Thursday, April 9, 2015

Another Brick in the Wall



Wednesday, Day 26 - After functioning at a pretty high level these past few weeks, making those hated phone calls, shlepping from doctor to lab to therapist and back again, drinking gallons of orange Gatorade laced with buckets of Miralax, everything finally came together and then ...

... brick wall.  Right there at the border of my peripheral vision.  I can see just enough to make it down the stairs and push the button on the Keurig for my first cup of coffee.  I hit a brick wall, emotionally and visually.  Call it being overwhelmed, call it cognitive overload, just make it stop.

I don't need no arms around me
And I don't need no drugs to calm me.
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don't think I need anything at all.
No! Don't think I'll need anything at all.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.

 

So the brain fog came rolling on in, and the best I can do is take baby steps.  It's not a reaction to Really Bad News; on the contrary, the news was firmly in the "good" column. Yes, there needs to be some follow up with a surgeon, but even if  she finds something malignant, we are talking very small and very manageable.  Nothing aggressive or invasive.  And the BRCA test came back negative - so I imagine that my father Mike is looking down from the Great Afterlife, giving a big sigh of relief.

Holding myself together while dealing with the really scary unknown has finally caught up to me.  My energy has been depleted, my focus has been skewed, my back and shoulders hurt.  Pah!  I am giving myself permission for one day to have this mini-meltdown.  Tomorrow I have to be back on the phone, in the car, in the store, whatever it takes.  I need to revise my list and stick to it.



Better than drugs ... music.  Oh, I still took my meds, but I plugged myself into the iPhone for music and damn if it didn't help me.  Kept down one-eighth of a chicken salad sandwich, did a load of dishes.  Trimmed my cuticles.  Good day despite the rocky start.  I even developed plans for throwing a raisin pumpernickel dough into the bread machine, but the cupboard was bare of rye flour.   Another time, yes.

I want a virtual TARDIS (there's an app for that).
I want Martha Stewart to stop talking about spring cleaning.  Spring cleaning is not a good thing.
Bathed all four doggies.
Dancin' to "Mack the Knife."  Feeling better.

(Not going to talk about the news, though.  If you want to get depressed, please feel free to do it on your own time.)



Incidentally, these cool pictures of pretty tree flowers were taken in a sun-parched parking lot on South Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando.  As one of my college English professors once wrote across the top of an essay I had written about Lao-Tse, "We find gold in unexpected places."  Arrogant prick.  The professor, not Lao-Tse.

No comments:

Post a Comment