ALMOST THERE!

I didn't get needle and thread in hand until a bit later in the evening, but did manage to make a fair amount of progress on Red Velvet Cake:

Only a few small areas to go and the stitching will be finished. Then it's on to the beading!

Today I will visit with three docs in the space of three hours. First, Dr. Melfi will help me unpack all of the stuff in my head that threw me to the ground, and then she'll help me make sense of it and put it into perspective. Then, Dr. P will examine Buzzy 2.0 and remove the surgical tape. Finally, Dr. Barbara (my very favorite family doctor who is a dead ringer for Nicole Kidman) will conduct my annual physical with soft encouragement and a few pats on my arm when I break out into the ugly cry over how completely overwhelmed I am.

Which leads me to two big decisions I made while tossing and turning in the big girl sleigh bed last night.

I have decided to put the 24/7 worry, stress, and management of my health on a shelf. For what feels like forever, I have been obsessively fretting over every single component of everything having to do with the physical functioning of myself, and I'm exhausted. The dialogue in my brain is a loop of worry. Worry about weight and blood pressure and potassium and phosphorous and my heart and lungs and whether I'm in menopause and what is that pain and am I going to pass out and when will I get a new kidney and how much is the needle going to hurt and did I remember to floss and why are my eyes so dry and how bad will my arm be scarred and is there a blood clot and when will I regain use of my left hand and why is my hair thinning and am I sleeping too much or not enough and should I be doing more exercise and why am I not losing weight anymore and ....

Somewhere along the line I got bogged down. Hard. 

I am smart and careful and compliant with all the things I should be doing. For the most part, I eat well, watch my fluid intake, and take all of my meds on time. Could I stand to lose another hundred pounds? Yes.  But obsessing about it every day has put me in a bad place and I need to pull out of it.

This doesn't mean I'm quitting dialysis.  Quite the opposite. I will still do my thing every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday like a big girl, but instead of stressing myself into a stroke over what might happen, I am going to trust my team to do their thing and just...breathe.

I thought I knew how to manage this, but it turns out that living with chronic illness and ambulatory life support is actually a fluid situation...it is not a nice neat flow chart that remains in order. You have to be able to adjust yourself and adapt to what comes and understand that change doesn't always mean decline. Sometimes it just means change.

(About the only way I can describe it is that I feel like I'm driving a semi truck full of explosives up a hill. I have a map and a plan. But every now and then something blocks the road I'm on, and turning the wheel feels like I'm going to plunge off a cliff. What I haven't realized yet is that sometimes turning the wheel PREVENTS you from driving off the cliff.)

So this is me turning the wheel.

My second big decision relates to this thing of ours.

You know this facacta rotation I started in which I go back through the blog and pull all the stuff I haven't finished for that month and work on it?

Well, the only thing that did was throw me into a very sad place of remembering what my life used to be. Seeing all of the pictures of my house and Stewey and reading stories about my old life with my sister and Bosco and all of our shenanagins wasn't a happy trip down memory lane. All it did was bring the grief over losing all of that back with a vengeance. That pain is sharp still, and I really don't think I need to do that to myself...especially now.

I don't know for sure if it was the anasthesia that did it, or the accumulation of everything, or pain, or the moon, or what. But I do know that I was able to clearly see two things that certainly aren't helping me shake it off, and for that I am truly very grateful.

So today we're moving onward. I have about another hour left before I have to get it together to leave the apartment. Fortunately, I have my second cup of damn good ready and the newspaoer all ready and waiting. The blanket is keeping my toes cozy and it almost looks like the sun is trying to come out!

Thank you, Dearies, for listening to my blathering today. I hope things in your corner of the world are a lot less angst-ful than they are sometimes here in Hoosierville. If you're driving your own semi...steady on, friend! Steady on!