Seven Weeks Ago
Time is starting to fly by as I find myself more comfortable with this new normal. The world keeps on turning and I am feeling like I am catching up with it. There is one more big out of town event that we have on the calendar this season and there is some nail biting as we hit the one week marker until we hit the road. Some parts of this new normal have been easy to get on board with but there are still some things I find that I am resisting and trying to make my peace with.
I can tell that I am feeling more comfortable with the flow of things because I am starting to feel more confident in my body and in my ability to understand my body’s limits at any given moment. I am starting to take more risks like going on longer solo drives and helping a friend move furniture. The increased confidence is seeping into other areas because I started researching a new forge project and I even replaced the spark plugs in our car, which is a first-time job for me. Helping move furniture made me feel strong in a way that I haven’t felt since leaving the hospital, it showed me that I can still help lift heavy things.
The early and mid portion of this past week was spent taking it slow, we gave ourselves a few days to unload and put away all of the things from the event. Shannon was forced to rest by the end of the week from a fever and then we both ended up sick over the weekend, so our weekend involved lots of Star Trek and tea. We just finished getting it all put away and time quickly turned from decompression to prep for another event. Our prep planning had a wrench thrown into the mix when our parked car got hit Friday evening. Thankfully no one was injured and it was just body damage on our car but it is just another thing to figure out right before a big trip.
The thing that I am going to be using to inject myself with came in the mail this week, it’s called a soloject. It’s still just sitting out on the coffee table; I haven’t given it a place to live yet. I still haven’t fully come to terms with having to take this medicine. An injection seems a lot harder to incorporate into your life than just a pill. I know there could be worse treatments, but there is just something about all this that’s just hard for me to swallow. I also know that I am scared and somewhat resistant to change and that in that of frame of mind perspective can be clouded so of course it is harder to see the good in it all. One way that I am going to try to make my peace with this hardware and medication is by making the soloject a leather case. If I am gonna need it I am going to make it mine.
I also talked to the nurse that is going to teach me how to use the thing. She was real sweet and told me that I would be surprised how simple it all is. Then she said that she knows because she has been taking the same medication that I will be on for 17 years and something in my stomach just dropped. I haven’t been thinking too far into the future lately, hell I never thought I would make it this close to 30, so it never occurred to me that I could be on this medication for years of my life.
Another big change that I have been resistant to in my life is quitting smoking. It’s been something I’ve been saying that I needed to do for awhile but I have never felt this as strongly as I do about it now because I am determined to not make things harder for my body than it needs to be. If I keep smoking my body will turn even more against itself and that doesn’t seem like a pleasant existence to me. I want to live out the rest of my life as healthy as I can be without taking it for granted. Part of what has made it hard to quit before is not thinking I’d be alive right now and planning for the rest of my life took a late start.
There has been plenty to think about this last week but I am glad to start feeling like I am moving and grooving again. I know the rest of the road isn’t easy but it is getting easier to keep trucking through the hard bits.
