I've had more trouble writing this particular entry than any I can recall writing before. I've spent most of the previous week muddling around in what you might call a state. At first, I thought it was purely physical. The Chiari symptoms seem to be part punishment and part balancing mechanism. At first, I was on a high like I've only experienced a few times since I got sick. I was paying attention to the other side of writing at last by getting my work "out there" as I've been telling Melissa. At the same time, it wasn't truly out there as in available for potentially hostile individuals. I'd sent the link to download a few selected pieces to a few friends who knew me to varying degrees.
My high got even higher when I had information drop into my lap on Facebook. An old friend is happy, healthy and as fully engaged in life as ever. I'll give myself a little more credit than that. When I decided that I wanted to run down a list of names, there was my friend sitting right there in the open but with a new name. She managed to find her someone and get married just as I had. Maybe I was giddy from my time spent awake but I set aside my usual reticence and desire to have a decision surrounded on all sides before taking it. I sent a Facebook message which I do not think has been received but there is no way to know for sure. Some part of me that is still nursing wounds from old high school and college battles fears the rejection I'd see in no reply. I've always been one to avoid provoking others to anger or frustration, I have suppressed my urge to follow up. It might not be considered harassment or anything like that but I don't have to cross legal lines to disappoint myself. I suppose I'll wait a while longer then attempt another re-introduction.
Within hours of sending this message, I was crushed by fatigue and vulnerability. I'd been awake for 72 hours or longer in pain. Certainty went away along with the arguably manic energy I used to try marketing my work. There is a lot of uncertainty when you set out to write fiction for a living but this was different. I mentioned the many layers of uncertainty with my old friend. They range from the technical to practical matters like being priority 11 on a day with 10 slots in it which is something that causes me to not return messages and emails but then there are the old wounds which cause me less rational doubts. My temporary physical deterioration combined with the old wounds and the doubts inherent in writing for others to see until it became something different.
Thanksgiving wasn't really a day of giving thanks for me as a child. It was a day for earning my oxygen in front of a wider audience than usual. I have to be doing pretty badly to fall back on trying to earn my oxygen already but this was worse. I tried to measure my worth in the world with a few well placed sallies from inside my little fortress. The result was pain, exhaustion and silence. In my dazed state, I took quiet to mean an ominous silence. For some reason, I made excuses to discount the people who did express caring and I'm sorry for that. When I'm trying to justify my use of public oxygen, it is because I believe that I am in deficit. I feel the need to move mountains and too weak to raise my head for long.
I need to shift my thinking. People are distracted by the holidays while I look for distractions from the holidays. All that blaring joy hurts.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Overdoing It
I should get a theme song one of these days so I can just play it instead of explaining how my mind got ahead of my body once again. I have an author's page on Facebook now where you can get three of my favorite recent works of fiction if I know you and trust you to not distribute it. It was easy to set up and I actually copy and pasted the catalog to the new page. Of course, I've been trying to clean some in advance of the house repair that should be happening soon. That involved backing up a phone call to the insurance adjustor in case I was mistaken and the contractor was not supposed to inform him. It also helps to offer friendly reminders when you need a favor from someone somewhere. I'm not sure whether this would count as a favor or an ADA requirement but I'm not going to be able to live here while people are banging hammers, etc.
In any case, I've been frustrated by how long it has been taking me to write the new novel. I have no idea when I'll be ready to declare the first draft of "Professor Pruitt" finished if I don't decide that the whole idea was terrible anyway. The gears in my head threatened to strip on me. I have people who have "liked" my author page mostly because they are my friends. A couple of people have drafts out from the Adobe Acrobat server but they do not want me sitting behind them looking over their shoulders and flinching every time I think they might be frowning. At least two of these victims...err....volunteers are fellow chronic pain patients and have perfectly awful yet understandable reasons of their own to flinch.
Maybe something in my unfinished folders would generate a new idea for me but they ended up being discouraging. I stopped writing those drafts for good reasons. What about the old standby novels? No. Melissa came as close as she will come to asking me to drop that project and seemed very relieved when I spoke of it in the past tense. Those novels can be seen as my first investment of serious time and energy in writing.
The adrenaline rush wore off and the arthritis kicked in. Before I could reach a full scale panic attack, I remembered that I was overdue for my nice calming medicine. I was hit with a brief case of title envy when I saw a link to something on Facebook called "The Klonopin Diaries" or something very close to that. Unfortunately, it could very well have been a non-fiction account of someone living with a panic disorder. I take my Klonopin for sleep since my mind refuses to shut down at bedtime yet it never has done much of anything that I've noticed. Melissa says she can tell the difference and I made her my coach in such matters for one of the million or so reasons why I married her. I trust her to look out for me.
My beloved is a very good coach. I was sitting here fretting because I don't have a reasonably professional looking picture of me taken in the last decade to use on my author's page. I know. It's a bit too ballsy of me to call it an author's page based on a lot of unpublished work so I listed this as my official site. I also threw an age restriction on there because I don't want Facebook to sue me for dropping the f-bomb every so delicately the way I do. Obviously, I've been posting links to these posts on my main FB page and my Twitter feed so making the author page 18+ won't affect anyone who wants me relax and not give a shit about my fucking language.
It's almost 4:30 AM and I'm having serious thoughts about my fourth cup of coffee in the last 24 hours. I could drink some herbal tea instead and I really should get away from my keyboard. If I start a major writing project at 4:30 AM while my arthritis is bad, I'm asking to a 10+ Chiari headache. This career thing will take time. Managing agonizing pain is my full-time job as much as I'd prefer writing. I need to go use my nice PS3 in my comfy chair where I will fall asleep if the need strikes. Up here at my desk, I will start pacing when the need hits. I haven't fallen down the stairs in a while. Yes, go sit in the comfy chair and be a good cat daddy.
I think I'm experiencing a case of what fellow Chiari blogger, Brian Murphy, wrote about recently. He is upset that so many Chiarians he knows aren't making it. The fact that you know you will experience agonizing pain for a significant part of the day is a bit of a downer. I deal with this in a number of ways. First of all, I have my beloved's support. Melissa is a treat to be around on a daily basis. She understands that pain control is a full time job except that it doesn't stop at 40 hours/week and the pay... Okay. The the disability pay is something to be thankful for though it is not a gift. I paid into the SSDI system with everyone else and then I bought extra private disability insurance because it seemed like the smart thing to do. Treating it as a gift is one of those traps that can lead to the ultimate disability trap. "Have I earned my oxygen today?"
In my case, I go on absurdly difficult mental quests. Get my fiction published not just once but on an ongoing basis. Find people who mattered in the past so that I can tell them how much mattered. There has been someone on top of that list for a long time. I ran into her accidentally in the Summer of 1993 and then she disappeared. I went into total brain lock back then before it was one of my symptoms and so I never told her and I've been trying to make up for it ever since. Of course, saying that I spent the last 20 years doing anything would be an exaggeration. Since 1999, my life has been about Melissa and pain management more than anything else. Every once in a while, I found myself looking for a short list of people for an hour or two. I found one of them about a decade ago but she asked me to not tell anyone where she was so I found it easier to pretend that she was still missing.
I found another one this morning. I hadn't seen her or heard anything from her since the Summer of 1993. How could someone avoid running into me even accidentally over all that time? Well, it probably starts with moving somewhere outside the Small World boundaries and ended with getting your own life. She might or might not contact me but I told someone that I would be happy enough just to know that she is alive, healthy and happy somewhere. Another impossible quest has succeeded so it would probably be smart to take a day or two off.
After all, the last thing I want to do is embark on another quest without getting a decent day of sleep first. Must remember that a watched inbox never fills.
