I am desperately waiting for my meds to take hold as I have two distinct areas of pain, for once one of them is totally my own fault. For the last few weeks I have been asking Adam to fix two of our curtain, one in the kitchen and the other in the bathroom, both were hanging wrong and just weren’t doing their winter job, keeping the cold out. I had high hopes all last week, with him being off, that they would be fixed and it would be over and done with, but they weren’t, despite my almost daily gentle reminders, so yesterday I fixed them. No I didn’t go climbing up ladders, it might have been easier if I had in the bathroom, but I managed both without too much danger. In the kitchen it was just a case of climbing on my stool and up onto the counter, a totally solid flat surface, in the kitchen I had to stand on the toilet seat lid, where I admit I didn’t feel that safe until I managed to put one knee on the wide window ledge, both curtains were fixed in about 10 minutes, less time than it took me to shift all the stuff now piled in the hall cupboard, so I could find and put away again the tools I needed, or the time I spent wondering around to just get it done. I was fine afterwards, I actually felt really pleased with myself as it has been years since I have done anything like it, sometimes we have to do something stupid, just to give ourselves that little boost and stop ourselves feeling totally useless. When I was finished, I felt just as I hoped I might, fine, which actually really shoked me and I was fine until I got up from my nap, it was then that my legs started to tell me exactly what they thought of my act of stubbornness, as that is what it was, stubbornness that I was going to get the job done, even if Adam won’t do it.
Anyone could see that I was walking worse than normal, just that bit more hesitant and that I was taking just that bit more care about every move, no matter how determiner I was to not show any sign of what I had been up to. Adam did mention it later in the evening and was quite happy to answer his own question, by attributing it to our day out on Thursday, I said nothing other than my legs were sore. Despite the fact that he has been in and out of both rooms several time, not once has he mentioned that the curtains have been fixed. I was tempted not to even mention it in here, but I know already that he doesn’t read it every day, just does catch ups ever so often, unless he thinks something is wrong that I am not talking about, so the wait is on, how long before he sees it has been done? I know that he has to be the most unobservant of all the men I have known, as I have bought and added to our home so many things that haven’t been noticed for weeks, even months in the case of some things, that holding my breath would be a dangerous thing to do. I remember him saying that if it wasn’t in front of him, he didn’t notice things, something I find hard to understand as I daily spend time looking round ever room and at almost everything in it, but I had a feeling that it worse than that and I tested it once, to be proved right. I bought a silver coloured elephant made of titanium and standing about two and half inches tall and placed it just below the TV screen on the stand and waited. Two days later I couldn’t take it any longer and pointed it out to him, he hadn’t noticed at all, proving that he truly doesn’t see things, despite still claiming to being an observant person who would do perfectly if asked to pick someone from a line up.
When I woke this morning I was so pleased to have the elevator there under my mattress to give me a boost out of bed. I had pain all around my pelvic and thighs and buttocks, the area that had rediscovered what it was made for, climbing. Honestly, I have had less pain from spending a day hiking in the Scottish countryside, than I have had so far from standing on a work surface and a toilet seat, not exactly mountains. But I did it, me, no one else so I just have to get on with it. The other pain I mentioned, well that isn’t my fault as I have had this one before and it made as little sense as it does to day, as we all know where our muscles are and how they work in groups, this just doesn’t fit. As always it started with my diaphragm and then down on step level to my stomach, those I am used to, the odd bit has to date only ever happened when I was lying down and made no sense then either. It is as though someone has drawn a line from my left ear, straight down as you would using a plumb weight. The pain starts just below my collar bone and travels straight down to the inner end of the rib that the line goes through. The band of pain is about an inch to two inches wide and there is nothing that I can think of that could either cause it, or even more confusingly account for pain that isn’t in line with anything other than an invisible line I can draw through it. I have felt it before on both sides whilst in bed in the past, but this is the first time I have ever had it while up and about. I have noticed that slowly over the last few months those things that were confined to when I was lying down are now appearing during the day. I can’t help feeling that the truth is that they were always there during the day, but due to the distractions of life and different position, I just wasn’t noticing them, lying down left me free to be aware, to listen to their complaints. That of course means that they are as I thought from the night pains, getting worse, now bad enough for me to be more than aware of their presence beyond the discomfort that I have lived with for years, it still doesn’t tell me what this strange horizontal line is though.
There is an unmissable pattern in my life that I find somewhat disheartening and that is almost ever pain and many of the symptoms I have ever had, started as something confined to evenings and night time. Others have also told me that it was at evening they too first noticed things like their dexterity going, or their balance was off, as though we needed to be tired before their systems broke down. Pain in our arms and legs were and are still worse at night and the more tired our bodies get, the more things we find are wrong. It was at night I first became aware of breathing problems, a story that unfolds through out this blog, as do many others, but it is still hard to accept that those miserable minutes of lying in bed, in pain in places that are still only night time, are my future. How long then is there before I wake feeling as rotten as I do at night just now and what then will my night time be?
Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 11/11/12 – Finding belief inside yourself
Two Rooms Plus Utilities 