http://www.lauralore.com/wordpress/

The website is [sort of] moving, that is.

Want to see some posts in 2017? Like real, actual updates with words and punctuation and stuff? I'm trying something new, and I want to make sure you're not left behind. If you have lauralore.com bookmarked, the site automatically redirects so no further action necessary.

That last sentence is totally pointless because if you use the lauralore.com path, you'll never even see this page. So why am I even addressing you still?

If you have lauralore.com/serendipity bookmarked, you're not going to see any new posts after this—totally personal preference I guess. If you DO want to see new stuff, you will need to update your link—it is a work-in-progress design-wise (WordPress seriously hides EVERYTHING), but all posts from 2004 to present are available in the archives over there, too.

Now, without further ado, check it out.

Hearts break, stories end, and yet...time marches on.

That was her biggest regret, you know. In our candid conversations near the end, she was ruined at the thought of what she would miss as time continued on without her. And here we are, on the eve of the tenth anniversary since her death. My mother was so special to me. It shouldn't have come as a surprise that she wasn't made for this world.

I admired her more than I'm capable of admiring another. She was the kind of person that I will always strive to be—she wasn't perfect, but she was real. She was true to herself and her creed...and no one who knew her had a better, more caring friend. She gave her love easily, and she gave it well. I know it sounds as though I've made her larger than life—and I grant you, I am prone to exaggeration—but to me, she actually was larger than life.

I can't believe that I've lived the past decade without you, Mom...but then, have I? I feel your presence so often...in a song, a scent, a memory. Every now and then, I open my mouth and you come out. I inherited your quirky sense of humor...which basically means that I laugh at my own jokes even nobody else does—I'm constantly amused with myself. And most importantly, I know how to love totally and without reservation...I learned that from you.

It's not such a bad life really. It would just be so much better if you were here.

I still miss you.

I shared my last Christmas with Mom ten years ago. 2005 taught me the meaning of the word bittersweet. Even now, a decade later, I look back on that time with unrestrained joy followed sharply by the pang of loss. It will always be the most memorable Christmas of my life. What surprises me is that I consider it the best. It was a pinnacle of emotion, and I never knew that a person could feel so much all at one time and survive.

Mom and I were at the hospital several times a week. I was on a first name basis with the lab staff, and I knew the coffee and cookie schedule in the waiting room. The hospital was like a second home for awhile there...Mom and I even got to the point where we could find some levity in our situation. Her experimental treatment was beginning to work, and the scans showed her Cancer slowing in growth. I'll never forget the sparkle of hope in her eye when she asked her oncologist early that December, "Will I be able to play Santa one more year?" Time: you just don't realize how overwhelming such a gift can be until "tomorrow" is no longer assumed. We were going to make it a Christmas to top all Christmases.

To add to the dichotomy, I was learning to accept end of my marriage and work through the hurt and bitterness that was left in my heart at its sudden end. In the way that it ended, unexpected for me, it induced strong feelings of grief. It was as if my spouse and life partner had died. Meanwhile, I was trying to put myself out there...meet new people and find myself again. I signed up for an online dating account to find companionship...I wanted an occasional evening of socialization...conversation in a coffee shop...maybe I would even find a friend. I had no expectations of permanency with anyone I met, I just needed to get out of my own head and away from death now and again. You see, by this time, I had decided that I wanted to live, and I wanted to love life. There were some very dark days in there, and I am profoundly grateful to have had my mother to pull me up from the abyss.

I had an online dating account for a whopping three weeks. That's how long it took for Nick and I to find one another. That's not entirely true...more accurately, that's how long it took us to connect. Part of the registration process for an online dating profile requires you to specify who you are looking to meet. I get the logic of that, but I know from my time on this earth that the best things in my life have been "off plan" so to speak. We don't always know what we want, so we outline what we think we should want. I was 24 at the time, and I think the age range I provided capped at 30.

Nick was 33 at the time and saw my profile soon after I registered. Yet, he never reached out because he didn't think he was what I wanted. Meanwhile, I could see that there was this guy who kept looking at my profile...I liked the person his profile painted, and he seemed kind, but obviously he wasn't interested in me or he would have reached out. So we played cat and mouse online for a few weeks until one of us finally broke the cycle (hint: it wasn't me). It was Christmas day 2005 when Nick contacted me the first time. Our first meeting and date was New Years Day, 2006.

