Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Shadow and the time change. Joe. Sue Bradshaw. Dandelion. Safeway. Shrimp Broil. The Mountain Night Sky. Up the hill and faraway to grandpop’s house we go. Artemis in late fall. Only Carrots still growing. Winter crop planting soon. That wobbly neck. Erleada and Orgovyx. Radiation. Jangly. Gabe as Bruce Springsteen. Seo as Spider Punk.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My chair, which supports my neck

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Histapkot.  Contentment. Acceptance.                       I’m comfortable with who I am and with what I have.

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: While Ana cleaned my house, I went to Aspen Perks for an early lunch, fish and chips; after lunch I walked through the Safeway to the pharmacy picking up the drugs for my still long awaited nerve ablations (not yet scheduled), came back out to Ruby, opened the Safeway app and alerted the pickup crew that I was, once again, in parking spot number one and would use the passcode 7528 when they came out, drove home and unloaded the groceries in their brown paper sacks, put them away. Exhausted, wrung out.

 

Here’s what seems to be going on. I think of my ailments as separate entities of different etiologies and not influencing each other. That feeling is not inappropriate. The hip pain is from my torn labrum. The back and leg pain from bulging discs and spinal arthritis. Prostate cancer from runaway rogue cells that birthed in my prostate. The wobbly neck is a late season present from my 1949 illness. See, different etiologies. Separateness, too, seems supported by this:  different medical specialties treat each one.

Yet. Each one draws on the energy reserves of my body. Chronic pain distracts and exhausts. Cancer means my body has to work extra hard to make up for the energy supplies the cancer cells steal from it. But, right now, I think my main point of exhaustion comes, surprisingly, from my wobbly neck.

While at the synagogue Saturday for bagel table and the men’s group, I became aware that sitting in chairs without head support, most chairs at the synagogue and in restaurants, leaves me, at the end of an hour and a half tingling with fatigue. And I’ve done nothing physically but sit in a chair.

By the time I got home on Saturday weariness had overtaken all of me.

Yesterday, as I wrote above, lunch out and walk across Safeway to the pharmacy followed by unloading and putting away my groceries left me in the same depleted state.

Why do I think it’s my wobbly neck that saps the final dregs? I come home, sit in my chair with neck support for an hour or so, and I’m ready to get up and go outside with Shadow, work in Artemis, cook. If, even at home, I’m up without neck support for a long period, say forty-five minutes, the exhaustion returns.

Fatigue in my case may begin with chronic pain and cancer, but it becomes debilitating when my neck does not have support. This places renewed attention on the hunt for some kind of brace. Not an easy one. It also means I have to pay attention to the places I go and how I am in them.