I’ve wanted to write a post for a while now, but the words just wouldn’t come. I think the combination of my massive doses of muscle relaxers coupled with a new addition to help them work harder, namely valium, is making me kind of dumb. Words and ideas keep popping into my head, some of them are really good ones too, but when I go to write them down my mind goes blank looking at the words from the notes I’d frantically jotted down on my phone so I wouldn’t forget. Nicely done, BBAD. Not being able to decipher my own ideas. Now there’s a new low if ever I saw one.

I don’t feel overly motivated to write right now, to be honest, but it felt like a day that had to be acknowledged here since it’s officially two weeks to the day that my surgery will be taking place and while that seems like such a great thing to note, I immediately want to tell you that two more weeks of this is likely to see me turn stark raving mad so it doesn’t feel all that celebratory. I’m forcing myself to celebrate it anyway. Two weeks. I told myself I could do anything for a few months while I waited for the only Valentine’s Day I’ve ever looked forward to to arrive, surely I can do this for two more weeks! That’s only 13 sleeps! I can do this.

Can I really do this? Can I? I’m so overwhelmed by the state of my drug addled brain that I am kind of fuzzy on the answer. I’m going to go with yes. Yes, I can do this for two more weeks.   And I will believe it because my precious Cheryl came to my house today to hang out with me and she totally believes I can do this and twenty years in therapy with her have taught me that she is almost always right. Also, the great thing about your precious therapist retiring is that now you can be friends! Like without it feeling weird when I ask her personal questions because I’m not a patient anymore I’m something more. Oh, and she brought me lunch and a delicious almond croissant. We chatted and laughed and it did my soul good. Obviously, I did all of this with the world’s worst bedhead and in my most ridiculous thermal pajamas but she didn’t bat an eye and I hardly gave it a second thought. I’ve had to go out into the world three different times this week and to say it kicked my ass something wicked would be an understatement, so I earned this pajama day and I reveled in it.

As it turns out having surgery on your spine involves all manner of preparation that I had no idea about. On Monday of this week I went to visit my local Allegheny Health Network outpatient services location and ticked off some major healthcare testing all in one fell swoop. I started with a chest X-ray (two views), then came the EKG, a mammogram after that, and then some blood work and yet another urinalysis. It was like testingpalooza but this whole Outpatient Services location made it almost painless and completely do-able. To say the people there were incredibly nice would be an understatement. They wheeled me from one end of the facility to the other to get all of these many tests done and they did it with smiles on their faces. I should mention that this facility is about 5 minutes from my house, so I got dropped off at the door and situated with the least stress possible. It says something about our health care system when I get practically giddy when things aren’t flat out painful. If I had to go to a giant hospital to get those tests done chances are it would have taken days and energy I simply don’t have and a level of inconvenience to my family of personal chauffeurs that would have made me feel terrible. So, good on you Allegheny Health Network. You did something right.

Wednesday was an appointment with my primary care physician to verify that I am approved for surgery. I saw a Dr. Vargo for this appointment because my regular primary care doctor is booked through April and that wasn’t going to work for me at all. The appointment went well. I answered all of the questions correctly and got all good marks on my vitals. It never ceases to amaze me how freaking healthy I am for someone so chronically unhealthy. I mean, thank the Universe that I don’t have other shit to deal with because that would suck beyond belief but it kind of makes me chuckle every time. It was all going so well until Dr. Vargo asked to look at my legs to check for swelling and happened to notice my double layer of compression socks. I’ve been having some horrible swelling in my feet and ankles over the last few weeks. It’s bad enough that it’s been almost impossible to get shoes on my feet and the compression socks are a necessity. An annoying necessity at that since getting them on my actual legs should count as some kind of chronic illness Iron Man test of strength and coordination but that’s neither here nor there. After poking at my legs which did something called “pitting” which means the indents from a finger poke make little pits in your skin he decided that I needed to have one more test before I could be approved for surgery.

One. More. Test. Jesus. H. Christ on a cracker.

I needed to have a vascular ultrasound done on both legs to make sure I didn’t have blood clots that would make having surgery a decidedly terrible idea. Once I was done panicking about the chance that my surgery might get postponed because of my fucking cankles, I started to panic about where and how long it would take for me to get this damn test which might ALSO delay my surgery, because FML that’s how things have been going for me lately and it felt like my little black raincloud was still determined to ruin this for me and I’m so goddamned close I can freaking smell the anesthesia (I realize anesthesia is probably scent free but you know what I’m saying, I know you do).