In any case, I've been frustrated by how long it has been taking me to write the new novel. I have no idea when I'll be ready to declare the first draft of "Professor Pruitt" finished if I don't decide that the whole idea was terrible anyway. The gears in my head threatened to strip on me. I have people who have "liked" my author page mostly because they are my friends. A couple of people have drafts out from the Adobe Acrobat server but they do not want me sitting behind them looking over their shoulders and flinching every time I think they might be frowning. At least two of these victims...err....volunteers are fellow chronic pain patients and have perfectly awful yet understandable reasons of their own to flinch.
Maybe something in my unfinished folders would generate a new idea for me but they ended up being discouraging. I stopped writing those drafts for good reasons. What about the old standby novels? No. Melissa came as close as she will come to asking me to drop that project and seemed very relieved when I spoke of it in the past tense. Those novels can be seen as my first investment of serious time and energy in writing.
The adrenaline rush wore off and the arthritis kicked in. Before I could reach a full scale panic attack, I remembered that I was overdue for my nice calming medicine. I was hit with a brief case of title envy when I saw a link to something on Facebook called "The Klonopin Diaries" or something very close to that. Unfortunately, it could very well have been a non-fiction account of someone living with a panic disorder. I take my Klonopin for sleep since my mind refuses to shut down at bedtime yet it never has done much of anything that I've noticed. Melissa says she can tell the difference and I made her my coach in such matters for one of the million or so reasons why I married her. I trust her to look out for me.
My beloved is a very good coach. I was sitting here fretting because I don't have a reasonably professional looking picture of me taken in the last decade to use on my author's page. I know. It's a bit too ballsy of me to call it an author's page based on a lot of unpublished work so I listed this as my official site. I also threw an age restriction on there because I don't want Facebook to sue me for dropping the f-bomb every so delicately the way I do. Obviously, I've been posting links to these posts on my main FB page and my Twitter feed so making the author page 18+ won't affect anyone who wants me relax and not give a shit about my fucking language.
It's almost 4:30 AM and I'm having serious thoughts about my fourth cup of coffee in the last 24 hours. I could drink some herbal tea instead and I really should get away from my keyboard. If I start a major writing project at 4:30 AM while my arthritis is bad, I'm asking to a 10+ Chiari headache. This career thing will take time. Managing agonizing pain is my full-time job as much as I'd prefer writing. I need to go use my nice PS3 in my comfy chair where I will fall asleep if the need strikes. Up here at my desk, I will start pacing when the need hits. I haven't fallen down the stairs in a while. Yes, go sit in the comfy chair and be a good cat daddy.
I think I'm experiencing a case of what fellow Chiari blogger, Brian Murphy, wrote about recently. He is upset that so many Chiarians he knows aren't making it. The fact that you know you will experience agonizing pain for a significant part of the day is a bit of a downer. I deal with this in a number of ways. First of all, I have my beloved's support. Melissa is a treat to be around on a daily basis. She understands that pain control is a full time job except that it doesn't stop at 40 hours/week and the pay... Okay. The the disability pay is something to be thankful for though it is not a gift. I paid into the SSDI system with everyone else and then I bought extra private disability insurance because it seemed like the smart thing to do. Treating it as a gift is one of those traps that can lead to the ultimate disability trap. "Have I earned my oxygen today?"
In my case, I go on absurdly difficult mental quests. Get my fiction published not just once but on an ongoing basis. Find people who mattered in the past so that I can tell them how much mattered. There has been someone on top of that list for a long time. I ran into her accidentally in the Summer of 1993 and then she disappeared. I went into total brain lock back then before it was one of my symptoms and so I never told her and I've been trying to make up for it ever since. Of course, saying that I spent the last 20 years doing anything would be an exaggeration. Since 1999, my life has been about Melissa and pain management more than anything else. Every once in a while, I found myself looking for a short list of people for an hour or two. I found one of them about a decade ago but she asked me to not tell anyone where she was so I found it easier to pretend that she was still missing.
I found another one this morning. I hadn't seen her or heard anything from her since the Summer of 1993. How could someone avoid running into me even accidentally over all that time? Well, it probably starts with moving somewhere outside the Small World boundaries and ended with getting your own life. She might or might not contact me but I told someone that I would be happy enough just to know that she is alive, healthy and happy somewhere. Another impossible quest has succeeded so it would probably be smart to take a day or two off.
After all, the last thing I want to do is embark on another quest without getting a decent day of sleep first. Must remember that a watched inbox never fills.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Logic Puzzle
You have to take your entertainment where you can get it. I happen to take a certain perverse pleasure in the logical puzzles my symptoms provide. Do you remember logic puzzles as a kid? You would get a subject and a list of clues. The subject might be something like "Summer Activities" and the clues would run along the lines sentences like "Martha hates swimming." You would make up a matrix with the activities or names across the top and the other down the side. Eventually, you would learn that Billy likes boating and X out the other names for boating and the other activities for Billy. You would be able to narrow down Martha's preferences to the other three choices and go from there.
My logic puzzles would have to be three dimensional because you would need to be able to list activities, symptoms that prevent those activities and things to moderate or aggravate symptoms. Right now, we're moving into cold weather so my arthritis is acting up. It's been a bad year for arthritis in general but there is always room for decline. It is difficult to do anything with my arms or hands during a flareup but I can count on passive activities more because the boredom counts less during immediate pain. Drinking chamomile tea helps calm me and warms my hands which I can't bundle effectively and so I drink more of it in arthritis peak season. Then again, I refuse to give up writing altogether for any given season so I accept a pain increase which makes me want more tea which makes me sleepy.
Stress headaches are the worst for logical puzzles. The best way to make inroads against pain is to stop what you're doing that aggravated the symptom in the first place. Try doing that with stress headaches. I can stress about not being able to stop stressing over the original problem so that's pretty much out. There are two main tricks for dealing with stress headaches. One is learning to take breaks. The utility company that is threatening to cut me off is closed until Monday so I don't have to think about it on Saturday or Sunday. The other is attacking the problem once properly medicated and all. Utilities are a useful example since I'm not in trouble with them right now. (That's twice my knee twitched and hit my bottom desk drawer when I've asserted a lack of specific trouble. Honestly, bill paying time starts this Wednesday!)
Utilities are a great example because they don't make money by shutting you down. Paying them in full is the best solution but most are willing to take the maximum interest penalty allowable by law plus small fines to not shut you down. It tends not to add up to that much in what you pay them but I don't want anyone thinking that a corporation is doing something out of the kindness of its heart. Corporations have boards of directors expressly required to eliminate any heart and soul from consideration in favor of keeping stock prices high. Businesses can be owned by individuals who often have good hearts. You can stay warm by taking a deal from the power company, reduce your stress level and they make money on the deal.
Relationship stress is actually tougher than monetary stress most of the time. Of course, monetary stress is the most commonly cited cause of relationship stress. Don't ask it to make sense. It will simply snarl at you as the cycle spins faster. I am defining relationship stress as broadly as possible here and recognizing subsets which I will ignore for the moment. We all know about marital stress, parent/child stress and various kinds of friendship stress. If you live with and love someone who is driving you out of your freaking mind, there is no easy answer. Therefore, said loved one might make you explain something obvious to you for the fifteenth time that day. Given that you do not wish to hurt them, your options for dealing with the loved one are limited.
Try making a logical puzzle out of two adults living together. Drink some chamomile tea and reduce the headache but be prepared to hear about it should you not wash the mug fast enough. If you take too long, you might end up worse off than when you began. Relationship deafness is a good tactic although you run the risk of ignoring a serious concern. The good news there is that you spend much of your life learning what's safe to ignore and what isn't.
