FOWC with Fandango — Comfortable
Note: Yes, it is the wrong word, but somehow, this is what popped up in my email this morning. So I’m going with it anyway!
Comfortable is what I wish I were, but which, so far, I’m not. Despite a new mattress, pillows, and all that, by the time morning has rolled around, my back has seized up.
It’s frustrating, not to mention painful. On a more positive note, the thing I have to do — which is the thing I don’t want to do because I could really use another couple of hours of sleep — is get up and move.
Every time I see Lionel Barrymore in his wheelchair — a result of his arthritis — I wonder how come they didn’t help the guy keep moving. But those were the days when if it hurt a lot, they plopped you in a wheelchair and that was it. Bad idea.
Arthritis hurts. No argument. About the only thing that makes it hurt less is activity. It doesn’t have to be heavy exercise. Mostly, I can’t do that for other reasons including that my heart doesn’t like it.
Light exercise helps a lot. “Woman’s work” like vacuuming the house, cooking, dusting — all of that and other examples of inside work loosen you up and make you feel a lot better. Quickly, too. A bit of gardening and even light raking or snow shoveling makes it better.
The hardest part of the effort is not doing the work. It’s getting out of bed and getting started. I have to do a lot of mental pushing and shoving to convince myself that it’s what I need to do. Oh, those conversations with one of me saying “Sleep. You need sleep. You are tired.”
Meanwhile, the other me is shrieking “Get your lazy butt out of bed and do something. Come on! You can do it.” I frequently say it out loud too, sitting on the edge of the sofa telling myself “You can do this, I know you can. One little push and you’ll be up and moving.”
Eventually, the second me wins.
Those first few steps are pretty wonky, but I look relatively normal a bit later. Eventually.
My arthritis is severe. I take relatively high (or as high as I’m willing to go) amounts of painkiller. All they do is lower the level of discomfort. Nothing will fix it. More drugs won’t make it hurt less and would probably make the rest of me feel worse.
I had surgery to fix my spine when I was 19. It was an early version of the work they do these days, but without the electronic assistance and tiny implements. Everything depended on saws, drills, and bone paste created from a different bone (my left hip). It crumbled over the years and now, it’s a mess. No surgeon wants to go fix another surgeon’s mess. Fixing old surgeries is one of those things most surgeons hate.
Since chances are about equal of making things better — or making them much worse — and this from Boston’s top spinal neurologist — I’ll pass.
I’m up. Not quite at’em yet, but I’m working on it. It’s about an hour and a half earlier than I wanted to on my feet, but I am out of bed, dressed, having coffee. The vacuuming is done. The dogs are barking. The sun is shining through the hazy, humid air. And I feel better.
Almost comfortable.
