Luck and Gratitude

In our last installment, I was talking about being bePICCed. I’m not going to lie, it was hard. But I did it, I’m here! I’m OK. Master Pravus reminds me “Temporary, Kitty. It’s only temporary. And it was life-saving. Not drinking is not something any human can sustain.”

Yes, I know. But. I can’t do anything now. I mean, I really can’t do anything at all without help. I can’t get up or down off the couch. I can’t go piss in the night without waking up Master Pravus so he can help me get off the couch. I can’t get a shirt on or off. I can barely type. I can’t make tea. There’s almost nothing I can do with my main arm unusable. It’s so frustrating. Before I could do most things with a small amount of help, and now I can’t even lift a tea cup and am trying to learn how to do things with my left (which is my weaker side). I’ve been stressed over it.

In the slightly under one week I have been stuck with this PICC line, I have had a lot of time to think. (I’m even having a difficult time reading, and most of my days have been designated to coloring with my ill-favoured hand.) And as I think, I realized something fairly important: how lucky I am.

I don’t mean that in a medical sense, but that is also true. Having an abscess in my port that went undetected for months (I mean, it was going on since about February because I was too scared to go back to Interventional Radiology again. My frick!) That’s ten months of time passing me by while I got sicker and sicker. I was on intermittent antibiotics during that time, for my feeding tube, and that probably kept things at bay.

Thing is, in January, I was doing so good! I was over the moon happy and I was making my clips and working on a YouTube return and doing ALL THE THINGS. But then I had a terrible feeding tube change, worse than any other one I had had up until then and I got too scared to go back in there when my port got a little weird. My Master and my Dragon tried to encourage me to get it looked at, of course, but neither of them wanted to push me knowing how terrified I was of IR. I’m just. It’s scary.

I started to decline. I tried once or twice to get back into Master Pravus’ “big bed” with him, but I always had to be moved back to the couch because I was too sick to be in the big bed. And also, in January, my Dragon and me officially started our relationship. So they watched this whole thing play out, and during that time, I never really improved. In fact, I got worse.

Maybe around March or April, I had people reach out to me and tell me they thought I might be depressed because I wasn’t posting. People always think I’m depressed when I don’t post, but they don’t understand that in truth, I am dying to do a billion things and I have a lot of desire. If you don’t see me posting and being my normal flibbertigibbet self, I’m probably actually sick. I might not know what’s wrong, and my doctors might not either, because chances are I might be so scared I can’t even get myself in to see someone. But it’s not usually lack of motivation. I have motivation in spades. What I lack is the proper nerve to push myself into absolutely frightening experiences where autonomy is a treat instead of standard. I lack that.

My Dragon says that if you’re doing a thing scared, you’re brave. So. At times I can be very, very brave. But what I really lack is the will to get the courage up to even try to do those terrifying things sometimes. I know the good things are on the other side of it, but it’s hard. It’s my mountain. It’s what I struggle so badly to navigate.

And during the course of the past year, my Master kept trying to patch me up in whatever ways he could to keep me going. He gave me pep talks when I felt like I was going to fall off the ledge. He did everything he could: except force me to go. (He won’t force the hospital on me unless I’m actually dying).

And my Dragon saw me falling apart and literally kept supporting me even though our relationship was so new and it would have been easier to leave. They didn’t leave me even though it got hard literally a month after we started dating. What the fuck? How the fuck am I that blessed?

And in August, I reconnected with someone who I hadn’t spoken to in years, and they really helped me to see the light and go to get some things looked at. To get them fixed after I basically wasn’t updating anything at all. Sometimes you need another person to hold up a mirror and say “Uh. Look!” And I did look, and it made me try a little harder.

But, my port. I waited too long, and now? I wasted nearly a year on my fear. I couldn’t have had a different outcome than what is happening right now, if I went to the doctor sooner than I did. That’s for sure. However, I could have done this whole port removal and replacement, and PICC line thing back in February or March. I could have done this before. I could be done with it! I could be done with this, and my hernia surgery and moving on to whatever else I need to accomplish to get back on track.

But I can’t turn back the clock. I can’t. I can only go forward from here, and now I’m looking at maybe next March to fix my hernia if I can fix my port on time. And still, that is lucky. It is lucky because now I realize I have wasted so much time. And I don’t want to do that going forward. It’s tough to sit with fear, but it’s even tougher to lose time you could be feeling better and moving forward.

I needed a push to get in. I needed to realize things were getting bad, by having my friends ask if I was depressed. Because if enough people are noticing my lack of posting then it’s not good. And I’m lucky. I’m lucky that I have my Master in my life, helping to keep patching me up so I can push forward in any way possible. I’m grateful to people who stick around in my life even when things are hard and I feel too frightened to move forward. And, as Master Pravus reminds me: I’m still lovable even when I’m sick. But I’m figuring it out, and I’m going to get this ship to straighten up and fly right.

So as I sit here, unable to do much by myself, I can’t exactly be upset. Things would have worked out this way but sooner. And I know going forward what to do. It’s only.. I have to do it. And I’m going to try harder. Ten months. That’s a lot to think about over the next five or so weeks. I do wish I had gone sooner. I do wish I had been braver instead of getting frozen and not moving. But I have a plan now, and not just for my port. It’s all slowly pulling together, I’m lucky I can see that now.