Hi Darling Ones,

I lost my shit this morning and now I have guilt. And I’m super weepy on top of that. Today’s not so great.

My mornings have been starting later and later since the relapse. The time change doesn’t help. Neither does staying up past 1 a.m. most nights. I’m lucky if I’m downstairs making breakfast by noon.

Today was no exception. Getting such a late start to my day makes me a little anxious. It makes me feel like a teenage slacker. I have no reason to be downstairs before noon. There isn’t much work to be done. And, well, I’m tired.

So I was finally ready to get the day started. My coffee, yogurt, breakfast sandwich, and water precisely balanced in the basket of my walker. Since I can’t walk and carry things, I use the basket to haul stuff. It’s the medical equivalent of the wicker-basket little girls used to put on the handlebars of their banana-seated bikes.

I turned from the walker to weed out some dead stalks from my green onion garden. It feels like my way of sticking it to the man, re-growing the green onions I buy from the grocery store in a pot of dirt on the counter. Free(ish) onions! Because I can’t stand for more than 90-seconds I have a wheeled stool I use in the kitchen. I was wheeling to the garbage, my back to the walker when I heard the crash.

Mortimer, the little acrobat, had jumped on the walker basket upsetting my delicate balance. My sandwich flew under the Sadness Garden cart, coffee and water rolled under the dining room table, and in his attempt to flee the scene of the crime Mortimer knocked the adorable mushroom plate I won at Rock & Roll Bookclub to the ground, shattering it.

That’s when I lost it. I threw the spoon I had in my hand into the sink and screamed “Fuck” as loud as I could, scaring all three cats.

“I AM SO ANGRY,” I shouted as I began to clean up the mess. “I’m angry at you,” I said to Mortimer who had calmly folded himself into a loaf in the middle of the kitchen floor.

“STOP!” I yelled at Fergus as she tried to lick the remains of my breakfast sandwich. “I’m angry,” I said in a more normal tone of voice as the anger quickly dissipated.

Because they are cats they did not care one fig about my hissy fit. Because I am human I did care about yelling at them for acting like kittens. It’s not their fault.

Losing my shit had little to do with the ruined breakfast or the shattered plate. It was just the very last thing I could take. I exploded for reasons. Good reasons, I think.

Yesterday I had a follow-up appointment with my primary care doctor. My Physical Therapist had messaged her expressing concern about my relapse. My doctor was also concerned and asked if I would come in.

Of course I did because I’m a goody-goody even though I think the concern is misplaced.

While I was there I showed her my new “party trick” where my right arm shakes uncontrollably unless I really focus on it. Then I can get it down to a barely discernible twitch.

“I think you should see a neurologist,” she said.
“Really?” I asked. We had discussed this in a telehealth appointment and at the time we both agreed it was probably unnecessary.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding her head. “I really dug into your records for the last year after our last appointment, and while I feel less worried that you can control the tremor with focus, I want to make sure there’s not something we missed.”

So she’s referring me to a neurologist for further testing. AND that was the second to last thing I could take, and why the breakfast catastrophe broke me. There’s something about seeing a neurologist that feels big and scary, somehow more serious and dire than, you know, a stroke.

Emotionally, I’m a precariously balanced walker basket.

I’ve been handling the relapse pretty well. When I had my physical therapy evaluation last week we discovered I had backslid quite a bit from where I was in September, but I had not slid all the way to where I was at the beginning in July. I even improved on a couple of things.

But still, it’s SO ANNOYING. And you put that on top of the grief of losing the relationship with my best friend and the money woes and what’s going on in the world and being a human, and well, something has to give.

In most ways I’m better off now than I was in March 2023, but damn I could really use a good break.

Thanks for listening,
Jodi

P.S. If you have any spare money you’d like to share with me I’d gratefully take it. I only made $225 last month and that doesn’t even cover my ridiculously cheap mortgage.