Letting Go Of Magical Thinking, And Self Care…

This has been coming for a long time. Since I fell outside in the garden in July 2019 and couldn’t get up for half an hour until I finally got hold of neighbors who came down and helped me up. And it was no easy feat at that. I simply cannot use my feet to push myself up at all. That’s when I started wearing the Fall Pendant 24/7 and after another fall in the garden when the EMT’s had to come and get me up and into the house (demoralizing to say the least) I knew that after more than 40 years as an avid gardener, garden designer, and garden writer, I would never be able to garden again. Now I have to use a Rollator Walker outside of my house and I cannot step off of concrete onto soft ground because as the doctor explained it to me, because of very serious neuropathy in my feet, and the fact that they were broken badly after a fall down a steep staircase, wherein, as the ER doctor said, “Honey, you didn’t just break your feet, you shattered them.” I have had surgeries on my feet. All this by way of saying my poor feet almost don’t exist at all. I can’t really feel them much which makes me, according to the Physical Therapist sent here to help me in the home, a very high fall risk. I have taken bad falls in my house and after one last October something happened to my left leg that, I have to admit after all of these months, simply isn’t going to get better, nevermind I have been dealing with a large bloodclot in the same leg, the second bloodclot in 3 years, which means blood thinners for life.

Now, the thing is, you’d think knowing all of that — and I know it very well, I live with it every single hour of the day — you’d have thought I’d have developed a realistic picture of what my life is now and will be. But the thing is somewhere in me lives a Little Mary Sunshine who believed that one day some magical treatment would make it all go away. Truly, I believe in the power of prayer, I believe in positive thinking, I practice it all, but still, I have come to realize, the answer to my prayers is to come to acceptance about my circumstances and to make concrete plans of action that make my life more knowable, more understandable, and help me to realize that I have to make concrete plans of action, which, when they are in place, will help me make my way in the world with greater ease and less fear. That is self-care, and I’ve been too afraid, with all of this happening to me in the last 6 months after years of going downhill, more than I knew.

I will be 68 on April 30, I am a disabled senior citizen, I know this, but the thing is, I knew as I got older it would become harder for me to get around, I thought, you know, maybe in my 80’s? I did not think I would, at 67, be so seriously disabled that a dear neighbor now brings my mail to the door (It is across the road from the end of a long driveway and I just can’t make it out there.) and she also wheels out my trash and recycling barrels. Another kind neighbor brings them back. I have been limited for decades being seriously agoraphobic, but this is not agoraphobia, this is physical disability, and the 2 together make most things outside of my house impossible. I now live with chronic pain and have a very hard time even getting up and down out of a chair. I walk very slowly and awkwardly and look like some slow-moving lopsided, cattywompus creature because of the pain but more than the pain I am so self-conscious I cannot bear to be seen like this. It has just broken my heart.

Every person, as they grow older, has their own version of what aging physically changes in them. Most people hopefully don’t become this disabled this soon. I know women who have gardened until they were 100 and some still playing tennis at 90, this is not my reality. But this week something in me awakened to the fact that while I have had many losses due to all of this and that my life has been drastically changed, I was going to have to come up with a plan of action for the times when I absolutely have to leave the house which, for the most part, would be for doctor’s visits.

I have therapy every Wednesday online. I have Instacart now that not only does my grocery shopping for me but also brings it into the house. But Tuesday, when I had my appointment with my med manager whom I have seen for a long time and dearly love, and he is very kind and wants to help me — he has been seeing me on Zoom since Covid began, but now their office is seeing people in person again, and as much as he would like to just see me on Zoom to help me out there is a billing issue. They don’t get paid through insurance if they don’t see me in person. In fact they called to cancel my appointment TWO HOURS BEFORE THE APPOINTMENT if I couldn’t make it there in person. I was in shock, I cried, I begged, because I was told by my med manager at my last visit that he would continue to see me via Zoom. But it is out of his hands. I sat here crying my eyes out but then they called and said he would see me that day on Zoom since it had been promised and I had no way to get there. I go back, however, for my next appointment, in 3 months, and I will have to go in person.

