Tag: weak and afraid and still awesome

I Feel

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In the early days of my disease, when encountering difficult things, or when someone would give me sympathy, I would say, “oh it hasn’t BEGUN to get hard.” For years. It wasn’t to be a doomsday preacher or anything, just acknowledgement of a fact. It was going to be harder someday, so I should both appreciate the good stuff while I had it and be prepared for when they did.

Things are officially Hard.

Several phrases describe me now that both hurt to hear and seem so surreal. “Late-stage ALS.” “Effectively paralyzed from the neck down.” Statement of fact. I don’t think that I get to have another birthday. True things. I am, technically, on a ventilator – while I CAN breathe without the AVAP, I choose to use it because it SO. MUCH. EASIER. But it all leads to I am capital D Dying.

Only.

Only I don’t FEEL like I’m Dying. Or even dying. I expected to be in a constant state of misery, when it got this far. I’m not. My body doesn’t work but nothing hurts. I feel FINE, it’s literally just that I can’t BREATHE. There is no deathbed, it’s just my tempurpedic.

My disease doesn’t feel awful, it just manifests as a thousand inconveniences. I would have posted months ago, but I was waiting to get my speech-to-text software running. Now that it’s installed and troubleshot and running, I find that it won’t work for me because my voice is too soft and the AVAP bakes be sound like I hab a code. It’s not the end of the world, it just means I must use the onscreen keyboard and type things out. Inconvenient. I can control my laptop using my eyes, but I can’t install anything because Windows’ little “are you SURE you want to allow this software to make changes “ prompt disables the eye gaze software so I can’t click Allow. Frustrating. But not a crisis.

Some day sooner than I would like, the ventilator won’t be strong enough. I’ll take the self checkout, because like HELL am I getting a ventilator surgically installed (you can fuck off with that ok thx bye. It is a viable option for a lot of people, but I absolutely do not want it). But that day will come, because I don’t fancy suffocating. And on that day, chances are I’ll feel fine except for breathing.

When I die, I’ll say goodbye, I promise. Until that day, expect more fuckery.

The Sitch

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Hello, my name is Vashti, and welcome to this old body. Bob Villa couldn’t make it today.

I figured it’s time for a check-in. Even local friends don’t know exactly how far my symptoms have progressed, what I can and can’t do, so let me show you around. We’ll do this from the bottom up.

Feet – useless. I can’t move them all. I still have full and complete sensation in them, they just don’t move when I asked them to.

Legs – some movements, no walking. I can shift my legs around a little bit, raise my knees just a little bit, and that’s it. Boom. I made you a poem. My knees have become stiff with lack of use, so it was getting to be excruciating what I had to bend my legs to be in the sling or whatever. I now sit with a blanket curled up behind my knees to prevent this.

Bathing suit area – OMG potty talk ahead LOL LOL LOL – I pee exclusively through a suprapubic catheter. It is a surgical tube installed straight into my bladder about halfway between my groin and enable. It is a single best surgical decision I have ever made. I get UTIs a lot, which sucks very much considering one of them wound me up in the hospital earlier this year. Pooping is hard, because the muscles I used to bear down are starting to wither away. So it’s a weird kind of constipation. I’m not sure what we’re going to do about that when it gets worse, laxatives are not really an option because I’m not going to be able to make it to the toilet quickly when they kick in. So that’s fun.

Guts – I have a feeding tube installed, but we haven’t started using it yet. We flush it daily with water to keep it open and clear. I can still eat food so it remains installed but auxiliary.

Arms – mostly useless. I cannot raise my hands to my face. I need things to be in both hands if I am to use them, if something is out of immediate reach, it is off in space for all it matters to me. I have had to surrender control of the bed for this reason. I need someone else to raise and lower the head. I need someone else to dress me these days, I can’t really participate in anymore. I am an unwieldy doll.

Hands – mostly useless. My range of motion is extremely limited. Mostly it’s just my thumbs can move a little bit. My cell phone is in my hands, I can swipe up and down but I can’t reach the other side of the screen. Using a cell phone is very hard these days. This entry is being brought to you by eye gaze technology and speech to text software! Hooray for technology!

Lungs – getting pretty bad. My lung capacity is now around 23%, actually probably lower than that because I haven’t had it tested in a few months. Breathing is officially getting hard. For the most part I still only use the AVAP when I’m sleeping. There are days though, there were three of them so far, which went where my breathing was so shitty that I wore it all day. This will be what kills me. There is no way in hell I am having a ventilator, so when my breathing gets too bad then that will be it. Hopefully they can make me comfortable.

Speech and swallowing – I can still do both of these things. My speech is unaffected except by my breathing, which makes my voice high and reed sometimes. I’m beginning to have problems swallowing. It might take me a gulp or two to get something down. Don’t have problems with things going down the wrong pipe very often, which is great because I can’t draw and breath strong enough to get it out when it happens. I wind up having to make these horrible horrible noises trying to draw in breath. It’s pretty damn scary for everyone involved. I’m afraid that’s how I will go out – choking on something. I’m very careful and diligent when drinking and eating so I think I’ll be okay.

Brain – the brain meats are doing their job but often with protests. I get a lot of panic attacks these days, mostly related to my breathing. I find myself a little out of breath, which triggers panic, which makes me unable to breathe, which makes me panic about not being able to breathe, and it’s just a vicious cycle. Praise God for Ativan is all I’m saying. I’m mostly coping. Things are getting more real, I’m definitely in planning stages for what will happen to all of my shit when I’m dead. I have a lot of stuff. I am trying to make my death as easy on people as possible. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare, so I’m doing what I can to alleviate that.

This concludes our tour. Please return your seats to their full upright position and make sure your table trays are locked and stowed. Moral of the story here, I guess, is that things aren’t exactly great but they could be so so much worse. I still have a sense of humor about it, and as long as I can find it funny, I’ll be okay. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Wait, I was doing a This Old House Parody. Okay well wear your safety goggles and check your measurements twice. Join us next week. We’ll be making mountains out of mole hills.

Third Time’s a Charm

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So two things. One, I did not die on the operating table. Two, that is the longest I have ever gone without posting. I apologize for that.

Actually, three things. I have not yet had the surgery. And oh boy is it a tale of woe and drama!

We arrived at the hospital and were wheeled back to what would be my room for my overnight stay. I got into my little dressing gown and took out my facial piercing and sat around for a long time waiting for them to come get me. Actually no, I’m misremembering. I didn’t wait very long at all for them to come get me for this one. I went back pretty quickly. They put me under, and I woke up.

Thank God right?

And then they were telling me about how they hadn’t been able to perform the actual surgery.  Something about how my anatomy was wrong, how my stomach was tucked up under my ribs and they couldn’t actually get to it. My diaphragm had atrophied to the point where it was pushed up and my stomach was hiding under there and they couldn’t get to it the simple way. We were going to have to try again, with radiology.

That sucked.

What also sucked is finding out that they had used a skin prep for the surgery that I am allergic to. It’s called chlorhexidine and it’s very common in surgery. And because it’s very common in surgery, I make a very specific point to tell them that I am allergic to it beforehand. I kind of make a fuss about telling them that I am allergic to it. Because it’s in everything. When I woke up my stomach was covered in a brown mark, which I thought was iodine, which they should have used, so I figured I was in the clear, but two days later I was covered in a very very itchy rash, which lasted for 2 weeks. Weeks. I spent those two weeks in a Benadryl haze, covered in itchy medicine. Bastards.

The new surgery was scheduled for January 4th. Same as before, a small puncture wound to fit the tube into, minimally invasive, super quick healing, the only difference being that they were going to use radiology to guide them instead of the camera. Unlike the previous surgery, this was only scheduled as a day surgery. Again, traded in my civilian clothing and took out my piercings and made a huge fuss about the fact that I am allergic to chlorhexidine do not use it. For fuck’s sake. Jay joined me in on this refrain with the nurse. It is very very sucky to have an allergic reaction and be unable to scratch because your hands don’t work, and you also cannot apply lotion because your hands don’t work. So you have to wait for your best friend to get home from work so he can help you apply itchy cream because your hands don’t work. And also you lose two weeks of your life because your brain’s in a fog because of the medication. I was wheeled into the room finally and asked to scoot on to the operating table which I had to break it to them that I am completely unable to help them do that, so they hauled me over and I helped them as best as I could. They then asked me to lay down, and I had to reiterate what I had told to the nurse before, that I am unable to lay flat. They indicated that they had a wedge pillow for me, which set me at about a 15° angle, which was not nearly enough. I was actually kind of panicking about this. They sensed that, and put me on pure oxygen and the anesthesiologist started the calming medication. I was able to lie down and think about nothing but my breathing and force myself to pull air in and push it out and then I was asleep.

And then I was awake. And they were telling me that they were not able to perform the surgery. Because my anatomy was wrong. Because my stomach was tucked up under my ribs.
Pretty much the exact same thing I had been told before. I’m not entirely sure what the radiology was supposed to do for them and why it didn’t work but the practical upshot is once again I had been put under and nothing had come of it. So they sent me home.

And the next day I broke out into a very itchy rash because once again they had used chlorhexidine on me.

There are not enough swear words in the world.

So, the only option after that was surgical. Instead of going down my throat into my stomach, they have to go through my abdominal wall straight. It’s a bigger deal surgery, and they have to knock me completely out, and it’s a bigger risk of course. A longer heal time. We couldn’t schedule the surgery for a long time, because COVID took up all of the hospital beds and they put a hold on all elective procedures. We are going to try to do it. Laparoscopically, using a tiny incision and a tiny camera. Failing that, she will have to make a slightly larger incision to put the tube in, but she’s very confident that we can do this and it will be still minimally invasive. To be honest, I will be happy if they can do this without using chlorhexidine on me. My surgery is scheduled for April 4th.

