Now, I have to start watching 'Army Wives'

Yes, that is a heart monitor in my pocket, but I am still glad to see you

I spent the afternoon at several doctors' offices, getting more questions than answers with my beautiful service dog and less beautiful but awesome service sister. I call my sister less beautiful because of the whole brother-sister thing and because no doctor walked in and said, "She is a beautiful girl" as one did with Claren. But my sister takes better notes and asks better questions than Claren.

I felt dizzy today, real dizzy.

My doctor saw me during lunch and listened to me for 45 minutes. She is running tests on my bodily fluids to see if there is some imbalance causing my dizziness. She looked at my supplements and was OK with them. She laughed off the brain tumor idea. She said my symptoms suggest heart not brain. She lowered my antidepressant, which might makes for a bad tomorrow, because it can lower blood pressure. She also doubted it was an imbalance of something, but thought it was something not bad.

She also got me in to see a cardiologist that day. I told my sister that I love my doctor. The cardiologist gave me a 24-hour heart monitor to check for arrhythmia. He scheduled an echocardiogram for next week to check for cardiomyopathy, which is not unusual in Freidriech's ataxia but would really really piss me off because everyone has said I am unlikely to have the FA heart problems.

The echo will also check for a buildup of fluid around the heart, which is not as bad as it sounds and is easily curable.

If all that is negative, there is a medicine to boost my blood volume we might try.

I do feel better after a long and tiring day, so maybe it is all in my mind. Maybe I'll ask my beautiful dog or my awesome sister.

I want to run

The sun was shining and it looked like a beautiful morning out my doctor's window.

At that point, I knew just what I wanted to do: Run away.

• Away from the dizziness and light-headed feeling I have had since Tuesday and that kept me from a party on a boat last night.
• Away from the goddamned wheelchair.
• Away from the fucking Freidriech's ataxia.
• Away from the heat.
• Away from the stress.

I wanted to run away from my life. Not suicide. The idea is to run to something better, not to nothingness. How great would it be to run to a beach? To dive in the water and feel its cooling power? To turn to the friend who came with you and laugh?

I couldn't run, though. The FA saw to that years ago.

Instead, I stayed and talked to the doctor. Low blood pressure is causing the head problems. I need to start eating more salt. She did not seem too worried about why it happened.

So now I am eating salty foods and starting to feel better. I still want to run, though, but who doesn't?

You make me dizzy, Mr. Matty

When I was in college, some friends decided that if I got drunk everything would balance out. Drunk clumsiness would cancel out ataxia.

I didn't try it then and have never been drunk so I can't say for sure that it doesn't work.

But if the dizziness I have been feeling off and on since I left work is any indication, the drunk experiment would fail. Perhaps you think that someone who is always a little dizzy would not notice. But holy crap is it annoying.

Enough to drive you to drink, but that would make me dizzier or would it. Maybe it would make me invincible like three stooges syndrome.

Can't say the walls won, but ...

I finally got back to rock climbing after a few months off.

I missed it and had a lot of fun back on the walls, but I didn't make it to the top either time. I probably should have done some easier climbs, but I tried two tall walls.

On the first climb, my helper attached herself to my rope to keep near me. It wasn't the best idea. When she lost her hold on the wall, say when my foot slipped off a foothold and smashed onto her hand, she dragged me with her. Not that we fell -- we just were swinging on roped not holding the wall.

Also, near the top there was an outcrop for my helper but not me. I am sure she could have gotten over it but not tethered to me. But with the tether there was no room for us both. I would have had to climb the last 10-15 feet alone.

I considered asking if I could and trying to, but I knew I was struggling. So we called it quits there.

The second wall was another tough one -- the dreaded chimney, with its outward leaning wall and its overhang and its narrow spaces.

I think I started that climb about 9 p.m. and when I called it quits and got down, it was like 9:55. I kept twisting oddly. I think I might try without the shoulder harness next time -- that seemed to be pulling at me. But probably I was just twisting oddly.

My helper on that one did say my legs seemed stronger, and he should know -- several times he let me use his thigh for a foothold. I feel kind of bad about doing that though.

It wore me out. I was sore before I got home.