aggressive with every one, and, if I'm being honest, have sent me into retreat, inch by inch, day by day, failed-solution after failed-solution.

You've impacted my life, my personality, my relationships, my finances, my hopes, my dreams, and my desires. And while there have been days where I have hit my pillow at night and felt that I was finally reigning you in, the fact is that those have become fewer and further between as time has gone on. I'll admit, there are days, sometimes many at a time, when I can't see past the pain you throw at me and where it takes every last ounce of my inner strength not to give up entirely and let you have at it once and for all. All of which leaves very little of me left for the other important things in my life: my husband, my daughter, my parents, my friendships, my work, and those hopes and dreams I mentioned earlier.

Many days, I don't like who I've become. I stare at images of myself before you started your attack and can barely connect with the life that girl led. With each new tactic I try hope resurges but you always seem to manage to swipe back and, each time, make it a little harder for me to get up and try again. Someone once said something on Facebook like: "Pain doesn't change who you are." They're wrong. It changes everything, gradually and slowly, almost so that, if you didn't pay attention, you would barely notice until it was too late. Apparently, this just as literal and physical as psychological, as I found out today from someone who understands a bit more about your dirty tactics.

But here's the deal. I'm not giving up. I will NEVER EVER EVER give up.

I will not retreat into a pharmaceutically-induced haze to block out what you throw at me. I will not sit on a couch, afraid to move, afraid to follow my dreams, just to avoid your attacks. I want to feel every last little stab and ache and crack and pop because it reminds me to never quit.

There may not be a single diagnosis or a magic pill but I refuse to believe that there are no solutions. And I'm willing to do whatever it takes to find them. I will leave no stone unturned. I will never, ever accept that retreat - the life you seem to want for me - is inevitable, no matter what mumbo-jumbo-meditational bullshit people throw at me. I am not listening to them, period. Deep down I am a fighter and you have seriously underestimated me.

See, you and I got too much to do yet, too much living to fit into whatever time we have left and I'm sorry to tell you this, but you've got little choice but to come along for the ride.

If anyone needs to practice acceptance, it's you.

I WILL win the war.

Consider yourself warned.

ME.

A follow up to "The Rebellion Begins"

Just a quick post to follow-up on my previous one on Daisy's school Holiday plans. (See here if you missed it.)

Despite having personally spoken to at least 10 people prior to that post, with the intent of trying to figure out why on earth a gift label needed to be so vague, nobody could provide a reasonable explanation and everyone was just as befuddled as me.

BUT, I forgot to consult the interwebs. Silly me.

My friend, Brandy, through a series of Facebook exchanges, finally made sense of it all for me: if bringing a book for the exchange was optional then so it follows that there may not be enough books to go around, so the school would have to make up the difference. Hence, nobody wants to embarrass the kids who did not bring the book (especially since that was their parents choice, not theirs) and some kids would end up with books from the school and others from school friends.

With a reasonable explanation I send a humble apology out into cyberspace (since I'm sure nobody at the school knows of this blog.) "To: My friend. From: Your friend", it is.

I still stand by not having to pay for school when there is no school. Sorry, you decide to provide no service, I should have to provide no payment. I think my issue with this was exacerbated by the fact that this scheduling information only reached me at the end of November. Fortunately, I have parents who are my back-up child care. Not everyone is so lucky.

Which brings me to the point of this follow-up post.

Once upon a time a wise friend (you know who you are) advised me against solutionless whining. At the very least it's unattractive and the very worst, it's darn right destructive. And as someone who likes nothing better than to get to the bottom of why things are not working right and then fix them (it's my thing, as you'll know if you've ever worked with me) I am going to do something about "this".

I am sending a proposal to the director of Daisy's school by email today and will report back later.

And if "this" is all a bit vague right now, it's intentionally so. Stay tuned...

The rebellion begins

Let me start by saying that I LOVE Daisy's school. She loves it. I love it. I love the teachers. I love the vibe. I'm very happy with it. But a couple of things are irking me right now...

The school is doing a little gift exchange for Christmas and, in keeping with the learning theme, we had to bring in a wrapped book to donate the exchange pile. Cool so far, I like it. Daisy will definitely not say no a new book. The problem is the school's instructions for the label.

TO: My friend
FROM: Your friend

W.T.F!?

I mean, why not just say "To you. From me"? And then, in that case, why even bother with a label at all? I think it's clear to even a toddler that the gift came from someone and is being given to someone; they don't need a label to explain that basic concept.

Then, there is the fact that 2 and 3 year olds can't read, so what the hell does it matter what the label says? Plus, what is the big deal about saying who the book is from? I totally get why it doesn't say who it is "to" but really what's the point in giving and receiving a gift if there is no joy or appreciation derived from either side when the recipient opens it?

Perhaps the intent is to ensure that any crappy book given doesn't reflect poorly on the child who gave it? Well, maybe if the gift had to say who it was from then there would be more pressure to present a worthy choice? And it's not like cost was an issue: we were told to spend no more than $10.

