Tag life

The finger and the feast

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

Maybe the title is a misnomer.

There is no feast, but I like alliteration.

I went to the hospital yesterday for a specialty diagnostic ultrasound of the middle finger of my right hand. I’ve been having issues with it for six months. There were about four instances, about once a month where when I reached for something, it felt like the finger exploded and I screamed out. The pain only lasted 20-30 seconds, but the whole experience reminded me of when I had a mallet finger on the neighboring ring finger. And I keep expecting to see that finger drooping.

[If you would like to learn more about mallet finger: here is the blog entry about my um… accident… where I sustained an injury removing my socks. This is the entry about meeting with the orthopedic specialist.]

And every time I move the top of my finger independently of my other fingers, it clicks. Not painfully, but it’s noticeable. It’s just weird.

Today I had to go to St Lukes Bethlehem, which is the main urban campus of the hospital network because if the specialty nature of the ultrasound. I did not know that the parking deck was under construction. And for the first time in my life, I had to use valet parking. I technically had enough time to look for parking in the neighborhoods near the hospital but… I thought that stress would be higher than just using the valet service.

I checked in at the kiosk, and thinking about it now I never had the chance to check if my Able Pay was on my file because I will be paying for this test out of pocket. I have a high deductible medical plan and I have about $1,200 left of my $3,500 annual individual deductible. Able Pay gets me a discount on procedures and offers me interest-free payment plans.

Of course they asked if I might have had a fall and I had to tell them, “Of course I might have had a fall, but not one I can connect to this problem.”

The test itself involved the doctor and the radiologist– and the doctor could feel my clicking finger. BUT because of the nature of the click, remember it only happens if the finger is acting independently, he couldn’t get an image of it. The way he held my finger to get the image prevented the click. OR he couldn’t get the ultrasound into the proper place at the right time.

He found fluid around the joint, but he couldn’t say whether or not it caused or was related to the click. And he couldn’t see anything wrong.

He said he could “grill me” longer and keep trying weird things to take the image, but we both decided it wasn’t necessary. If he didn’t see anything structurally worrying AND I no longer have the pain– then I’m satisfied.

My neurologist asked if I wanted to see a hand specialist as a next step to examine the inflammation. I said no, unless the pain returns.

In the meantime, influenced by my experience at the Hindu temple and my recent overeating/ weight gain, I have done an impressive (in my opinion) job removing animal products and artificial sweeteners from my diet. I am working to reduce caffeine consumption but that has not been as successful.

So far this week, I have had no meat, milk only in my coffee, two servings of cheese, and I may have consumed eggs in baked goods that I did not make. But the main baked good in question is packaged gingerbread cookies that came from Grocery Outlet. They are GMO-free and I have eaten four small cookies (which comes out to one per day).

The scale is three pounds down, which might be because I moved the scale and this is an old house. I am also surprised that my protein levels have still been hitting 60-80 grams a day.

Eliminating animal products and artificial sweeteners is a great way to be mindful about eating. Sure, I want to promote preserving resources and eliminate animal suffering, but there is less food noise to contend with if you start with the vegan options and ask “will one of these work?” and the bonus is that I end up getting more fiber and meeting my fruit and vegetable goals because plant-based non-manufactured foods are often the most nutrient dense.

Today I visit the ENT to set up an old lady hearing test.

On writing, living and working (with a disability)

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

I pride myself on being able to write just about anything at any time with no fear of writers block.

But lately, I haven’t been keeping this blog up-to-date. I think it’s because I’m doing so much that I don’t have enough stillness to think, reflect and write. I still have the thoughts, but I don’t have the time to germinate themes and record them and so I lose the moment.

Last night, I was a guest speaker at the Behind Our Eyes writing group for writers with disabilities. Nan has been a part of that group probably for most of its 19+ year existence, but I am a relative newcomer. I joined because I read Nan’s email and work so closely with her as a writer that I already knew most of the members in the creepy troll way.

