Tight Wire

I lay on the floor in the shape of lightning. My pose is the one I go to when I need relief. My back hurts, so I lay on the flat floor with my calves rested atop three of my fattest pillows, my butt right up against them and my heating pad underneath my lower back. I put the heat on the highest level. Within minutes my back gets itchy as I read my book. And as I read, I attempt to ignore the itch. I shift and adjust, I put it out of my mind. My back is burning, the highest level on the heating pad goes from cold to warm to hot to hotter to very hot & so on. It seems as though level three is just the beginning of an idea. If there were a control long enough for as hot as it can go, the control would be 5 feet long, or so I imagine as my back burns.

Finally I can't take it any longer and I turn it down to the second level. It only takes a few seconds to get to a much more comfortable temperature. My back aches as I move, and I think to myself, What if my back is totally fucked up tomorrow? You'll go anyway, you can't NOT go. You haven't gone in months, you have to go. Stay in this position as long as possible, keep reading, keep watching.

I'm actually watching "Royal Pains" as I'm reading "Thirst #1" (by Christopher Pike) between commercials. I only have about 30ish pages to go till the end of the book, and I told myself I'd finish it tonight. Reading fast is something I'm very good at, and I read a lot but I also told myself that I'd go to bed early. Well, early for me is the 12 or 1 o'clock hour-although I felt as though I'd pass out by 9. Things change, I woke up. I talked to Amy, I ate yogurt, I took a shower, I read and I watched and I ached.

Finally I stayed on the heat as long as I could, no-maybe I could last a bit longer but it seemed as though my back was starting to get sore from the floor as well as hot from the heat and most importantly-I had to pee. Oh, so sore, ouch. Damn. My back hasn't hurt this bad in a long time. How fitting. How totally inconvenient. Why did you decide to bend and squat and carry heavy books around the library today, today of all days preceding tomorrow?

I have no idea. But it felt good to go to the library, and it was a great idea Amy had for me, since I blaze through books at a ridiculous speed and have a drug addicts-type issue of pacing myself. Yes, it was good to go to the library. I got research material, I got another book by Christopher Pike, although not the sequel to "Thirst #1", which is aptly named "Thirst #2" the library didn't have it. Both books put three of the original books together in each, making up 6 altogether. They are over a decade old and only now coming back into print, "Thirst 2" not until Jan of 2010. Most likely because of the success that "The Twilight Series" had. Yes, Thirst is a story about vampires, and damn good. I expect that "Season Passage" is very good also-although not a vampire story, and I'm excited to get it started. I also checked out "Soul Stories" by Gary Zukov. One might say that reading about Vampires and Souls seems a strange combination, all I know is that both subjects have fascinated me forever.

Anyway, as I write this I am not reading or sleeping but thinking about tomorrow. My first day back to work since the last day in April. It's been a long time, and although I am not nearly as "healthy" as I'd like to be upon my return to work, I have decided to try anyway. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, like so many times in my life. And, like so many times in my life I have to just plunge in and hope I don't sink to the bottom. "Sink or swim"-seems like the theme of my life.

Yes, I'm going back to work-but I'm not being stupid about it. At least not completely. I am going to do 4 or 5 hour days every other day for 4 days and then have 2 days off and then do it again for a second week. At that point we'll see how I'm doing, I'll either continue on that schedule or, hopefully-be able to work more. The goal is to be back to full-time ASAP.

It is a high-wire act of sorts, navigating work while still in the midst of a horrible Fibro flare that is still flaring, although better. A month ago I would never have been able to go to the library and do what I did today, but it did wear me out, it did make my body hurt. Anyway, the circus act-it is trying to juggle pushing myself to do as much as I can take without slipping backward into the state of not being able to work at all. No one knows how to do this, or what is too much or too little or just enough, no one knows this. Not me and certainly not my doctor, my asshole Rhuematologist. But I may or may not expand on that. The bottom line is that I will get another Rhuemie. Our break-up wasn't without my making him feel like he's 1 inch tall, with a deflated ego and the need to buy a clue and a piece of humanity. Trust me, he deserved it and I'm glad I said everything I did and handled it the best way I could. So what if it left me literally shaking because I was so upset? It had to be done. And I did it.

It will be overwhelming tomorrow, seeing everyone, being there, being in my office & around my partner Tawni who's had to deal with my absence for all of these months...Being around my employees, most of whom have no idea what my final diagnosis was of my attack on the 1st of May, and have no clue that I have Fibro. I did want to let everyone know, but my bosses do not want me to. I think this is a poor choice, and my business to tell if I want to, but they don't. So, I will have to deal with people on a one to one basis which will make it much more difficult for me, but who'd care about that other than me? Oh well. I'm happy to be going back. Happy and anxious and nervous and excited. Mostly excited. And, scared that I'll be a blubbering idiot. I'm highly emotional these days, going through what I've gone through-I'm much more fragile than I used to be and I hope I handle it ok without breaking down. I've never been so easy to cry. I must remember my nasal spray-there's a good chance I'll get all congested.

Wish me luck.

~V~