Coming Apart at the Seams

Sometimes I lie awake, night after night
Coming apart at the seams

1/26 - So I woke up this morning and decided I'd had enough.  The body hurts, the mind is foggy.  This is no way to live.  I have made an appointment to see the doctor later this morning, something that everyone has been urging me to do for a long time.

I don't have a normal life anymore.  I never know, from one day to the next, whether I am going to be able to discharge my responsibilities at work.  It is difficult for me to leave the house, because I feel safe here, but not out there.  Sometimes it is hard for me to drive home, and I only live a half mile from the office. I can no longer engage in exercise or sport.  Physical therapy made me feel worse, not better.  Both of my forearms look shredded from having to scratch at the constant, inexorable itching. My left hand and arm are pretty damn useless because of the pins and needles that never ever stop. I cannot eat, at least not like a normal human. Often I experience pain in my abdomen (I can't say in my stomach, because as far as I know, they bypassed that sucker over 10 years ago.  But as Tom Baker says, Who knows?  Who knows?)  My eyesight suddenly and dramatically declined.  I'm afraid to drive after sundown.  Weirdest of all, I lost so much weight so rapidly, it reminds me of my early days after my gastric bypass.  No clear idea why.  I know I don't eat much, but I never have gone back to eating normally.  Nothing is normal for me anymore.

I don't know how, if at all, the injuries I sustained back in May have contributed to this situation.  I was already experiencing the constant chronic symptoms of fibromyalgia or chronic pain syndrome for a long time before I took that awful fall in the elevator.  My worker's comp carrier sent me to this doctor or for that test, and in the end all they found was a pretty insignificant spinal irregularity, or maybe it was a pinched nerve.

I have headaches all the time. I feel depressed, almost always sad.  I am a bit more forgetful, but I've been fighting that for a long time, starting with menopause and antidepressants.  Most of the time I can find my words, or come up with an adequate substitute.  But I am not as sharp as I used to be, and that bothers me so very, very much.

Sometimes I'm tired, sometimes I'm shot

Sometimes I don't know how much more I've got

Maybe I'm headed over the hill

Maybe I've set myself up for the kill

Tell me how much do you think you can take

Until the heart in you is starting to break?

Sometimes it feels like it will

Done with the doctor.  My doctor, not The Doctor.  He spent quite a bit of time with me, which I appreciate.  He listens, which I also appreciate.  After I expressed my concerns about the impact of my health upon my work product, he said I might want to think about early retirement.  I might, I definitely might - I have, as a matter of fact, especially now that I am 62, but, as my friend Dave likes to preface many of his arguments to the Court, "the truth of the matter is" that I can't afford to do so.

In the meantime, I am going to have a colonoscopy, and then someone will stick a tube down my gullet to try to discern why the food I eat has become the gift that keeps on giving.  And blood, gotta give some blood to those ever-so-cheerful vampires at Quest Diagnostic.  But not today; I tried to walk into Quest following my doctor's appointment, but the waiting room looked like they were at the front of the line for an all you can eat ribs night at Sizzler.  The faces were grim but hopeful.  No empty chairs.  I had as much chance of joining their group as Netanyahu has of sharing tea and crumpets with Obama.  I'll try again, thanks.

And there will be drugs - actually, just one small add-on, as my doctor is aware that a) I have a "thing" about taking too much medication, especially anything that has the slightest chance of being addictive, and b) I can't swallow the damn things anyway.  No room in my stomach pouch, seriously.

So I am done with all that, and back at home, tucked into my corner of the couch.  I don't know what life is going to bring, but then, Who Does?  Who Does?