Nan pointed out to the group that I was a gifted cook and bargain hunter, and that she hopes I commit more time to my disability memoir because I have some insights that the world needs to hear. And maybe they are things I also need to remember.

I overdid it last week. The last few weeks have been insane. I haven’t been eating right, or sleeping well, or giving myself any breathing room. I saw my cardiologist last week, and I mentioned to her that I don’t know if my blood pressure medications are the most efficient way to stabilize my heart rate.

The backstory

So, in March 2023, I had two bad falls down stairs in close proximity– 2 weeks apart. Neither were traditional mechanical falls of the type I am used to, those from lack of proper muscle control due to cerebral palsy. The first occurred as I was hurriedly leaving work to go to the chiropractor. I dove down the cement stairs and ended up severely spraining my pinky. Most dumb injury ever, and my pinky is still bent.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my eating habits had flooded my system with salt when I misbehaved, and then when I suddenly returned to my normal diet and drank the massive amounts of water I had always consumed, well, I washed all the sodium from my body, causing low blood pressure and dizziness (orthostatic hypotension).

With cerebral palsy impacting my gait, and allergies/congestion also challenging my balance, a sudden drop in blood pressure may have caused the fall. (I suggest this because I did almost pass out in the moments after the incident.)

Almost two weeks later, I was carrying a cup of tea upstairs when I had a nothing fall triggered by my head and not my legs. My daughter watched it happen. I plummeted out and down and into an air conditioner that was on the floor. I split open my chin directly under my lip. I definitely needed stitches so we headed to the emergency room.

I told the doctor that I knew mechanical falls and these weren’t from my legs, and he gave me some options:

  1. He could stitch me up and send me home in a matter of minutes.
  2. He could order every test and I’d be there all night.

I asked if there was an option in the middle, and he suggested starting with some bloodwork. But they also noticed my blood pressure hadn’t come down so they put me on a heart monitor and very quickly noticed that I was in Afib with OVR.

So it looked like I would be there all night anyway.

They eventually labeled the whole incident as idiopathic and put me on a low-dose beta blocker to make sure I stayed in rhythm. I invested in an AppleWatch to try and get information about what my heart was doing.

Fast forward to present-day

I have had no incidents of Afib since that initial one. But each fall, my blood pressure has risen in the autumn. Is it allergies causing stress on my body? Is it the stress of the end of the year and all the obligations of adulthood like taxes and paying for fuel oil? Is it just the looming presence of Christmas? Or is it the change in the seasons and the shorter days? Or a figment of my imagination?

In the autumn, I struggle more with anxiety. My primary care physician has talked with me several times about the impact of stress and anxiety on heart health. I have been in and out of psychotherapy for 15 years showing symptoms of depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

So I asked my primary care doctor, my cardiologist, and my psychologist if I might need an anti-anxiety med instead of the combination of other meds for high blood pressure. Because typically my diastolic pressure is typically good, and high in response to stress, but it’s not uncommon for my systolic pressure to stay high even when my heart is at rest, sometimes elevated for days even with a now higher dose of the beta blocker.

I take a muscle relaxer for spasticity several times a day and some anti-anxiety meds can also treat this, allowing me to reduce the amount of medications I am taking. A standard low-dose beta blocker and muscle relaxer for maintenance and on days that I am anxious, an anti-anxiety med instead. So now I’m on the hunt for a psychiatrist to get an evaluation.

Which brings me back to last week

Last week was brutal. I was booked every day from 8 a.m. to at least 10 p.m. And Saturday I attended Collingswood Book Festival as an author with Pennwriters Area 6. I met with clients everyday, taught my college class, went to WDIY to talk about advertising my business (and hopefully make some new friends)…

And I still worked part-time. I don’t talk much about the job I have in a local fast-food restaurant, a job I took last January because after a year of relying on Parisian Phoenix Publishing for my income, the realities of first quarter in the business world were making me nervous. And since royalties pay out three months after sales, I know how much money is coming and when.

And 90% of the time, the evening fast food job suits me perfectly and feeds me. The general manager was an English teacher until this year and understands my business and my frequent time off requests.