I certainly wasn't in a good place to start a serious relationship. I just wanted a friend now and then. Sometimes though, if you're lucky, you meet a person who fills all the empty places inside of you and warms away all the cold. I still don't know who would sign up to begin dating someone in my position...my life was shrouded in darkness then. He didn't know me...barely at all really...but he wanted to be the person I could lean on as I said goodbye to the best woman I'd ever know.

You see, Mom got that one last Christmas, but time was running out. It didn't matter what the tests showed, we all just knew.

I never would have imagined that I would become whole again. I never thought I would enjoy another Christmas ever again...how could I? She was the joy, she was the spirit. I just got to be along for the ride all those years (or so I thought). It turns out that I was apprenticing all that time to carry on the spirit after she left...but it's at this time more than any other that it doesn't feel like she left at all. She's in every ornament I hang, every memory a Christmas carol triggers, every tradition I uphold. It's trite, but there really is magic this time of year...warmth that transcends differences, self interest, and even the divide between this life and the next.

During my blogging drought, much has happened in our household dynamic. Most notably and awesomely, Sophie is no longer an only child. I mentioned my desire to rescue another cat about six months ago...well, it didn't go exactly as planned. It started okay enough. I fell in love...like head over heels in love...with this little puffball who looked like a "Charlotte" to me:



You see, in my head, I've been hoping to rescue another cat for a long time. A girl can dream, after all. Due to her kidney problems, Sophie would be considered a "less adoptable" cat if we didn't find her...and what a loss that would have been if no one was ever on the receiving end of her affection. I knew that if I ever got the chance to adopt again, I wanted a "less adoptable" cat...an older cat, and injured or ill cat (as long as Sophie's health wouldn't be in jeopardy), or a black cat. The long-hair was sort of a foregone conclusion for me...most people do not know how or want to care for a cat with long hair. They require a bit more maintenance than your average cat. However, none of that occurs to people when they simply set their eyes on a cute, fluffy kitten.

When Nick gave his [resigned] go-ahead, we talked it over with our vet. She strongly urged us to bring in a kitten if we wanted Sophie to bond with her new sibling. (So, an older cat was out of the running.)

We first popped into a a rescue agency in early June, but that was a little early for this year's batch of kittens to be old enough for adoption. Still, we walked around and visited with the cats in cages...those places are heartbreaking. I have such admiration for people who work there and don't end up adopting 100 cats. The surrendered cats especially...they all look so sad...looking for their owners and feeling so abandoned.

Side note:

I quickly bonded with a beautiful boy named Mareo. He was a long-haired polydactyl with soulful eyes. I had such a strong connection to him that I would have ignored that he wasn't technically a kitten. Unfortunately, Mareo had something else working against him...he was FeLV positive. He could only go into a single cat home or a multicat home if the other cats were also FeLV positive. I followed him closely on the agency's website...scheming who of my cat-less friends I could coerce into adoption. He was finally adopted on September 14th...then surrendered soon after his new owner discovered she had a serious allergy to cats. I was so very happy when I saw he was adopted for good on September 21st...and this time it stuck.

Anyway, back to Charlotte. We met her a week after our first visit to the rescue agency. The foster mom was pretty intimidating at first...which is good. She took in 3 of a 6-kitten, all-black litter when they were 3 weeks old (another volunteer took the other 3). She was a protective mama-bear, making sure her babies would go home with trustworthy people. She warmed up to become something more like you'd imagine Mrs. Clause would be as soon as she made her decision about us. She took us back to one of the little rooms where people can interact with cats.

Either she liked what she saw in me or I had "SUCKER" written on my forehead, because she kept adding cats to the little room before stepping out to give us some time to engage the kittens. If you've never been in a confined space with at least three highly socialized 8 week old kittens, you haven't lived.

Seriously.

After a space of time—I have no concept of the actual amount of time due to my zen, kitten-addled state—the foster mom stepped back into the room and sat in the chair I had vacated when I popped down to the floor to be overrun with kittens. She told us that there were many inquiries into Charlotte and her brother who was in the room ( see were both long-haired cats). She had Charlotte narrowed down to either us or another lady she said. Then she got crafty.

