Rocky Road

 

While I am no stranger to recovering from health issues, neither do I much enjoy it.  

One always hopes that the road will be a nice lovely straight line towards the goal (good health) but in actuality, it's rather more 'interesting'.

So I continue to struggle with the shingles, feeling pretty much like crap, still doing eye drops 8 times a day, pills and two other drops three times a day.  My left eye continues to be dilated all day long which makes focusing on anything a challenge.  

I thought today I could do without the patch, but realized just now my eye is watering and shutting and I need to keep using the patch.  Probably until they stop dilating my eye.  

(stops to apply patch to left eye...)

The last time I remember being so sick for this long was when I was 12 and had my tonsils out.  I was so sick I barely got out of bed for a month.  Well, it's been two weeks now since the diagnosis, and while I am feeling slightly better, between not being able to see properly, no depth perception, and needing to take medication every two hours, with apparently months more treatment to face, on TOP of the other health issues I was already having...

Let's just say I play a very tiny violin with the saddest song you ever heard.

Yes.  I AM feeling sorry for myself.  I will be blunt.  I am feeling VERY sorry for myself.  It isn't fair that I have shingles and even less fair that it is in my eye.

So the rational, adult part of me keeps reminding the rest of me that Life Isn't Fair and I need to just keep on keeping on.  Just like I have in the past.

Part of the reason I am feeling so disgruntled is the simple fact that while I begin to feel better I also feel more resentment that I am feeling so unwell.  That just getting up in the morning to face another day of dealing with the pain and the awkwardness of no depth perception, and the worry over whether or not I can keep the vision in that eye becomes a huge burden.  And I don't like it.

But just like covid doesn't care what someone thinks about it, shingles (another damn virus) doesn't give a damn what I think about it returning again.

So I call on the strength I have as a Very Stubborn Person, and I get dressed.  I make extremely modest plans for the day.  Plans that I don't always manage to complete.  But an inch is better than a centimeter when it comes to progress.  So I inch along, part of me raging at the unfairness of what is happening to my body.

And I thank all the gods that be that I am old enough that I'm not required to show up at work somewhere and be pleasant.  Because I am not in a pleasant frame of mind right now.

Stubborn is as stubborn does.  And right now whatever energy I have is going towards not turning into a lump of misery.  I may be a lump of raging misery, but the stubbornness that my mother railed against is what is going to get me through this time.  

So I put three more scarves into the washing machine - red scarves, with a red that is guaranteed to bleed - along with some other red items, and I will press the two scarves from yesterday.  And who knows, maybe press the scarves from today.  We will see.

I am able to read a little bit so I have gone back to reading Victoria Finlay's book Fabric.  And I am finding that enjoyable and distracting when I can read.  I fiddle with jigsaw puzzles.  I move from chair to chair because even that little bit of activity helps my back.  Because just because you get sick with one thing doesn't make the other illnesses you are dealing with go away.  They just keep burbling along.

On a brighter note (literally) the sun has made an appearance and it is not yet snowing.  So I am going to appreciate the sunshine outside and continue to isolate due to several virii in my town plus my own personal hell.  And just keep going.  Like Churchill supposedly said - when you are going through hell...keep going.  And I agree.  Who the hell wants to stop in this place, in this time?  Doug kindly reminds me when the next two hour med time arrives.  He even set up an old cell phone that chimes every two hours for when he isn't home and to make sure I don't forget.

If you were looking for something inspiring today, I'm afraid I'm all out.  Must be supply chain issues.