Tag Archives: memory

Being honest

Posted on by
11

I have known it for a long time, in fact, many years if I am honest, that my memory, isn’t quite what it used to be. Twelve years ago, I was put through a full range of those annoying tests, where they read things to you, ask you to memorise list,then answer questions ten minutes later. Not to mention the flashcards with pictures you have to name, and that odd drawing of a picture you meant to draw a copy of, once they have hidden it. I in fact, had three spaced over a three-year period, that’s how I became very sure of that there was a real problem and not just one I was imagining. Even back then, the results weren’t good, not only was my short term memory lacking, but it confirmed the frontal lobe damage seen in my MRI that causes my tremors and speech problems and my inability to control tears from appearing in all the wrong places. Since the last test, there has been a marked downwards trail, on that I have learned to live with as on the whole, it is easy when you spend the majority of your time alone, to kid yourself nothing is really wrong. It’s only when you try interacting with others, that the truth is clear. Yesterday supplied me with the perfect example, one of which, I still have to apologise to Adam over. Bare in mind, that all of the below, happened within one hour.

It was just after 4:30, I had had my shower and the carer had just left, when I asked Adam if he was to coming home on Monday or Tuesday lunchtime. I had a vegetarian lasagna in the fridge, which either had to go in the oven or the microwave, meaning I couldn’t prepare it for myself. We had already agreed that when Adam came home from work on Monday evening, he was going to cook my Psyllium pancakes, so I suggested that it might be a good idea, if he came home on Tuesday lunchtime, making Monday slightly less cluttered. He didn’t appear to be bothered either way but decided to go along with my plan. That decided, I stood and picked up all my empty juice bottles, put them in the backpack on my wheelchair and was sat ready to head to the kitchen, to make my supper and put the bottle by the sink. Adam decided that he was coming with me. He has been wheeling me around whenever he is here now for several weeks, in an attempt to help my elbow heal, I haven’t had any say in it.

Once in the kitchen, he fetched a plate for me, then started talking about the tumble dryer. He had dried some of my clothes the night before, and he was going to put them on the bed, so once I had eaten, I could put them away, but they were still damp. We had to buy a new tumble dryer a couple of weeks ago, so he is still learning how to use the different settings. We made a plan as to which setting to use going forward, but put it on straight away, so that I could put my clothes away before bedtime. I put some cod’s roe, lumpfish, cream cheese and crackers on my plate, spread some jam on my Psyllium pancake and rolled it up in some kitchen towel and we returned to the living room. Adam left me alone to eat and went off to do something else in the kitchen. As soon as I finished, I headed through to the bedroom to put my washing away, it wasn’t on the bed and I couldn’t work out why.

Confused I headed to the kitchen, where I heard the tumble dryer and remembered what had happened earlier. Adam took me back to the living room, parked me in my chair, then took the juice bottles out my backpack and took them to the kitchen for me. Two small silly things within minutes of each other. The third was bigger and didn’t play out fully until today. The first part unfolded when we were once more in the kitchen sorting out my meds at 8pm. I started talking to Adam about when he was home at lunchtime on Monday, he tried his best to tell me that we had agreed to Tuesday, but I was adamant, as I always am in these situations when it is someone else’s memory verses mine, I’m always right. I am so good at it, that I have confused many many people in my time, and Adam even started to think that he had got it wrong and eventually agreed with me, we had said Monday not Tuesday. We talked about it on and off over the last hour of my day, but I was right and that was it, no matter how many times he said he was sure it was the other way around.

It wasn’t until I was actually eating the lasagna he had cooked before going back to work, that I remembered the missing part of the conversation we had the day before. We had agreed on Tuesday, my brain had quite simply blocked it out completely. Just as it had the fact that I had picked up the bottles to put them in the kitchen, or that my clothes were too wet to put away. This is my life, the one without a brain. I didn’t really need one, but it truly is a great example of the things my brain does to me, and those around me. As I said, when you are on your own, you can fob these things off, tell yourself that it doesn’t matter or it’s not important. I know without the slightest doubt, if I were out there in the normal world, I would have retreated long before it got this bad, I just happen to have retreated before it did. It’s not like I just forget what I went into a certain room for, or never remember to bring things back with me, I’m way past that point. They are more than daily occurrence, they are quarter daily ones. My short term memory long ago went past the conveniently selective stage, I’m not even sure if it knows what convenient or selective is anymore, it just gives up, then reappears, if and when it feels like it.