Unlike those logic puzzles of old, symptom and pain puzzles usually involve a little of this and a little of that. My doctors and I used to talk of it all like a big old fashioned machine with a lot of knobs. If you turn one knob all the way up, you might feel pretty good for a while but that knob is likely to malfunction shortly. You need to learn how to turn each knob just enough to get the benefit you need with minimal risk. When it works, it can be great fun and a big boost to your morale. When it doesn't work, it can be interesting to figure out why. When a knob breaks and has to be replaced, it can be most interesting of all if painful. What can I replace this with that is similar enough to have the same effect but without being so close that it breaks right away.
If nothing else, finding new medical answers can lead to Han Solo quotes.
"This one goes here. That one goes there."
"Turn it off! Turn it off!" Said with small explosions in the background.
I know. I prefer to call it eccentricity.
My logic puzzles would have to be three dimensional because you would need to be able to list activities, symptoms that prevent those activities and things to moderate or aggravate symptoms. Right now, we're moving into cold weather so my arthritis is acting up. It's been a bad year for arthritis in general but there is always room for decline. It is difficult to do anything with my arms or hands during a flareup but I can count on passive activities more because the boredom counts less during immediate pain. Drinking chamomile tea helps calm me and warms my hands which I can't bundle effectively and so I drink more of it in arthritis peak season. Then again, I refuse to give up writing altogether for any given season so I accept a pain increase which makes me want more tea which makes me sleepy.
Stress headaches are the worst for logical puzzles. The best way to make inroads against pain is to stop what you're doing that aggravated the symptom in the first place. Try doing that with stress headaches. I can stress about not being able to stop stressing over the original problem so that's pretty much out. There are two main tricks for dealing with stress headaches. One is learning to take breaks. The utility company that is threatening to cut me off is closed until Monday so I don't have to think about it on Saturday or Sunday. The other is attacking the problem once properly medicated and all. Utilities are a useful example since I'm not in trouble with them right now. (That's twice my knee twitched and hit my bottom desk drawer when I've asserted a lack of specific trouble. Honestly, bill paying time starts this Wednesday!)
Utilities are a great example because they don't make money by shutting you down. Paying them in full is the best solution but most are willing to take the maximum interest penalty allowable by law plus small fines to not shut you down. It tends not to add up to that much in what you pay them but I don't want anyone thinking that a corporation is doing something out of the kindness of its heart. Corporations have boards of directors expressly required to eliminate any heart and soul from consideration in favor of keeping stock prices high. Businesses can be owned by individuals who often have good hearts. You can stay warm by taking a deal from the power company, reduce your stress level and they make money on the deal.
Relationship stress is actually tougher than monetary stress most of the time. Of course, monetary stress is the most commonly cited cause of relationship stress. Don't ask it to make sense. It will simply snarl at you as the cycle spins faster. I am defining relationship stress as broadly as possible here and recognizing subsets which I will ignore for the moment. We all know about marital stress, parent/child stress and various kinds of friendship stress. If you live with and love someone who is driving you out of your freaking mind, there is no easy answer. Therefore, said loved one might make you explain something obvious to you for the fifteenth time that day. Given that you do not wish to hurt them, your options for dealing with the loved one are limited.
Try making a logical puzzle out of two adults living together. Drink some chamomile tea and reduce the headache but be prepared to hear about it should you not wash the mug fast enough. If you take too long, you might end up worse off than when you began. Relationship deafness is a good tactic although you run the risk of ignoring a serious concern. The good news there is that you spend much of your life learning what's safe to ignore and what isn't.
Unlike those logic puzzles of old, symptom and pain puzzles usually involve a little of this and a little of that. My doctors and I used to talk of it all like a big old fashioned machine with a lot of knobs. If you turn one knob all the way up, you might feel pretty good for a while but that knob is likely to malfunction shortly. You need to learn how to turn each knob just enough to get the benefit you need with minimal risk. When it works, it can be great fun and a big boost to your morale. When it doesn't work, it can be interesting to figure out why. When a knob breaks and has to be replaced, it can be most interesting of all if painful. What can I replace this with that is similar enough to have the same effect but without being so close that it breaks right away.
If nothing else, finding new medical answers can lead to Han Solo quotes.
"This one goes here. That one goes there."
"Turn it off! Turn it off!" Said with small explosions in the background.
I know. I prefer to call it eccentricity.
Friday, November 15, 2013
First Day Back
In the way most people mean, I've been back from New York for a while now. I think it might even be a week or something close but the travel costs me a lot in pain. This might be my first day back from total convalescence. I started a downturn sometime back in September or October when the weather changed and I started getting excited about October. It might have been the weather or my body might not know the difference between eustress and distress. (I am so grateful to Mr. Mark Davis for an excellent lesson on the subject in Gym/Health class ever so long ago!) That's good stress and bad stress respectfully in the simplified terms I was ready to learn in grade school. It's the difference between anticipation and fear or the night before Christmas or the night before some big exam.
The distress followed in short order. Barbara Allen, my sister-in-law, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in early October. Whether deserved or not, she has a little reputation for taking care of things in her own time. She knows what I mean. I'm all too happy to report that this was an exception and that she's cancer free in what seems like record time. I guess it's good to have a sprinter in the family. (Obviously, the time went slower for her and her recovery isn't quite over so don't go jumping all over her.) I'm more of a marathon man if I may extend the metaphor a little. Sometimes, I forget this in the heat of battle. (Just can't resist a mixed metaphor!) I want to win and be done now if not yesterday. I could barely resist taking it out on every loved one in sight but I'm not going to bash myself over it.
The fact is that my pain meds stopped working for the most part in October and then I had some guaranteed bad times that felt like someone was kicking me while I was down. I can handle that part quite well on my own. Thank you very much. There was some hope during my last full day in New York when I was able to get past the pain enough to enjoy MSNBC. They held out and kept their internet/cable long enough for me to have some entertainment while I was there and it was much appreciated. Nonetheless, the trip back home crushed this nascent recovery as expected.
Having read my last few posts, I decided to hold out until I could write something positive. While I maintain my position on the grouchy side of the Force, I don't want to chase everyone away with pure grumpiness. There are plenty of cute little kids out there being excessively brave to show us all that all we need to do is hope. That's not exactly how it works for them but it's harder to raise money for the various Children's Hospitals with ads about how Johnny doesn't want to take his medicine today because it tastes terrible or hurts going in and he feels sicker after taking it anyway. Maybe I'll find a way to make the concept work and write "Short Term Thinking Johnny" as an ad for them.
Now that I'm back to my normal levels of pain that I can handle even if they piss me off at times, it feels like a break from the pain. Honestly, the greatest danger is that I'll treat it like one, overdo something and then go backsliding. It isn't easy because all I want to do is write, write, write! It started with a recent burst of activity on the tablet because there's not much else I can do while virtually chair bound. I wrote my friend who never writes back because I knew she could sop up the activity. Oops! This was when she decided to write back and I found myself writing as fast as I could manage with stylus and tablet. Barbara would have let me use her PC or her laptop but neither would have worked well in the sofa bed or comfy chair I staked out for myself. Melissa did a great job picking out that tablet for me! My poor friend had to cry uncle but she was a big help just by responding on those days.
Let me offer a few quick reminders about my change of season tactics concerning chronic pain. For those of us with arthritis, we may have to choose between excess sweat and pain until the cold weather sets in for good. For me, I learned to take the sweat over my bitter objections. I used to think sweating was one of the worst things in the world and I still dislike it. On the other hand, my arthritis medicine doesn't work right without swaddling as a supplement. Oh! It might have helped to have confirmed that my doctor allowed a temporary increase in that medicine to help get me through what I call - with apologies to slightly aging women - the change. For those of you without my incredible doctors, please try to stay warm and bundled where you are sorest. You might find that a little temperature discomfort can go a long way for pain control and there's no chance of tolerance, addiction and I guess overdose of warmth/fire is the same risk for everyone.
