This is the first post I’m doing with my digital pen, that turns my sloppy handwriting into computer text (very cool, but very time intensive, which makes for infrequent updates.
*Health Update*: As you’ll read in my post below, I had a little fluke setback in the past couple weeks, which took away most of my remaining left hand/arm movement (for the time being). With my left side strength never having comeback in full (on top of diminishing strength over the gust months), my brain team down at UWMC wants to have a look at my brain about a month earlier than expected. Wed. AM, I’ll be getting another MRI and finding out what it shows that afternoon. My hope is that tumor growth will remain nil, and that the garbage shutting down my left side will be shown to be something easily reversible. I’m also praying that God would help me glean as much from all this as I can, and that I’m ready for whatever’s coming next, even if it’s just more frustration. Thanks for your prayers to that effect
I hate being told that I can’t do something; don’t ask where it comes from. Maybe the little brother in me is tired of being told exactly what my choices are.
Unfortunately, this quirk of mine has run face first into the path my life has taken over the past few years. Starting with the MRI appt where I received my initial turner diagnosis, I was told ”You can’t drive home, as you’re now a risk for seizures.” that turned into ‘you can’t go on that carping road trip you’ve been planning all year. And, furthermore, you can’t go hiking any more this year.” After the surgery came “You can t go on with your life yet; the tremor was cancerous.” The next two years echoed with similar warnings about not taking off the helmet I had to wear for several months, not taking any more solo road trips (some of my favorite things in the world)., not being able to enjoy the basic things I used to take for granted (like being able to sit in loud theaters or stadiums without discomfort. and eventually (in the past few months) my not having full use of my left side (my arm, & leg have been getting weaker since late fall). We’ve not quite sure where this is coming from, but it’s beyond inconvenient. Not to mention frustrating.
So it might seem understandable that, after hearing “you can’t do this.‘ You can’t go places, do things you want,’ I might be forgiven for not waiting to hear “can’t” or “Don’t” anymore.
Along came my niece’s 8th birthday party a couple of weeks ago. The party was at the local ice skating rink; now I’ve ice skated before, and was fairly decent at it as I recall, but I can barely recall, since I can’t even remember the last time I would have stepped onto the ice. But that didn’t stop me from insisting that I was just fine to give ice skating a go.
As you can imagine, this was not much support from my family (the other partygoers), they insisted, “You can’t ice skate anymore. It’s not a good idea.” Now, normally, I put a lot of stock in the wisdom & advice of my family, & would not be so bold as to act in direct defiance of the overwhelming advice / urging of them. But, on this occasion, I’d just had enough ‘Can’t.” At some point being told you can’t do things you know you’re otherwise capable of (aside from current circumstances) makes you feel like you absolutely have to do that thing you’re being told is out of your reach. It just gets too frustrating having your options & abilities taken away from you.
Maybe that’s the heart of our hatred of cancer. It robs. It takes freedom, privileges, abilities, choices, time, and ultimately lives. Or at least the ability to live a full life.
So, to wrap up my little story, I quickly learned that my diminished leg strength / balance over the past few years have not prepared me For a go on ice skates. I got about 5 feet out on the ice before I realized that maybe everyone had been onto something. But by then a surge of fellow skaters had rushed in behind me, blocking my smooth return to dry land. It’s about then that I lost my feet, went down, and bounced my head off the boards. Not a tremendously hard hit, but righter the sweet spot. I had what the ER doc (whom I saw at the insistence of the paramedics) called a focal seizure, causing the left side of my body to go limp & have convulsions, I never lost consciousness but the resulting embarrassment from having to be drug off the ice by 4 guys & worried about by a crowd including my little nieces almost made me wish I had been knocked out.
So there we are. Lesson learned. Like it or not, I gust can’t do what I want any more, and others will have to help me reign myself in. Frustrating? More than I could express in writing. Humbling’. Even more But maybe that’s the whole lesson To be learned here; being an adult means you don’t get to live your life just for yourself anymore and have to take others into consideration I don’t like it, but I can’t grow in is through this until I learn things like that.
Here’s where that health update you read earlier fits into the story:
