Well, fuck! For the second day, I can hardly walk. My left foot is grotesquely swollen and very, very painful. Walking Sheba takes forever and now I hate going for walks. When I last saw Jennifer, she said I had calcific tendonitis and that is why she signed me up for a barbotage treatment. Calcific tendonitis. O thought I had bone spurs, but that’s not true. If it continues to be this painful, I am going to have to get help walking Sheba and I am going to ask Jennifer to help me get a handicapped parking pass if this condition continues. (I can’t use crutches because the arthritis in my hands makes both hands incredibly painful.)
The worst outcome of having one fat painful foot, it not walking with my dog walking friends. Honestly, I’ve been crying over this situation only because of being unable to continue with the group I’ve been with for eight years. We walk three times a week together. This is heartbreaking.
I was quite stressed yesterday morning, but it all worked out okay. I wrote to Tracey to tell her that I might have a conflict with the arrival of the disposal people while we are having our UK stuttering support group meeting. Tracey wrote back immediately saying that she could not be part of our session. That’s when I started panicking, because it was 9:40 and the disposal people had not arrived (they’d said they’d be here at 9:00), and our Zoom session started at 10:00.
They arrived at 9:45, and I helped them load up all the stuff, and they left at 9:58. Phew! I was online ready to welcome our group at 10:00. And not only that, I had an enormous surprise when the disposal people told me what I was to pay.
A long time ago, I wrote to the disposal firm about having two couches to remove. I thought that they said it would cost $300/couch to take them to the landfill, so I was expecting to pay around $700 for the load I was having removed—two couches and a lot of bagged other stuff. But the total charge for taking all the stuff was $147!
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Things keep happening that shrink my world. My nervous system is fucked. Moving here was to heal. I came here 18 months after the sudden onset of my seizure and speech disorders. I know that isolation would be the ideal condition for living without seizures and increased fluency.
I video chat with my long-time friends regularly and we email as well. That makes me feel connected to people. I see people on the island periodically. And Steve comes every year, bless him. Beth is coming. Dwight may come. Dianne and I always have Thanksgiving together.
I believe I have things under control. I am managing myself to limit the likelihood of seizures. I’m good in a room with four other people, or fewer. I try not to do things where there is noise or when there are too many people. My nervous system is, as I said, fucked. The world is full of triggers, hence my defensive retreat.
Losing the dog walkers is losing the people my nervous system trusts the most. With my doggers, I am at my most fluent. My nervous system trusts them, I know by how well I can speak.
My foot is not as painful in the morning, so I have decided to walk with the group this morning to see how it goes. It’s cloudy and cool, so I am going to light a morning fire to warm the house up a little bit. I am likely to want to read today, and I like being warm because I am sitting still when I read. I may do some yard work, I may not. Who cares?
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