She gestured toward's Charlotte's sister who was also in the room with us (at the time her name was Kira). She said, and I know this is verbatim because it flipped a switch in me, "Nobody wants this one." Since that Saturday was the first time ever they were onsite at the rescue, and we arrived minutes after they opened, it had to do with something on the online listing. I'm 100% sure it was because of one of the photos they posted for Kira on the rescue site. You see, they caught her mid-yawn. When I saw it, I thought it looked like she was smiling, I thought she looked adorable. However, I could see how someone less familiar with cats could mistake it for a hiss.



Then she played her fall-card: "If you agree to adopt Kira as well, I'll guarantee that you will get [Charlotte]." Now whether or not there were any other inquiries on Charlotte or that was just a ploy, I'll never know. I trusted her statement on the brother because she didn't try to push him on us. There's also a belief (that has since been proven untrue by animal behaviorists) that it's easier to integrate a male kitten into a multicat household than a female...and that male cats are friendlier in the end. All completely untrue of course. It's just a stigma that has been perpetuated long enough to become an uncontested truth. Male kittens have a better chance for adoption.

Even without the dangling carrot of Charlotte, I knew that we were bringing Kira—who we renamed Emma—home. Nick told me later that he was prepared to walk out of there with 2 kittens all along...but I honestly only had single-cat intentions going in. The rescue agency was neutering them that week, so we could take them home the following weekend.



So, there you have it. The cats now outnumber humans in this house...the kittens are growing like weeds, and Sophie has adapted to them very well. She has even come to their defense when a cat we were cat-sitting was growling at them. Typical big sister...she doesn't have patience for their energy ALL the time, but she won't let anyone hurt them either.

By all blog appearances, it would seem that I dropped from the face of the planet, yes?

I've been trying to figure out some things in my life, and the black hole of cyberspace was not the ally I needed. I can't seem to shake the journalling bug though, scribbling notes in a little notebook. There is something deeply satisfying in taking a pen to paper at the end of the day...technology be damned. I kept diaries as a young girl...I did not write in them every day, but every so often I had a fevered emotional purge as the words spilled from my pen. This is not a new form of release for me.

Digitally, I've published my inner monologue in one form or another since 2002. I belonged to a fitness forum then. I met many wonderful women there, and I am still in contact with many of them. They were the return embrace I needed when I was in North Carolina (away from my family) and trying to find my identity during weight loss.

You see, right or wrong, the harsh reality is that people treat an overweight person differently than a fit person. I was struggling then to hold onto that strand of "me" that made me who I was. I was afraid that I would become less authentic, much like I felt others treated me when my appearance started to fit a cultural norm. I did not trust my instincts...I did not believe anything that anyone said, either.

Obviously I made it through that period of my life...a little worse for wear, but in solid possession of my knowledge of self.

I am facing a similar complex now. A year on 24/7 Fentanyl, OxyContin, and Zanaflex left me with a nearly defeating weight gain...I've seen numbers on the scale that I swore I would never see again. I've been feeling like I failed myself, I broke an oath. Feeling sorry for myself, I developed a self-sabotaging victim mentality and all progress halted.

I accept my share of the blame for the pockets of lost time since April when I finally rid myself of the worst of the daily prescription narcotics. Back in the early 2000s when people asked how I lost so much weight, I would say, "Persistence." My redemption cannot be a half-hearted, part-time job. That doesn't work...what's sick is that I know it doesn't work. I've known it for nearly half my life now.

There are always roadblocks when focusing on calorie intake and expenditure. For me, it's physical as much as it is mental, but I need to remind myself that the end justifies the means. I needed a way to make exercise a regular part of my routine.

The end of the day doesn't work for me. My best hours are in the morning...which is why I start work earlier than most. And with that, I would like to share some of the notes I captured on what I cheekily named The Laura Project.

