word from on high

First I want to tip my hat to my blog partner, Stine, who has been (and remains) a source of courage, inspiration, strength and humor to me. I am always amazed at how much we have to talk about, and how easily that talking flows. What an unexpected bonus born from my in-and -out Weight Watchers journey. I could never go back and still I'd have StineyB, still I'd have this person out there whom I've never met in person but knew in another time, another dimension. Maybe the reality is that we know one another in parallel dimensions, and we can never truly meet lest those parallels run into one another like glowing rung-less ladders, crashing and shattering into infintessimal pieces deep in space. Perhaps I'm being too egocentric. Or I'm stoned. Could be either.

It would take far too long and more minutes than I am allowed to be on a computer at any one time for me to begin unravelling all that has happened to me in the past eight weeks. I would really have to be stoned, or really stoned, to make it through such retelling. But I can say this: I celebrate the smallest things now, or at least try to, like when I'm able to stand in the corner of my bedroom with my eyes closed, feet directly in line with shoulders, hands at my sides, for a full 30 seconds. Or when I go a day without Valium, or wake up without dizziness, or when those blessed moments descend from on high and I temporarily forget that I have VN, I am granted a repreive of seeming normality, and I feel the rush of freedom from illness. S. is charting my nightly physical therapy exercises and three, four second increment increases are HUGE. S. cheers and claps and smiles so big and bright with every second that I tack on to my time upright. And I cheer too, but more inside, because any unnecessary motion in the midst of those exercises is just asking for trouble.

I don't know when I'll drive a car again. I miss it. Yesterday I took a walk with my neighbors and it was wonderful, but I think I overdid it a bit. I constantly have to check myself around that--I am not a good pacer, I don't like slowing down my natural rhythms, shortening my long stride. But I have to. As my physical therapist said, "...there's a very fine line with this condition--you can be too sedentary and not do enough to help push your brain into reworking itself, or you can flood it with too much stimuli and set yourself back a step." I'm working at finding that line.

And I haven't been on a scale since May 21, 2007. Hallelujah and holy mother of God. Let me not be over 250 lbs. I don't know if I'll be able to take it, even with a mantra of "just take it off the table, you can't worry about that right now, you've been ill" even with "you can do this you can do this you can do this" even with it all...

Just imagine what I'd weigh if I'd been drinking throughout this whole ordeal. No, on second thought, don't.