Adventures with a Sick Body

I decide after feeling cooped up in this house that I will take the dog for a short walk near the river.  I put on my shoes, grab the leash, and head for the car.  I pull out of the driveway.  I’m already feeling out of breath, out of energy.  By the time I drive a ½ block, I feel sucked dry - there is nothing left in me I am so shattered….

At the first stop sign I put my head on the steering wheel.  I realize I am too ill and exhausted to even drive somewhere, let alone walk.  My leg muscles are in tremor just pushing down the car break or accelerator.  I drive around the block and park back in the driveway.  I sit in the parked car, staring at the house.  I could sit here all day.  I rally myself mentally to make what seems like a herculean effort, to open the car door, stand up, get myself into the house so I can lay down.

I love my house, but sometimes it is also my prison.  I want to escape….I crave freedom.  I want that old body back, the one that could run and hike and paddle and socialize and work.  I want to escape this life I live now in a sick body.  It has almost been 12 years and I am still sick.  I am still sick after 12 years, how can this be?

Sometimes I feel like if I go somewhere different, on an outing to the drug store, a short drive or walk with the dog, I will somehow leave it behind. I am deluded; this illness, it is inescapable.  How do I not know this by now?

It walks with me to the car, weighing my limbs down.  It has penetrated my autonomic nervous system, I stand and I’m dizzy, tachycardic, and shaky.  It has sent tendrils down into my every cell – I feel the poison of this illness coursing through me, my lymph nodes throb, my throat is raw and blistered.  I take a breath and feel the heaviness, the ache…this disease lives deep in my chest, I’m sure of it.  

Occasionally, my dysfunctional immune system attempts to fight back, it mounts a fever, I am shivering, bleary eyed and achy. Or I wake up drenched from a night sweat – so wet I have to change my clothes.

You monster of an illness!! I hate you, but I can’t rid myself of you.  Even worse, if I fight back, if I ignore and push, 36 hrs later PEM sets in.  My throat swells, I am two or three times as weak and sick.  I am the colour of paste, I can't stand without blacking out.  I lay in bed cursing myself for trying, for overdoing….I did this to myself, caused the PEM crash.

But I don’t learn, I always do it again.

Another day, I manage to drive to the woods.  I walk some, ignoring the weakness and illness pulsing through me as best as possible.  But I can’t walk far, I’m just too feeble, too weak.  I sit on the thick soft carpet of green moss.  I look up through the spruce trees - sun beams penetrate the green canopy.  Curious Grey Jays flit down to some lower branches nearby to investigate my presence.  The dog wades in the temporary ponds created by recent snowmelt. 

Even here I can’t escape illness, I already feel the effort to get here doing it’s damage…and I know the worst of it, the dreaded PEM, won’t hit me for more than a day. But I try to put it out of my mind because, for a change, I am looking at a different scene, breathing in the coolness of the forest, the air rich with damp, earthy smells, the sounds of red squirrels and birds, a distant river.