Here I am up and out of my comfy chair and sitting in my writing chair and it's good for the soul.
The distress followed in short order. Barbara Allen, my sister-in-law, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in early October. Whether deserved or not, she has a little reputation for taking care of things in her own time. She knows what I mean. I'm all too happy to report that this was an exception and that she's cancer free in what seems like record time. I guess it's good to have a sprinter in the family. (Obviously, the time went slower for her and her recovery isn't quite over so don't go jumping all over her.) I'm more of a marathon man if I may extend the metaphor a little. Sometimes, I forget this in the heat of battle. (Just can't resist a mixed metaphor!) I want to win and be done now if not yesterday. I could barely resist taking it out on every loved one in sight but I'm not going to bash myself over it.
The fact is that my pain meds stopped working for the most part in October and then I had some guaranteed bad times that felt like someone was kicking me while I was down. I can handle that part quite well on my own. Thank you very much. There was some hope during my last full day in New York when I was able to get past the pain enough to enjoy MSNBC. They held out and kept their internet/cable long enough for me to have some entertainment while I was there and it was much appreciated. Nonetheless, the trip back home crushed this nascent recovery as expected.
Having read my last few posts, I decided to hold out until I could write something positive. While I maintain my position on the grouchy side of the Force, I don't want to chase everyone away with pure grumpiness. There are plenty of cute little kids out there being excessively brave to show us all that all we need to do is hope. That's not exactly how it works for them but it's harder to raise money for the various Children's Hospitals with ads about how Johnny doesn't want to take his medicine today because it tastes terrible or hurts going in and he feels sicker after taking it anyway. Maybe I'll find a way to make the concept work and write "Short Term Thinking Johnny" as an ad for them.
Now that I'm back to my normal levels of pain that I can handle even if they piss me off at times, it feels like a break from the pain. Honestly, the greatest danger is that I'll treat it like one, overdo something and then go backsliding. It isn't easy because all I want to do is write, write, write! It started with a recent burst of activity on the tablet because there's not much else I can do while virtually chair bound. I wrote my friend who never writes back because I knew she could sop up the activity. Oops! This was when she decided to write back and I found myself writing as fast as I could manage with stylus and tablet. Barbara would have let me use her PC or her laptop but neither would have worked well in the sofa bed or comfy chair I staked out for myself. Melissa did a great job picking out that tablet for me! My poor friend had to cry uncle but she was a big help just by responding on those days.
Let me offer a few quick reminders about my change of season tactics concerning chronic pain. For those of us with arthritis, we may have to choose between excess sweat and pain until the cold weather sets in for good. For me, I learned to take the sweat over my bitter objections. I used to think sweating was one of the worst things in the world and I still dislike it. On the other hand, my arthritis medicine doesn't work right without swaddling as a supplement. Oh! It might have helped to have confirmed that my doctor allowed a temporary increase in that medicine to help get me through what I call - with apologies to slightly aging women - the change. For those of you without my incredible doctors, please try to stay warm and bundled where you are sorest. You might find that a little temperature discomfort can go a long way for pain control and there's no chance of tolerance, addiction and I guess overdose of warmth/fire is the same risk for everyone.
Here I am up and out of my comfy chair and sitting in my writing chair and it's good for the soul.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Sicker and Tireder
I'm wiped out. The only reason why I'm not predicting disaster and collapse is that I seem to do pretty well bluffing my way along with lousy cards. My pain doc appointment was frustrating and soothing at the same time. I got talked into letting them take my blood pressure which was the highest it has ever been but I think that is largely due to the fact that my arm is still throbbing. I feel like the very picture of my favorite grandmother who helped raise me early on. (Both of my parents were working so someone needed to take me!) She always seemed to be feeble, rarely left her chair and complained of arthritis all the time. I miss her dearly to this day and I don't expect that to change.
In a time when all my symptoms are spiking and I'm losing ground on my temper, there is one sign of hope. I don't spend as much time in my chair as I did a few years ago. In fact, I've written 2-3 marketable looking pieces in the last year. All told, that's probably around a thousand pages of work including multiple drafts. No, that wouldn't mean anything professionally but remember that my full time job is pain management. I do not remember a time when this favorite grandmother was active mentally or physically. I'm working on one of my serious projects nearly every day and I come off pretty well comparing myself to someone double my age who succumbed to presumed Alzheimer's.
There never has been a good apples to apples comparison for me. My parents used to compare me to the smartest kids in the school and I came out unfavorably. The other kids had other things going for them like healthy bodies and social lives so it was unfair for me to compare myself to them. My concentration was supposed to be on academics and nothing else. Even now, I wonder if I could drop down the pain scale if I simply did very little but listen to music.
Every month, I go to the pain doc and make the same report. I would probably be doing well but... This time, I admitted to an apparently endless series of buts. I'm just putting myself back together from being apart from Melissa for four days and I'll be leaving with her on another four day trip tomorrow. I plan on throwing everything I have into pain control yet I'm asking for it. November could easily be the worst month in memory. I do this willingly so that no one will shine a penlight into my eyes to make sure I'm alive. Someone at the pain doc's office asked why I haven't shaved or cut my hair. I explained but this nurse seems to think I've forgotten or something.
Hello! I'm still alive here. I'll cut my hair and shave when I am healthy enough to require a business appropriate appearance. Until then, I am gearing up for my 40th birthday purple Mohawk. After that, you never know. My birthday is awfully close to Halloween and all. Chances are that I won't be shaving off this much hair when it took me a few years to grow it all in the first place. Right now, it's a hedge against baldness. While I doubt it truly works this way, it seems as if it would be tougher to lose this much hair all at once. I think of it as a pet that's very difficult to kill accidentally. I wash it when I'm up to standing in the shower that long and blow it dry if Melissa is awake. It feels good moving around on my head somehow.
As a child and young adult, I wasted a lot of energy resisting grooming rituals. We're like birds getting our plumage just right for some mating ritual and I didn't want to be a bird. I felt like I was both too good for the stupid dance meant to show off on that animal level and that I was so bad that I could only fail if I tried. My mother sent me to the barber who was too good of a guy to get stuck in the middle of that pointless contest. He was such a good guy that I let down my guard around him. My mother stopped going there with me but sent me with the money. This is one case where I truly forgot what was going on and the barber decided that my family was good for it. I think I was suspected of sabotage but it was just forgetfulness.
The pain is going to force me to get to the point if nothing else. I went for my appointment determined to make no excuses. Things were not going to get better and I wanted something from them to recognize the months of pain. The first thing I got was flat out refusal. I was surprised and started to react badly when I remembered that I had rejected the change I was asking her to consider flat out because I read the monograph on it and determined that I was not a candidate and the main pain doc had agreed with me. We had rejected the other possible way to get me better medication because it involved minor surgery. We're talking outpatient stuff but I get nervous when surgery is mentioned. However, it sounded like my doctor was taking it off the table.
That's when I realized that we were not speaking the same language at that moment. I wanted pain relief not more narcotic medication. Therefore, we discussed changes that we could make around the periphery. We may or may not have intended to increase my arthritis medication. I'm not sure because the pharmacist says it exceeds the standard dosages but that he has an override to use. My doctor will let me know on Monday if I remember to call her. We increased by fibro medication to help deal with the muscle burn. That should help a lot and we kept me on the muscle relaxer which I take very sparingly.
