The Old Blog

Here is an entry that I have not been able to post to the former edition of my blog at technomonk.us (after trying for the past several days)...

I know, I know...I said last time that “I’m baaaacck” ...and then I went away again. You just can’t trust anybody anymore, can you? 

The truth is I thought I was back, but it proved to be not true; I continue[d] to be locked out again (after that last entry). This most recent experience with Blogger is pretty much the last straw for me. As you may recall, when I migrated TechnoMonk’s Musings away from its Comcast-server location (to the present URL) during the summer, I spent weeks and weeks devoted to the task. When things went kafloowie, I just had to figure the problems out by: sorting through the only-modestly-helpful Blogger help files, asking questions of the Blogger Help Group (discussion board), using Google to search the internet for solutions that other users had come up with, writing emails to people I thought might be able to assist, figuring it all out by myself, or leaving a task undone. (Not that you, the reader, noticed very much of this at all…I’m mainly talking about behind-the-scenes web-maintenance stuff.) Anyway, it was very time consuming and frustrating. 

Of course, let’s be fair here, too. Blogger is a free service and was very attractive to me last November when I got the itch to start a blog: in the space of a couple of hours I went from a blogless person to posting my first entry here on TechnoMonk’s Musings. There was not a whole lot of research or deliberateness about this whole thing...I explored a couple of no-cost options on the web and picked one. And here I’ve stayed ever since, despite the problems.

But it’s now time to move on, I believe. Blogger was good while it lasted, but I’ve been at this business long enough now (148 posts prior to this one) to know that I desire options and features on my blog not easily available to me here. (Reliability and support are two that come to mind...) Hence, I’ve started the research in order to make a change (more deliberately this time)...I will pick software and/or a service that will better serve my blogging wants and needs.

Just so you know: I won’t try to migrate this blog onward. I’ll leave it all behind to serve as 11 months worth of “archives.” I intend to obtain another domain name, establish the blog, and take up there where I left off here...just with another “look and feel” for my web presence.

So, stay tuned...I'll let you know when I’m really back...

Update on January 27, 2012:

Dear Reader: I subsequently decided to migrate a large portion of the old blog over to this one, and those entries now appear here (search the "Archives"). Many old posts dated from November 2005 to October 2006 are now available for your reading pleasure.

End of Life

I received word a couple of days ago that one of my high school classmates does not have long to live. Several years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer but was able to survive the experience back then. The most recent memory I have of her is from a class reunion where I observed her smoking a cigarette. I must admit, I had a judgment about this. I thought: A cancer survivor. Yet she’s smoking. Incredible. She must have a death wish.

Linda was someone I shared rides with to school in the morning some days (via a carpool). I can’t say that we were really friends, though. We were acquaintances, mostly; we lived in the same neighborhood of our small, rural northern-Wisconsin town and our parents knew each other. She was at least one notch, probably more, above me on the social scale. She was a good looking teenager (rather hot, actually) and dated the jocks. I was extremely average looking, small, non-athletic, academic — and nerdy with a rather rebellious wild side. I didn’t fit. She did.

Now she’s in hospice care. So, again I’m left thinking: what’s this life all about, anyway?

My Own Dot Com

Just so you know, I’ve become totally enamored with the services and user interface at squarespace.com and have committed to locating my blog here on a permanent basis. I’ve laid down my money and made the move. The new domain name will be technomonksmusings.com. (Yep, I’ve finally got my own dot com location!)

The really frustrating part now is that I still am unable to log into the Blogger system to let my readers at technomonk.us know about this transition. Sooner or later, I suppose, I’ll be able to get back into the system long enough to notify everyone of my new address. In the meantime, folks’ll probably start to get worried: my last post there indicated that I was “back” – and then I disappeared again. Hey everybody: are you out there?

New & Improved Blog

Welcome!! My old Blogger-produced blog was good for my first year of online journaling, but I ultimately discovered I was desirous of a cleaner, more-professional, and up-to-date look. So, here I am with a new address and a new blog. Thanks for traveling this journey with me!

