Out of the Blue

It is February 13th. The stores are filled with roses, bouquets, beautiful boxes of candy and chocolates of every description; bakery windows are stuffed with heart-shaped cakes, cookies, and pink-frosted confections. Red streamers, glittering pink and red banners, teddy-bears, plushy bunnies and puppies, and even jewelry are prominently displayed everywhere I look. Valentine's Day is at hand, and here I am, single. Valentine's Day as we celebrate it today is a holiday for lovers. Sweethearts buy each other flowers, candy, and other gifts. They make plans, have dinner, or go away for the weekend. Couples get engaged on Valentine's Day. There is a coalition of singles, an unspoken cadre of the unattached, who are supposed to be anti-Valentine's Day. They make plans to pig out on pizza and bash the idea of love and relationships. My married, or coupled, friends are careful not to talk about their Valentine's plans when I'm around. They don't talk about the g...

Sharing again my thoughts on Ash Wednesday, written years ago. Now, I need to find a church and receive the ashes, begin my wilderness journey, and come closer to Christ. Receiving the Mark On Ash Wednesday the Christian world begins its wilderness journey with Christ in commemoration of his forty days in the desert. At my church, the Sanctuary is quiet as we come forward in long, solemn lines to receive the ashes. Before me, I hear the ministers whisper about how we are all made of dust and must therefore return to dust – exhorting us to repent and believe what the Gospels have taught us. I pray the prayer of contrition, confess my sins before God. I stand with the rest, my forehead bare, waiting. Knowing that the season of Lent begins in that moment, when the minister’s finger draws the midnight-black cross on my skin, marking me as a follower of Jesus, as one who stands in solidarity with the Son of Man in his long suffering, his work for human-kind, and his v...

The only thing I regret about having taken a new job is that I had to miss my quarterly rheumatology appointment today. I have rescheduled it for a month from now; by then, I will have the sick time built up to cover it, and I hope that my health insurance will have kicked in as well. I may need to put it off for another month, though. It is possible that coverage won't begin until April 1. Knowing that I will have excellent coverage greatly helps my stress level, which keeps me feeling pretty good, but I hurt for people who don't have the same opportunities. I completed my taxes on Sunday afternoon, and because I spend a lot on medications and health-care, I decided to itemize those costs and see if I qualified for a deduction. I did - costs needed to be more than $3700 and they were. My out of pocket costs for health care and medication exceeded the $3700 limit. In checking that number, I saw how much my insurance policy had paid for my care. My Enbrel alone cost the compan...

I like having choices, but I don't like having to choose. I know how little sense that makes. It seems like a paradox, doesn't it? But it's true - having options is great, but when I'm comfortable with things as they are, I don't really like being faced with choices. Sometimes, the choice might lead me to a better situation, a better job, better education, or even better health. But, there's always that fear that I'll be jumping out of the safety of the boat, thinking I can walk on water like Jesus, and then sink like a stone. I was presented with a couple of opportunities just last week that put me in this kind of situation. A friend called to tell me about a job opening that she thought I'd be interested in. I wasn't sure that I was interested, frankly - I really enjoy my current jobs - but I thought it would be interesting to actually hear a bit more about the position, so I called and left a message. After a little back-and-forth, I had an in...

A year ago tonight was one of the worst nights of my life. Or I thought it was. It was the night when my boyfriend broke up with me after a year and a half of serious relationship. He had hinted at marriage several times, and it was understood between us that it was what we were both looking for. Then I got sick, and everything changed.. At first, he just seemed distant. Then it was more than distance - I knew he didn't want to be there when we were together. He was more than a million miles away. He wasn't even on the same planet. I asked him several times what was wrong, and if he was happy in the relationship. He would only speak briefly about anxiety and depression, but refused treatment. Pride would not allow him to seek help. It was something, he said, he had to deal with on his own. So he broke up with me and I really thought it would kill me. I nearly let it kill me, truth be told. After all, the rest of my life had fallen apart. What was there to live for? I had lost...

