Resting (Thank You II)

Pain Spectrum – murky yellow
BM/RD Index – 18
Fuzz meter – 5

Hey all. Once again, the comments elicited from my last post were insightful, helpful, kind and just what the doctor ordered. What would I do without you people?

My aunt is improving; she is going out again and having friends over for visits. Someone now stays nights, although finding the right person took longer than we anticipated. It is only in the last week or so, then, that I have really been trying to rest and recuperate.

I’m bored with it already.

Okay, that is not really fair. It has been good not to do much, to sit and read and try to relax. And not doing much is not the same as doing nothing at all – I’ve still managed to see a play (“Mother Courage and Her Children”) and K took me for a wonderful ride through the Country, as we city-folk are apt to call the wilds of Westchester and Dutchess Counties. But I haven’t been really writing or trying to do anything too strenuous. I have been thinking, though. About what I said, about how I feel, about where to go from here.

I do think that my body has shifted again. The right arm, which was injured in the auto accident, has been holding pretty steady, recovery-wise, for about five months now. It is not a horrible place to be. I can use it pretty well, but it hurts when I use the cane. If this is as good as it gets, well, it could have been a lot worse. And it makes sense that this has negatively impacted my other weak points – my left hip and arm, my back, my knees, my neck. I still think it was good for me to jump off the medication merry-go-round for a while. With all the complications I had experienced, I needed to get my blocking mechanisms back in place. (I actually have a post, never finished, about this. I'll get it done and post it sometime soon.) But I think the time has come to admit that mental acumen is not the be-all and end-all when dealing with pain. So one of my decisions is that I am going back on painkillers again. This time though, there are no pills. I’m going to try pain-patches: you wear them for 12-hour on/off stretches over the areas the hurt the most. With no ingestion of medication, I am hoping that my two big problems with meds, namely my stomach and my head, will become irrelevant.

Another decision concerns my writing. As some out there know, I have never really tried to market that first book of mine. I’ve started working on the second one, a continuation of Book I, but it has been rough going. This, I believe, stems from the fact that I am just not comfortable continuing with the story without at least trying to get the first one published. So I’m going to spend the next few months re-reading Shadows of the Past (it still could use a bit of tightening) and then try a serious send-out to agents and the like. Nothing may come of it. I might end up publishing on my own. But I will have at least owned up to my fear of rejection and will have tried my best. And I think that will make it easier to keep writing and finish my story.

I am always going to be afraid of things; I will never learn to be sanguine in the face of my diminishing capabilities or the rejection of my work. But there is a difference between owning up to my fears and being owned by them. Those that responded to my last post had it right: I did need to calm down and rest. I flipped out a bit this month, and I know that I still haven’t really recovered from it. But it did help me recognize that things need to change. Setting goals that deal with adjustment rather than attainment is a start. Recognizing that my family and friends will still love me even if I can only do half of what I wish I could do is another. (And yes, when I say half, I am still thinking “Seventy-five percent! I can do seventy-five!” It is going to be a long haul, folks.) And I promise, to you all and to myself, that I will remember that rest is as important as action. Even if it is a bore.

So there you have it. This was supposed to be a short post – I guess I had more to say than I realized. Thank you all again for your support. It was much needed.

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Shifts

Pain Spectrum – dark red
BM/RD Index – 40
Fuzz meter – 9


Today might not be the best day for writing but I am crawling up the walls here in pain. I can’t find a position comfortable enough to prop myself up to hold a book and my concentration levels are crap anyway – even the TV is proving to be a bit much. It hurts to type, but no more so than trying something else I guess. And at least this way I feel like I am doing something. .

It rained today. I’ve been ping ponging pain-wise for the last week anyway, so this dampness was more than enough to tip me over to serious levels. Hopefully it won’t last too long. Especially seeing as K and I need to look after my aunt again for the weekend.

It is important for me to be able to take care of my aunt. Not just because I love and care about her, want to be able to contribute to the family, ease the burden, blah blah blah. No, it is important to me on a very selfish level. As I alluded to in the last post, I in no way want to admit that looking after an exceptionally well-fit nonagenarian woman is beyond my capabilities.

I think I’ve been pretty good lately with recognizing my slowly diminishing limitations; that even if I can no longer do things I was capable of a few years ago, I can still do an awful lot. Yet the idea of not being able to care for people really freaks me out. When we were looking after Hannah B, our 1-½ year old niece, I was completely overwhelmed. Not emotionally - the nice thing about growing up with a baby brother who was capable of psychologically destroying most mere mortals from just after birth is that kids don’t throw me – but physically. And forget about lasting a day. She killed me in an hour. There was one point, when we were waiting for K on the sidewalk, when she turned and ran. Thank G-d she ran on the sidewalk, because it took way too fucking long for me to catch her. K is gone for four minutes and comes back outside to find her screaming and wailing at me (she could probably feel that I was afraid to put her down, and so, of course, wanted me to let go) and me trying to hold her so that she can’t kick any more danger areas, nauseous and sweating from the pain of running her down, with images of her running left instead of right and into the street flashing in front of my eyes. Now, K and decided long ago that we weren’t having kids. That’s not what is going on here. I’ve known for some time I am not capable of raising children the way that I would wish. It isn’t even that huge of a deal: G-d or good fortune or genes has given me the boon of not really wanting children all that much and has matched me with a man who feels the same. But to not even be able to handle one day’s worth? This is not something I am okay with.