Am I worried about it, not really. I’m not sure if that is a good or a bad thing, it’s just the way it is. But I think it is time, that I am a lot more honest about it, not so much with Adam, I’m totally sure he is well aware of it, but with myself. The time has come when I have to stop believing that I am always right, as even I can see, that I’m not any longer, yet, I’m not sure how to do that. How do you tell yourself that what you remember, is totally wrong, when it’s what you remember? Our minds aren’t supposed to do these things to us, yes, to other people, but not to us.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 20/09/2014 – A new peace

It feels like this week has lasted forever and all I have been doing throughout all of it is a fight to make myself better. I already know that the antibiotics have failed in what they were supposed to do, they may have shown up other problems and saved me from a spell in hospital, but they haven’t managed to……

Holding on?

Posted on by
17

It doesn’t happen often, but there are days when I find myself asking questions, probably the same questions I know others ask of me, but when they come from inside, they mean more. Don’t take that badly, I’m not putting anyone out there down, but we all know, that those silent questions are always the most powerful ones.

There isn’t a certain time of day, or a feeling, place or set of circumstances that triggers them, they just appear when I least expect them and without any warning. Bang, there it is, one of those damned questions. Todays appeared when I was taking my lunch out of the fridge, Vegetarian Mousaka, I wish I had eaten the packaging as it looked far better than the contains did, and probably tasted better too. I was searching for the use by date, then that question  appeared.
“What is it that keeps me going?”.
The first answer was easy.
“Definitely not the food”
Then I started to really think about it, to answer what had appeared from somewhere back there in the muddle I call my brain.

I’ve been here in this flat now for 9 years, a length of time that if you are honest, I bet you can’t even imagine spending in your home. Never going out, not even to get the air. Your world is the space you call home and there is nothing else outside of it, that you can get to. 9 years, it’s a long time. Yet looking back, I find it almost impossible to believe that it could possibly be that long since I last opened my front door, and walked out into the street. Of course, I have been out, I’ve written about that many times, those trips to the hospital, but even then, I don’t make it on my feet, I’m strapped in a chair and guarded by ambulance attendants. Those trips feel far more like being transferred from one prison to another, just to be brought right back again. But my home isn’t a prison, it’s never felt that way, my prison is my body, not the place where it lives. I guess that’s the first answer, I love my home, I love what I see daily, how it makes me feel and the feeling of safety and security that it gives me. I doubt there are many prisoners who would describe their jail that way.

I guess, I don’t really even see my body as a jail either, how can I, it’s the same one that I have lived within since the day I was born. In that regard, I’m as free as you and everyone else out there. Within my world, there is one other constant, my husband. Just like my body, he has been here throughout this phase of my life. There are two clues wrapped up in the last sentence. My husband, who to anyone who reads my blog will know that without him, I would be isolated and totally alone. Yes, there are others now, my nurses and carers, but they are new to this madness. Adam, is my one constant, the one love that lifts me through all the bad spells and makes me laugh and smile on even my worst days. No, I wouldn’t want to survive without him, but that’s a totally different question.

All our lives are broken into phases, not just childhood, teens and adulthood, as they have many, many phases mixed up within them. Some of them cross over each other, and some are totally isolated by the power they have over us. They are made up of relationships, jobs, hobbies, likes, and dislikes. Take my health, they say it started back when I was 21, but they didn’t diagnose it until I was 40, just two years after marrying Adam. During this phase I have been married, had children, got divorced, had three totally separate careers and married again, following three failed relationships. Phases, that intertwined, yet some remained separate in many ways. As we move through those phases, we grow, become more mature and have a deeper understanding of life. All of it makes us the people we are, so for me to give you, or even myself, one defined answer as to how I survive, would be impossible, but I do have many clues.