I never identify the doctor or practice beyond "pain doc" for a number of reasons. One is that I have pragmatic doctors who are willing to let me try thinking outside the box. I have tacit permission to drink alcohol for pain management purposes despite the fact that most doctors would call this "self-medicating" and condemn patients for doing it. Maybe that's just mental health professionals who know that alcohol does not make you feel better about yourself. It's a mood booster in my experience. If you're sad, you'll get sadder. I've also seen it work but I guess I was more agitated than sad. I was scared about drinking too much though not by healthy person standards. We're not talking about drinking myself sick or even stupid. We're just talking about potential invisible effects on my liver.
That's when I heard the same three words from two different people. They are incredibly reassuring for how short they are. Melissa and my doctor both said, "I trust you." As long as good people are looking out for me, I can trust myself. Therefore, I will drink what I need to drink to dull the pain within my own paranoid limits until Melissa says when. Then I'll stop because I can't drive or walk to a liquor store.
Melissa says that things will get better. We'll get the house fixed even if it isn't done by our current contractor. We'll get to the plumbing which turns every shower into a wannabe bath. There will be a break in the stress somewhere. I'd like it to be soon at my favorite hotel.
In a time when all my symptoms are spiking and I'm losing ground on my temper, there is one sign of hope. I don't spend as much time in my chair as I did a few years ago. In fact, I've written 2-3 marketable looking pieces in the last year. All told, that's probably around a thousand pages of work including multiple drafts. No, that wouldn't mean anything professionally but remember that my full time job is pain management. I do not remember a time when this favorite grandmother was active mentally or physically. I'm working on one of my serious projects nearly every day and I come off pretty well comparing myself to someone double my age who succumbed to presumed Alzheimer's.
There never has been a good apples to apples comparison for me. My parents used to compare me to the smartest kids in the school and I came out unfavorably. The other kids had other things going for them like healthy bodies and social lives so it was unfair for me to compare myself to them. My concentration was supposed to be on academics and nothing else. Even now, I wonder if I could drop down the pain scale if I simply did very little but listen to music.
Every month, I go to the pain doc and make the same report. I would probably be doing well but... This time, I admitted to an apparently endless series of buts. I'm just putting myself back together from being apart from Melissa for four days and I'll be leaving with her on another four day trip tomorrow. I plan on throwing everything I have into pain control yet I'm asking for it. November could easily be the worst month in memory. I do this willingly so that no one will shine a penlight into my eyes to make sure I'm alive. Someone at the pain doc's office asked why I haven't shaved or cut my hair. I explained but this nurse seems to think I've forgotten or something.
Hello! I'm still alive here. I'll cut my hair and shave when I am healthy enough to require a business appropriate appearance. Until then, I am gearing up for my 40th birthday purple Mohawk. After that, you never know. My birthday is awfully close to Halloween and all. Chances are that I won't be shaving off this much hair when it took me a few years to grow it all in the first place. Right now, it's a hedge against baldness. While I doubt it truly works this way, it seems as if it would be tougher to lose this much hair all at once. I think of it as a pet that's very difficult to kill accidentally. I wash it when I'm up to standing in the shower that long and blow it dry if Melissa is awake. It feels good moving around on my head somehow.
As a child and young adult, I wasted a lot of energy resisting grooming rituals. We're like birds getting our plumage just right for some mating ritual and I didn't want to be a bird. I felt like I was both too good for the stupid dance meant to show off on that animal level and that I was so bad that I could only fail if I tried. My mother sent me to the barber who was too good of a guy to get stuck in the middle of that pointless contest. He was such a good guy that I let down my guard around him. My mother stopped going there with me but sent me with the money. This is one case where I truly forgot what was going on and the barber decided that my family was good for it. I think I was suspected of sabotage but it was just forgetfulness.
The pain is going to force me to get to the point if nothing else. I went for my appointment determined to make no excuses. Things were not going to get better and I wanted something from them to recognize the months of pain. The first thing I got was flat out refusal. I was surprised and started to react badly when I remembered that I had rejected the change I was asking her to consider flat out because I read the monograph on it and determined that I was not a candidate and the main pain doc had agreed with me. We had rejected the other possible way to get me better medication because it involved minor surgery. We're talking outpatient stuff but I get nervous when surgery is mentioned. However, it sounded like my doctor was taking it off the table.
That's when I realized that we were not speaking the same language at that moment. I wanted pain relief not more narcotic medication. Therefore, we discussed changes that we could make around the periphery. We may or may not have intended to increase my arthritis medication. I'm not sure because the pharmacist says it exceeds the standard dosages but that he has an override to use. My doctor will let me know on Monday if I remember to call her. We increased by fibro medication to help deal with the muscle burn. That should help a lot and we kept me on the muscle relaxer which I take very sparingly.
I never identify the doctor or practice beyond "pain doc" for a number of reasons. One is that I have pragmatic doctors who are willing to let me try thinking outside the box. I have tacit permission to drink alcohol for pain management purposes despite the fact that most doctors would call this "self-medicating" and condemn patients for doing it. Maybe that's just mental health professionals who know that alcohol does not make you feel better about yourself. It's a mood booster in my experience. If you're sad, you'll get sadder. I've also seen it work but I guess I was more agitated than sad. I was scared about drinking too much though not by healthy person standards. We're not talking about drinking myself sick or even stupid. We're just talking about potential invisible effects on my liver.
That's when I heard the same three words from two different people. They are incredibly reassuring for how short they are. Melissa and my doctor both said, "I trust you." As long as good people are looking out for me, I can trust myself. Therefore, I will drink what I need to drink to dull the pain within my own paranoid limits until Melissa says when. Then I'll stop because I can't drive or walk to a liquor store.
Melissa says that things will get better. We'll get the house fixed even if it isn't done by our current contractor. We'll get to the plumbing which turns every shower into a wannabe bath. There will be a break in the stress somewhere. I'd like it to be soon at my favorite hotel.
Monday, October 28, 2013
My Old Favorite Band
I had been listening to nothing but Pearl Jam and WMMR for a long time now but I had a favorite band before Pearl Jam formed. I'm connected to Facebook and had been checking my "likes" to see how many things snuck their way in. That's when I remembered that I had the Spotify app on my page and, ridiculous name aside, it's free music including a band's entire history. One of these days, I had planned to listen to some of Phil's earliest work as lead singer of Genesis. It's awfully good. I had assumed that "Squonk" was some of that Peter Gabriel crap but it's on "Trick of the Tail" with Phil singing lead. "Entangled" is on this first album as well as "Ripples" which Melissa and I fell in love with seeing them in concert.
That was an amazing show. We had seats in the second level, front row centered on the stage. I got dazzled a lot but this was the show where I devised a lot of concert survival tactics. We had already seen Pearl Jam once but outdoors where we couldn't see a thing. This show was a revelation because I hadn't even bothered to purchase the previous album or two from Phil solo. He had let me down with one album utterly devoid of the life that always filled his voice. I was pleased to see him back with Genesis for one last tour but his voice sounded pretty bad on TV and I decided to sink back into memories of better days. Then I saw them performing "I Can't Dance" live somewhere and all the old life was back. They were coming to the Wells Fargo Center and I wasn't going to die without ever seeing my first favorite band play live.
I know. How can I go from Genesis to Pearl Jam? At the time, Pearl Jam was a force of nature with driving guitars and lyrics about bad things happening to good people. They were exactly what I needed because I needed to learn how to get angry without taking it out on myself. Along the way, I discovered that Eddie Vedder and Phil Collins had something surprising in common. They will be singing along in fairly different registers and then both of them soar to something transcendent. Listen to "Ripples" from Genesis and then "Given to Fly" from Pearl Jam if you're not sure what I mean. I'm pretty sure you can manage both from my Facebook page. Just beware of Eddie's ability to be most eloquent when dropping the f-bomb.
