This whole crap started months ago when I woke up feeling as if I'd just stepped off an airplane and needed to "clear my ears" to rejoin the real world. A few pops, and I'm ready to go. (To the couch.) I visited the doc when this started. "Oh, it will resolve itself in a few weeks." Yeah, it resolved itself so beautifully, I don't pop anymore. I just can't hear.
My disease is isolating enough with my lung issues. With my back a total misery. (More P.T., Woohoo.) Slowly losing my hearing. (No, it probably isn't permanent, but I can't use any less oxygen. So it might as well be permanent, yes? I'll settle for popping if I have to. Please don't leave me in a fog.)
Someone is playing a very nasty joke on me. Removing my senses one at a time. Pieces of me are gradually disappearing without my noticing it and then whoops! Too late, chica! Eventually, will I become like the young man in Johnny Got His Gun? No, I think that's overdramatizing my predicament, so let's return to poor Captain Pike. That's way over the top too, but here, in Life No. 2, I've grown quite fond of him. So I think he's to be my doppelganger, appropriate or no. For the record , I often feel I'm nothing more than a lump of flesh. The buddha on the couch.
In third grade, I was sitting at the back of the classroom, and I couldn't read the words for the day's spelling quiz. I report this to my teacher and to my mother. Was I taken to an optometrist right away? The first thing these two beauties thought is that maybe, since my best friend of the moment, Wendy, had gotten glasses a few weeks prior, that I wanted them too. "Franny, do you want glasses because Wendy just got them?" "Say what?!?
Someone (I don't know who, but it was said in all seriousness) actually asked me this question. Don't you all get me by now? My mother sure as hell knew what I was about. I don't care if I were in third grade or in pre-school, I was never, ever such an asshole to do something as inane as that. (For god sakes, I was smart enough not to drink prune juice as I sat constipated on the potty. The potty. How old could I have been? I knew how disgusting prune juice was. Even as a wee thing. I was vehement. That's some kid.)
No, I fucking couldn't see. When I got my glasses, my mother was concerned that I was wearing them all the time. The doctor assured her: she'll use them when she needs them and if she's always wearing them...she needs them. Yeah, and right now I'm doing my damnedest to be just like Captain Pike. But I'm already fucking that one up too. I think one sense he did have was hearing. C'mon girl, get your defects in order!
They tell me I can make my back better. I'll believe that when it actually happens. Right now, I'm dubious of a fix. I've been living with a rainbow of pain (from dull to piercing) for so long, I've forgotten what it's like to be pain free. Just like I can't remember what it was like to breathe normally. I often wish I had more. More of what? More normalcy?
You all know that the P.T. will be torture. When I first came home after thirteen weeks at the hospital, I had to relearn everything: how to get up on my feet, walk, get up off the floor among the other million things we do and take for granted. (As well we should, we learned this shit when we were babies.) That was pure agony.
Oh, yippee. I just received the boiling heat pack from Chip. It took me awhile to figure out that these odd blisters that started appearing my back were second degree burns from this damned thing. (But, it actually makes me feel better. No, not the blisters, but the "warm" moist heat does. I just sit forward when my back is hot enough to cook an egg. Sunnyside up or over easy?)
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