For the past week, I've stayed at a ten on the pain-scale. Monday started out well - my knee felt good, the rest of me was fairly level. Things took a sharp nosedive with an extra dose of emotional distress on Tuesday morning, but I shook that off fairly quickly. It was just a confirmation of what I already suspected; that a person I had spent a lot of time loving had become someone I didn't know anymore. I didn't want to accept it, but denial only lasts so long. I've spent the past three months mourning the loss of that love and it is time to move on. So - I'm doing that; living life, focusing on being happy and getting well. Wednesday morning, I got up and tried to leash my dog to go for a walk, and I threw my back out. Immediate agony flared across the L5 region. I couldn't straighten up. So I did the bent-double duck-foot shuffle to the couch and pushed myself upright. SCREAMING pain. INCREDIBLE pain. Fortunately, my seventeen-year-old was home and she hel...

Tomorrow is May 31st. It will mark a year since my father died. A year ago...can it really have been a year? Has it been more than a year since I heard his voice? Since I saw him smile? Since I held his hand while he drew his last breaths? Wiped his face as his skin cooled, watched as the nurse listened for a heartbeat that no longer echoed? Does grief ever ease? The loss is greater now that I've had time to measure it, to consider it. To feel it. For most of my life, I believed the world would end when he died. He was the foundation of my life. He was the tree whose roots encircled the whole world. He was the shelter I sought when the storms were too frightening to bear. Every moment without him in the world seems pointless. Tragedies are deeper. Loneliness more bitter. Sorrow more profound. How can anything happen without him? How can the sun rise? How can it set? How can the rain fall? How can I breathe? But the sun does rise, and it sets. The clouds gather. Rain falls. ...

I took a long walk through a cemetery today at lunch-time. The sun was buttery and bright, and the stone bench at the monument for Psalm 23 was rough and warm as I sat on it and leaned back against the rock. I closed my eyes and turned my face up toward the sky. The wind was blowing cool but the sun was stronger. For the first time in thirteen days I felt some peace. I've spent the past two weeks in near-constant prayer for one person or another, myself included, but the prayers never felt connected. They were incoherent, desperate cries for help. And that's what brought me there in the first place. I woke up this morning after only two and a half hours sleep with my body shaking and my eyes burning. I shook so hard I could barely get dressed. Because I felt so weak, I made myself eat; peanut butter toast with honey. I am down thirteen pounds since April 9th. Not necessarily a bad thing, but when you lose 13 pounds in 13 days because your stomach hurts so much that even the t...

I went to bed at nine o'clock on Sunday night. It is now Monday morning - 3:55 am right at this moment - and I have been awake since six minutes past midnight. The alarm will ring at 6:05. I keep telling myself that if I can just get to sleep now, I can still get two hours. I am so tired that I can barely keep my eyes open. But I have been lying here in bed for four hours with my eyes closed, trying to sleep, to no avail. My body is begging for sleep but my mind just won't turn off. And it's a vicious circle, the way it feeds itself; the more tired I am, the more pain I have. The more I hurt, the more my mind races. I have taken 15 mg of melatonin over the course of the past three hours, but it hasn't helped. It usually only takes 5 mg to buy a night's sleep. So I'm awake. At three o'clock, I gave up and started reading. The words blurred together and I couldn't focus. Finally I turned on Netflix. Now reruns of The Walking Dead are on in the backgrou...

Have I ever mentioned how impatient I am? I want to know everything. And I want to know it right now. When I first suspected I had RA, I immediately began learning everything I could about it. I spent hours - probably days - learning about how RA works, what drives it, what might affect it, and how to best combat it. I read up on the blood tests used to diagnose it, how to understand the lab reports, and what the medications could do to help. In becoming more informed, I became less fearful. Long before I ever saw a Rheumatologist, I knew about my condition, the medications that were likely to be prescribed, and about how the disease might progress. I tend to approach life this way. Knowledge is my armor, my shield, and my sword. I use it to both protect and defend myself and the people I love. There are other ways to fight, and I use those too when I must, but knowledge is my preferred tool. When it doesn't work, when words fail, I am left scrambling for a position that is tenab...