Monday January 9th 2012

The New Year has begun....
My New Years eve was very uneventful....my wife and I stayed home.....our grandson came over to stay and he and his nephew sat up and watched the ball drop on TV, with my wife and I.

So...what else to write about today...?? Hmmm, let's see...
Well, TM wise, things are still pretty much the same....although the pain level seems to be worse this year than in years past...
Which, is kind of weird because it has been warmer outside this winter than in winter's past....
Usually the colder it was, the worse things got...but now, for some reason, I have been having some bad burning sensation in my backside and my legs....
and my leg cramps have been pissing me off....
Two nights ago I had a cramp from hell......this time in my left calf..It lasted for better than a half an hour...
It eventually subsided and I got to sleep....and then at about 1:00 AM I was wakened by another one.....
They hurt to the point that I have to get out of bed, and try to walk and stretch and massage and eventually end up taking a Valium to get it to subside enough to where I can lay down again...

The day after Christmas I had a slight return of those damn episodes I had been getting....the headache, the diarrhea, overall lethargy...etc..
That lasted for about 2 to 3 days....but it was no where near as bad as the ones I used to get....the thing is, I thought that those episodes were gone once I had started taking the the Nexium....which was in November of 2010....I went about a whole year of not having any of those episodes...and then all of a sudden this one pops up...
I hope that it does not happen again..because if it does, that means I need to get back to the doc and start the process all over again to figure out why I get them....
but.....I'm knocking on wood that I do not get another one of those episodes...

Sleep.... yeah, sleep....what sleep..?? My sleep is so screwed up that I don't know what day is what hardly anymore...
I manage a day or two to where I get to sleep in a bit...until like 5AM.....but then, my normal is waking up by about 3AM because my legs are so stiff and achy....
This morning I was up at 3.....
I get up, walk about a little.....let the cats out, let the dog out...make some coffee....and by then, I'm whooped...
I sit down on the couch for a while...drink my coffee and 9 times out of 10....I nod back off for awhile....
I am usually so tired, so fatigued, so exhausted........

All of this gets to me sometimes....recently my wife wrote something regarding how proud she is of me....and one of the things that she said, was how much I work to try and make our lives as normal as possible...and I do...
I don't ask for any special treatment from anyone...as a matter of fact, it pisses me off when someone asks me if I want them to do something for me.....
I don't....I want to still do most of the things I used to be able to do.....I know what my limitations are, and I will ask I absolutely have to....but I don't like to do it...
which brings me to my point.....since I try to continue pushing myself, I know that it is affecting my fatigue level....
and then to go hand in hand with that, when I'm tired, the pain level goes up......
So...maybe that is the cause of the pain level being worse.....unless I'm just becoming more of a wuss and can't deal with the pain any more....
I've always had a high tolerance for pain and can manage to hide it behind a smile without too much problem....
Lately, I don't feel that it is as easy for me to do that.

I want 2012 to be a better year than it's been in the past....and I'm going to continue to work towards that goal......but.....

So, for now, I'll finish this writing for today.....

My music choice today......I'm going to go back a few years....back to something that came out right about 1970.....a rather obscure little tune....from a band called The Marmalade and their hit song....Reflections Of My Life....


Till Next Time......