July 30, 2004

• I’m a mucking fess!

  
  

  WARNING:  Don’t look for any of the usual wit and whimsy and wisdom here.  Mostly today it will be some honesty, and more typos than usual (for reasons that will become clear later) and a lot of bitching and moaning and whining and self-pity.  Here’s the thing.

  
  

  My sweety, aka Kathy aka SuSu, has written movingly about her Damned Disease, myalgic encephalopathy/chronic fatigue immunodeficiency syndrome, aka fibro.  I have the same thing, only less severe, but mine has been getting worse lately.  A lot worse.

  
  

  Lately, lots of things hurt, and  hurt lots more than usual.  My feet hurt, my ankles hurt, my knees hurt, my back hurts, my shoulders hurt, my neck hurts. . . you get the idea.  I take two Aleve, and nothing much happens.  Being a recovering dope fiend, the heavy-duty stuff like Oxycontin (which may of us fibro types do take–that or Demerol) is not a viable option, even if I could afford it, which I can’t.

  
  

  I have no energy.  I wake up tired.  Today when I went to the laundromat for a shower, I just kept sitting and sitting in the car, partly because I didn’t know what to say if the counter clerk would ask me how I was doing, and partly because I just didn’t have the get up and go needed to, well, get up and go. When I do have something I have to do, I take ephedra and/or synephrine and/or caffeine.  If I don’t take it, I tend to fall asleep in the middle of the day.  Sometimes I wonder about what it’s doing to my heart and kidneys and liver and such, but I have to keep going somehow.  I have responsibilities, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

  
  

  And talking about going–I have the runs pretty much all the time, which is largely due to my diet, though–I eat lots of fresh fruits and veggies. Okay, it beats being constipated, but it does get inconvenient and the rectal bleeding can be a nuisance.  And then there’s the loss of bladder control.

  
  

  Lately I have been pissing myself on a regular basis.  I will think I am all done tinkiling, zip up and–SURGE–another dark stain on the front of my trou.  I have learned to stuff a few paper towels in my pants, which gives me an enviably well-endowed look–at least until the urine-soaked towel comes unmoored and starts creeping down my pantleg while I am pushing a shopping cart at the local Safeway.  This whole business has been annoying, not to say humiliating.

  
  

  The disease has a mental component, too, and lately I am lots fuzzier, mentally, than usual.  NY Times crosswords that I used to breeze through tend to stump me, at least for a few hours.  Store clerks say “How you doin’” and I’m stuck for an answer.  I go to a store to buy two things and forget one of them–always, it seems, the more important one. I screw up things like fixing a sandwich or taking a shower.  Yesterday, I managed to misplace one of my guns which I was packing at the time.

  
  

  Then there is the emotional component.  Lately I am getting curt to the point of rudeness with everyone from pedestrians to my sweety, which really sucks.  Kathy, besides having saved my life over and over again and besides making up the med packs for me that keep me as sane as I am, is the one person on the planet who merits my respect and affection and all the best I have to give.  Instead, she gets the worst.  Maybe it is true that no good deed goes unpunished, but she has gotten way more punishment from me than she deserves.

  
  

  Shakespeare wrote that when troubles come, they come not as single spies but in battalions, or something like that.  Besides all this fibro shit, my business has taken a sharp downturn at the worst possible time, when we have huge credit card bills coming in, and this on the heels of other uncommon stuff, like $300+ vet bills for our pets.  Plus we evidently need a new computer, or a massive repair/upgrade on the existing one.  Plus the funny noise in the front of my car is getting worse, it needs a new drive axle–the part came in, I have’t picked it up yet partly because I don’t know who I can get to do the work.  I can’t afford to have a regular garage do the work.  More and more I am feeling stressed out and inadequate to deal with the financial burdens.

  
  

  Then there’s the huge shipment of knives that came in last week that I don’t quite know what to do with.  I have so many knives in myh car that they are croding out a bunch of my other stock.  And I have another 386 knives on the way, but I sort of have a clue about what to do with them.  Meanwhile, I have been bugging the post office almost every day. “Are my knives in?”  “No, not today,” they say.  I don’t know who will be gladder when the damn things finally do arrive, me or the post office clerks.  And the shipment will amount to over 100 pounds, and I’m not supposed to lift more than 20 pounds at a time because of my hernia (yeah, THAT’S been hurting a lot lately, too) so I’ll be doing a lot of unpacking and schlepping when they finally do come in.

  
  

  At least I’m not getitng loaded.  That is something, and kind of a big something.  At least I have a little self-awareness, and a wee smidge of gratitude that things aren’t worse.  I have no doubt that things will work out perfectly, just as they always have.  But right now, I am a cranky, bitchy, pissy old fart and way less fun than usual to be around. 

  
  

  Even my cat has been making herself scarce lately.  And who could blame her.  So how am I doin’?

  
  

  “Fine, thanks.  And yourself?”

  • 3:33 pm
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