In other words, right where I am sitting.
Most of the time, this bedroom of mine is well heated. But when it’s very windy outside, the wind blowing past the big window my computer desk sits in front of (love that natural light!) sucks the heat right out of the room and makes me feel like I am living in a fridge.
So I was really fucking cold this morning.
The only thing to do in that situation is to turn the heat all the way up in my room and start a sort of temperature war between the wind and the furnace, hoping that somewhere in the middle I can feel comfy.
And if that doesn’t work, it’s back to bed to burrow under the covers.
Really makes me wish I had my father’s old caulking gun and thermal tape. I would fix that big window up but good.
Well so much for the light bitching. Now for the scary stuff.
See, I have had two incidents in the last 24 hours that have me kinda freaked out. It’s a good thing that I have an appointment with Doctor Chao tomorrow so I can talk t him about them and he can maybe help me figure out WTF is going on.
The first incident was last night. I got out of bed after a nap and stood up, and felt a series of hard clicks from various parts of the right side of my skeleton.
And not the usual parts, like elbows, fingers, and knees. Deep parts that you normally never even think about because they are just there.
And with these clicks came pain. Serious fucking pain. Hard, electric pain that shot down my right side from just above my right elbow to just above my right knee.
At the same time, my lower back hurt like motherfucker too. A deep ache that gave me that oh so lovely “creaky” feeling in my lumbar region/
The pain was so intense that I had to sit down heavily in my computer chair to recuperate. It took around ten minutes for the pain, which now had turned into a harsh burning sensation, to die down enough for me to get back up and continue my evening.
That’s not good.
Then, this morning, when I got out of bed, I had an attack of…. something.
I was breathing heavily, and I kept yawning really hard. My head throbbed with pain and when I went for my morning pee, that hurt too, right in that area of the bottom of my bladder that has caused me problems before.
The symptoms suggest some kind of oxygen issue. The yawning is especially indicative. Luckily, once I sat down at the computer post-pee, I was able to get my breathing under control with my breathing exercises and I have been okay since.
But that was seriously scary. I was thinking I was going to have to call 911 and I was worried I would not have the breath to tell them what was wrong.
Looking back, I am pretty sure that would not have been a problem. But given how easily I panic when nothing is going wrong, you can well imagine what kind of emotional state I was in, especially after last night’s incident.
After these two attacks, I possibly should have headed to the ER. But they both passed and I am going to see Doc Chao tomorrow anyhow,
The two attacks are probably unrelated, but could be the sign of something seriously degenerative going on.
I hate my stupid fucking life.
More after the break.
Meanwhile, in other people’s lives
Joe went in for his second round of chemo today.
I have no idea how bad chemo is these days. I know that it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be. How could it be?
The approach used to be basically, “we’re going to poison you almost to death in the hopes it will kill more of the cancer than it does you.”.
Ditto for radiation therapy.
But I can only imagine that it’s still pretty bad. Luckily, he has Julian there by his side to help him through it. And I am sure someone from his family will visit too.
That’s what normal families do, after all.
Not mine. I’ve recently realized that one of the basic settings of my family was the assumption that we would all do our own thing and have our own lives and not make a lot of demands on one another’s autonomy.
Now it would be facile and glib to just blame that on having self-absorbed Boomer parents who didn’t really give us much choice in whether we wanted to raise ourselves.
And that’s definitely a big part of it, especially for me, the isolated and unwanted “surprise” child who came along when my parents were already getting to be too old to keep up with the three they already had.
Well, mean, my mom was 30 when she had me. So not that old. But still.
They could not divest themselves of all responsibility for raising me fast enough. So like a lot of Gen-X kids, I became “self-reliant”.
But there is more to my toxic and inhospitable family dynamic than mere Boomer neglect. I think that, despite her warmth, there was a deep yet subtle chill that came from my mother that we all felt.
Well, not so subtle for me,. eventually.
And of course, our always-simmering rage pot of a father didn’t exactly help us bond together as a family unit either.
But even at the best times, we were not that “tightly knit” a family. Sure, we did things together sometimes when I was younger, like trips to the beach or to Rainbow Valley or whatnot, but for the most part, we all did our own thing.
And the trips stopped too. Part of the parental divestment movement. Both parents did less and less and less for us as time wore on.
I’m surprised they still let us in the house.
Well, me, anyhow.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.