Last night didn’t go the way I planned at all, well to be far it went just as I expected up until bedtime, then it went off the rails. I know it is just sods law, when thing go bad at bed time but I do so often feel like my body is on sort of vendetta. I had gone through my normal night time ritual of lying down and waiting for my chest muscles to clamp in on me, but I was at first pleasantly surprised when it was just the right side of my chest that feel under the imaginary weight of my invisible lead waistcoat, my left side other than my diaphragm was fine, but I still set out on my usual night time routine of relaxing everything it was then that I felt something odd, really odd, not painful just not right. It was as though when I put on the night time waistcoat, I had managed to twist it just a bit and the collar line wasn’t sitting straight, I could feel pressure on the front of my neck just along the baseline on the right side. It was gentle, not painful at all, just a steady pressure enough for me to be aware of it, but what happened was my brain flew into overdrive, sorting through possibilities and horror stories of what might happen, next or far in the future. I used to think that having an active and vivid imagination was a blessing, but since I have been seriously ill, well I just wish it would shut up as the places it goes, are mainly places that I hope I never go. My first thoughts of a simple drift into sleep quickly after lying down were gone, it was now one of those rare nights where my brain had all the controls and it wasn’t going to give them back.
I woke up at just after 4 am, it took me a few seconds to work out that I was awake and what had woken me, the pain in my heel is back. It’s been months since I last felt it but I was warned it would come and go and it has clearly come again. I know from experience that I was going to have to get up, take my blue booster pill and wait for it to work, so I headed for the kitchen to have a cigarette, as I opened the bedroom door I saw that the light was on in the kitchen. Adam had woken ahead of me and was of all things emptying the dishwasher as he forgot to do it last night. I’m not sure which of us was the most surprised to find the other in the kitchen in the middle of the night, but there we were. I am guessing that I must have heard him moving about and it was that that woke me not my heel. To be honest it wasn’t producing anything like the pain it had before, in a funny way I was glad to have been disturbed before it reached its peak. Back in bed I once again couldn’t find sleep, I was right back to the start of the night with my mind running over and over things that will probably never ever happen, but at 4:30 in the morning, logic is in small supply. I know I did find sleep but I was again awake just a couple of hours later needing to go to the loo. Despite the fact I should still have been very much under the influence of both my normal meds and the booster, I had the type of pain in my lower stomach right where my appendices is, that had me wondering if an ambulance might be needed as I couldn’t truly straighten up. I have had it off and on my entire adult life, so I knew that it would pass, I think I just have a loop of intestine there that likes to complain at times and it wasn’t happy, probably because I took my laxatives last night, so far they still haven’t worked. It was a totally no-win night and right now I feel like death warmed up. Sleep, next to pain control is the most important thing in the world to me and not getting my clear 11 hours the problems just start to pile up.
As always once my heel pain has been woken it stays around for quite a while, so yes it is with me right now, along with an exhausted body, a mind that is actually asleep, this is all coming out of the auto-pilot department and raised pain everywhere else, so no, I am not a happy bunny just now. We can be as fit a fiddle but have a bad nights sleep and it slaps us all right down, so imagine what it can do to a body that was down before the slap even got anywhere close. All too often it is the simplest everyday things that have the most dramatic effect on me, not the out of the ordinary or surprising things. A simple need for an extra glass of coke, or taking a shower can all too often be the one thing too much for me on that day. I have often thought about locking my routine down totally so that every day is identical and set out so that I use the same amount of energy, making life into a system that can’t knock me over the edge. But life isn’t like that, bodies don’t need the same things every day or even at the same time every day, days like today would never work out as right now I am sitting here with an empty glass and also without the energy to make it to the kitchen and back. It is also days like today that remind me why I don’t have a job, no one would put up with me in this state and just because I didn’t sleep well.
I suppose that is where today does have a positive use, as it really reminds me just how poor my health is. Trust me it is easy to forget, to find yourself wondering if you are really as ill as everyone around you keeps tell you, you are. Especially when you are the person who has been telling everyone since you were 21 that something is wrong and they have been telling you your fine. I honestly do often think that I am a fraud, as I manage well enough, I have always somehow managed, so why I am not doing what I should be, living my life out there and working, but those thoughts are caused by my ability to manage my health. I don’t know what I would be like if I didn’t manage things as tightly as I do, but I know without a doubt that I wouldn’t have any quality of life. I know that the majority of people think I have no quality of life now, how can I, I am housebound, I never see anyone other than my husband, with occasional visits from my daughter and I am almost constantly in pain. How can I say I have a good quality of life? Easy, I have managed to find happiness where I never thought anyone could. It may sound a little mad but I did sort of hint at it the other day, I have guilt about receiving money from the state. I know that is a totally taught feeling, one I was taught as a child, you don’t accept handouts, you work until you die and even then you leave money for others. No one should ever have to support you long term, especially not the state, that is below low, it is the lowest state anyone can ever be in, yes my family were stuck up, well off, snobs. But that is where I was brought up and I can’t change what I was taught to feel. Every day that is a good one, has that touch of guilt to it, every time I am not feeling like I do at this second, I feel that guilt, but today, well today I have a true need for it, even a right to it if you like, as today I am on the verge of not even being able to look after myself, as even that empty glass is staying empty.
Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 15/10/12 – Visiting Dimensions
Two Rooms Plus Utilities 