Tag Archives: recovery

I do not need any help, until I do.

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Self sufficient, reliable, independent. That’s me. Until it wasn’t. Oh how that universe demands us to keep learning, to keep our awareness growing.

The pain radiated from my left hip and ran down me leg. I writhed on the floor, unable to get up. Okay. Okay. Okay. I said the words aloud with each exhale. I’m not sure why. To reassure myself? To encourage myself to stand?

The pain continued until I could no longer cope. “Take me to the ER,” I told my husband.

Besides the physical pain, the emotional pain appeared. Grown kids or not, I needed to be available to them as well as my grandchildren. And I had my routines I needed to follow – my boxing classes, my weight lifting classes. But I was useless. I couldn’t function.

After scans, and an MRI showed nothing, I spent two nights in the hospital to discover I had shingles. But, of course, not like most people. I was in that 1-5 percentile. My pain was not near the rash (on my foot). The pain followed a lengthy dermatome path from hip down.

It took days for me to admit, “Carolyn, you have a virus. Be nice to yourself.”

Still, I had to rely on others for help.

Until I didn’t. I became proactive. I needed more than nerve pain meds and steroids. I needed answers, solutions to how I could walk properly again.

I made another doctor’s appointment and received a referral for physical therapy.

I have routines to get back to. And, if possible, an upcoming trip to Manchu Picchu on October 6th.

Yesterday I had my first physical therapy appointment. Easy exercises a month ago. Not now. All the muscles in the back of my leg are locked. My left ankle struggles to bend backwards, a necessary movement to walk properly. The physical therapist thinks I’ll be ready to go on October 6th. I hope she’s right.

So here’s what I learned:

  • routines change when unexpected shit happens
  • sometimes, it is my turn to ask for and receive help
  • old goals vanish when you don’t want them to and are replaced by new goals you didn’t expect
  • Friends show their support, true friends follow along with your progress
  • And those family members I feel the need to be available for? They’ll be okay. They have to be. It is time to take care of myself.

Discouragement is being replaced by determination. No one can help me more than myself. So here I go.

CD-W photoshop art.

When Words Kill

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Cono Dennis, after realizing his father read his private letters.

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Cono Dennis, my father, age 18

I might not have sparred with him but I stopped him cold and I don’t just mean by showing off my defense skills and putting him in a head lock. As sure as a sharp axe can cut through and splinter a log and slice a thin piece of paper, a sharpened pencil can do the same thing. Words are powerful; they can be weapons as sharp as an axe. “Gene, I want to kill my Dad,” words that must have reverberated and Echoed in Dad’s ears just as loud as a sawed off shotgun, or blue lightening bouncing off a cow’s head. And just as loud as his slap across my face. I don’t think I meant for him to find all those letters, but he did.

 

From No Hill for a Stepper, the novel based upon my father’s life from age two till age eighteen.

 

Meeting Dixie Dupree!

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I rarely write a review on Amazon, but after reading The Education of Dixie Dupree by Donna Everhart, I had to. Here it is:

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Readers will learn from Dixie Dupree’s education!

Like every great book, the first chapter of The Education of Dixie Dupree grabs the reader by the collar and makes us yearn to know more. Loved this book!

The author, Donna Everhart, blew so much life and guts into her eleven-year-old protagonist that Dixie Dupree leaped off the page and into my heart from the very beginning. I identified with this young girl’s sassiness and grit, wagged my finger at her mischievous tongue, and, later, screamed at her to speak up and let the words flow.

Set in a small town in Alabama in the late 1960’s, the story revolves around Dixie and her relationship with her mother, father, brother and uncle. Written in first person point-of-view, Dixie shows us the good in her life, and how to survive when it’s anything but.

Some readers may find parts of Dixie’s suffering too troublesome to read. But her suffering is also part of our education. What reader can’t identify with the emotions of guilt, anger, and sadness that may lead to (hopefully temporarily) damaging our being?

But these emotions do not depict the whole story. The Education of Dixie Dupree is also about determination, insightfulness, warm hugs, resolution, and wholeness.

Dixie Dupree deserves a degree for her education—and her creator, Donna Everhart, deserves to be wearing a cap and gown and handed a framed diploma for writing this outstanding novel.