Then I saw Genesis live and realized just how alike the two bands really were. Phil sang lyrics that never would have made it past the record companies of the day. He took songs that fluttered and floated on the radio and made them rage right before my eyes. Mike Rutherford might not play as fast as Mike McCready but he is very good at what he does. Phil used drum machines as some of my friends would tell me with sneers in their voices but he used them with his drumming. He liked to say that the machines could handle the boring parts while he did the rest. I had been afraid that Phil would take it easy and avoid too many highs and lows but he soared right there before my eyes. It was wonderful.
There are so many things that I have been fortunate enough to see and do. My life may seem like a non-stop whirlwind of hellish torment and I see it that way all too often. It helps to remember those times of pure joy in as much detail as possible. I remember exactly the way Phil sounded when he told the crowd that Genesis wouldn't be back. They were retiring at the end of this tour. I realized that I had done it and had come so close to failing. Sweet success was mine at last. I remember the thrill I felt when I realized that Eddie was singing one of my favorite songs, "Porch," while swinging from a light fixture. I remember thinking the second Pearl Jam show was over and they broke into "Yellow Ledbetter." I remember the thrill of realizing that Genesis was going straight from "Home by the Sea" to "Second Home by the Sea" the way I thought it should have gone on the album. It sounded as if Phil was singing to Melissa and me when he sang "It's Gonna Get Better." I needed to hear that more than I even knew.
By the standards of our earliest days when we couldn't afford food, things sure have gotten better. My house may look like a bomb went off in it and I'm only talking about the structural damage from flooding but it's mine. I have the comfy chair I needed since our reclining love seat came apart. I know that my house is getting fixed partially anyway and that I'm going to spend the time while the job is being done in a more comfortable place. I'm going to win the important fights in spite of the pain. More precisely, to spite the pain.
The ordeal of not seeing Melissa for days at a time starts this Wednesday instead of last Wednesday. My week long reprieve is nearly over. It seems that I've already started my first physical reaction to missing her. It seems that I've lost the ability to sleep again. Climbing the stairs with sleep meds in me plus total exhaustion was exciting. There just doesn't seem to be much point in doing anything. I'm too tired to concentrate on anything already and my meds will not function under these circumstances. I don't want to sleep today because there will be plenty of time for sleep on those days when she's not coming home.
Not coming home. I try to tell myself that it's not really all that different from most days. She goes to work early for day shifts like today and stays late. I told her recently that her night shifts are as bad as not seeing her from midnight to midnight. She goes to sleep around midnight the night before, doesn't get up until the absolute last minute before going to work and then doesn't get home from the night shift until midnight or later. Even then, I know she's coming home at some point in that 24 hour period. That's not the case this time. I don't want to eat or sleep and she hasn't even left yet. I lose today because of whatever she does after work, tomorrow because it's a night shift and then she leaves on Wednesday.
All I can do is freaking endure again.
When I posted this, I had a sudden feeling of remorse. I don't edit my blog/journal work. These are my thoughts as I felt them at the time. At the time, I was freaking out in what I thought was a big way. It turns out that I'm getting a lot better at enduring as I get older. I was feeling the emotionally bruising sense that I have no local family other than Melissa in a big way. I've cast my parents out of my life for what I intend to be the final time. They were very big about adults sleeping in the beds they made as I grew up. This was always right before they fixed the immediate problem and left me with a bigger but longer term one. As I liked to put it, I was Wile E. Coyote and they were the big boulder that landed on me after I fell off the cliff.
The cliffs have been getting higher as I have gotten older but I made one decision while shockingly young. So long as it was only my life that was affected, I would die before seeking their help. At first, it was an easy decision because they simply imposed their "help" on me and I took it with bad grace. It's a Thomas Covenant sort of compromise from the early books before he learned better. As I got older, my life has gotten more interconnected which is both the problem and its solution. The problem is easier to discuss before the solution. My life always involves others now so the dying to preserve my principles option is out. It's not a last resort somewhere in my bag of tricks but it is completely out. I will die someday and plan on kicking and screaming the entire way there. That's the only way I go.
The solution is that there are others connected with me. Problems are unique to the people facing them. Truth is that I've found most problems will unravel if I ask for a small favor from someone. Once you add in the possibility of several someones who may or may not even know of each other, there is a solution for most problems that will hardly inconvenience anyone. I can't tell you what it is only because it is unique to each problem. It's subtle, it takes very little effort and it's how all of my best work has been done. The hard part is building up a network over the course of a lifetime. They are slippery and like to fall apart if you don't manage them. The best ones are the ones you can manage by doing things you'd do anyway. Social media helps the way Christmas cards did for previous generations. Just a little touch to let you know I haven't forgotten you. It sounds cynical but it isn't because it's always something I was going to do anyway.
I will miss Melissa while she is away but she won't really even be gone. There are these odd inventions called cell phones that I resist because they are annoying but this is a useful time to have one. Melissa will not be out of touch and she has her own networks that might even surpass mine. I will probably catch up on some writing I've been meaning to do unless the pain is too much. I love saying that because writing projects breed like cuddly rats. Every time I'm working on one, I think of half a dozen others. I will never catch up unless I run out of inspiration. I'll probably spend a lot more time online with the tablet like I did when I was in pain in the hotel. There are a few people to whom I'd like to reach out (see above about networks) but I haven't made the time yet.
I will endure but I'm not one of those pansy statues or buildings that waste away after a few thousand years. I will endure smiling or snarling but never passive.
Now I can risk putting this out there for others to see.
That was an amazing show. We had seats in the second level, front row centered on the stage. I got dazzled a lot but this was the show where I devised a lot of concert survival tactics. We had already seen Pearl Jam once but outdoors where we couldn't see a thing. This show was a revelation because I hadn't even bothered to purchase the previous album or two from Phil solo. He had let me down with one album utterly devoid of the life that always filled his voice. I was pleased to see him back with Genesis for one last tour but his voice sounded pretty bad on TV and I decided to sink back into memories of better days. Then I saw them performing "I Can't Dance" live somewhere and all the old life was back. They were coming to the Wells Fargo Center and I wasn't going to die without ever seeing my first favorite band play live.
I know. How can I go from Genesis to Pearl Jam? At the time, Pearl Jam was a force of nature with driving guitars and lyrics about bad things happening to good people. They were exactly what I needed because I needed to learn how to get angry without taking it out on myself. Along the way, I discovered that Eddie Vedder and Phil Collins had something surprising in common. They will be singing along in fairly different registers and then both of them soar to something transcendent. Listen to "Ripples" from Genesis and then "Given to Fly" from Pearl Jam if you're not sure what I mean. I'm pretty sure you can manage both from my Facebook page. Just beware of Eddie's ability to be most eloquent when dropping the f-bomb.
Then I saw Genesis live and realized just how alike the two bands really were. Phil sang lyrics that never would have made it past the record companies of the day. He took songs that fluttered and floated on the radio and made them rage right before my eyes. Mike Rutherford might not play as fast as Mike McCready but he is very good at what he does. Phil used drum machines as some of my friends would tell me with sneers in their voices but he used them with his drumming. He liked to say that the machines could handle the boring parts while he did the rest. I had been afraid that Phil would take it easy and avoid too many highs and lows but he soared right there before my eyes. It was wonderful.
There are so many things that I have been fortunate enough to see and do. My life may seem like a non-stop whirlwind of hellish torment and I see it that way all too often. It helps to remember those times of pure joy in as much detail as possible. I remember exactly the way Phil sounded when he told the crowd that Genesis wouldn't be back. They were retiring at the end of this tour. I realized that I had done it and had come so close to failing. Sweet success was mine at last. I remember the thrill I felt when I realized that Eddie was singing one of my favorite songs, "Porch," while swinging from a light fixture. I remember thinking the second Pearl Jam show was over and they broke into "Yellow Ledbetter." I remember the thrill of realizing that Genesis was going straight from "Home by the Sea" to "Second Home by the Sea" the way I thought it should have gone on the album. It sounded as if Phil was singing to Melissa and me when he sang "It's Gonna Get Better." I needed to hear that more than I even knew.
