Falls and Jinxes

I seem to have been hit by some great iceberg of inertia. Even as I’m typing this, every fiber of my being is shouting, "No! Don’t want to!" I could try to blame it on the trip to Gina’s, seeing as they are an hour behind us and I feel a definite sort of jet lag. But I think it had started before then. Maybe it was planting those roses. Sometimes I feel like digging those holes really shaved a bit off of my youth. That sounds ridiculous to actually come out and say, although Mom agrees. She thinks it can give you arthritis. Well, I’m wondering if she’s not right because I’ve woken many a time since I started that blasted digging with my hands aching. But, then, maybe I am just getting older and things just start hurting. Lots of times I’ll get up in the morning and my left heel with hurt so badly every time I take a step. Then it disappears at some point. Maybe I just sleep wrong or I tense up. I often wonder if that’s where my migraines come from. (They seem to be getting worse, by the way.) It’s really a bit funny because I’ve been absence into different ways to relax and let go f stress. And as if I’m in a stressful situation!

Ok, enough talking about me–as you an probably tell, I haven’t been writing in my diary (of course not–no desire or energy to do much of anything), so my personal stuff is spilling onto this blog. And I have to reiterate that my attitude towards my laptop has really changed since I had to redo the startup disk thingy. I should just pay to have it looked at, but, then, again, I feel so...unenthused. No, that’s not right. It’s not just a lack of enthusiasm but another layer of loathing to act on top of it. I guess I’ve been reading too much Harry Potter lately, but I feel as if someone has put several jinxes on me.

Now, really, enough talk about me. I should have written earlier. When we were in St Louis, Mary fell and hurt herself. She was getting ready to sit down in the rocking chair in the living room and so I’d let go and then she just suddenly keeled over to the left, away from me. I stood there and just watched her fall, as if in slow motion, with my brain screaming at me to catch her the whole time. Again, I felt like someone had put a spell on me. Then I let out this blood-curdling scream and everyone came running. We got her up and into a chair, but she was hurting badly. Chris came, very luckily, within a few hours and told us to put cold on her groin where it hurt in case there was swelling, to keep it down. He checked her later to see if she was bruised but I can’t remember what that would have told him. I think it would have meant that her hurting came from a more superficial problem, like a muscle tear. An absence of a bruise increased that likelihood that she’d broken something. (I’ve got to make this short as my back is hurting me.) We stayed a day longer to spend more time with Chris since he’s a nurse and when we got home I took her to see her doctor who x-rayed her and sent her to an orthopedic surgeon. He said it was a crack in the pelvis (thus the groin pain), not the hip and that it needed to heal by itself. That was such a relief! I just can’t tell you... Mary, meanwhile, only felt pain when she moved and didn’t even remember that she’d fallen! O je! I got her home and that evening she started complaining about her wrist hurting, which I poo-pooed. In the middle of the night, it was still hurting, so I started taking it seriously–there was a lump on the inside of her wrist. I dragged her to her doctor the next day again. She said it was a cist caused by trauma from her fall–i.e., she’d hit it on something–and I was to wrap it up and apply heat three times a day. And stop giving her pain meds round the clock b/c it was making her sleepy–just administer when she requested it, i.e., almost never.

Things have been going ok. Mary mostly doesn’t remember that she fell. I have only been letting her do transfers (from chair to potty to chair to bed, etc) but yesterday and today she’s done a wee bit of walking. She’ll be back to abnormal before we know it! But, seriously, I’m a bit concerned about taking her down any steps for a while. We’ll see.

Sometimes I a wave of hopelessness crash over me when she doesn’t know things. Sometimes in the evening now before she’s even gone to bed, she doesn’t remember that she’s in her own home. I’d feared that would happen with another trip. Mom says that’s not so bad because if something happens to me, Mary won’t know if she has to leave her home. I doubt that. Who knows? Would Mary be one of those zombies if she’d been sent to a nursing home?

It’s almost been a year since I started taking care of Mary full time. What have I achieved since then? I feel so...useless. A friend of mine said maybe I should be concentrating on who I’m becoming at this point in my life, not what I’m achieving. On NPR they are having this thing about what people believe. I find myself lately thinking more and more about what I’d like to believe. Sometimes I really do feel like a character trapped in a book that someone else is writing. And who am I becoming? A lazy person who doesn’t do the dishes every night, eats junk food, doesn’t give Mary baths regularly or make sure she brushes her teeth every day (much less me brushing my own or bathing regularly). I feel like I’m constantly searching for titillation, for something to awaken some desire or curiosity in me and then when I do find something, I latch onto it, whether for a few minutes or hours at a time or days, and get obsessed with it, with little thought for anything else. I’ve gotten frustrated with reading to Mary because she inevitably starts talking to the cat, who I think comes in at the sound of my voice, and so she doesn’t listen to me. She doesn’t remember what I’ve read anyway, but says she enjoys listening. Is it just because I am in some form giving her attention? And the cat...I feel myself becoming more and more attached to her and don’t want to. I miss her if she doesn’t sleep in my bed. I need to take her to the vet for her yearly check-up but can’t seem to force myself to do this. I need to make my own appointments for check-ups but don’t do it. I don’t even have the energy to make all the lists I usually waste all my time making.

Enough of this. I need to force Mary to sit on the potty. She hasn’t been for hours. She’s had a lot of problems with incontinence lately. And my fingers hurt. Isn’t that stupid?