I really must be careful
I really must be careful about lots of things. Not to run my hands through my hair or wind it through my fingers, not to sleep on my left side, not to sleep on my right side.
In this enforced rest I must be careful to limit my using this laptop, as I don't want to loose control of my digits as I was afraid of before, but I have got over my fear of why it makes my arm and hands tingle, because it didn't do it before I installed the wireless card and driver, it is doing it less since I un-installed them, and I am placing all responsibility for sorting it out on the dealer and if not them, IBM through the extended warranty. If they don't, then I will have a problem to solve.
Prioritising energy on problems is the name of the game many of us play.
I must be more careful in censoring the titles that occur to name my posts, some of which have attracted very odd placings of Sally on the internet, which if I follow via my site meter, lead to strange lands and even stranger people in other lands, geographical and psychological. Not that I am referring to the benign people who stop by for a while on a semi regular basis. Nice to have you visit.
So I didn't use the drug and metal staple inspired title that has been creeping around my head all afternoon. I don't like my staples, I don't want to refer to them as 'my' staples, I don't want to own them. They are big dull metal things, bigger and tougher than the staples in my desk stapler which is bigger than my small chair-side stapler (my mother has ornaments), and which occasionally glint as they catch the light, so I am told; evily, I imagine. They have their own voice, they creak when I raise my eyebrows, so I cannot assume a quizzical look until they are removed.
I want a photograph of them (not of me, just my forehead) so I can remember just how aggressive they look. They are beginning to take on an imagined personality, sitting there fixed to me, not moving, just clamped onto me, alien, malign. It (my attitude to the staples) could just be the drugs. Which I am taking to deal with the pain of the staples. I blame all the pain on the staples, whether or not it is generated by them. See, I am referring to them, as 'them'.
I know where I am with the Methotrexate, I know it depresses me, sends me down, darkens the world around me for 48 hours. I know that if I have an illness such as a cold, on top of the Lupus, I feel negative about the world and my prospects in it, and of the prospects of those that are nearest and dearest to me.
My stapled appearance is an improvement in that the staples look better than the strips of white surgical tape that I gingerly pulled off the staples yesterday. Nobody would wear a white headband that wide that far back off the forehead, I said to the friend who was trying to reconcile me to my appearance. Now she thinks the v-shape of metal staples looks like one of those toothed plastic headbands. Would I !? Never, nor a white head band.
Like Mrs Munster, for many years I have had a white streak in my hair, so maybe I should just find a suitable husband and a suitable wardrobe and go with the flow.
Go BoHo with scarves, said another friend. I don't have the wardrobe to temporarily become a bohemian, I cannot afford such wardrobe diversity on state benefits. Everything has to fit the use/occasion/comfort/warm/cool/dry equation. Although if I did, if I could, I would disappear for a few months, because BoHo would be so far from my usual self, I would be unrecognisable.
I could, I did, overcome the wheelchair's effects on my self-image, re-forged my persona when I had to forgo the dancing, rambling, swimming, singing. But this is, temporarily, flooring me. Perhaps because it is temporary, or because I have not yet arrived at the position of dealing with it, or perhaps because I am very afraid that I will be left with something worse than the osteoma that was protruding from my forehead.
Get over yourself Sally.
The Goldfish has done it again, with her magnificent hosting of the Disability Blog Carnival No. 4, a feast of fellow crips writing about their route on this path.
Charles Dawson's contribution is spot-on, and he keeps on keeping on, at present bemoaning the mud with his ducks, always inspiring and entertaining, despite persistent coughing and fear of being put down by the vet.
Over at where the revolution starts; Crip World Domination (copyright Gimpy Mumpy) in answer to her Guardian Party post, I have suggested a service-user led Crips' Telephone Answering Service. For those days when we really don't feel up to it, or don't give a ....
The Quaker Agitator is a daily reminder, a daily witness, to the reality of the war that we are all responsible for.
It is good to see that Geoffrey Chaucer has visited his blog recently and Lady Bracknell's Editor has posted some charming pictures of her visit to Buck House to receive recognition for her sterling work. Congratulations !
In this enforced rest I must be careful to limit my using this laptop, as I don't want to loose control of my digits as I was afraid of before, but I have got over my fear of why it makes my arm and hands tingle, because it didn't do it before I installed the wireless card and driver, it is doing it less since I un-installed them, and I am placing all responsibility for sorting it out on the dealer and if not them, IBM through the extended warranty. If they don't, then I will have a problem to solve.
