Memory Almost Full

 

I now take Theracurmin for my bones. It’s a derivative of turmeric that’s lauded as a natural anti-inflammatory and so far, I’m a fan. My pain has reduced to almost nothing and I’ve been able to regain much of the mobility I feared I’d lost. It’s like the magic pill everyone hopes will be prescribed, and while it’s not quite that magical (I still have to avoid known inflammatory foods etc.), it’s the closest I’ve ever come to finding it.

A few weeks after I’d started taking it, Ter saw an ad for it in a magazine. “Hey,” she said, scanning list of the purported benefits, “not only is it an anti-inflammatory, it helps with memory and cognitive function, too!”

Bonus! I thought.

Later that week, I booked a date with my office tea buddy for my day in town. We put it in stone via meeting invites so the time is blocked in our calendars. I had another meeting scheduled ahead of our appointed time, so I sent her an instant message to say I was stuck in a call and would IM her when I was done. She sent back a thumbs up, and my meeting proceeded as planned.

It finished a few minutes later than scheduled. I hung up the phone and glanced at Treena’s status, which is indicated by the colour of a dot next to her name in the Skype for Business window. If it’s green, she’s available. If it’s red, it means she’s busy, in a call, or in a meeting. Hover your cursor over the dot and the system tells you which of the three applies.

Well, Treena’s dot was red. In a meeting. Huh. Must have come up suddenly (it does, sometimes).

I sent her an IM: “Zap me when you’re ready to go.”

She wrote back immediately: “I’m heading for the stairs!”

Only then did I realize her dot was red because she was in a meeting—with me!

Apparently, the Theracurmin has yet to kick in on my memory and cognitive function ...

Food Porn XIII

"Chovocado Pudding"

The pursuit of drug-free pain management continues. I stopped taking Aleve every other night after a scary bout of what might have been food poisoning but also checked every box for overuse of non-prescription meds. I don’t even take it occasionally, anymore. Once bitten, you know.

But once bitten, what was the alternative to my little blue pill? Once again, I looked to my diet. COVID restrictions have helped in one area: “take out” means more than a bacon cheeseburger for pickup. Now it means “prepare to be taken out for a day after eating take out”. It’s amazing how quickly my body responds to inflammatory foods, and tasty as that burger may be, it’s also loaded with salt, fat, dairy, and whatever the steer was fed before it became a beef patty. I’m basically shrink-wrapped for twenty-four hours after consuming one.

I also live with a food narc. Ter is a strong believer in food as medicine; she has a ton of books on the subject and has made it her personal mission to feed me all the right stuff. But she can’t control what I choose to consume on my own watch.

So on the morning when I announced I was giving up sugar, she almost wept with relief. The preceding few weeks had been fraught with pain, frustration, and desperation as my symptoms worsened and I stubbornly continued to ignore my inner voice. In fact, I had almost defiantly begun hoarding treats: muffins, cookies, granola bars, candy, chocolate – if sugar was the primary ingredient, I bought it. Finally, after a particularly rough weekend, I surrendered. Consulting one of Ter’s anti-inflammatory books, I determined that honey and maple syrup could stay on the list, but everything else had to go. No sugar? No problem.

And so to the “food porn” part of this post. I would never in a million years have imagined that a phenomenal chocolate pudding could result from five ingredients that exclude milk, cream, melted chocolate, sugar, or any of the other items on my verboten foods list. But it can, and it does:

One ripe avocado

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

2.5 to 3 tablespoons maple syrup

Pinch of salt

¼ to 1/3 cup almond or coconut milk (your preference)

Put everything into a food processor and blitz until smooth and creamy. (Note: the amount of almond milk depends on the size of the avocado and how creamy you like your pud.) Refrigerate for a couple of hours – it’s really good cold – and enjoy within a few days. Word is that it spoils fairly quickly, but mine has never lasted that long.

I dare yours to do the same.