But last week I had two long shifts back to back where I was assigned jobs that were physically challenging for me. And I haven’t been in that much pain and discomfort in a long time.

And so even though I still have more work than time, and business can be as stressful as it is rewarding, I will try to go easier on myself. I only have two fast food shifts this week, and they are both on the longer side… but my days aren’t packed nearly as tight.

A cane, a popcorn machine and a compost heap

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I realized yesterday, after working for at least four hours on a political profile for Armchair Lehigh Valley on the upcoming Easton (Pa.) City Council race, that I currently spend about ten hours a week on political journalism for that publication, about ten hours a week teaching college and another twenty hours working my evening fast food job.

That’s 40 hours a week, before we consider the 30-plus hours a week I devote to my book publishing business, Parisian Phoenix (parisianphoenix.com). I thought I had everything perfectly balanced– but toward the end of the week, my sleep was starting to suffer.

And last night I fell. Not once, but twice. And not at home. Or even on the street. But at my fast food job. Both of the falls were trips. Both were quickly forgotten.

But when I got home, and when I woke up this morning, my body was struggling. And when I caught my right foot “catching” on my left ankle and almost causing a fall on the way to the restroom, I went and got my cane out of the car.

(And because I often have a lot of 21-year-olds in my house– Eva, her romantic interest, and one of her friends from high school staying with us– they thought my snake head cane was badass. They also encouraged me to change my outfit to match it as I am currently in sweatpants.)

After finishing my lesson planning for my class at Northampton Community College this week, I started the new Superman movie as I am a Superman fan. Since the movie includes Krypto the Superdog as a significant character, I restarted the movie an hour in so I could watch it with Eva.

When Eva left for work, I cleaned the cupboards and collected all the open and stale food items that were more than a couple weeks old. I also admitted what items I would never eat and I took these out to the compost heap. A lot of crackers including a box of Triscuit thins I treated myself to and forgot about.

This is really hard for me. I have experienced food insecurity and have gone mildly hungry, so I have a tendency to not waste food to an excessive degree.

I used to garden when Eva was little, and our neighborhood has terrible clay soil so I keep a compost heap under my porch. And believe-it-or-not, the regular digging and turning of the heap provides a great deal of emotional relief for me. Resuming care of the compost heap has given me some renewed vibrancy. And a lot of mosquito bites.

And if you haven’t cared for your own soil, it’s amazing to see the soil change and grow richer.

In addition to the maintenance of the compost, I also cleaned my popcorn machine. I’m hoping maybe the 21-year-olds might want to have a movie night with popcorn sometime.

All those memories of pizza and popcorn from Target Café.

How this nerd had the most spectacular birthday

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

My 49th birthday was Monday, May 20, 2024.

And my illustrator Joseph Swarctz of the Echo City Capers series drew me this “sexy Angel” for the conference coming in the fall. I think she’s fantastic. He asked me, over lattes at Panera because we were being fancy at our business meeting because it was my birthday, if I felt any different.

I had mentioned that as I get older, I suddenly realized how old everything else around me has gotten. Like the used car I bought in 2019, it’s almost ten years old now. And don’t even get me started on The Teenager– she’s going to not be a teenager anymore next month.

The mood (and the drama?)

I expected my birthday to be a catch-up-on-work day. I had hoped my birthday would be such. And I hoped that would distract me from the fact that since my father passed away, my family no longer talks to me. My mother sent me a passive-aggressive birthday card last week and my stepmother, who shares my birthday, made it clear that she does not want me in her life, first by ghosting me for more than a year and then by calling me up in February and listing everything I’ve done that she disapproved of during our 30-year-relationship.

Both my mother and my stepmother have experienced a lot of loss in the last few years, so I’m going to remember that. This isn’t the place to talk about family history, trauma, and the list of all the terrible things that can or did happen to people. We all live, we all love the best we can, and we all make mistakes. I think that’s part of why my dad meant so much to me– he understood that.

