https://www.democraticunderground.com/11473621mopinko (53,638 posts)
i posted this on fb today, i thought it might get an amen here.
got into a fight w my best friend this morning because i woke up w a knife of pain in my back, so i thought i might need to explain to more than just one person.
i feel like i ought to put this out there.
i dont like to bitch about my health, or, frankly, to talk about it.
but i feel like maybe some of my friends are scratching their heads about stuff i am or am not doing, and i think it might help if i explained.
i have had a lot of ups and downs in my health for nearly 20 years now. i got bit by a mosquito, and came down w west nile. i never felt good again. i have fibromyalgia, and some autoimmune irregularities as well as 3 separate autoimmune conditions.
i have had creeping osteoarthritis for the last decade, starting w 2 vertebral disks that fell apart in '08.
2 years ago, i had to have my shoulder reconstructed, and now i have 2 hips and a knee that are a daily drag.
and i cant take most pain meds, as my intestines are sorta falling apart.
the last 2 years have been a steady downward slide.
at this point, i am barely functional.
tho i marvel at the number of seedlings and plants that i was able to produce this year, i also know how many failed, and why, and how much more i could have done w just a little more energy, and how much extra help it took.
i am grateful as all holy hell that i have the kind of support for everyday life functions that i have now, but i think everybody knows that that is a rose w many thorns.
through all this, i have never doubted that there was a fix out there that could at least make things better.
both surgeries were very successful, and made a massive improvement. meds have helped keep the fibro at bay for a long while.
but i turn 65 in a few short weeks, and it feels like there are no more peaks out there for me to climb. just a deeper and deeper valley, w no passes out.
so, if i miss your thing, even tho i said i was gonna be there a couple of hours ago, or it takes me several hours or even days to answer your messages, or it seems like i am always napping, now you know why.
no sorries or prayers or suggestions needed.
i just thought there were more than a couple people on this feed that might read this and go- ooo00ooh.
ps, if you post something that is the kind of thing that makes people w chronic illness groan or cry, imma delete it.
i have heard them all, i know they are well intentioned. but they can make us sickies a little nuts, and i dont want that to happen to any of my sicky friends.
i aint mad at ya. it's ok, but it's my thread here.
As most here know, Big Mo since 2004 has been one of my favorite primitives, and I mean that in a kind sense.
She's of my generation, and we both grew up in the middle-class, she in suburban America and I in small town America. We both enjoyed privileges many others didn't, chief of them being our loving, caring parents who gave us a stable environment in which to grow up.
But as she's obviously been unhappy most if not all of her adult life, while I've been generally content, it's apparent that somewhere along the line, our paths diverged. Why has her fate been so much different from mine, or mine from hers?
She's admitted that as an adolescent, she felt a "need" to be a rebel, even though she had nothing against which to rebel. Myself, like anyone else growing up, I was rebellious at times.....when there was something meaningful to be rebellious about. Big Mo was a rebel without a cause, franksolich was a rebel with a cause.
She apparently started running with the wrong crowd, nascent women's libbers who like she had a "need" to be angry, to be bitter, without having anything to be bitter or angry about. I on the other hand ran only with blue-chip people noted for their self-confidence and good cheer for mankind.
She also fell into the hippie idea of "better living through chemistry;" it didn't matter how one behaved, because medical science had, or would develop, some sort of pill to make things okay again. Myself, I attribute my strength and fortitude in a time of grave illness to that self-discipline, not drugs, builds character.
Big Mo's biggest problem has always been her lack of gratitude for the very much that life has given her. Loving, caring parents and unselfish siblings, a stable childhood, and then marriage with a banker who loved her to pieces, gave her everything she wanted, and more.
It's all very sad, and one sheds the occasional tear for a suffering fellow human being, but in the decreptitude of her old age, Big Mo's got no one but herself to blame.
