For anyone with a command of basic math, you’ve probably already figured out that the image up there should be a number 9 and not a number 10. There’s a funny story about how this happened and by funny I mean not funny at all. I wrote the headline last night, when I intended to publish this post and I agonized over whether or not it was quite right but as it turns out, considering what happened, it was actually perfect. But I had no way of knowing that at the time.

I wrote a sublime post, full of witty language and intricate detail about how I live for my weekly yoga sessions with my friend and beloved personal yoga instructor Rachel but I had to cancel my much needed appointment because I dropped my phone behind my bed. Those two things may not seem connected until you consider the lengths I had to go to to retrieve my phone from behind my very heavy and immovable wrought iron bed. I had no energy left for anything afterwards. And it made for a hilarious, if mildly pathetic, blog post until I tried to insert a photo into the post while using my WordPress app on my iPhone (which I was using to write said post) and accidentally deleted the entire thing. Gone. Completely and forever.

Why was I writing a blog post on my phone, is a reasonable question you might ask and I would explain to you that on top of everything else that has gone to shit in these last few weeks before my impending surgery I’ve all of the sudden come down with a strange case of cankles. Swollen feet and ankles that are so giant that they are actually painful. There is no obvious reason for this phenomena but it gets worse when I sit with my feet on the floor – like I tend to do at my writing desk. So I had the brilliant idea to write the post using the app on my phone while laying in bed. I was pretty freaking impressed with myself too.

The funny part of the story is that the reason I accidentally dropped my phone behind my very heavy wrought iron bed is that I’d been trying to figure out a way to arrange myself in the bed with my feet elevated to get the swelling down before yoga began. This involved many of the very many pillows, wedges and other various and sundry devices I use in my bed to keep my spasms from rendering me immobile and pained during the night whilst I sleep. It’s harder than you might think to elevate your feet when your entire legs spasm when you straighten them for any length of time. Even a few seconds. So it took a lot of my brain power to figure this out. I placed my phone on the bed near my head so I could reach it once I finally got myself into position. This was important because if my mom can’t reach me on the phone right away she tends to panic and assume I’m lying on the floor unable to get up which is an entirely reasonable thing to think since this exact thing happened to me just a few days before.

So my point here is that this post was intended to be published last night but it disappeared and I almost sobbed but then I was out of energy to even try to recreate it and thus I missed the monumental ten days before surgery date. I also missed yoga. The only thing that gives me any tiny modicum of relief – even if it only lasts while I’m actually doing it. It still matters. Rachel time is sacred. I almost wept to have to cancel but the retrieval of my phone from behind my bed involved so much energy, and tools, and moving of actual furniture that my entire body was spent. Done. Not safe to be vertical levels of done. I had no choice than to get back into bed and rest it off.

Here is the picture of the ingenious set up I created for foot elevation without spasms that tanked this very post last night.

And here is the photo of what was involved in getting my phone out from under my bed and yes. It involved many random tools including a paint roller on a stick used for painting ceilings as well as my handi-girl object grabbing device, the moving of a very heavy bedside table and a curious and inconvenient cat. And yes. Those pillows you see tossed about willy nilly are all required to get me either into bed or out of the bed or sleeping in the bed without my entire body being wracked with spasms. Going to bed has become my personal nightmare.

If you know me at all, you know how much I love my bed. Everything about it. I lovingly buy the best possible bedding. I own more sheets and comforters and quilts than any single woman ever should. My bed even has a nickname. It’s called The Puffy Village. It was dubbed this by an ex-boyfriend who once said it was nearly impossible to want to leave my bed once you climbed into it because it was just that perfectly, blissfully comfortable. That’s how much I love my bed. I still use a nickname for it given by a boy long gone and not missed. Now my beloved Puffy Village looks like this.

That’s just not ok.

MS, and more specifically severe spasticity related to my MS, has ruined my bed for me. I dread going to bed now. I’m almost as afraid of how I’ll get into it as I am with how I’ll get out of it again when that time comes. MS ruined my bed for me and it definitely ruined my chance at spending a much needed hour with Rachel yesterday. I was not ok with this. I was even less ok with losing my entire post so painstakingly written from my dreaded bed so as not to exacerbate my painful cankle situation.

Since I’m writing this very post from my bed, on my phone again, it might take this whole story to all new levels of absurd but I needed to tell you, my loyal and beloved readers, just how close I am to literally losing my actual shit while I await the arrival of Valentine’s Day and this goddamn surgery that better be worth all of this.

Because that’s where I keep going in my mind. As each day passes and they become more absurd and preposterous as my spasms and stiffness seem intent on reaching all new levels of bad, I’m haunted by the fear of what if I waited too long?

What if I waited too long to get this process moving and have allowed myself to get so fucking weak and impossibly addled and limited that I won’t be able to come back from this place of actual misery. This place where changing my sheets or retrieving my phone from behind my bed brings me to such physical levels of exhaustion and weakness that I become a danger to myself. What if I waited too long?

Like right this very minute I’m writing this to distract myself from the fact that it’s exactly one hour and thirteen minutes before I can take my next horse doses of baclofen and tizanidine. And as I’m writing this post from my bed (and obsessively saving every 20 seconds) I’m wondering how hard it’s going to be to get myself out of the bed because of course I have to pee. Funny. The cure for my mysterious cankles is yet another drug that makes me pee even more often than my MS does. Because of course it is!

I hope you’ll forgive me if this isn’t my best writing. Editing one’s writing on one’s phone is not very easy. I hope you’ll forgive me for posting about day 10 on day 9. I hope, like me, you’ll be able to focus on the glorious fact that we’re now into single digits! And I do say “we” because I feel like you’re all in this with me. Helping me not to lose what’s left of my mind while the countdown continues.

In mere days it will be exactly one week until surgery day. God I hope it’s not too late. God I hope I can figure out how to get to that day without breaking any bones. And I really hope I can figure out how to pack my 27 step skincare routine in a small bag for my stay in rehab.

We can do this. Right?