I think being ill makes me think of being young and vulnerable and poorly cared for, hence my maudlin trip down memory lane a couple of days ago. Plus the similar physical feelings. I’m in decent spirits though.

This is where I go to remember. If you talk to me in real life, I hope I seem like I’m planted in 2014 most of the time. I don’t know who I’m writing this to, ultimately. I’m glad I’ve been keeping am online journal since 2001. My secret is that when I write with a pen it’s a slog and demoralizing. Typing is my medium and it always has been. I did okay when I was a child, and in college as a note taker, but now when I put letters to paper the letters jump into the correct words, but often out of order. I am a decent speller but I cannot make my brain tell my hand to do it in the correct order. I have to concentrate to write a check or a grocery list. Typing flows like water.

I’m grateful that I’m read and heard at all. Part of me is writing to my future self, because sometimes I go back and cringe and make sense of things, sort of. Maybe I am hoping my children will read this someday and try to make sense of it some point. I have had to reflect back into the past on my own and try to impose some sense of compassion onto my family, which was obviously a mess. Maybe I am trying to leave a map for my girls so they can see that the stew is attempting to be equal parts “mom is flawed” with “but she was trying.”

Today I feel–the same. It’s distressing to have too much pain in my legs to stand in one place. It’s hard to go to the fridge and get a glass of juice. The first round of results came back and I have a marker in my blood that is saying that I have inflammation, which. Yeah. I’m on orders at this point to rest for 5-7 days and if there’s no change then it’s advanced testing. The hope from my doctor is that I have Worst Flu Ever, or “Flu Part Two” as I’ve been thinking of it, since your typical flu symptoms cleared up in about a week. He’s hoping this will subside it and it will kind of be Mystery Viral Myositis What I Kicked Eventually. I am running out of Prednisone in two days which makes me nervous because it is uninflaming (it’s a word now) my body and I can sleep.

This has been so consistent and ongoing since the onset that I don’t really have a gut feeling which way it’s going to go at this point. Being off Prednisone on Saturday will be the moment of truth I suppose. Will it be less pain, or the same as Tuesday, when I went to the doctor. I think I’m being tested for Lyme disease, but if not, I will make sure I get tested. I keep thinking about these two bug bites I got on my ankle on the first night in Hawaii that were irritated for days, and stung horribly in the ocean. Everything could be a coincidence, or it could actually mean something.