Maybe the teachers are worried that the receiving child will hate it, throw it across the room, and have a toddler-fit, thus upsetting the recipient? Well, what about the opportunity to teach kids the valuable lesson of appreciating gifts for the thought and effort not just whether or not it was on their wish list? Plus, won't most kids know which book is the one their family donated anyway? I know Daisy will. They may be only two but they're not stupid.

Finally, I find it hard to believe that a room of curious preschoolers will not ask the inevitable question: "Who bought me this?" And what will be the teachers' response? Will they say "Santa" delivered it? I'm guessing no or the "From" would have been Saint Nick himself.

So, I'm totally perplexed and quite pissed and the stupidity of it all.

Hence, I left the label off completely. I mean, there was no actual point in the label, so why waste one?

Unfortunately, husband let me down. He dropped Daisy and said, wrapped book off this week and when the teacher took it from him she examined it, determined it didn't have a label, and said she would put one on it for us. And what did Hubby say? Did he say "Actually, we left it off purposefully because we thought the wording made absolutely no sense"? No, he did not. He said "Ok," OK!? OK!!!!??????

Yes, he totally thwarted my rebellion, which is leading me to more drastic measures. I will now spend all weekend prepping Daisy for the gift exchange, making sure she relentlessly demands to know who her book is from and ensuring she loudly identifies the book we donated when it is pulled from the pile.

I will undo this P.C. insanity one way or another.

And while I'm ranting about the school... it's all but closed next week. Of course, there is no reduction in tuition which, over the Holidays, would be much appreciated. Sure, it's open on Monday (when Daisy doesn't attend anyway) and Tuesday, but Tuesday is basically a throwaway because school is only from 9am to 12:30pm and the whole day is dedicated to the Christmas concert, puppet show, and Santa visit... all of which we parents are expected to attend (which, of course, I will... happily.). What's even more annoying is that there is a sign-up sheet for parents to provide the food!

Let me get this straight: I pay you $700 a month; you eliminate one week of school and force me to find alternative care for my child but provide no refund; and THEN you want me to bring food to your Christmas celebration which, incidentally, I had to take time off to attend!?

Where's the Holiday spirit in that!?

----------

And yes, I fully intend to pay no mind to the fact that this is my first post on here in months. Move along. Nothing to see here.

From confusion and self doubt, clarity and focus

It came to me in the shower today. What makes my photography what it is. What is makes my sessions "mine".

So I had to write it down.

The four words I chose as my tagline for MbyM are: Fun. Fresh. Real. Memorable. That's where I started.

FUN
All my sessions are designed to be fun. We all look best when we're happy, don't we? So doing something you enjoy is the best place to start. I want to know: where do you (and your family) feel most comfortable being yourself? That's where we'll shoot. Doesn't matter if it's the park, the pizza parlor, or the local farmer's market. One client once told me that a session with me was like taking a walk in the park with friends. Yeah, like that.

FRESH
It's the style of my photography, from concept to final editing. I like bright, happy colors, clean lines and clean light. Think about a basket of fresh fruit on a warm, summer's day. Yummy.

REAL.
Although my sessions can run the gamut from staged and carefully-planned to completely loose and carefree, the goal is always to set you and your family up to capture real emotions and personalities. Often, I've found, these happen in the moments between moments. Sometimes we show up with a plan and your children are just not into it. It happens. We ditch the plan and we go with the flow. Whatever works. We'll get the shot. Promise.

MEMORABLE.
It's in the title, so I should hope so! Everything from the session to the final photos should be something you remember fondly. I take time to bond with you, to get to know you, to make your session unique. Then, I edit your photos with that uniqueness in mind. There's no formula -  although there's always that MbyM "freshness". Finally, all my print products are delivered on high-quality professional printed, coated, and mounted photographic paper, ensuring that those memories last for generations. I have photos on my wall of my grandparents that I completely cherish. Back then photos were printed on some sturdy card-stock. We kind of got away from that with our inkjet printers and cheap WalMart prints that fade and whither all-too quickly. Let's save WalMart for vacation snapshots and capture something real, fresh, and memorable that lasts.

Sound good?

---------

This now resides here.

Me happy.

A creative condundrum

Yesterday I posted a request for feedback on Facebook, to help me choose 3-4 of my favorite photos to produce as samples both for client demonstration and a couple of events I am attending.

What came back was a bit of a surprise. Despite me being a big fan of color and really wanting to define myself as a "colorful photographer", the most popular images were black and white. One friend even went as far as to say that I should choose just black and white images to help me stand-apart.

Hmmmm.

I'll be honest... my heart sank. I don't want to be identified by my black-and-white images, or as the "black-and-white" photographer. Granted, these are just opinions and I am the ultimate decision-maker in how I define my work but it was a little jarring to realize that people connect more with my black and whites. Since I create images for other people, I cannot completely ignore what this is telling me.

There could be some logical reasons for this, of course.

