Your normal is my catatonic

On top of my careful eating and constant self-policing... I've cut my online time to the bone, to conserve neurotransmitters and wear and tear on my telomeres.

 

I'm moving to a sunnier flat, to improve vitamin D uptake and exposure to beneficial UV bands.

 

I've gotten a cat, to lower my bp and help stabilize my diurnal cycle. (They get stirred up and worried when you stay up past your bedtime. It's the cutest form of nagging ever.)

 

I'm doing my autogenic exercises as often as I can bear to, to bring my baseline level of overdrive down and begin to approach "normal".

 

For better or worse, I'm getting more closely in touch with what a "normal" state of relaxation really feels like -- and realizing how far from "normal" it is for me.

 

If I am as close to "normally" relaxed (or "normally" tense -- its the same thing) as I can get, I'm nonfunctional.

 

All I can do is lie there, bathed in the peaceful antitoxins of adequate tissue perfusion and a still mind. Getting up requires dropping that calm, because there just isn't enough energy there.

 

I'm far, far too tired to function as a normal person. My very cells are tired -- I can feel it when I let down this chemical structure of overdrive and tension. Their very organelles are tired. The vacuoles, I bet, are tired.

 

Why? I mean, weariness is all very well,  but isn't this a little ridiculous?

 

Ridiculous it may be, but not irrational or inappropriate. Here's why, as far as I've thought it through.

 

- For one thing, pain is exhausting. An hour of pain is as wearying as an hour of running, but without the cardiovascular benefit or endorphins. Quite the opposite. And it never really stops.

 

- Moving the body with degraded muscles is hard work.

 

- Making decisions and doing the business of life (rent, bills, laundry, shopping) with a brain that flickers on and off... requires a lot of repeated trips and extra effort -- also tiring.

 

- Remember that list of JCAHO-rated crises I mentioned on my last post? That was a sample from the latest in a series of years, each of which was about as harrowingly difficult, in different ways. Truly, I had no idea that so many ghastly things, most far too protracted for Hollywood to use in even their most grueling work, could grind through one measly life.

 

So maybe I should give my weariness some credit. Maybe I should stop bitching about how I just can't get things done. Now that I'm trying to ratchet my ANS responses down from the stratosphere, maybe I shouldn't wonder that it's becoming hellishly difficult to get off the couch most of the time.

Maybe I should stop obsessing on my characteristic need to be productive.

 

Maybe it's finally time to stop ignoring the fact that I'm really damn TIRED, and put my attention on getting more rest.

 

That might be the most productive thing I could do.

Overdoing...the first time

My walking time in PT went from 5 min. to 10 min. when we decided to start training for the marathon. My walking at home took the 10 min. up to nearly 20 min., a third of that uphill.

That was nearly a mile. In a burst of what I thought was genius, on Friday I decided to walk down to town (0.8 miles), run a couple of errands, sit down on a sunny bench if need be, and walk back (0.8 miles, all gently but steadily uphill.)

Then, I thought bouyantly, I'd throw necessaries in the car and take off for my two week vacation.

Well, I got as far as making it back to the house. I knew, as I started back from town, that this had been a bad idea, and that there were three outstanding questions: would I have to find a place to sit down en route, exactly how hard would it hit me, and how long would it take to recover.

Saturday was a dead loss.

Sunday, I packed in small loads, resting for an hour or two between each trip to the car. No kidding: an hour or two. By Sunday around 4pm I was beginning to recoup a little. I left at 5.

I had forgotten what a mitochondrial shriek-fest felt like. An almost devastating feeling that my flesh turns to rot when I try to get up. I don't recommend it.

Mitochondria are the wonderful little hitchhikers that house our bodies' energy factories, in return for a warm place to live. They are most thickly concentrated in nerve cells and muscle cells. I knew all along that rebuilding my mitochondria was going to be perhaps the most essential part of training, but after my stellar success on the Hill, I thought I had more to draw on than that.

A delightful piece of training advice I got years ago was, "You can do all the cardiovascular you want." Perhaps that was true at the time, although I noticed I did better when training four days per week than five or six. Perhaps I should've remembered that last week.

I think I should've rested for a day after my Hill expedition, for one thing. More importantly, I should've had a backup plan on my "adventure", so I wasn't stuck with the hike back. And I probably shouldn't have done this around the excitement of going to see my sweetie.

My kitten just typed $. I have no idea…

Perhaps he's telling me that overdoing doesn't pay.

Back in the saddle again

The grip of the last round of the Yucks started to break right after posting my last. I hate it when I have to go that far to get past a bad spot, but hey, I'll do whatever it takes to keep heading in the right direction.

Dignity is optional. Progress is not. Words I live by.

My new kitten has changed apparent gender twice, and is back to being a boy kitty -- not that it matters in any practical way. I was looking for a name as elegant, good-natured and playful as he/she/it, while treating an upper respiratory infection that made that left eye look like a mouse:

My cat's mouse

But then, with returning health and strength, his natural energy and violence reasserted itself. He has exactly two gears:
1. Unconscious (or nearly so)
2. Full-tilt, greedy, grasping, and spikily impulsive (as the scratch-marks around my blinked eyelashes attest)

So I've named him Siddhartha, in the hope that something will rub off.

Siddhi playing hide-n-seek.
("Siddi" is an Arabic address used towards a respectable gentleman.
Another fine malapropism from the chronically punny.)

All of his front nails are trimmed now...

In health care, we call this "desensitization"

As for my own care, I'm up to 2/3 of my reiki time and 2/3 of my basic qi gong routine, and hope to get some t'ai chi in today as well. This is tremendous progress.

Vegetables are once again a chief component of my diet, thanks in no small part to an enormous bag of frozen "Normandy style" blend from Costco and our local dollar store, which sells cheap organic produce out of cardboard boxes.

I actually did laundry yesterday.  Today, I hope to take a shower and -- gasp -- wash my hair!

 

I realize only a minority of you will find that truly inspiring, but the rest can have a good laugh... and then think for a minute :-)

For me, life with CRPS is indeed a matter of tiny triumphs and great goals. For the record, I'm still bound and determined to advance the search for a cure, and yes, I've gotten slightly more concrete in my ideas about that... More to come in time.

And now, just for the deliciously hokey yodeling at the end...

Links list:
Here is a recap and explication of the links used in this post:

• Frustration at the wall
• The Buddhist World: Gautama Buddha (external site)
• On desensitization, I linked to my post on Remembering and re-membering.
  Also see:
     The sheer activity of Espom salt
     Pushing back on neuroplasticity
• Where you can buy Lee Holden's excellent beginner routine, which gets more interesting, more useful and more inwardly complex the more I do it: Qi Gong Flow (external  site; his work highly recommended)
• An excellent blog post on the relationship between tiny triumphs and great goals: New year, new thinking from Elle and the Auto Gnome (external site, very highly recommended)