I have to say I’m pretty freaked out about this one. The surgeon still thinks it’s a day surgery and I’ll be able to go home that same day, and I hope she’s right. We’ve booked me an overnight stay just in case, and will send me home if we’re able. She went over all of the risks to the procedure, of which of course one of them being not being able to get off of the ventilator and having to spend a day in the ICU until I can breathe on my own. A person in my ALS support group had this surgery and his vital lung capacity dropped 30% afterwards. He went in with 70% and came out 40%. I’m sitting at about 35%. I am terrified about coming out of the surgery and not being able to get off of the breathing machine and having to decide if I want a vent or not because at this point I think I would want to vent but we haven’t planned or budgeted or even seeing if we can afford a nurse to be here basically 24/7 to monitor the ventilator if I have to be on one. I’m afraid of going in for surgery and coming out on a ventilator being unable to eat, drink or talk ever again. I’ve been through this twice now and I’ve suffered no problems from the anesthesia but I haven’t been put under completely with breathing support and I’m worried about them stopping my breathing and me being unable to start it on my own again. Which is you know the reason we’re doing this now instead of when I actually need the feeding tube to get this out of the way. Basically: one guy I know has a horror story and it’s got me rattled. I shouldn’t be so freaked out. I know better. It’s probably going to be just fine. There’s just some worried little part of me that is having a field day with what-ifs.

Surgery is one week from today.

They sent me a cleaning kit for my body, two bottles of cleaning solution to be used the night before and the morning of surgery. To make sure that I am clean as a whistle before they go cutting on me. The cleaning solution is… 2% chlorhexidine. The surgeon herself had provided me with written instructions and verbal instructions and she had not mentioned sending me any kit; rather, just to wash up with a kind of soap called hibiclens.

Which it turns out is also a solution of chlorhexidine.

Luckily I called her up today and she told me I could use dial soap instead and it would be just fine. If I were to actually use the soap that they recommended, we would not be performing the surgery because I would be a red itchy mess. I had given some thought semi-seriously to having Jay write on my body: DO NOT USE CHLORHEXIDINE.

So anyway that’s what’s happening. The surgery hasn’t happened yet. We’ve had two false starts, 3rd and hopefully final attempt next week. If you’re the praying sort, pray for me. Hopefully I come out of this with an additional hole in my body and it having been the last surgery I have to go through.

Hopefully they don’t use any fucking chlorhexidine.

Five

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Five years ago today, my life was split in two. My life B.C. (Before Crisis) and A.D. (After Diagnosis)

Five years ago I was told I was going to die. Pretty horribly. My prognosis wasn’t great. ALS typically kills you in 3 to 5 years. I had a feeling I had a few years – my progression was pretty slow. Six months after exhibiting any symptoms, I was still on my feet with no assistance, no degradation in my hands, breathing was excellent, swallowing and speech still perfect.

Only ten percent of people with ALS live longer than 10 years. I optimistically vowed to be among them. (….as if I have any control.)

It’s five years later, and I’m still doing pretty well, all things considered. I may make ten years yet, though I don’t think so, honestly. I’m definitely showing signs of wear. I can no longer stand, let alone walk, without assistance. When I try REAL hard, I can still sliiiiightly move the big toe of my left foot sometimes. My hands are near useless garbage meat noodles,
my posture like a T.Rex . I can curl my fingers in but not flex them out, the only digits I still have some control over is my thumbs. I type with the knuckles of my index fingers. Bladder control is completely a thing of the past. My breathing is getting shitty, but it’s nothing I need assistance with, yet.

This last month, I’ve started to exhibit bulbar symptoms. Mannnnnnnnnnnnnn it’s hard to admit that. I’ve been biting my tongue in my sleep, but luckily I already had a night guard so it’s not a problem. No choking or drooling or slurring yet, but my tongue sometimes gets a little tired if I’m eating something really chewy or hard.

It’s not the end of me, but I’m starting to think I can see it from here.

Not sure I’ve got another five years, but I’m going to try like hell. I’m pretty confident I won’t make it to fifty years old. (..This disease sucks, man, don’t get it.)

BUT.

BUT!!!

I have outlived the average. Some folks don’t even get one year. I’ve gotten FIVE. So far. It’s been such a rare privilege to make friends with my own death, to know what’s coming and have a chance to plan for it. My employer had amazing benefits and was completely understanding. My friends, my circle, they have my back in ways I never would have dared to expect. I was already death positive and prepared to think about my own demise in very real ways. I am doing SO WELL, all things considered. I was positioned to handle this with some grace and lots of support.

This sucks, but it could have been so. much. worse.

Tonight, instead of mourning my life that won’t be, I can celebrate the life I’ve had so far. Old school – I’m throwing a freaking pizza party to mark beating the typical prognosis. It’s going to be great to be with my planets, to eat and have some laughs and be grateful for five years of life so far. A very full life containing an amazing cast, fantastic sets, a very interesting plot. I will have hopefully been a source of light for someone, a sliver of kindness, maybe a laugh or two. I have cool tattoos and cute cats and enough stickers to have my own boutique. I am eating delicious things with the best people.

When people ask how I’m doing, I tell them “so far, so good”.

And I really, truly mean it. My life, she don’t suck, you know?

Here’s to another five years. Let’s see where this road leads.

Body, Mind, Self

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So as usual, it’s 3 AM and instead of sleep I am staring at the ceiling. It’s been kind of a rough day. I took a shower, which anymore is a Herculean task and wears me out pretty well. J came over and shaved my head for me, and the shower afterwards was both marvelous relief from all the little itchy bits and frustration at my newfound inability to scrub my skin properly. I am out of breath, tired, and not completely clean when I get out. I feel a little defeated, if I’m being honest. I’m still doing infusions, and so there is two weeks out of the month when I cannot take a shower. I scrub the best as I can with washcloth and baby wipes, and after the last infusion of the cycle is done I take a very long warm soak in the shower. It feels like a second skin sloughs off and it feels wonderful. Anymore though, my attempts to scrub are coming up short.

After J goes home, I’m sitting in bed and screwing around on the Internet as always and someone posts a meme on Facebook gets under my skin. It wasn’t directed at me personally, but it was something I am six shades of defensive about and it bothers me a lot. I left a sarcastic comment reply, closed my laptop, and declare that’s enough Internet for one day. As usual it takes me a very long time to fall asleep. As usual it’s because of unwanted conversation.

I feel a little queasy.

hey uh sorry about that i think it’s the new meds

Oh, hey, Body. How’s it going.

not so great today. i couldn’t get hands to work proper, so now i’m not actually as clean as i want to be, but i really don’t think there’s anything i can do about that? i mean i’m trying really hard?

Yeah, that sucks. It’s almost time to admit defeat,huh?

HEY LOSERS WHAT’S HAPPENING

What’s up, Brain. Kind of expected you earlier to be honest. Body and I were just talking and it’s probably time to start thinking about getting some help for real.

YEAH THAT SUCKS AND I DON’T WANT TO THINK ABOUT THAT.

Well, we’re going to have to. Eventually. And you know this.

WELL LIZ IS COMING OVER TUESDAY TO START TALKING ABOUT SHARE THE CARE NONSENSE. LET’S DEAL WITH THAT THEN.

We kind of need to think about that beforehand, though. And Liz can’t really help us come to terms with needing bathing assistance. She didn’t sign on for that. That’s something we have to do.

HEY REMEMBER THE SONGS WE USED TO SING IN SUNDAY SCHOOL?

… are you serious right now

For real though, Brain. I need you to focus for a second.

FAAAAAAAAAAAAATHEEEEEERRRRRRRR ABRAHAM! HAD MANY SONS!

Are you fucking kidding me right now. Brain.

MANY SONS HAD FAAAAAAAAAAAATHER ABRAHAM!

Dude. Get your shit together. This is serious. Body is not really able to help us as well as she used to. I’m not asking you to pick up the slack or anything, we all know that you can’t. You know Body is going to fail us completely, and you and I need a plan for when that happens.

i don’t want to let you down

I AM ONE OF THEM

I know that. It’s not your fault.

whose fault is it then

I really wish I knew. I’d kick their teeth in.

well we couldn’t really. not anymore

AND SO ARE YOU

Yeah I know that too . But we have an entire posse full of people willing to do it for us.

we are really lucky aren’t we. all things considered

HEY HEY HEY

YES, Brain, what.

REMEMBER IN SUNDAY SCHOOL? THE SONG WITH THE STOP AND GO SIGNS? AND HOW IT WOULD COMPLETELY MAKE OUR WEEK IF WE WERE THE ONES PICKED ON TO HOLD UP THE SIGNS DURING THE SONGS? WITH THE LYRICS ON THE BACK? “STOP!! AND LET ME TELL YOU”? REMEMBER HOW PROUD WE WERE WHEN SISTER MENG CALLED ON US TO LEAD THE SONGS?

….Yeah. What about it?

I MISS THAT. LIFE WAS SO MUCH SIMPLER.

i could do anything

Yeah. I miss that too.

DEEP! AND WIDE! DEEP! AND WIDE!

Yep. So much simpler. Go to sleep, asshole.

Surreal

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Man, what even IS my life anymore.

I got a voice mail the day after that last post from my awesome nurse. “Hi, I read your blog, and I have some ideas about the AVAPS.”

Uhhhhh..hi there. I forget that people read this, sometimes. I have the best freaking care team ever, you guys. I got contacted from three different folks to ABSOLUTELY ASSURE ME that the machine would get paid for, the rules are more bendy for folks with ALS so please don’t stress about it. And then thanks to Nurse Awesome, I was contacted yesterday by Providence Respiratory to adjust my settings remotely to ramp that sucker down.

OMG SO MUCH BETTER GUYS.