First, I will readily admit that some images have a particular emotional pull for me and that, in many of these cases, I choose to edit those images as black and white because the color can distract from the emotion. So, maybe what people are reacting to is this relationship my black-and-white choices have to the emotionality of the images?

Secondly, maybe people, in general, prefer black and white images. Maybe I am alone in loving the beauty of color.

Lastly, of course, it could be that the way I process color images is not appealing. 

Hmmmm. Again.

Although I want to personally define how I creatively process images, I am interested in hearing YOUR constructive opinions here. 

What do you think is behind this? Is there something about my color images that is lacking for you? If so what? Or am I totally overanalyzing this?

If you need some reference point, I invite you to visit my website: www.mbymphotos.com and click on Portfolio, or visit my Flickr Stream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/britvixen/.

What think you?

SHOOT...

It's been a while...

... since I messed with of the I Heart Faces Fix it Fridays. But I loved this photo of this beautiful little girl so much, I was compelled to participate this week. Sometimes it's just so fun to edit someone else's image because you have no attathment to it, except for the aesthetic.

Since I'm keeping a tighter reign on the content of my Memories by Michelle blog these days, experimenting stuff will now come to Ms. Ranty Pants.

BEFORE / Straight out of Camera

AFTER / My edit

See more cool edits over at I Heart Faces

The knee post

As opposed to the hip posts of yore.

Sigh... yes... now knee problems.

And yes, my hip bone is connected to my thigh bone which is, in turn, connected to my knee bone. Hence, it's all connected.

More sighing.

As you know (and are no doubt tired of hearing at this point if you're friends with me on the Face Book) my right knee has been hurting, getting progressively more painful over the last few weeks. It started with some pain in my kneecap whenever I lunged during my workouts. So I backed-off for a bit, only to find that, without my regular PT workout (which includes lunges) my back began to hurt. The pain in my knee came back during certain lunges, however. Crap.

Then, all of a sudden, about a few weeks ago, it began to hurt walking up stairs also. Given I live in a 2 story home with an office and bedroom upstairs, this is a problem. Despite trying to stay away from aggravating activities, icing, and taking supplements like crazy, the pain progressed to a point where I had to crawl up the stairs yesterday.

Meanwhile, of course, my back is upset because it wants me to do my exercises that make IT happy.

Insolent little joints!

Today was my P.T. appointment. I'm not sure how many physical therapists this is for me now since 2005 but off the top of my head I can think of 5. I'd love to go back to my last PT who quite literally gave me my life back from S.I. joint and back pain, but the reality is that my insurance doesn't cover them and at $60 a time, I just can't do that right now.  Fortunately, I found another good therapist, Felicia, and she quickly put me through my paces.

The lamen's diagnosis is that my knee joint is a train that keeps veering off the tracks and, where it's crossing the line, there is friction and, therefore, pain. A more in-depth explanation is that my continued issues with a tight I.T. band (which extend back to before my hip surgery in '08), which connects from my glutes (which are, coinkidentally attached to my S.I. joint) mean my knee is being coaxed off the tracks. I also have a bit of a strained A.C.L., thankfully not torn but definitely causing destablization and exacerbating the problem. My knee, when I flex my quad muscle, is therefore being pulled up and out, to the side, causing the cartilage in the joint to rub and, potentially over time, degenerate.

Here's a pic to help those of you out who aren't big on anatomy (which I wasn't either until I started to hurt it.)

In the pic below you're seeing the front of the thigh. The tensor fascia lata on the left, connected to your glutes (butt muscles) at your hip and then turns into the I.T. band (Iliotibial tract) which then connects to the knee (patellar) and knee ligament. Fascinating, huh? (Or... not.)

In short: there's no doubt about it. I'm not making it to my grave able-bodied.

The good news is that she does not think I need surgery. Hallelujah because I really thought this was another kind of impingement that would require more people cutting into me, more recovery, more P.T. and back on that whole cycle again. No way. NO. WAY.

The bad news is that I have to add a whole new set of exercises to my P.T. repertoire to stretch my I.T. band, strengthen my glutes, and coax my knee back onto the tracks. Seriously, I could make doing my P.T. exercises a full time job at this point. There's the neck and shoulder exercises, the lower back and hip exercises, and now the knee exercises. All told, I can work out for 90 minutes just on this stuff alone. And many of the exercises should be done >1x a day!

Felicia also conceded that the hip surgery likely had something to do with all this. Since I had the surgery, whenever I lay down at night, my leg turns outward - I just can't stop it - and this is because my I.T. band is tight. It was tight before the surgery, likely pissed off by the traction during the surgery, and never really released after the surgery.

And so back to P.T. I go, 2x a week for 3 weeks. Because, you know, I have nothing better to do on my lunch hour.

I'll keep you posted. (I know, the suspense will kill you.)

Random Thursday night thoughts...

On Thursday nights I get a night off of bedtime duty. It's just an extra 30 minutes in my day but I'll take every extra second I can get these days.

