and therein lies the curse...

there are 2 things i want to ramble about today. one is the recent spinal tap (LP) and the other is a general sharing of where my head is at these days.

post LP hasn't gone so well. the evil headaches have ceased, which means i was able to pull myself up off from the horizontal position i was glued to for days on end. (and no, get your heads out of the gutter- not that kind of horizontal position.) the lower back pain that was radiating up my spine and down my legs have morphed into a general ache and overall soreness. and where am i? well, i am exhausted beyond explanation. i spent the majority of monday in bed- moving from my bed to my mother's bed, and back again. the girls (lady G and madeline) have followed me from bed to bed, sprawling in comfort like the loyal ladies in waiting they are. it has taken effort to even sit up in bed to drink coffee, or to walk to my pill container and take my medicine.

i'm in a fog. i literally feel like i am walking underneath water- that is how slow motion things life feels for me right now. my body is throbbing in slow, constant aches. everything is taking so much effort...after the spinal tap, i knew that it would take some time for my body to readjust- the same thing happened with the colonoscopy. my body needed 2 weeks to get back to a normal pace. my body doesn't react like normal bodies when procedures are done- i don't have the resources needed to get me back to speed. i predicted that the LP would require an additional week just to recover from the week before- so that is what i am in at the moment.

part of the moment is that am angry with my doctors. they should have weighed the benefits of this test against the possible side effects on my body. and if they did that, they sure didn't do it in front of me. so, yes, i am angry with them- they should have known that it would take me 2 weeks to recover from this simple procedure, and was it worth it? not to me.

so here is the part where i share the contents of my head. i'm definitely struggling with something. and here lies the curse... how am i to plan my life, when i have no control over my life? this applies to planning tomorrow, or planning next weekend, or planning next year. i have no idea what each day is going to bring. will i be able to get out of bed? will i have the energy to correspond with friends? will i be able to accompany my mom to a doctor's appointment? will i be able to visit one of my best friends in november? what is the point of planning anything when i have no idea if i will be able to do any of it? so, what do i have to look forward to? what joy does each day bring me. these are all the things swirling around my head.

for example, let's say that i had managed to land a part time job that started last week. i go to work on Monday, everything is fine. the next day i have a spinal tap, and i have to call in sick for the consecutive 2 weeks. ms. morgensen? you're fired. i mean, seriously, let's be honest here. what kind of job is going to allow that breadth of flexibility? as my mother says, i am not always going to be getting a spinal tap. but, it will always be something. i consider myself lucky that i know my body so well. and because i know it so well- i know there will always be something.

i think it is very difficult to be on the outside of my life looking in. my friends can attest to that. you have to know me quite well to understand the inner workings and the inner struggles just to pull myself together to attend a wedding, or go to the movies. i speak of the post LP issues above as just a minor example of how difficult it is to create a life for myself. sometimes i feel like scoffing at the ideas of making plans- due to circumstances out of my control, i will have to break them, or cancel them, or reschedule countless times. i think back on my old life of plans, schedules and order. i yearn for that just momentarily, b/c i know that isn't my life anymore. i can't waste my energy playing the game of "i wish...."