I wish I could understand why it is that I so often wake during the early hours, to find that I have once again I have somehow managed to twist on the bed into a position where my head is still set on the pillows in its normal position, vouched for the fact that my hair is still spread across the pillows as I place it each night, but with both of my feet out of the side of the bed and actually flat on the floor. Waking like that is incredibly painful, partly because I don’t have the strength to pull my legs back into bed under their own strength, but partly because the twisted position has clearly been where I have been lying for at least an hour or more and muscles are stiff and painful. I can only get myself corrected by reaching above my head and pulling myself back into bed by holding on to the bars of the headboard. It makes no logical sense as to why I would even need or want to lie like that? The closest thing I can think of is that I am actually trying to sleepwalk, something I have only done once as a teenager that I am aware of, but something that wouldn’t work now as I can’t get out of bed from that position, I would first have to raise the head of the bed further with the elevator. I wake like that a handful of times each month, as normal though I can’t remember when the first occasion was, it’s too long ago, but no more than 18 months ago, it wouldn’t bother me that much if it wasn’t for the fact it is so hard and so painful to correct.

When you are fit and able, sleep is something you hardly ever think about, well other than when you are exceptionally tired, but now I seem to think about it all the time, I am either counting down the time before I can go back to sleep, or I am wishing away the time I have left as I feel too tired to manage to stay awake any longer. I know without a doubt that I have mentioned over and over again how I don’t have enough hours in my day, as I now sleep away more of them than I ever thought a person could, but it doesn’t matter what happens, I am always fighting the desire to sleep through even more of them. I have this fear that I will be heading to bed one day to never get up again, but that isn’t out of tiredness, more out of an inability to do anything else. I am totally aware that the less time I am actually using my muscles, even just to sit up, the weaker those muscles will become, sleeping more and more is a steady route to being bed bound even in your waking hours. There is a point where bad health becomes an ever decreasing circle, not just because of the progression of the illness, but due to the progression of all the unrecognised side effects. As I said on Tuesday the list of those is long and I never even mentioned sleep and everything around it in that list before. It has been well over 2 years now since I was able to lie on either of my sides, the pain was constantly increasing and the time I could lie there grew less and less, now it isn’t just the pain that stops me, but the fact that I can’t even roll onto either side, the strength to do so escapes me. I tried not that long ago to pull myself over, using again the headboard, but even with all the strength I could find, I couldn’t find enough. These days I go to bed, lift my hair, which is now well down below my waist, out from behind me and spread it over the pillow so I am not lying on it. I am sure that sleeping constantly on my back can’t be doing me any good, why I’m not sure, but if it is natural to move around in sleep, then not doing so must be putting pressure on places not designed to take it.

I am sorry if I have been going over old ground in the last few days, I know I keep running through all the possibilities, all the reasons, and all the changes that have been happening in the last few months, but I am snatching at and scrapping through everything, in a vain hope that I will find something that I can fix. I am left though with no other conclusion than the one I was running away from, that my health is now considerably worse than it was even just two months ago. The more I fight it, the more I am finding that I can’t, not through lack of will, but through lack of ability, how do you fight what you can’t quantify, pin down or even fully describe or explain. I don’t believe there is an inch of my body that I can find that I can say I recognise as mine, both inside and out. I have gone so far from the body I was born with, that right now I haven’t the slightest idea what it is I am supposed to do with it. It is all too easy to say, well do what it wants, go with it, what harm could it do, but if I did I don’t know if I would ever be able to pull myself back. This isn’t like a bad day that I can rest, take extra sleep or give into for a short while, if it was I wouldn’t be where I am right now because it would have been fixed by all the days that I have done exactly that.

I feel like I have to apologise, that I have to make excuses for the facts I can’t change this, but that is just me, when all else fails, say sorry. My body is slowing down on me, causing me more pain, less energy, and less ability. I have for a while know it was happening, written about it and questioned it, I guess now it is simply a case that I have to adapt to it again. In the last year I have slashed what I do daily in more than half, but here I am again struggling, all I can do is slash it again and try again to adapt.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – Physio for the Ego

I had another night of being sick and try as I might I can see no reason. I have had really bad stomach pains for the past couple of days when you have a lot of spasms as normal it is often hard for me to separate out what is causing what. When they started I realised that I should have taken my stomach meds even though the Doctor said not to until I saw the specialist, I hadn’t been to the loo for….