So, on Thursday night, I have thoughts.

Random, adult thoughts. (Gasp.)

And so, for your pleasure, and in no particular order, here they are:

1. There are not enough teenage vampire TV shows in the world. I am SOOOOO excited for the season premiere of The Vampire Diaries, it's embarrassing. All hail September and new shows!
2. Two year olds are a force of nature. At what point in our lives do we lose that kind of power? Yeah, yeah, I know, if we all behaved like toddlers all the time, the world would come to a very ugly and untimely end. But what I'm thinking about is the energy, the power, the sense that you can bend the world around you to your will. I hope there is some way to bring Daisy up as a productive citizen without having her lose this spirit because, correctly channeled, it is powerful and empowering. She sure is a daily inspiration (and challenge) to me!
3. I am having SO. MUCH. FUN. with Memories by Michelle, it should be illegal. Working on the website, the branding, the new materials... it's just hitting all my creative and strategic hot-buttons. Unveiling the new website (www.mbymphotos.com) was like giving birth to a second child. I also have a Google ad campaign working out there, am looking into other online advertising opportunities, and am working on promotional materials for grass-roots promotions. I am LOVING all of this. Yes, I love the photography most of all but the fact that I get to make my own decisions on marketing, design, copywriting after 15 years in the corporate world... LIBERATING and EXHILERATING. Yep. 
4. I AM REALLY TIRED OF MY BROKEN BODY. My knee pain is know knees pain and getting worse. WTF!?  Bad knees mean I can't do my other P.T. exercises for my back which equals... bad back Gimmeabreak!
5. I NEED A VACATION. 
6. I am ridonkulously excited about having joined a new gym. Yup, I took the plunge. I joined Rollingwood Raquet Club, just a quick 15 minute walk or 5 minute bike-ride from my house. It's so close, trying to form an excuse as to why I can't make it would be pathetic. Plus, my mum joined with me and we're going to go together 2 days a week. After trying the at-home workout-video path and being stuck with #4 and a general sense of lethargy and boredom, I signed-up for a 7-day pass, fully expecting to "fail" at this routine also. But something funny happened. I got into that gym and I felt myself be "myself" for the first time in a long time. I grabbed some dumbells, stood in front of a mirror, and felt just a little bit giddy. I remembered my former self, when I was strong, fit, and powerful and I saw remnants of that "me" in the mirror; I wanted more. I'm excited to start a new routine beginning tomorrow!
7. I am seriously depressed that I have not even been able to find the time to see the final Harry Potter movie. I've been DYING to get to the theater since it came out. FAIL.

Alrighty then. Ending on an odd number and heading to bed to torture myself with a travel essay or two.

TTFN.

Let me be clear...

I am only having one child. 

This is not a fleeting thought. It's not the mad ramblings of someone who hasn't yet "recovered" from baby #1. It's not something I'll "get over", "move beyond" or otherwise change my mind about. 

This is a considered decision, jointly, by me and my husband, as a team, around what we want from life, the lifestyle we want to lead, where our priorities lie, what we feel we are capable of and what kind of parents we want to be. It has nothing to do with me being an only child and I have not strong-armed him into making this decision with me. We made our decision about only having one child much the same way we made our decision to have a child at all: with much thought and planning.  

It's also not something I will change by "accident". I am not a teenager with uncontrollable urges who thinks she can "get away with it".  Included in our plan is a pretty fail-safe method to ensure no accidents, thankyouverymuch.

This is not to say that I think that having an only child is the way to go for everyone. It's our personal decision much the same way that you having more than one child or none at all, is for you.  

There is nothing wrong with having multiple children, as many as you want and can provide for. It's probably fantastic to have siblings. I don't personally have any but I'm sure that I would have been equally as happy in my life if I had. If you have siblings, I'm also sure that you would have been just as happy as an only child. Seriously, I know this is hard to grasp because you love your brothers and sisters and cannot imagine life without them - as it should be. But you can't miss or mourn what you never had.

As an only child, my daughter will not be lonely or unsociable. But thanks for your concern. When I was a child, my house was always full of children; my friends, who loved to come over and hang out at my house. As an adult I consider myself to be sociable, outgoing, and no more selfish than the average person, so I think it's safe to say that being an only didn't turn me into a social pariah. Incidentally, I know plenty of selfish, unsocial folks with siblings: just sayin' 

There is also nothing wrong with having no children by choice. It's not selfish to recognize that parenthood is not for you. In fact, if you did have that realization and decided not to have children, I applaud you. Society begs you to be otherwise at every turn but having a child just because it's what everyone else does is a piss-poor reason, IMHO. 

In short, no matter your parental (or non-parental) status, whether you have brothers or sisters or are an only child, I do not judge you nor ask you to defend your decision. I may not understand your reality but that doesn't mean I don't respect your choice. I don't ask you "if you're sure" when you decide to have baby number 3, nor espouse the many joys of parenthood you're missing out on, if you've decided to have none. We all make decisions that are right for us and this one is right for our family. 