It is the same with my aunt. For her sake, I hope that we do not have to be looking after her round the clock for much longer. It is such an invasion of her privacy. Even hiring a night aid for a short time, which we are in the process of doing, probably will be easier on her than having us around. And although I am worried about her, I love the time I am getting to spend with her. It is not as if there is much to do. Answer phones, make some light food, prop pillows, hold the walker: it is all rather innocuous stuff. But taken together it adds up to a strain. Every time I come home from an overnight stay, I am weak and in pain. I am not sure why. Is it the stress of constantly being alert to someone else’s needs? Is it the more-than-normal getting up and down and around that I do when I am there? I have no answers.

These are not the questions that worry me anyway. I had always hoped that K and I would be the super-cool aunt and uncle who could sweep their little relatives away for some outrageous times - how the hell is that going to happen if I only can get a few hours in before having to go take a nap? Why on earth would my brother and in-laws trust me with their kids anyway, if I can’t keep up them? (The answer is, they shouldn’t. Not without K around. Sucks for K.) While I am not failing so dismally with my aunt as I did with Hannah, I am not doing all that great, either. If this is how I do now at age 34, with a relatively healthy (albeit elderly) woman, what is going to happen down the line as my parents age? What if something happens to K?

There was a moment in time, when I was still at the bank, when a death keel went off in my head. It was about two weeks or so before my final and ignominious collapse on the trading floor. I was pushing myself well past the limits of what I could really do physically. There was nothing new in this; I had been doing it for years. But this time, as I looked around the office, at the fluorescent lights that made you wince and the cubicles that were just not quite private enough for comfort and all those nasty pictures on the walls, something shifted in my head. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep it up for much longer, not this time. I was finally going to have to admit that there were things - many things as it turned out - that I could not do. Of course, I still muffed it: I’d thought I’d have a few months to try and pull out gracefully and not let everyone know that my body was calling it quits on the whole working thing, but that damn bell had probably been going off in my head for quite some time before I acknowledged it.

Thing is, I’m hearing this shift again. I first became aware of after I couldn’t catch Hannah. I have felt this shift, this perception change, a few times throughout my life, and I have not always reacted well to it – perhaps because it usually signals a change for the worse, body-wise. But I have not felt it since leaving the bank six years ago. Not even the accident, with all of its subsequent complications, brought it on.

What has changed? I don’t know. Maybe it is this: I had always hoped that if I stopped pushing my body to its limits, I’d at least be fit enough to take care of my loved ones if they needed me. But I am starting to see that, rest or push, I can’t take care of those I love, not really, and that I am actually a lot weaker than I let myself know. Perhaps there is something entirely different going on; perhaps I am just tired. I don’t know. But I’m scared.

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Limitations

Pain Spectrum – red
BM/RD Index – 40
Fuzz meter – 9


Hey. It has been a very hectic few weeks. My great-aunt has been pretty ill and I have been part of a family team taking care of her. I am grateful that she trusts us enough to let us do this. That said looking after her has been difficult. My body is just not up for the job, and this coming right on the heels of that rather disastrous baby-sitting outing has left me shaken. But I do not really have the strength, time, or desire to deal with it now. Right now, I am just most worried about my aunt. I’ll deal with the implications of all this later. I guess I just needed to give voice to my anxieties a bit. Life can be so utterly disappointing sometimes.

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HEAT WAVE!

Pain Spectrum – red and SWOLLEN. Ugh.
BM/RD Index – 22
Fuzz meter – 8

NYC is currently in its third day of 100+ temperatures. K, the cat and I are holding out well. It clocked in at over 117 degrees yesterday on the roof; today should probably be even higher. To look out the window these last few days has been like looking at old photographs. Languid does not even begin to describe the pace of the streets. The only movement is by the fire hydrant in the middle of the block. This has been opened and is surrounded by kids with buckets and water balloons, splashing water over everything and everyone. The parents are a safe distance away from the mayhem, sitting on folding chairs, buckets of soda on ice scattered about between their outstretched legs as they play dominos. The cops do an occasional drive-by, seemingly more to chat with the chair-sitters then for anything else. A few times a day, an ice-cream truck makes its rounds and is mobbed. At night, the kids get a bit older and more rowdy, and the cops might drive by a bit more often, but that’s about it. That it is not only hot, but humid as well, means that I cannot go out – I’m swollen enough as it is, and the few attempts I have made have left me looking like the stay-puff marshmallow man. But it is nice to sit and watch the children play. I have a poem tickling at the edges of my brain about summer in the city; whether its one that has been written or wants to be I can’t quite figure out. Any thoughts?

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