I survive because I haven’t changed, it’s my life that has changed and it did it so slowly, I grew used to where I was and the fact that I couldn’t be anywhere else. From diagnosis on, I went into a nine-year long nest building phase. I spent all my spare money and time, making our home as beautiful and as comfortable as I could. My working phase of my life overlapped the first three years of being housebound. I had time to adapt, time to adjust and I didn’t even know I was doing it. Two phases ended, but I still had the constant of Adam, the anchor that held me steady while I built the phase I’m in now. Content, housebound, writing and happy. I got here, without even knowing it. I survive because I am here and I now can’t think of a single place that I would rather be. I know that might sound odd to you, but to me, there is a logic there, as if I didn’t feel this way, I would go mad, I’d fall into depression and I would probably end it all. I survive because I have all the things that it takes to make a human happy, right here where I am. To the modern mind I know that’s hard to grasp, but to our ancestors, it would have been easy. Think back to a time when people were born in the village where several generations of their family were also born and spent their entire lives. Not once leaving for any reason, because they couldn’t see anything out there worth leaving for. They didn’t leave because they were happy just where they were, just as I’m happy just where I am.

I have become so content in the space that I live, that I can’t even tell you when I last even looked out of the window. There is nothing out there that I long to see or want to be part of any longer, why would I, as I have everything I need right here. Unlike my ancestors, I have the benefits of the modern world, which actually make it easier to live an isolated life. Entertainment is at my fingertips, the world is there too and when my health is up to it, I can join it and chat to whoever is there. I don’t need physical people here in front of me, to have company when I need it, I just open my PC and there you all are. What keeps me going is all of this, plus a lot of magic from the medical world. There is one other thing that I haven’t mentioned, and that’s a zest for life. No, it doesn’t die just because we are doing so. As my body fails me, it tells me there is still much to do and how can you give up, when you haven’t finished doing all those things still to come. I keep going, because I want to see what tomorrow will bring, good or bad, I haven’t seen it yet and I want to, and as long as I or you have that need, we will all keep going, where ever we are.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 14/08/2014 – Too much

I hate the day before anything, be it Christmas, visits or interview, the day before is the day you wish just wasn’t there. Last night Adam was once again concerned about the whole thing, he thinks it is great that I have been asked to the interview as it shows that all I have written here is having an impact but he worries about the length of time, an hour sitting talking is a long time for me, especially……

Dumbstruck

Posted on by
10

The world and it’s dog, think of MS as a condition that affects muscles, both in pain but mainly weakness. They see us as future cripples, the people sat in wheelchairs, rarely seen without a carer and simply waiting for the day to pass. After all what value are we to the world, the cripples who can no longer work. Some look at us with pity, but most don’t look at us at all. We are invisible, long before we disappear completely by becoming housebound. I can say that, because if someone had asked me when I was 20, that is probably roughly what I would have said. Just as I saw spina bifida as people wearing calipers until my son was born with it and then died 12 days later. None of us really know what any chronic condition or disability is like until it somehow touches us. Even now, I couldn’t tell you if my Jeffery felt pain or felt anything at all, I just had to take the word of the doctors, that he was at peace in his misshaped body.

MS isn’t just weak muscles and pain, it is so much more. All you need to do is read my blog from its start to today, and you will see that there isn’t a single part of me that it doesn’t affect. Although, I do have to add that what you would read is my version of PRMS, one of five forms that MS took until recently, now there are only four. I discovered yesterday while reading on line that PRMS no longer exists, we have been absorbed into PPMS, although how I’m not sure. I’ve read the description often, and I quite honestly don’t fit. Yet, who am I to argue with the great and the good of the medical world, I am, after all, only the person who lives with it. In fact, I’ve lived with it now for over 30 years, but if you were diagnosed with RRMS, SPMS, PPMS or even benign MS tomorrow, I couldn’t tell you what lies ahead, because I haven’t lived your life. It’s not just MS that this is true of, whatever the condition, all of us would find our own quirks, symptoms, and difficulties, that’s just life though, as none of us live the same one in the same body.

At times people have asked me what is the worst thing about the conditions that I have. Yes, it is plural, I like the majority of people with a chronic condition have a collection of them. Why they travel in gangs, I can’t tell you the medical reasons, but I’d make a guess that once our bodies are weak, we are susceptible to other developing. As for the worst part of it all, well, it depends on what day and at what time you ask me. In the mornings, I am most likely to say that it’s the pain and by the evening the fatigue, catch me in the middle of a brain fog, and I’d most likely look at you stupidly and say very little of any sense. Chronic illness is a minefield filled with monsters, just waiting to take over from each other when the others have got fed up of playing with you. But if you have one, you already know this.

