I hear it all over the place. Showers are the cure for all that's wrong with you. On a hot day, there's nothing like a hot shower to get all that sweat off you. On a cold day, a nearly scaldingly hot shower will take the ache right out of those bones. I never got the "hot shower" thing since I've always been sensitive to heat but the shower was a great place to solve problems in my head. Unless my father was timing me in order to teach me how to be more efficient or something, I did learn to enjoy a good shower. My father seemed to believe that adding time pressure to any task would help me somehow unless he just enjoyed making me freak out.
So, you might think that this is going to be about how my father ruined showers for the rest of my life but you'd be mistaken. As I started to experience arm pain and my restless arm syndrome, showers stopped being pleasant. After a shower, I have more trouble than usual using my arms as more than counter balancing weights somehow involved in walking. No, really! I'm just talking about swinging my arms. I can do that. Bringing my hands up to a typing position will be miserable
It's not just a matter of pain. I'm worn out compared to how I've been feel normally which isn't exactly fresh.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Overdoing It
You would think I'd learn my lesson one of these days and I might. It's been 15 years of my lovely Chiari experience and I have yet to have this lesson stick. It doesn't matter that there might only been ten cool and breezy days of sunny Spring/Fall weather each year. Yes, they are glorious. It's enough to make me want to stay in the office all day writing and interacting with others as best I can. Unfortunately, I have limits and they aren't limits that anyone would ever find reasonable. Even on the nicest day of the year, I have to spend most of the day sitting in my recliner doing very little.
If that sounds wonderful, you're right because it's great for the first week. There is so much that I would like to do but overdoing it is one of those things you don't forget. If I don't forget the penalty, why do I slip up and overdo things so often? For one thing, the line between doing just enough to satisfy my need to meet goals for the day is invisible and it moves. It seems that all it takes is one foot over the invisible line that moves and I'm in for a rough few days. Therefore, Melissa tries to remind me to avoid doing too much despite the fact that I have to leave more for her to do than she can handle.
I suppose I could get my team together and figure out a way to avoid overdoing it but I don't think I'd like the results. When you get right down to it, there's some small part of me that isn't open to all this compromise. I have resisted authority for as long as I can remember and my disability is the highest de facto authority in my life. Therefore, I need sleep but I can't deal with the anxiety attacks that hit when I try to sleep. The best thing I can do to thumb my nose at this Chiari dictatorship is to overdo it once in a while.
What's that you say? I'm not actually thumbing my nose at the pain and twitching that will come? I'm actually giving in to my fear of sleep at great cost to myself? You could say it that way but I prefer my way of putting it. Learning to take some of the sting out of bad situations by reframing them as advantages is one of my most important coping skills. When I do succumb to exhaustion and sleep for 3-4 hours and have my nightmares, I'll awaken feeling just as badly. Is that a defeat? You don't listen well. No! It's a chance to drink whiskey with club soda while telling myself it's actually 20 year old Scotch and not something rejected as paint thinner.
In truth, it doesn't taste half bad and it helps dull the pain. Best of all, it calms the nerves. My doctor just reminds me to avoid overdoing it. Oops.
If that sounds wonderful, you're right because it's great for the first week. There is so much that I would like to do but overdoing it is one of those things you don't forget. If I don't forget the penalty, why do I slip up and overdo things so often? For one thing, the line between doing just enough to satisfy my need to meet goals for the day is invisible and it moves. It seems that all it takes is one foot over the invisible line that moves and I'm in for a rough few days. Therefore, Melissa tries to remind me to avoid doing too much despite the fact that I have to leave more for her to do than she can handle.
I suppose I could get my team together and figure out a way to avoid overdoing it but I don't think I'd like the results. When you get right down to it, there's some small part of me that isn't open to all this compromise. I have resisted authority for as long as I can remember and my disability is the highest de facto authority in my life. Therefore, I need sleep but I can't deal with the anxiety attacks that hit when I try to sleep. The best thing I can do to thumb my nose at this Chiari dictatorship is to overdo it once in a while.
What's that you say? I'm not actually thumbing my nose at the pain and twitching that will come? I'm actually giving in to my fear of sleep at great cost to myself? You could say it that way but I prefer my way of putting it. Learning to take some of the sting out of bad situations by reframing them as advantages is one of my most important coping skills. When I do succumb to exhaustion and sleep for 3-4 hours and have my nightmares, I'll awaken feeling just as badly. Is that a defeat? You don't listen well. No! It's a chance to drink whiskey with club soda while telling myself it's actually 20 year old Scotch and not something rejected as paint thinner.
In truth, it doesn't taste half bad and it helps dull the pain. Best of all, it calms the nerves. My doctor just reminds me to avoid overdoing it. Oops.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Summer Is Coming
Other than a tongue in cheek reference to the "winter is coming" theme of George R. R. Martin's now famous books, this title is a twist on that theme. Turning it on its head, summer is coming and it will bring a time of great hope and struggle with it. Winter has made all of my aches and pains work. After the long winter, I am exhausted and all but crushed but I seem to have survived. One of the great lessons in pain management is to survive now and deal with everything else later. Life doesn't like to cooperate and gives me crises with short term deadlines but the details don't matter right now. I survived and summer is coming.
Over the course of the next month, we'll get into A/C weather which sucks the humidity out of the air along with the heat. My energy will improve along with my overall mood. The heat is just as hard on my body as the cold but I can counter it better. Maybe it isn't so much a matter of dealing with the bad things in my life so much better. I know that I am doing better about getting excited about the good things. Facebook games and Playstation games interest me again. "FIFA '11" is the PS3 soccer game and I've started to see the poetry of the game again. My attacking midfielder cuts through groups of defenders. My defenders make long passes behind the opposing defense and the forwards manage to stay onside once in a while. When they do, it can be glorious. My favorite is when they occupy all the opponent's defenders leaving me wife open in front of the net.
On Facebook, I have good friends who play Galaxy Online II with me. I'm such a nerd but I'm surrounded by fellow nerds. I'm replacing older obsolete missile frigates wuth updated versions. At the same time, I'm gathering resources for the next big technolol leap forward. It's exciting even when it's frustrating. In real life, the coffee is very good though it's a risk of extreme tooth pain. There's always some sort of tradeoff but that's just life.
Yes, there are problems and issues all the time but there is also good in the world. I must remember to see the good even more than most people. I'm surviving and summer is coming.
Over the course of the next month, we'll get into A/C weather which sucks the humidity out of the air along with the heat. My energy will improve along with my overall mood. The heat is just as hard on my body as the cold but I can counter it better. Maybe it isn't so much a matter of dealing with the bad things in my life so much better. I know that I am doing better about getting excited about the good things. Facebook games and Playstation games interest me again. "FIFA '11" is the PS3 soccer game and I've started to see the poetry of the game again. My attacking midfielder cuts through groups of defenders. My defenders make long passes behind the opposing defense and the forwards manage to stay onside once in a while. When they do, it can be glorious. My favorite is when they occupy all the opponent's defenders leaving me wife open in front of the net.
On Facebook, I have good friends who play Galaxy Online II with me. I'm such a nerd but I'm surrounded by fellow nerds. I'm replacing older obsolete missile frigates wuth updated versions. At the same time, I'm gathering resources for the next big technolol leap forward. It's exciting even when it's frustrating. In real life, the coffee is very good though it's a risk of extreme tooth pain. There's always some sort of tradeoff but that's just life.
Yes, there are problems and issues all the time but there is also good in the world. I must remember to see the good even more than most people. I'm surviving and summer is coming.
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