One’s Own Path

 

I am the protagonist in my own story. I am also a sister, neighbour, friend, colleague, aunt, and life partner. I play “random stranger” in countless other stories, too. Sometimes I forget and try to solve another person’s problem, but ultimately, and as difficult as it is when I would take someone else’s burden on myself, I can’t walk a path set for someone else. I can only walk alongside.

The path analogy is certainly not new, but it became more clear to me during a flânerie some weeks ago. It was a gorgeous sunny day in the urban forest. The light was gloriously dappled a dozen shades of green. I was surrounded by towering firs and abundant foliage, yet I plainly heard other people’s voices all around me. Strangely (or maybe not, to those who know me), I thought of those who have gone before, the unseen souls whom I have loved and who yet linger to help me navigate my way through this weighty, challenging, fleeting and paradoxically interminable third dimensional existence. I felt their combined presence beside me on the spongy cedar path, but when I glanced around, I was alone.

I didn’t feel alone, though. That was comforting ... to a point. I realized facing front that even if I can’t see them, they stay a step or two behind because the path before me is mine. My hand will not be held and the obstacles removed before I encounter them. I have to test the footing and trip over the roots and choose which way to go when I reach a fork in the trail. The best they can do—the best any of us can do—is lend support and encouragement from the sidelines.

It’s a hard lesson. I can’t imagine what a parent feels like when their child falls ill. My mother blamed herself when my arthritis was diagnosed; she thought God was punishing her through me. I distinctly remember telling her this was not so, that my bones were my challenge. She felt the ripple effect, as did the entire family to varying degrees, but in the end all she could do was help me while I tackled the problem.

So it is with life. Each of us has a map to follow, sometimes with company, sometimes not. People come and go according to their own maps, and when all is said and done, a magical story will have been told.

Crap O’Clock

I am slumped in my comfy chair, still in my jammies with a hot Magic Bag softening my stiff neck and shoulders. A bleary-eyed Ter is nursing the day’s first cup of tea from her corner of the loveseat. Neither of us has the energy for small talk. A mournful wail suddenly wafts up from the lawn beneath our window, wending its way into our living room—it’s the three-year-old downstairs, voicing his displeasure at being dressed and out the door to daycare before seven a.m. on a weekday.

“Suck it up, junior,” I say, bluntly. “Life is hard so you’d better get used to it.”

Cut me some slack, okay? This is the same kid who wakes me from a sound sleep at this same ungodly hour on a Sunday by galloping gaily up and down the hall beneath our suite. Instead of sympathizing, I take a perverse pleasure in him being hauled out the door against his will two days a week when I have to get up and go to work for five. He thinks he’s hard done by now? Wait until he starts school, heh heh.

Yup, it’s a hard life all right. I am not nor ever have been a morning person. I have learned to appreciate the beauty of a sunrise over the ocean or the tranquil solitude of a pre-breakfast flânerie, but overall, I’d rather stay up late than get up early. And I can sympathize with Junior Jinx (as Ter calls him) to some degree: I became “anti-morning” when I started school myself. It’s not that I disliked school (much). I’m generally quite happy when I get to the office, too. It’s the getting up at crap o’clock to go somewhere I’d rather not go that well and truly bites.

I don’t know how my mother did it. She was always the first one up, summer or winter, rain or shine, and breakfast was usually on the hob before she knocked on my door with a cheery, “Wakey, wakey!” or—after my bones kicked in—an even brighter, “Pill time!” Those were bleak mornings for sure. I can’t imagine she liked them any better than I did, but I never saw it.

During a recent work tea with Treena, she reminisced fondly about the idyllic days of childhood. “Do you remember waking up every day, full of excitement and eager to see what adventure awaited?” she asked, wistfully.

I just stared at her, wondering what that must have been like. It seems every morning of my life is met with the question of whether I can do it. Whether I can get up and get going. It was particularly grim when I was younger, but I’ve hated being woken up forever. Sure, I can wake up happy on a weekend, but who doesn’t? It’s a weekend, for Pete’s sake!