It had previously been forcing air down my throat so hard my ears were popping. Seriously. I can handle it now. I might even get compliance on my own without my awesome peeps having to argue for leeway. It’s still not exactly comfortable, but it’s so much more manageable.

Thursday was noooooooot a good day, there were a million things going wrong, including hurting myself by trying to lean over in the chair to pull something out from under my wheels. I felt and heard something go POP, and owowowowowow. Not a crack, though, and breathing was still ok, so I just rode it out and after a few days’ soreness I’m alright. Then Thursday night someone said something a bit unkind and I kinda completely lost my shit for awhile. Occasionally there’s a trigger and I mourn the person I don’t get to become. Five years ago, I had my very own house, I had just lost a lot of weight and was fitting in all my cute clothes again, I was going to school to further my career, I had all my shit sorted out and my life was pretty fucking great, actually. Thursday night I let myself grieve for her, because that future is dead, and I let myself be angry at people who say really stupid shit.

Friday I had the distinct displeasure of taking the sodding van in for repair. It cost me $919. I’m extremely grateful to Intel for their short term disability benefit easing me out of the workforce, because fortunately I HAVE that money. For now. Although now the brake light’s coming on. So that’ll be fun.

Saturday I did nothing but sleep and fuck around on the internet.

Sunday I did something SUPER COOL but is not my story to tell, so just believe me when I say it was amazing.

This morning my cat woke me up because I could hear him chewing on plastic. When I located him, he had a huge long piece of cellophane coming out of his mouth, and was choking on it a little. I could not get him to come to me for ANYTHING, and when I stood up and tried to get to him, of course he backed away. I took another step towards him and fell right on my ass. It didn’t hurt, even though I’ve kinda got no muscle in my ass to cushion the fall anymore, but it knocked a bit of breath away.

And then since I was on the floor, my fucking cat decided to come check me out and I was able to get the plastic out of his mouth.

Motherfucker.

The fall didn’t hurt, but getting off the floor did. I wound up sitting on my foot rests and using that wheelchair lift feature to get myself up off the ground, but even with the grab bar on my bed, the chair to push off of, and my walker on standby, I wasn’t able to get over up on the bed. I had to lower myself back to the floor and let myself catch my breath before I tried again, and was very, very grateful to the Depends company for their fine product and my forethought to start wearing them to bed otherwise I’d have exacerbated my situation by having to catch my breath sitting in a puddle.

Welcome to the TMI Show.

Now, I have my awesome watch, so I was never stranded. I always had options. I’m just stubborn as fuck. I texted J but he was not immediately responding, so I tried the wheelchair lift again, and used it to ALSO steer myself right up against the bed this time, and was able to get in bed. And then after catching my breath, getting up to go to the bathroom to change my disposable shorts. I cried for like half a second, but realistically I know this is definitely going to happen again. Probably not the cat part, but there will definitely be another fall, and next time I very probably will not be able to get myself up. It’s twelve hours later and even though I’ve been in bed all day I’m still exhausted from the ordeal. So that sucks. If I hadn’t had such a huge meltdown Thursday, it would have happened today.

So that’s my life, this last week. Kinda a shit show, but there were definitely some good bits in there.

Also I wanna restate that my care team is amazing, especially my nurse. <3










My First Death Positivity Experience

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When I was very young, barely old enough to even know what death was, I saw a show on PBS about the (still very new to the public at the time) AIDS epidemic. I don’t remember anything else about the show, but there was one segment that stuck with me for the rest of my life.

A man, in a hospital gown, sitting in a wheelchair. He was emaciated, very clearly capital-D-Dying. And he made eye contact with the camera, and then sang a very jaunty song about his own, very eminent demise from the disease. I remembered clearly three things: that it was basically about why you should be kind to him as he was going to die soon (particularly a phrase “forgive me when I’m mean”), a quirky little instrumental break during which he tap danced while sitting in his wheelchair, and the chorus phrase “cause I’ve got less time than you”.

And it stayed with me. I was…let’s see when this was released….ooh. I was 13. I remember clearly thinking that the song was funny, and not being sad for him at all, even though I knew he was going to die, and I knew that he knew it, too. The emergent Spooky Kid in me delighted in how morbid the whole thing was, and i loved the twisted sense of humor, but what resonated with me 30 years later was not the morbidity. I actually admired him for knowing that he was going to die, and having made peace with that, he was able to be so forthright with his needs. Since he knew there was literally nothing he could do about it, he decided to have such a wicked sense of humor about the whole thing. It was a quiet, desperate, dare you not to look away from it strength. LOOK AT ME, I AM DYING AND THERE IS NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO. NOW LAUGH WITH ME. He saw his own pending demise, and owned it. I wanted to be like that, too, if I could. Strong, unafraid, and funny.

The image of the tap-dancing dying man never left me, and indeed after my diagnosis, any time I prioritized my own needs over those of someone with a muddier, less terminal future, the chorus would pop into my head. I justified inconveniencing people (whether they actually felt inconvenienced or not was irrelevant to my broken brain) with a jaunty internal chorus of “cause I’ve got less time than you”.

I finally remembered to look for it online, not really expecting to find it. It was (exactly!) 30 years ago, pre-internet, and all I had to go on was “man in wheelchair AIDS song less time than you”. But I did find it. It took some doing to find an actual video (especially one that wasn’t an impossible-to-understand audience recorded live version), but my Google-fu is strong. His name was Rodney Price, and he died two weeks after filming this. He is my role model to aspire to while dying today, and he was my very first Death Positive Hero.

I give you Rodney Price, “Song From An Angel”.










Clinical Anxiety

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Clinic was Monday! Let’s break down how it went, shall we?

PT/OT: My hands now no longer register ANYTHING on the strength test. Fuck. My arms are still plenty strong, though. My biceps are a force to be reckoned with from essentially doing push-ups on my walker every day. I have an appointment to follow-up with Deb the Awesome to reimagine my spider hand braces, since my wrists droop badly enough now they’re not helping much. It doesn’t do a lot of good to keep my fingers propped up if my hands as a whole are curling under. My finger joints are doing great though, still a lot of flexibility in them so I’m not going to be clawhands any time soon. Yay!

Dietician: (Hi, Kelly!) My weight remains stable, so I’m to keep doing what I am doing. I need to keep mindful of feeding myself while I’m at home, now, since I don’t have the routine of work to set that schedule for me. My mom doesn’t know to bring me food unless I ask her because she’s old as hell and eats like, a tic-tac a day and calls it a meal. (Hi, Mom, love you!)

Nurse: I forgot to ask her what my chair weighs. Dangit. It’s written down somewhere in my chart and I’m curious what that thing weighs without me in it. Combined, we are 627 pounds of geddafuggoutmaway. She arranged my appointment with Deb, and I didn’t otherwise have much for her. I rarely do. That’s a good thing.

Social Worker: Have I waxed poetic lately about how amazing the ALS Association is? Because damn. Single-handedly saving my sanity more than once, and saving my ass multiple times. We arranged for them to pick up equipment that I’ve borrowed (FOR FREE) that I no longer need because my disease has progressed beyond their use. We then spoke about some other situations that are stressing me out, like the lack of social services for my elderly disabled mother, and she promised to dig up what resources she could for my mom in our area. She sent me an email not even a day later with a bunch of places to check out. THAT is how amazing ALSA is. My mom’s not even on their roster, but because helping her would help ME, they were totally on it. I LOVE THE ALS ASSOCIATION.

Neurologist: Usually I’d be seeing Dr. Goslin, but today I met with her new partner. I’d seen him talk at the ALS Research Symposium, and I’d been given his bio before when I was asked to write something up for him explaining why the ALS Multidisciplinary Clinic was such an awesome thing. It was nice to meet him, and the dude has one of those old-school doctor bags that J wanted to steal. Plus for geek. It was a general get-to-know-you kinda appointment.

Speech: These appointments always go fast because I’ve got no symptoms at all yet. Puff up cheeks, move your tongue, eat this dry-ass graham cracker so I can watch you swallow. NBD, nothing to report.

Respiratory: Yeeeeeah this is always my absolute least favorite, not least of all is because it’s actually HARD. I’ve actually been noticing decline here, and since this is the part of ALS that actually IS going to kill me, I don’t like having a concrete measurement of how shitty my disease is. And yet. I want that measurement, so that I know, so that I can plan, and manage expectations. I came to this appointment knowing my breathing has gotten a bit worse lately; it’s taking a bit longer to recover when I exert myself, and there’s been a few times I wake up in the night because my breath is a little short. I also had to report that my CPAP machine (which I am now supposed to use every night) is busted, doesn’t power on at ALL. We are going to get me a new machine, called an AVAPS and I have no idea what the difference is because I keep forgetting to look it up.

Hang on.

“Noninvasive mechanical ventilation with average volume assured pressure support”

That tells me nothing. 2 secs.

…Oh. It’s…basically a non-invasive respirator. So it’s hardcore. OK then. That’s…intimidating. But I had the choice between getting my CPAP replaced or getting this new hotness, and since I still have Cadillac Intel Insurance for another year, I really want to get the expensive stuff now.

With that out of the way, we did all the usual tests. First they stick a rigid plastic thing in my mouth and I exhale as hard as I can to make these little indicators move; it measures cough strength. Cough strength is still normal; it was down ten points from last visit but she wasn’t worried about that at all. The next test involves a soft plastic mask over my nose and mouth and inhaling sharply; I always ace that one by going beyond what it measures; I guess I’m really good at..sucking…? Monday was no exception. The last test is the worst. Both in what it portends, and the work it takes to perform. My dudes, it is HARD. It blew goats even when my lungs were as strong as ten oxen. It involves inhaling deeply, plugging your nose, and then blowing out as hard as you can, for as long as you can, while getting encouragement shouted at you to GO GO GO MORE MORE MORE MORE and then when you can’t possibly exhale anything else and you feel like you’re going to pass out, another sharp, fast inhale.

