Os Trigonum Syndrome

I had myself some coffee yesterday, which perked me up pretty fast, because I could not wake up, as I am not used to 50 mg of Seroquel anymore. I woke up at 9, and by 1 PM, I still did not have my bearings, so I had to have something. In fact, I wonder if it perked me up a little too much, because normally when I drink coffee, it doesn’t really do anything for me. I normally drink it out of enjoyment, just because I’ve learned to appreciate the taste of coffee itself a little over the years. I mean, I added a lot of sugar, but even when we had work meetings and I decided to have coffee, I’d still add a lot of sugar, but that didn’t make me up. I was still at the same energy level I was when I finished drinking it. But a similar thing happened to me last Saturday when I worked Market on the River. I was already awake by the time I got there, but it’s not like I was bleary. I was just in a super crabby mood. I didn’t want anything to do with anyone, and I figured people were going to tick me off. My co-worker wasn’t ticking me off, but whenever I talked, it was all this irritable negativity. But as soon as I had some coffee just to warm me up, suddenly I was up and ready for the world, and despite the crummy weather, I had this sudden burst of confidence and desire to do stuff, to wander around–to not stay still, basically.

I know with a lot of people, this is what coffee probably does for them. I don’t know. All I can tell you is that coffee normally does not make me up, up, if that makes sense.

But today I woke up, and it’s like I hadn’t even taken 50 mg at all. I woke up at 9, my usual time, unfortunately, just because Seroquel is annoying, but my mind was sharp and racing with thoughts. I laid in bed for fifteen minutes, just so the sleepiness could drain from my body itself, but I was zipping around, ready to get my paycheck, cash my work check and AEC one, send of WSD to a Tumblr winner, and I even went to Hobby Lobby to buy new brushes, paints, canvas, and an easel. For some reason, whenever I’m hypomanic or manic, I get this strong urge to paint, probably because it’s therapeutic and I don’t have to worry about making it right. I can just mix colors on canvas, abstract fashion, and just go with it. I collected my supplies, went home, and did my Access homework. I had this sudden confidence with my Access homework, so confident I got a 99 compared to yesterday’s 89. And I can’t figure out what I did differently with today’s assignment that I didn’t do with the last one.

So I got some bad news on my ankle, the thing I talked about in the last post. I have a syndrome called OS Trigonum syndrome (this isn’t the bad news, although it’s still bad). This means that something didn’t ossify when I was younger, so I have an extra bone at the back of my heel either fused to my talus or held in place by a piece of cartilage. I think pointe work began to irritate this bone. What happens when you do plantar flexion or pointe work, this little bone gets crushed between your heel and ankle, so it gets very irritated. Jumps mostly aggravated the bone. Many dancers report it hurting during pointe work, but my injury might not be that bad…yet. But the bad news is that I was hoping I could get the MRI ASAP, get the surgery soon, and then take a break over the summer. However, apparently I’m not going to get the second opinion until July, which means surgery being delayed, and Grade V starts in the fall.

Now being hypomanic, you can imagine my explosiveness toward this news. I wanted to scream, I wanted to break things, I wanted to hurt myself because I couldn’t go to bed to escape these feelings because hypomania says you don’t want to go to bed, no matter how crappy you feel. My dad had to talk me down from it, because I couldn’t. You get so irrational, so rage-filled, that you can’t concentrate, you can’t find that silver lining. And someone HAS to talk you down from it. So there is a silver lining. I can do Session I of the grade IV intensive  and learn the grade V barre work (because for some reason you do grade V barre work in a grade IV intensive). And let’s assume I get the surgery in October. I will have a month and a half to learn the Grade V exercises, get the surgery in October, and come back in January. I’ll probably be a little behind, just because they build on the exercises, but I will have at least learned those exercises; I would just have to see what was added to them.

I am going back en pointe though. I am not staying off pointe for five months, not when pointe work didn’t cause me any pain to begin with. This decision is out of sheer stubborness and the fear that I am going to fall behind in pointe work. Now if it does begin to hurt, I’ll take myself off pointe. I’ll also probably limit the jumps I do in class. Like maybe do every other jump exercise, depending on what it is. This is my decision, my choice. And even if it starts hurting worse than it hurts right now (because it’s not so severe that I can’t dance), then I think by that point, I’ll be okay with not doing anything until everything gets taken care of. As it stands, I can still dance; therefore, I will keep dancing until my injury literally tells me it is not possible to currently dance.

I’ll just load up on Icy Hot.