Negatives Outweighing Positives

Let's start with a positive: Physical therapy is going well. Today I saw Kate, and after I wore myself out with exercises (honestly not many; I am easily worn out), she worked on my upper back and shoulder. It hurt!! I can take a lot of pain, though. It was not as bad as my MS pain. Or surgery without anesthesia. ;) After working on my rhomboids, levator, and teres for a while, she had my sit up. She asked if I still had pain, and I said yes. The amazing part... She did something about it! My previous PT experience was different. But Kate continued to work on my rhomboids and made the pain nearly go away.

Boo: I have had a migraine for five hours.

Yay: I am recovering from the steroids. Do not get me wrong; I feel awful. On a scale of 0 (great) to 10 (awful), today was a 9, down from 10s last week. But I did not feel an awfulness of 9 when I woke up, so that is an improvement.

Boo: My nerve pain is bad today. I think it is the weather. I have noticed that it tends to be worse when a storm is coming. I am like an old farmer: "My knee says it will rain!"

Yay: My butt incision is finally healing. I know: it has been six weeks! It keeps tearing and gaping. My friend put butterflies on it a few days ago, so it cannot open back up. Hopefully it is not growing MRSA inside of it. I cannot really keep it clean without getting the butterflies wet. I do not want to take them off, because I want to give the tissue a chance to knit together and STAY.

Boo: I am depressed. I am just sick of being sick. Cliched but true. I am becoming reconciled to the idea that I will not be healed. It does not matter how much faith I have.

On Friday, I met with my shrink, Ruth, and I had one big question I wanted answered: How do I not have a stress response when I am too sick to do basic life tasks? I realized that I am becoming stressed and anxious when I am sick in the morning or when I go to bed without having recovered from the day. I am learning how my MS operates and improving at predicting how things will go. For example, if my fatigue is at a 9 at 10:00 am, I am going to be incoherent by noon if I continue to do taxing things like, oh, sitting up.

So I talked with Ruth about that, and she did not have answers. She said to hold onto hope, and I said that I do not have any. I also said that I did not think that my thoughts were distorted; I thought my predictions were reasonable based on experience. And she agreed. She agreed that there is no reason for me to hold onto hope, but that somehow I should anyway. I should find a way. And that she was holding onto hope for me. Then she offered to have her husband give me a blessing.

As he began the blessing, I was thinking of a word, a half question that I could not really formulate into a complete thought due to my fatigue. Right after I thought the word, he said it.

This was not a blessing of healing, but it was a blessing of knowledge. I knew that I will not be healed, and that knowledge was a little bit comforting, because at least I can know what to expect. It is kind of like when a child acts out repeatedly and then the parent begins to discipline the child. Every time he hits, he sits in time out. And somehow the child feels less anxious. I am not saying that I am being punished. I am saying that boundaries and set expectations are comforting, in a way.

But I am still not happy to be sick! When I am this sick, I want so badly to die. I just want it all to be over. I find joy in small things, I love my kids, I have fun sometimes, blah blah blah, but my body is being tortured from the inside out. And it is getting worse, not better. So many times these past two weeks I have thought of my bottle of Percocet. I like having it around, just in case. Of course, I have so many meds--I could easily concoct a home remedy if I wanted. The only thing that keeps me from doing that is my best friend, who would never get over it. So I am living for her.