Tomorrow is Christmas. Probably our last Christmas with Chris for a long time. He goes to Japan next month, and will be gone...indefinitely. I want to make it festive. I really really do, but I am so tired and sore that it seems a little bit impossible. IBS sucks. Have I mentioned this? I'm having some days of improvement, and I've started on a probiotic and herbal supplement that are helping my symptoms. I'm finding, however, that everything I'm used to eating sets me off. This also sucks. Dairy, wheat, fatty foods, raw veggies...and it's a good thing I have been tending vegetarian already, because the idea of meat just makes me queasy. What am I going to do? Christmas Eve morning and I'm still asking myself this. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go outside and climb on a bus, and go to the market. I'll see if they have ham, and if they don't, I'll just buy lots of potatoes, and make scalloped potatoes. Kelly said that's the only food he really wants for Christmas, so I can do that. I wonder if it would work with coconut milk?

I'm angry and I'm frustrated and I"m SO tired of being sick. But enough! I'm not fixing those things by sitting here crying over them. I'll do what I can. What I can't do, I'll let go. I'm afraid that what I can do won't be enough, but it's only ever me that has these huge expectations anyhow. So screw it. I'm off to find out what I CAN do.

I went for a beautiful hike today. I hike with the Community Recreational Initiatives Society (CRIS for short). There was a nippy little breeze, but in among the trees it was just perfect. It was good to be out, to connect to the world of snow and not have it be an inconvenience, or something I had to work around. It was just part of the day, and it was perfect for snowballs, too. I'm glad I went, but I'm kind of shocked at how tired I was afterwards. We were out for a couple hours; not on terribly challenging trails, but by the time we were done all I wanted was a nap. I feel so convalescent, which isn't unreasonable, I suppose. I've only been out of the hospital for a week or so. I'm finding it difficult to balance the needs of my IBS with those of my diabetes, but I'm going to be seeing a dietitian to help with that. Tonight it's just a little hard to be sick again, still, whatever. I'm trying to remember that even sick I do things that are good.

One of the things I've learned from CRIS is that I'm much more interested in finding out what I can do than in enumerating the things I can't. So, apparently I can hike for 2 hours in the snow, as long as I plan a nap. Unfortunately, I have set myself a whole list of things I 'should' be doing, regardless of how I feel. This is unproductive, but I seem to do it pretty regularly anyway. My house feels grubby, and I still don't quite feel up to the task of getting it not-grubby. Is it okay for me to be a little afraid of how tired I am? I guess it'll have to be. I'm torn, you see, between feeling crappy and knowing that I tend to stagnate in the winter. I know I sometimes don't do stuff because my mood is down, and that leads to more not doing, which leads into the Pit of Despair. Push, don't push...I keep waiting for this to get simpler.

The simplest fact of my life is that it's mine, I guess. I'll just have to do what I can.

Today I am forty-two. It's funny. I always felt like I was so much older than my age, and now I feel so much younger than it. Perhaps it's only that I've finally got enough years to fit all the events comfortably. I don't know, but I feel joyful today. I feel victorious. My insides still ache some, and I know it's going to take a while for that to calm (assuming it ever does). But I feel like I've regained my optimism, that ridiculous spark of belief that has carried me so far. I want to believe that things will work out, and so, eventually I do. One good thing I can see out of all the tests at the hospital is that apart from the IBS and all my other existing health concerns, I'm absurdly healthy. I'm still epileptic, and I'm still diabetic, but they're both well controlled. The doctor told me that my results were "pristine" and that he wished his were as good. While it wasn't comforting in the middle of my pain, I find it comforting now. Ever since the stroke, and my sister's death a few years after that, I've had this terrible feeling that I was dying. That something was very wrong, and we just didn't know. It has been more than just a feeling, actually, it has been a rock-solid belief that creeps up from time to time, usually when I'm stressed. So while I'm doing as much dying day-to-day as anyone else, I can be sure I'm doing as much living, too. Maybe more. I'm aiming for more, that's for sure.

So thank you, Universe, for another year. Thank you for hope, and for conviction. Thank you for the people I love, the people that love me, and thank you for everyone else. Thank you for my peace, thank you for my healing, and thank you for giving me the lessons you have.

Oh my. What a few months this has been. I've been diagnosed with IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I had a stomach flu, and first it just didn't get better, then slowly got much, much worse. I ended up in Emergency a couple of times, on doctor's orders that if it got worse, I was to go back. The final time, they admitted me. All I knew was that something was writing lines of fire across my insides, and I really wanted it to stop. They tested my blood, cleaned out my insides to scope me, then filled me with barium for x-rays. I'm not going to go in any greater detail, except to say that this has been one of the most invasive responses to illness that I've ever had. It's left me feeling a little vulnerable, as has the pain. I ate almost normally yesterday for the first time in over a month, and so ended up in terrible pain in the middle of the night. I have medication, but now I need to learn to cope with the condition. IBS is essentially a diagnosis of  'yes it hurts, but we don't know why'. They ruled out all sorts of illnesses, and what it comes down to is managing my stress, eating well, and generally taking care of myself.

I wanted desperately to ask the universe 'why me'. I really, really did. But the lesson is too implicit for me to ignore. I'm supposed to learn how to take care of myself better. Or perhaps to remember skills I've forgotten to use. I know what helps me manage my stress, and I know I've not been managing it well. I've not been writing, and perhaps that emotional block was bound to show up in the physical. How could it possibly have been described better than by the gut of me, the core of me; a system that has the most nerve-endings of anywhere in my body?

So here I am, at the keyboard, reaching in to my worded soul, reaching out to a blank page. It feels like I am poised on the brink of something life-altering. Something beyond physical wellness, perhaps. How peculiar.