I was a whirlwind yesterday morning before we went on our walk. I continue to work on searching out items that can be discarded or given to GIRO. I’m waiting to call the disposal people until I’ve done a thorough job of decluttering. I also vacuumed. Fir needles are a curse. I find them everywhere and I’ve become a person who vacuums daily.
The clear skies of the early morning slowly changed to overcast and gloomy while I got the house looking mighty fine and I schlepped all the things I found for disposal and storage into the studio. We walk and 9:30 and it was, as it always is, glorious to be in the forest. Sometimes I think getting Sheba was the best decision I made after coming here to Gabriola. It’s through her that I met all my friends here, and she gets me out and forest walking bright and early every morning.
Poor Regina is clearly down in the dumps. She left her husband of forty years this year, and this past week her beloved dog, Molly, died. She was ten years old. I feel for her. I can’t imagine the pain of both events in her life. To have two such traumas in one year is truly horrific. She’s seeing a counsellor. I’m very glad to know that. And I’m glad she has us, her fellow dog walkers with whom she’s been walking three times a week for over seven years.
Jennifer came by to pick up the shoulder bag I was advertising at noon. We had a nice little visit, and she proposed that we get together one day for coffee at Mad Rona’s, which was very nice! And once she’d left, it was time to feed everyone lunch. And then, armed with a big glass of Diet Coke, I got on the chaise to start reading.
I was interrupted almost immediately by Steve on Zoom. Then Aidan sent me a text, and I spent over an hour talking to a recorder and attaching a photo so that I am part of the Library of Dysfluent Voices on the SPACE website. I’m so cuffed to be on the Library site. I’m a super fan of Aidan and his organisation, SPACE.
I’m very proud that I could handle the technical requirements involved with posting a verbal story in the Library. And I’m very pleased with my story on the site. Both Aidan and Luke (the fellow who manages the Library) sent extremely lovely and complimentary messages to me about my brief submission.
While that was going on, Fedex arrived with my Tezspire, so I shot up, and I’m good for another month. Following that, Her Highness and I went for a short walk because our morning one was long, and then we came home for a nice evening together of dinner, a rawhide bone for her, and dinner and a movie for me.
These endless days largely alone have me feeling giddy. I am so happy about my life here on Gabe with my four-legged family. It’s a wonderful thing to feel so happy all the time. I lucked out in that regard. Some miraculous aspect of my character keeps me blissful. Lucky, lucky me. I have so many friends who struggle with depression. They tell me what it’s like and I often cry when they do because I love my friends who suffer so. I never tell them about my permanent state of bliss. It seems wrong.
When we got back from out afternoon walk, I lit the fire and the brood wanted dinner. It’s as though they can tell time, but now that it gets dark so early, they’ve moved their expectations ahead in time.
I can’t help but write about the changes in the grand room here. It feels like I’m in the lobby of a lodge because it’s now so open. The room feels huge because a large mass has been removed that was in the centre of the room. It feels big and wonderful. And putting the sideboard against the kitchen counter, right behind the stove makes a wonderful presentation place for food when it’s help-yourself serving. All the changes increase my happiness.
I had a large deep green faux velvet throw to put over the couch I removed from the living room. It concealed cat damage. So, now that the sofa’s gone, the throw looks fabulous on my double bed that has a dark wood headboard and footing.
Everywhere looks better, including the studio and the shed. It’s a miracle. Before Tezspire I was losing confidence about living here, but the drug has brought new life to me.
I thought to hire someone to clean the yard. It’s a mess out there, but there will be storms and it’ll just get bad again. On sunny days, I will rake the leaves, and the yard will look better. There are two Japanese Maples that have dropped all their millions of leaves on the courtyard paving stones. They are beautiful, but they are slippery underfoot, so they have to go.
The worst thing about my heel spurs is that to bend over and pick something up off the floor, I must raise my left foot off the floor and put all my weight on my right foot. If I don’t do that, when I bend over it stretches my Achilles tendon and it must pull the tendon against the spurs because it is unbelievably painful. And the weird thing is, the pain feels a lot like heat. It feels like my tendon is burning. It’s a unique experience of pain. So, gardening next season is going to be limited to things that I can do standing up. I’ll be hiring next year again.
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A wonderful outcome resulting from posting my photo and story, in all my stuttering glory, into the Library, was learning about an app on my phone and computer called Voice Memo. What thrills me about it is that it is a perfect work-around for a serious challenge that I have faced several times—all but one when I lived in Vancouver. That first year with seizure disorder was brutal.
The problem is that people would call 911. And the combination of me being unable to speak, and the caller saying that I’d had a seizure, the paramedics feel committed to taking me to hospital. I can do the pray pore, you know, hands together in prayer, and then shake my head no, no, no and then way my finger back and forth in the ‘now way’ gesture. But I can’t talk.
I wind up going to hospital and spending hours on end waiting for the inevitable. And do you know what that inevitable is, it’s the decision that I don’t need any treatment. That’s what I’d write on notes to the paramedics, so I knew that. But it’s the tone in their voice.
Once, when I had a particular form of seizure that I can have, I was in the hospital. I go into a non-responsive sate for up to two hours. It’s only happened three times. Once was when I was in the hospital and the nurse pushed the Code Blue button and 8 highly skilled medics came to my aid. When the inevitable arrived, one of them said to me: “I hope you feel good about yourself. You just wasted the time of my team who might have had to treat a real emergency.”
Now that I have an iPhone, I can have a friend record messages for me in Voice Memo, and I can store them in the program. I’ll make memos that explain my neurogenic seizures and that I need no assistance. All I need do when I have a seizure in public and people come to me, is open the app and play the memos.
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Late last night, disaster hit. Ethel is epileptic and last night she had her third grand mal seizure. It was absolutely brutal to witness. It must have lasted about four minutes. I feared that this time would be her last. I could not imagine her sustaining what I was seeing, but the little survivor did. When her seizures are over, she rests to recover. She usually crouches down low on the ground, but last night she chose to stand still in one place.
I got a warm and damp face cloth and I wiped her down. The foam that comes out of her mouth was all over her, so I very, very gently cleaned her. And then I turned off all the lights, and we all went to bed. I figured nothing would be better for her than if we all left her alone.
For the first time ever, she came to the bedside last night and climbed under the covers to lie beside me. I was touched to be her go-to person for comfort. This morning, she is back to her old self and getting a lot of attention from me.
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