Reaching New Highs

The nurse tested my glucose level right after I woke up today. It was 450. For you lucky folk who don't have a reason to know this, I'll clue you in. That's high. That's go-the-hospital high. Normal is 100. She gave me insulin and a bunch of pills, then took it again later. It was all the way down to 415. Right now it's down to about 186, which is way better than 450. Why is it getting so high? Maybe because of the fact that one of my tried-and-true diabetes medications was discontinued while I was in the hospital. My doc said he'd reinstate it, but hasn't done so.

Needless to say, I've felt pretty bad all day. It's such a treat to feel sad and then get physically ill, too. But, on the positive side, the abcess on my abdomen doesn't hurt constantly anymore. That's a plus.

When I started this blog, I pictured reporting my struggles, but also my progress. Mentally, things have improved. At least I don't just lie around wishing a chunk of an airplane would fall on me. Or a large cow. Anything fatal would've done. But there has been no physical progress. In fact, physically, I've gotten worse and worse. I've tried really hard to get what my body needs in order to make progress and regain as much independence as I can, but something always blocks it from happening. Physically, I'm much worse off than I was a year ago.

And I have to wonder why. There's no answer, of course. It just is what it is.

Being who I am, I'm not angry at anyone. There's no one at fault. So the feelings go where they always go -- inside me. They nestle down and curl up in my abdomen where they ooze sadness and pain and fear. I watch helplessly as hope turns to smoke and starts drifting away. Because I am stubborn, I capture some of it and put it in a pocket in my heart for safekeeping. I am determined to hang onto it because I know I can't live without it, and wouldn't want to.

Well, this has been a cheery little treat for you. Don't worry. I have a couple of pieces of advice I give myself. The first is, "If there's one thing you can depend on in life, it's change." It may not be a change for the better, but things never stay the same. And they're just as likely to be changes for the better as they are changes for the worse.

The second piece of advice is, "Start from here." In other words, treat dead ends like they are new beginnings. Look forward, not backwards. There are a lot of ways to say this, but however you say it, hope automatically becomes a part of it.

Be as cheerful as you can, even if the tent you're hiding under to make you feel safe collapses around you. Maybe it's been hiding you from happiness. And with that enigmatic crumb of advice, I bid you happiness, health, and love.

Huh. There's a small vehicle in my eye.

Running Up the Slide

Fight or flight. Can't fight, can't run away. What, then, can I do? Been waiting for things to get better, but they never do. I haven't given up hope, but that hope has taken on the red rustiness of cynicism. What do I expect to happen next? I expect more obstacles to spring up, one after another. And still I will batter myself against them because without even the tiniest slivers of hope there is nothing left.

Sometimes I give up and allow myself to feel sorry for myself. I give myself comfort, as much as I can. I hug my pillow and pretend it's my lost little girl and for a fleeting moment I can feel the warmth of her prickly-haired head against my cheek. I think about the day she was visiting me in the nursing home when she picked up my hand and rubbed the back of it gently across her cheek. Sometimes I do that to my own cheek. It's comforting.

But it's sad because that is lost now. It also makes me happy. My heart feels like it's being twisted by conflicting emotions.

I feel, tucked away in my little corner of a nursing home, that I'm no longer a part of the world. I'm just in storage until I turn to dust. That's one of the problems. I'm almost completely isolated, and there doesn't seem to be a solution for that. But this is part of the human condition for people like me. I'm certainly not the only one.

Somethng inside me is screaming that life shouldn't be this hard, that every way I turn I shouldn't be greeted by an impenetrable blank wall. I feel like I'm trapped in a tiny room with no way out. But I still keep searching for a crack in the wall that I can scrabble at, that maybe I can chip away at until I've created an escape for myself. There is one sure way to get out, but I'm not ready to take that route. It is not under consideration. I'll let you know if that changes.

This March 29 will mark the fourth anniversary of the day I last walked. My, how time drags onward by its elbows.

Keep your eyes on the good, my friends. You don't want to dwell where my heart dwells. I wish better than that for you. ❤

New Year, New Troubles

Don't think my old problems have disappeared in any way, despite the way-too-long sabbatical I took from writing this blog. I did accomplish writing the novel, completing it four days before the deadline. Yay for me. Of course, I was ignoring practically everything else in my life, not the least of which was my blog. Writing 50,000 words in 30 days was incredibly intense, but it was also invigorating.