This post is directed at nobody in particular, by the way. I know a recent exchange occurred on Facebook on this topic but I am not mad at anyone or about anybody's comments. But the comments did spur me to write this post because they are part of an ongoing conversation that my husband and I continue to have with people in general, about our decision. 

As there becomes an increasing number of only children in the population I hope the attitude toward only children and their parents changes. There has been a stigma associated with this lifestyle choice for a long time and it is without empirical merit - read this if you're interested in learning more.

----------------

Comments on this post are disabled because this is not a subject up for discussion. Thanks for understanding.

Perspective

One of the very many reasons I love my friends and love meeting new people is because they bring perspective to my life.

I'm the sort of person who is never happy with where I'm at in life, I'm always wanting to strive for the next new thing, create the next goal, the next project; change this, move that. This doesn't mean I am "never happy" just that I am always trying to get to "anywhere but here", both geographically and in terms of this moment in time.

My "anywhere but here" issue of late is my day job. You know, the one that pays all those pesky bills. I don't hate it but I don't love it. It's certainly not my passion. However, it has a lot of perks: I work from home, I don't have anyone breathing down my neck (most days), I control my own schedule, and I get a lot of input into how the company is run. Am I sick-and-tired to the hilt of being "coached", "assessed", and "moulded"? Absofrickinlutely! But would I want to work anywhere else? You know, in one of those cubicle farms with a supervisor and all that? Ughh... no. (I firmly believe myself to be unsupervisable.)

Today I met with another local photographer and now, I hope, friend, and we chatted about business stuff. She does this full time, lucky gal, and she is looking at making some changes in her business. As a result, she's going through a lot of the same stuff I am right now: pricing, web content, branding, direction...

What I realized in that chat is that, as much as the golden-handcuffs are 8 hours of my day where I am not pursuing my passion, they provide me with some financial freedom to take chances and fail; risks that are much more nail-biting when photography is your main income, your livelihood. The stakes are higher, the ramifications greater if you don't make the right decision.

So, while I still dream of a life where I have a regular stream of business and income from photography, and where I can cut those chains to my corporate life, right now I am given the luxury of experimenting with my business on my own time, in my own way, and without the fear of failure.

Like I said, perspective.

Neck, shoulders, hip, back, and knee

Yeah, it's been that kind of week (or so).

The past week or two I had been dealing with muscle spasms in my shoulders. This is a recurring thing that happens to me when I am under a lot of stress. It happens once or twice a year maybe and passes in a couple of weeks. I have some good PT exercises to speed-up the recovery and a great massage therapist to push the timeline further.

Last Saturday, as I was heading up to Lake Tahoe with Mum and Daisy, I finally felt my shoulders release with a deep exhale. Driving long distances is very therapeutic to me and just the thought of the long drive ahead allowed me to let everything go.

Ahhhhhhhhhh. Sweet relief!


Until...

I picked Daisy up in a hurry as we were leaving the beach and strained my lower back and left I.T. band (a tendon that runs from your butt down the outside of your thigh and connects to your knee.) Ouch. Again, not a new thing for me. Back to some old PT exercises to release it.

It just started getting better a couple of days ago and then, hey presto, my right knee started getting shooting pains whenever I lunged forward to kneel down or (now) walk up or down stairs.

I mean, can I get a break PLEASE!?


Knee pain is new for me, sadly. Fortunately, at least right now, it is only hurting in those certain planes of motion I mentioned and there is no obvious swelling. Performing some Google research suggests that I probably have patellar tendinitis (also known as Jumper's Knee), likely a result of the increased number of plyometric workouts I have been doing to get back in shape. (So much for that.)

I have an appointment with my doctor next week for a regular cracky-cracky and we'll see what he says.

All I can say for certain is this: I AM NOT GETTING KNEE SURGERY. I am so done with surgeries. I just hope this doesn't result in months and months of physical therapy again, because I'm kinda done with PT too. I don't have time for this (or the money!)

Groan. I hate to be a moaner but nothing puts me in a worse mood than physical limitations.
-----------
edited to add:

Shortly after writing this post I got excrutiating nerve pain in my lower back and hips; pain I have not had in a long, long time. I literally had to ice it until my ass was a popsicle, medicate with NSAIDS and do yoga breathing until I fell asleep sitting up. The side effect? Pain in my knee appears to be all but gone.

The ever-so-delicate phrase WHAT THE F***!? springs to mind.

Tilt shift

WOW. Most days your life's axis operates on a relatively even keel. The odd wobble here and there but otherwise, you manage to keep your balance.

Other days, something happens to tip your axis. Someone gives it a nudge at the right time and in the right way and before you know it, life is spinning in a different direction.

That was my day yesterday.

Really.

It was a day of dichotomies. The first half of the day was filled with life and self-affirming positivity and the second half with professional frustration and challenge. Yet, strangely enough, both situations were closely linked.

