The cruelest month

It's been a few days since I last checked in... I've spent a lot of it in the sack (or in "a" sack, of some sort). Took a couple of days off of work, may take another one off tomorrow... I hope I can make the drive out to my doctor, where--I hope--I'll get some support, or at least relief.

You know how when you're just starting to catch something, and you have this uncomfortable feeling, and you know that you're getting sick? You know that you're sick, no matter what the symptoms might be?

Well, here's the thing. I don't feel "sick," as such. Completely deflated, barely able to concentrate on anything, I try to read various screens but it doesn't work very well or feel very enjoyable, I cough my lungs out, I'm not sleeping through the night but I'm zoning out a lot by day, I had to bow out of what I hear was a simply wonderful evening with friends because I just couldn't deal with leaving the bed, I nearly fall over every time I get up, I'm emotionally unbelievably fragile--brittle. But, oddly enough, I don't feel "sick." Not "I've got a cold" or "I've got a flu" or the usual kind of "I know I'm sick" sick. Malfunctioning--that, I definitely am.

Been tromping through the darkness, too... trying to process it, not to wallow in it, and doing my best not to avoid or deny it. An interesting, unpleasant road. Been finding a disturbing track record of avoidance/denial, the very thing I'm trying to confront in my handling of the MS experience... as the saying goes, practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent; and trying to de-permanent-ify denial is ... quite a road.

And add to that all the physical I-have-no-idea-what's-up-but-I-ain't-enjoing-it nonsense that has been compounding the neurological nonsense that's a constant source of unpleasantness...

Well, T.S. Eliot, I'm told, said that April was the cruelest month. I dunno if it's April's fault, but... hoo boy, what a ride.