I'm supposed to be resting this week, to see if it helped anything. It kind of seems to be. It's helping the pain in my back. I am getting plenty of sleep thanks to the medication Dr. DogLover prescribed for me. It's not helping the trembling any, but at least, at night I'm sleeping through it. I suppose I'm catching up on lost sleep. I forgot to mention that when Dr. DogLover first met me he asked me to turn my head so he could more closely see the bruise under my left eye....but it was was just my normal dark circles - I hadn't been wearing any makeup. So I guess I do need to rest.....

But I seem to be turning into a mastiff - I can't get through a long day of doing nothing without taking a nap! I was hoping that, by now I'd have a lot more energy. Instead I've just become much more aware of what 1940's movies are on Turner Classic Movies. Further proof that my brain has turned to jello: I'm sitting here watching Cops. No wonder police officers have such a bad attitude: it's not like they see the best of human behavior....and I guess after awhile you'd start to think everybody is the sort of person who just goes nuts and starts stabbing people outside a methadone clinic. Or whatever. It's hard to tell. It just came on.

Help.

Okay, it's not like I don't have any goals. I'm teaching K-Bird to roll over and to say "Super Bird!". Oh Lord. I've been off work for less than a week and this is starting to count as a "goal"

Double Help.

She IS making progress on the roll over thing, though. Maybe I can hire her out a stunt bird.

It's starting to dawn on me that I'm probably going to have to do something else besides continue to drive to Rockville every day. (Oh my God! This man just said he met his wife on a domestic violence call - she was the other deputy responding. It was "love at first sight!" How romantic!!) Actually, that was the only clear thing that I got out of the meeting with the neurologist. He said I needed to come up with a plan that would involve me not driving for an hour and a half one way each day. He said that even if the only problem I had was the nerve damage in my left leg such a commute is actively making it worse.

Of course, it shouldn't have taken a meeting with a neurologist to tell me that. Again, you'd think I'd pay attention to the fact that both of my feet are numb when I get out of the car. But I've been so committed to the bulldog plan "keep going no matter what" that I just take my shoes off, rub some feeling back into them, put my shoes back on and stomp my feet on the pavement to bring them back to life.

I wish I'd had this meeting before we bought the house here and committed ourselves to the Monster Mortgage payment. Then the plan would have been easy: move closer to work.

As it is, the circumstances are not easy for me. I like to make plans. I'm big on having a plan, a backup plan, plan B - the plan you use when the most likely thing does not happen, but something else does - auxiliary plans, and plans I hope I never have to use. (Like my plan for what to say if I ever find The Hub in bed with another woman. Not that I expect that to happen. I don't believe it would ever happen. But the point is, if it ever DID happen, I wouldn't get caught flat footed, I'd have a plan)

This has been a whole week with no plan. Or, at least, a very limited kind of plan. The plan has been to rest up and have the tests done. The backup plan was to rest up and get as many of the tests done as I could. I can't make any further plans until I have more information, such as What The Hell is Wrong With Me? I'd even settle for an educated guess as to what is wrong with me. Come to think of it, that's all I'm really going to get anyway.

But the thing is, especially with neurological symptoms, you can't even make a plan based on the most likely outcome. I could have anything from a really mild sleep disorder, a pinched nerve and a form of whiplash that could be overcome by physical therapy. Or I could be circling the drain with a brain or spinal cord tumor. Believe me when I tell you that, at this point, I don't really CARE what it is as long as I KNOW what it is (or know to the best of any body's knowledge and belief) It's just that my plans are going to be a lot different if I need to go back to the chiropractor and get some PT than they are if I have to polish off my will and make sure somebody knows which version of Solisbury Hill to play at my memorial service. I don't know what my plans would be in that case, but I can tell you this much: underwriting life insurance would fall right off my list of things to do.

And there's no one to talk to about this. The Hub just goes crazy when I talk like this. He has a whole different, indeed opposite, approach to problems. While he's quite willing to worry about minor stuff, like somebody not paying him on time, when it comes to Big Issues he doesn't believe in "torturing himself" thinking about what we'll do if my symptoms get worse or don't get better. He refuses to believe anything Serious is happening until Serious has it's talons wrapped around his neck and his breathing fire down his neck.

I don't blame The Hub. After all, this strategy served him really well through very difficult periods of his life. When he had cancer he absolutely refused to believe it was That Bad, and went to work every day through his grueling chemotherapy. When people asked him how he was he asked them what they were talking about. If the mind really is connected to the body, he probably saved his own life, convincing any remaining cancer cells that they were nothing in the grand scheme of things by the sheer force of his willpower.

After his first wife, with whom he was still deeply in love, left him and was left in a coma with only the most minimal brain functions after a plane crash, he was able to visit her every day, keep her on his health insurance, and silence every and anyone who questioned anything about their relationship by repeating calmly, "She's my wife, and she's going to get better." He understood, intellectually, what happened the day her brain started swelling and everything went to hell in a handbasket, but he wanted Angela to have the best care and every chance there was to get better. While I had a pretty good grasp of the situation the day that one of her neurologists came out to tell me she was back from one of her x-rays and I could step in to visit her (by-passing the patient liaison, whose job it was to tell people such things....he was doing it because it was, literally, all he could do for her) when this same man told The Hub that Angela had a 2% chance of making any improvement at all The Hub just blinked at him. And there was not a living soul at Hopkins, or Sinai or Longview Nursing home who dared to give Angela anything less than the same care they'd give a person with the most promising prognosis under The Hub's persistent and ever watchful eye.

Meanwhile, my motto is "pray to God, but paddle away from the rocks". I got The Hub to move the office chair with wheels on it up here so I can use it to move stuff that's too heavy for me to lift. I re-started my e-bay selling account. I went to Target and looked for baskets and carts on wheels. When I went to Rite-Aid I priced those walkers which fold out into little seats.

But, beyond that, I'm a woman with no plan, no diagnosis, my excused absence from work runs out today.I have no idea if it's safe, both for me and other people, to drive. The results of my blood tests seem to be lost in space. I left a message for Dr. DogLover. If he's like most doctors, he'll probably get to returning my call by about Thursday. All I have going for me are my wits and a parrot that sometimes rolls over.

And I could fall asleep right now. But I'd better not, because I strongly suspect that on Monday the only thing to do is going to be to drive to work, stomp the feet, and run the rat race with as much grace and aplomb as I can muster - there's no taking a nap in the middle of a work day.

Hmm. That may sound a little bitter. I don't mean it to be. I just mean that we've all got to do what we've got to do....and it looks like I'm going to have to keep doing it the hard way for the foreseeable future, so I'm glad I'm used to it.