Let me explain. (it may take a bit but hang in there.)

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me a link to her favorite photographer, based here in Sacramento. (For a few reasons, I'm going to keep the photographer's name out of this post but email me if you want to know who she was.) Anyway, I of course checked out said photographer's site. To say her work was unusual for the Sacramento market, was an understatement. There is really nobody else I have found like her in this area. Put your feelers out to the Bay Area or further afield - sure - but here, in good-ole Sac, notsomuch. Which is not to say that there aren't great photographers here - there truly are - but this lady is an artist. Everything about her work and her branding have a distinction and style that is clearly and personally defined. Her entire body of work has a voice. It slapped me around the face quite quickly that she was unique. (I'm also guessing that, since my friend is in the sales/marketing field, she got slapped similarly.)

After perusing the website, I found a paragraph about the photographer herself and part of that addressed budding photographers who were looking to pick her brain. While she doesn't host workshops or mentoring sessions, her words suggested that she was open to sharing some inspiration with me, if I got in touch. Which I did. And she was.

Awesome.

She agreed to meet me for some coffee. Yesterday was our coffee-date.

I admit, I went in almost without agenda. I had a short list of questions I wanted to ask but no clear goal for what I wanted out of the session. Honestly, I didn't know how much she would be comfortable sharing and I wanted to be respectful of that fact; it's one thing to nurture new, local photographers in your community, another to give-up your hard-won experience and insights for the price of a cup of coffee.  If nothing else, I thought I would get to meet and learn more about the person behind the work and come away having had a nice chat about photography.

Man, did I underestimate this lady.

In many ways, our conversation was very esoteric, which is typically not my comfort zone. At the risk of stereotyping our deeply complex and multi-faceted personalities, she is a calm and thoughtful owl and I am a panting, over-enthusiastic puppy dog. I don't know if that makes sense, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't but without 500 words, I don't know how else to boil it down for a blog post. But that's how I felt during the conversation. She speaks slower than me; she has a steady gaze to my darting eyes; and her body language is calm while I constantly fidget and gesticulate. And, while I have spent the last fifteen years of my life learning to say fifteen words when only five will do, in order to package every question or thought for public consumption, she discards the package, removes the fluff, and dives right into the issue before her. Her ability to read between my words, digest my randomly expressed thoughts, and interpret my body language within such a short period of time and then poke me in the ribs with her laser-focused and spot-on insight, was uncanny and a little unsettling.

In many ways, I felt very jealous of her path to her passion and saw starkly, in just that short time, how our lives had shaped us. She went to art school, has been mentored by great photographers, and has followed the artist's path through her life, being positively encouraged to nurture the expression of her innermost self to feed her art. I, on the other hand, have spent the last 15 years in the corporate world, being encouraged to suppress and/or change my expression of my innermost self to suit other people. The fact that we approach photography through different lenses is therefore unsurprising.

I am not ashamed to say I left in tears. Good tears. It was exactly what I needed to hear and never even knew it.

Like I said, it was a tad esoteric so some of it was "you had to be there" dialogue, however, let me summarize what I got out of our hour together:

1. I need to stop looking at other people's work. I am overstimulated and distracted by it and it is preventing me from defining who I am as a photographer.
2. I need to work from within. Forget (most) workshops, classes, guides, actions, presets... what do I really want to get out of them? How to learn to be someone else? What I have to offer as a photographer is already inside me. It's my own artistic vision not someone else's vision, it's who I am when I'm with my clients not who I think I should be, that will help me be the best that i can be. I can't get that from someone else. I have to spend time nurturing it within and pulling it out of me.
3. The words that resonate for "my style" are: contrast, color, drama, warmth emotion, clean lines, and a little whimsy. Make everything about these words from the way I take the photo, to the way I edit it, to the way I brand myself. 
4. Don't blog every session, only your best work. 
5. Spend less time editing. Significantly less time. I mean like, cut it down by two thirds. Whoah! This one smacked me in the face. What am I fixing? Either I took a good photo or not. Either I know what my editing style is or not.
6. Find beauty in the world around you. Be content in yourself and thankful for your life and express that through your art. Beauty comes from within. (This isn't something I can just turn-on, granted, but it's worth remembering.)
7. Learn off-camera flash. (I've been wanting to do this anyway.)
8. Take pictures of 30 things that are ugly and make them beautiful.
9. Take one picture a day, every day of the same thing, from a unique perspective.
10. Breathe and slow down. Get out of my head and into the moment. Focus on being present with my surroundings and my subjects. (#1 will help with this.)
11. Forget weddings. Not forever necessarily but for now. Go back to why I got into this in the first place - I love taking portraits. Quite apart from anything else, being gone at least one full weekend day every weekend during the summer, does not work well for my family. 