Do that three times.

It actually makes J a little uncomfortable to watch, because it’s so obviously hard. It’s intense, it feels like hell, and at the end you have a number that represents your average lung capacity. When I started going to clinic, my scores were over a hundred percent – a very strong set of lungs. Over the last year, I’ve watched that number go down. She wasn’t concerned, really, even 80% was still really good! and she had no recommendations for me except to continue with the breath stacking exercises, which is where you inhale as much as you can and then use a balloon and tube to squuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeze more air in. and hold. and release. And when you’re no longer light-headed, do it again. And again. I often describe it as reverse drowning, because that’s what it feels like. I do that, but not as often as I should. Six months ago at Clinic I hit 70% and she was a little less cavalier about me not doing them every day. 3 months ago on Clinic day, the machine was busted so I was spared. She wasn’t worried about it though, as my other tests were about the same as last time and she expected the same for this test, too.

I knew it wasn’t going to be the same. I feel a difference. When I eat too much food, I can feel that it’s harder to breathe – not that I’m short of breath, exactly, but I feel that when my lungs don’t have proper room to expand, there’s less strength in my diaphragm to bully the rest of my guts out of the way, maybe. It’s not harder to breathe, exactly, but I notice that I am breathing. And I was keenly aware that the breathing test this time was the hardest it’s ever been. I could feel veins on my forehead. She told me the result.

60%.

I’ve gone down 10% in six months.

I am now to do breath stacking twice a day, and sleep with the AVAPS every night, once it arrives. Next Clinic maybe we’ll do the respiratory early; having it be the very last thing in the day might have fudged my numbers a bit since I’d be tired. But somehow, I didn’t think that will matter. I didn’t take it well at all, and was in a shitty mood the rest of the night, and spent pretty much all day Tuesday crying or sleeping. I feel better now, hence why I have it in me to post tonight, but it kiiiiinda cemented something I’ve been thinking the last few months, something that I haven’t said out loud or posted or anything because I don’t want panic, either from myself or from any of you.

I am pretty goddamned sure I don’t have another 4 years.

I mean, it would be nice? But I’m not going to live to 50. I know that. I’ve been really fucking lucky to make it 4 years, and still be able to be on my feet awhile and wipe my own ass and everything. Some people with ALS don’t make it through ONE, and I’ve already had four, officially diagnosed, and probably closer to six since symptoms first appeared. I’m so, so fucking lucky. I get to see my death coming and plan for it. It was just rude as fuck to see that imaginary timeline become somewhat ..truncated, from what I was telling myself. But now, the part of ALS that will kill me has officially begun to kill me and I don’t have as much time as I thought.

You know what though?

That’s okay.

It really is. This is how ALS goes. This is normal. It’s okay. I’m alright.

Tonight, I am sanguine. There will be more freaking out; count on it. (See you at 3am, stupid brain) At this exact moment though? I have a clarity most people will never, ever experience. I see a world in 5 years without me in it, and it’s a good world and those I love are doing fine, in that long-term place. There’s a delicious release that comes with knowing so far in the future is officially Not My Fucking Problem. Today though, I am making many short-term plans. Hangouts with friends. An art show opening. The Walk to Defeat ALS on Sunday. A zoo trip with family. Neil DeGrasse Tyson – TWICE – in November. I still have a future to plan. It may be abbreviated, but goddammit I have SOME time. I get to make plans. It’s a fucking privilege to tell someone I’ll come to an event in April and know I can. After that. Who knows. My timeline is finite, truncated, and not guaranteed, but I have one. I can see what’s coming and make peace with it before it happens. I get the rare and amazing privilege to become friends with my own death.

And that is fucking awesome.










A is for ALS

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A is for Almost.

Two more days. TWO MORE DAYS. And then I’m done with my working career. Three weeks of vacation as a formality. The rest of my life is a blank book, with ALS having already written in all the margins.

A is for Atrophy.

My muscles continue to waste away as ALS kills the neurons transmitting signals to them. My legs are meat stilts, capable of minor movement only; walking on them is a matter of mechanics and getting my knees to lock properly so I can balance ON them rather than WITH them. My hands are curling up into claws of uselessness. My mouth still works, to the detriment of some, and my brain always will. My body is wasting away into the meat shell it will eventually become.

A is for Avoidance.

Most days I don’t really think about it all, except as an abstract idea. Sure, I’m going to die. I have that roadmap. In my day-to-day life, though, the Big-M-Mortality idea makes way for the general practices of getting through life. ALS intrudes in all things, of course; drinking a soda is now a two-hand operation and I can never even pretend that my life is normal again. All of that, though, is background radiation anymore. It’s amazing what can become normal, given time.

A is for Abbreviated.

My life has a shortened length. For some ALS folks, this throws them into a fervor of living as much life as possible in the time they had left. I didn’t go that route. I’m far too pragmatic to have abandoned my job and traveled the world while I still could. I focused my efforts on making my future life more comfortable, and that meant working as long as I could. If we had universal healthcare I wouldn’t have had to worry about it so much.

A is for Adjustments.

The disease progresses, and whatever I could do a month ago, I can’t necessarily do today. Life is a constant series of micro-adjustments and new behaviors, new rules and limitations. I learn of these new limitations, often the hard way, and another compromise with life is created. The new normal evolves.

A is for Afraid.

Just cause I’ve accepted death, doesn’t mean I’m ready. I’m terrified of what this disease will continue to do to me, and what it’s going to cost my loved ones. What it’s already cost them. I hate that I’m so reliant on everyone around me, and it’s going to get so much worse.

A is for Advance Directive.

Seriously, you have to have one. Fill it out today. If I have one positive impact on your life, let it be that I inspired/coerced you to do this one thing. It’s a hard thing to think about, I know, but your family needs to know what you want. They can’t know unless you tell them.

A is for Assisted Suicide.

I don’t know for sure that I’m going to go out this way. But I’m grateful every fucking day that I have this option.

A is for Anger.

I don’t think I’ve ever questioned “why me” so much as outright stated, “It is pretty fucked up that this is happening to me.” No one deserves ALS. (There are a few people I would like to have it temporarily though. It’s a short, sharp lesson in humility and reliance on others.) I’m angry that this disease exists at all. That we know next to nothing about it. It’s brutal and unfair.

A is for Allies.

It’s absolutely true that you don’t know who your friends really are until disaster strikes. I’m grateful in a perverse way for this disease, for showing me what grace actually looks like. I knew my friends were awesome before. I didn’t quite understand the enormity of that power they have. I do now; I am witness to it every day.

A is for Alive.

For now. I continue to breathe, and so I will continue to write and think and feel and rant and swear. And as long as I am alive, I can bear witness to the ravages and the comedy and the love and the struggle and the disaster my life has become. Al of it, often at once. And so long as I have the best medical care team on my side (I do!), the support and love of friends (check!), and a sense of humor about it all (absofuckinglutely), I’ll be okay. Even when I’m really not okay. And when I die, you will know that it was all okay, too. Somehow. Someday. You’re going to be okay.

A is for Acceptance.










What’s Next

tragerstreit2 Comments

Three weeks, one day. And God knows how many times more I have to repeat this conversation:

“So what are your plans after you leave?”

“Well, for the first two weeks of vacation, I plan to sleep. I’m purposely planning to do absolutely nothing for those first two weeks. It’s going to be GLORIOUS. After that, I’m not really sure. I will probably volunteer somewhere. I will go absolutely crazy with nothing to do for too long. So I’m not sure. I’ll figure it out.”

“Well good luck to you.”

Cue uncomfortable undertones, awkward silence, shuffling to exit the conversation. In reality, here’s how I would like that conversation to go:

“So, what are you going to do after you leave?”

“Die.”

I mean, that is what is going to happen. That is why I’m leaving. I can no longer work because I’m going to die. But because we suck at conversations about dying and death, because our society is so uncomfortable with the mere mention of the D-WORD, in polite society I’m not allowed to say that. Even though we all know it’s true, and no shit, right? Medical retirement; I am leaving because I have a medical condition that is debilitating and ultimately, sooner than we want to admit, terminal. THIS DISEASE IS GOING TO KILL ME DEAD, IS ALREADY KILLING ME, I AM NOT LEAVING BECAUSE I WANT TO.

And so instead, I am forced to have the same inane conversation. And even though they know the real answer, the true answer, I go through the motions and come up with some stupid answer that denies my own impending mortality. I mean, what are they honestly expecting me to say? “Oh, you know, I figured I would take two weeks in the Hamptons. After that, perhaps pursue my scuba certification and do a week in the tropics. Learn a new language. Take up waterskiing maybe. Maybe learn a new vocation. Maybe finally get my baking business off the ground.”

For fucks’ sake. No. I’m going to continue to get my affairs in order, and eventually I am going to fucking die. I am going to keep losing abilities you take for granted, like feeding oneself and scratching your nose and breathing and not peeing your pants. In the meantime, I am going to continue to collect stickers, watch cartoons, and pet my cats until I can’t, and then? I am going to die.

Because ALS is a motherfucking terminal disease.

Three more weeks and one more day of this bullshit conversation replaying itself over and over. Three more weeks and one more day of pretending I’m leaving because I want to, and not because this disease is forcing me to. This has made me extra specially grateful for all of the people with whom I can actually have that frank conversation – the ones who don’t pretend not to notice that my hands are no longer working. The ones who, if they actually asked that question, I could out right tell them “die”. But they know better to ask. Because they already know. So instead they ask how my cats are doing (they’re good!), if I’ve found a house yet (not yet! The housing market in Portland sucks major ass), how well does SSI pay out (not well, but my job has awesome supplemental disability benefits)? Better, more important questions.

