Trying to Try

 

I am in bed Doing my stretches and feet circles and leg wiggles in bed trying to get the

strength to roll to stand to get my brace to take the pressure off to move to get to the bathroom. 

And I am wondering if I want to fully get up again.

 

I was so excited to be better and getting betterere before the cruise in march. I rallied, I pulled 

and I was doing so well. 

 

Then this crash after crash after crash and I just don’t know if I have it in me to get all the way up. 

What if I get up and this happens again? I am so tired. 

I was so happy to be back at work and doing more around the house and getting ready to go for 

walks and hikes and dancing again. And then it all went away. 

 

Again. 

 

I think two big things (years)  like this too close together is making it hard to believe there will be a pot of "good" 

(span of time of wellness) at the top of this mountain.

I keep hitting shame and guilt for being knocked down again. 

Like I have betrayed everyone who helped me the wheelchair year by doing “this”. 

I know logically that the odds of having this many hits this close together are slim. 

I know that it took five things in a couple months to knock me down: 

The car accident, 

the covid round 2, 

the really bad injury on the stool with both shins, esp. Poor left leg, 

the really bad fall on the memorial day weekend 

plus whatever this heart thing/chest thing is

I know we all will have health stuff and I know there will be decline points but this 

wheelchair/ribs/ locked in house for a year followed by whatever the hell this last few months is 

is too much too close together

I can’t find my vmmmm get up and go. I can’t remember the experience of waking up expecting to to life things 

When I landed flat with the memorial day trip over aya’s thing and crashed through the crate to flat on my belly -

 it was the first time i ever thought about just not getting up physically. 

The pain and the realization that I was going to be actually injured again - 

I really almost didn’t move - like I am just going to live here on the floor until I don’t.

When I tripped on the stool during that massage giving and it hurt so BAD 

I don’t know why I didn’t SAY anything and just ask for help - 

Why did I finish the massage with tears streaming? 

This person on my table is a friend who would have understood...  

if I had gone in then I wouldn’t have doctors not believing me now about the leg - 

 

I was too attached to finally doing better and i couldn’t bring myself to amidst I was really really hurt. 

What the heck is wrong with me that I tried to power through that instead of asking for help and ice? 

I went from starting to look good again and people commenting on it to looking worse than I ever have in my life. 

This prednisone this time has decimated me, I can’t remember ever feeling pretty. 

My face won’t unpuff. I can’t dress myself without planning every piece of clothing. 

Getting to the bathroom is an Olympic event still. 

I don't even like to take selfies anymore- yup ME not selfie

They used to represent hope now I just think I am always going to feel this crummy  

Nathan has taken the lead on taking pic of me and us.... and he doesn't like selfies 

I can see progress, part of me knows I can “do this” and I am making myself do the doctors, 

go to the appointments, take the meds, eat the foods while this huge part of me keeps wondering 

if its going to be another get up and then it all falls apart and I just let every one down again, and can’t stay up. 

The little victories that last time anchored me aren’t hooking in deep enough to really believe 

that there will be life life after, like the ann things, the dancing, the real packwooding, the hiking, 

the working and providing well for pups, being happy and energetic at work 

(even though right before this I had hit the same earnings I had years ago, even though I had raised my rates - 

I look so bad now I can’t remember being ready to go to work - 

I just look at myself and see one of those when I was a kid gmas in curlers in the houserobes even out in public 

because they just didn’t care anymore).  

I think it's the heart - energy flow part that is the difference maybe. 

I just can’t energy with the pressure on my chest.

I am trying in spite of it. I am rebuilding the leg. 

I am at a record low now again on the prednisone for almost a week. 

I am working on the spine. I know if I got the low back fixed before the cruise, I can get it fixed again. 

I am so close to being able to walk again. 

What if I do all that and my heart is broken and I STILL can’t do it? 

I watched my gma spend the last years of her life in a chair, decades after being so active.

She could get from her lazy boy to her kitchen to her bedroom. I watched my mom spend years in her recliner, 

now I think she uses a walker sometimes. I never wanted to become a “chair person”. 

But even this isn't motivating me the way it used to to get UP. 

Now I can only get from bed to bathroom and I am winded. Getting to the PT place exhausts me. 

Getting from the car to the chiro’s table requires 2 hours to get my energy back.

Where did the gal who butt crawled backwards upstairs with a broken leg to still work go? 

I can’t imagine doing that to save my life now. 

Since the cruise  there has been 40 lbs of water/prednisone slush added… 

my whole year in the wheelchair I didn’t gain that type of weight. 

Wherever changed after the cruise that put all this slush into my rib cage I feel like I am drowning in the ribs.  

The diarrhetics helped so much with the arms and legs and now the doctors and massage practitioners and 

PT and chiro can get to that to fix it but I still don’t have room to eat, drink or breathe and 

 

I think that may be the part I can’t push through mentally. It feels like I will always feel like this. 

Before my broken leg I walked 7 miles a day and went hiking. 

After my broken leg I made it up (with help of friends who brought my wheelchair) to packwood lake. 

After that I knew my back needed fixed because I never wanted to feel that much pain again, 

but I got the back fixed. We went on the cruise, I had two good weeks after and then it all disintegrated.

Maybe this will change after heart doctor. 

Maybe they will find something. 

Maybe it will change if I tiptoe and take itty bitty steps towards walking like I did before the cruise. 

I just can’t get enough breath this time .. last time I didn’t have this feeling of a swimming pool on my chest. 

It feels like wearing a pregnancy empathy belly all the time. 

A year ago I still planned to live a hundred years - making this 50 the second bucket of the “two bucket life” plan.

 I want to be one of those vivacious and energetic - age enthusiastically people - and now I can’t find that.

The hardest part other than not being able to feel like i can breathe is that everyone believed in me 

and my getting up and then I fell again. I can’t find the will to rally this time the same way. 

I feel like getting up may be false advertising. What if I let everyone down again. What if I can’t stay up. 

What if this heart issue thing is a thing that isn’t fixable.

I am making myself do what I always tell other people to do and fix the other things that can be fixed 

so the hard to fix thing is the only thing left to fix and the rest of my body can support the fixing of that 

when dox figure it out. 

But I can’t feel it. It’s all autopilot and going on what I wrote down when I felt better. 

Or what I remember telling other people when they don’t feel good. 

I am trying to try.