Patience is a virtue I don’t possess

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH MY TIME?

I apologize to God every day for the time I’ve been given and have wasted.

I’m not a big believer in just letting time float by, which makes this akin to the sin of laziness.

I don’t mind hard work – never have – and always intended to work hard my whole life, to use my time wisely, and to help others: family, friends, community, nation.

I always felt, when I was young, that I could work my way out of any dead end, find a way to proceed from where I was to where I wanted to go.

I trusted that there was a purpose for me, and I tried to discern that purpose. Since I seemed to be able to handle math and science better than my peers, I determined I would be a physicist. After that, the PhD seemed a useful next step – I would do research. There was a paucity of women in hard science, so that must be my goal in life, what I was meant to do, and I enjoyed it a lot of the time, too.

It turned out I liked programming computers, and I preferred doing so with a worthwhile use for all that power: scientific computing in between the experimentalists and the theorists in my chosen field fit perfectly as a home.

Even when I got sick, I found ways to make myself useful, and that gave shape to what was left of my life: kids, husband, home – the energy went there. Instead of spending time and energy getting kids to school at the same time with a lunch, we homeschooled, and the science was poured into projects and fairs, competitions and internships.

As the kids needed me less, I taught myself to write fiction, poured into writing what I could spare.

Healing? Feels like a complete waste of time.

In a week it will be three months since they finally figured out what was wrong and installed the magic third stent in the right place. It’s been longer since the beginning of the whole thing, much longer if you add the three months of coughing that started last Nov. 1.

I am trying hard to be grateful for being alive: while there’s life, there’s hope.

But this status right now, waiting to see if I will even get back to that very basic writing level I had over half a year ago, having days go by without producing anything, week after week after week, feels not like healing, but like waste.

I can force myself to do a few things when they’re critical – but the ones I need to do with a bit of a brain are on the list of things piling up by the day.

And I can’t force myself to write fiction. It is a higher ability which can be encouraged but not ordered, and it had disappeared completely as of over a month ago, with the zombie brain that came from the last, unnecessary, drug: clopidogrel – generic Plavix. I stopped taking it two weeks ago, and it took ten days before I could say it was letting go of its grip.

I’m not back yet. All my schedules and timings are off. It takes me far longer to have the brain click on – and it stays on for a very short time, and then clicks back off.

So I wait, and another day goes by with nothing to show.

Exercise? A joke.

My online CFS friends tell me it can be four months before I will even see the beginning effects of my tiny bit of exercise. The exercise? Eight minutes, three times a week, of deliberately sub-aerobic recumbent rowing motion for arms or legs, in four 2-min. bursts, separated by 4-min. rests. Even I can’t see how that will add up to anything in four months, since I can’t increase it, as I barely tolerate it now. It will be two months in a week.

Without the clopidogrel, there is no huge pain surge after the exercise. But there is also only the slightest hint that I will be able to increase the intensity. I’m grateful for the eight minutes – but it is pitiful.

I do my exercise – missed one day because I got too much walking to be functional later – because it is the one thing I’m doing which the doctor told me to do. I was trying to exercise before I found out one of my arteries (I don’t believe the other stents were necessary) was almost blocked, and it hadn’t been going well, for what now looks like obvious reasons. So I will keep that one up, hope for improvement, and be prepared for it to take a long time.

I haven’t tried a bike ride yet – I could do that before, but I have a residual ‘vertical instability’ feeling from the drugs, and I’m not sure I’m safe yet.

Which still leaves me with 17 hours a day to ‘use’

And during which I’m still tireder than I was before, which makes no sense to me since supposedly I have better blood flow!

I have been bored out of my gourd. I can’t read – that uses energy I haven’t had. I can only watch a bit of TV in the evening – two shows, and I’m tired. From watching the friggin TV! I can’t do useful things – no energy. Though I’ve managed a couple of weeding sessions, sitting on the ground for a couple of hours getting those pesky strawberries and onions out – losing the complete next day because I did too much SITTING. Honestly – it’s appalling.

So what HAVE I been doing?

