January 16, 2004

• OUCH!

  
  

  That is not the title I had in mind for today’s blog as I thought about it from time to time yesterday.  The best title I had come up with by mid-day yesterday was “cautious optimism.”  Someone at last night’s meeting asked me how I was, and I said I was feeling so good it was scary.

  
  

  That’s something a lot of addicts can relate to.  We’ve tossed that idea around a lot, about the anxiety that sets in when things are going TOO well, when we feel too good.  Nobody I’ve heard has had any solid understanding of or explanation for why we tend to feel that way, but I suspect it could have something to do with the remembered euphoria of our drug experiences and the disastrous aftermath that often ensued, the inevitable harsh comedown that always followed.

  
  

  There was no drug high involved in yesterday’s euphoria, but today I broke my general policy on painkillers of several years’ standing, and took some ibuprofen.  I had been disgusting myself with all the yelping and whimpering.  Often, with M.E., all movement hurts but for me today even immobility is painful, just breathing triggers agony (and please don’t think I’m exaggerating) in a shoulder or through my ribcage.

  
  

  I’m saddened by this development.  For several days I had been feeling better and better.  I had energy.  I looked forward with anticipation to last night’s meeting, driving the rehab van, seeing my friends, those dope fiends that are like my family now; and to the thrift-shop prowl beforehand, the produce shopping at the all-night supermarket afterward.  If forced to come up with an explanation for this come-down, I’d have to guess it was mostly the cold.  Greyfox thinks it was the activity and stress, and I suppose that is at least partially correct.

  
  

  I took three 200 milligram Advil gelcaps just before I sat down here to write.  Greyfox recommended the gelcaps, which are a new development since I kicked NSAIDS a few years ago, said they are faster-acting.  I think he’s right.  I feel the euphoria coming on already.  He thinks there is something nutty/weird about me because I get euphoric from over-the-counter NSAIDS.  I really don’t think it’s the pills.  I think it’s because with that chemical boost my own endorphins and enkephalins are what’s making me feel giddy.  Normally, my neurotransmitters are too busy just keeping me upright and quiet to do any euphorizing.

  
  

  But before that little drug-related side-trip, I was on the subject of the cold and the stress.  A warming trend had accompanied my improved condition earlier in the week.  On Wednesday when we went to the laundromat the weather was sunny and so was my mood.  It was in the low twenties, still crisply frozen out there but warm for this time of year.  We are up to over six hours and twenty minutes of daylight now, which is another boost to my mood and those of most people I know.  Usually there’s an undertone of dread or reluctance when I’m facing a trip to town during a fibro-flare, but I was looking forward to it.

  
  

  I was enjoying it through the day and evening yesterday.  I had a few remarkable thrift shop scores, including a like-new pair of black Glorious Vanderbutts, a huge, thick, brand-new bath towel, and a sack of silk fabric for which I only paid a buck, most of which is pre-cut into 3″ quilt squares.  I was enjoying wearing my comfortable new boots.  It’s the first time I’ve worn any heel-height in decades.  I usually wear sneakers, moccasins or sno-jogs.  It took a bit to get back into the swing of walking in heels, but I’d started enjoying the feel of the feminine hip-sway.   Last night at home before I took them off, Greyfox asked me, “Who’s this tall sexy redhead and what did you do with my wife?”  You know that can’t be hard on my ego, don’t you?

  
  

  It wasn’t until I took them off that my toes, arches, ankles and shins started hurting.  I’d had a little complaint from the calves during the day, and had some creepy socks that had to be pulled up a few times when they cramped my toes, but the real pain waited for when I took the damned boots off.  Then I remembered why I gave up heels all those decades ago.  Euphoric recall, I suppose.  That was the ‘sixties, the Women’s Movement, rebellion against bras, girdles and high-heeled shoes–freedom.  A lot of time has passed since then, but I should have remembered.

  
  

  Not that I’m ditching these boots.  For one thing, I’m sorta stuck with them now.  I ended up with them because I couldn’t find sno-jogs.  I bought a pair when they came into the stores this fall, and they were defective, wore a sore on one of my heels.  When I returned them the stores were all sold out of sno-jogs for the season.  That’s the way it goes here.  Why managers never order enough to supply the seasonal demand, I’ll never understand.  Those boots were the only thing that I could find in my price range with high enough tops to keep out the snow and good enough traction to keep me on my feet, and they DO look good, make me look good, too, and my old sno-jogs are patched with duct tape.  It doesn’t stick well on that plasticized fabric, peels and looks like ragged hell.

