To my rescue?

Nurse Gertrude visited yesterday, and that ends my participation in the drug study. I am now allowed to smoke tobacco or marijuana.

Instead, I  aim starting baclofen in hopes it stops my legs from jumping and doesn't make me more inclined to fall. (I use tightness to hold my muscles in place when transferring, and baclofen weakend tightness.)

My jumpy legs are really bad these days. I am desperate.

Matty Hughes

Less than a week after telling my head-shrinker I wasn't freaking out about the coronavirus, I was emailing my boss to tell her I need to telework til they get a handle on it.

A few days after that, I emailed my swimming instructor to say I wouldn't be coming for a while.

I don't think I am paranoid about it exactly. Nor do I think I am particularly high risk, even though my heart and lungs are not my most awesome features.

The chief problem is my inability to stay away from other people's germs. I need help, whether it is taking my water bottle out of my bag, filling my water bottle or picking me up after a fall. If I touch a cootie-filled grab bar with my right hand, the cooties spread to my wheelchair controller or any other part of the chair I touch. Then, even if I wash my hands, the cooties are still on my chair. I'd have to carry wipes around and use them liberally, and even then I just don't think it would work. At least at home, they're my cooties.

Teleworking also saves my work neighbors from worrying as I have been known to cough.

I haven't gone total recluse yet, still showering, shaving, doing my nails.

Choke or hurt

My head-shrinker and I were discussing how things in my life appear to be one step up, one step back.

That was her idea. I didn't tell her it is more like one step, 437 steps back.

The latest is my shoulder/neck pain.  It is OK if I keep my head up, but if I do that I choke. I need to tuck my chin to swallow.

Do I choke or hurt?

Suck that, depression

This morning I got on the toilet as I normally do, and instead of transferring off when I finished, debated just sitting on it all day.

I'm not sick or anything. I think this thought, which is not new, is related to three issues.

• First and probably only counting for 5%, I have evacuation issues, which if I stay on the toilet are eliminated.
• Second and maybe 15%, transferring back to my chair is a challenge. Most of my falls come during this transfer.
• But the lion's share is related to depression. Not awful but niggling. Lots of stuff: my disease, the world, the cold, evil, my shoulder ... Cold is a biggie these days.

Instead, I got dressed and took Fame for  a walk in the miserable cold. 

Gray?

My hearing aids were under warranty through sometime in December.

It should not surprise me, then, that they stopped pairing with my phone this month (it does surprise me, but is shouldn't).

Even bigger shocks were in store.

First, the company said the hearing aids would cost me zero out of pocket. Then when I made the appointment, the zero became substantially more. But I need hearing aids.

Then today I went to pick out new hearing aids, and we got to the color. I picked out tan and showed the audiologist.

No, he said, you want something that matches your hair, and he showed me gray or silver.