Which reminds me: I have to reset the alarm before I go to bed tonight.

Crap.

Wobbly Knees and Wonky Fingers

Now that summer has finally come out of the closet, so have the summer clothes. With those clothes come the perennial questions like: “How does a busty woman hide her bra straps under a sleeveless dress?” or “When do shorts become too-shorts?”

I practice being non-judgmental at the bus stop, but one must wonder what the plaid shorts/tropical print shirt combo was thinking, and I genuinely lament the days of the plain ponytail during the ongoing parade of modern-day “manbuns”. Mostly, though, I admire the sleek young women in flippy dresses and wispy sandals, their bare legs impossibly tanned. When in my 20s, despite the arthritis, my legs were long and straight, and looked pretty darned good in a short skirt. Nowadays, I have knobbly Grinch knees that make it comically ill-advised even to wear leggings, let alone dare a raised hem.

Fortunately, mid-calf still works on me, even if my ankles are a bit thicker and less flexible than they were 30 years ago.

Make no mistake—I don’t envy the gazelles in Gap garb; I had my time in miniskirts and heels. And I’ve grown fond of my crooked knees. After all, they’ve got a ton of mileage on them. My whole body is like that, actually: mid-century modern that’s held up pretty well, all things considered.

For someone who has spent decades at war with her compostable container, this is an impressively mature attitude. I used to fear the ravages of age, blithely unaware that those ravages were happening well in advance of my dotage via the aforementioned arthritis. Perhaps I sensed my golden years might be worse as a result; though I naively imagined that when the RA burned out, my bones would be magically restored to mint condition, I was purely bitter that no one thought to warn me I’d later have to deal with the damage done in my teens. Then there was my well-meaning but misguided notion that all the pre-emptive therapies I could foist upon myself would pre-empt more pain. So much for that.

I’ve always said that I don’t care what it looks like so long as it works, and while I may have been deceiving myself in my youth, this has become my truth in middle age. My recent quest to heal—or at least subdue—the angst of last winter has led me to a more compassionate view of my physical self. Now I can regard my wonky knees and gnarled knuckles with affection. My body has been to war and come out alive. Her swollen joints are a testament to survival, to a challenge met and ultimately defeated. Every day, she gets me from point A to B and beyond, sometimes with a side order of arg and sometimes nary a whimper, but the point is, she gets me where I want to go and will, I hope, continue doing so for as long as she has breath.

Gone are the days of mid-thigh skirts and silly shoes, but that’s okay. I own my scars. I’ve earned them.

On Da Mend

I’ve been wondering why my arthritis chose this winter to reignite. I may not understand completely why it’s back until it’s gone again (one always hopes, right?), but I have some ideas. This life is about learning, and as far as my bones go, I think I failed grade three the first time.

The first time around, I declared war. I fought to be as normal as everyone else in my world. I didn’t always make it, of course. I had a ton of sick days during those years. I was deeply, truly angry when it beat me, and I used that fury to redouble my efforts, sometimes successfully and sometimes not so much. There were no trippy hippy platitudes for teenaged Ru, that’s for sure. I was locked in mortal combat with a monster and one of us was gonna die.

When it finally burned out, my relief was overwhelming. I had won. I was alive and my nemesis wasn’t.

I was also wrong. Oh, I was most certainly alive, but the bones—and my terror of their return—have haunted me to this day. The trouble with your worst fear is that it can manifest in ideal conditions. I have no idea what those conditions are, but something went haywire last fall.

Welcome back to grade three, Ru.

I’m a quicker study these days, though. This relapse happened for a reason. I hope it’s a short term stint, but this time I’m doing my homework between meltdowns. (I still have them, those opaque moments when the fear of indefinite hurting immobilizes me.) Anyway, here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Living with chronic pain is not a competition. It’s a process. If I didn’t know it before—which I apparently didn’t—I know it now. Rather than a battle for supremacy between me and my compostable container, it’s a cooperative effort based on mutual respect. I give it what it needs to feel better, be it ice, rest, or the occasional Aleve, and it stops hurting so much. Who knew?