Like I said before, in a lot of ways all of this is like asking me to undo what I've spent several years doing to myself.  I can't even begin to express here what a huge thing that is to me. If your life hasn't been like this it may be hard to connect with. Yet in no way am I saying that the last 15 years of my life were bad or worthless - in fact I learned many, many valuable things that will benefit my photography business. But what I'm trying to get across is that this is a completely different skillset, a completely different way of approaching "your job". I mean, like a whole 180. I feel like a coat that all of a sudden has to be able to turn inside out and become reversible.

LOL. I know, you're thinking: that's a lot for one coffee date. Like I said, I was surprised myself. It was quite possibly one of the most valuable hours I have ever spent with a stranger.

And wasn't the timing perfect, given my post of just the day before?

Clearly, I have a lot to think about. At the same time, I feel more focused and am generally re-energized. I can't wait for my next client session, truly, because each session opens up a new opportunity for me to work on all this stuff - as well as, of course, delivering some cool images for my clients!

Speaking of which, right when I say I'm going to do fewer sessions, I get three inquiries from my website and schedules three new sessions this week. Isn't that how life always happens?

----------
In terms of the other half of my day, I can't really share too much because it's a work thing and I don't blog about work things for a multitude of reasons. Let's just say that something went down that has big impact to the company and to me , was not my fault, and where the responsible party will not take ownership of the problem or the solution and is, in fact, placing the "lesson" on my doorstep. There is history and back-story here that would take forever to explain but the long and short of it is that I'm fed up with overcompensating for other people's weaknesses.

Not only did it result in one of the most challenging phone conversations of my entire career, the eventual outcome wound up telling me a lot about the priorities of the company I work for and I can't say I'm too happy about them. Such is life, I guess.

How is this related to the first half of the day? Well because the message of being true to myself resonated here too. I ditched allowing myself to be the punching bag, treading on eggshells for a quiet life, and dealing with the issue from a place of "I'm bound to be wrong" (and by wrong I mean ME as a person being wrong, not me being wrong about something. Different things.) 
Instead, I was authentic and honest in my response to the situation. It made it harder work, more emotional, more challenging, and ultimately I'm sure there will be repercussions. But the one thing I can say for sure is that I am not second-guessing my decision to handle it the way I did and I will not apologize for it in retrospect either.

I have no doubt that this will only further entrench certain people's opinion of me as being overbearing and stubborn or however I have been previously pigeon-holed but I actually just don't care anymore. Here am I in one area of my life being called upon to nurture who I am and bring that out in a positive way and it only calls to attention even more the other half of my life where I am constantly being negatively judged for who I am asked to be someone else. Like I said, dichotomies.

Not sure where that leaves me but there you go. I'm just going to let this loose-end flap in the breeze for a while and be ok with it.

In the meantime, me and my camera are gonna have some fun.

Learnings and reflections on being a part-time photographer

I just finished editing my very first wedding photo shoot.

For a first foray into the wedding photography world, I think I did ok. I mean, I've been to weddings, I've been a bride twice, and I immerse myself in the work of other photographers doing this kind of thing every day. But outside of that, I've never been a 2nd-shooter with a professional photographer and have never been through the flow of a wedding from the perspective of a photographer.

So, I knew, up-front, that I had a lot to learn. I wasn't wrong.

Here are my key take-aways:

1. Patience and focus. Don't let external variables, personalities, or timelines distract from what you have been hired to do. (Which is not to say, be stubborn and inflexible, just focused.) This is obviously easier to do if you have a ton of experience under your belt and the process is old-hat.
2. Pre-wedding communication. How are the couple scheduling their day? Have they built in enough time (with cushion, for the inevitable delays) for you to get the shots they need?
3. Alignment with your style and goals. Is the photography as important to the bride and groom as the results will be to you? Is their style of wedding one that matches your style of photography and your goals for your portfolio? This relates to a whole set of variables: time to take photos; tolerance of the bridal party for getting the images you would like to get to make them happy; how comfortable the bride and groom will be working with you etc...
4. Posing. I typically lean toward a more candid style of photography but, for weddings, you need to give your subjects more direction. I think this will come with experience. I'd really love to work as an assistant/2nd-shooter for an experienced photographer at this point. I feel the "lacking" if you know what I mean.
5. Time to edit = a lot. My biggest challenge, doing this after my day job, was finding a clear block of time to edit the photos. It took me a few weeks, which is no time at all for a full-time photographer (most of whom take 6+ weeks) but usually this is at least in part because the photographer also has other sessions to edit. I felt the process lacked creative consistency for me because I was editing in 1-2 hour fits and spurts. By the time I was half way through I almost wanted to go in a different direction with the style of the edits but then had already committed myself and didn't have time to change the first half. All of this means I lost my momentum and enthusiasm (not entirely but I was feeling overwhelmed/dejected.) Honestly, I had a hard time with the editing, run out of steam, and I think it showed in the final product.
6. Time. Time. Time. Weddings require a lot of time, a lot of focus, a lot of creative energy both in preparation, on the day, and subsequently in choosing and editing the final photos... or, at least, this one did for me. Right now, this is hard for me to fit into my life. It makes me question if this is an aspect of photography I should pursue right now. 

