Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Up and down

6/28/22
Week 12, Day 2

How do I write what is happening?
Random bits of symptoms.
My brain scrambles.
Creativity hard to find. 

My body...
It's too exhausting to try to put into words.
Pain.
Weakness.
Lameness.
The conscious effort required for simple movements.
 
Such as folding the small, bendable, wired tab that seals the coffee bag.
I consciously have to slow down to perform that movement.
Else pain shoots through my right bicep causing my arm to go lame. 
Pressing the pump on the liquid soap dispenser?
Impossible.
Unless I move very, very slowly and deliberately, concentrating. 
The bicep muscle is used in the smallest of human movements.

My forearms...
Undulating waves of pressure.
The song "Under Pressure" by Queen comes to mind. 

My hands...
Slight ache and soreness.
Slight pins and needles.
Tender palms. 

But an observer can't see these sensations within me.
They can see my tremors and my slowness.
It takes a moment for the signal to get to my hands and fingers when grasping something small, like a receipt from a clerk. 
Every clerk who has serviced me the past 10 years has always been kind and patient. 

My legs...
I whisper or talk to my legs and hips and torso,
"Don't do the limp. Stop."
So, I stop.
I set my face and my posture.
And then I consciously walk through the house, without the limp. 
Hum-buzz in my lower legs.
Feeling that too often-feeling I've lived through the years...
That my shins will splinter.
But they never have; so, I ignore it.
Pain in my left hip and calf from my two falls last week.
Tenderness in the soles of my feet.

I told my self this morning, 
Week 12. Don't fight it. You can't fight it. 
Lean into it. Roll with it. 
Remember, discovery and curiosity. 
You have got to continue. 

I cannot fight my own body.
It would be easier, though that's not the right word, if my cognitive faculties could work better.