Prioritising energy on problems is the name of the game many of us play.
I must be more careful in censoring the titles that occur to name my posts, some of which have attracted very odd placings of Sally on the internet, which if I follow via my site meter, lead to strange lands and even stranger people in other lands, geographical and psychological. Not that I am referring to the benign people who stop by for a while on a semi regular basis. Nice to have you visit.
So I didn't use the drug and metal staple inspired title that has been creeping around my head all afternoon. I don't like my staples, I don't want to refer to them as 'my' staples, I don't want to own them. They are big dull metal things, bigger and tougher than the staples in my desk stapler which is bigger than my small chair-side stapler (my mother has ornaments), and which occasionally glint as they catch the light, so I am told; evily, I imagine. They have their own voice, they creak when I raise my eyebrows, so I cannot assume a quizzical look until they are removed.
I want a photograph of them (not of me, just my forehead) so I can remember just how aggressive they look. They are beginning to take on an imagined personality, sitting there fixed to me, not moving, just clamped onto me, alien, malign. It (my attitude to the staples) could just be the drugs. Which I am taking to deal with the pain of the staples. I blame all the pain on the staples, whether or not it is generated by them. See, I am referring to them, as 'them'.
I know where I am with the Methotrexate, I know it depresses me, sends me down, darkens the world around me for 48 hours. I know that if I have an illness such as a cold, on top of the Lupus, I feel negative about the world and my prospects in it, and of the prospects of those that are nearest and dearest to me.
My stapled appearance is an improvement in that the staples look better than the strips of white surgical tape that I gingerly pulled off the staples yesterday. Nobody would wear a white headband that wide that far back off the forehead, I said to the friend who was trying to reconcile me to my appearance. Now she thinks the v-shape of metal staples looks like one of those toothed plastic headbands. Would I !? Never, nor a white head band.
Like Mrs Munster, for many years I have had a white streak in my hair, so maybe I should just find a suitable husband and a suitable wardrobe and go with the flow.
Go BoHo with scarves, said another friend. I don't have the wardrobe to temporarily become a bohemian, I cannot afford such wardrobe diversity on state benefits. Everything has to fit the use/occasion/comfort/warm/cool/dry equation. Although if I did, if I could, I would disappear for a few months, because BoHo would be so far from my usual self, I would be unrecognisable.
I could, I did, overcome the wheelchair's effects on my self-image, re-forged my persona when I had to forgo the dancing, rambling, swimming, singing. But this is, temporarily, flooring me. Perhaps because it is temporary, or because I have not yet arrived at the position of dealing with it, or perhaps because I am very afraid that I will be left with something worse than the osteoma that was protruding from my forehead.
Get over yourself Sally.
The Goldfish has done it again, with her magnificent hosting of the Disability Blog Carnival No. 4, a feast of fellow crips writing about their route on this path.
Charles Dawson's contribution is spot-on, and he keeps on keeping on, at present bemoaning the mud with his ducks, always inspiring and entertaining, despite persistent coughing and fear of being put down by the vet.
Over at where the revolution starts; Crip World Domination (copyright Gimpy Mumpy) in answer to her Guardian Party post, I have suggested a service-user led Crips' Telephone Answering Service. For those days when we really don't feel up to it, or don't give a ....
The Quaker Agitator is a daily reminder, a daily witness, to the reality of the war that we are all responsible for.
It is good to see that Geoffrey Chaucer has visited his blog recently and Lady Bracknell's Editor has posted some charming pictures of her visit to Buck House to receive recognition for her sterling work. Congratulations !
posted by Sally at 11:30 pm
2 Comments:
Dear Sally, I can empathise with the staples. Many years ago I underwent an emergency laparotomy and ended up with a line of staples vertically up my tum from the, er hairy bit, almost to the navel.
(I think the surgeon wanted room for a good rummage around.)
Anyway I was a slapely slip of a lad in those days with not much skin to spare so the staples pulled tight, and I can still remember the agony until they were removed. The ancillary stitiches weren't painful at all by comparison. So take heart.
A colleague who had to undergo chemo and lost all her hair went the scarf route; you can get quite creative with colours and textures and add-ons, so much so that people are more interested in the display than in what's underneath.
Yes, but your's didn't creak when you raised your eyebrows, or anything (!) did they ! Did they ?
Chuckle.
Thanks, I appreciate the sympathy.
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