  
  

  So, there was a little bit of stress from the new heel-height and the creepy socks, added to the normal physiological stress of just a lot of walking, shopping, traffic, perfumes and other chemical pollutants aggravating my MCS.  Then there was the wind.  It blows hard and blows often in Wasilla this time of year.  Down at that end of the Valley, where the Susitna and Matanuska converge, the Talkeetna Mountains and Chugach Range make a wind-tunnel effect and there is often snow drifted across the highway, roofs ripped off, odd things hanging in trees. We’re used to it, but getting around in it, getting car and store doors open, keeping your feet on icy pavement, is always a struggle.  Last night on the way back to the ranch in the big old van, a big old gust of crosswind hit me and suddenly I was driving on the shoulder. 

  
  

  “Whoops!  Get back on the road, Kathy,”  I said softly to myself.  Some of my passengers didn’t seem to notice, just went on with their conversation, but the woman riding shotgun and another woman seated right behind me noticed.  The one beside me shivered and said, “Wind!”.  I heard the shiver in the other’s voice as she said, “Yeah, it’s awful.”  Out there on the edge of town, amid all those open fields where the residents of the rehab grow potatoes, broccoli, cabbage and such in the summer, the wind scours everything, strips the snow off the flats and piles it up in the lee of every building, fencepost and parked vehicle.  I shiver just to think of it.

  
  

  But, come to think of it, that shiver might not have been entirely from remembered wind.  It is 41 degrees Fahrenheit in here right now.  We have been trying to optimize our woodstove’s output ever since we got home last night, with frequent rearranging of the wood.  Doug had loaded the stove and gone to bed by the time Greyfox and I got here.  Several openings of the door to bring in groceries chilled the house and it hasn’t recovered.    The temp outdoors dropped from about -16° when we got home to -22° before we went to bed.  Now it is back up to about -16° again.  The aurora was spectacular last night.  That’s one plus to the cold.  Another is that when it’s that cold it almost never snows.  As the weather warms up, it almost always snows, has to, precipitating the moisture out of that warm air that warms us up.

  
  

  I had an interesting little fire experience last night.  Doug’s fire was burning only in half of the firebox, so I added a “fire starter” on the other side, to up the BTU output.  What we use for that is trioxane.  It comes in bars, wrapped in thick foil lined with plastic.  The packages are OD green in color, unless they came from the Gulf War era, in which case they are desert tan.  They are military surplus items, the ration-heaters they hand out with MREs.  I opened it by ripping the wrapper down one side and slipping the bar out.  Stuck the bar between two pieces of wood and then spread open and upturned the envelope and stuck it into the stove to knock the residue (powder and the waxy stuff that exudes from those bars when they get warm) onto the fire.  Instead of falling out the way that residue usually does, it stuck in the pack and ignited.

  
  

  I pulled the blazing envelope out, turned it up, fascinated with the pretty blue flame.  Holding it by two bottom corners, gingerly between thumbs and forefingers, I gazed at the fire and called Greyfox’s attention to it.  I held my little foil cup of fire I don’t know how long.  It never burnt my fingers, no sensation of heat there last night nor any sign of a burn today, but after a while the foil melted and started dripping molten aluminum on the carpet, so I pitched it in the ash bucket and extinguished the pretty blue flames.  Weird.

  
  

  Weird, too, this drug-euphoria from the ibuprofen.  Not really pleasant, just weird.  I’m making more typos than usual, I notice.  That could be just cold fingers, the fully-returned fibro flare that had earlier this week seemed to be waning, or it could be at least in part from the drug.  We’re supposed to be in “a program of total abstinence from all drugs,” but in practice that doesn’t include, for most of us, caffeine, nicotine, sugar, and a host of other licit drugs.  I don’t suppose a few NSAIDS are going to blow my clean date.

  
  

  

  
  

  Weather update:  Outdoors, it’s up almost to ten below zero.  No change so far indoors, but the stove is flaming up, “taking off”, and there will soon be a good bed of coals to support more combustion.  I’m gonna go put on a coat for a while, anyway.

  • 4:28 pm
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