While I hesitate...

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As a lot of you have deduced, things have not been going well here. We're okay - we'll make it through, we always do. But Lord, it's been coming at us, bad.

The tenosynovitis that permanently crippled my right pinkie finger a few years ago has returned, but with a remarkable difference.

It's tearing into every tendon in my body, it seems, with a speed and virulence that startles us.

For so long, I've tried so hard to write this post. Write anything, really. Losing a connection with the outside world would not be a good thing, just now. While I hesitate and wait for more function in my hands, instead I lose what I just had.

Along with the physical loss of the use of most of my fingers, my left hand, and now the right hand, is the most mind-bending pain I've ever experienced. To touch or accidentally brush against anything can make me cry out despite myself. It's the kind of pain that brings you close to vomiting, to going insane, to chewing into your own flesh like a mortally wounded animal.

Every day a new area of attack emerges. It's spread from my left hand to the right, throughout my left arm, left shoulder, left rib cage, both elbows, both knees - front and back - both ankles, both Achilles tendons, and now both feet. This morning it had hit my left lower back. Tonight, just now, I felt it pulling throughout my left leg. All these for the first time, all in the last few weeks.

I sit helpless in the kitchen. Can't take the turkey meat off the bones for the soup I tried to make. Not now. Wait, watch for an opening when I can use my right hand for that, it still has partial function sometimes. See, I keep forgetting I can't use my hands, keep picking things up and dropping them all over the floor. Which I can't, then, clean up.

Can't wash and trim my veggies, knead bread, open any container, open the fridge or freezer to get a drink. Can't bathe myself. I have to relearn everything, every way my body moves. And it never lasts because the new way I learned today doesn't work when I wake up tomorrow, having lost another tendon.

I write a little here and there, only when I have a little lucky usable time. It doesn't seem to be enough time to finish what I'd call a *post.* So if I have to do this in pieces, let it be.

We're like so many other Americans, living paycheck to paycheck; if one paycheck stops, life can spiral out of control with horrifying speed. We're there. Walter's Worker's Comp was cut off on a spurious basis. Yesterday came a letter saying his disability claim was denied. The basis? They said his disability was from a work injury, so go apply for Worker's Comp.

Yeah.

We'll win on a challenge, I've no doubt. Until then?

Since - November, is it? - we've had no income except my Social Security. There's an income tax refund coming as soon as we get all our tax documents. That's it.

I can't pick up any of our meds right now because we have no funds for the copays. Can't do the laundry; we're out of an essential disinfectant. No voice recognition program for now; the expense is quite small, but we have nothing to pay for even that. I have enough fuel to see my new PCP tomorrow. (You should see me try to drive.) After that? Wait, I guess, for the 28th, when my SSD gets deposited.

Only the kindness of friends has kept us afloat and in groceries. That can't go on. Everyone is hurting financially, including those who are helping us.

One day, perhaps, I'll find a way to thank you for that, for everything you've done for us. It's too much for me today; I cannot do it justice.

I will not be silenced. I will not be silenced.
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