The N-Zone

I’ve talked off and on here about my diagnosis of chronic myofascial pain, provided some thoughts about surviving this disease and the treatment process, and most recently, discussed the trigger-point injection therapy I began a couple of weeks ago.

Here’s a little addendum to the story that I’ll now share with you…

During the first appointment at the doctor’s office where we performed trigger-point injections , skittish-(around-needles)-person that I am, I allowed only four injections. The second time, a few days later, was a session with 19 injections. That extremely-intense ordeal was on a Monday morning, and, as it followed a weekend of suffering through some intense back and foot pain, I experienced some much-needed relief during the course of that day. However, by that evening, I had pretty much returned to “normal.” (This was not a good thing, of course…the pain had returned!) In fact, by the end of the week (on that Friday), I was hurting so much that I made and kept an appointment with my chiropractor in Eugene, where I obtained some pain abatement with the (for me, usual) treatment modes of ultrasound, light massage, and a small chiropractic adjustment.

My injection-therapy doc was going to be out of town for a bit, so the first chance I had to return to him was Monday morning of this week. While there, I reported on my status, including the few-hours-only relief I obtained as a result of the 19 injections last time.

Of course, I had been discouraged at not experiencing more relief as a result of that previous visit, but, still, was rather unprepared for the assessment that injections were not going to be the preferred treatment for me. The “typical patient” tends to respond much more positively than I did, apparently.

I had been warned that this (injection) path might be more problematic for me than others, though. In reporting my medical history, I of course had disclosed that I had been taking lorazepam (“Ativan”) during the last several months in an attempt to cope with the anxiety-factors of my life (job loss, interviewing, moving…that kind of stuff). As it turns out, and as I had been informed, taking a drug in the bezodiazepine class can sometimes (oftentimes) seriously get in the way of having a successful outcome from trigger-point injections. And this doctor, while having treated only a few individuals who were taking (or had taken) this type of drug, had first-hand experience in seeing such cases as mine “fail.” I had been off the drug for a full three weeks at the time of my injections (and, now, as I write this, it’s been over five weeks), but the effect that the drug can have on the body (at least as far as trigger-point injections go) can be much longer lasting than would typically be predicted from the elimination half-life .

So, what to do now? (was the question) I had been studying the Trigger Point Therapy Workbook and doing my own self-massage of trigger points (with the help of a variety of massage “tools” that I now own). But this approach seems to have yielded little progress, especially regarding my back pain. (It’s possible that the condition in my left leg and foot is somewhat improved.)

I asked the doc what we could to do to pursue an alternative treatment path. Fortunately, he had some ideas (several of them, actually). One possible approach that emerged was to take small doses of a drug, naltrexone , once a day (at bedtime) for thirty days. Naltrexone is an “anti-narcotic” usually prescribed to manage alcohol and opiate addiction. However, in low doses (3 mg vs. the typical 50 mg), the drug has been found to be advantageous for a variety of ailments. The hypothesis regarding this drug’s biochemical mechanism (magic?) is that it produces an increase in endorphin levels in the body, which positively impact muscle tissue (and myofascial trigger points, in my case). In people with diseases that are partially or largely triggered by a deficiency of endorphins ( CMP and fibromyalgia are thought to be in this category), or are accelerated by a deficiency of endorphins, restoration of the body’s normal production of endorphins is believed to be the major therapeutic action of (low-dose) naltrexone.

Now, I had never heard of this drug prior to two days ago. But, I admit, this theory and approach are fairly attractive: a low dose of a drug purported to have “no side effects” and that does not involve frequent, multiple and painful needles in my body. Further, the success rate of this approach for individuals with my condition is supposedly quite high (the pharmacist said that, in his experience, this approach works “about 90% of the time”).

I took the first dose last night at bedtime, after discovering that “low-dose naltrexone” (LDN) has its own website and listserv on yahoogroups . I have started to do the reading and the research, though it may be several days before I have any “results” of this experiment to talk about.

Stay tuned for further updates on my naltrexone experience...