Tuesday, November 30, 2010Feelin' GroovyEveryone's heard this a hundred times before. Maybe a billion. But: When your body feels better, you feel better.Duh. But, golly gee. It's really true. During one horrible night over the weekend, when I tried to go to sleep without my Nyquil-induced coma, I woke up at about 3:40 and just could not go back to sleep. I mulled over everything there was to mull about: my symptoms so numerous I couldn't distinguish my sore throat from my headache from my fever from my cough; my mother's age and increasingly proportionate sweetness and dementia; my own age and the fact of all our mortality; the things I wish I'd done; the things I'll probably never do... you name it, I mulled it over. At 4:30 I took two melatonin, downed some cough syrup, and settled back into bed confident that I would be soon sliding off into dream land. At 5:00 I was still staring at the clock, going back over all the things I'd lost, all the people who hated me for not calling them enough, the things in the garage that needed sorting out, my god! the storage unit, I'd never get that dealt with and I'd be spending money every month, for ever... like throwing it away.. flushing it down the john, and why? because I was a loser and could never just get down and do anything and I'd better get used to it because I was now never going to have my mobility back again so the storage unit would stay unsorted... you get my drift. At 5:30 I began marveling that I could actually take one Melatonin tablet, at 35,000 feet, with -65 degree Fahrenheit air surrounding the little metal container I was bobbling around in, completely at the mercy of some unknown entity in the cockpit, who probably wasn't even trying to fly the plane but who was him/herself completely at the mercy of some piece of software some bozo developer put together somewhere to fly planes over long distances at very high altitudes with like some funky old QA process and no functional specs and a list of Known Limitations a mile long, with no place to rest my neck, and annoying people yapping behind me, and children crying and stupid images burning through my eyelids from the video in the back of the seat in front of me (the little plane crawling with excruciating slowness across the map of the US, ticking of the miles in 12 foot increments, the miles decrementing with agonizing slowness, the smattering of little hamlets of farmhouse lights clumped in the dark far far below us, their inhabitants slumbering in their warm feather beds after an honest day's work and maybe a half hour or so watching Sarah Palin's Alaska before slipping off into dreamland, then staring back at the little plane on the monitor....oh look... we've got a ground speed of 555 miles and we've traveled exactly 10 miles), and how, freezing and neck spasming and annoyed and somewhat molecularly freaked out -- I could fall asleep within about 20 minutes. But that night, with two tablets, and a very comfortable bed, and a sweet husband by my side and a goofball dog sleeping quietly on the floor, and a good day of watching Swamp Loggers under our belts, and all well and right and good with the world: nope. Could not sleep. At 6:00 am I thought, my GOD it's going to be the night that I woke up at 3:40 and never went back to sleep. And then, I must've, because the next time I looked it was all of 6:30. Thus even ruining my story (and martyrdom.) And while I was ruminating about every single last part of me and my life that had gone off track, and wondering how in the world I would ever get any part of it back in shape again... that my days of exercising were certainly over, and my days of actually feeling happy were obviously gone, and that any wonder or joy or sense of mastery I ever had over anything was now going to progressively erode away until I would be laying in bed someday, at 87 (my mother's age) and I'd still feel like me but I would be old. Old old old. And my body wouldn't work and my brain would be bleak and, basically, I'd feel like I was feeling at right that moment... only I'd feel that way all the time. And, well, you know, that certainly cheered me up. So I made a little deal with myself. Very slowly, maybe, possibly... I could try to get back on track. And I wouldn't try to do it all at once because that would absolutely be impossible. But maybe there was one, or maybe two things I could do, for a week, to kind of try to sneak up on health, both mental and spiritual and physical. I wouldn't just jump into it, and further dislocate every bone in my body. But I'd stealthily, and carefully, and quietly... just try two things. I would sit in meditation for five minutes a day. And I would drink more water. That's it. I couldn't solve anything more. In a place where there was no foothold to start from, the first goal was to get a foothold. And meditation has always worked for me (which is good as I, you know, married the meditation teacher). And water... hey. Always a good start. So I've been doing it. Two days. And the sitting is like an oasis to my frenzied mind. It just feels good to stop. And I know this, and I've done this. But, gosh, it really works. And it felt like a balm to my sore and wounded brain. And water. Water: good. And then today I went and bought about $100 worth of high end supplements from Whole Foods. Including a sleep-inducing something that promises something called "relaxation" (whatever that is). And a supplement that addresses stress and immunity. Hmmm... ya think? So, yeah, that went into the basket. And some teas with pretty pictures and nice marketing writing on the box that make you feel better just reading them. Or at least you have the potential for feeling better. And ... I'm feeling better. Like, actually really better. Roger of course feels like crap because the angel of death is now in his body... so maybe I'm just joyful I've been liberated... but... it's true. Body feels good; you feel good. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 9:00 AM  
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