Back in Masks!

WHAT A WEEK!

So here I am, a week out from my last tournament in the competition season before Districts in June. We had our last tournament in mid-March. It was pretty successful for me - two 1sts and one 2nd. But ... I folded my foot halfway through the second to last sparring match. I knew I did something not good to it, but since I was able to walk it off, I figured I could finish off the competition and pay for it the next day. That's what I did and I took the sparring competition for my second 1st.

However, when I took my footpad off, I already had a massive goose egg started and knew there was some thing wrong. I ended up at the ER getting X-rayed. They told me it was just a really bad bruise, and nothing had popped like it did when I sprained my other ankle. But I am pretty sure I ended up with a high ankle sprain. My foot wound up looking like a sausage with toes attached and the bruising was spectacular - all the way down into my toes, even down to one of my toenails! I also rapped shins really good and ended up with bruising from that down under the other side of my ankle so it was a matching set on each side.

I'd post some pics ... but that function seems to be down.

At any rate, I've been nursing that injury through practice. My foot is stiff but I'm able to move on it pretty good. I'm just braced against not rolling it under again. I'm pretty sure that would hurt really bad.

Now, to this week and my real rant. I had to set the stage ... It has been ... eventful.

At work, I have a difficult coworker, one of my minions. She is a Karen in every sense of the word. She also has health issues armor so no one wants to be mean to her. She is erratic in her patterns, so I can't get her worked into the system and work around her particular idiosyncrasies to avoid her less pleasant aspects, and she has now yelled at me at least three times. She has constantly pushed for more responsibility which, to me, signals that she does not have enough to do and needs more work, but to her just means she is bored with what she was doing, not that she didn't have enough of it. So when I give her more work, she gets mad because it's too much. Things like that ...

At any rate, our boss debuted a new checklist system for how we are to check through the job orders in our system. This is mainly for the minions who primarily handle that task. I mostly trouble shoot orders and delegate them out and maintain orderly workflow so things progress across the board in a timely manner, but I also have to know how to backup every aspect of the system in case I need to help things along here or there as part of workflow maintenance. So our boss whom I tend to work closely with, but mostly by text and chat - we seldom see her in person, spent a good 30 to 45 minutes shut in a small room on Wednesday training all of us in the new system.

She mentioned a sore throat; she also assured us it couldn't be COVID because she had her boosters and had had it not 6 months previous on her honeymoon (no joke).

Yeah, no ... it's COVID. We're all back in masks now across the entire department because, of course, we have all been exposed. At least we only have to do it for this next week, but still ... we *never* see our boss in person on our side of things, hardly ever. We mostly work with her via text and chat. But of course, she had to train us, and we had to be shut in with her in person for over half an hour ... So we all got good and exposed. However, I am sitting here on Sunday morning healthy as a horse, so I'm pretty sure I don't have it. Won't get me out of my mask next week though.

Now why did I tell you about the difficult coworker? I mentioned the new system, right? It's just a checklist. It's designed to help us not forget things as we work through orders, nothing else. It DOES NOT NEED TO BE PERFECT. But we have a Karen on staff. It NEEDS TO BE PERFECT. Far the rest of the week, the last two days, her task has been to use the orders to proof the checklist.

Understand, this is a woman who does not like "no" as an answer. She barely interacts with me anymore because I am unimpressed with her health issues armor and demeanor (she seems meek). I tell her no and have no trouble doing it when it needs to be done. She now goes right over my head with everything because the others will seek to appease her. She thinks every order has to be put on hold and redone for things like misplaced commas in obscure places. I'd tell her that the patient is unlikely in the extreme to notice that, so we can send that order and fix the issue for all succeeding orders. That's not enough for a Karen.

She finally got our boss, whose baby this new checklist is, to "peace out" on us. Boss has been working from home with her COVID and being extremely nice about it all, but the constant badgering to "fix this" and "tweak that" got to be too much, and we were left to handle the incessant Karening. It amounted to "later" or the ever favorite video game developer "soon". I would have simply said NO.

And finally, my poor foot. I'm finally getting it back to close to normal, and what do I do? Last night in the shower I dropped a nearly full large bottle of Aveeno body wash on it. Guess I'll be limping around for another week ... Should be good to go on Saturday provided I avoid sabotaging myself any more. At least I'm qualified for Districts in June even if I can't compete this weekend or can't do it well.

I popped my big toe out of it's socket one time and did it get swollen up in the joint area. I went to the doctors and they sent me for X-rays, but the doctor left so there was nobody to read the x-rays till the next tuesday and I had things to do over the weekend.