Today, though, my physical monsters are just treading water, the pain levels are set at normal and my fatigue just slightly higher, today, it’s the monster in my brain that is having the most fun. I have started and not finished a dozen things already, and my poor browser, has been straining under the number of web pages that I have opened, most I have little idea why. Concentration is little more than a distant memory. I have even stopped this post more times than you would believe, returning and having to read my earlier entries, and then sitting here trying to work out where I thought it was going. Even now, I’m not sure. Mind you, that’s nothing that unusual. For some reason, today seemed like the perfect day to change broadband suppliers. I had been thinking about it for a while, but out of the blue, I found myself actually doing it. So hopefully, as of the middle of next month, I will be flying on high-speed fiber and miles from the company who couldn’t even answer their phone without getting me angry and leaving me in tears. Yes, I will double check all that I’ve done when my own brain has returned.

I know that I am being rather flippant today, that is quite often the result of living in a muddle, as if you don’t take it on the light side, you’d drive yourself mad, if, I’m not already. Seriously, though, unless you are living with a brain that has been affected by something like MS, you don’t have a clue just how frustrating and depressing the whole thing is. I know that I am still managing to type out word after word and that I will appear to many as not having the slightest problem, but take my word for it, my brain is a mess. All of those wonderful tricks or the gizmo’s that are supposed to aid me in my everyday life, to me, are totally useless. It doesn’t matter what it is, my brain finds a way of turning it into an ignorable annoyance, something that doesn’t apply to me, or at least not at the moment it is trying desperately to put me back on track. It doesn’t matter if it’s a post-it note, a list, an alarm or even something huge in the middle of my computer screen, I can ignore it and totally forget ever even seeing it. Life with my brain is now one long smooth line, uninterrupted by all those annoying little things, like eating, washing or taking my meds. Well, it would be, if I hadn’t long ago started using Adams brain to fill in what I missed and of course my carers now keep me straight as well. Yet, I’m lucid and intelligent, well I think I was once, and might be occasionally now, as long as I don’t engage my brain, it will trip me up in seconds, if I let it and even when I don’t.

There is nothing in my life that annoys me more than those hoards of people who have happily brushed aside everything I have said, then try to tell me of this amazing way they know, of getting things done and never forgetting again. I learned long ago that I wasn’t only invisible, I was also mute as what I have said, was clearly unheard. Until you have spent an entire day, with my brain, in control of your life, you won’t understand, any more than you can understand the effects that pain has me, outside of the pain itself. When your brain is being eaten alive by lesions, nothing is as simple as it was just a week ago, far less a year ago. Unlike my body that now sits in a wheelchair, there is nothing visible that supports my brain. I can’t show it to you, all I can do is tell you, but then, of course, I forgot, I’m mute.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 01/08/2014 – A spark of truth

I am waiting for the phone to ring, Teressa and John are due to come and see us today the first time we have seen each other since Christmas. To be far I doubt I will get a call before 12, after all, they are on holiday and as she is staying with her brother, I know last night will have included more alcohol than is …..

Mentally unfair

Posted on by
36

When you are by yourself, as I am, day in day out, it is incredibly easy to take things to heart. What I mean by that, is that when someone says something perfectly innocently, it is heard or read in a totally incorrect way. When you send as many tweets as I do, or write as much, it’s not really surprising that from time to time, I completely innocently upset someone. It is even more likely to happen when your main audience is those with chronic illness, including those isolated as I am, by being housebound. When you are feeling down, are in a lot of pain or feeling more alone than normal, well we all take things in ways we normally wouldn’t. It used to be something I did a lot until I started to realise that I was just being precious. Then there are the times when I have suddenly found myself face to face with those I have upset, well, as face to face as the internet allows, and trying my best to sort the whole terrible mess out and often making it worse. The result is that now you wouldn’t believe the care that I try to take when I write anything, beyond a, “thank you” or a “(((hug)))”.

It is amazing just how much our moods are affected by what is happening to us at that second. As I said, I have frequently thought that someone was being either really nasty or far too personal for comfort. If you are like me, someone who has only come to social media since I became unable to work, understanding just how 140 characters, (as on my pet favourite Twitter only allows) can skew the real meaning with ease, takes time. Reading what isn’t there, is beyond easy. In the first year, I lost count of the times I found myself sitting here feeling wounded, but for some reason, I’m not the sort of person who makes a fuss about it. I just sit here quietly hurting, and actually making myself feel far worse than I did before I read it. It is easy to say, just take it with a pinch of salt, but when your body is racked with pain and you’re looking for an escape, not persecution, it’s sometimes hard.