Some days are easier than others. As my Scottish mum would say, you’ll be “up one day and doon the next.” Accept this and move on. Down days are frustrating, and sometimes you’ll weep anguished tears. That’s okay. Tears are not a sign of weakness. Tomorrow will be different. Sure, it might be worse ... but it might also be better.

Stay in the moment. Some of them (many of them) will hurt like the dickens, but not every one of them. Occasions do occur when the pain is overshadowed. Laughing with a friend. A hot cup of tea. Cuddling a teddy bear. Sun breaking through cloud. Watching a favourite movie. Even wrangling with a math problem can provide a welcome distraction. Cherish those moments by embracing, welcoming, savouring and otherwise being grateful for them. (There is always space for gratitude.)

Do not look too far ahead. Contemplating a future of non-stop coping will make you want to cut your throat. This saps strength better applied either to the present moment, if necessary, or spared for a moment when you really need it.

Rest and rejuvenate. Fighting pain while operating in day to day life takes more energy for you than it does for your healthy friend/neighbour/co-worker. I resisted this notion in my teens, when all I wanted was to be as normal as my buddies, but as a middle-aged adult, if I have to, I nap on a weekend afternoon. Sometimes I can’t keep my eyes open; at other times, I doze while listening to my silly jazz station. It’s nice for most of us to lie still once in a while. For you, it’s imperative!

Admit when you’re not up to par. It takes courage to say you’re unwell. I wish it didn’t. As with tears, pain is not a sign of weakness. It’s frigging pain. When you’re in it, it’s okay to say so (just try to maintain your dignity while doing it). At my worst last November, I discovered how much my co-workers care for me when they rallied to make my life easier during a particularly trying phase at the office. My honesty gave them a chance to be as kind and generous with me as they claim I am with them. Win-win!

Wash dishes by hand, in purely hot water (no cold), and wearing rubber gloves. Aching finger joints love the heat and the gloves ensure you don’t strain them further by gripping too hard on wet stoneware.

Remind yourself that, though pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. You may not have a choice about when it hurts, but you can certainly decide how to handle it when it does.

Finally, you may be alone with the pain, but you are not truly alone. Each of us is loved somewhere, by someone. You are no exception. It may be hard to remember this when you’re living your day one breath at a time. That doesn’t make it a lie. Reach out. Someone will answer.

With love,

The Sunday Post

How’s 2017 treating you so far? I’m still dealing with a relapse of my arthritis, but every day and in every way, I’m getting better and better. My attention has been diverted from pretty much everything except surviving, though— and my writing has suffered as a result.

Imagine my dismay on reviewing last year’s creative files and noting that nothing in my “finished” folder was dated 2016! I wrote all right, but everything I worked on remains unfinished. My bones can only be responsible for the latter part of the year. What the heck happened in the first three quarters to prevent me from completing a single project?

There’s no point in rehashing time already lost. As Ragnar Lothbrok would say, “Don’t look behind you; that’s not where you are going.”

Going forward, however, I’ve given up the idea of writing on weekday evenings. It just doesn’t happen. That leaves a precious few hours over a “sometimes two, sometimes three” day weekend in which to slough off the workaday energy and get back in touch with my Muse. Sometimes she cooperates, sometimes not. Genius cannot be predicted.

All I can do is make a writing plan for the future. I can commit to this much:

First priority: whatever project I am working on (currently the tale of Caius and Aurelia, which continues to beguile).

Second priority: Comfortable Rebellion. Ter has suggested that I limit myself to one post per week. Keeping up with more than that has proven a challenge for both me, the writer, and her, the reader. (Okay, one of my readers, but she has a point when she says she gets boggled when she does check in and finds half a dozen pieces awaiting her equally precious downtime.) so we came up with the idea of “The Sunday Post”, a commitment I can keep—I think—by scheduling my writing hours accordingly.

