I’ve had increasing pain in my incision sites the last week, and last night I couldn’t sleep with my CPAP mask. I slept in my bedside recliner so my snoring wouldn’t keep Dale up. I was heavily medicated for the pain, so my sleep was in and out and I kept looking at my phone.
This pain is sharp and I think it is normal. It’s a kind of stretchy feeling, like my skin is stretching and crawling into a new place. Which is what is happening no doubt. My skin is settling. But geeze it hurts. I had a couple of waves, very short lived, of this pain just after my surgery, but it never got bad and I was surprised at the overall lack of pain. My eyes were far worse than my head and oh! I get it.
The numbness is wearing off!! That must be why it’s hurting. And this numbness is impossible to describe, but over the past month the crown of my head has felt…itchy, for lack of a better word. And oily. I rub it a lot, I think. Anyhow, this must be the case. I’ve been so glad of my brow lift, not smug really but feeling like that cat who got the cream. My insurance paid for it! And I cannot tell that it’s made a bit of difference with my vision. NOt a wit. However, I’ve not gotten my new glasses yet. I hope they come in this week. I am eager to see if I can see better with them. And new readers and new sunglasses what a good girl am I!
So I went in for my cosmetic consult on Friday. It was annoying because I made the appointment online and they’re like well we don’t have your appointment in our online system is just not working really great and I’m thinking well maybe you should take it off of your phone message how people should make their appointments online but whatever.
I saw the doctor and first I talked with her about HS. She put me on Spironolactone, 50 mgs. I’ve taken this drug before but only 25 mg and only for occasional swelling. The 50 mg dose is a heavy hitter. I need to get in touch with my GP and let her know about the addition of this drug. My blood pressure has been up a little bit since I haven’t been going to rehab and exercising. And since I’m going on this combo of Sprionolactone and Losartan, they’ll have to check my potassium on a regular basis. I am eating a banana with cereal every single day as a snack. I sweeten it with Truvia and I’m getting more fiber with it and it seems to really satisfy my sweet tooth I also bought some sugar-free special dark Hershey miniatures. I had one last night and I thought it was quite good and would probably do the trick when I want chocolate and whatever as I was saying.
Anyhow the new drug made me drowsy and kind of stupid actually, it’s a sort of diuretic. I also got my Covid booster Saturday and that may be contributing to how I feel also to how my scalp is feeling as it heals because I just feel vulnerable. I have a sizable knot on my arm where I got the shot and it’s hot to the touch although better this morning.
My scalp was so painful last night and with all of this pain I’ve gotten into the muscle relaxers and the oxy which I really want to stop being dependent on pills every single time I have pain, but last night was so complicated with my scalp and my arm and my overall malaise and also I felt like I was getting a headache and I still have some occipital neuralgia and it’s like everything is so confusing I just throw medicine at it.
I want to get to the point where I meditate instead of diving into the pills, and where I’m active enough to keep the migraines at bay which I know the small amount of exercise I was doing in rehab, usually about 30 minutes of cardio on machines, made a huge difference in how I feel. I’m pretty sure I know two things now about my migraines. One alcohol is bad. Two, exercise is good.
So that’s an update on meds and pain and body, but that’s not quite all. I think I’m seeing a rapid turnaround with my skin with the HS–when I saw the doctor I told her that I was already breaking out again even though I had started the biologic and that’s why she put me on the new drug. She says the combination is often a good one, so I feel like everything is clearing up although it’s probably too soon to tell.
The other part of the visit was a Cosmetics consultation, and this doctor and her two assistants had nothing to say to me at all, like wow you look good for 60, or you’re skin is pretty good but we can do this for you, or even–we are so glad you’re here that you chose us. I had thought it would be cushy and posh–a comfy chair, surrounded by soft light and their various in-house-compounded skin care lines. But no. A regular room, two assistants who barely said a thing, and a doctor who was rushing the whole time. It was not fun, it was perfunctory. If they had been salesmen, I might have popped for the expensive serum they wanted to sell me. The upshot is she Has likely convinced me to get a chemical peel. they are not very expensive I figure I can get one for $500, and it will completely reset my skin according to her and then I can just go from there. she wanted me to use a cream in the morning that they sell for $165 we should probably be last me Maybe a month or two no one could really tell me which was kind of sad so I didn’t buy it. I did buy the tinted sunscreen and I think it’s very good and it’s reasonably priced, so I went to the dreaded CVS because I had Cubans and I bought Olay super serum which is a vitamin C vitamin E etc etc etc serum which should be close to this $165 cream that they sell. then in the afternoons I put on the retinol mixture and I swear I think I can already tell a difference I couldn’t really tell any difference with the Clinique.
So we will see what we see I’m convincing a friend to go with me to get the chemical peel we’ll look like shit for a week but then things should be better. I don’t really want to look younger or expect to look younger because I don’t think people really can look younger–this is something a friend pointed out to me. You kind of look your age no matter what you do, you just look better or worse or whatever. Jennifer Lopez is someone that people would point out as looking so awesome but even if you had to guess her age it would be in her late 40s or early ’50s because, like, that’s her age. You can’t really hide your age and that’s not what I’m trying to do. I have sun damage on my face and I want all that dark stuff to be gone basically, because it makes me uncomfortable to see it when I look at the mirror and I notice it and I will just feel better if it’s all evened out and it’s not there anymore. So paying $500 for a chemical peel sounds pretty good to me although I’m going to see how this retinol bleaching cream works first.
Saturday, I had a long, long phone chat with an old friend whom I’ve not spoken with in a long, long time. It was awesome stupendous and was a marvelous resetting–just what I needed.
I’m feeling freakish coming-out-of-drug-stupor and please don’t let the pain start back up please. I’m going to try to do some mending, if I can. There’s a hole in one of my favorites dresses, and the border of our quilt needs tacking up.
~r.
