Enjoying the ride

Oh, what a week, and the week ain't even over.

For the first time, I fell down and hit the ground; my left leg just collapsed under me. When that happens at home, I'm near enough a wall or something to halt my fall, but this happened in a store. I controlled my landing surprisingly well, but my head hit the corner of something. No structural damage, only a few drops of blood shed, but it really pranged the muscles connected to my jaw so that opening my mouth is nasty painful. That's been subsiding, it'll be gone in a few days (I think).

The list of what's malfunctioning seems to be growing, both in scope of malfunction and number of "issues," let's call them. Same thing's happening to my seventy-nine-year-old mother, for different reasons, she doesn't like it either. But, I'm taking a new tack in the meet-and-greet of these new "issues." I've had several brushes with mortality, in my day. Big earthquake. Car-related adventures, the most spectacular of which was a seventy-MPH spinout into the center divider of a freeway (Again, humor you can't write; the car started skidding, and the thought that immediately came to me was "Turn in the direction of the skid, they said in Driver's Ed... but they never said what 'the direction of the skid' meant.") And each time, I had exactly the same reaction: "Well. This is interesting." I quite literally enjoyed the ride.

And I think what is called for is precisely that. If I can look the Grim Reaper in the face, even when he's not reaching for me but simply standing there, and say "Hm. So that's what he looks like. What a ride!" why can't I enjoy the ride of the neurological failures? Right foot and leg below the knee goes into dental-grade numbness, from time to time; honestly, it really is interesting, the wild sensations (and non-sensations) you get from it when you try to walk on it. There are other failures that you definitely don't want to hear about, and they're hardly "fun" to deal with, but they certainly make for an interesting ride.

So I can't do what I planned, on day X, because I need to sleep instead. So I can't do what I used to do, with activity Y. So I can't go up a stepstool. Or carry that. Or move that. Or walk or stand there.

And as to "fixing" things? Doing something that makes the malfunctions back away, or stop? At the moment, that's not on the menu, as they say in the restaurant biz. (I'm still seeing all of my caregivers, but their best efforts at the moment aren't erasing these symptoms.) So let's not mourn the loss of something that couldn't be made mine.

Work with what I got, at the moment that I have the energy to work at all, and enjoy the ride.

That's hard enough.

If all I do is enjoy the ride... hey, at least I'm having some fun--and more than I would have if I was concentrating on the failure rather than the fun. And, although this is hardly theraputic, wallowing in passive-aggressive, it is kinda funny...

My best revenge against M.S. is enjoying the having of it. Not enjoying the malfunctions... but enjoying the ride.

Humor like that... I need to write.