Well...weird used a lot

I did sprain my ankle more than a little.  I had more xrays to be sure I didn't have an odd-angle fracture because of the existing problems in that foot and some of the pain.  The doctor agreed that I'm in an awkward place because I already limp and so now the leg that bears most weight can't.  So he is treating it like a worse sprain than I think it is.  I think.  I should say, he is being very conservative.  Which is good, because it hurts.  Not like the other one did, and if weren't for the other problems I think it would hurt a lot less,but because even though I've figured out the world's most crazy new gait pattern (think very not pregnant woman walking like she's 10 months pregnant and in labor without bending either ankle) there's still stress on it because I can't take the weight fully off it.  I have a supportive taping thing done that ironically I read about only the day before in a training video.  It stays on essentially as long as I can stand it (it means sponge baths and I assume will start to feel stinky and itchy) or until I go back to the dr. Monday.  Until that point I'm at a desk.  He was going to keep me home but I was able to promise to do desk work and I did a LOT of it today.  I got in trouble for chatting too much but I worked every second I talked and was getting 100% on my tests on my learning modules so whatever.  (In trouble is a strong word).  This is BORING and my bottom hurts from sitting strangely to keep the leg elevated.  I've now tried out every angle for this my desk offers.  Thankfully it's a decent sized cubicle but it is still not ideal.  I keep thinking how sleepy I am (I suspect this is a response to pain since meds aren't really an option and I have lots of sore muscles, a badly skinned knee, etc along with the ankle, and my normally bad ankle is achy too as it tried to twist but couldn't thanks to my brace.  I'm just glad I had him, that he got me in fast, and that he is very compassionate with the situation.  He makes me feel more than almost any doctor has without having worked to gain my trust that I truly have a problem and that no, i am not incorrect to question that an ace wrap is not the treatment of choice for this sprain.  To be fair to the people who saw me yesterday it waited until overnight to swell or bruise.  They also just clearly didn't know what to do with the starting point being a bit weird.  They should have sent me to him, but thankfully as therapists I'm surrounded with people who can say "um, yeah, Jen walks weird all the time and this doesn't look right".

I had the weird experience today of being in the office when few people are around and hearing something I had no clue my company provides but which is awesome:  someone corporatey was there to do a lot of education and retraining for a nurse (there were 2 involved but I heard one) who they were calling "frustrated staff'.  Both are newerish and are the two who I most dread getting referrals from because they tend to make a lot of poor calls and make a lot of errors.  I know that one of the two repeated their trial period and had to be nearing the end of #2 and was still not doing things well.  So I thought this was so neat rather than just discipline or fire them.  I just completed my first 90 day period without being invited to repeat it well ever since I've had that 90 day thing only twice before and both times had trouble.

I also had a kind of troubling experience.  I am not sure what to do about this one.  I've mentioned a few times that I've tried to reconnect with different people and apologize for the things I did that caused the end of relationships back when I not diagnosed, not treated, and not always nice.  One of the losses I never wanted to deal with because I feared rejection was this one cousin.  My mom and her sister had 5 girls.  I'm the oldest; the youngest is 3.5 years younger than me.  We grew up very, very close, especially me and the one a few months younger than I am.  We even both went into therapy although different kinds.  While I was in grad school she married and for the first year or so we kept in touch with phone calls and emails.  And then suddenly the last year I was in Michigan the email responses stopped.  I remember this clearly among many jumbled memories as I remember writing and getting no response, writing and getting no response, lather, rinse repeat until I gave up probably a year, maybe 18 months later after I'd moved back here and was on my first job.  And then came the time I was sickest and just didn't care, and then for years this has hurt me, I have cried and cried and cried about it.  In all this time I've seen her once and it was totally awkward.

Well, I wrote to her.  I told her that she was my best friend for 25 years and I missed her, and that I didn't know what happened but that knowing I'd hurt her somehow made me very sad.

She answered quickly.  She answered nicely.  She also lied.  First, she said she thought we just grew apart and that it was a lot harder back then without emails.  We emailed all the time.  Email was available through the colleges we went to and we emailed then, and then later through the freebie services that were plenty popular and common by grad school.  So I KNOW we emailed.  Also, email and IM were the only way I could afford to stay in touch with people in grad school.  Therefore, I'm even more positive.  So I may not remember what happened to cause problems, but I know that's not it.  Then she said after she learned about my bipolar she figured I didn't want to talk about it.  That translates to "I didn't know what to say to you because I didn't know how to handle mental illness".  And while that is something I understand, she said something about b/c she's a private person (yet not so private that the whole family didn't know every detail of some personal health issues she had a few years ago) she figured I'd want to be private about this.  Now, to give her credit for one thing, my mother told the world about my diagnosis when I had asked her not to.  I'm sure my cousin feels weird that she knew when I didn't tell her and probably when she was told not to let me know she knew.  But at the same time, it is so illogical to think "hmm, she has a serious illness so I'll just not talk to her for 10 years?".  That's not about privacy.  That's about discomfort with mental illness.  And while I don't expect a lot of honesty about that kind of feeling, I also am mentally ill, not stupid, and I know perfectly well that if another illness had been substituted the reaction would have been different.  But I'm tired and achy and grouchy to begin with from the steroids and so I can't respond yet because I want to be nice and not say what I am saying here.

I need to do meds and bed now.  Been trying to get hungry.  I even stopped and got something that sounded good.  No luck.  Guess it's toast again. I hope that the next steroid isn't so hard on my appetite.  Assuming Dr. Body is ok.  Tomorrow will be 2 cancelled appointments 2 weeks in a row because of a family emergency.  So I'm worried about him.  It was especially weird this week as they didn't cancel until nearly 7 pm tonight for tomorrow.  Hopefully my bad luck is not spreading to my doctors'; Dr. Brain had surgery this week.  Funny enough she told me not to get sick this week.  So instead I got sick last week and hurt this week.