600!!!!

By noon yesterday, it was 30° and after watering many of the beds and our long morning walk, I needed a nap. My house stays lovely and cool and I have ceiling fans in every room, so I turn on the fan in my bedroom before I lie down to nap and I feel mighty comfortable in the gentle breezes that come in the window and from the fan. Oh, it felt so, so good to lie down. 

The case for my weakness and fatigue being simple old age is building. Mt heart is ruled out, and this morning I blew on my respirometer and was shocked at the outcome. When I was diagnosed and began treatment, I blew 350-400. After two months of treatment, and for the ensuing couple of years, I blew 425. This level of exhaling force pleased my doctors.

Well, this morning, twice, I blew 600. I find that truly remarkable and I attribute the improvement to my meds plus quitting smoking pot almost 4 years ago. It’s a fabulous reading and it rules out asthma as the cause of my fatigue/weakness. I see Dr. Shoja in just over two weeks and I will talk to her about Clonazepam as a possible cause. I may stop taking it for a while to see if I feel stronger and if my speech goes to shit again. Or I may not. It seems to have done wonders for my condition.

It occurs to me that I am just getting old. The one thing that prevents me from believing that it’s due to ageing is that it came on so suddenly. Yesterday, I went into the village and got dog food at the pet store, and bird seed at another store. Both came in heavy bags, and I struggled to get to the car carrying each one. It left me thinking that I may need a cart for heavy things. This is all so sudden.

I did nothing yesterday except water everything. Every day I want to do other chores, but as each day goes by, I don’t anything but water. Today, I hope to actually do some of the things I wanted to do. I blame the heat. I blame this new weakness situation. 

I take .25 mgs of Clonazepam. How could so small an amount of a drug change me as much as I have changed. I am not capable of exertion. That is the most accurate way of expressing my situation as I live it. I can live like this and be happy in Pinecone Park. Next year, I must hire someone to stack the wood. This is terribly disappointing.

I see Dr. Shoja on August 6^th.  I’ll talk about my situation and the Clonazepam with her. That may lead to going off the drug to see if there is a change. I would have to allow several weeks to pass to assess any changes. If there is no change, then I go to see my nurse practitioner. I think she will respect that I undertook all my consultations before coming to her.

Maybe it will forever be a mystery.

Being gay bent my life off the track I envisioned for myself as a young lad. I adapted. Meeting Steve was another big path-shifter, as was getting HIV from the first person I went out with a year after Steve left me. (He had an accident, bled everywhere and I had eczema cracks on my hands. I always explain this due to the judgement I experienced when I seroconverted.)

When I knew I was gay, my reaction was to realize immediately, that my dreams would not come true. My dreams were taken away. When I became HIV+, I experienced prejudice for the first time, and it was from my community who treated me like a leper. I lost my good health when the virus entered me. Now, serious losses are happening. FND has driven me to (blissful) home arrest, and now this sudden loss of capacity handicaps me even more. It’s hard not to think about dying. I’ve things I must do, but not until this heat stops. Until then, I have little hope for action other than standing, holding a hose.

I’ve written a long message to Dr. Shoja. It will be the subject of our next session. I’m proposing a route to test if Clonazepam is the cause of my weakness. If going off Clonazepam does not bring improvement to my capacity, I will go to my nurse practitioner to see what she says. And if that leads nowhere, I’m going to be mighty disappointed to face living like this forever. Fuck!

I can’t believe I blew 600 on my respirometer!