What's important--and what's not

Being this sick has led to an inevitable reordering of priorities. There was a time when I never would have gone out of the house without make-up; now it's been months since I've worn any. I don't have the stamina to stand in the bathroom to put it on, and I don't have anyplace with a mirror where I could do it sitting down, so it's just become less important to me. (Of course, there were all those years when I didn't wear make-up, as some sort of doctrinaire feminism, but that's a whole other story.) Now I'm glad if my hair is brushed! My hair only looks good if it's freshly washed--I used to wash it daily, when taking a shower was something I simply did automatically every morning, rather than the occasional event, with lots of preparation, that it's become.

It becomes a choice as to where I expend my very limited energy, and if I use it up getting ready, I may never get to the actual event at all. So I have become reconciled to going out looking lousy--overweight, my clothes not fitting properly, no make-up, my hair hanging limply--rather than not going out at all. What's important is the enjoyment I can get out of the things we choose to do, like going to the festival, which was wonderful and worth all the effort and exhaustion.

Yesterday I was tired all day, after a poor night's sleep caused by waking up repeatedly with leg pain (when the pain is really bad, as it was that night, it goes from being located in my hips and knees to a generalized aching of the entire leg). I took morphine several times during the night, and then had a lot of trouble getting back to sleep each time. Doing something about this pain is now high priority. For some reason, the hospice doctor (whom I've never met, but with whom Lauren has been consulting regularly) seems to want to try to control the pain by adding and adjusting medications (more morphine, possibly a switch to the long-acting type, as well as lydoderm patches), whereas I am quite ready to go back to the pain clinic for another radio frequency ablation procedure. I am going to talk more about this with Lauren tomorrow. Pain is so limiting, and it hasn't been a problem until recently.

Marty was out a good part of the day yesterday, so Laurel stayed with me, and Tim came for a visit, since Caren is on vacation this week and she asked him to fill in for her. Tim had called on Tuesday evening after reading in my blog about the lost change purse, to say that he had seen it when he was here on Monday. I was in the living room when he came, and I asked him to go into the bedroom to see if he could find my pill-sorter box, and he told me on the phone on Tuesday that he had found the purse in the bed at the same time, and had placed it on the bedside table in the bedroom. So somehow it got knocked off the table (by me? by a cat? by the cleaning people?) and although the floor has been thoroughly searched, it has not turned up. I have calmed down about it, though, which I guess is the important thing.

Laurel left when Anne came at two to give me acupuncture, and then I rested comfortably until Susan arrived at three thirty. Since Marty was going out to an evening meeting, and since I was so tired, I decided that Susan could get me back to bed and give me an early dinner (Chinese leftovers) before she had to leave at five thirty, and I'd be fine alone since I was probably going to doze off anyway, which is what happened.

Now it's Thursday morning, my knees don't hurt, I got a reasonable amount of sleep, and I'm hoping for a better day. And Thursday is massage day, which is always a treat!