Freaking out over health news


If it's not one thing, it's another. More body parts failing!

This week I got some pretty devastating news from my doc & I kind of freaked out.

Three weeks ago I fell off my bike — first ride of the season -- & injured an ankle. I’ve gotten used to just “sucking it up” over pain because of my fibromyalgia and Sjogren’s Syndrome (an autoimmune disorder). If I’m going to have a life I just have to ignore pain. Mornings I always wake up feeling like crap, but I have a choice: lie in bed and feel like crap or get up and do something. If I stay in bed, it will just get worse and soon I won’t be able to move at all. So I get up. Sometimes not until noon or even later, but at least I get up!

But my ankle wouldn’t heal. It didn’t really hurt that much. At least, not in comparison to the rest of me. I actually continued on a very long bike ride after that — it was such a gorgeous day and I wasn’t about to let it go to waste! And I always feel better when I ride.

Still, I noticed the other night that the ankle continued to be very swollen, so I emailed my doc & he said come in immediately.

X-rays showed major arthritic deterioration in the ankle. This has all come up in less than two years — I had every joint in my body x-rayed back when I was going through the Sjogren’s diagnosis in 2005. Arthritis very often accompanies Sjogren’s.

What’s scary is that all this was happening without a clue. If it hadn’t been for the fall off my bike, and the swelling that resulted, I still wouldn’t know. And all that could go on just getting worse until it was too late to do anything about it.

I’ve been having a lot of problems with my hips and knees, but sucking it up because, well, like I said, I’d have no life at all if I didn’t. God knows how much deterioration I have in THOSE joints. They will be looked at later.

I’ve worked so hard to build this new life after I lost nearly everything ten years ago — my career, my home, all my savings, hope for the future. I came out of grad school (a top grad school at that) with everyone expecting that I would be a high power college professor at some major research university, once I finished my dissertation — which was considered “cutting edge” scholarship at the time. Mass Comm. faculty in places like U Minnesota were using chapters I’d presented at professional conferences in their graduate courses.

And then I ended up, of all places, on Union Street , unable to work at all for the longest time. I never even got the dissertation published. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the effort it would take. Sometimes I’d try to read it and I’d be damned if I could understand it! Then when I finally got my brain back the thought of double-checking the 400 or so citations of books and articles I never wanted to read again just didn’t appeal to me.

But I’ve built up this new life. Ok, I don’t get paid for the urban activist work I do, but at least it brings me satisfaction and sense of accomplishment and moral purpose, as well as a degree of status and recognition and a little bit of local “fame.” I don’t want to have to go through all that letting go again. But I know I’ve been pushing myself way too hard lately, and it’s having an impact.

I know I’ll get through this somehow. As I said when my former landlady evicted me (bless her heart for doing so!) I always land on my feet. Trouble is, sometimes I have to spend a lot of time flat on my back first.

Ok, here’s the old humor — I had a “fortunate fall.” (Biblical scholars, you know what I mean.)

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Follow-up

One of the things that was clear to me after I sent the above email out to friends is that I can never again fall as far and as hard as I did back in ‘98, because I have a very large support network. Back then there were only a few people I could rely on and most of them didn’t live in Rochester! But now, because of all the community work I’ve done, I am well known and well loved.

My doc says I can and should ride my bike, and that’s always been good for me not only physically but emotionally. With the near summer-like weather we’ve been having I’ve been off riding a lot, and it really helps.

For more on what bike riding means to me (I consider it a spiritual experience!), see these blog posts I collected in one place, here.

I have started to peel off some of my community obligations so I can find more time to write. I DID do something writing-oriented today — I submitted an old short story of mine to Glimmer Train. One of my stories submitted back in ‘98 was selected as a top 25 new writers story in that magazine, but not published. I got an email notice about a contest for stories about family, and one of my old stories fit, so I thought, what the hell. It only took a few minutes (and a $15 reading fee) to do online.

It's sunny and gorgeous out right now, so the minute I get my work done for my online class, I'm going to be on my bike.

Posted: Sun - April 22, 2007 at 02:01 PM          

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