Handicapped

Up until that crippling moment getting out of the car on Friday morning, I considered myself a fairly strong, active senior who could walk the theme parks, swim for over a half an hour at a stretch, cruise, dance, play mini-golf, travel, and participate in almost any activity I chose.

Now I'm not that person.

Now I have a handicapped tag and walk with a cane in constant pain.

Now I can barely make it the length of my house, and I'm not sure I can walk the two doors down to my neighbor's house to play Mah Jongg on Mondays.

Now I think twice before getting up out of the chair to do anything.

On the plus side, my blood sugar numbers are insanely good.  It's like I just suddenly stopped being a pre-diabetic and went back to being normal.

I have counted the carbs and calories almost every day since August 29 when I got my first high fasting blood sugar reading of 120.  Every day I got something between 103 and 129 first thing in the morning until five days ago.  My last five readings were 96, 88, 86, 79, and today's reading of 84.

A couple of those days were mornings after a fairly low carb day, but others were not.  For instance, yesterday I ate over 150 carbs and about 1600 calories.  The 96 reading followed a day of only 1200 calories and 72 carbs.  There's no pattern.

It also seems odd that the sugars became normal two days after I started on 20 mg of Prednisone, which is supposed to raise the blood sugar.  I've been in constant pain and moving far less on all of these days, too, and normally pain raises blood sugar.  I don't understand it, but I'm going to continue to plan and log in all my carbs and calories as well as check my sugar first thing in the morning.

This morning I'm down almost a pound to 266.6.  Nice.  I did do the water aerobics yesterday as well as walking into the doctor's office and going to the DMV.  I actually drove myself to the DMV and did that whole tag thing on my own.  It hurt the entire drive to Winter Haven and back, but just being in my car and driving somewhere felt so normal that I was able to push through the pain.

Today and tomorrow are Jewish holidays to conclude the fall holiday of Succoth. Today is Shemini Atzeret with Yizkor service and tomorrow is Simchat Torah.  Mark and I had already decided we would not go to Simchat Torah services either tonight or tomorrow because it's just not as much fun here as they make it up at Mishkan Torah.  We have always gone to that service here until this year, but with me in so much pain, I'm not going to be up happily singing and dancing with the Torah anyway.  Today's Yizkor service is more problematic. It's a somber service to remember our dead relatives and friends.  We have never missed that service either, as far as I remember anyway.  Mark said I don't have to go if I don't want to go, but I'm not sure how I feel.  Yizkor is one of those services that I could just recite here at home, but it seems so defeatist, like giving in to the handicapping condition.

If I'm going to be handicapped, I want to be the kind of handicapped person who doesn't let their condition stop them from doing what they want to do.  It might moderate my activity it a bit, for instance, walking less, using a scooter at a theme park, or doing only one big activity a day instead of two or three, but I don't want to stop all my activities.  I'm too young to be giving up on my life yet.