My dad

My dad was an extremely imperfect person, and now that I reflect upon it, he would make the most amazing fiction character. He was only five-feet tall and wore black motorcycle boots, jeans and Harley-Davidson t-shirts. He had tattoos, some of which honored the important people in his life. He was an alcoholic, and when I was a kid, he drank a lot. And sometimes that led to violence between him and my mother. Violence that I witnessed.

He also could fix anything. He had this sharp, strategic mind that could solve puzzles. He liked the Pittsburgh Steelers and would play Uno with me as he laid on the couch and watched Sunday night football. Which, as a parent now, I see is the easiest way possible to spend time with a child and still do what you want to do. For a while, I even collected football cards to share something, other than Uno, with my dad.

My dad would always have friends around with motorcycles or cars that needed fixing. They would arrange trades or bring gifts, which might have been because he wouldn’t take money.

I could tell stories forever about my dad, but the point is, that it always seemed like he gave people the benefit of the doubt, even when it was clear they were a mess, and I think that’s because he understood that we all have imperfections and some of his, he couldn’t fix. He could changed his behavior in a lot of ways, but sometimes those imperfections still hold us back.

So, it’s my birthday. And the only relatives who contact me do so on Facebook– and I have one cousin who posts this fabulous picture of us kids by my grandmother’s pool. I am between my cousins in the middle of the back row.

But for someone who did not expect or intend much birthday celebrating, it was a chaotic one and I have a feeling it might all extend into next week.

The PreGame

On Saturday, I presented a workshop to the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group. So, some of last week I “lost” in preparation for this event, which went fabulously, though I spoke too fast and squeezed what should have been two presentations into one. I thought I could use Sunday to recoup some lost client time.

How wrong I was.

I started with a Substack newsletter for Parisian Phoenix Publishing. You can read that here. I caught up on some email and watched a replay of a webinar I missed when I went up to the Times-News on Thursday. Then, it was time to go to Barnes & Noble in the Southmont Shopping Center where Joe was selling a LOT of books. It was one of our best days there ever for Echo City Capers.

And when I got home, I thought, now I can focus on some ghostwriting for my mafia novel client.

And then the Teenager approached. “Hey, Mom. I’m going down to groom [my friend and fellow author Tiffani Burnett-Velez’s] dog. You’re coming, right?”

Well, five-plus hours later I came home with a full belly and a copy of Tiff’s first novel because we traded– her first, for my fourth. And a cookie.

The family even sacrificed a cherry pie they had purchased for themselves to celebrate my birthday. And Tiff and I talked about neurologists longer than we probably should have. Because mine is the best one ever.

And during the drive home, the Teenager mentions that she has time on my actual birthday if I want to have a little adventure in the afternoon. So, I send her a list of ideas.

My birthday

The Teenager was definitely confused and perhaps disappointed by my final choice of Palmerton, Pa., for our outing. But I have a strange soft spot in my heart for that town and after my trip to Lehighton earlier in the week it felt like an easy choice.

Our first stop was the Country Harvest grocery store because according to Google maps they had doughnuts and a coffee bar inside. And unexpectedly, or perhaps very expectedly, The Teenager and I found lots of fun items in there. Including the iced teas we both had in school, and varieties of cat food that The Teenager’s finicky cat might eat. And for some reason The Teenager wanted puffed rice, and we picked desserts from the cooler and I bought a copy of the Times-News.

Then we walked down the main drag to go have a quick slice of pizza. Imagine our surprise when we discovered an amazing taco pizza, which we chased with a walk past the park and a visit to the public library so I could use the bathroom and enjoy the beautiful architecture.

The Teenager mentioned that she recognized the town and she felt like it was a place she had visited with my father on the motorcycle. That made sense, I told her, because my dad loved to take the motorcycle along the Lehigh River and through the picturesque hills and valleys of the region. So to celebrate him, we spent some time with the crane machine, another of my dad’s favorite activities.

I think what made the day special was that all we did was walk, talk and enjoy the scenery. Toss in some desserts and a good slice of pizza and what more could I ask… well, and it turns out we also had the presence of my dad.