Our bodies have so much to answer for, being in chronic pain is something that you get used to, but when you’re having a bad day, it’s affects us in ways we don’t expect. Without a doubt, I know that I, and probably others, wouldn’t bat an eyelid at any of those silly things that turn into that straw that breaks us. I’m using social media as it’s an example, as it one that I know for sure, we have in common. It could just as easily have been something on TV, or that our partners have said, whatever it is, I’m sure you can all sight your own examples. It’s easy for us to understand what is happening when we look back, but others aren’t always that patient. Adam has told me that he has often dismissed all I was saying and how I was doing so, because, he knew that that day, I was in pain, although I was totally unaware of my error myself. Those online can’t see me, don’t know me, and some often don’t care. So like so many things in our lives, it is us who have to take the care, choose our words, and our subjects, with others foremost in our minds. Our lives are so complex and as much as we like being around people, they don’t half make our lives harder.

Chronic illness steals so much from us, and for some of us, our patience is just one of them. I have to admit that I have over the years went through spells of hiding. I know that sounds odd to some, but when you’re struggling and you know that you have recently upset a couple of people, even when for the life of you, you couldn’t see how, it just feels easier to avoid them all. If I have hidden away, I know for a fact, that that means there will be others out there who have done just the same. If blogging has taught me one thing, whatever we have done, someone else out there will have done it as well. The one thing none of us should be doing is hiding. People don’t understand what is going on in our heads. They see our illnesses as physical and never take into account that the mental impacts can be huge. Just because most of the time we handle things well, doesn’t mean that we don’t have our off days. Every spasm, every time that we find ourselves with our arms too tired to push that wheelchair another inch, our mental state changes. It affects what we say and how we say it, and because we are so tied up with ourselves, we don’t always notice it and we can’t tell you, we don’t mean it.

We are tested in ways that the able-bodied and healthy will never understand. What our bodies do to our brains, especially our emotions, is something I know I didn’t understand, until I found myself here. It is only those closest to us who see it, feel it and know how to handle it. Our lives are nothing like they once were and this is just yet another example of how screwed up it becomes. So if I do at any time accidently hurt you, I’m sorry, and if you do me, well, I promise to understand and just brush it away.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 29/07/2014 – Unable to stop

I am in one of those “I just can’t be bothered moods”, not normal for me I must say. In fact, I don’t remember when I last had one, I just want to do nothing, not here online or anywhere else, I just want to curl up and disappear for the rest of the day and worse still, I don’t know why. I hate this, I know some……

It shouldn’t be this hard

Posted on by
14

I feel so weak, I don’t have a clue why I should feel like this, but I do. In fact, I started feeling like this a couple of days ago, but it has only become worse, not better. Every time I try to stand, my limbs are weak and don’t want to hold me, or even push me into an erect position. At first, as I said the other day, I put it down to the tremors and twitches, but I have begun to wonder what is truly at fault, is it my PRMS, or is it something else.

I spoke to my Dr on Monday, he phoned to tell me that he has at last received the letter from the consultant I saw about two weeks ago. As I knew, he is starting me on a drug that will hopefully melt my gallstones, plus he is arranging for the district nurse to visit me every couple of days, to give me an enema. As it is clear that my bowels are no longer capable of clearing themselves, they hope that the enema will stimulate them to move. At the moment they are bulking up until there is nowhere else to go, which is decidedly uncomfortable, if not painful. I took the opportunity to talk to him about the fluid retention and how it is now clear that I have been swelling up for far longer than I thought. Over the days that I have been on the higher dose of Frusemide, my entire body shape has changed, so he suggested that I stay on the 40mls to stop it from returning. I forgot at the time that there is an issue with my being on such a dose as I have Vasovagal. When it was diagnosed with it, I was warned about taking Frusemide as it might aggravate it. For those who don’t know, Vasovagal can and has made me pass out with incredible ease. Which is exactly how I feel, as though I could do at any second. I can’t be sure, but I think that could also be aggravating the twitches and tremors. Adam and I talked about it last night and agreed that I shouldn’t take it today and see what happened. By mid-afternoon, nothing had changed, despite me drinking as much I possibly could, without throwing up, another sensation that is hanging around, but we will see.

