Here I am!

Two days in a row, even. Can you believe it?

Except very little happened today, and I wasn't sure what I could tell you about. But then, I took a shower. And, showering, by necessity has turned into someting intersting:


It is both torture and treat at the same time.


First, a little background about our bathroom. We live in a very old house: the bathroom door is not wide enough for the wheelchair, so I can't get in or out on my own. It's a small little room, so even if it fit through the doorway, there'd be no room for it to actually move. We have a claw foot tub, which, while beautiful, requires climbing in and out of. I cannot climb. I (obviously) can't stand, so I use a showerchair. Showering stopped being a solo effort for me about 10 years ago. And it is a challenge I am not always up for.


And the actual shower itself is like my own special form of kryptonite: with nerves that read even the slightest touch as PAIN, it's not my favorite thing. I can't handle cold water, at all, and my preferred water temperature is somewhere between "boiling hot" and "actual temperature of the sun." This searing heat zaps my brains right out of me (It's the POTS: my blood pressure is about 20/0 by the time I get out of the shower), and I can almost watch my ability to think or move flow right down the drain with the water. After my shower, my mom pours me into bed, where I have my "coma." At least 2 (and sometimes up to 10)hours of lying in bed, not moving, trying to get my body and brain to reboot.

However, the only time my body is semi-pain free is right after a blistering hot shower. If I hold the heat over the sorest muscles for a sufficent time, when I get out, all I can feel is a blissful numb tingling feeling.

Wow, with the poor descriptive word choice.

I wish I could explain it better, but it's really just that: the intense heat leaving my body, the chill in the air interacting with that heat, it's as if my body is suspended right above my normal oh-my-god-shoot-me-now level of pain, even for just those 3-4 minutes.

Of course, those three or four minutes are just a bit shadowed by the fact that I can't move, or connect two thoughts to each other.


But here I am a few hours later: brain working again, fresh and clean, talking to you nice people.

So, that was my day... what sort of intersting things happened in your life today?