61

 

A year has passed already? When did that happen?

There’s no point in being mystified, as it clearly has happened. Better to accept and get on with it. In fact, it’s preferable.

It would be peevish to claim that my sixties have sucked, but really, the past twelve months have been challenging. I reacted to my second dose and subsequent booster of the COVID vaccine, resulting in so much pain that I could barely function on a day to day basis. I managed to keep to my work routine, but anything more—flâneries, writing, socializing, even eating regular meals—was beyond my capacity as I spent my free time sleeping to recover from the fatigue of said work routine. I lost weight, mobility and, to some extent, the will to live. My will to survive remained, else my sixtieth birthday might have been my last, thus I am here to tell you that, to quote Star Trek: the Next Generation, “survival (alone) is insufficient”.

I thank the gods every day for my beloved Ter. Without her, I would have been—and would still be—hooped. She made it her mission to get me through each day, to get me where I needed to be and see me safely home again. She took on all household chores. She pored over countless books and websites in search of solutions to my ongoing inflammation. She encouraged me in whatever I felt able to do, be it a shuffle around the park or a shuffle around the coffee table. In essence, she stepped up as she had done during 2016’s auto immune incident. She is simply the best. I cannot be grateful enough for her love and unlimited support. Why she puts up with me I do not know and no longer care. I’m just glad she does.

I found a physiotherapist to help me rebuild my strength with an eye to resuming my regular flâneries. It was promising to start, then I faltered. My condition is chronic rather than the result of a short-term injury and I was unable to maintain the level of activity he prescribed on a weekly basis. I did well enough to start, but then my energy would be sapped by stress at work or at home, or by what I might have eaten (and why) that caused a flare. We talked a lot about capacity versus activity, how psychology affects the physical, and ways to manage chronic pain that differ from his usual area of practice. In the end, he’s let me build my own routine based on the tools he gave me (load-bearing exercises and yoga/qigong videos on YouTube), but the really cool thing is he’s putting together a low impact program for folks with chronic pain and has asked me to help by giving him feedback after running through the steps with him. We inspired each other in a way neither of us anticipated, which proves to me that the Universe had a definite hand in me finding him.

Same with the chiropractor. My chiro of twenty-plus years retired last Christmas, so I’ve been test-driving potential successors. My first try worked out great for a few months, until she injured herself and I was forced to visit her colleague in the same clinic. I liked him so much that I’m considering switching to him for good. I have a good sense of what works for my body, and wonderful as Dr M is, Dr C has a subtle something extra that just feels better.

Now that COVID is here to stay, work has settled into halftime in town and halftime at home office. The world is a less amiable place than it was even a year ago, but the media doesn’t report good news or optimistic stories so I’m unconvinced that the positive in human nature is outdone by the negative in human nature. Power, money, ego and fear may get all the attention, but the spirit of creative collaboration defies the boundaries of race, religion and nationality.

While I work on overcoming my challenges, the Universe continues to care for me in every conceivable way. Miracles continue to manifest, if not for me directly then for people within my circle to which I am a witness. The world is stupid crazy, yet I am blessed with an inner calm that occasionally gives way to monkey mind but hey, that’s what mortality is all about, Charlie Brown.

Today I turn sixty-one. There’s plenty of time for my sixties to be my best decade yet. It’s up to me.

Happy birthday, Ru. With love,