The abcess on my back healed, but it took a 3-week course of antibiotics. Still, I consider that a triumph. But then, a few weeks ago, a tiny pimple-like thing sprung up in the middle of a decades-old scar on my abdomen. This had never happened before so I was kind of bemused by it. My new doctor prescribed hot compresses every 6 hours. I was lucky if I got one a day. So not very effective. The little pimple got bigger and bigger and more and more painful until it was huge and I was in constant pain. Still no treatment. Then I went into cold sweats and became utterly listless. At that point the doctor finally prescribed antibiotics.

I decided it was too little too late and decided to go to the hospital to get treatment. By that time, I learned, the "pimple" was filled with a staph infection and had a very deep abcess under it. That was weeks ago. I stayed in the hospital six days getting heavy-duty intravenous antibiotics. I even spent Christmas there. I was extremely unhappy about the situation. The wound, which is a more accurate word for what it has become, seems to be infection-free now, but has in no way healed. Every day a wound care nurse repacks my wound, which, even though they pour lidocaine into it first, is still very painful. The healing process is likely to take several more weeks. That thought makes me most unhappy.

I was re-evaluated by physical therapists and they determined that my legs are too contracted for me to get physical therapy and they suspect my hip joints are "frozen" in place. This means I can't even begin to make any progress towards independence until I have orthopedic surgery. Recovery time for that will probably be months long. And if my hips are involved, then it will most likely be really painful. But, before we can even discuss getting surgery, all my wounds have to be healed. And I'm not even sure I am strong enough to withstand the surgery. They might disqualify me because I'm a diabetic. That would mean I'd never gain any kind of independence.

So I'm feeling pretty glum.

Sorry for the doom-and-gloom attitude. I'll work on that. But paraplegia definitely sucks, so I'm not making any promises.

I sincerely hope  your lives are going well. May 2014 treat you kindly. ❤

 

Truth or Die

I saw my Ombudsman again today. Same one. This time she told me I'm not eligible for physical therapy beause there is a law on both the state and federal level that only people who will be able to walk again can qualify for PT. That sounded goofy to me, so I called Medicare and asked about that. The person I talked to took awhile looking, but she said she couldn't find anything like that and that I should qualify, once I've jumped through all the hoops they present.

So I called the state office and told them I couldn't get anyone here to work with my legs, and that my doctor is completely nonresponsive when I ask to talk to him.

The Ombudman also told me that Medicaid pays for my costs and Medicare picks up the rest, which is completely backwards. I have absolutely no confidece in this woman. I think she's giving me misinformation, but I don't think it's intentional. She just doesn't seem to know what she's talking about. So far she's done me more harm than good, because I'm always upset and discouraged after she leaves.

Plus, she spent more time prosylitizing her Christan viewpoint than she did helping. I listened for awhile, then told her I appreciated her advice, but praying wasn't going to resolve my current situation. It needs action, not hoping for the best. So she gave me some phone numbers to call and I did.

Meanwhile, I'm still at the novel writing. Here are my stats so far (I don't know what the wedgy thing at the bottom is for. I just could't make it go away):

Your Average Per Day

1,903 

Words Written Today

2,070 

Target Word Count

50,000

Target Average Words Per Day

1,667

Total Words Written

15,230 

Words Remaining

34,770

Current Day

8 

Days Remaining

23

At This Rate You Will Finish On

November 27, 2013

Words Per Day To Finish On Time

1,512

Oh, joy, oh frabjous day!

Nothing to report on the getting up in my new chair saga. Pffft.

My NaNoWriMo story is up to 7,407 words, as I recall, though my memory for numbers stinks out loud. On a daily average, I'm still ahead a little tiny bit on the daily average I need.

Anyway, I'm having fun.

Wait a minute I'll go to their website and check out what the real number is.

7,843. I underestimated. I've spent 3 hours a night writing. Not bad for a person who has to poke at a keyboard with a stick. Of course, I do have the time whereas most people have to fit writing in between doing other things, like having a life.

But, as I 've said, writing makes me happier than just about anything in life, with the exception of my children and grandchildren. So I'm in a great mood.

I hope you all had frabjous days, too. Maybe tomorrow I'll get up in my chair and I can shout Callooh, Callay!

