Tuesday, June 21, 2011

A Pattern Emerges?

As my 6-year-old would say: "What the heck?!"

I've always been clumsy. Ever since I was a kid, I've always had bruises somewhere on my body, many for which I couldn't necessarily identify the cause. 

For the past year or two (or maybe the full four since I got sick), it seems like the number of fall I take has been far higher than I would expect. And I never quite know why I've fallen. There's rarely something I can point to like a slippery wet floor or a toy I tripped over, although I have those falls too.

It's been a hard few weeks with an overwhelming number of obligations, most related to the end of the school year. (For the last three weeks of school, parents were expected to be present at least one day per week for "special" events in the classroom. How do people manage this every year??)

And the last day of school, which was Friday, was particularly challenging, but I survived it. Saturday was tougher with a double commitment of a friend's house warming party and the opening ceremony for the regional championship for figure (art) roller skating. I was exhausted and feeling pretty zombie like, but coping despite the pain and fatigue. 

That is, until the floor jumped up and attacked me ... at least that's the only way I can describe it. One minute I was walking toward a water fountain to refill my water bottle, and the next I'm lying face down on the floor, clutching my injured elbow and hoping that I didn't tear a hole in my brand-new cardigan. (I didn't.)

Seriously, I was just walking and minding my own business, and I didn't even feel like I lost my balance or tripped on something.  And despite being in a roller rink, I was not in roller skates! :)


So I've got a seriously bruised elbow sporting a big lump, two bruised knees, a mild wrist sprain, some assorted aches and pains from the fall. 


It's not a huge deal in most ways, and it's far from the first time I've fallen like this. But I think I have it slightly figured out, even if I don't think there's a real preventative solution to the problem. 


See, I was tired. I'd pushed myself beyond where I should have, and pretended I was a normal, healthy mom who could attend all the events important to her kid. And I think, maybe, my other falls have been in similar straits, where I'm well beyond my comfort zone and on the brink of pushing myself into a flare. (Although in this case, I think I was already in a flare and pushing myself farther into one.)


If exhaustion = falling, then what? My internist, who I saw on Monday, told me, "When you're really tired like that, you shouldn't be walking. Now you know." But I'm not convinced that's particularly helpful, especially since many of my falls happen around the house. And it's not like I'm ever not tired.

I still don't understand what's causing me to fall. But at least I think I've found a pattern ... now I have to channel John Snow and figure out how to interpret that pattern and what to do about it. (See, there was a higher purpose to my reading Steven Johnson's book The Ghost Map about a cholera outbreak in the mid-19th century. Now I know who John Snow is! :)

   

 

 

Monday, June 20, 2011

Top Ten Reasons I Wish I Could Give For My Lack of Blogging

Rather than share the mundane reasons I haven't been posting much lately, I decided to share reasons I wish I could claim:

10. My non-existent dog ate my homework blog posts.

9. I've been training for the Portland Marathon and contemplating following that up with an Iron Man competition.

8. I've gone back to college to obtain my master's degree in library sciences so I can fulfill my childhood dream of being a librarian. They make lots and lots of money, right?

7. I succumbed to an Angry Birds addiction.

6. I've been reading uplifting and cheerful books like The Windup Girl and The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. (I did just read those books, and highly recommend them. But they're definitely not what you'd call cheerful.)

5. I forgot how to type.

4.  I founded my own multilevel marketing (MLM) company selling placebos as miracle cures for everything from cancer to lupus to indigestion. Email me if you'd like to become a distributor and earn up to $50,000 a month working from home for just 5 minutes a month, all for a teensy little investment cost.


3. I wrote an amazing novel that has sparked a bidding war among publishers and is already being touted for next year's Nobel Prize for literature. 


2. We won the lottery and it's too time consuming counting my millions and figuring out how to spend it.


And the Number One reason I haven't blogged lately is (drumroll please):


1. I woke up one morning to discover my four years of debilitating illness had been a bad dream, and I'm actually completely healthy and able to do anything I want to do.