cumulative

Alright people, I owe everyone an explanation after my last post. It’s confused a few, startled a few more and pretty much scared some enough to prompt emails and panicky pings. If the post could prompt sb to actually comment and ask me what’s happening, I think I’ve reached the point of explanation. I mean it in a nice way sb, since you usually don’t get perturbed with my crazy goofball-ish posts and angst-ridden fables. 🙂

First off: Thanks to all you who stopped a few minutes to ask, check, mail, IM me. Really. We live in a world of crazy non-stop hopping from one task to the other, and taking an un-scheduled break to do anything else must require changing of gears, and thought. So yes, appreciate your thought and time.

Secondly: No, am not dying. At least not anytime in the near future if I can help it. I am not struck with cancer or something in between or worse. Am alive and kicking (well, I can kick well with at least one leg!). In case there are any doubts, no am not being a drama queen either.

As I have been cribbing of late, this year has not been pleasant. There have been a few pleasant events that have happened, but they are far and scattered. This is the not the kind of year you want to dwell on when you are retired sitting on the beach, sipping cold martinis and reflecting on your life. The kind you’d wear as a medal on your shoulder. This despite me being an optimist, where I almost invariably always am seeing the glass half full, salvaging what’s left of a hurricane and moving on.

As I reflect on the bigger picture of the last years, I’ve probably made good of the saying “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade”. I’ve tried, and the Lord knows I have. I doubt my lemonade’s ever been perfect, and it has tilted in taste and could have used more sugar, or salt at times, but it’s been drinkable, with a few complaints. It quenched thirsts and sustained me enough to want to make more lemonade, every time.

Do you know the kind of crick you occasionally get in your neck when you wake up one morning? The kind that comes out of not sleeping right? The kind that usually doesn’t go away until you sleep again in that same uncomfortable position and magically the next day, you can swing your neck around like the referee on the tennis courts? Yeah, that’s the kind of stiff neck I am having. One that started last holiday season and one that I hope will ease up at least this holiday. The factors that contributed should in some way as the world destines will come together to make it alright.

Naive? I don’t think so. It’s just a question of faith.

Since May sometime Ive been having knee pain. It annoyed me a bit. I did what I normally do when something annoys me. I ignore it. In June it got to a point, that I couldn’t squat or sit cross-legged on the floor at the Sunday school. I was quite sure I was developing arthritis! Well, Rheumatoid Juvenile arthritis could very well develop for someone in the 30’s and I didn’t like it. July was the dance thing, and though I didn’t do intricate footwork, it demanded sufficient energy and I pushed me. There was enough going on at home and I was on my feet for fairly large amounts of time. End of the month, one Sunday night, after intense racking pain that had me sobbing loud tears, a visit to the orthopedist was scheduled, and it’s been baffling the rather cute intelligent doctor ever since. Over the next few weeks physical therapy and icing the area has helped. Unfortunately, one day while very far from home, I was getting onto a bus, and the knee popped. It was a loud pop. The passengers looked at me startled. The driver thought he had to duck in case something was going to explode. It was just my knee. The pain, and swelling that followed within the next hour had me in agony. I began to feel like a little mad elephant (no, not cute) but more with the leg weighing a ton and me quite grumbled, cranky and upset at everyone and me. More ice and then a shot of cortisone did wonders and I was back skipping away at work.

Like a bad dream, the swelling keeps coming back. Pain’s bad and I suppose it gets tolerable. The thing is I stay away from pain medication of any kind. Just one of those things that you vow after taking a Pharmacology class a semester and discover all the chemicals that could get into your bloodstream through one itsy bitsy little pill. Pain tolerance’s a developed trait. So I’ve pretty much gritted through physical pain. Even the deliveries. Well, I tried epidural for munchkin’s time, and she acted all nutty inside, and so they took me off of it.

Yesterday the doc tells me it could be a cartilage tear and I would need an MRI to confirm it. If it is a tear, I’d have to have surgery. Having studied what I did, I am able to look at every little interaction Ive ever had with hospitals, doctors, needless as clinical as possible. It helps, to an extent.

Despite that, what’s happening is upsetting at various levels. Ive never ever fallen sick. Ive never ever had a surgeon’s knife cut through me. I worry for the time when I’d be out of sorts. It’s a drag. I made adjustments at work to be there for the kids and now there have to be more adjustments made which could affect later decisions. I don’t have time to take off. I’d set a few goals for dance, and now am not sure anymore. Just stuff. Random stuff. Random weighing little annoyances that creep up on you enough to feel large and heavy as a combined load.

We all love our demons. We even have our favorites whom we fight with. My demon cannot be compared to yours. The factors that make a fight are too many and varied. I know this is not a big deal and all will eventually be well. I believe in that. I can’t think any other way. That does not mean I do not feel apprehension over the unknowns.
The combined demons have been sapping at my energy. I am getting a little tired. Little pieces of it gnawing away at the armor I wear. I know before the year’s over, there’s something else that needs to be done in the winter which would again require me to be strong and hold myself together. They are tiny. They are beatable. But, raining blows without recovery can occasionally bring even a hero down, and I may be whatever, but I surely am no hero. Am just another woman managing, juggling and doing the best she can.

So yes, I may not be much fun around, and this has hit me a little harder than I imagined. As I said it’s cumulative. I may not be much fun to read for a while either. It’s hard to find me down and sad, but am not sad, I am smiling, though not laughing yet. I’d like to laugh. Soon.

Hope that helped. Have a nice weekend y’all. I am supposedly off to NYC, though how much of it I’d see is any toddler’s guess.