My back hurts.
Not in the laid out, "Oh my God, I need Valium right now!" way. I've been there and that is no fun at all. This is more of an "Oh my God I am a thousand years old and really really tired" way. It's the nagging backache up one sometimes has in the morning, but it sticks round all day long. I am so worn out from all the lifting of Maggie and maneuvering of her wheelchair that my body is on strike.
I have spent the past several weeks living my life in two hour segments. How much can I get done before I have to help the nurse lift Maggie for a procedure or before the nurse goes home? It is exhausting and very difficult to get anything accomplished besides simple errands.
On Wednesday afternoon I had 30 minutes to go to the bank and Safeway before I had to be home to help Maggie. As I sat in the bank waiting for the woman to copy some papers, I was thinking about how much more I needed to get done in a short amount of time and how much my back hurt. It was 4PM and I'm sure I looked exhausted.The bank manager decided to strike up a conversation with me, saying "are you done for the day?" I just looked at him and gave him a thin smile and said, "I am never done for the day."
The good news is that there is a cure for this particular ailment. it's called THE BEGINNING OF THE SCHOOL YEAR and its only 72 hours away. I have to keep Maggie entertained for the next three days and then she goes back to school. That's at least six lifts and four loading/unloading of the wheelchair onto a vehicle each day that will be done by someone other than me. My vertebrae and the connecting tissue are all looking forward to that.
The last few days will be tough, though, because Steve is fishing in Canada and Tim is house/cat sitting in Marin. That means I can't ask them to help with any lifting. The nurse will be here 8 hours a day and then again overnight, so I really have only 24 of the 72 hours that fall to me. That means I am down to the final 20 or so lifts. Not that I'm counting or anything.
Funny, I used to dread the end of summer.
How times change when we reach 1000 years old.
What? Speak up? I can't hear you! I'm 1001 years old.
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