9-7-10                  8:10pm

Last week I was contemplating opening a dance studio. This weekend I was contemplating how to stay conscious. I just went to a lecture on motivation and now I’m contemplating contemplating.

Change, is inevitable. Change is hard for me.

I’m looking at a lot of change and stress, good and bad. Here’s the layout. Work at my group is slow but about to pick up. Gospel choir brings me great joy, and great responsibility. A storm of planning and fundraising awaits. No Broadway San Diego events this week. Those are my work-like activities.

At home, mom is spiraling. She’s depressed and irritable and she doesn’t hear half the things I say anymore. She’s constantly yelling at the cat. The tension really gets to me. And she’s gonna have another surgery on her arm soon. I don’t know when. I’m still paying on the last one. I am significantly less healthy this time around and I barely made the last one.

I saw Dr. Tecca today after I had my mom page him last night. He couldn’t find anything wrong (as usual), other than slightly high blood pressure and a low fever. He doesn’t deny my illness this weekend. His verdict? “You are… a marshmallow.” He says I’m too weak and fragile (like a marshmallow) and that I should exercise.

The question for me is how much? He said an hour at least 3 days a week. By why, you ask, did I page and see him today? Because after attending a baseball game Saturday (attending NOT playing) I was barely conscious but for an hour here and there ‘til today at noon (Tuesday). Severe weakness that nothing helped. I know there’s something between nothing and an hour, but what is it? This guess-and-check method is costly.

I finally talked to Dr. Licht and he’ll order one of the two ataxia panels I asked for – either the complete or the autosomal dominant. Mom is pissed that I told him there’s no definitive diagnosis of HD. But at this point there isn’t. She doesn’t think it’s important. She yelled, “IT IS WHAT IT IS!” Ya, but what is it? I can’t write that on an insurance form and a doctor can’t treat “it.” It’s not fair for her to try and block me from finding what “it” is. It doesn’t mean she did anything wrong. But someone did. It’s not her body. “It” is killing me.

And I’m trying to come to terms with that and I don’t know how. So yes, I am a marshmallow. I am fragile and weak. But I’m here. What of this do I contemplate? It’s too much to handle. Thankfully, dissociation and memory problems help with that. But what do you do?

Pray. “Paciencia y fe.” Thank you, Broadway.

© Michelle Routhieaux 2010