Well, I went up to my neices graduation and walking up I stepped onto the curb with my toe and it popped back into place. That was Friday afternoon, by tuesday it was all pretty well healed when the doctor finally called and said I needed to come in because it was dislocated...I told her it fixed itself...but she said I needed to go see a specialist...I blew that off, why go see a specialist after it is already fixed. It has been fine ever since and that was around twelve years ago.

I am not going to go to a doctor if I don't need to. I usually do not go to a doctor unless I can't kick something, but they want you to go in if you cough once these days and get tested. They usually don't even do anything anyway, seems they want us all to just support the medical trade these days. It was not like this years ago, if you went to the doctor after you were starting to get better, the doctor thought you were looney back in the sixties. But now they want everyone to come in even though they know that the vast majority of people can kick what they got on their own...and that the pills they prescribed wrongly made things worse....back then it was aspirins for everything, then came antibiotics which now you got a hard time getting a prescription for since those panceas turned out to be a nightmare. Not even counting all the pain pills people got addicted to that were supposed to not be addicting.

Hope your foot gets better, Even if it is a broken bone it will get better eventually, I ran over my foot by putting them down on a four wheeler and it went under the back tire. that break took almost two months to heal but it might look fa little funny on an x-ray but it is fine. That was one of the bones that go from the heel to the toe area, when you break that one it is just a big bruise, very little swelling but it does click when you step on it for at least two weeks.

a reply to: rickymouse

Guitarist me...Yesterday..popped my "wah-wah" pedal rt leg out...like over 50 years. (Guitar players? You know the malady: rockin' (literally) on stage, on one foot...for 50 years.)

Marshal Amp left ear syndrome...also 50+ years ear-towards amp.......now, what???

a reply to: ketsuko

1st my good friend? Congrats and my condolences! Oh my gosh...we all could start a "Malady Tally for Members".

It doesnt end, doesnt get better, has an absolute ending...so, make it count while Gods keepin score!

K, didnt know you were into the sports as much. Me, never. Physical limitations...but, yours is very immpressive.

Going forward, one word: Geritol

God Bless!!

**ETA: Again! It does not get any better! soooo....Onward!!!!!!!!! Carpe' Diem

a reply to: ketsuko

My family is all recovering from sickness from a relative that had visited from your state. What the heck in going on down there!

It sounds like you need a mini vacation!

Also, isn’t it amazing how people can just make a job so…..uggggg. When I think back on the best jobs I ever had it wasn’t the jobs it was the people I was surrounded by.

a reply to: JAGStorm

We are eyeballing a week-long vacation in June. The problem is that my mom just finished her radiation treatments this past week too. Her oncologist said the surgeon likes to wait between 6 and 8 weeks for healing before scheduling the surgery. We don't know if that's 6 to 8 weeks hard after the date of last treatment or 6 to 8 weeks after the scan to see where her tumor is at now, but if the former, 6 weeks is the week before Districts which could make that week ... interesting. I might need to be in Wichita for her surgery during the week and then in St. Louis that Saturday provided all goes well. Eight weeks would set it right during the week we were planning to take our vacation.

And depending on how it all goes, we may be talking about rescheduling or simply not taking it at all because of PTO concerns.

And none of that is talking about my mother-in-law who has stage IV cancer and a poor prognosis. There will be needed time there at some point, but we do not know when, of course.

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
a reply to: rickymouse

Guitarist me...Yesterday..popped my "wah-wah" pedal rt leg out...like over 50 years. (Guitar players? You know the malady: rockin' (literally) on stage, on one foot...for 50 years.)

Marshal Amp left ear syndrome...also 50+ years ear-towards amp.......now, what???

Every job has it's health problems, even playing in a band can cause problems with the body. Evidently this is not new to you, you seem to have been aware of these things for years...but if you enjoy what you do it can justify the discomfort.

I got hurt a lot and I actually was more cautious than my friends...although a lot of them are crippled up or dead now. That is life I guess, fearing things that hurt you can make your life boring.

a reply to: mysterioustranger

As to sports: I was always *that* kid. What season is it? What's the sport? Sign me up. I started when I was about 6 or 7. I have some good experience with several sports. Basketball and track & field were my two main sports up through high school and into college. I played basketball for fun and to stay active in the off season, and track was my money sport. My senior year, I took the Gatorade award for the state of Kansas in track & field. They only award 1/sport/state for a girl and boy every year. My name is listed on the website and I have the framed award letter and everything. Track also paid for most of my college.

When I developed chronic migraine, it knocked me out for a long time.

But then my kiddo got to be old enough to start trying sports, and he's physically energetic. We started trying him at different things to find stuff he likes. He tried tae kwon do, and it stuck. I decided it looked like fun, so even though I'm pushing 50, I got myself whipped back into shape and stepped on the floor.

