On 63 of 101

Every day I've opened my dashboard to post.

Day 60. Day 61. Day 62.

Every day I've had the intention of sitting to post something, but I haven't found the energy or the wherewithal to sit here to write anything that I could sit back and deem it either worthwhile or not worthwhile to post.

Instead, I've been reading and generally feeling frustrated and sorry for myself, debating levels of disability and the idea of living the rest of my life, from age 32 to 40 or 50 or 62 or beyond, with some degree of pain.

Do people really deal with such situations as this on a daily basis?

For the rest of their lives?

Seriously?

I wonder how we could ever be expected to cure the big-lettered diseases and disorders, the capital ("big") C or AIDS (or HIV) or COPD or some other XYZLMNOP that has yet to take on life through any combined mnemonic or acronym, when the doctors and professionals can't even cure something as simple and basic as pain.

I mean, yeah, they can give you a pill to reduce inflammation and block the actions of the prostaglandins or something that you have to show your license to fill because it doesn't really work to get rid of the pain, it just makes it so that you don't notice it so much, but they can't give you something that you could really call a "painkiller."

I'm not despondent, not by any means, but I can't help thinking that the idea of "chronic pain," and the idea of living by a label like that one, is really ridiculous.

So, I've been filling my journal, especially yesterday when I celebrated entering the year six (I haven't found it worthwhile to imbibe a mind-altering or mood-altering chemical since the night of Friday, July 15, 2005) without attending a meeting or picking up a new medallion to commemorate an event that is tantamount to a wedding or a graduation in the recovery community. Not that I don't plan to do so, and not that I probably don't really need to hit a meeting sometime in the next forty-eight hours, if for no other reason than that I've not been to one in two weeks now, I just felt some semblance of content with merely staying home, watching episode five ("Of Love and War") of The Winds of War (still refreshing my memory of having read the book many years ago, during the long, hot summer of 1999), using a heavily exfoliating scrub on my dry and calloused toes and heels, slathering on a cucumber-melon-combo across my cheeks, forehead, nose, and chin (the "T-zone" area prone to all the crap that you think you're done acquiring once you enter college, but quickly find you're never too old to accept whether willingly or combatting-ly), filing my fingernails, and reading Joyce Carol Oates's Black Water after having finished Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles yesterday afternoon.

I need to get back to work, and the doctor's left the ball in my court to decide for myself ("...well, you know what you do and you know whether or not you can do it, so I think that I'm gonna leave this open, and when you're ready..."). My plan is to call tomorrow, throw caution to the wind, and request a release that will allow me to return as the week concludes (to the shock and chagrin of several I'm sure as I'm strongly contemplating an offer from my DON to return to a different shift, possibly one not even during the week at all as I wonder if I wouldn't be happier, more helpful, and better equipped to work the back-to-back sixteen-hour weekend doubles) so that I can see whether or not my body and my back can hold out and handle a return to real life.

In theory, having a medical leave sounds like a dream, but you can only watch so much coverage of the Casey Anthony debacle or the budget reconciliation arguments or re-runs of any one of the million versions of Law and Order that are on at any given hour on any given channel on every possible day of the week.

Besides, it's not as if I'm being overly productive with my writing and posting here.