But lo, I called my new friends at the AHN Outpatient Services facility 5 minutes from my home and they said my test did require an appointment (some things there are walk-in services but not this vascular ultrasound apparently) and could I be there tomorrow at 1PM for about an hour? Um, YES I CAN you wonderful, convenient and nice people. I will be there with bells on and I was and it was good. And it was really good because my vascular test came out perfectly and I don’t have any vascular clots causing my cankles at all. I was given the green light without reservation for my Valentine’s Day date to actually happen as planned. Hallelujah and pass the scrubs I’m good to go.

It hasn’t been all fun and games and clear test results since last we spoke, dear reader. There was the time last Saturday that I decided I needed to change my sheets on my bed myself because it’s still spring in January in Pittsburgh and I was in danger of spontaneous human combustion from sleeping on flannel sheets. I mean what could go wrong? I’d use my rollator like I did that one time and I’d go slow. It would be FINE. Which it almost was fine until I rollated myself to the bathroom to pee on incredibly shaky, weak legs. As I was attempting to get myself back to my bedroom to finish the task, my right leg spasmed while I was walking and went completely rigid but my body was moving in forward motion so I somehow fell out of my bathroom sideways, landing in the doorway of my guest room with my upstairs rollator somehow on top of me. Nitro is my second-floor rollator and he weighs about 23 pounds which isn’t terrible but I went down hard and I was all twisted up between Nitro and the doorway to my guest room and my right leg still wouldn’t bend so I was 100% stuck there knowing for sure that I probably hurt myself pretty badly based on how hard I fell.

I held myself together somehow and managed to disentangle myself and my spasming rigid legs from Nitro very, very slowly. I was too weak to get to a standing position though. That whole bed changing thing took it out of me and my lower body was all, “Yeah bitch, you live down here now and you better get used to it because we’re not moving and your phone is in the other room and hope you like the view.” I laid there a bit longer and took very tiny movements to get my legs bent and by some miracle of god I got to my hands and knees and crawled into my bedroom where my phone was and Siri did me a solid and called my nephew for me because I couldn’t reach my phone from the floor where I was currently stranded, maybe for the rest of my life if Alex wasn’t home but lo! It happened again that the universe tossed me a bone and not only was Al home but he could come right over and rescue me from the floor and all would be right in my world once more and it would be good! (I have no idea why this post seems to lend itself to a biblical language style but it felt big to me at the time so I’m just rolling with it like a disciple from the days of yore who wrote nice stories about parables and stuff.)

The best part of this pathetic story is how I thought I had escaped my dramatic, epic fall with only a few small bruises that I could see on my right upper arm. A few dark purple splotches no bigger than a few grapes! I am a falling wizard, I thought to myself, for coming out of this debacle with only a few little marks. Yay me! Until I took my shower the next day and it went off without any incidents – shockingly. I know someone once said something about pride goeth-ing before the fall or something like that, (I think that’s ALSO a bible thing! Those twelve years of catholic education taught me a few more things than I thought), but I’m here to tell you that fear cometh AFTER the fall because I was so nerved out the entire time I was in the shower about potentially taking another graceless dive but this time being stark-ass naked when Siri called someone for help that my shower took like 45 minutes because I was moving so slowly and being extra careful.

Anyway, I got myself to my dressing room wrapped in a towel and safely in a chair in front of my vanity to dry my hair and do elaborate skin care stuff, as one does, when I saw something freaky when I lifted up my left arm. The entire underside of my arm was almost black. Like it didn’t look like my pasty white winter-skin arm at all. So, it turns out that I didn’t escape my epic fall with only tiny bruises at all. I had killed my own left arm and just hadn’t noticed it. But wait! I can show you what it looked like because you know I had to take a picture of that shit. I had to show at least a few people this epic bruise whether they liked it or not and now I’m going to share it with all of you, because why the hell not? It’s epic. It deserves to be seen. I’ve decided to tell anyone who sees it in real life that it’s a new series of vegetable tattoos I’m getting. A vegetable arm sleeve, if you will, starting with this first tat of an eggplant. The problem is, of course, that a few more days have gone by and now my eggplant appears to be rotting so yeah. It’s not cute. But it’s mine.

So yeah. Fourteen days. No more tests just more waiting and more random leg spasms that could potentially turn my entire body deep purple should I decide to be so cheeky as to attempt any other basic household tasks and go flying again.

The good thing about valium for leg spasms is that it really does help them to not happen as often and when they do happen, you feel all calm and Zen about it and merely marvel at the enormity of your arm eggplant. I’m going to be sad when I’m not taking valium anymore. Feeling Zen-like calm is so much more appealing than the other feelings I usually have which are more like panic, sadness and overall dread. Maybe this next two weeks won’t be so bad after all.