Confined to Barracks

 Well that's it. The headline. 

Three words.

The story of my life at the moment.

Normally I love being home, not having plans. But three weeks of it?

A bit of a challenge.

So what do I do with my time?

I read.

I'm on the internet.

I play Scrabble with friends around the world more frequently (we've been playing for over a decade and we all have high ratings)

I started to take pictures of this interior life.

I welcome guests, but only those who are safe. Masked. Careful. Cautious. As the Summer Wave of the Pandemic still hasn't hit here yet but has in other parts of the globe. Some of my friends have been, and still are in some cases, deathly ill with the blasted thing.

I social-media-post outrage for that patriarchal country to the south of us throwing women to the curb once more. Has ERA ever been ratified down there? I doubt it but am too lazy to check. Or care. The women need to arm themselves with the liberal gun laws and determine their own futures. As guns are the only thing understood down there it seems. It's heartening to see many younger Canadian women of my acquaintance offering Usian women sanctuary and abortion free of charge if and when they need it.

And PS I'm on a pain medication but still sleeping in my recliner as lying down in a bed is a thing of the past for now. I feel like I'm permanently camping (which, ps, I've always hated) but in my living room without the views of the great outdoors.

Oh Woe Is Me

 

I had a couple of other posts prepared (in raw unedited stages) but I've thrown them on the blog scrap heap.

My overall health has been of a really depressing nature lately and my doctor confirmed today my haemo is on a serious downslide and has dropped from 115 to 85 in a very short time frame. So that explains the complete lack of energy and the sadness of having to miss my birthday celebration a few days ago.

So he's sending all the latest lab work data to one of my specialists (who coincidentally called me two weeks ago to insist on the scary test I was avoiding because of my fall) instructing him to put utmost priority on said test.

If I sink lower than 85 I am to take myself to hospital and get immediate transfusions.

So that's the reason for blog silence.

I managed an excellent whingy-whine at the doctor's. He was completely sympathetic to the madness of this ongoing, unresolved, half-life I'm living for far too long. 

Sometimes, all we need is a few drops of sympathy to prop us up and prevent us from curling into a fetal position on the floor. 

I Hate Downers (Day 50 of the Year of the Plague self-isolation)

This past week has had me with spasms in my back, sharp and exhausting in their frequency. Aging means not bouncing back. I find the pain sucks the creativity out of me. I don't return calls, not wishing to burden anyone with my whining. I sit in a pool of misery, wanting to sleep the day away and quite succeeding in that accomplishment and shocked that I actually can sleep through some nights and then maneuver out of my bed slowly and carefully. It seems like soft tissue as it's not near the spine, so some kind of sprain.

I will call the doctor on Monday as over a week of this is quite distressing. Along with that my BP shot through the roof and I don't know why. My old BP monitor whimpered and died and the readings from the new one reflect these new alarming readings.

So there you have it.


Positives:
One 1 case in the last couple of weeks here so we are now in a progression of loosening restrictions, basically following NZ but without reopening schools. We are moving from Alert Level 5 to Alert Level 4. Really good news. Slow and steady is the plan.

I'm getting around to your blogs, slowly but surely.

Objet du Jour

4 healing vials sitting on my windowsill in my bedroom with little messages of comfort within or attached. My two young friends made them for me.

Facebook have a new emoticon which is supposedly created to show care/sympathy/compassion. Consensus is it's a Big Fail but great suggestions have been offered to expand their reactive images. (sorry for the quality of image)

One Twist Away

I disabled myself just about completely during the past week. I was behaving like the flexible 21 year old I used to be way back in the last century. Throwing a leg on a bench and reaching for my scarf at the same time.

I know I don't have to supply you with all the grim details. Suffice to say is, in spite of fiction writers, there was no sound just a horrible sharp discomfort which worsened. And worsened. To the point of, you know, squealing every time I moved.

I did not look as good as the picture on the left side here...Crab was the position I favoured and even then it was accompanied by a symphony of different sounds I didn't believe I was capable of anymore.

I doused myself liberally in Tylenol 3s, Voltrane and CBD oil which took the peak edge off but on the whole, exhaustion took me over quite frequently and a fetal position seemed to work for pain easement on the bed. And my blessed recliner which I have never regretted buying.

On top of all this my doctor had requested I go back on beta blockers for 3 weeks to see if my body would handle them a little better than before (Symptoms: concrete body and constant irritability and exhaustion). Do not give up he said to me on Monday.

So the Twist and Shout happened on Tuesday. It is now Sunday and though still in pain I have moved to a slightly tilted (think Leaning Tower of Pisa) position. Daughter drove in yesterday (goddess bless her, it's a 2 hour drive in) and went nuts in the grocery store. I swear I could live for a month or more on all she brought in. Stuff I would never buy. Mexican, Indian, coffee beans, cans of....name it. She hauled it all in and ran out of shelf space.

I am so grateful that both she and Niece are close by. I can't imagine not having family close by. Incapacitated like this would be a huge challenge for anyone.

I am at the stage of life where I take nothing for granted.

The smallest gesture of kindness just about does my head in with gratitude.

I am reminded even more clearly that many of us, in our old age, are just one twist or fall away from complete dependence.

Be careful out there, my friends.

The Strange World of Predawn

I haven't done this in a while. Write in the pre-dawn hours.

There's a good reason.

Pain.

Intermittent and weird.

Tests are being conducted. Daily it seems. Various hospitals, clinics.

I've become a medi-bore overnight. Not about the symptoms. No. They're brief and troubling. But all these blood tests, scans, etc. My life is filled with medi-treks every day this week. Which exhaust me. And then I'm flooded with relief once they're behind me. Like I'm joining the real world again. I do these treks alone, by choice. I don't know what it feels like to have a partner/loved one journeying beside. I don't think I'd like it. I pursue my own thoughts in these waiting rooms.

"Ah, The Galway Shawl" I said to a pacing man yesterday in the nuclear medicine clinic. He'd been whistling it under his breath. Waiting for someone, I speculated.

"I don't know what else to do," he whispered, walking slowly around the pod-like room.

On top of that a friend of over 30 years has been diagnosed with liver cancer so he just recovered from surgery on Tuesday and another acquaintance messaged all of us yesterday that he is refusing any further treatment for cancer and is going to die with dignity in the next few days. He's 63.

So a fresh batch of pain strikes me before 5 in the morning most mornings. And I get up and take some meds but they take a while to kick in.

They say it's a good time for writing. Blank slate of a brain. So here I go.

I trek off to the doctor later on this morning.

I hope we get to the bottom of this.

I was waiting in a coffee shop yesterday to sign some papers for my real estate agent and I deliberately sat across from a man who was knitting a hat very similar to one I just finished for a friend (see above). And I showed him a pic of it.

We chatted and he let me feel the hat he was working on(silk and merino) and then he let me feel his hand-knitted scarf (muskox from the North West Territories) and then he admired my Kipling knapsack so I offered him a feel of it (parachute material, very light, very old) and he searched on line for one like it as he loved it. And he told me of a sealskin mitten workshop happening at the end of the month, and I told him about my story shawls that I create and we had such a lovely time. And then my realtor arrived and I never even found out what my new friend's name was.

Or maybe it was just one of those jewels of a connection and should lie where it is, you know?

I mean it's kinda special when you get to feel a stranger's clothes and can ooh and aah together over the sensuous nature of beautiful material, right?

Where do you take it from there?