Daily Miracles

Hi everyone, I’m struggling with swollen legs and feet again. The vascular center has agreed to do several lymphedema massages for me to get things back under control again. Need to start my recumbent bike riding again too. The muscle movement helps the lymph fluid move up and out of my legs rather than staying there. Just haven’t felt like much exercise at all with my breathing being so tight the last several days. My appetite has finally started coming back following Dad’s death. Things will turn around soon. Need to be patient as I go through the stages of grief. Need more roughage and fiber in my diet so that I can get over this darned constipation. It’s too bad that methadone stops the wave’s of muscular contractions that mean blessed regularity. Oh well, this too shall pass. Ha….

I just get that feeling of being stuck recently and not wanting to nor having the energy to do very much. I think this is just a passing feeling as I adjust to limits in stamina still there, fatigue which pops up, and pain that I need to respect. When I look at it, I’ve been getting groceries for us recently, have been feeding Charley at evenings and cleaning his litter pans, have been paying the bills, and play with Charley each morning. I read about and keep up with the world and fill my days in a calm and relaxed way. Yesterday, I had three health care appointments and drove around in the downtown area to get to them, coming back home once. One was with my pain specialist. That’s the hard one because there are always two or three other residents or pharmacists or other doctors with him. It makes me tense. Then I had my lymphedema massage at the other big hospital in town, Abbot has a very good vascular center. Then I had an allergy desensitization shot. I’m trying to space my three shots further apart because I’m having some itching and breathing difficulties when I get all three injections together. Then finally, home; in a lot of pain. I was exhausted and shaky from fatigue too and then got hot and sweaty, all signs of too much on one day. I only do that when I absolutely have to. Because of office schedules I had to make it a hard day. Thankfully, I could just rest and relax when I got home about 3:15. Oh what a lot of freedom I have with my life.

So, you see, I shouldn’t be feeling so stuck. There were even opportunities to help two older women who were having a terrible time putting groceries in their cars. They were both disabled and had made it all the way to the grocery store and driven themselves and had managed through the store. The last step got them both. For one, I calmed her down after being so upset when all her groceries fell on the parking lot. Another young woman helped her pick them up. Then, she was so frazzled and upset that she couldn’t find her keys and couldn’t start her car. What do you do, but try to help her feel proud for what she has accomplished and say this is ok. It’s not so bad. She said that she felt she was just becoming a shell of herself. Maybe, but getting to the store is a big victory. I knew how much help I need and how much help I get from others to get along.

The other woman had gotten to her car with an electric grocery cart and her cane. She just didn’t see how she could get those bags into her car. I could see her staring at those bags and shaking her head slightly with a tightly pursed lip. I said almost immediately, “can I help you?” “If you’d like to”, she said. Well I did and loaded them all into her trunk. It just made me feel so wonderful inside when she gave me that big smile and said Thank You! ; so warmly. She saw me a few minutes later at the Post Office dropping off mail. She grinned and smiled again. We waved to each other. I guess all I need is some small sense of accomplishment. Life is not made of a few BIG moments, but of many small meaningful moments of love and caring that bring us closer to each other . I call them the background to my living. My life is not moving along so much in big jumps, but in small daily miracles, reaching out .