That’s it up there. The puffy village. The place I love most in the world, where I come for comfort, where I lay my head when the world out there becomes too much. An old boyfriend dubbed my overly comfortable bed the puffy village a long time ago because he said it was so insanely comfortable you could live there happily for all time. The boyfriend is long gone. The puffy remains.

I take a lot of care making her as comfy as possible. I choose my sheets and bedding with obsessive care the way I used to select designer shoes. Currently, I’m in a mixed print phase.
Just looking at this picture makes me happy.

Mostly.

See, I’ve spent a whole lot of time in the puffy since being sprung from the hospital on Monday evening. I mean, I’m glad I got out. I couldn’t stand the idea of that hideous torture chamber they call Allegheny General Hospital for even one more second. I guess I thought it would be better at home. I’d feel better. The ruse I performed for the overly attentive PT team would turn out to be real and I’d go back to being able to stand up, walk around, bend over touch my toes and do a little jig. But as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, things actually haven’t gotten much better at all.

I’m so dizzy it’s ridiculous. I can barely remain on my feet. I hold on to anything and everything in order to do basic things like walk to the bathroom or down the steps to the kitchen. My legs are weak on top of the dizziness I feel in my brain. I feel like my house has been transformed into a fancy house boat that happens to always traverse super rough waters.

The antivert I’m taking for the dizziness makes me tired and doesn’t seem to help the vertigo much at all. I haven’t left the house since getting home Monday night. I’ve been asleep approximately 85% of the time since. I’m still in pajamas all day and I’ve yet to risk the shower. I’m deathly afraid of falling and ending up in the hospital again – and lord knows, that’s just not gonna be something I allow to happen.

Family and friends are at my beck and call to handle chores, to feed me, to make deliveries and make me laugh. Mostly they’re there to help me up and down the steps and take care of my very spoiled menagerie of felines. Damn, I have a lot of cats.

I can’t read because my right eye is wonky. I can type if I keep one eye closed. Television is hard, again, because of the wonky eye. My list of things I can do consecutively has grown shorter. I’m down to one thing at a time before I need to rest. I used to have at least two things in me, sometimes even three.

It’s hitting me hard because I’m finally realizing that this just is what it is! The part I thought was the worst, where I was waiting for the magical drug to kick in and make me more human, that was the good part! I thought it was the bad part. I thought I could only get better.

Turns out, it’s super easy to get so much worse. I wonder how long it’s going to take me to bounce back from this episode? What will my new normal be? Will I ever get back to my doing three small things in a row self? How long will I be the queen of the puffy village?

At what point do I simply cease to exist?

I know. I’m super dramatic. Spending so much time alone in deep thought whilst listening to one’s body fail all around her will do that to a girl. And that pisses me off even more!

I’m the queen of the loners! Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you how much I enjoy my own company. It’s probably a giant character flaw but it’s true. These last few days I feel like I’m in the twilight zone where I’m walking from familiar room to familiar room, holding on to walls and chairs, looking for the person I used to be and not finding her. There’s someone else here now. She can barely stand up and her hair is atrocious. Don’t even look at her eyebrows! The horrors.

I keep telling myself this too shall pass. That’s what everyone, literally everyone I know both in real life and in MS life, has told me and I believe those people. They’re so much better at this MS thing than I am. They’ve gone to the darkest places and clawed their way back. I keep thinking I’ve accepted this thing in my life then something happens that turns my life ass over teacups and I’m back at the beginning looking around thinking, “what the hell just happened?”

I just want to not be dizzy so badly! I want to will it so with my broken brain. I want to sleep the sick away and wake up magically feeling a little worse for wear but generally just a little gimpy and slow. I thought that was the bad part! I thought things could only get better. As if I didn’t know the truth.

The truth is that was probably as good as it gets. That whole time before this hospital incident when I felt like I’d hit rock bottom wasn’t even close to the bottom! I’m looking at getting my first assistive walking device (form tbd hopefully with the help of some outpatient PT once I feel a bit more able). Once I get a cane, I’ll probably need a walker soon after that. The wheel chair can’t be too far behind right? At least a scooter…

I know how lucky I am to have the luxury of sleep in the world’s most comfortable bed. After being deprived of sleep for so long, being in the puffy feels almost like heaven. And yet the whole thing changes a little tiny bit when you realize you’re not in the bed by choice. You’re in the bed because your body flat gave up on you. No combination of high thread count mixed print sheets can help you in that situation. You just have to suck it up. Try to be grateful and go back to sleep.

Every time I close my eyes these last few days I have this intense hope in my heart that when my eyes open again I’ll be off this houseboat version of my life and back to my happy place where a shower isn’t life threatening and awesome sheets are enough to make me feel happy.

Until then, here I lay. Flat on my back. Cultivating happy hopeful thoughts and functioning as a speed bump for my very many cats. It could be worse. It could be much worse.

Remember the hospital? Exactly. Shivers.