Writing. The journals for every day since I got out of the hospital now include 62,000 words; and the auxiliary material – drugs, stents, papers – another 36,000. About 5% of that is time stamps; the rest is a good size novel. Boring and repetitious, but it has allowed me to see patterns, which identified the side effects – and the consequences of drug changes. I haven’t had the energy to report the side effects to the FDA – a huge item on my to do list.

Reading. I forced myself to read that bunch of scientific papers (okay, SKIM, not read, looking for the necessary parts – because things were getting worse by the day in the side effects department, and I needed to get off drugs). Unbelievably exhausting – but I found what I needed – thank you, Dr. Google and online medical papers.

Blogging. I think I’ve put out around ten posts of about 1500 words each, turning some of that journaling into semi-coherent pieces of description of one or another topic in those journals.

Surfing. THERE IS NOTHING TO READ ON THE INTERNET. I don’t know where most of the content went, but it seems WAY down from when I started educating myself on self-publishing back in 2012. Several prominent bloggers then have either stopped posting, or have cut way back.

Games. No, don’t get excited – I haven’t had the brainpower for real games. Sudoku and Drench, a simple flash game, things I can play rather mindlessly (even the hard Sudokus which I use to gauge mental speed); very occasionally Bee Cells on my Color Nook – the only thing I sometimes charge it up to take somewhere (I can’t leave it charged – no ability to stop playing).

Sleeping. Night runs 6-7 interrupted hours; and I’m still aiming for 3-5 half-hour naps during which my brain dumps the junk (I call it ‘mental dialysis’ – used to work much better). I meditate during the naps, keep the heart rate and blood pressure down, calm myself, get through.

Sitting. Here, at the computer, waiting each day for my brain to come back. Getting an hour once a week up until quite recently. Now I’m up to an hour every second or third day. Note that it takes me 5-6 hours to GET that hour, and involves rituals having to do with Diet Coke, food, naps, and what I’m allowed to do while there is any possibility the brain might visit that day (mostly that surfing, and the leaving of comments if there’s ANYTHING I can contribute to a discussion).

Can’t: listen to music – it hurts my ears. Do anything artistic, even coloring in a coloring book, because it seems both boring and pointless. Embroider. Sew. Clean. Work on getting this house ready for market when my assistant is here a few hours a week. Talk to people – phone, video, or in person are exhausting. Leave the house – I think I’m up to once or twice a week, and pay for it, and most of them have been visits to the you-know-whos.

There IS no solution that comes from without

I don’t need pity. Suggestions are pretty useless in the present conditions, though they have been lovely from people showing concern.

All I can do is HOPE that this extremely slow process – doing what I can, exercising my 8 min. three times a week, continuing to eat carefully so it doesn’t set off the new gut instabilities and I lose a bit of weight (good for heart and joints), praying, not giving up – will result in something positive.

I got that hour of ‘brain on’ today – and finished a scene I started six weeks ago. It isn’t me, it isn’t writer’s block – the instant the brain is on, I head for the WIP (work in progress) and get started. It isn’t depression keeping me from writing (though I’m rather depressed about the situation, it’s just that, situational). And it isn’t even dealing with the post-traumatic stress – I’ve done that, I’m doing that, and without the drugs in my system some of the more hallucinatory effects have disappeared (which proves they’ve never been me in the first place).

I can’t even eat chocolate! I tried a couple of times, made two tablespoonfuls of chocolate chips last an hour – and then was hit with a rapid heart rate and elevated temperature period afterward, each time, that has made me very skittish.

I feel like Job in the Old Testament – hopeful, yet subject to boils and all other disasters. My trust in the Almightly hasn’t wavered (much), but I sure wish I could ask Him a lot of questions.

As I said, PATIENCE is a virtue I don’t have.

I’m being forced to pretend. Got it. I don’t need to disturb my poor friends and family any more than I’ve already done.

If I’ve missed something obvious, please feel free. Pray. I don’t see what else to do.

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Thank you for letting me vent. I will be happy to listen to YOU vent.

And yes, I’m still grateful to be alive, however pointless it seems right now. It CAN get a LOT worse. But then boredom wouldn’t really be the problem any more – survival would.