Don't get me wrong, I make this sound negative: it wasn't. I had a great time and I'm thankful for the opportunity. Learning about where you need to improve is just as important as having a positive experience that reaffirms your strengths.

Yet, as I think about the next 12 months for Memories by Michelle, I have a definite vision for where I want to go, what I want to achieve (creatively and from a business perspective) and it all seems a little overwhelming. I just don't have the time to devote to it that I want/need to do things to the standard that will make me satisfied. Further, I know I have made choices this past year that don't fit in with where I want to go in the next 12-18 months

Part of what this wedding, and the build-up to it with a ton of sessions this year, has taught me is that, as I referred to in #5 and #6, to achieve what I really want to achieve with my photography, at the standard at which I want to achieve it, I need to be more strategic in the way I approach my sessions.

Basically, I need to do fewer sessions to avoid burnout, and only accept clients whose vision for their end product not only matches where I want to go with my photography but also makes the time I spend working on the images worthwhile from a business perspective. Otherwise I run the risk of losing steam, getting sloppy, and devaluing what I want to achieve in the long term.

It's been an interesting and fun 12 months on this ride so far but I'm tired and I feel it - which is not a good place to be when you need to pour your passion and enthusiasm into your work. I've loved every one of my photo sessions (32 in 9 months) and have learned so much but now I feel I need some space. Some time to do some workshops, attend some seminars, and experiment with different techniques. At the same time, I don't want to stop doing sessions. I want to BUILD this business still. I want to move forward. I just wish I could press pause for a while.

Let's not even get into: the time away from my daughter (both mentally and physically); the strain on my husband and our relationship (do we have one right now?); the fact that my relationship with my parents has pretty much paired-down to seeing them as I drop off/pick-up my daughter; the housework and laundry that rarely gets done; the fact I haven't watched a TV program in months and have very little idea of what's going on in the world; and the short-term memory lapses that result from being spread too thin and that drive everyone in the family crazy.

No, this is not a woe-is-me post. I am not seeking sympathy. These things just are. They're a reality, a trade-off to pursue a dream, and I have to take note of them before they spiral out of control. I've been out of balance and I need to fix that.

So, I feel in a bit of a quandry. I'm sure it's not unique and I'm sure I'll push through it but I'm trying to absorb everything I am feeling, process it, and turn it into positive action.

I'll share as I go along. Of course, advice is always appreciated.

10 random stream-of-consciousness wants and wishes

1. I STILL want to de-clutter my house. I just don't have the time. But I notice that the busier I am, the more untidy and more cluttered my environment is but the more frustrated I become because I don't have time to waste looking for things.
2. I wish I knew where my brain cells went. I feel like my cerebrum has been lobotomized. I have almost no short term memory to speak of. I am always losing, misplacing, or forgetting things. (See #3)
3. I want to find my house/car keys. It's really bothering me. I have two sets and one of them I used on Monday during our driveway fireworks session to open my car and get my tripod out. Haven't seen them since. I'm kinda worried I left them on the grass or the driveway somewhere and some random person picked them up and plans to either steal my car or cart-off all the stuff in my house (if they can find any of it under the clutter.)
4. I wish I knew what died in my fridge. We've cleaned it out from top to bottom but still, every time we open that door, it smells like 4 month old chicken breasts. GAG.
5. I wish I could stop thinking about planning a vacation. Every inch of me is itching, except for the part of me that says: you can't afford it. (Note: this is usually the part of my brain that is wildly out-voted - possibly why I never actually "have" the money to go on vacation. Hey, maybe American Express lobotomized me for this exact reason!?)
6. I want to have time to take my 52-week pictures BEFORE they're due. I so want to be creative but the time just eludes me. This week's topic is "windows". Betcha there's some cool shots to be had Downtown. Not going to make it there, though, so maybe I have to clean the windows of my house grab my #1 prop - my daughter - as second-best idea.
7. I wish I could take away the troubles of a few of my friends right now.  Some people who I am very close to are going through a tough time - the kind of tough time where you're sort of at a loss to do anything to help them. If you're reading this and can think of anything, friends, just email or call, k?
8. I want a pool in my back yard. OK, I said it. It's too expensive, financially it doesn't fit in with my life plans, and realistically it's not going to happen for those reasons and more but I want it. I want it like a kid wants candy before bedtime. 
9. I want an assistant. A free one, of course. I could be so much more productive with someone to do all the little things, ya know? Anyone at a loose end and independently wealthy may apply by posting in comments with their email address. Thanks!
10. I want book 11 of the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries. I've just finished #10 and my friend has #11. I am so tempted to run over there and get it from her but I'm delaying the pleasure because it's the last one right now. Plus, in the meantime, I can actually FINALLY finish reading my e-book on setting up Memories by Michelle as a profitable business and brand for 2012, or watch one of my many photo tutorial DVDs at night instead. Oh, but what I really want is hot, vampire sex.