What did i leave out so far? What does the future hold? Who's most vulnerable? Why? Music? Tv? Zoom? Facebook, tic tock, youtube? I'm in a line for a vaccine by being a fragile old soul. Today i reluctantly went to my 1st rehab visit in yrs because of chronic back pain. I decided on advice from a wonderful friend to try & take better care of my self. My stroke left me with this crazy burning freezing pain.My back? That was when I'd jumped off the roof on a dare as teen. I was supposed to hold the unsecured bamboo pole & slide dowm like a fireman. But i didn't hold tight enough. Wham. Could hardly stand. Put to bed with ice pack & aspirin. Today i would have been off to er in a flash for xrays & mri. Not back then. If you could tuff it out, you were ok. When i went to the pt for an assessment she noticed some probs, so didn't want to go in today. The waiting room slowly failed with some more sorry souls. 1 in a wheelchair & 1 with a cane. Nobody acknowledged one another. Weird & unhealty with tv news babbling on the wall & nobody watches. For my 1st visit, she found a rash on my leg & bulge in my belly when i strained. She thought the rash was cellulitis. The shameful belly? When was i going to get my big hernia fixed? Now I'm on cortisone cream for rash & keflex for cellulitis. A pending surgical consult for an op thatI don't want. My PA didn't know what was the thing on my leg. Rash? Or infection? I didn't want to take my feeble ugly body back for her help & eagle eyed scrutiny. Point is what do you have to do to get better? Watch more tv? Spend hours online reading & posting?
For me: my therapy has been music & npr radio. No tv news. Yuck. Vapid except for public tv which is usually full of deadly boring talking heads (useless pols trying to justify their existence while really sucking up to $$$). For pain i read or lately play a computer game which so demands my attention that i ignore my pain & time can melt away. Otherwise when the Pain is bad enough> me in bed curled up like a baby. & taking too much gaba (my anticonvulsant & only Rx for my type of pain). Then my eyelid started dropping from too much gaba. Now trying to suck up the pain. It just is my price tag for surving my cva.
When Will i focus on the other unanswered??? Later. To get better—I've gotta pushpushpush myself. Try something new, scary or both. Like online dating. To live means taking risks. But who wants Risk.
The pic is one i made yesterday for my cousin who loves roots appalachian music.
Tony,
As we get older, we begin to experience limits to what we can do to live our lives productively. In our modern, digital, world it is easy to just give up our fight. We experience the law of gravitation in an intense, personal way.
But there are ways to combat this. It is a fight, and perhaps it is the struggles we wage that can keep us going, keep us human, and not just become a passive robot. This new newsletter is a great way to fight, and I am very much enjoying the obvious efforts you are putting into it.
Wonderful. Keep it up and do not quit the fight!
-Peter