OK, make that Yellow Alert Level 2. If not maybe 3.
Because I just made my trip to the kitchen to get my lunch together and it took a LOT out of me. My legs were really hurting.
And a more acute pain than usual. In fact, the really shocking and frightening thing is that the minute I stood up, the pain was as bad as it usually gets right before I collapse.
And with me here all alone. J&J are at Costco.
The situation is bad enough that I am worried about making it to Denny’s tonight. And that’s just a matter of rollating from the apartment to the car and from the car into Denny’s and then back again later.
I knew I wasn’t doing so hot after Wound Care on Friday but I thought I had gotten over that and was getting better.
Which is an easy thing to believe when you haven’t put your legs to the test lately, as I had not done since last night.
My heart was pounding too. I suspect that is because the weaker your legs are, the harder your heart has to work to move you around.
And judging by what I just went through, they are getting pretty damned weak.
But I am learning to be cautious about going to full on red alert. What just happened was bad but it was not necessarily a sure sign of how things will be from now on.
All chronic illnesses have good days and bad days and I could just be having a bad leg day, so to speak. Or it could be that when I am on my feet again and moving and committed to getting to Denny’s, my body shakes off whatever is going on right now, and I make it to Denny’s and back just fine.
On the other hand, this might be the end of me as an ambulatory being. It might be that from now on, I will be lucky to make it to the bathroom and back under my own power and that means it is wheelchair time for yours truly.
Presumably the motorized kind as my arms are becoming useless too.
All of this is pretty fucking grim. So I am not exactly a happy camper right now. In fact, I am on the verge of a major depression at the moment and I would probably have fallen into one if I didn’t have the prospect of Denny’s to look forward to.
So if it turns out I can’t go, well….. that would be bad.
Honestly, at that point, I should probably just press the big red button, go to full red alert, and call 911.
Because if I can’t make it to the car for Denny’s, I certainly can’t make it there to be taken to the hospital either.
At that point, it’s an ambulance or nothing.
Hopefully it will not come to that. But even if I make it to Denny’s, I get the feeling that I should see a medical professional of some sort ASAP.
More after the break.
Post prandial prattle
It means “after eating”.
Made it to Denny’s and back without a problem. I am fine as long as I remember to take things slowly and smoothly. That’s how I made it through Wound Care last Friday and that is how I made it through tonight.
It’s when I forget I am sick and absentmindedly try to do things the usual way that I get myself in trouble. The trick is to move like I am a frail but dignified old lady pushing her shopping cart around Safeway.
One thing I want to note before I forget : one thing that needing the walker has shown me is that people are quite happy to help a disabled person out. I have had so many people open and/or hold open doors for me, clear out of my path with a smile on their face, and otherwise treat me very nicely that it’s honestly improved my opinion of my fellow naked beach monkeys a fair bit.
And given my many concentric layers of social issues, that’s a big deal.
That’s why I wanted to point it out here : to make it more real. I don’t date trust it to the crime infested neighborhood that is my mind because it would be all too easy for the forces of darkness in there to make that knowledge disappear before it threatens their regime of mistrust and self-loathing.
But now that I have “said it out loud”, it can’t be “:disappeared”.
This is how badly damaged I am : I am honestly surprised that people are extending to me the same courtesy and consideration that I have seen everybody extend to other handicapped people all my life, including myself.
Like I somehow though people would think I didn’t deserve it. Like they would instinctively react to my innate toxic horribleness by scorning and shunning me and giving me the coldest of shoulders.
Now that’s some seriously fucked up Avoidant Personality Syndrome stuff right there.
Ergo that is also worth putting down in words. I need to be reminded that no matter what my mental illness tells me about myself, all the real world sees is a fairly average big fat dude with a neutrally pleasant warm demeanor.
I am not some knd of shambling horror causing revulsion and nausea and contempt in the public at large wherever I go, and it is crazytown to think that I am.
I’m just some guy. Maybe a big bigger and broader than most and definitely not a paragon of fashion and refinement, but no worse than the millions of other big fat guys just like me out there.
And that means that I don’t have to be so guarded or scared. I can relax and just be a person, no better or worse than anyone else.
The bullies are long gone. I am not the schoolyard pariah I once was. I’m a perfectly delightful fellow people like to be around. I can go out and play with the other kids and be perfectly safe from harm.
At worst, they will think I’m a little weird.
Well, they’re not wrong, are they?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.