October 19, 2015: Day One So, today's the day. Today I start to build a habit—a healthy one for once. When I lost weight the first time, everybody asked the expected, "How did you do it?" At the time, I would reply, "Everyone knows how to lose weight. If you want it badly enough, sacrifice—focus, persistence— seems easy." I still believe in that answer. With all my project management and lean methodology training, my problem solving efficiency is without compare...except when it comes to myself it seems. At the end of the workday, I am physically and mentally spent. I cannot seem to muster the energy for regular evening exercise even though that would fit into my schedule best. The answer, of course, is to exercise in the morning. Another old Laura addage—man, I used to be smart. I should write a self-help book for myself (for the next time I fall), right? All self-mocking aside, morning truly is the best time to build any routine. There is nothing to alter the storyline in the beginning...no tangents to entertain or schedule changes to swallow. It helps that I am a morning person, I suppose. I have struggled with morning exercise. I need pain medication in my system before I can even move around and get dressed for my day. So straight from alarm clock to exercise mat? No can dosville, baby doll. (In case me of the future reads this with utter confusion, that's a How I Met Your Mother reference. That's was the show with Doogie Howser all grown up...you remember.) So here's where the problem compounds. When I start doing the math, I feel dispirited. I need at least 30-45 minutes for the pain medication to take effect. Since I cannot perform high impact exercise anymore, I need to make sure I exercise for longer periods of time...an hour is a good number, so let's go with that. After that's done, I need to cool down, rehydrate, and I'll be near-homicidal until I get something to eat. Let's time block that at 30 minutes. Then, I'll need to shower, blow out my hair, apply makeup—oh yes, and get dressed—that's another 45 minutes. All that has to happen before I leave for work at 6:30 in the morning. In case you lost count, I need to be out of bed a minimum of THREE hours before I leave for work if I am going to fit in exercise...to be concise, I need to roll out of bed no later than 3:30 in the morning. Even as a morning person, that feels a teensy bit early. If I woke up at 3:30 before this nonsense (and I have), I would curse insomnia and stew about my lack of sleep until I get up at 4:30 (or 5:00 if I'm feeling lazy). BUT— How did that go again? "If you want it badly enough, sacrifice—focus, persistence— seems easy." So, I am on a quest to make a habit out of getting up at 3:30 to workout. One good habit leads to another, then another, then...you get it. If I'm getting up that early, you'd better believe I'm journaling my food to make sure I don't out-eat my exercise...to make sure the missed sleep was not in vain. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit...here's where I begin. The alarm went off this morning, and I wasn't sure what to do at first. I hit snooze so it would quiet down enough for me to think. It all started coming back to me...and my excited energy grew. I started chatting at my half-asleep husband like the irritating morning person that I am until I realized that getting up at 3-something was my deal, not his. I climbed out of bed and started my day as planned...game on. 20 more days until this feels normal.

A couple days later, I changed the alarm to 3:15 to give myself a little cushion. Today marks 21 days. I'm down nine pounds.

I'm doing it.

As is so often the case, I cannot organize my thoughts for a targeted post. So, here we go.

Sunshine


Yes, that's me. It's a tough attraction with all the dangers the sun poses. My parents both loved the sun—though I get my love for "stifling" heat solely from my father. I would prefer 100° F weather every day if I had the choice. (Curious that I live in Wisconsin, I know.)

My ancestry is made of pale ethnicities, so I have no idea why I tan so easily when I should burn by all logic. I sometimes wish I was more sensitive to the sun so I would have learned earlier in life to use caution when spending time outdoors. Of course I try to keep my skin protected now that I know better, but it isn’t something I remember all the time. That concerns me.

Even with all this—the danger, the fear…even the guilt—I am a moth, and it is my flame.

Immunity
It never fails: I become ill after a couple weeks counting calories (thereby restricting calories, I suppose). It's the darndest thing. This whole weight loss thing was a heck of a lot easier 14 years ago—you know, back when I was able to give it the one-two (diet-exercise) punch without these pesky repercussions.

The portion-control malady is usually in the form of the good old head cold. Lousy things, those colds. The symptoms are just enough to make you miserable—nothing more, nothing less. This time, the cold morphed into a sinus infection. I've now been on antibiotics for two days...five more to go.