Third priority: writing exercises. I’m not done with “Diva”, and I’ve collected a few photographs that inspired me to ask the question, “What, who, where, when and why?” (or is that five questions?) It’s encouraging to feel that spark of curiosity again, and my fourth priority falls in line with the third:

Make time for the Muse on a workday. I may not manage a full blown “artist date”, but surely I  can devote one lunchbreak per week to tea and a half-hour of scribbling. Whether a two-bite piece of fiction or next Sunday’s post emerges in that time makes no difference; I just want to reconnect with my imagination, to gain a little momentum for the weekend, and to remind myself of what’s really real ... ’cause a lot in my life of late isn’t.

With love,

The Next Two Weeks

This is my life for the next two weeks. With breaks for the new Star Wars film and hosting a visit with my wee and boy sisters on New Year’s Eve, the bulk of my remaining fortnight’s vacation will be spent writing. Yup, a typewriter and a coffee cup (actually a computer and a tea tumbler) are my constant companions as I devote myself to reconnecting with the Muse.

My primary project is the story of Caius and Aurelia. I won’t get it finished—there’s too much to tell—but now that I feel more like myself again, I’m eager to resume the writing of it. While I was doing the dishes the other night, the opening lines of Aurelia’s POV drifted in on the winter wind, soon followed by a third character stepping up to tell his version of the tale. I was so excited I forgot about the dishes and stood with my hands in the hot water, watching the pictures in my mind’s eye. With that much meat on the bone, I’ll be feasting well into 2017!

Reconnecting means more than with the Muse, however. I lost some serious touch with my daily practice after accidentally igniting an auto-immune reaction to a homeopathic flu preparation in November. A natural alternative to an annual flu shot, which I have never had, I decided to get back with the program after some years of going without—and I wish I had gone without it this year, too. Within 48 hours of the first dose, joints were flaring all over the place; and while there is no definitive proof that the medicine was the culprit, the timing is too suspicious to discount it. Over the five week course, my arthritis progressively worsened, started to recover, then worsened again. Three health practitioners had three different theories. None of the treatments made it better. One or two made it worse. I decided to finish the flu program rather than quit halfway through—it may or may not have been a good idea, but four weeks after my final dose and my body appears to be recalibrating. Oh, my joints still hurt like tiny star flares, but the frequency, location and intensity are diminishing and, as I say, I am beginning to look outward with more interest in things than I was through the past couple of months.

During those interminable weeks, it was all I could do to get out of bed, get to work and hang on until fatigue sent me to a premature bedtime. Christmas only happened with the help of tea fairy Treena and my angels—thanks to them, I was able to pull off the coup of Christmas prezzies for my beloved Ter, who was my stalwart rock the whole time—but anything else requiring energy or focus fell by the wayside. Weekly yoga sessions, daily meditations, attention to detail at the office (I’m sure my mistakes will show up later in January), and writing anything other than my name were sacrificed in the name of survival.

Though I did finish my annual reading of The Night Circus. And the Christmas cards got done. Priorities, you know.

So, my fiendish plan for the rest of my vacation also includes reconnecting with Ru. Gradually, gently, I mean to reinstate my twice weekly yoga sessions and practice more frequent meditations. Ter has wryly warned against “over meditating”—she has as many gurus as I have doctors, and in helping to make her point with me, she realized that she has a similar proclivity to spiritual maintenance as I have to physical. And it’s true: too much of a good thing can be as harmful as too much of a bad one. The pendulum on maintenance (physical for me, spiritual for her) swung a bit too far and messed us up in 2016. Between us, we intend on simplifying our practices as we move into the new year, aiming for balance in all things.

With love,

Aches and Pains

Well, crap. When they told me my arthritis would burn out in eight or ten years, they forgot to mention that I’d have to deal with repercussions. Maybe I should have seen it coming, but I totally missed that the damage done to my joints as a teen would come back to bite me in middle age.