I have been thinking, wishing, hoping, praying, and believing some magical thing would happen — the right treatment, the right medication, etc, to make me be able to get around easier. As it is now I cannot even attend my beloved grandson’s high school graduation and this has just broken my heart. But there will be times that I have to get to the doctor in person for hands-on treatment, testing, etc. Unless and until I get a plan of action to help me do this my life is more and more becoming a living hell around these things when I am so terrified I can barely function. I had to leave my house very briefly to go 2 minutes to get Molly to the vet, an urgent situation. It is excruciating for me to get in and out of the car but I made it, the vet tech carried Molly in, and another tech helped me in. I was in so much pain I could barely breathe but Molly is not only the love of my life, and my legitimate emotional support animal, she is my whole world here. By the time I made it home I collapsed in tears.

My daughter is helping me investigate modes of transportation. She used to take me to things but has recently had a new baby and right now is juggling the new baby and starting back to work and she just can’t and I wouldn’t expect her to but she is helping me figure some things out. We found out that the senior center, if you book ahead, can provide transportation to a doctor’s appointment, but I have to check into what that means. When I had a recent doctor’s visit they told me they had a transport van BUT they would come and pick you up and take you home but they would not help you in any way with say the rollator walker, getting in and out. If you are that physically disabled they won’t take you. In the end they arranged for someone, a dear gentleman, actually the security guard, to come out to me when I arrived. I had a special number to call, he came out, got the rollator walker out of the back of my car, and helped me in. He helped me and stayed right by my side as I checked in, and then he walked me back (a long walk) to the area I had to see my doctor. I was there for 4 hours, in terrible pain, had to have different tests, and treatments, and shots, and more, and half way through I was crying like a baby. It is so hard for me to leave the house at all because of the agoraphobia I have to take anxiety medicine which I would have if, say, my daughter had been able to take me. But driving myself it would not have been safe so I didn’t take my magic pill but also I had no idea the appointment would be so long and half way through, 2 hours in with another 2 to go, I was just sobbing. I was so scared, I hurt so bad, I didn’t know how I would ever make it home. Through the grace of God the lovely nurse stayed with me every step of the way, took me to the restroom, and after seeing 2 different doctors she walked me out front and had me sit on my rollator seat while she got my medications at the pharmacy for me. The gentleman that walked me in saw us and he called out to me, “I got you baby!” and indeed he came and got me out to the car, put the rollator back in, helped me into the car, and stood there until he was certain I was okay to drive. Whether I really was was kind of up for grabs and after he walked away I sat there sobbing. I felt weak, and in terrible pain, and was really scared. My agoraphobia was in high dudgeon by this point and how I made it home I will never know.

I tell you all of this because I want you to know that yes, it can get very bad, but unless and until we come up with a plan of action for difficult times we will be emotionally crippled and afraid and it makes it hard to get through every single day. I was trained as a ballerina, 15 years of ballet, tap, modern dance, jazz dance. I was a dance minor in college. Today just making slow steps from this chair to the bathroom is like climbing Mount Everest, in pain all the way, but I have made provisions in my home with the help of the physical therapist and the dear man who built an extra step, put grab bars up in several places, and so on, to make my way about my home the best I can. Now I will have to figure out a plan for transportation too. I don’t know how, but I just have to.

We think of self-care as being bubblebaths, pretty candles, nice treats, and all the lovely things and those are all wonderful, but self care is first and foremost, for the elderly and the disabled, about putting practices in place, and having plans of action that help us live our lives with some modicum of confidence and grace. I’m trying, I really am. I am learning new things every day.

Please know this, I repeat, prayer and positive thinking are wonderful, we need them, but with serious circumstances we need also to do things that give us the comfort of knowing that we can do the things we have to do, and that we can get the help we need. Do not be ashamed that you need help. And with these practices and plans of action in place you will have a greater peace of mind which can change the whole tenor of your life. Take care of you, ask for the help you need, and let us pray for each other.

I am sending you so much love. I’m scared, but I’m learning. You can too.