Awakening

I open my eyes this morning after a full night's sleep.

I am alive. I feel rested. It feels good to feel rested.

I had taken a sleep aid last night so I could sleep the whole night through.

I arise to relieve my bladder. Simply by getting up, I am reminded of the disability in my hands and arms and feet and ankles. After relieving myself, I lay back down.

It can be a good day, Carol. You can get some things accomplished today.

Yesterday I accomplished very little in relation to what I could have accomplished had I not been grieving and fatigued.

I lay in bed and lift both arms perpendicular to my body. The action to raise them causes the regular continual pain in my biceps; I can feel their weakness. I bend my arms at my elbows...up and down, up and down. I lower my arms again feeling the pain in my biceps. One at a time, I touch each finger on both hands with their corresponding thumbs. I make a fist formation with each hand. Fist-making too is painful and I am unable to make full fists. I look through the holes in each fists like they are binoculars. I unfold my hands and examine the recent lump on the back of my right hand as I run my left fingers over the lump. The lump used to be on the outer side of my right wrist; it moved sometime in the last month to the back of my right hand.

In my mind's eye, I see Dad, see him moving his arms back and forth, back and forth, as they dangle down over the armrests of his wheelchair. He used to move his arms back and forth often; it was about the only part of his body below his head that he could move.

As I move my own arms, I realize how much it must have meant to Dad that he could move his arms, giving him some sense of control, to feel the little bit of strength that was left in his limbs. Dad was labeled an "odd quad." His spinal cord sever was at C-4. He shouldn't have been able to move his arms, but he could. He couldn't move his fingers though.

I arise and walk down the hall and down the stairs. I take one stair at a time due to the tenderness in the soles of my feet and the shooting pain in my right ankle. I remind myself that my feet will feel much better shortly; they improve as I go about my day. I enter the kitchen.

I assemble the blender to make my morning smoothie: water, apple cider vinegar, tart cherry juice, grapefruit seed extract, powdered nutritional supplements for inflammation and general nutrition and hormones, beet powder, green veggie powder, frozen blueberries, and immoglobulin powder. With all my strength I pry the cap off the vinegar bottle. I use the wooden cover end of an ice pick like a hammer to secure the lid back onto the bottle. I combine all the ingredients and whir my smoothie in the blender. Using both hands, I pour the mixture into a glass and insert a colored straw into the deep purple beverage. I fill another glass with the herbal tea I brew every other day; the tea addresses fatigue. I eat a handful of pistachios to get digestive juices going to prepare my tummy for pills: quercetin, vitamins C & D, fish oil, probiotics, garlic, mixed boron and calcium, Theracumin, prednisone. I pop a sublingual vitamin B-12 under my tongue and let it dissolve. I try not to despise that I spend most all my personal earnings on supplements to either counter the side effects of prednisone or address the nerve damage and inflammation.

As I go about my morning, I hear myself grunt and groan. I don't like it. It's a habit that has come about due to the pain and weakness in my arms and hands. I hear myself whispering, "Okay Carol, you can do this," as I make my body work to put up the vacuum cleaner and pick up the bottle of laundry detergent and make the bed and pull my shirt over my head and brush my hair and engage in some simple stretching exercises. "Come on, come on, come on; work," I whisper in quick succession, reminding my hands and arms to function.

I am unable to use my palms for resistance - they are too tender and weak. Sometimes I feel like an ape when I engage in certain floor exercises. I curl my hands in an almost fist and use the back of my hands with my knuckles to support my body and absorb the pressure as I lift myself off the floor.

Nerves. I never really gave them much thought in regard to physical strength. It seems I equated physical strength with muscles and ligaments and tendons and bones. But Dad was weakened and paralyzed due to the most severe kind of nerve damage - severing. My limb nerves are inflamed at the spinal cord, at least that is the current diagnosis. The nerves are damaged. The inflammation causes weakness and pain in my limbs.

I cry. Then I remind myself, I can at least move my hands and my arms and my legs and my body. Don't give up Carol. Keep that spark of hope. Find joy and laughter in little things. Gratitude, gratitude.