Feeling

If I could, I would use no words today. The part of my legs which are complete nerve dead, or sensation dead now extend about 10 inches past the knee; I tested yesterday and then a couple times today. I can’t be sure how much sensation I am getting above that, but at least I can feel I pinch as a pinch, however delayed or mild it might seem. I guess I thought that the quads would stay. And while my right arm has almost no pain sensation all the way up to the shoulder, the left arm is still pretty good except for the hand.

I remember in the book Girl, Interrupted about a girl in an asylum/sanitarium for rich girls and how one of the girls. R was getting out and practicing “cooking” and making caramel apples when one of the girls started screaming because R had caramelized her hand instead of an apple and just stood there, not saying anything. I had always wondered what that would be like. What level of pain inside you would need to feel to not feel that? Or as it is now, as I still have function, just not necessarily control of the level of function, muscles connected to muscles I control; reactions from muscles I control but cannot feel? It is an odd world indeed.

Summer it seems is here and many are away, going away. I remain. Is there more to say? I remain. Another week, another week, and pain. I worked today some more on a project which is important to me because the act is important. The action is good. Sadly it seems to eat all my money, but this is my peaches. Linda and I were told, by a caretaker, of a man dying of cancer, on chemo, who asked for peaches. The caregiver thought it a waste because she would buy 10 cans and he would only be able to eat one. I explained to Linda that he was trying to hold on to whatever passion he could feel: to BELIEVE that there was enough for 10 cans of peaches. And that he then went on to pears next and didn’t finish the peaches showed he was NOT a quitter, that he kept trying, between the vomiting, and the fatigue, to care about caring. To find passion in a life where at the time it was hard to find. I respect that. I understand that. For me, I am working, thankful that I am left handed so I can write. A single small notebook page takes over 40 minutes, and then a rest but it is my peaches. And it is good. Even if no one understands.

This is how I feel, today, last night; off and on for weeks I think. More so because people do leave, and I think that is what they should do. But that doesn’t stop it from hurting. And parts of life leave too, things precious, they leave. To admit, or even accept I don’t have control doesn’t make it stop hurting.