Post Winter Post

 I know winter isn't over yet, but in the frosty mornings and the dark evenings, I still feel the faint hint that spring is on her way.  I've been cold and dark physically too, avoiding, for years, the fact that my aches and pains are bigger than just the simple aging process I have been blaming it on.  Then a couple things happened that pried my blinders off.

 My good friend is ten years older than me, and has been taking care of aging parents, so as I struggled to get up from my seat, she automatically offered me a hand up. I realized, she doesn't limp and moan like I do, even when I'm trying to insist I'm fine.

Then I was loving Black Panther, for its gorgeousness, at the local theater, when people began discussing the release of A wrinkle In Time, and my first thought was that "I have to live to see this movie!" and I wasn't being at all ironic. Somehow my brain had accepted that I am dying.

 So I made the dreaded Dr. appointment, and things are scary, but not as scary as dying.  My blood pressure on a normal day reads about 168/102.  My ANA blood test was positive which could mean Lupus or Lyme disease or be a false positive and I won't know until I follow trough at the Rheumatologist, I have to drive 127 miles to see, and wait until April 26th.  But all the symptoms point to some type of Rheumatoid arthritis. Things like the pain of pressure in my wrists from turning a steering wheel or spreading peanut butter on toast.  Things like loss of the ability to get out of the bathtub or to put on my own shoes.  Simple things are impossible on some days and cutting my toenails might mean I nerd to sleep for 12 hours to recover from the exertion.

 but life doesn't suck.  I had a good day driving through beautiful trees to go with my husband and daughter on a shopping/dentist trip, and I didn't feel too horrible by the end of it.  Now it is pouring hail on my house and Im loving the snuggled in feeling by the fireplace.

 there will be better days.  Spring is in the air.