Recently, and by that I mean as adults, my mum and wee sister have both been diagnosed with RA, and each of them has said to me that they don’t know how I lived with it all those years ago.

Truth is, neither do I.

Credit the strength and energy of youth ... and a poor memory for hard times. I did it because I had to, but it must have been tough. There were long stretches when I couldn’t move worth a darn; I do recall being camped on the couch with a book and blanket while Dad and my sibs trooped off to work and school. I missed a lot of school that first year, and in subsequent years, too.

I’m thinking on it now because the past few weeks have been particularly annoying. It’s not just my hinges or ball-and-sockets, either. My tendonitis is back with a vengeance (though I imagine curtailing my colouring might help alleviate the situation), and I’ve been to a bunch of appointments while trying to solve the mystery of my right knee. It’s fine when I’m not moving around and it’s fine when I’m standing still, but try to walk on it and it bites back. I’m not complaining—okay, maybe I am—but I am pondering the precondition and why it’s acting up right now.

The last time I was racked up like this was in 2011/12, when I was so stressed about the home situation that my back kept going out. And, yes, I am somewhat stressed at present—though this time, home is not the arena. There’s a lot going on at work, some good, some not so much, and all happening at the same time. For me, “change management” often means “pain management” and once my mental angst is done, my physical angst should follow suit.

I had a good talk with my executive director last week. I was razzing him about losing his phone and his keys and his building access card, suggesting that an idiot string might be in order, when he looked at me and wondered aloud what the heck was going on. He’s a young man; he shouldn’t be so scattered. I shrugged and said, “It’s evidence of too many daggers in the air.”

I may just have answered my own question. These days, coping skills are stretched to their absolute limits; life is not supposed to be an extreme sport, yet it’s certainly acting like one. We have so much coming at us so fast that we can’t possibly handle everything at once—and yet we try. We fear that failing will mark us as failures, but why does it have to be our fault? Humans are not designed to multi-task. We’re meant to do one thing at a time, but with so many knives in the air, how many of us are doing anything to the best of our innate ability?

No wonder my knees are acting up.

Oceanic

I have lived near the ocean for most of my life. It’s a bit like living in Paris: drive past the Eiffel Tower every day and, eventually, you just don’t see it anymore. I’m no sun worshipper, either. I have rarely spent more than a couple of hours at a time on the beach, and even then my beach time was accumulated in Europe a gazillion years ago. (The tan lines on my back took two years to fade.) It’s been enough for me to know it’s there when I want it—hop in the car and twenty minutes in any direction brings you to a patch of the coast, be it sandy, rocky, sheltered or open horizon.

On a trip to Edmonton in 1992, Ter and I visited the museum. The big draw at the time was a cetacean exhibit featuring whales and other “everyday” west coast critters—otters, herons, indigenous fish, etc. A horde of curious prairie dwellers had gathered, rightfully ooh-ing and ah-ing, around the life-sized model of an orca that, quite frankly, I barely noticed. I think I glanced at it, thought, oh, yeah—orca, then said to Ter, “Where are the dinosaurs?”

That was my first hint of how blessed I am to live beside wild water.

Only lately have I realized how therapeutic the ocean has been in my life. Almost inherently, I am drawn to it when distressed or frazzled. When my bones were new and thrice-weekly physiotherapy sessions were located in the Cook Street village, my mother often drove the long way home, cruising along Dallas Road in the big blue Mercury so I could look out at the water. My favourite ocean was deep blue with scattered whitecaps. I was so fixed on watching the waves that I forgot, for a moment, how much my joints hurt.

Over the years, my colour preference has shifted like the ocean itself, from deep blue with whitecaps to grey-green with whitecaps, but these days it varies. The one constant is whitecaps. Better yet, give me surf. Now that I live across the street from the very stretch of Dallas that Mum drove in the old days, I can lie in bed at night and hear the ocean boom as it hits the shore. I get up early on weekends and visit the beach, watching the birds and the waves and losing track of time. On work days, I deliberately choose a walking route from the limo stop that takes me home along the cliffs, just because I can. And the other night, after a particularly weird-energy day, Ter and I wandered across the street to “the finger” and watched the tide crash against the beach. Unsettled and weepy when we started, a half-hour later, I was cracking up as she danced along the breakwater. No drugs, no booze. Just wind and playful water, and we were healed.

