Tuesday, January 28, 2020

A balloon made of light.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020;
all rights reserved.
Hope is like a balloon made of light: You need it to drift close enough to grab hold of it without either puncturing the balloon or pouring molten fire down on yourself. And your chances of missing it entirely are about the same as either of the other two bad outcomes. Grabbing hold of it safely? Notsomuch.

There are days when putting one foot in front of the other is too much.

I know it seems like I "suddenly" have subluxes every day. The only "suddenly" here is that, at long last, after a whole entire lifetime, I finally have the words for what's happening to me. I have had physical pain literally every single day of my life; this has been my existence from the cradle. No one ever believed me. Certainly no one ever thought it needed to be taken seriously. Even my fibro DX 20 years ago was a trashcan DX, a way for the medical profession to put the onus on me for just not trying hard enough, just not doing the work, just not dealing with it. Except none of that was it, and I kept telling people, and no one ever listened. And on days like this, when the migraine threatens to blind me because my damaged neck is out of place, when I'm operating on virtually no sleep, when my entire body is subluxed thanks to a near-fall yesterday? Yes, I'm glad to know what to call it now, but what I feel most? Is rage. Rage, at a lifetime's worth of deliberate dismissal, of purposeful mistreatment. Because whatever might have been minimized then? That chance is all gone now. And on days like today, the pain is more than I can take. I don't know how I'm supposed to do everything I need to do to keep us going when I can't even get through the pain that's drowning my entire body. Hope, my subluxed ass (and it is; my hips are both out of place, as is my pelvic saddle right now).

And as I've said, even though we have some light at the end of the tunnel on Wings's dental work, I still need to make it rain on a regular basis with sales and subscriptions, because there are all the usual bills and expenses, upcoming taxes, the urgent need to replace this dying laptop (and the camera, too, eventually, which is also a tool essential to our livelihood), the repairs on the house, and, if I get really lucky, all my one-year follow-up testing. [I'm using "lucky" ironically, because getting it done guarantees a lot of pain, discomfort, and inconvenience, not the least of which is all the travel obstacles. To say that I don't want to do it is massively understating it. Unfortunately, I need to do it at some point.]

Also unfortunately, I'm still reduced to trying to get work done with a torn ankle and subluxed forearm, hips, and knees, and now two barely functional hands, and a laptop that continues to deteriorate by the day (a camera, too, and both are essential for our work — not just mine, but his). The pain is . . . very bad these days. It's not a function of weather or cold, mostly, but of deterioration. In desperation, I'm adding one last supplement, a costly one, in hopes of getting it to ease off even a little, but it won't be in until next week. I'm also trying to plan for all the expenses of winter to come. The Pueblo closure, starting this weekend, is slated to last two full months this time, so it will be worse than usual. In that period of time, there will be taxes to pay, his scrip to keep refilling, his dental work to try somehow to get done, and forget about my own follow-up tests, to say nothing of plumbing/wall repairs or all the work still unfinished on the house; I'm scrapping everything, because we can't afford it. Yes, I'm due for follow-up scans and biopsies already, and they're not going to happen, because we don't have five figures' worth of scratch to waste on it. I've still got to make sales, try to drum up new Patreon subscribers, do whatever I can to bring in more money, all on top of everything else. Folks can help in several ways (sales are always preferred):
Please share everything. Thanks.


All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used 
or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

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