So at around 3:30 pm I got up to get some lunch together.
But my legs hurt pretty bad ike right away, and that made me remember that it has been a long time since I took my newly beloved yabba-dabba-gabapentin, so I figured I was overdue for pain relief, took one plus some Acetaminophen (Jesus is that a hard word to spell) and waited half an hour or so for the pills to kick in.
So a bit before 4 pm, I get up to try again, and the pills, they do nothing!
My legs still hurt like hell. In fact, disturbingly. my legs already hurt like they normally do at the end of one of my kitchen runs.
This was decidedly unwelcome.
Luckily, once I am actually in the kitchen, there are plenty of surfaces close at hand for me to lean on.. Which was especially good, because I have started getting really dizzy when I stand up again.
Dunno what made it go away for a while, but it’s back, baby.
So I had to lean hard on the counter for a while before it would even be safe for me to move when my local subjective gravity field is in such violent flux.
Makes it feel like I am in something that is spinning really hard and fast. No fun.
Then I pulled together my meal, and before I was even halfway done, I knew I was not going to make it back to the computer in one go this time.
So I had to flop my butt down on my couch in the living room and wait a while for my legs to recover.
This happens like 1/4 of the times I go fetch meals. It’s worrying because it seems like a step in the wrong direction and i am dreading the day I just plain can’t make the trip no matter what any more.
That will signal a phase change into being truly crippled. And at that point I will need some kind of professional help.
Besides my therapist, that is.
I am starting to wonder if I would be better off in some kind of managed care home.
Assuming such a thing is even an option for poor folk like me.
If I was in one, there would be people around to help when I needed assistance and they would be professionals so I would not feel guilty for leaning on them so much.
Still can’t shake that fear and guilt about being a burden to others, no matter how much they tell me they don’t mind and it’s no big deal.
Because the deepest levels of my sickness still insist that I am worth absolutely no amount of time, effort, or money to anyone and therefore anything anyone does for me is a huge sacrifice for which I should feel massively guilty because by definition any time, effort or money invested in me is a huge waste.
That is brutally sad but I am stuck with it for now. I have almost never had anyone treat me like I am worth anything, despite all my gifts, and I got the message from that experience that I am not, in fact, worth anything.
Nobody ever treated my gifts like they were something valuable. They treated them as something annoying that made me hard to deal with.
Maybe that’s how people dealt with me as a potential threat to their own self-esteem. Dealing with a mega-bright kid must be really rough for adults that have the assumption that they will always have an intellectual advantage over kids.
Some of whom go into teaching.
And I mean, it’s a valid assumption that works most of the time.
Just not with extreme outliers like lil ol me.
All it would have taken is just one adult who believed in me and told me I was lucky to be so gifted and that said gifts were worth a lot in the real world, and give me some genuine encouragement, and things would have been radically different.
But nope. The only way they could deal with the fact that I was massively, staggeringly smarter than them was to treat it like a nuisance.
If I actually realized what I was worth, I would become utterly intolerable.
Better to permanently crush my self esteem.
Yeah. That makes sense. That tracks.
More after the break.
The latest update
Just got supper. Legs are still not doing too good.
God, I hope this isn’t the new normal. Please let this just be a bad day or otherwise an aberration and let me return to previously established levels of agony and suffering when I stand or walk Real Soon Now.
If this DOES turn out to be the new normal. then it is definitely the last step before being totally crippled. Because I am just barely making the kitchen trip right now.
I might have to pull the trigger on my plan to move some or all of my food into the bedroom here so I can get at it more easily.
Not sure where the hell I would put said food. Possibly in bags under the desk so they are easy to reach?
For this plan to fully succeed, I would need a mini-fridge and a microwave.
I have the mini-fridge, it’s just not working right now. Door won’t stay closed. Should be possible to fix with some ingenuity and duct tape.
Mostly duct tape.
I doubt we have a spare micro-wave lying around, although you never know with Joe, so I will be sure to ask before I make any purchases.
It can be a small-ish one as it will mostly be used to pop popcorn and heat stuff up. Maybe make the occasional microwavable entree or whatever.
Point is, I’m not going to be cooking Christmas dinner in the dang thing.
Not sure where I would PUT a microwave ’round here./ I suppose that if I cleaned off my desk and rearranged things just right, I could fit a small microwave on my desk.
Assuming it being there wouldn’t fuck up my computer. Hmmm.
Otherwise, I don’t see a way to have it in reach when I am at the computer.
Oh, and get this : Joe bought me a walker.
And I am going to give it a try, at least for getting around the apartment.
Being seen in public with it is a much dodgier prospect.
Personally, I have my doubt about it being able to stretch to a sufficient height for me to use it without hunching over like Quasimodo.
And that’s not acceptable.
Then there’s the issue of clearance. This is a small heavily packed apartment and me plus a walker will need a lot of room to move around.
Still, if it saves me pain during kitchen trips, it might be worth it.
I just need to stop thinking of it as a walker, and start thinking of it as a “portable thing I can lean on”.
That should take some of the sting out of it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.