Never underestimate the power of the ocean. Sure, it can take out entire villages in a tempest, but in a gentler mood, it can lull a babe to sleep and ease the edgiest adult. When I spend time beside it, be it on a workday evening or a Sunday morning, I always come away recalibrated.

Waxing Rhapsodic

On the subject of bones, I’ve recently been amused to hear of a spa treatment for softening one’s skin: the paraffin wax bath.

I’ve never been to a spa, but for years I had three wax baths a week—in physio at CARS. Before every session, I’d loosen up my finger joints by dipping my hands in a metal tub of warm wax (seven times, count to ten between dips). The therapist would then slip a plastic bag over each hand and wrap it in a towel, whereupon I’d sit for 20 minutes while the heat did its thing.

The wax smelled of the wintergreen oil they added to keep it from sticking to your skin. After about 10 minutes, the wax would cool and I’d start my ritual of trying to pull my fingers free while keeping the wax gloves intact. The cold wax was clammy and, I think, similar to what a baby must feel sitting in a wet nappy after the first warmth wears off. The wax gloves never survived; even if I’d been able to preserve the mold, once they were removed, the wax was either discarded or tossed back into the hopper to melt again.

My fingertips were always shriveled and to this day I cannot abide oil on my hands, but 40 years later, my skin is still über-soft—to the wrists, anyway.

Ocean Therapy

Looking at the ocean through my living room window, I remain amazed at my good fortune to have landed in this plum spot. People come from all over to walk/drive along the water and here I am right across from it.

For me, Dallas Road has long been synonymous with the moments “in between”, particularly when my arthritis was new and the then-CARS (Canadian Arthritis and Rheumatism Society) was housed in the Cook Street village. Three times a week, my mother would pick me up from school and take me to physio. After my treatment, I’d sometimes ask if we could drive home along Dallas Road. It was the longer route, but Mum often obliged.

To this day (if I’m not driving), I stare out the car window and remember those drives—moments of limbo when I didn’t think or worry or fear. I just watched for whitecaps on the waves.

I still do that. Now I can do it on my sofa with a cup of tea and silly jazz playing, but I acutely remember riding in the big blue Merc, being more intent on the colour of the sea than the state of my bones and, in some way, being grateful for that moment.

How precious those moments were.

And are.

Suffering for Art

Unless you count emails at work, my plan to write daily isn’t going very well. You might count the goings on in my imagination, I suppose, as there’s always something brewing in there. I am more productive if I get the scene/story ordered in my head before I tackle the computer. Going in cold rarely achieves ignition.

I wonder why I do it at all.

At the beginning of January, Erin Morgenstern posted a piece on her blog that struck a chord. She intends to write her follow up to The Night Circus in 2014, but expressed some doubt about how to accomplish it. She’s much happier with life now than she was then, so liking the world outside her head is interfering with the world inside her head. She finally confessed that she started writing to escape a sadness that no longer exists. At the beginning, she wrote to escape.

So did I.

My arthritis was diagnosed shortly after I discovered the joy of creating my own stories. I loved to read, as did (does) my whole family, but for me, writing took that pleasure to another, all-consuming level. After delivering the good news to my mother and me, the doctor added the bonus info that I’d have to cut back on the writing, as the physics of it were likely to cause more problems than the disease alone.

That very night, I started writing a new story. I recall nothing of it except that it was as much an act of defiance as of creativity. I had dabbled with words since age ten. At thirteen, I flung my arms around the practice and held on for dear life. From then on, writing was my escape, my sanctuary from a world where the struggle against pain reigned supreme. For years, arthritis was my real life and writing was how I coped with it. I actually did let up in my twenties, when the worst seemed over and my life got happier. I still use it as a coping mechanism, but overall, my inner world is darker and scarier than my outer one.

