Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Where have I been lately?

Have you wondered what's been going on and why it seems that there are shows on a regular basis and then there won't be a show for almost 2 weeks?
I have the one word answer. Sciatica.
What's sciatica? It's the biggest nerve in the body and it's being pinched. This began on 11/1 at work. It was a majorly crappy day. My paycheck got screwed up, everything that was going wrong did and the stress caused my muscles to spasm and put me in pain that I can't even describe.
I ended up in the E.R. that night. The pain was an 11 on a scale of 1-10 and I had heard that morphine was a magic drug and would make the pain stop. After 8 shots of morphine, I was still in pain (8 on the scale) which was better than 10, but still hurt like hell.

The pain is centered around a couple of places. It feels like someone is stabbing me in the butt and also the back of the leg. I've also had numbness and a burning sensation in my foot. Sounds fun huh. Drugs don't help. I have a prescription for percocet and it does nothing. Because it's a nerve thing, drugs just aren't going to help at all.

I was in bed for 3 days. It was agony to do things like get up out of bed, walk (even to the bathroom), it was agony to sit on the toilet. It was complete and utter torture. And I wanted to die. I had made some shows in advance before this happened so you might not have noticed a lack of new episodes. But then my backlog of extra shows ran out and then it became really difficult.

During this time, I was offered a new job, so I quit my other job. I took the month of November to focus on getting better before I started my new job on 12/4. By then, I was a lot better, but by the time I got home at the end of the day, to do anything more than lay down was torture. I got better. Then Christmas came and I stopped doing the 2 things I needed to do which was drink lots of water and do stretching excercies a couple of times a day. Coupled with people being in my house for 5 days, my back relapsed.

I've done shows sporadically. They have typically been done on the weekends when I can do them before the pain gets to be too much. Show 101 took me 3 hours to do instead of 30 minutes. I would do something and then have to go lay down for 10-15 minutes and then go back and repeat the process.

I'm going to a chiropractor and a massage therapist and things are getting better. I haven't had any numbness or burning in my foot which is a nice change. Overall, things are getting better. I hope that this means my shows can go back to being somewhat regular and when I feel good, I think I'm going to crank out several shows to have in case things get bad again.

So that's where I've been. I haven't died. I haven't pod faded. I've just been going through an extremely rough time.

There you have it.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Rubyfruit Radio Episode 100

Rubyfruit Radio celebrated 100 episodes with a best of show.
Featured artists included Meg and Dia, Terra Naomi, Ashley Anderson, Three 5 Human, Sirsy, Lesley Gore, Nervous But Excited, Katie Todd Band, Beth Thornley, Adrienne Pierce, The Gossip and 8 Inch Betsy.

Check it out at rubyfruitradio.com