What is with Dr. K? First he says fibro, then he says psychosomatic, then he says fibro, now we’re back to psychosomatic. He wants me to see a friend of his, a psychiatrist. I pointed out that I had one and I’m quite happy with him (for the most part).
I don’t understand how the pain can be in my head if it responds to medication, trigger point injections and physical therapy. I left his office (after he did the injections) feeling like crap. This is not in my head. Stress makes it worse. The stress level at work now is through the roof. My so called breaks where I usually do lesson planning and grading were filled with stupid shit like making a transcript out of a YouTube video so Sky Class could do it as a dictation exercise for homework. Do you know how long it takes to transcribe 6 minutes of video? Approximately 90 minutes. I give it to my boss who starts to type it up. She comes in and says “I think you forgot part of it.” Uh no E, did you turn the paper over? I wrote on both sides. “OHHHHHHHH”. Yeah. That was my day Friday. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
I think the worst part is the brain fog and the fatigue. When I have a bit of energy, I have to take advantage of it. Today I got a new desk chair (I was tired of sitting on a card table chair) and a printer/scanner. Do you think I bought paper? Nope. Which, is OK because the few other things I did buy (glue and scissors for my classroom) fit it my backpack. But here I am lugging two big boxes into a cab. Then getting them out of the cab. And then getting them to the second floor.
The chair got put together with a reasonable amount of ease. Except I put the arms on upside down the first time. No big deal.
The printer is hooked up, but the scanning software wants to be smarter than me. Maybe there’s a setting someplace I’m not seeing. But for the love of God, I want it to scan the entire piece of paper I put in there, not what it thinks I want scanned. Amazingly, I didn’t curse at the thing. I just kept on trying different thing. Speaking of software, who would have figured out that a program named “Seashore” with an icon of a fish would be a basic image editor. Not me. I didn’t even think to click the stupid thing until I did a search on image editors for Macs.
Now, speaking of the brain fog, I’m trying to do a python course through LinuxChix. Units 1 and 2 were fine. Unit 3 should have been fine, but even copying other students’ answers I still couldn’t get it to work. So I’ve yet to finish Unit 3 and Unit 4 arrived in my inbox earlier today. I think I’m going to print out the original emails (when I buy some paper that is) and mark it up. I don’t do well reading heavy stuff online anymore. It’s like my brain can’t process it unless I can actively make notes on it. It’s sad. I feel like I’m getting dumber and dumber every day.
I started some art therapy today (see saga with scanner and saga with finding an image editor). I like what I did even if it’s ugly… and I wanted to post it here.

There’s no head in my picture, that’s because the pain (represented by red) isn’t in my head. My head has little to do with it. Unless you want to get highly technical and then all pain signals and processed in the brain so it really is all in my head. But the pain in my back and chest and shoulders and neck and elbows and wrists and knees and ankles… all of it is real. I’m not making this up. This isn’t some kind of neurosis or psychosis (not my words, but Dr. K’s or possibly his friend’s words).