Selenay's Ramblings

I just looked out of the window and the rain is going side-ways. Hmm. Methinks that I won't be taking a walk this lunchtime.

My hip was bothering me yesterday and it's bothering me again today. In correcting my gait for the pain yesterday, I was managing to introduce an interesting moment where my knee bent backwards, which is one of the best ways that I know to dislocate it. So today I'm using the walking stick so that I hopefully stop the knee trick :-( I suspect that it's a combination of weather and tiredness causing the problem. Hopefully I'll be back to normal by the weekend so that I can do my shopping trip :-)

I find myself with rather less to say than I thought I had. Huh. Is it too early to start on the chocolate?

The only geeky comment I can think of is to note that I'm starting to look into how I can rework my websites so they don't explode in IE7. Yay. It's looking like conditional comments to serve alternate versions of the CSS file is the way to go now that hacks have been largely disabled. I just need to work out which bugs are still affecting IE7 and need alternative CSS for, and what it actually does properly now. Obviously installing IE7 over my IE6 will make testing for IE6 impossible - does anyone know of websites or, even better, Firefox plugins that will let me view websites in the different generations of IE so that I can see what's going on? Or even just view things in IE7 so that I don't have to overwrite IE6.

Food. Friends. Family. Fun.

Christmas was lovely and I had a terrific time :-) The time off work was very welcome and my day in work wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I've been thoroughly lazy all week and enjoying every minute of it.

The mystery present doner was revealed! Medieval Law in Context was sent by the only aunt/uncle pairing that I'd dismissed as highly unlikely :-) They'd sent me a birthday card, proving that they'd remembered my birthday this year (unlike last year...) so I'd been assuming that we weren't doing birthday presents this year. Possibly due to internal family politics, they changed their minds and sent me a present through my Amazon wishlist, but didn't realise that there was a facility to providing a message on a tag. Hence the confusion :-)

The other minor moment of confusion involved my sister receiving my birthday present as her Christmas present from another aunt/uncle pairing, but that was cleared up quickly and painlessly after a couple of days when said aunt/uncle realised that the gift they were wrapping for my cousin wasn't really something that he'd normally ask for and the whole chain of present giving fell down around their ears. It's all sorted now, luckily, except they had to make an emergency shopping trip to find a Christmas present for my cousin to replace the gift that should have been my sister's... :-)

I shall have thoughts on the recent Torchwood episodes and The Runaway Bride in seperate posts. And I'm looking forward to The Sarah Jane Adventures tomorrow greatly. It's really been a very Doctor Who themed Christmas.

The only slight dampner to the Christmas excess was the cold that I've had for the past couple of days and the nasty stomach bug that floored me yesterday (literally, there was this whole moment when everything went blurry and then...). Huh. But I'm back to eating today and the cold is hopefully starting to lift.

The only other interesting piece of news is that I saw the rhuematologist on Thursday and he's declared himself at the end of his knowledge on how to treat me. Therefore he wants me refered to a specialist hypermobility clinic in London because he's sure that it's the HM that's the root of my back and hip problems now. Other than that, it was a fairly routine appointment but I like him and he actually seems willing to recognise that this is causing me some problems in my day to day life, rather than dismissing it. So that's progress. He wants to continue monitoring me and I'll just have to see how long it takes to get the appointment in London.

I finally have proof that I have uneven leg lengths! Which goes to prove that I'm not crazy...mostly.

For years I've been getting the cuffs of trousers chewed up on my right leg and fine on my left. A few months ago, Mom needed to shorten a pair of trousers for me and rather than just fitting them to one leg and shortening the other by the same length, we decided to check both legs. Oddly, we needed to shorted the right by half an inch more than the left. The doc insists that despite my hip dysplasia, my legs are perfectly even...

Well, we've just done the measuring for another pair of trousers to be shortened and the right is half an inch shorter than the left again. I've measured and the trousers definitely started out with even length legs, so it's now definite - something is making my legs uneven and it's probably the damn hips.

It's very strange, but it may help to explain some of the problems that I've been having with my back.

I'm so weird :-)

I just heard the dulcet tones of Baby's alarm, so it looks like the mechanic has arrived to pick her up and take her away for fixing tomorrow. The dead battery situation has been confusing her dreadfully and the alarm tends to re-arm itself when you try to start the engine and then the sensors set her off. Poor Baby. The mechanic is attempting to jump start her so that he can drive her away rather than adding towing costs to my bill.

I hope that I hear her engine soon :-(

Baby was even deader this morning than she was yesterday morning so I borrowed Mom's car and called my nice mechanic. He's promised to look her over, check that there aren't any electrical faults draining the battery and then replace the battery. If there is an electrical fault, I'm not entirely sure what we do.

It's bad news with a convention less than three weeks away. Quite aside from Baby's essential transport functions, extensive repair bills might make the con budget rather tighter than I'd wanted. Damnit, I want to buy a new Atlantis T-shirt!

Ah, just heard Baby's engine so the mechanic at least won't need to add towing costs to the rest of. One plus point.

But I have a cough and a headache. And Da has flu. Not good.

But I've finally written a letter to the doctor about my hip so that I can get some information from him to throw at the insurance company. Hopefully that stuff will start to move along now. So, kinda progress.

Well, the doc on Wednesday had nothing concrete, but he did give me an idea of what is probably going on. I have hypermobility - loose ligaments - and it looks like that's finally taking its toll on my joints. Both hips show signs of dysplasia, more pronounced in the left (painful) one, and it's probable that the ligaments aren't holding my joints together properly anymore.

I'm being sent for assessment with a physio to see whether there's anything that can be done to strengthen the muscles. It worked when I was a kid - I went from dislocations and sprains two or three times a month to dislocations every couple of years - so that's hopeful. In the long-term, he's referring me to a rheumatologist who will hopefully be able to find out exactly what's going on and what the long-term implications might be. I can't say that what I've been reading about hypermobility is particularly encouraging, but my doc is deliberately not sending me to a surgeon because I'm much to young to start down that route so that's good.

The bad news is that the hip is playing up badly at the moment so I'm back on my walking stick. Hopefully this won't be for more than a day or two.

Ain't it fun to be me? *g*

In the good news, I got the final Christmas present bought today and also bought a pretty blouse so that I have some nice new clothes to wear at Christmas. I also went to the archery shop and upgraded my limbs - my bow is now pulling 26 pounds and my shooting should improve with that. I've also made some minor adjustments to some other bits, buying a new arrow rest and swapping to a different type of string. Considering I couldn't even pull 26 pounds five months ago, I'm feeling very good about this. I also won a couple of medals for the summer season - best handicapped score in August and September. Plus I got a big round of applause for improving my handicap from 88 to 66 during the season. My handicap last month was 64, so it's entirely reasonable to hope that my handicap will be down to 60 by the end of the indoor season. The archery is going well and I still love it :-)))