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beautiful pink lava erupting in this dreamstate horizon
2006-07-30 8:48 p.m.

I am in a new and bothersome part of my recovery from the week in ICU last November for CNS Vasculitis. 6 weeks ago I finally got off prednisone. Steroids do weird things to your body besides healing whatever they are prescribed for. My clothes are starting to fit again, I don't bruise as easily, I can fall asleep without sleeping pills- those are the good things about stopping steroids. The bothersome part is PAIN.

My knees and ankles are so painful I can't sit in a chair. To get up from the pillow wall, I crawl to a chair and "climb" up it to standing. Once up I can walk around. The Dr. has me walking an hour a day- which I do with Scrappy up our hills anyway. That is the only time my knees don't hurt!

My knees never hurt before- but stopping the prednisone has created inflammation where there wasn't any before. If I sit in a chair my ankles swell to the point I can't put shoes on. Sitting down in the bathroom is agony! I spend my time walking Scrappy or lounging with my powerbook on the pillows. Friends come over- we have "Leslie's Laptop Lounge" My cordless 900mhz phone is in reach.

My head has been so into animation for the last year or so. I've learned so much new Flash stuff, Quicktime stuff, renovated many of my web pages, read lots of news, nap, etc... All kinds of things fill the "lounge time". I am currently designing my self-promotion site, 13ringcircus.net to reveal more web design clients.

My immune system post-prednisone is like an AIDS patient- and will be for months, so my usual gardening activity is out for this year. My neighbor, Sue, is watering and cooking for me. Good thing the cats are not little kittys, because I would not be able to handle their scratches.

I bought a 500GB Lacie firewire 7200rpm drive, and an 802.11g USB adapter to set up our old imac as a server on our Airport Extreme network, and ripped all our 700+ CD collection, and all my home recordings and sound effects into it. I bought a cool little 20$ App called "NetTunes" so I have complete control of iTunes on the music server imac from my powerbook. I can choose where (we have 2 sound systems with Airport Express units attached)
and what I want to hear without moving! That helps a lot.

Dr. says it will subside. When!? Who Knows. But for now I make the best of it, with a smile on my face. Thank God for the web, and the fact I love to make web pages and animations and art, have many fun friends, live music played in my house often and love to read. Oh I have much Gratitude that the "cure" worked- the CNS Vasculitis is not coming back. I've still got substantial Dr. stuff to follow through with- but that is a fascinating adventure for me- I'm learning so much!

Hope I didn't whine too much- I just wanted to let you know what's up for me. This too shall pass!