I might not be quite as crippled as I thought I was.
The scene : I am making my lunch at around 4:15 pm (weird schedule, I know) when the phone rings. I answer it in the kitchen because… we have a phone there.
I guess that was implied. Whatever.
Turns out it’s a doctor’s office telling me I have an appointment tomorrow. 2:45 pm, a Doctor Khemani, who is a rheumatologist.
Makes sense. My problems could very well have something to do with rheumatism or some other related disorder.
But I’m in the kitchen, so there’s no easy way for me to take down the deets of the appointment. So I decide to switch to the phone in my room.
I am half way to my desk when I realize I have left my walker behind.
I hesitate for a moment or two, but the path is clear: I might as well go the rest of the way on my own two legs too.
So I do. And when I get off the phone, I walk back to the kitchen and finish making my lunch, all without being crippled by pain.
Hmmm. This could be big.
Now by the time I am seated in front of Mister Computer again, my legs are definitely not super happy with me. But they are still working. I did not end up in a heap on the floor as they just plain gave up on me.
Which is what I would have expected.
And the pain I was experiencing them, and am experiencing now, could just be from the atrophy caused by my not putting my full weight on my legs for coming up on two years now. Plus, it’s been 8 hours since my last dose of Gabapentin, which means I am 2/3 of the way to the next dose.
Could it be that my legs have actually miraculously recovered? Might I actually be able to walk like a human being again? Might I actually be FREE?
Maybe. It’s certainly worth investigating.
So I am now going to push my limits somewhat. I am going to make short trips sans walker here in the apartment and see how that works out.
I can’t imagine I will have regained full, normal use of my legs just yet. But it now seems like it might be possible if I get more exercise and maybe some physio.
Right now, the muscle fibers in my legs feel sort of tight. Like the beginning of a cramp. And there is a slight burning sensation in the big tendons connecting my leg to my kneecap, as well as deep in my heel and ankle.
So it’s nowhere near being a “throw the cane away” level miracle but it certainly emboldens me to test my limits.
Even if all I get out of it is the ability to go to the kitchen and back unaided, that would still be something. I might not need my “indoor” walker at all any more.
If that works out OK, what the heck, maybe I will try to make it down to the car.
But not being (that kind of) insane, I will have Julian push the walker right behind me the whole way in case I can’t make it.
I’ve had little incidents like this before but I was too chickenshit to follow up on them to see if I really have gotten better.
Could be that I have been using the walker for no good reason for a while now. How would I know? I just assumed I still needed it. Who wouldn’t?
Got to find out where I stand now, So to speak.
More after the break.
The longest sigh
Feeling kind of melancholy right now. And wistful. Like I just want to heave a sigh that lasts an hour or two in order to let all the emotions out.
It’s a dark mood, but not a terrible one. I’d rather be sad than depressed any day.
Sadness has feet. Sadness moves. Sadness carries within it the notion that it will end. And sadness expresses something about your internal emotional state and therefore releases some of those emotions into the world.
All depression expresses is the cruel and hungering void. That vast yawning gulf inside of you that silently screams out the pain of all that is missing inside you because of depression’s killing frost.
Man, I should be a poet.
I guess I sort of am.
But depression does not carry within in it the feeling that it will end, even though it always does. It may not end completely but while the frost may remain, the storm that brought it never lasts.
Everything ends, even the bad stuff.
My Well of Pain feels restless tonight. Like some kind of primordial critter is splashing around in there like a bear cub.
Patience, little one. I’m drinking as fast as I can.
And that, too, feels like a process that will eventually end. Despite the apparent endlessness of my Midnight Tundra, I know that I will eventually empty that well and maybe even get to look around and take stock of my actual life.
Or at least become more alert to my surroundings.
What I truly need is a rebirth. A do-over. A cosmic hitting of my reset button. Something to definitively cut me off from my past and the vast amounts of absolutely nothing – no job, no family, no love affairs – it contains.
But I lack the spiritual resources to create such an event. I am still far too rational and stable for nervous breakdowns or spiritual epiphanies or mind-rending visions of a world that seems realer than reality.
I am way too boring for that shit.
Knowing the laughable limitations of my supposed “reason” does not, alas, automatically open up any alternatives.
I don’t know how one finds true spirituality this late in life apart from having a heart attack, but there has to be some way to build a bridge to that holy place that does not require me to make a leap of faith.
Or at least, only requires one small enough for even my faith to make.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.