Death positivity kids. It’s sorely needed. I crave it like sugar and hugs. I want, I NEED to be able to have these conversations without feeling like I’m intruding on someone’s fragile psyche. Instead of what do I plan to do with my time, like it’s some summer vacation, I would rather people ask me if I have my affairs in order? (Almost!) Do I have a living will? (Yes! And a POLST form!) Do I had support I need the time I have left? (I think so!)

Three weeks and one more day. Before I can get on with the business of dying, instead of pretending like I have some plan for my future.

Because I don’t really have one, anymore.

And you know what? That’s okay. It’s normal. Not everyone gets to see 50. It sucks and it is sad, but it is normal.

Unlike this stilted-ass conversation I keep having with y’all.










Unkind

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I was told twice yesterday that I had been unkind. Once about a caustic post I’d made that I didn’t realize had such a caustic tone, which I didn’t intend at all. Once about letting in-character anger spill over into an out-of character moment during a game.

It’s fucking with me more than I want to admit out loud.

I want to think I’m patient and a nice person. I want to BE a kind and soft person. With swearing as needed. I also want to think I can take constructive criticism. Both times, I tried to take the information in with a whole mind and open heart. I freely accepted valid points, admitted areas of ignorance – I genuinely did not realize my irritation with a sub-group of people spilled over into a perception of complete disdain and impatience for a related whole category of people. I vowed to be more aware, and work on it, and thanked them for bringing it to me. It’s a brave thing, to tell a friend they’re being a bit of a bitch.

But it’s fucking with me.

I don’t want to be unkind. It bothers me that someone would think I am. It bothers me that I speak without careful consideration, to have words and actions misconstrued.

So I lie awake until 3AM mulling over every interaction I had that day, wondering who else thought I was being a bitch, and what I can do to make amends. Usually these criticisms are self-inflicted, so coming from an external source, that knows me well, is especially jarring.

Before I moved away from Sacramento, several friends told me later, I became a bit of a bitch. My joking a little too caustic. I wondered if it were a subconscious self-defense mechanism, distancing myself from people I cared about in an effort to make it less shitty to leave.

I’m terrified of doing that same thing, knowing that I’m dying. From Diagnosis Day I have been fearful of being that embittered person in a wheelchair, lashing out at loved ones because I’m afraid to leave them. To be remembered as a total and complete bitch at the end of my days, in an effort to somehow distance myself from them so that the parting will be easier. Knowing it won’t help a goddamned bit. I do not wish to be a caustic person with nasty words where my love should be.

I’m glad my unkindness was called out. I’m glad I have time to work on it.

But until I am nothing but kind, it’s gonna fuck with me.










Cry Me a River of Lava

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I had a 3AM epiphany after watching one of many, many, many nature shows. I’ve been on a Carl Sagan and Brian Cox kick lately, having completely exhausted all things Sir Attenborough. My mind latched on to the idea and wrestled with it rather than letting me sleep: people are like volcanoes.

No wait, stick with me.

Our outer shell is a hard rocky thing, but internal emotions are a seething, writhing mass of potentially deadly stuff. Some people bottle that up and become a tall cold stately thing, very impressive to look at but not all that interesting. Some people let emotions seep out all over the place until they are thin, flat, and stretched out to a similar on interestingness. Most of us though, keep it bottled in until it can’t be bottled anymore, and there’s an explosion. Sometimes there are signs for months or even years before the event that an impending irruption is eminent; irritability, depression, reclusiveness the equivalents of smoke and the occasional ash plume. Sometimes the eruption is sudden and violent, and nothing around it is ever the same. And once the eruption is over, we may become a stark hellscape of stripped trees, chartered earth, and acrid air. Or, we may become an amazingly fertile landscape of lush vegetation, the ash of emotional eruption fertilizing our lives afterwards. We can either be scarred by the experience, or renewed by it. And we can, if we are lucky, even use that emotional lava to build something new.

I suppose I saw it coming for weeks, this latest eruption. I had a serious bout with Sadbrain, to the point last Wednesday while having dinner with J, he repeatedly asked me if I was okay, because I clearly wasn’t. I didn’t know what to tell him. Of course I wasn’t. I’m never going to be “okay”, not ever again, but I can be okay with what’s happening. Occasionally. Right now, in this moment. Naturally sometimes are going to be rougher than ours, of course they are, but Sadbrain is another beast entirely. It’s born of, but not entirely created by, current events of course, but there is an insidious undercurrent of malignant chemistry in the mix to make things even worse.

He and I had had a chat about suicidal ideation lately, I don’t even remember how it came about. I told him I’ve never been properly suicidal, never really wanted to commit suicide, to which he immediately scoffed. I corrected myself that of course I’ve thought about suicide, everyone does, even if only in a sort of philosophical way. But I’ve never actually thought about killing myself. “I don’t want to kill myself,” I told him, “but …sometimes I just don’t want to be alive anymore.” Being alive is hard, and often it would be so much easier to just …not. I don’t have the impetus or the energy to actually end my life, and I would never want to, but I can’t help sometimes to just… not want to exist.

And, this is the space I was in. Everything seemed unnecessarily difficult. My job had thrown a bit of a curveball at me, physically of course things are continuing to decline, there was drama with my cat, bad things happening to the people I love, horrors occurring daily in the world which I keep failing to protect myself from hearing about, and my continued search for a living situation is so desperately difficult it deserves its own post. Which, I may or may not get up the emotional fortitude to create some day. And so, two days ago, I completely erupted.

I was working from home that day. I had a role-playing game session that night planned with my friends, and was kind of freaking out about just not wanting to deal with the outside world. Not that I didn’t want to see my friends, and it’s not that I didn’t want to play, but that the concept of existing I any capacity in the outside world seemed untenable. Jay gave me an opportunity to decline to go, but of course my social anxiety and sad brain told me that if I couldn’t even manage to go out and have fun, then I was truly worthless. I was determined to make myself go out, even if I didn’t feel like it. I was watching Cosmos with Carl Sagan while I worked that day and I listened to Sagan talk about our thousands of nuclear bombs and how one of them is the equivalent destructive force of the entirety of the destructive force of all the bombs used in WW2. And then he wistfully pondered how we could wipe out the entire world population in the space of “a lazy afternoon” instead of one small corner of the world over 6 years and I just …totally lost my shit and started bawling.

Completely erupted.

The next 30 to 40 minutes were spent sobbing like a heartbroken thing, wailing into my hands, hyperventilating, or staring at a space on the wall with tears spilling down my cheeks. I can’t even articulate why I was crying, or what I thought it would help to rub the scratchy hand towel into my face until it hurt instead of blowing my nose, or why it just seems natural to rock my body back and forth or hold my fists in front of me and just shake, but that’s what I did. For almost an hour. There was no one sore spot, no one trigger, just that everything was terrible and I was broken and I wanted more than anything to just… Not have to exist.

Needless to say, I did not go to game that night.

Instead I took more than my usual dose of Ativan, put on a nature show that had not a shred of social commentary in it, cuddled the hell out of my cats, and eventually tried to sleep. Eventually I succeeded. I guess that’s one blissful thing about mental and emotional breakdowns, they leave you so completely exhausted that it’s easier to get to sleep.

I feel that this particular eruption is not quite over, there’s still a little hiccups that keep happening. I came across an image today, posted below, and I kind of lost it again. Just for a minute. Molly woke me up at 5 AM this morning to be petted, and I’m probably projecting but she seemed frustrated that I can’t quite had her properly anymore. And this is the first post I’ve ever cried while dictating. Sad brain has a lot to do with this, but of course there are legitimate underlying reasons for all of my distress definite geological pressures to go with the mystical phases of the moon and planets aligning just right. I wish I knew what drugs to take, how many virgins to sacrifice, to prevent these eruptions from happening again, but I know they’re going to. For as long as I am physically able to draw breath, and think, and feel. All I can really do is monitor the seismic activity of my emotional state and declare a state of emergency when I feel interruption is pending. And do my best to mitigate the damage when these eruptions are sudden severe, and catastrophic.

And try my damnedest to make sure this results in a verdant forest instead of a hellscape.

http://thelatestkate.tumblr.com/










How to Help in Three Easy Steps!

tragerstreit3 Comments

Howdy folks! Brought on by a recent incident, which I will tell you about in another entry, the question was once again asked, both directly of me and in a general forum:

WHAT DO I DO WHEN I SEE A PERSON STRUGGLING WITH THEIR HANDICAP?

Maybe you just saw a blind person attempting to cross the street and having a hard time. Maybe it’s a person in a wheelchair having a rough time pulling something off a store shelf. Maybe you just witnessed me try to get up in to a tiny-ass unstable boat and fail miserably in front of Anne Wheaton in Loreto, Mexico. Whatever the incident, there is someone with some obvious difficulty in life trying to do A Thing and you’re not sure how to proceed. Well, as a public service announcement, I’m here to help.

There are three easy steps*.

1) OFFER YOUR HELP.

Seriously, you’d think this was obvious, but the Bystander Effect is a real thing and you’d be appalled at how often no one says or does anything. Don’t be a grandiose dick about it, just approach the person and offer a specific way you can be of help, or ask if there is something you can do. “Hey, can I grab something off the shelf for you?” “Do you want a hand across the street?” “The boat crew clearly have no fucking idea how to get you off the ground, how can I help get you up?” DO NOT – UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES – ENTER PERSONAL SPACE TO HELP WITHOUT ASKING. Hooooly HELL you would think this is common sense, but I wonder how many blind people have someone just fucking grab their arm and start pulling them across the street. Just ..don’t do this. Don’t start trying to haul me to my feet when I’ve had a fall. I need to muster strength for the attempt, for one, and it’s just incredibly invasive to have a stranger start grabbing at you when you’re already at a very vulnerable moment. Politely announce your presence and ask if you can help. And then…

2) ACCEPT NO FOR AN ANSWER / ASSIST WITHOUT MAKING A BIG FUCKING DEAL ABOUT IT

Sometimes the answer will be “No, thanks.” Accept this and move on. This person’s difficulty is not your Heroic Moment; they are not here to provide you with your Good Deed For the Day. They’re just trying to get some shopping done/cross the street/get on the goddamned boat/live their life like a normal person, and are under no obligation whatsoever to accept your help, even if everyone in the world can see it would be so much easier if they’d just get over it and accept the help. Graciously allow them to decline and move on with your day.