By the standards of our earliest days when we couldn't afford food, things sure have gotten better. My house may look like a bomb went off in it and I'm only talking about the structural damage from flooding but it's mine. I have the comfy chair I needed since our reclining love seat came apart. I know that my house is getting fixed partially anyway and that I'm going to spend the time while the job is being done in a more comfortable place. I'm going to win the important fights in spite of the pain. More precisely, to spite the pain.
The ordeal of not seeing Melissa for days at a time starts this Wednesday instead of last Wednesday. My week long reprieve is nearly over. It seems that I've already started my first physical reaction to missing her. It seems that I've lost the ability to sleep again. Climbing the stairs with sleep meds in me plus total exhaustion was exciting. There just doesn't seem to be much point in doing anything. I'm too tired to concentrate on anything already and my meds will not function under these circumstances. I don't want to sleep today because there will be plenty of time for sleep on those days when she's not coming home.
Not coming home. I try to tell myself that it's not really all that different from most days. She goes to work early for day shifts like today and stays late. I told her recently that her night shifts are as bad as not seeing her from midnight to midnight. She goes to sleep around midnight the night before, doesn't get up until the absolute last minute before going to work and then doesn't get home from the night shift until midnight or later. Even then, I know she's coming home at some point in that 24 hour period. That's not the case this time. I don't want to eat or sleep and she hasn't even left yet. I lose today because of whatever she does after work, tomorrow because it's a night shift and then she leaves on Wednesday.
All I can do is freaking endure again.
When I posted this, I had a sudden feeling of remorse. I don't edit my blog/journal work. These are my thoughts as I felt them at the time. At the time, I was freaking out in what I thought was a big way. It turns out that I'm getting a lot better at enduring as I get older. I was feeling the emotionally bruising sense that I have no local family other than Melissa in a big way. I've cast my parents out of my life for what I intend to be the final time. They were very big about adults sleeping in the beds they made as I grew up. This was always right before they fixed the immediate problem and left me with a bigger but longer term one. As I liked to put it, I was Wile E. Coyote and they were the big boulder that landed on me after I fell off the cliff.
The cliffs have been getting higher as I have gotten older but I made one decision while shockingly young. So long as it was only my life that was affected, I would die before seeking their help. At first, it was an easy decision because they simply imposed their "help" on me and I took it with bad grace. It's a Thomas Covenant sort of compromise from the early books before he learned better. As I got older, my life has gotten more interconnected which is both the problem and its solution. The problem is easier to discuss before the solution. My life always involves others now so the dying to preserve my principles option is out. It's not a last resort somewhere in my bag of tricks but it is completely out. I will die someday and plan on kicking and screaming the entire way there. That's the only way I go.
The solution is that there are others connected with me. Problems are unique to the people facing them. Truth is that I've found most problems will unravel if I ask for a small favor from someone. Once you add in the possibility of several someones who may or may not even know of each other, there is a solution for most problems that will hardly inconvenience anyone. I can't tell you what it is only because it is unique to each problem. It's subtle, it takes very little effort and it's how all of my best work has been done. The hard part is building up a network over the course of a lifetime. They are slippery and like to fall apart if you don't manage them. The best ones are the ones you can manage by doing things you'd do anyway. Social media helps the way Christmas cards did for previous generations. Just a little touch to let you know I haven't forgotten you. It sounds cynical but it isn't because it's always something I was going to do anyway.
I will miss Melissa while she is away but she won't really even be gone. There are these odd inventions called cell phones that I resist because they are annoying but this is a useful time to have one. Melissa will not be out of touch and she has her own networks that might even surpass mine. I will probably catch up on some writing I've been meaning to do unless the pain is too much. I love saying that because writing projects breed like cuddly rats. Every time I'm working on one, I think of half a dozen others. I will never catch up unless I run out of inspiration. I'll probably spend a lot more time online with the tablet like I did when I was in pain in the hotel. There are a few people to whom I'd like to reach out (see above about networks) but I haven't made the time yet.
I will endure but I'm not one of those pansy statues or buildings that waste away after a few thousand years. I will endure smiling or snarling but never passive.
Now I can risk putting this out there for others to see.
Friday, October 25, 2013
A New Definition of Pain and Suffering
The Pearl Jam show was amazing even if the crowd around me was less than stellar. I was not interested in getting a contact high from my neighbor's very skunky smelling pot nor did I appreciate the elbows to the head from him dancing while too wasted to stand. Oddly enough, the closest I came to losing my temper was when his girlfriend went to put her arm around him and gouged my face with her nails. She didn't leave a mark much less draw blood but I let them know how much I enjoyed coughing up a storm only to get whacked in the head numerous times.
The fact was that I was at the end of my rope when I got ready to go to the concert. Everything hurt already with this breaking last year's record for the harshest change of season pain ever. I thought I had planned well for this concert but a slight mistake buying tickets forced Melissa and me to start over and we lost the good seats that we were buying. Just too many numbers to type in such a short time. I didn't know the Wells Fargo Center as well as I thought so I figured any second level seat would do. Unfortunately, there is no third level. We arrived an hour early for the printed starting time only to learn that there was no opening band. The rest of the crowd strolled in just before the real starting time so I had spent two extra hours in a seat designed to squeeze every last cent out of a potential crowd. My knees cramped and I was wedged between the two chair arms. There was no leaping for joy from this PJ fan.
The show started on a quiet note which I found soothing for about 1.5 seconds. The crowd all jumped up and started dancing anyway. The first few songs were thought provoking and full of subtle guitar work but I couldn't hear a thing. The crowd was so loud that I couldn't quite hear the band. Pearl Jam's sound engineers fixed that problem before long but not until after I had loosened my ear plugs. Soon, I found a position where I could lean back against the top of my seat and see through a gap between a guy recording the concert illegally and someone who was pleasantly short. If I stood up any more, the sides of the chair were going to remove my pants and that's just something I prefer to keep private.
After the first few songs, it was a matter of agony and ecstasy. The agony came from all over my body including my legs where my thighs were going painfully numb while my swollen knees simply ached. The ecstasy came from the music and what I could see onstage. They played just about everything I had hoped to hear except "Love Boat Captain" for me and "Black" for Melissa and me. Mike played entire songs with his guitar held over his head. He must have been supporting all the weight with his left hand on the neck while still using it to play. He also played for long stretches with the guitar behind his head. It was incredibly cool to be on Mike's side of the stage even with my head brushing the Wells Fargo Center's roof. Eddie had been remarkably well behaved during the first two concerts we attended. This time, he climbed a stage light hanging from the roof and went swinging Tarzan style overhead (yet well below me) through "Porch." He had his feet resting on the flat top of the light but he did it with a microphone in hand so it was classic Eddie Vedder. We sang along to all the songs we knew at the top of our lungs (between coughing sprees for me - damn inconsiderate potheads!) in that rare tribal experience left in American life including "Not for You" which I realized is the ultimate expression of that tribal feeling. Outsiders who don't get us can just [stay away] which I'm editing because I'm not eloquent with the f-bomb the way Eddie is.
Somehow, my loosened right ear plug got knocked out of my ear. It might have been during one of those shots from the dancing plume of smoke next to me. You think? I didn't notice it for quite some time until I realized that my entire body was taking the sound from the speakers like body punches. All of my spares were in my bag which was wedged between my feet. My sensible precautions were coming unglued one at a time. I even had my sunglasses on top of my head because the stage was pretty dark from our angle until a yellow spotlight nailed me during "Yellow Moon." Not sure if that quite makes it to ironic but it nearly cost me my balance and I was properly dazzled for a few minutes.