I stuck my toes into some smaller tournaments, and my instructor invited me to go competitive. So I've been heavily wrapped up in the competitive side of things this past year. It's lots of fun. We're nothing compared to the young guys especially as ladies in our 40s, but I'm still flexible enough to kick the others in the head and I have in tournaments to win matches. I might make it into the full splits yet.

And I have discovered that I'm practically ambidextrous which is a huge advantage with the weapons' techniques. I use nunchuks for mine and switch them from right hand to left a couple times in my form with no slowdown, not something many can do until they get much higher ranked then we are now (purple belt at present).

a reply to: ketsuko

And none of that is talking about my mother-in-law who has stage IV cancer and a poor prognosis. There will be needed time there at some point, but we do not know when, of course.

My mom did not do Chemo, but she did immunotherapy and some other treatments for her cancer. Looking back in hindsight, I don’t know if I would have encouraged any of them. I think the only really helpful thing was IV saline infusion so she wasn’t dehydrated. I think it depends on the age of the person and if they are really… ready.
My mom wanted to go.

Back to your vacation. Yes take days off, relax as much as you can but know it won’t feel like a real vacation while your mom is sick.
I’m finally getting to a point where I can truly relax and it’s been a year since my mom passed.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Our relationship to my mother-in-law is complex.

Understand that my husband lost his mother to cancer when he was in college. His father up and suddenly moved several states away and gave my husband the ultimatum that if he wanted any more support, he had to leave college and move too. My husband had over a year invested at that point and chose to stay on by himself.

His father met up with an old college friend who had coincidentally lost her husband to cancer also, and they reconnected and were married shortly. It has never been a close relationship because of all of this. We will be most sorry for my husband's father who will be losing his second wife to cancer, but we are not close enough to our mother-in-law to feel deeply saddened as ashamed as I am to admit it.

And honestly, her personality hasn't helped that over the years, but no one deserves to die of cancer.

Still, she has found a specialist with a promising experimental treatment that might help and has shown the ability to put people in her situation in remission. Who knows? It may work for her. We will pray that it does.

a reply to: rickymouse

Yep...including bouncing around rigs in emergencies another 20, a fall off a 2nd floor....yep.

When they said in high school "Wait. Youre gonna feel it when youre older!" They. Were. Not. Kidding.

*When I get up every morning....I 1st ask the rest of me if it agrees!

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
a reply to: rickymouse

Yep...including bouncing around rigs in emergencies another 20, a fall off a 2nd floor....yep.

When they said in high school "Wait. Youre gonna feel it when youre older!" They. Were. Not. Kidding.

*When I get up every morning....I 1st ask the rest of me if it agrees!

Yeah, all the older people I knew back when I was young mentioned that when you break something it comes back to haunt you when you are old. I did listen to them...but of course when your in your upper teens and twenties, you think you are immortal. I never figured I would live past thirty so settled down after I did not die then. I had multiple ankles sprained, both knees, one hip, one shoulder, two hernias, and smacked my head a couple of times and got mild concussions as diagnosed by the ER people. I also damaged my spine a half dozen times, that bugged me all along, it didn't wait to torture me when I got old. But the car accident took me out, after I got epilepsy it put a damper on everything. Well, I had many years because of the accident to extensive research on things...if you can't safely work, you can still learn and possibly help others to not have so many problems in health.

a reply to: mysterioustranger

I was doubled jointed through my younger years in my shoulders. I had a PT tell me that if I did not keep my shoulders strong enough to stabilize the joints, I would pay for it when I got older.

Yep.

One frozen shoulder in each, and major surgery in one here in my 40s. They are no longer double jointed or anywhere near as flexible, either.

You know what's even more fun?

Because of the cancer on both sides of the family, I can't actually talk to anyone.

They ask, "How is everything and what's going on ..." You can't actually tell them because one cancer patient shouldn't have to deal with the news from the other. I don't to tell my mom my mother-in-law is dying of cancer, and I don't want to tell my likely dying mother-in-law that my mom is likely going to pull through ...

a reply to: ketsuko

Understand that my husband lost his mother to cancer when he was in college. His father up and suddenly moved several states away and gave my husband the ultimatum that if he wanted any more support, he had to leave college and move too. My husband had over a year invested at that point and chose to stay on by himself.

That’s crazy but my parents did something similar to my brother. I begged my brother not to listen to them but he did and has been a bitter bitter man ever since!
I think this form of parental financial abuse is absolutely despicable and signs of narcissistic parenting.

a reply to: ketsuko

Damn Ket! You n Rickymouse n me could be triplets!!!

And my wife...(10 yrs younger)...kinda forgets n "Why can't you walk!?"
Near fatal fall off a 2nd floor ..broke back, neck, legs, crushed skull...x a dozen other "I almost died!"'s....but it's all good.

At least...that's what I'm told. Still waiting....