Our family is saddened by the passing of our wonderful cat Crouton. He was three weeks away from his 19th birthday. This cat saw Liz and I turn into a family and was always a bundle of joy. He was such an amazing cat that converted me from a dog lover to a cat lover. He was great with the kids when they were young and chose to sleep next to Ollie for the last few years. He will be missed dearly by our family and anyone at our house with a lap. Ha.

Congrats to Fuzz and Leslie! One of the cutest couples out there.

Lots of fun was had all day and at the reception. Can’t believe our son Jack got kicked out. Geez, what bad parents Liz and I are. Ha, Jack and everyone else in this photo you rule!

Jack’s blog has some fun photos from recent session. Peep it here.

Saw this photo on The Skateboard Mag site and it stoked me out so much. It was directly across the street from the hotel I stayed at in St Louis. It reminded me of the week I had there that I took advantage of to it’s fullest. Even with tons of knee pain I skated three of the four nights I was there. Man it was fun. On a side note, I’m not on my 6th month of not being near 100%. Yikes.

.. is through J Mascis! Just look at this hand painted Valentines Day card inspired by a J Mascis t-shirt I have. Ahh, so cute. The Mighty LZA really knows the way to my heart! Ha.

The t-shirt:

Lucas Puig can stack footage!

Jordan Sanchez. Quick feet, lots of up/down curb tricks which are my favorite, good style ….

My knee is feeling better. My arthritis isn’t so much. It’s been 3 weeks of no jumping with 1 – 3 more. I can’t wait to skate again. Hopefully I remember some tricks. I had a dream I grabbed someones board, did a perfect treflip and handed it back. Felt so good in my dream. Ha. Ollie just bought EA SKATE 3 for the PS3 so hopefully that will help tide me over.

Had a really fun Sunday with the Null crew and Jason. Thanks dudes (and dudette)!

Since I’m on a possible two month break from skateboarding while tendonitis heals I gotta find new ways to occupy my time. Last night I went for a long walk. I don’t really care for walking around neighborhoods at night. It’s just creepy. So I went to campus and roamed around looking for new spots, but mostly just saw spots I already knew about. Spots I’ve had fun at. I stared at pieces of concrete in ways that no one except skaters can relate to. That made me feel pretty good. But then the reality of why I was walking around campus instead of skating set it. I felt like an old man looking back at his youth. It was really depressing. I know I’m supposed to be 100% at some point, but I don’t know that. I really don’t. My arthritis has been pretty bad the last couple days. It’s supposed to go away, but it keeps returning. So even if I didn’t also have tendonitis I wouldn’t be able to skate right now. I’m trying to stay optimistic, but it’s not easy.

Sorry for the downer. Getting old sucks. I know that even if I can never skate again I still have a pretty great life ahead of me. It’s just tough to not be able to do something that has been a huge part of me for most of my life.

Went to an acupuncturist this week about the sharp pain above my left knee cap. It was happening before the arthritis and it’s back. She said it was tendonitis and to not skate/jump/squat for two months so it can heal. Arghghghg! After some research it looks like most people suggest a rest period of 4-6 weeks. So maybe it wont be two months, but wow, I’m bummed. Hopefully this will give me time to get rid of the arthritis at least and so when I can finally skate I am 100%. The acupuncturist thinks the arthritis is still around because I’ve been pushing it too hard. Interesting.

I ordered this little stationary bike awhile ago and just brought it into work today. It’s funny. I can’t use it too much yet because of the tendonitis, but it’s pretty fun to use it when I sit at work. And yes, for those keeping track I still have a stand up desk and I still stand quite a bit, just not as much as I did before the arthritis episode.

The final diagnosis is poststreptococcal reactive arthritis. Basically I had a strep infection and it caused my immune system to go haywire and start attacking my joints. Not cool. By itself, the Amoxicillin helped some of the symptoms, but it didn’t do much for my arthritis. I was feeling better over the weekend, but by no means good. I couldn’t walk very well, stairs were hard and Sunday was full of painkillers and wrist pain. The natural course of reactive arthritis is to get better over time. Some cases are weeks, most are several months, even a year. With how severe my case was I have no idea how much longer it would take under normal circumstances.

Last night I took a dose of the arthritis drug Humira which is supposed to get me feeling better quick. And wow it did. I would say overnight I went from about 30% to 40%. Everything that ached felt better. I feel encouraged to say the least. The million dollar question is of course, how long before I can skate again? The nurse estimated six weeks (which would be 3 doses of Humira since you take it every two weeks). I think it’ll be awhile, but not six weeks. I don’t think she understands how determined skateboarders can be. I’m gonna be patient and try not to rush it, but at least I can finally start leaving the house again.

Another 10 days of pain has gone by with no improvement. Yesterday was one of the worst yet. Ugh. After some advice from my aunt who has Rhuematoid Arthritis I went to my general practitioner. We took a new blood sample and the results showed yet again some potential for a strep infection. The initial synovial fluid sample on 10/26 showed a very high streptozyme count (386 when 200 is considered high). Liz and I mentioned this to the arthritis dr and he said it was nothing. That was a test of fluid from my knee. The new sample was blood which doesn’t show strep bacteria count, but instead shows strep antibodies called Antistreptolysin. This also gets flagged as high if the count is greater than 200. MINE WAS 10379.5!!! INSANE! So my GP prescribed me Amoxicillin. I started it yesterday evening. The above photo was taken before I went to sleep as both ankles had swollen up worse that they have yet. They weren’t super painful. Anyways I woke up this morning feeling better. I got out of bed before taking a painkiller for the first time in awhile. I’ve had a few ups and downs so it’s to early to say if the Amoxicillin is doing the trick, but I’m not complaining. At least it makes perfect sense to me to be taking it when the lab results show there is a good chance I have a strep infection.