Alternately, if they accept your help, Do the Thing. And give zero fucks about it. Don’t make a big show about helping; just grab the whatever for them, help them across the street like it ain’t no thang, whatever. They will say thanks. Tell them it’s no big deal and believe that it is not. I, for one, would be so much more willing to accept simple assistance from strangers if people were extra chill about it, but usually they act like a big damn hero about the whole thing and I’ve suddenly become someone’s Inspiration Porn and I can already HEAR them telling their spouse when they get home about how they helped a woman in a walker pick up her dropped purse. Just pick up the fucking purse and hand it over and go on with your life. You’re not curing cancer, here, you’re just holding a door for someone who can’t walk.

Whichever option was chosen, the next step is the same….

3) PRETEND THE WHOLE THING NEVER HAPPENED

Most important. THE MOST. If it was a routine thing that you might have done for anyone, like opening a door or helping someone get something from a shelf, then it’s already no big deal and a part of life. Move on. If it’s something like a fall recovery or an unexpectedly needed assist (hello, hands suddenly not working so I can’t swipe my own fucking debit card!), then it’s almost certain that the person in need of help is embarrassed by the unwanted attention already. It’s humiliating to fall on your ass even if there isn’t a disability involved. Whether or not there was a celebrity watching. It’s ALWAYS my most fervent desire that the whole thing would be forgotten immediately. This also ties into the whole “I’m not your good deed” ideal, but primarily? I’m embarrassed to have been caught publicly in a weak moment, whether it can be forgiven due to disease or not. Act natural. Make sure they’re okay, and then forget the whole thing. Please. Don’t make some weak-ass joke, or reassure me that it’s okay and natural, just..pretend it never fucking happened in the first place. Whatever’s whatever, man, no big thing, not even worth mentioning. EVER. AGAIN.

That’s it!

OFFER, ACCEPT/ASSIST, IGNORE.

The only miiiiiiiinor correction to this may be to ignore that I said no thanks and it turns out I DO need some help. Then you may add RESIST, as in RESIST the temptation to say “I told you so” when I accept that I do need assistance after all. I’m still learning my own limitations, and they change every day. be patient with me in this, and I will be patient with you as you learn The Steps. We’ll help each other out, okay?

*Your mileage may vary. Some disabled people are total assholes about this sort of thing. This is just what I think is most useful, for most people.










sadbrain

tragerstreit3 Comments

I’ve had depression most of my life. I’m really, really lucky in that it’s a super high functioning depression; most of the time I can still convince myself to Get Shit Done. I know many, many people who aren’t that lucky. Most days, I can get out of bed even though I don’t want to and my brain asks what is the point, even, and my anxiety tells me a million lies a day that I can usually push aside and do things anyway. A lot of folks with depression are like this; we’re not all like the commercials show you.

Some days though.

Some days it really IS like that. The days you call in sick because you literally just….can’t. The days you cry, the whole day, for little or no reason at all. When you spoon food in your mouth and it sits there, unchewed, for like five minutes. The days when your cat looking up at you and meowing (as he has a million times) is suddenly the worst thing ever and you just shake in frustration because you don’t know what to do. About the meowing, about standing in your kitchen, about being alive at all. And then you go to bed and the next day it’s fine, and it’s like you were possessed. If you’re lucky and female, sometimes you realize that the depression is PMS in disguise and somehow just knowing that takes the sting out. It’s temporary. It’s going to be okay, even if you don’t feel like it right now. Which of course is the same thing you tell yourself the OTHER days, too, but with nothing concrete to point at, you never believe yourself.

Depression and terminal diseases are tricky. Because you have a PERFECTLY legitimate reason to be sad, but you know in those slumps that it’s not why you’re crying. When they talk about your meds, and ask how you’re doing, of COURSE you’re low; you have a terminal fucking disease. Separating the mind disease from the physical disease becomes a very demanding and complicated thing, and of course you won’t get it right all the time. You don’t want to bump up the meds and become a zombie if your uptick is just cause you’re quite reasonably sad; it’s only for the sadness you can’t help, the depression that is there for no other reason than your chemistry is off and your brain hates you. The I-have-hella-circumstances depression can be medicated too, but I don’t like the idea of taking something all the time for something that’s legitimately situational and not just chemical. I like having an as-needed med for those times.

Wednesday was one of those times.

I think it was triggered Tuesday night; I found my newt dead in his tank. Now, the newts were always just above furniture, the same as a fishtank; they hated to be looked at, much less TOUCHED. They were low maintenance, you top off the water when it evaporates and toss in a couple of frozen bloodworm cubes once in awhile. I wasn’t particularly emotionally attached to these animals. The cats found them enchanting, I called it Newt TV and it was Molly’s favorite show. I always felt a little guilty for not getting more enjoyment out of them, surely there was some kid out there who would love these neat little pets more than I, but they were perfectly happy being completely ignored. They looked like pissed-off old men, and I named them after the old heckling muppets, and we coexisted. I was upset when Molly somehow pulled the screen off the tank and she either killed one of them outright or put it on the floor and it dried up and died outside of its tank; it seemed like it was an easily preventable death and I should have noticed he was missing from his tank before he had a chance to mummify in my living room. The last newt, I’m pretty sure died of natural causes – there was water in his tank and he’d CERTAINLY gone longer without being fed before – but I failed to notice until he’d had time to partially decompose in there. It was a warm week, probably didn’t take long for that to happen but I was still horrified with myself. Not guilty, he didn’t die because of neglect, just…I should have noticed that a living thing in my care was no longer living before then. I felt shaky and weird, horrified at his little corpse that I just couldn’t bring myself to fish out of the tank just yet, and went to bed after taking an Ativan.

Wednesday was work from home day. My stomach felt…off..so I called off the housecleaner. And then at some point during the day, sadbrain kicked me in the head. Everything was wrong. Work was frustrating and seemed hopeless. I checked Facebook to distract myself, but that turned out to be the absolute WORST thing, because not only were several friends having terrible things happening to them, but the world was full of screenshots of a dead black man bleeding in the street next to his car. And then I lost my shit. And cried and cried. And then went to sleep for a bit, and woke up crying, and everything was the worst. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t stop crying. The slightest thing set it off, and when you have ALS and the slightest things are stupidly difficult already, the world just seemed …too much. I had social obligations that night, and begged off instead, because I didn’t know if I’d ever stop crying. And then I watched television to distract myself, and HOLY SHIT WAS THAT A DUMB THING I DID.

OK. So. Something about me and my broken brain. This sounds stupid, but, welcome to how my personality disorder works. Look up Avoidant Personality DIsorder, and read all about my dumb brain. I have a really hard time watching new shows, because they’re an emotional risk. I just don’t know how they’re going to make me feel, so I have to be REALLY REALLY brave to try something new. I usually have some kind of an “in” – it’s recommended to me by a friend who knows about my broken brain, it’s by a writer whose work I trust, it’s so dang silly it couldn’t possibly be harmful. Otherwise I stick to ‘safe’ shows, like nature specials (Sir David Attenborough is legit one of my favorite people on the planet), cooking shows, How It’s Made.

So I picked this show that had just been added to Netflix:

Dream Knight (드림 나이트)
Alternate titles: 玩偶骑士
Starring Song Ha Yoon and Im Jae Bum (JB)
Though she’s constantly bullied, orphaned high schooler Joo In Hyeong (Song Ha Yoon) refuses to let life get her down and fills her little home with positive vibes from her favorite boy band. But fandom hits the next level when she discovers the ability to call upon four mysterious hotties (played by GOT7), who turn her world topsy-turvy with magical and hilarious antics, including JYP artist cameos. No matter how tough life gets, she’ll get by with a little help from her friends, especially with dreamy knights!

HOW COULD THAT HAVE GONE WRONG. I mean, it even had wacky sound effects and live-action cartoon antics. Only…she lives in a trailer because her mom died suddenly. Ok, I’ve seen anime like that before, that doesn’t HAVE to be depressing; it can lead to wacky misunderstandings involving four boys unsupervised in a single woman’s home. Classic harem anime formula. Four gorgeous guys show up, but they’re really magical dolls born from her tears of despair, here to make everything better! And what she wants most in life right now is to win a dance competition so she can dance with her favorite idol! Only she can’t really dance because she’s clumsy! THIS IS A COOKIE CUTTER FORMULA. Throw in the “oh noes, when her wish comes true the magical dolls will disappear!’ trope that ALWAYS FINDS A SOLUTION (hint: she falls in love and true love’s kiss saves him!) for good measure. Why not. Oh hey, loophole that if they kill her, they can remain human! O NOES (whatever, they totally won’t betray her).

Only..

Only she lives in the trailer because her aunt fucked her out of her mom’s fortune. Only she’s clumsy because she actually has myasthenia gravis! What’s that? OH ONLY A MOTHERFUCKING PARALLEL DISEASE TO ALS THAT CAUSES MUSCLE WEAKNESS AND EVENTUALLY PARALYSIS. No big deal, not fatal, right? Nothing to be upset about as a viewer? Oh, what’s that? Her disease is progressing quickly and she’ll be paralyzed within a year? Is that her and her knight finally falling in love even though the other knights have decided to betray her after all and she doesn’t know about any of this, including the fact that they’re not human? Is that her praying to her dead mother to give her the strength to dance really well, this one last time, with the man she loves? And then afterwards, she is going to break up with him to spare him a lifetime of taking care of a cripple? Oh, is this her winning the competition, everything is happy, wait a minute ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME THEY ACTUALLY DO DISAPPEAR FOREVER AND THAT IS THE END OF YOUR SHOW YOU ASSHOLES.

