Everything Gets Gone

Exactly one year after my first symptoms showed their mean, little, inflammation faces...my rheumatologist gave me the green light to see what my life would be like if I were to go off my medicine completely. First, it was Prednisone in...err January, I think. Then, it was the arthritis medicine itself in April. Her suggestion may or may not have had something to do with the confession that I wasn't taking the full dosage anyways because the shit made me Space Cadette 5000. But, along with that, my markers indicated my inflammation was at Rock Star status.

So, why no post about this until now?

If I were to be truthful, which is the sole purpose of having this page.... I was scared to write about it here. To have something that had been front and center of my life for a year suddenly go back in hiding was difficult for me to believe. I thought it was too good to be true. I was almost certain that I'd be hobbling around on swollen, balloon feet again in a month begging for people to open my soda bottles because my sausage fingers couldn't bear it.

So far, this hasn't happened.

(What also hasn't happened? Losing the 25 pounds this ordeal has caused me to pack on but, hey, I give myself better, squishier hugs now! And, the other else that has happened??? The rad, trippy dreams my arthritis medicine made me have full of brilliant colors and insane story lines, sigh.)

Impermanence.

Impermanence is an element of life that is sometimes hard to grasp when one is digging down in the trenches dragging through whatever war has been thrown their way. Part of it, I think, is because once the pendulum swings back the other way, we're too blurry-eyed with our new, gleeful norm that we can't even remember what the hell all the fuss was about before.

I can assure you, though, that each day I step out of bed and don't feel the need to wince and curse from the pain in my body is a day that does not go unnoticed. It still seems crazy to me. My rings fit again. I can still make a fully-closed fist! (Watch out, all you haters!) Such simple things, but, my, how beautiful they are!

If I may be so trite, I'm fuckin' lucky.

Life has provided a glimpse of what may be in store for me throughout my future of however many seconds I'm given to breathe this time roaming around Earth ...it has given me the slap in the face necessary to count those I love, those who unconditionally love me back, and all the beauty in between.

I'll take it.

Recognize the sweetness all around and hug yourself for me.

Cheers.

"Like a tree by the river,
I'm holding on...
But, everything gets gone...
Everything gets gone."

- William Elliott Whitmore <----click that link and nod along to that smokey voice!