My inflamed sinuses have temporarily stolen the hearing in my right ear. I never really had ear infections as a child, so this has been a rare experience for me. I am amazed at how this has affected my balance. The clogged ear has also amplified sounds that I wish I could turn down—the sound of my own voice being at the top of the list—but also, my heartbeat and the sound of my breathing.

I know it all sounds really whiny—and make no mistake, it is—but I am going a little bonkers with all that racket coupled with the issues with equilibrium. It’s a bad trip, man. To use the younger vernacular, I suppose I literally can’t even right now.

Fitbit Ambition
Fitbit has brought out the worst part of myself (in my opinion). It’s been a little data collecting device that fires all my OCD cannons: SO MANY NUMBERS! But the most awful of the ugly heads that have reared is my competitiveness. That I am competitive surprises most people, which makes me happy. I have made tamping down aggressive ambition an art. I abstain from activities that I believe will trigger the beast—I hate this part of my personality.

No matter where I look, be it a personality test or a summary of my astrological sign* (Virgo), this ruthlessness appears. Type-A much?

Fitbit users can “friend” each other and have step challenges. Only catastrophe can keep me from the top. Seriously. There are nights when I have delayed bedtime to do laps around the kitchen island just to get the edge.

When someone we know finds out I have a Fitbit and suggests that we be friends, Nick warns them off. “You don’t want to be Laura’s friend.” He knows. The struggle is real.

*I don’t actually put a lot of stock into horoscopes.

Landscaping
Our landscaper began work three days ago. The grass (sod in the front, seed in the back) will go in early this week, but everything is looking really good. We're no longer ashamed to show our faces in the neighborhood now that it doesn't look so construction zone-y.

With the exception of last year, the year I have given the working title of The Living Death, Nick and I have had a longstanding tradition to welcome the unofficial start of summer enthusiastically with a day of biking, a day of hiking, and a day of kayaking (in no particular order). We refer to it as the trifecta, and it's as much a reason to jumpstart our out-of-shape cold weather bodies as it is to embrace the reasons we still live in the midwest despite the long bite of winter.

This year, it doesn't appear that the forecast will allow three dry days to complete the trifecta, but we hit kayaking and hiking with a vengeance while the sun was in session. We both used vacation time on Friday to squeeze in an extra day without rain. We were out on the water just after 9:00 on Friday morning for a smooth, soul-freeing paddle along Mirror Lake.

We had the lake mostly to ourselves until the afternoon matured, and weekend visitors arrived in the Wisconsin Dells area to begin their long weekends. Those hours of solitude were the definition of perfection, but the weight of underused upper body muscles made itself known on the last stretch of our established path as we fought the current rolling toward the dam where we turned around. (We'll save portaging over the dam for a time when the arms don't feel so noodly as we approach.)

When we decided to call it a day, we worked like a well-oiled machine to pack up the boats. It felt good to work in tandem so naturally, like this is who we are—an active couple who likes spending time together...and it is. The seamlessness of our actions was so automatic that I didn't appreciate it until an older couple who parked near the boat launch remarked upon how easy we made it look to transition from paddling to travel-ready.

I felt fine on Saturday. I felt alive. I felt happy. Endorphins are so yummy...I can't believe I forgot the high. Saturday was to be the last pleasant day of the long weekend, so we planned a morning hike at one of my favorite places in Wisconsin: Devil's Lake.

In typical extremist Laura fashion, I picked the hardest trail to begin and agreed that we should take the harder of the two trails on the other side of the lake to get back to the car. According to my Fitbit, the first part of the first trail was the equivalent of climbing the stairs of 45 floors without rest—basically a long, continuous, boulder staircase straight to the top of the cliff. By the time we finished the paths on both sides of the lake, Fitbit had me clocked in at 113 floors.

I was proud to have accomplished such a feat because it had been years since we completed a challenging trail on both sides of the lake. By the second side, my right hip (the wonkier of the two) was definitely protesting movement, but I talked her into sticking it out (mainly because we had no choice if we wanted to get back to the car).

The photo of myself at the top of this post was taken before we left the house that morning...fresh-faced and happy. I used to feel like that every weekend, because every weekend meant a new adventure. I want to become fit enough to recapture that spirit. My mom used to have a plaque at her desk (at work) that read, "If it is to be, it is up to me." It's a statement that has stuck with me through some of my tougher times. I decided to put it in play through this journey; I've even added it to the site header.

