Finally
Posted By Russ Emerson on October 1, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Now that October is here, I think we can say that summer is well and truly over — de facto as well as de jure. Personally, this has been the worst summer I can remember — and if it had gone on any longer, I’m not sure I’d have survived.
Worse than 2007? When my health was declining precipitously? Well, perhaps. In 2007, there was hope of a solution, and I was looking forward to improvement. This summer, though, I’ve been having more problems with my legs, and I’m losing control of my feet. I’ve been to the ER once, seen I don’t know how many doctors, been X-rayed, ultrasounded, poked, prodded and tazed, all to no effect, other than the sure empirical knowledge that the nerve response in my legs has degraded. I have more tests coming up in the next few weeks.
Maybe something will point to a cause and a treatment, but I’m having a hard time remaining optimistic.
A couple of weeks ago, I found myself shopping around for a walker, and for hand controls for my pickup. Not just looking around online, but seriously investigating.
I’m 48 years old.
I’ve tried to remain upbeat about all this. I have accepted the new status quo, and can function pretty well — well enough to handle living on my own. The renewed decline, however, is beginning to wear on my morale.
On the “plus” side for this summer, my lawn died early, so the neighborhood lad I hire to water the lawn has not had a lot to do. OK, that’s not much of a plus.
On the other hand, when I have the lawn aerated and reseeded next week it will give me the opportunity to perhaps replace the fescue grass with something more likely to survive a North Carolina summer.
Oh, who am I kidding…? I’ll just have fescue put down. Again. So I can kvetch about it dying again next summer. At least that’d be something tangible for me to complain about.