September 2007 Archives
Just when you think it can't get any more hectic or full or anxious or overwhelming, you get a nice shiny "SLOW DOWN" lesson-from-the-Universe wrapped up in a box with a big gaudy bow. No, I didn't get sick (which would be expected, but frankly, too plebian for a ninja master of IAS/NADM such as myself). I got pain. Big, distracting, sleep-interrupting, life-rearranging pain, the kind that makes you fantasize idly about how soothing it would be to be unconscious right now. I have an old shoulder injury that has caused me stiffness and pain over the years, which for no apparent reason (as in, no fall, no yank, no lifting of heavy objects, no specific trauma at all that I can see) decided to go all nuclear on me last week. It was so painful, I called my parents up at midnight and asked them to come get me and take me to the emergency room (Josh had to stay home with the kids). They did x-rays, scratched their heads, prescribed me Vicodin and ibuprofen, gave me a sling and sent me home around 4am. I saw an orthopedist a day later who gave me a cortisone shot and sent me on my way with a sunny "it'll feel 100% better soon, just avoid any overhead activity with the arm". And it did begin to feel better, about 60-70% for a day or two, but then got worse again. After suffering with it over the weekend, I called the ortho's office on Monday morning. When they finally called me back, the orthopedist's nurse told me "oh, sometimes it takes up to 14 days for cortisone to work." Didn't seem to think they should see me again until that time had gone by. Didn't have any other advice as to what to do for the pain beyond the drugs I was already taking.
Did I mention that the pain is really, really bad? I'm talking the kind of bad that takes over the rest of your being, squashes all your other physical and mental activities into a little corner while it sits in the middle of the room demanding regular attention. The kind that wakes you up in the middle of the night and makes you cry at how alone you really are--there's just you, and the pain, and everything else is way far away on the sidelines. Drugs reduce the pain enough to make it bearable, but then I'm all spacey and foggy and mentally useless. And day after day after day of being in pain makes you a narrowed, diminished person, one focused on dealing with the pain and the body's limitations--one living on the other side of the looking glass from the normal, expansive, full-of-all-kinds-of-things self. It just really, really sucks.
The pain is bad, but so is the fact that I'm crippled. I can't use my arm--my right arm, my primary arm--for almost anything. I can type (like this) when properly propped up and supported, but I have to keep pausing and resting. I can hold something light in my right hand, I can use my wrist; but anything that starts to involve the shoulder action (and you'd be surprised how much of what a body does involves the shoulder somehow) makes me yelp and have to stop.
And of course, timing is everything…which is what makes me suspect that this whole incidence is some sort of *#*!&% lesson (one that I am clearly still resistant to). Josh is leaving for a biz trip on Tuesday, and then I'm supposed to be getting on a plane on Thursday myself, first to go meet Josh at the Cash Machine Workshop that my work is putting on, and then another set of planes-trains-automobiles (well ok, no trains) to get to Viable Paradise. I am raging, raging at the unfairness of this happening now of all times, when I really really want and need to be well and whole in body and mind. But I am determined to go. I will especially not let this stop me from fulfilling my dream of going to VP. I am nothing if not tough and resourceful when it comes to things like this. Perhaps I am being a bit bullheaded or stubborn too; I'm willing to cop to that. But I will not back down on this, Universe, do you hear me? Can we just take the point as having been sufficiently made and resume the learning how to slow down and balance overwhelm in a couple weeks when I get back?
Really, I am trying to stay positive and am doing everything I can to make this shoulder craziness better (or as better as it will get over the next week). I have been to a chiropractor and an acupuncturist (my first time ever--which truly deserves its own blog entry but I don't know as it will ever get it). I'm wearing magnets. I'm drinking water. I'm icing and heating. I have an appointment with my primary care doc this afternoon to at least discuss pain and inflammation relief, and I have an appointment with a second opinion ortho tomorrow. I am taking (most of) the day off work today, just so I can rest (since sleeping has been problematic). I am in the process of triage, figuring out what's truly important and needing to get done--and by whom--at any given moment, and am tossing the rest (and trying not to feel guilty about the things not getting done or the expectations of me not being met).
And yes, grudgingly, I am still trying to focus on the blessings around me as well. It could be worse. It could be so much worse.
But can it get better now, please?
The two words forming the light side/dark side framework of my emotional life right now are "full" and "anxious", in all their nuanced shadings and entendres. Full because, well, duh, do I really need to go through that again?--ok, full of activities, full of work, full of thingstodoplacestogopeopletosee. Most often, life is full in the sense of "containing all that can be contained" and "stretched to capacity". But life is also full in the sense(s) of "complete", "abundant", "rich", "satisfied", and "generous". Yes, I'd do much better with a little more sleep, and it'd be great to have a few more hours in the day so that a wee tiny measure of leisurely downtime could be indulged in here and there, but despite that, life still consistently delivers the good stuff. Case in point, just today: stealing a few moments of leisure and snuggles in a hammock with my boys on a beautiful late summer evening, as geese honked and airplanes zoomed overhead.
(and yes, I do have approximately a zillion pictures that I have not yet bothered taking the time to upload to our family gallery site; "archivist" is just not high on my job description list right now)
But (for posterity) I also want to record the dark side--there is just so much anxiety floating around the aether of my thoughts these days as well. Anxiety about work (mostly performance and money related, natch). Anxiety about starting a new venture--par for the course, I know, but still. Anxiety about the increasing compaction of time and that possibly important things could get lost in the shuffle (if they don't get exploded or squoze down into diamonds by all that pressure). Anxiety about parking the kids in front of the TV so much lately. Anxiety about being perceived as a bad friend because I just don't have the bandwidth for check-ins on top of everything else. Anxiety about aging and physical health and body image, exemplified by the familiar poster child of weight gain--all that "full" stuff has led to a return to emotional eating (yes, I know there's a pun in there somewhere), and I just haven't had the energy to stamp it out again. Anxiety about amount and quality of creative output--with VP looming on the horizon I just can't seem to shake the persistent bugaboo of "oh god maybe I really *am* boring/unoriginal/lazy/ignorant/all around unfit for membership in the club". I'm sure if I thought about it more I'd find at least 6 other things I'm anxious about but even this incomplete list of anxiety producers is making me--yeah, anxious. I wish my brain had a "power down" button, it'd come in handy these days. Or maybe just an "interrupt negative cycle/replace with positive thoughts" program. That'd be handy too. I'm hoping that just putting it all down here in Parenthetical form will exorcise some of it, at least.
Sigh. If it wasn't already past my bedtime, I'd try to elaborate more, but I think just opening the can of worms is all I can do for now. I do know that for both the fullness and the anxiety, the cure seems to be composed of equal parts 1) increasing my skill at compartmentalization and 2) giving myself a break. (And let's not forget that crazy old wives' remedy, "getting more sleep".)
Speaking of which….