Today, it's difficult to interpret the results of my enthusiasm. Difficult because, while I am in increased pain, I can't know why. Today is also rainy, and though it's cliché, my [arthritic] lower body joints become real jerks every time it rains. I'm still navigating physical activity on the D-L, so I will have to pay attention and listen to my body (when I figure out what it's trying to tell me).

I dearly hope I don't have to take two steps back after taking such a thrilling step forward this weekend. For the sake of the trifecta, I would love some dry time tomorrow to take the bikes for a spin, but the forced break might be a kindness to a mind that has decided to push through whatever pain may come. For now, I'll post an old photo to help me remember where I want to be again.

My poor, anthropomorphized pet. I sometimes forget that she's at a disadvantage...we're not cats, and we'll never understand her all the way.

We've been a tight unit, the three of us. I would live in a cat colony if I could, so I've always been on board with rescuing another cat...Nick? Not so much—mainly because we didn't want to rock the boat with Sophie.

She's a dog in a cat's body, truly. She's the sweetest and most engaging cat I've ever known. We didn't want her to go all territorial and lose her awesomeness. She is also on a prescription diet from a kidney illness she was diagnosed with early-on in her life as a domesticated cat. The prescription diet will help her keep it in check, but the vet also warned that stress could trigger a relapse.

Then, our condo sold super fast and we couldn't find a house that we loved in Conservancy Place, a community along conservancy land in my hometown...but we did find a lot, so we decided to build. In that time, Sophie was transplanted from her home two different times, subjected to a multicat household, and...she adapted...very well, actually.

Not long after we moved into the new house, it was time for Nick's mom to take her annual leave of winter and head to Florida. We watched her cat, Krystal, while she was away. I was sad to see her go because the cats were in such harmony. Sophie acted differently after Krystal was gone. She became very clingy (almost suffocatingly so). She's never been a cat to suffer from separation anxiety in the past, but after a year living with multiple cats followed shortly by a 2-month play-date with another cat, I think being an only cat started to suck.



A lot of buildup for that one statement, eh? We've had Sophie eight years (she is eight-and-a-half years old) as of last month, so this has been a years' long thought process.

What are we getting ourselves into?

Well, well, well…what do we have here? A writer who hasn’t written isn’t just irony, it’s sad—at least it is for this writer. For this writer, it means that I haven’t felt like my feelings are worth recording…worth remembering.

It’s just that…life is precious. I know it as well as anyone (probably even more than some), so I have no rational excuse: I need to stop wishing my life away.

I’m very hard on myself as I struggle through the melancholy that sometimes clouds my vision. I feel like I have a lot of things going right for me. I have a solid grasp of who I am as a person. I know empathy. I have patience. I have the love and friendship of a wonderful man. I have a job that—okay, yes it can be stressful, but it can also be rewarding. I am living in a home that captures my heart and gives me solace.

I have so many of these riches of the soul that my permanent zip code should be on cloud nine. When I am surrounded by these things without distraction, I do live there. It’s the distractions that weigh me down. They make me feel undeserving of the good because I am not impervious to the bad. My shield isn’t resilient enough to keep them away, but I feel like it should be by now.

That isn’t the way it works though, at least not for me.

I don’t even know where to start since I don’t want to write a 10,000 word position paper about the thoughts that have polluted my mind since I stopped using this blog…my pensieve. I suppose I should chip away at the thoughts that shame me most.

I feel ugly. Really, truly, solidly ugly. I’m not really talking about my physical appearance. That has never mattered to me all that much. The outside has nothing to do with me…it’s a collection of genes that my parents passed along. As I get older, I am beginning to see a pale version of my mother staring back at me in the mirror. It’s the living part of her I have left.

Rather, I feel like all the negativity inside me has seeped through my skin…and now I’m coated in it. I show it to no one, but it screams at me to get my attention beneath the disguise. I’m, again, distracted by it. I’m missing beautiful, sweet, fleeting moments of life because I can’t push aside my feelings of failure and worthlessness (which only multiplies those feelings). Talk about a slippery slope.