After triggering a lot of ALS/terminal disease buttons, you’re not even going to give me a happy ending to your stupid boy band television live action cartoon?

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.

….so yeah I cried until I nearly threw up, cried until I gave myself a migraine, called in sick the next day and cried that whole day too. Zootopia was released on Netflix, but I knew it was a not-even-bothering-to-veil-this analogy for race, and after sobbing in despair for a couple of hours about race relations ALREADY the previous day, I avoided that trigger. And just avoided the internet best as I could. And slept. And I don’t menstruate anymore so I couldn’t even lie to myself that it was temporary, and I thought about just not showing up to life ever again, and slept some more, and took more ativan in three days than I’ve taken in the last six months. And slept. And Friday came, and I was no longer crying, but so bone-tired that all I could do was sleep some more.

And the tricky part is looking back at that and trying to figure out what was Depression, and what was Disease. My feelings had a reason; their intensity did not, necessarily. Because I need to decipher what the situation really was, what were the triggers, in order that I might avoid them in the future and not lose three days of my life to crying and sleeping the next time. The dead man on my feed, that was obviously a real trigger, and there is most decidedly some very real buildup to that breaking point – you’ve read the news or failed to avoid it as much as I have. I had reason to cry over that. Maybe not so long. Friends’ issues that came up, I don’t know that there would have been tears to go with the empathy otherwise. Not sure. The frustration that my hands cramped up when I tried to eat something, real. Intensity, probably uncalled for. Etcetera. I have to unpack all of these things, examine them carefully, and put up traffic cones around the ones likely to make me slip again. There is certainly an element of the single straw that broke the camel’s back, here; a lot of kinda shitty things have been going on lately, a lot of micro-stresses, and the weight of the major ones combined, and the dam broke. I was way overdue for a cathartic cry. But not so hard, not so long.

ALS has added a layer of difficulty to this process. I can’t just shrug it off and say fuck it, I had a breakdown, maybe it’s time to try a new med. I’m paying much closer attention to all of this, for as much as I could easily play the “I’m Dying” card when I freak out and withdraw, I don’t WANT to unless it’s true. I don’t WANT to give myself permission to ignore causes and allow myself to drown in slumps like this without trying to figure out how to never do that again. My life is too short to allow whole days and weeks to be wasted if I can do something to avoid that. I quite literally…do not have time for this.

And if I’m being honest? Neither do you. Please look after your mental health, babies.










FORTIFY

tragerstreit6 Comments

on top of gravity:
I asked one of my (male) friends to stop using the phrase “man up” and he has been using “fortify” for the past two weeks instead and it’s just a little thing but honestly it makes a difference
and tbh it’s also pretty funny when I start to deflate in the library and he leans over and goes “FORTIFY”

Seriously try that. J and I use it now and it’s awesome. Sometimes when I’m whining, even though he knows I have every right to (CENTER CIRCLE, BITCHES), he will just grin and shrug and say, “Fortify.” And I will flip him off the best I can, and we laugh and go about our lives.

There will be a real post soon – I know I keep telling you this. But Monday is Clinic Day so there will be lots to report on that front. Meantime I thought I’d check in with just a quick thing about the weekend.

It wasn’t particularly kind, if I’m being honest, but there were moments of goodness interspersed, for certain. I mean, it started with a road trip to Olympia to see a black metal show. How is that not awesome? I’m not generally in to black metal, but Wolves in the Throne Room are an exception. They’re not so much Black Metal as…Black Folk? It’s more melodic than the usual stuff, and they have been properly described as “atmospheric black metal”. None of the cheesy SATAN666OMG stuff. I like it. It was two and a half hours away, on a school night, and the venue was this ADORABLE little place that served surprisingly delicious food and had the cutest waitstaff OMG and delightful bathroom graffiti (next to the signs that declared said bathrooms to be transgender friendly, use whatever restroom coordinates with your identity, and if someone gives you a problem, please report their asses and they will fix it). The music of course, was WAY too loud for the small room, and the geniuses decided that a smoke machine was a good idea so I spent some time breathing through my shirt, and then some jackass decided that you know what this concert needs? For me to blaze up in this tiny room.

So yeah I had a headache.

The show was awesome though, a dear friend in Seattle had joined us, and the opening act was every cheesy stereotype I could hope it to be, including announcing themselves in a Cookie Monster voice “WE ARE BLACK! FUCKING! CANCERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!” And yet, the whole time I was listening, I was so tired I felt like I could fall asleep any minute. Even with Cookie Monster screaming about forests or satan or whatever. I don’t know what the hell that band was about. We got home around 4, because the show was an hour late to open, and had 3 bands, and was two and a half hours from home. I had wisely taken the next day off. I slept until like..3, and then took a nap, and then went to bed early. Working all day and then car ride and then socials and everything was way too much and I was DONE for the whole day.

Saturday I FINALLY got my Fallout 4 install working. I’d had to reinstall my operating system, so everything is cattywampus still, and I hadn’t played in forever because getting everything how I like it was just too daunting most of the time. So I finally got all my add-ins working, got it set up for use in the bedroom so I can lounge and play, annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd…..discovered my hands don’t work well enough to play on the wireless keyboard anymore. My left ring finger seriously droops, and that’s the finger that controls moving LEFT, soooo….unplayable. I tried for a little bit and gave up. I’m going to have to get a controller. Which SUCKS because I am totally a mouse/keyboard gamer.

Sunday I had a friend come over to help me around the apartment. AGAIN – people just…show up! And do cool things! And the hardest part is always just LETTING them help. I’m so grateful I can never even HOPE to say how much. While I was shifting some things around for her arrival, I had a fall. Not a bad one at all, just…wound up on my butt. I got up with little difficulty and went about my day. I continued to think about it, but it didn’t really upset me or hurt me. Just, whoops, on the floor. Get up, move on.

That evening we went to dinner with Gecko for his birthday, and we did Brazil Grill. If you’re not familiar with the place, you sit at a table, and they bring huge hunks of meat around on swords. And they carve you some, and you eat meat until you DIE. And then they bring you cinnamon sugar glazed pineapple and you know you’re in Heaven. I love this place. Only trouble is, when they carve off that beautiful slice of tri-tip, you have to grab it with your tongs and take it to your plate. I had to use my tongs with my whole fist, and still didn’t quite manage to grab it a couple of times. The delightful gaucho (dude with the meat sword) apologized every time, but it was clearly ME dropping it, not him cutting, and I wanted to tell him “It’s not you, my hands just don’t work” but I didn’t. I wound up putting my freakin’ boob in my plate once, reaching over to try and grab the slice properly. And then cutting up the meat was its own challenge, and trying to be discreet when my hands inevitably cramped up with the effort was useless because 1) I have to do a prayer gesture with my hands to get it to stop, and 2) my brother is observant AF. But it wasn’t a huge deal, just a quiet “hand cramping?” “Yah.” and that was the end. I realize next time, I’m going to have to ask someone to grab the slices for me. And probably cut my steak.

Four slaps in the face from ALS this weekend. The exhaustion, the loss of playing video games with mouse and keyboard, the fall, knowing I’m gonna have to have my steak cut for me like a toddler from now on….and yet.

And yet.

Not once did I lose my shit, or even feel like I was going to. Or needed to. Just a quiet acceptance. The exhaustion was to be expected, and things like this are just going to require a full day recovery anymore. That’s how it is. Gaming, well, I knew that it was coming, and I’ve been keenly aware that my ring finger in particular is very weak, so it makes sense that I can’t really do it anymore. The fall, well, they’re going to happen. Until I am no longer able to get up out of a chair, and even then, I’m going to get dropped. Being unable to cut my own food in the future, well, I’m honestly glad I’m still even able to EAT steak. And I have people willing to cut it for me. Gecko and his husband would have done it in a flash, had I asked. And next time, I will.

ALS still sucks. But I’m getting better at coping with the losses, to foresee them happening and bracing myself.

To fortify.

And that’s pretty awesome.










The Week in ALS…

tragerstreit2 Comments

This should probably be a vlog post, but I don’t feel like putting on makeup and sitting in my hot office to record one, so you get a micropost update.

So to sum up:

1) The orthotics appointment for testing various knee braces was stressful and awful. Traffic was horrifying – it took us literally an hour and fifteen minutes to drive a 35 minute distance. When I called to give them a heads-up, she was AWFUL and rude to me, “Well HOW late.” “I don’t really know, maybe five to ten minutes?” “Well where ARE you.” “Two exits away, but traffic is unpredictable.” “I’m going to check with the doctor and make sure that he even has time for you.” I was literally ON the exit when she came back and told me I’d have to reschedule because they really needed EVERY MINUTE of my appointment time to work with me. “How about this. I’m on my way in RIGHT NOW. If I show up too late, I’ll reschedule in person.” When I showed up seven minutes late, they cheerfully had me fill out the paperwork and wait in the office lobby for five minutes. So I guess I’m not allowed to be late, but they can delay all they want.

And then, they had me try on a brace that didn’t help at all, made walking even NOISIER, and when I tried to take them off, I had to shove the velcro between my palms and push them hard together while I pulled at the strap in order to get them unhooked, because my hand strength wasn’t enough. And then they told me that anything sturdier would make sitting and standing nearly impossible, so they have nothing that can help me.

2) Dr. Goslin called and then emailed me yesterday (because I didn’t answer the phone) to tell me that I was disqualified for the new research trial. I did not take it very well; about as hard as I took the initial diagnosis, actually, because it felt like hope for SOME good to come out of this had been pulled out from under me. Again. I spent the entire day sleeping.