I understand what EM is saying. Great art, be it literature, music or painting, is often born of the artist’s suffering and subsequent urge to escape some form of pain—a broken heart, a broken child, a broken faith. Time and again, I’ve heard poets and musicians say their best work was done in their darkest moments. Happily, it’s not set in stone that beauty must come from pain. After all these years, writing is my habit as much as my escape. At times, I don’t even think about it; I just do it. Whether it began as a hidden part of me or it arrived later to save me from my angst, it’s very much a part of me now. If I had to stop, I’d as soon stop breathing.

EM says she must learn to write while she’s happy. She’s so gifted that I’m sure she’ll succeed. As for me … I’ll leave the suffering to my characters. I’m fine without it.

Mrs Bones

Another Hot Red Cantaloupe

No walk for me today – my right knee blew up like a red cantaloupe overnight (again), and while I’ve managed to get it to bear weight, it fights me on bending so better not to attempt the stairs without someone home to call 911 if it buckles. It’s not an excuse to avoid walking, either; I’m miffed about it because I really enjoy my solitary sojourns on my mornings off.

No matter. I have appeased my OCD regarding dust on the dark wood furniture and am ready to hit the writing computer when I’m done here. In fact, horror of horrors, I got an idea for untangling the knot I left in the novel at the same time I got a nibble for my next scene with Cristal. This means a little internal duelling to decide which thread gets my attention. It’ll be a good writing day.

I got my marathon Newsroom viewing done yesterday, when my right knee blew up the first time and kept me off work as well as off my feet. Two days running, it’s flared at 4:00 in the morning and I can’t figure out why. The usual suspects are notably absent from my diet, so it must be, er, um, hormones. These wonderful shifts in the female cycle can cause arthritic flares. I swear, whoever said it was great to be a girl had to be a guy.

Not only have I been dealing with hormones since I was thirteen, I’ve been dealing with arthritis since then as well. My younger older brother, The Handsome One, tagged me with the nickname “Mrs. Bones” when I was a teenager and still calls me by it thirty-some years later. It’s nice to be special that way. I have a few nicknames, but this one is my sentimental favourite.

I don’t know how my illness affected the rest of my family. I do know that I wasn’t the only one who had to cope with it. My focus was exclusively narrowed on getting through every day, sometimes moment by moment, so either I didn’t notice how everyone else reacted or they did such a good job of hiding it that I wouldn’t have seen it if I had been looking. We’re a pretty stoic bunch despite the powerful emotion roiling beneath our collective skin. I don’t remember talking about it with any of them. I tried not to talk about it at all. I just … got through it. My mother believed that she had done something to make God mad and He was taking it out on me; I hope she’s let that go because I never ever believed that. My bones were my challenge, but being aware of how much Mum suffered for my pain, I did all I could to be as normal as my healthier siblings – thrice-weekly physio and ongoing medical appointments notwithstanding. Mum was with me every step of the way, for which I am eternally grateful, but I also know the rest of the family, my wee sister especially, felt the loss of her attention.

Ironically, both my mother and my wee sister have been diagnosed with the same cursed thing during the last decade, and my father is starting to feel the effects of “everyone’s bones” – the arthritis we all get as wear and tear builds on ageing joints. Each of them has said to me at some point in the past few years, “I don’t know how you did it.”

You know what? Neither do I. I sat with a bag of ice on my knee this morning and stupidly said to Ter, “I think my walk is toast today.” She gave me the look that warned I’d be toast if I tried to push it – my parents once worried how I would manage when I left the nest. With Ter on board, they truly have no need to be concerned. I’m more afraid of her than I ever was of them!

Annoyingly painful as these incidents are, they serve as a good reminder of where I came from and what I was able to overcome with the support of my whole family. Even if all my brother could do to help me feel better was to give me a nickname, he did it. And it helped.