In late 2013, my doctor, in an effort to help me control my pain, began prescribing different combinations of medications that would prove to be a mistake. If I have one fault (and I have waaaaaaaay more than one), it is that I trust too easily. It’s a fault that I struggle with controlling because I think it can be positive. I don’t want to be a cynic who believes in no one and nothing, but I also need to trust my intuition when trusting someone else feels wrong. It’s a balance I have not mastered, particularly with the medical profession. I always assume that a doctor is way smarter than I’ll ever be, and I should always defer to their advice. The thing is though, no one knows my body as well as I do, and no one ever could. This patient needs to grow a spine (and preferably one that isn’t deformed or damaged from surgery this time).

After months on opioids, I was referred back to the pain clinic when I expressed interest in either spinal cord stimulation or neuraxial drug delivery as an alternative. My pain surgeon happens to specialize in both. It was her professional opinion that neither was an option on my treatment table. She scheduled more steroid treatments and another round of PT. She also prescribed a transdermal patch that would deliver the pain medication since the pills upset my stomach.

I was on a relatively low dose (compared to some people) for about a year, having only increased the dose once. Maybe it would have been different if I felt like the medication actually took away all the pain, but I was respectfully afraid of the drug and feared increasing the dose. The patch, plus the narcotics for break through pain, plus the steroids, plus the muscle relaxers…I lived in a haze, if you can even call it living—and I was still in pain because I didn’t want to increase any of the doses.

PT had me to cease all my regular exercise routines (at least for "a while" they said...but never really defined a timeframe when I could return to activity) because they surmised that any activity that required me to be in an upright position was worsening the problem. I felt like I was losing a friend. Exercise has helped me keep the demons at bay when darkness looms for over a decade.

Back to the drugs: I was afraid of them almost from the start but tabled my feelings and followed blindly. It struck me one night in bed as I listened to Nick’s deep breathing next to me how shallowly I breathed in comparison. Would there be a night when I stopped breathing completely? How long was I willing to gamble with my life?

Maybe I just didn’t give it enough time, but those thoughts were enough for me to pull the plug on this treatment plan. The year and a half of narcotics, steroids, and inactivity altered my physical appearance. I would be lying if I said that it didn’t bother me or that I’m not bitter—it is a visual reminder of a bad decision, after all. But those feelings will not help me fix it. I have some hard work ahead of me, and I suppose I’m going a little rogue on approved activities…but for the first time in too long, my mind is in a positive place.

If I cannot have a perfectly working body, I at least want my mind. On the medications, I was so tired. I felt like all of my energy went toward staying awake during the hours normal people are awake. Everything was dull, like I was experiencing my own life as a bystander. I felt like my brain processed conversation and information in slow motion. There was nothing of myself that I recognized…I felt so lost. I am relieved to be free of them, even if the pain is greater. I don’t feel like I’m forfeiting my life anymore.

Losing the extra weight will be slow going. It’s something that I need to do not only to feel like I’ve resurrected a semblance of myself, but also because I know that the lighter I am, the less stress I will place on my spine.

I can’t be the exercise extremist that I used to be. I cannot eat vegetables as heartily as I’d like because my body does not digest them well (and tells me so quite pointedly when I force the issue). I’m still figuring it out. I know how to lose weight…I just have to figure out how to follow through within the boundaries of my physical constraints. I still believe that if you can conquer patience and consistency, you will win at weight loss every time. Point blank, you just have to want it badly enough that your goal mutes the other noises vying for your attention.

Basically, I have to not give up on myself. That seems simple enough, doesn’t it? It’s not simple at all. When enough different people inject the word “can’t” into your vocabulary, you start to believe it. The ceiling on the realm of possibility lowers. Fear has imprisoned me…fear that I won’t be able to walk at all one day, fear that I will become a burden to my loved ones. Fear has stopped me from being as fit as I’d like to be, and my fears are slowly becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if any of my fears come to fruition, I will regret forever that I didn’t use my body the way I wanted to when I still had the ability to use it at all. So, I’m breaking out of this jail. Yes, it seems simple…but I know this is going to be hard. No hiding from it now.

I am suffocating under circumstances I cannot control; I need to reclaim those that I can.