3) I woke up this morning still in a funk, and while getting ready for work, I had a fall. Just, knees gave out while I was coming out of the bathroom, and I landed very solidly on the linoleum on my knees like I’d just had a religious revelation. It hurt a LOT, and I resisted crying, but let myself just lay in the bathroom doorway for a little bit while Ianto very nervously sniffed me. Falling and getting up while wearing my braces makes everything suck worse, because it holds my ankles in a fixed and uncomfortable angle while I’m crawling. Usually when I fall at home, the first thing I do is yank my boots off if I’m wearing them, to make getting up easier. But I was already running late.

So, it’s been a terrible week on the ALS front. This is not to say the week has been terrible; I saw my favorite radio play live, with some of my very favorite people, had an awesome Saturday showing off Portland to a friend I hardly ever get to see because she lives far away, and my elderly cat is actually recovering quite well from his sickness. So yay for all those things. Yay.

And now you are updated!










Sometimes Snake Oil is Actual Medicine.

tragerstreit1 Comment

So! I had a follow up with Dr. Goslin about all the things that came up from clinic day, notably meds changes, follow up with the physical therapist, and a general check-in. I found that I had lost 5 pounds, which I am not at all unhappy about. She was unconcerned about that, telling me as usual that maintaining my weight is important; as long as I’m not dropping weight quickly it’s not a problem. Even though I miss being 60 pounds lighter, I suppose that will come in time, and that will be a problem. But until then I am fat and alive.

As far as the physical therapist goes, we didn’t find any braces that helped more than the ones I currently have. Most of them actually exacerbated the problems, particularly on inclines and declines. Instead we’re going to look into some sort of knee brace, as my knees are usually what fails when I fall. We’re thinking some sort of neoprene brace with metal supports; maybe that won’t make it quite so meat-stilty when I walk. We will see. Basically anything that keeps me walking as long as possible is a good thing, in my opinion. Ideally, also not tripping over the cats would be good.

Regarding the meds conversations, we had started me on something to help with the… er.. accidents… And something to may be kickstart the antidepressants again, as they didn’t seem to be doing a whole hell of a lot lately. Lab bladder control made is working out awesomely, we’re going to slightly increase the dosage on that. The other med doesn’t seem to be helping but it also doesn’t seem to be detrimental, so we are going to slightly increase the dosage on that. Maybe we’ll get a reaction. We are also increasing the dosage on Nuvigil, to see if we can’t kickstart my energy levels some more. In that same light, we are decreasing the gabapentin because I’m not sure it’s doing much of anything anymore, and it’s known to cause drowsiness, and I really hate taking something three times a day. Hopefully I can taper off that altogether. The antidepressant kick starter was also prescribed hopefully to reduce the migraines; I haven’t had one in a couple of months and I’m not sure if that’s working, or if it’s just that the Botox is no longer in my system.

Related to the headaches, we had a conversation – again – about the Cefaly device. When she had first talked to me about it, she had explained that she KNOWS that it looks like snake oil and seems super fake. (Seriously so fake.) The science she assured me, was sound and it had potential to be effective. Since then, she had actually tried the device and bought a few for her patients to try; a few of them reported up to 50% fewer migraines. It worked so well that none of her patients have returned it. So she wrote me a prescription for one, and almost $400 later, it should be arriving soon. The crappy part about it is that insurance will not cover it so this was out-of-pocket. Expect future updates when I finally get my hands on it. LIVE FROM THE FUTURE WITH MY SPACE HEADBAND OF MIGRAINES -2 !

We also spoke about medical trials. She hadn’t been able to attend the research symposium, so I told her about my conversation with Dr. Beckman and how frustrated he seems with his complete lack of progress. She shared my sense of dismay and agreed that an actual trial is probably not forthcoming anytime soon. HOWEVER, she told me, there was ANOTHER trial about to start. LITERALLY about to start. Like, in August. She was positively geeking out about the potential for this trial, super excited about the potential, and in fact said she felt BETTER about this than the copper trial. It’s centered on inflammatory behavior with ALS degeneration; previous trials had stopped the progression of ALS in patients with those inflammatory markers while they were taking this drug. Only 35 percents of ALS patients have those markers, though. It’s an IV administered drug, and a six-month trial; I think she said five visits for the first two months and three visits a month for the rest of the duration. I’m not exactly sure what it entails in detail, but I suppose I shall find out if I am selected for this trial. Because of course when she asked if I was interested, I said HELL YES. The trial coordinator is supposed to be giving me a call very soon to give me more information and arrange to have me tested to see if I have those markers.

So THAT’S exciting.

She also suggested, which in retrospect seems OBVIOUS, that I go to the physical therapist to learn how to fall gracefully, and how to get back up. It’s the getting back up that’s the problem, usually. So I’m going to go do that. Soon. In the meantime she gave me materials about various “med alert” type devices. Which, I realize I really SHOULD be looking into, but every time I think about it, the phrase “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” also goes through my head. It’s one of those stupid associations, one of those steps that feels like surrender, no matter how practical and ultimately necessary it may be. I’m working on getting over that.

So that’s the haps. You are now fully updated. I’ll make a goofy video once I get the Cefaly. I’m sorry I haven’t been updating lately, the world those outside and inside has been in that sees stupid, dramatic, and sad. So I’ve been in full out capital avoidant mode, sitting in bed with my cats eating candy and watching nature TV. It’s so much easier.

I hope life is treating you kind. I hope you are safe, and happy.. And I hope it stays that way.










Too private.

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“I tend to be pretty private,” she told me, as we talked of grief.

“I keep that close to my chest, usually, too,” I agreed.

“But you’re pretty open, usually? You have that blog.”

“I post a lot of things people would consider private and personal, sure. But when I get really sad about my own situation, I tend to shut up and not post for awhile.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So I haven’t posted for awhile. Not that things haven’t been happening. Things being thought, that I ought to write down. Feelings to document, frustrations to record. Things. But it’s hard to write, when you feel bad. There’s a bullshit self-imposed rule of “if you can’t say anything nice”, when the whole POINT of this was to record the good and bad. The funny among the fucked up, the grace between the grief, the other alliterative things that mean shit happens and sometimes it sucks and it’s all valid and okay.

There’s been a vast lack of energy, both physical and spiritual, lately. I spent the entire weekend in bed. Sleeping or playing video games. Safe to say I’m in a depressive streak, and things are hard right now, but good stuff still happens. I have a lot in my brain. Work is stressful as shit, and that’s its own post, one of many that I feel I owe you, this place, this blog, my future self. One of many. It’s harder to type and that makes me not want to do it. I am tired. I am lazy. I would rather be escaping into virtual realms, the Commonwealth, the biome I call my Minecraft home, Discworld, anywhere but here. I am squandering the time I have left and the ability I have to do things with it, and I can’t bring myself to care, most days.

But I have things to tell you. And I shall. I’m sorry to myself, and to whatever audience here, and to the universe in general for not being a diligent reporter, for not allowing myself permission to post even the bad days, when the bad days aren’t funny. It’s just easier to sleep, instead.

I have things to tell you. And I shall.










And then I was just…peeing.

tragerstreit2 Comments

I wanted the title to be something more…dramatic/appropriate/somber, but Jack asked if that could be the title of my autobiography and I said no, but it COULD be the title of this post. So. This is a glamorous post, sure to make you fall madly in love with me.

Wednesday my body totally betrayed me. I mean, with ALS it does that as a matter of course, at all times. There have been FAR more instances of yelling at my legs to Do The Thing (including one total failure and forced sit-down while trying to get in to a car lately), and opening string cheese is becoming less of a struggle and more of a “forget it, I’ll get sscissors”. And now that I’m posting this, I’m realizing how awkward my typing is now. But Wednesday there was an Incident.

It started with a fall. I was cleaning up puppy pads because my elderly cat can’t stop peeing everywhere, and my little brother was coming over to steam clean my carpet for me. Balancing while operating a machine is no longer possible. So while scooping up the wet pads, my knees buckled and I just sat down. Wrenched my ankle a bit, still hurts. I was upset, but not crushed or anything, it happens. Justin the Wonder Brother came over, steam cleaned the office carpets and most of the dining room, and then ran the Spot Bot when Parmesan sauntered in and peed on the still-damp clean carpet.

Asshole cat.

The rest of the night proceeded without incident until I was ready for bed. I went to the kitchen to rinse out my cup and get more juice (see, Dietician? I’m drinking juice instead of soda with my evening pills like I promised!) and as I’m standing there with the water running, I just..start peeing. And I can’t stop.

Now, with ALS I was told soooometimes there is some ‘bladder urgency’ because of muscle spasms. And I’ve definitely experienced that – just all of a sudden YOU GOTS TA GO. And there’s been a couple of times I almost didn’t make it. But this was the first time I just completely lost control. I couldn’t do anything about it but stand there, fervently wishing it would stop, just hold it, just wait, the bathroom is LITERALLY ten steps away, but there was nothing. Just grab the roll of paper towels and wait it out.

And when it was over, I cleaned up the mess, took a shower, and bawled like a broken thing. Because one of the silver linings in all of this was the solace I took in the fact that people with ALS generally maintain bowel and bladder control. If I have to be trapped in a meat shell, at least I don’t have to be a meat shell sitting in a wet diaper. But then this, and I don’t know what to think, and I hope it’s an isolated incident, but it was jarring and scary and I spent alllllllllllllll day yesterday in a terrific funk that I’ve still not entirely shaken.

And then yesterday my nephew fell asleep and peed on my couch so I guess my house is just kinda a pee zone. Hooray for that.

Sorry I’ve not got something more lighthearted for you today. Sometimes with ALS that’s how it is. But I’m still mobile, still alive, still working. Still mostly happy. Still loving all of you.