The pain has become bad enough to invade my last sanctuary…my dreams.
The one last, best way to escape it has been breached, and I woke up hurting even more. I hesitate to contact my VA doctor about it, I don’t think she believes in pain. It would probably entail another trip to American Lake to see the orthopedic surgeon, and would likely complicate any plans for the mastectomies…nah. One thing, one step at a time. In my dreams, the pain was accompanied by every person who has ever caused me pain. I was haunted through the night by ex’s, horrible bosses, co-workers from hell, bullies…all the people who I thought I had let go long ago, were all there to judge me. Like the childhood injuries that you think you have recovered from-yet they come back to haunt us as we age. Broken bones ache again, surgical sites mourn for missing pieces, long gone. From head to hips I am throbbing. I’ve been getting some bad headaches with neck and shoulder pain…it may be an indication that the stenosis is getting worse. It all leaves me in a state of little will and no energy. Yesterday’s aborted post is a good example. It’s just too hard to think, sometimes. It very well could be behind this last bout of depression. Hard to ‘be happy’ when everything hurts. I went back to bed after an hour, and overslept.
It was nine-thirty when I woke up, and I hurried out to apologize to Mom. I figured she would be frowning and hungry, she just smiled and said she was fine. If I had been out there the whole time, the finger tapping and time checks would have been popping off like firecrackers. I offered her a bowl of cereal, but she said she was just dandy, with a cookie. I waited a few minutes and then offered her some scrambled eggs. “Lets just think of it as ‘second breakfast, Mom.” She gave me a dimpled smile and exclaimed, “Oh, that sounds delightful!” So at ten am, Mom finally got fed. I more or less collapsed in the office, holding out for noon. I really didn’t expect Mom to eat that much at lunchtime, having eaten well once she finally had breakfast, and she didn’t. That’s when I went back to bed, and slept until three-thirty in the afternoon. Up again until Mom went to bed after dinner, and right back down. Some of the pain that woke me at three am this morning is undoubtedly due to laying down for so long. It looks like Mom had another restless night, too. She was up to the bathroom and checking her talking clock before four am. She goes to bed (or to her room, anyway) before seven pm at night. She doesn’t stay down for long before she starts her rounds, back and forth to the bathroom, coming out to check the time, pouring coffee…only to leave it on the table to grow cold. She often keeps this up until Kevin comes to bed. It has made me wonder more than once if she ever really gets any sleep at all.
We didn’t get the downpour from yesterday’s storm that we wanted, although some areas did. Bremerton got an inch and a half. We got just enough to make the grass wake up and start to grow. sigh. The prevailing theory up here is that if you water the grass, you just have to cut it more. We don’t mind when your yards turn brown, we know that when it rains, they green right back up. And our yard is only getting bigger as we clear the edges of the forest. It’s really amazing how much it opens our space up, to be able to see into the forest, unblocked by blackberry vines and wild roses. Given the fire danger, I want to clear the dry underbrush out close to the house. That will be a very long project, at my speed. Long ago, my father planted a living Christmas tree out front. At some point during the long years since it got backed into and nearly toppled it. Someone stuck a cement block underneath, and it survived, albeit at an angle. It has grown…stranger over time. I’ve been playing with the idea of trimming it up for some time now…maybe a Dr. Seuss style topiary of some sort. Clever little Einstein uses the tree as a blind, knowing that he can get to the compost pile before I see him, using the tree for cover. I’m going to trim it up off the ground, so he can’t do that.
Einstein’s skin is getting loose again, I think he’s getting ready for another growth spurt. I really need to take some video of him playing soccer. For some reason, he needs to hold a small toy in his mouth when he plays ball. Its sort of like a self-imposed handicap. He can then only use nose and feet to move the ball. His front feet double as paws and hands, and he is becoming amazingly adept at moving the ball around. Sometimes he will deliberately put the ball in amongst the feet of Kevin’s office chair, practicing moving the ball through the labyrinth of chair legs. We use a tennis ball in the house, but outside we have a standard size soccer ball. With that one, he cheats. He worked and worked stretching his jaws until he could get a grip on the ball with his teeth, so he usually carries it back to me. In all fairness, outside the ball goes much further. Of course, indoors there’s also the Momstacle to get around. Along with the cats, Einie is just certain that Mom wants to play with him. I don’t know how many times a day he will put that ball under her feet. And she still only kicks at him. Without a NO to go with it, kicking is just play behavior to him…but I still can’t convince Mom of this. You’re a Doodle, Mama, you really are.
Della's Days 