Agony was winning out over ecstasy bit by bit. Sometimes, chronic pain is too unpredictable to prepare for regardless of your experience. As the concert ended, I realized that I was more than ready to leave. There was no jubilant seeking of Pierre and Matt from WMMR. I wanted a bathroom and to go home in that order. The bathroom was just outside our section but I was unsteady on my feet anyway. The pain had gone past my endurance probably before we left. I doubt anything but Pearl Jam could have dragged me out of my sick bed (recliner) that night.
I must have looked terrible because some big guy walked me to the front of the bathroom line daring everyone to say something. I mean that pretty much literally. He had an even clearer picture of how badly I was doing than I did. On the way toward the elevator or stairs, I fell twice on flat ground. I know how to take a fall but the concrete hurt anyway. My second fall took place right in front of a Comcast employee who seemed to be questioning my right to take the elevator. Jackass! The contrast between the drunk guy helping me and the employee failing to do his job by helping me is absurd. It just wasn't funny at the time.
The pain only got worse the next day. My main defense against this sorta pain is reclining into a comfortable position and meditating my way to sleep. I was too overwhelmed and touch sensitive to find any sort of comfortable position. Beer brought a certain numbness with it but it deprives me of sleep. The concert was Monday night and today is Friday (might be Saturday before I post) with the time in between a painful blur. My cats took outrageous advantage of the fact that I could hardly get out of my chair. I was the perfect napping platform and 30 pounds of cat or more did not help me get up to meet my needs. For a while, it seemed like some sort of congealed hell but time did pass.
I seem to have regained a few useful hours where I can meditate past the pain. At first, I blamed myself as being stupid for going to see my favorite band. The thing is that we bought the tickets in July when I was anticipating a lot of relief from the stress triggered pain of the time. Looking forward to this show brought me a lot of the relief I did feel. Call it stubbornness but Melissa and I are working on a revised set of rules for enjoying a concert despite extreme chronic pain. It might help to take a limo up with some fan friends of ours and we will need better seats. Getting the right mix of conditions for a little preliminary numbness could be crucial. Belgian beer in the limo plus using my right to take my medication when it's needed most seems logical. If there's a will,...sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and admit your preparations failed.
I hope it doesn't come to that again because a fourth Pearl Jam show will not be enough. I could follow them around the way people used to follow the Grateful Dead.
The fact was that I was at the end of my rope when I got ready to go to the concert. Everything hurt already with this breaking last year's record for the harshest change of season pain ever. I thought I had planned well for this concert but a slight mistake buying tickets forced Melissa and me to start over and we lost the good seats that we were buying. Just too many numbers to type in such a short time. I didn't know the Wells Fargo Center as well as I thought so I figured any second level seat would do. Unfortunately, there is no third level. We arrived an hour early for the printed starting time only to learn that there was no opening band. The rest of the crowd strolled in just before the real starting time so I had spent two extra hours in a seat designed to squeeze every last cent out of a potential crowd. My knees cramped and I was wedged between the two chair arms. There was no leaping for joy from this PJ fan.
The show started on a quiet note which I found soothing for about 1.5 seconds. The crowd all jumped up and started dancing anyway. The first few songs were thought provoking and full of subtle guitar work but I couldn't hear a thing. The crowd was so loud that I couldn't quite hear the band. Pearl Jam's sound engineers fixed that problem before long but not until after I had loosened my ear plugs. Soon, I found a position where I could lean back against the top of my seat and see through a gap between a guy recording the concert illegally and someone who was pleasantly short. If I stood up any more, the sides of the chair were going to remove my pants and that's just something I prefer to keep private.
After the first few songs, it was a matter of agony and ecstasy. The agony came from all over my body including my legs where my thighs were going painfully numb while my swollen knees simply ached. The ecstasy came from the music and what I could see onstage. They played just about everything I had hoped to hear except "Love Boat Captain" for me and "Black" for Melissa and me. Mike played entire songs with his guitar held over his head. He must have been supporting all the weight with his left hand on the neck while still using it to play. He also played for long stretches with the guitar behind his head. It was incredibly cool to be on Mike's side of the stage even with my head brushing the Wells Fargo Center's roof. Eddie had been remarkably well behaved during the first two concerts we attended. This time, he climbed a stage light hanging from the roof and went swinging Tarzan style overhead (yet well below me) through "Porch." He had his feet resting on the flat top of the light but he did it with a microphone in hand so it was classic Eddie Vedder. We sang along to all the songs we knew at the top of our lungs (between coughing sprees for me - damn inconsiderate potheads!) in that rare tribal experience left in American life including "Not for You" which I realized is the ultimate expression of that tribal feeling. Outsiders who don't get us can just [stay away] which I'm editing because I'm not eloquent with the f-bomb the way Eddie is.
Somehow, my loosened right ear plug got knocked out of my ear. It might have been during one of those shots from the dancing plume of smoke next to me. You think? I didn't notice it for quite some time until I realized that my entire body was taking the sound from the speakers like body punches. All of my spares were in my bag which was wedged between my feet. My sensible precautions were coming unglued one at a time. I even had my sunglasses on top of my head because the stage was pretty dark from our angle until a yellow spotlight nailed me during "Yellow Moon." Not sure if that quite makes it to ironic but it nearly cost me my balance and I was properly dazzled for a few minutes.
Agony was winning out over ecstasy bit by bit. Sometimes, chronic pain is too unpredictable to prepare for regardless of your experience. As the concert ended, I realized that I was more than ready to leave. There was no jubilant seeking of Pierre and Matt from WMMR. I wanted a bathroom and to go home in that order. The bathroom was just outside our section but I was unsteady on my feet anyway. The pain had gone past my endurance probably before we left. I doubt anything but Pearl Jam could have dragged me out of my sick bed (recliner) that night.
I must have looked terrible because some big guy walked me to the front of the bathroom line daring everyone to say something. I mean that pretty much literally. He had an even clearer picture of how badly I was doing than I did. On the way toward the elevator or stairs, I fell twice on flat ground. I know how to take a fall but the concrete hurt anyway. My second fall took place right in front of a Comcast employee who seemed to be questioning my right to take the elevator. Jackass! The contrast between the drunk guy helping me and the employee failing to do his job by helping me is absurd. It just wasn't funny at the time.
The pain only got worse the next day. My main defense against this sorta pain is reclining into a comfortable position and meditating my way to sleep. I was too overwhelmed and touch sensitive to find any sort of comfortable position. Beer brought a certain numbness with it but it deprives me of sleep. The concert was Monday night and today is Friday (might be Saturday before I post) with the time in between a painful blur. My cats took outrageous advantage of the fact that I could hardly get out of my chair. I was the perfect napping platform and 30 pounds of cat or more did not help me get up to meet my needs. For a while, it seemed like some sort of congealed hell but time did pass.
I seem to have regained a few useful hours where I can meditate past the pain. At first, I blamed myself as being stupid for going to see my favorite band. The thing is that we bought the tickets in July when I was anticipating a lot of relief from the stress triggered pain of the time. Looking forward to this show brought me a lot of the relief I did feel. Call it stubbornness but Melissa and I are working on a revised set of rules for enjoying a concert despite extreme chronic pain. It might help to take a limo up with some fan friends of ours and we will need better seats. Getting the right mix of conditions for a little preliminary numbness could be crucial. Belgian beer in the limo plus using my right to take my medication when it's needed most seems logical. If there's a will,...sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and admit your preparations failed.
I hope it doesn't come to that again because a fourth Pearl Jam show will not be enough. I could follow them around the way people used to follow the Grateful Dead.
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