I know all too well that I might just be grabbing at straws. We all do it when we feel out of control, whatever we can come up with, has to be a better answer than the one we don’t want to face, that this just might be what it is, a new way of living all over again. So I’m holding tightly to that straw, no matter how thin, as I don’t know how well I would cope with that dreaded reality.

I had realised a few weeks ago that I was putting on weight again. At the time I was totally lost as to why, as I haven’t changed my eating habits, and although my weight had gone up when I was first housebound, by a very annoying and unshiftable 3 stone, it had stayed constant since then. I avoided standing on the scales, but when I was at the hospital, they forced me onto them. I was horrified when they told me that I was just under 14 and a half stone. Another 17lbs, and every single one of them more unwelcome than the first. This morning, I fetched the scales from the cupboard and ventured to stand on them in the kitchen, 13st 4lbs. I’m still not happy about it, but at least the Frusemide has clearly removed the mythical weight as it was nothing other than water. Which leaves me in a total quandary, carry around unwanted fluid and possibly feel better, or be happier about my shape and weight, and feel like death warmed up. Why is it, that the longer we live with our pet illnesses, that the harder the options get and the more likely it is, whatever the result, we’re not going to like it?

Wednesday 29th

I had to stop writing yesterday, I was feeling terrible, so for the second day in a row, I retreated to my bed. By the evening, I was feeling a lot better, not perfect, and the twitches were still there, but smoother if twitches can be smooth. The difference from the day before was marked, Adam and I decided it was worth not taking the Frusemide this morning as well, just to see what happened. Well here we are, the next morning and I don’t feel like I want to pass out. I twitching like a mad twitchy thing, but I don’t want to pass out. I think we have the reason, all we have to do now, is find the balance, what dose will control the fluid without making me feel ill.

The district nurse has been and like some kind of mad whirlwind has taken over my life. Firstly, she took my blood, but then there were a million questions, and chat about every single part of my life. Of course, we started with my bowels and the type and frequency of enema that I will require. She isn’t happy with the type that has been prescribed, it is a Phosphate Enema which she feels it too violent in its actions and in her experience, the smaller more modern ones, are better, but we clearly have to try the prescribed version. I’m hopeful that it will be here by Friday, so she will do the first dose then. She asked if I was having problems with my bladder, so I let her know about the leakage I have during the day and my recent nighttime bed wetting. To my delight, she is the person he should have sent me to, not the hospital continence team. She can supply the towels and pads so we don’t have to keep buying them. She did say, though, that it might still be worthwhile seeing the hospital team as well, as they might be able to offer other options, especially as I can no longer manage to self-catheter.

With the toilet areas all covered, we headed onwards. Next came mobility and how I was managing my wheelchair. She totally agreed that I should have an electric chair and is going to get me referred back to Westmark, the department at the Southern General hospital, who are responsible for the final decision. Then came the fact that I haven’t seen my Neurologist for at least 7 years, if not more. She could see that I was very reluctant when we got onto that area. I went over the last time I was there, and what had been said by all the different departments who I saw back then. I explained how they had all told me the same thing, that there was nothing that they could do for me. She was clearly not happy about what she was hearing, and I knew from what she said that she knew as well as I did, that I had just slipped through the system. There should have been return visits, and something had quite simply gone wrong. She is going to take a look at my notes and see what happened back then and let me know when she is here on Friday.

The stress of her entire visit built and built, by the time she left, I was once again a jibbering, twitching wreck. I know that I react to strangers is my home badly, but this one really pushed me. I had a distinct feeling that she intendeds to sort out my life, and I’m not too sure that I want her to. Yes, there are elements that I need from her, but the actual organisation of it all, I really don’t feel I am up to it. There will be more hospital visits, more people to see and more things to do when all I want is peace and quiet.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 30/06/2014 – The doctor lottery

I seem to be just jogging along the same path every day at the moment, inside all I want to do is sleep, but when I am lying down I find I can lie there without sleep appearing. Yesterday afternoon I lay in bed during the afternoon just aware of once again how dead my arms and legs where and how incredibly tired I felt. I would have sworn that I didn’t sleep at all, but the clock told a very different story, I had slept for well over…..