3/25/24

 Monday, March 25, 2024

In bed On the BL at 10 and up at 4 after 2 PS, fairly rested.  38°, high of 49°.  The wind is SE at 15 mph, 12-19/37.  Cloudy, windy, rainy day ahead.  0.65" of rain is expected in the next 24 hours.  Sunrise at 6:44, sunset at 7:10, 12+25.  The high noon altitude will be 49°. 

Pain, etc.  I took 2 8-Hour Tylenol and applied diclofenac at about 9 last night and slept reasonably well, with brown background noise, black screen, on YouTube, helping to mask tinnitus and perhaps subdue 'monkey brain' or 'bait bucket' thoughts.  I tried consciously to avoid overstretching my shoulder muscles and tendons while doing the prescribed physical therapy stretches yesterday and last evening.  Normal waking pains at 4.  The left shoulder pain seems localized in the front, near the acromion.  I took an intentional walk around the house to loosen my limbs and joints, something I should do every morning and indeed throughout the day.  I emptied the dishwasher at 6:45 but had to forego filling it for a while when my lower back tightened up and became painful.

Two 8-Hour Tylenol at 5:30 a.m.    1:30 & 9:30 follow-ups.

Diclofenac at 5:30, focused on the upper front of the shoulder.

I'm grateful for this wonderful house we live in that provides so much space for so many discrete activities.  The sunroom is also Geri's exercise room and reading room.  The  TV room has become another bedroom for me.  The living room is Geri's dedicated puzzle nook and reading room.  The dining room is Geri's office.  In the basement, I have a large open office space and my painting studio, as well as large storage and utility areas.  Plus, the treadmill I hope to start using again, a TV on which to watch YouTube stuff and avoid devastating boredom on that treadmill, and a great old recliner for reading and watching the TV, or snoozing.

I'm losing the physical and mental energy to write.   I suspect I may abandon this journalling project one of these days. I've never been entirely sure why I do it in the first place except perhaps that I have no attractive alternative, certainly not watching television.  Reading is increasingly difficult for me except on a Kindle or on my laptop with its ability to enlarge fonts.  There's certainly enough wretchedly bad news to read about, to think about, and to write about but I haven't much energy.  I am bowled over by how seemingly fast I have gone downhill with these chronic pain problems, with the interstitial cystitis assortment of pains lasting about a year and a half (?) only to be resolved by surgery and replaced by rotator cuff and various arthritis pains, all debilitating and at least semi-crippling.  At least as distressing as the physical pain is the cognitive decline that has accompanied it.  It's very noticeable to me, both in terms of executive function and in terms of increasing short-term memory problems and confusion.  

One year ago today  we were under several inches of snow and I had finished reading Gilead and posted the following:

Finished reading Gilead: "While I am thinking about it - when you are an old man like I am, you might think of writing some sort of account of yourself, as I am doing.  In my experience of it, age has a tendency to make one's sense of oneself harder to maintain, less robust in some way."  John Ames' frequent description of himself as old and tired, the metaphor being "ember," dull and gray but with an internal heat and fire, ready to be refulgent again when the Lord breathes life on it.  I was struck by "one's sense of oneself [being] harder to maintain," how true that seems of old age, the age with little new except daily diminishment, little to look forward to but more diminishment, but filled with so many old memories, 80+ years of memories.  The good ones fade away, the regretful ones linger and haunt.  The good ones are almost all of the goodness of others - mother, sister, Uncle Jim, Aunt Monica, Brother Coogan, Wally Halperin, Johnny Flynn, Troy Major, Father Matthew, so many nurse-nuns - while the regretful ones are of my own failings, ingratitude, cowardice,  selfishness, vanity, pettiness, indifference.  It's curious that Marilynne Robinson named her fictional town "Gilead."  I suppose  she intended her novel to be healing, affirming.  "There is a balm in Gilead / To make the wounded whole / There is a balm in Gilea / .To heal the sin-sick soul. / Sometimes I feel discouraged / And deep I feel the pain / In prayers the holy spirit / Revives my soul again"  For those without the faith of a John Ames or Marilynne Robinson, hope comes harder.

I'm thinking once more of that insight that "one's sense of oneself [being] harder to maintain."  Why am I so self-conscious in one sense and yet so unsure of who and what my 'self' is?  Or is it as the Buddhists or at least the Zenists assert that there is no 'self'?