Happy days and dream filled nights of joy, my wonderful peeps.

OMG!

I had no idea how much time it would take to keep up with my NaNoWriMo novel. I started late. Then my app proved to be a piece of crap, so I got another app. That worked fine, but once it was closed it didn't want to open again. So I got another app. Then, after more than 10 tries, the second app finally opened so I could copy my text and paste it into the third app. So far, so good. I have caught up now. I'm supposed to write 1667 words per day to reach my goal of 50,000 at the end and I have averaged a bit over 1700 per day. You know, even with having to tap an online keyboard one letter at a time, I might just complete this task. And it might even be semi-coherent. We'll see about that, though. I'm writing in first person narrative, in the voice of an old woman reminiscing about her life and what she's learned from it. It's really my life, but since I am writing as a fictional character, I can make things up, too! Ha ha!

No news on the chair front. Haven't been in it since last Thursday. As for the mystery infection on my back, a "knot" has formed that wasn't there last week. My wound care doctor actually made an appearance, felt the knot and decided to extend my round of antibiotics.

Did I tell you my wound care doctor has grown a full beard? He doesn't look 12 anymore. He looks more like he'll be eligible to vote next year. I'm sorry. I know I'm being snarky, but give me a break. I'm old! Anybody without grey hair looks like a teenager to me.

Anyway, Dr. Cooper, his actual name, wants to talk to the neurosugeon who did the original surgery on my spine in 2010 and see the files from then. I don't know what this means, except that one of the wound care nurses mentioned that he wants to know if the knot is a natural growth and is an actual part of my body. Let's see. Hmmm. It wasn't there last week or ever until this week. What are we to think? Hey, maybe it's part of my backbone which has suddenly become larger in that spot! Maybe not.

Worrisome stuff. I don't want more surgery. I don't want to go to the hospital. I want to stay right here, in my home away from the home I don't have anymore. I have a minifridge here. They pop me popcorn  when I ask them to. This is my nest.

The saga continues. Meh.

Here is a random photo which has absolutely no relevance to this blog entry. Hope you like it, whatever it turns out to be. Peace.

Mental Diarrhea

My eyes are squinted in disappointment because I didn't get up today. I told everyone I wanted to get up in time for my session with Therapist Mike and was paid absolutely NO attention. In fact, no one got me up at all. I are not happy.

I am inevitably reminded of how helpless and ineffective I am. This is one of those times when I hate my life. I am constantly at other people's mercy and whim. I have no control over my life; not even a smidgen of independence. 

I have to wonder if my life will be like this until I die. What a horrible thought. If I can't make progress toward at least a modicum of independence, then what's the point?

I've decided to give NaNoWriMo a shot. It's an exercise done every year where the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It started today and ends November 30.

I got a really late start. I just decided to join today and didn't have a good word processing app, so I bought one. What a piece of crap! My text, once it got long enough, disappeared behind the onscreen keyboard. So I scrolled the text up so I could see what I had written. Except that the text wouldn't scroll. I spent at least an hour trying to make it work, all for nothing.

So I sent them a review titled "I want my money back!" And downloaded a free app that works just fine. But I didn't get started until late evening. Since I use an iPad on-screen keyboard, and have to tap each letter one at a time, I didn't hold out much hope.

But I started typing the novel. Two or so hours later, I stopped so I could write this entry, but first I checked how many words I'd written. I was surprised! I had written 1,120 words. Yeah, that's a lot less than the 1,667 words I need to type every day to keep up, but I spend most of my time alone so I doubtless have more time than most. Besides, once I get my mind rolling, it doesn't want to stop. I tend to be very wordy when I write, as you may have noticed.

The working title, so far, is Forevermore. It's the thoughts of a self-educated old woman who now lives, bedbound, in a nursing home. Write what you know, right? I don't know if I'll ever finish it, but it's fun to try, and it gives me something to look forward to. I like writing just about more than anything. It makes me happy.

It's not too late to get in on this exercise, peeps. There's no prize, but if it catches someone's eye, you might get approached by a (legitimate --watch out for the ones who want money from you up front) agent or publisher. Who knows? To do this you have to be a dreamer, so why not dream big? Just go to NaNoWriMo.org and sign up.

Sweet dreams to all of you. May your good dreams come true.