Man, am I having a difficult winter. December was, truthfully, the worst month I’ve ever experienced, and that’s saying something. This extreme restless legs syndrome makes living hell.
Some people are bed-ridden by illness; I have been bath-ridden, because, if I time it right and get the water temperature right, a bath is the only place where I can be still and read. I can’t overdo it, though. Three baths a day means I run out of dry towels and my estrogen patch falls off.
I’m in a better-off state now than I was last month, but seriously, starting from 7pm until about midnight, I struggle to wrangle my body into a semblance close enough to calm that I might be able to get four hours of sleep. I have tried two types of opioids to thwack me into calm and I’m ready to try a third, but I can’t until after thyroid surgery in a couple of weeks. It’s administered as a patch that’s often prescribed for people recovering from heroine addiction, which sounds like serious shit, and that’s exactly what I need. Serious shit.
Another reason it’s been a difficult winter is, well, all the reasons. News. And my own crap.
Uncertainty
I got off the road in part because I can’t tolerate so much uncertainty in my life, and here I am with every bit of uncertainty there could be for me. Like:
- Don’t know yet if we’ll keep the house. Still waiting on a final estimate from the contractor.
- Don’t know what we’ll do if we decide to sell the house. Stay in Madison? Go back on the road? First things first with the house.
- Don’t know how or when my health will improve. This withdrawal from the dopamine agonist is new territory, and my sleep appointment is in May.
Life Transitions
I just realized, too, that Tracy and I are now both experiencing some of the hardest transitions there are for people in our socio-economic whatever, and we’re dealing with them all at once. Yes, we lived through some of these while we were on the road, but you are too busy while on the road to even notice them, seriously.
- Retirement (boredom)
- New town (loneliness)
- Empty nesting (see above)
- Apartment life
- Menopause
- Major unhappiness about leaving the road
- Our first cold winter in years
- Our first time living together with all of the above
Loneliness and boredom, meet weight gain and depression. Have a side of crippling guilt to go with that order, and then smother it with extreme restlessness.
Surgeryaversary
January 22 will be two years since I received my zombie ACL, and—what are the odds?—the date this year when I will have half of my thyroid out. And I’m actually looking forward to it.
I’m not concerned about the surgery itself, or pain after, or recovery, because as far as I can tell it will all be a piece of cake compared to my ACL. I’m also not particularly looking forward to relief from a ton of symptoms, seeing as how I’m taking meds temporarily for that.
What I am looking forward to is something to focus on that is not the machinations of my brain, or how I manage meds for RLS, or world news right now. And how sad is that that surgery is what I was looking forward to. Until today, when I booked travel plans.
A Vacation!
Since Tracy and I hit the road six years ago, we’ve been very limited in what trips we’ve taken. Seriously! Yes, we could go anywhere we could take the trailer and the dog, and we went hundreds of places. But, we couldn’t fly anywhere because we had no Banjo-sitter, and we couldn’t go where the climate wasn’t great, so nowhere north in the winter or south in the summer. And, importantly, we couldn’t go anywhere in a hurry, since about five hours of towing a day was all we felt safe with, so you can’t really sprint across the country.
Not a big deal, except when it came to visiting family. I did leave Tracy and Banjo and the trailer once in Alaska when I flew to Michigan to visit Finn in the summer. That took a bit of conniving. I didn’t make it to relatives’ funerals, friends’ weddings, any kind of getaway from my regular bed and my regular bed-fellow, except for a few nights at my friend Heather’s house in Virginia, and I got covid on that trip, so not all that worth it.
So, ever since I decided to get off the road in July, I’ve been thinking about visiting my Aunt Esther. She’s my only other close relative, and she’s a super sweet one, too. Just today, I found a few days in February after surgery and between doctors’ appointments, so I booked a flight and an Airbnb within walking distance of her house. Bingo!
If luck is on my side:
- I won’t get sick before surgery and have to postpone it,
- I’ll recover from surgery fine,
- I’ll figure out how to wrangle restlessness long enough for flights (I’m hoping with that patch), and
- I’ll be able to meet up with some old friends while I’m away.
Not that I want to lure good luck or well-deserved fate away from all the suffering people in the world right now, but, ain’t it time I got some good luck?
If I do, then here’s something to look forward to that isn’t surgery.
Wow. I’d say it’s more than past time for your luck to turn.
I’m sitting here with an ice wrap on my bad knee feeling sorry for myself while you’re going through literal physical hell. My SIL suffered from restless leg and it alone almost drove her insane, I can’t imagine all the rest of it on top.
But hey, if your marriage can survive all these changes and stress? It can survive anything.
My fingers and toes are crossed for you.