Confessions of a Free Range Prolapsed Catholic

I’m miserable, so miserable

down on misery farm!

i remember this bit of the song from my childhood. It was sung in a mocking way whenever someone in the house was down in the dumps in order to snap them out of it. Well I have been singing it to myself tonight!

I had an alright kind of day. Long , lean and Loveable and son left early today to go to archery. This gave me a day to myself. Sadly though, it did not provide me with much by way of opportunity to kick my heels up!

HEELS! Boy are they giving my grief. Apparently walking up and down a 9 step flight of stairs at least 6 times a day for 3 and a half days, turns your Achilles’ tendon high powered revenge weapon and so, for the present, my lovely long, straight gait resembles a bent over bit of a shuffle when I succumb to the feeling of a whipper-snipper carving up the Achilles!

TAIL-BONE! I would not normally raise this area of my person in polite spoken or written communication. But I remain under the influence of pain killing drugs which I feel gives my licence so to do! I cannot lie on my left or right side in bed. When I lie on my back, my fear of waking up choking, having had a terrifying similar experience in hospital ( that’s another story!)is enough to give me a panic attack and so I sleep between two wedges in the shape of a capital V with my new knees hanging, in air over the top of the contraption.

FOUR DAYS LATER!

same position…in bed, knees up but not as high as before! I have decided, in an attempt to improve my quality of sleep to abandon the ” wedge” and resort to a memory foam pillow which just elevates my knees a bit. so far so good but the bedroom is littered with my grabber, my walker, my wedge, a torch and a different blanket just in case I have to revert to the usual arrangement! My trusty bed stick remains ensconced beside me and I have downed the endone for the evening. I am hoping to sleep for a longer stretch! TAIL BONE is not protesting at present…..touch wood.

Continuing my list of misery…..

CLOTHES – sometimes my knees go nuts and object strongly to material that might come close to them! Synthetics ( which is just about everything) itch, anything with a bit of stretch in it – jeans, leggings, pants even skirts seem to generate enough heat to start a forest fire on the hairs on my legs. I have not shaved my legs since the arrival of the new knees because I am terrified I will cut myself and bleed to death courtesy of the blood thinner Pradaxa which I have been taking for nearly a year!

My bras are too big! I adjust the straps in the hope of a bit of uplift and the pressure on my shoulders becomes almost unbearable! The left strap goes straight over the middle of the pacemaker scar making it sore and itchy and on the odd occasion the pacemaker does a little shift and pops out to greet me. A gentle roll of the shoulder and it clunks itself back! The technician assures me this is not unusual but adds a note of caution not to be too “rough” in getting it back in place because ” we would not want the wire to your heart to dislodge”! Oh? really?

physically it is much easier to ” keep my chin up” these days because I now have only one of the. But mentally? Well I write as if I am wallowing in misery and that is because I am! To use a recent catch cry – one which pisses me off really – ” it is what it is”! I AM miserable! SO miserable! Down on MISERY FARM!

BUT…….. The memory foam pillow swap thing has given me some respite. I am typing this at 4.40am having had the longest uninterrupted sleep -about four and a half hours – in weeks.

Triple L continues to look after me, that is when he is not slipping on grapes at the local supermarket! Yup, that’s right! Accident report completed. No damage done at the time but neck and back given a bit of a jar!

going back to bed!