Art, Pain, and Princess
I appear to be awake at an unsociable hour and have a backlog of things I'd hoped to post about. This will no doubt be more than a little disorganised and rambly, so no change then.
A couple of weeks ago we went to Sculpture By The Sea, my favourite annual art event. It's a major undertaking but usually worth the effort. This year I even made a little snow shoe for my cane in the hope of making the trek across the soft sand a little easier. We also went to the indoor (and painfully upstairs) miniatures exhibition earlier rather than later, and sacrificed the more distant exhibits. Ran out of spoons fairly dramatically, so we decided to stop then for lunch rather than try to squeeze in the last half dozen or so sculptures. Even so, I'd reached the point of near collapse on the beach, and had to struggle up the slope.
On the way uphill we looked in at the fish & chip place under the Indiana Tea Rooms, but I was immediately repelled by the incredible stench of male urine coming from the change rooms next door. I could not get out of there fast enough, literally. Yuck. Up the stairs we went, then up a few more, then the last few, and made it to the main entrance of the tea rooms. We've never been but wanted to try it out in holiday mode. i.e. don't flinch at the prices. I was in total brain fog at this point and couldn't begin to guess at the basic rules - where to wait (if at all) for a table, and how and where to order. I didn't attempt to fight it, delegated the finding of a table to Husband, and collapsed in the handy lounge area. We had to wait for a table, but not for terribly long.
I revived enough during the wait to develop a ferocious appetite. During subsequent waits for our orders to be taken and for the food to arrive, my ferocious appetite developed a mind of its own. I came very close to snatching food off neighbouring diners. I very nearly tackled and ate a waiter. Eventually the food arrived and it was all very salty, displayed fetchingly, and not nearly in sufficient quantities. But it did the job. It cost a lot, the decor was interesting, the view acceptably sublime in abstract but largely lost on local girl me.
That was Monday, and because I had a hair appointment on Thursday I had only Tuesday and Wednesday to attempt hydrotherapy for the week, and I don't think I managed it. I really can't remember - all I know is that in the last couple of weeks I've missed one week and dragged myself to another. That last session was a slow slog, and though the water was nice, I didn't really feel I managed much in the way of exercise. I'm a tired bunny, and I hurt. It's a new week and I have three days to get there.
So, there's been a lot of accumulated fatigue of late, and then there's Princess. A few days back I thought we'd settled into a new routine of laying out multiple puppy pads and extra newspaper where Princess had been peeing on the carpet. As far as I can tell, she's been using the pads consistently - I have to replace one or more usually two every day. She seems to like them, and although she pees more than seems healthy, she's actually put on a bit of weight. It took a lot of stress to get to this point, and I thought things were looking up, but then I had to help her a couple of times to deliver poo, and that's no fun for anyone. Miserable Princess means miserable me, with added turmoil in that I really want all of this to go away, and yet I hold her life in my hands. She's not an easy cat to love at the best of times, and I've really been feeling the strain of caring for her. I don't have a lot of strain to spare.
The other thing that happened recently was a potentially life-changing massage. I asked N to work on the fascia along the outside of my thighs as well as the areas on the outside of the knees. The latter bits are not normally touched since it's all gristle and no meat, but they've always been a source of tension and frustration when the massage stopped just short. When I got off the table at the end it was as though a miracle had occurred. The inwards pressure on my knees was gone, my feet rolled out and I could feel my weight firmly planted on the outside of my soles. My femurs sat in my pelvis without complaint, and my shoulders actually felt like original factory equipment, rather than the bolted-on knock-off monstrosities they usually are. Everything felt right; the relief from pain was enormous; my feet landed safely on the ground; I immediately wanted to go for a run. I settled for delighted laughter and some high-stepping silly walks around the house. No lurching into walls for me!
It didn't last.
Within a couple of hours the temporarily stretched ligature started to retract, and while I may have slowed it down a little with heat and salve, things went back to highly-strung distorted normal pretty quickly. But they didn't stop there. Over the next couple of days (this weekend just gone) it went tighter and tighter, and I've had to hit the painkillers hard. Hard painkillers make me depressed, pain makes me depressed, sick annoying cats make me depressed, guilt makes me depressed, depression gave me bad thoughts, bad thoughts made me feel more guilty, and so on. Although I once again never came close to actual physical self harm, I got much closer than I have before and actually took a practical step. I also withdrew from posting on social media for several days (which is really dumb considering how much I crave interaction, but no-one ever accused depression of being a sensible disease). Somewhere in there were a lot of hormones making things that much worse. And other stuff.
I kicked myself, hard.
I'm back. Again. *sigh* But it's getting harder and harder every time, and it seems to be happening more and more often. Methinks it's time for a med adjustment, to return to the dosage I was on before I tried the pyroluria treatments last year. I've been off all the pyroluria stuff for a while now and it's possible I'm missing the small benefit that allowed (tricked?) me into reducing my fluoxetine dose in the first place. Some of my other prescription pain-relief meds have anti-depressant qualities, but on me they tend to make me low rather than happy (and have a bunch of other inconvenient side effects that restrict me to small and occasional dosage). Time to crank up the happy juice again, but this will be painful and risky. Nothing says it's-time-to-jump-under-a-truck-here-have-just-enough-motivation-to-do-it like messing with fluoxetine dosage. If I'm lucky I'll just scream and cry a lot. Mmmm, can't wait.
On the bright side, I'm planning to further investigate The Miracle Of The Softened Ligature with my physio - maybe there's a yoga-ish posture that will provide sufficient leverage to stretch what needs stretching without the tearing damage that usually results from my unguided attempts to do same. Maybe regular ultrasound will do the trick. Maybe I'm a candidate for surgery to scrape off scar tissue or lumps of calcium or something. It's worth a try. Pretty much anything is worth a try, at first. What I do have-and what I cling to with all my might-is a memory of relief from pain. A memory of strength and stability. A memory of feeling that I could just get up and go and achieve anything. Right now those memories are causing more pain and frustration than anything else, but I'm keeping them safe.