A Terrible Start to 2023

The start to 2023 has been absolutely horrible and the next few months, at the very least, already promise to be just as stressful and rather miserable.

Sheila's mom, known as Nan in many other blog entries here, has been struggling with Alzheimer's Disease for about four years now.  Over the past few months...  hmmm, I think it has been since summer...  she had dipped into end-stage Alzheimer's and is now in the hospital with a fractured spine and in the worst condition she has ever been in to date.  

I'm not going to go into specifics here but this has been incredibly stressful for the rest of her family as one would expect.  She has been hospitalized for a couple of weeks at this point and I'd say she is just "surviving" now or "holding on"...  not "living" like we all try to do but just surviving one moment to the next. This is sort of like the body being on autopilot.  So, the past couple of months have been terribly rough for Sheila, Will (Pop) and the rest of the immediate family.  I've already been through all of this with my own mother while she struggled with cancer through to her passing in a hospital so I know all too well firsthand how it affects the family.

Sometime in mid-January, I also was rushed to the hospital by ambulance and I have not yet recovered from that significant dip in health.  

This hospital visit has prompted scheduling another bone marrow biopsy to see what is happening there.  My bloodwork has some signs of either my Systemic Mastocytosis worsening or there is some other type of Myeloproliferative Disease (other leukemias) developing.  Regardless of the outcome of my upcoming bone marrow biopsy, the foreseeable future will continue to be rough.  I cannot see beyond a couple of months right now so that should be an indication of how lousy my health has been.  All of our plans, events, and short trips have been cancelled.  

Whenever I attempt to do anything, my health begins to crash again.  If we do some grocery shopping, my health takes a dive.  Having to move snow causes my health to dive.  Having to work on the furnace...  work on the fridge...  fix any little thing in the house that needs fixing... do anything more than mildly menial...  my health begins to crash again.  Each time it begins to crash, I go back to emergency medications in addition to all of my usual medications to attempt to stabilize my body again.  This doesn't seem to be working all that well because every little thing I do is still causing significant problems.  This is not the way to start the new year and it is an indication of things probably being quite lousy for the foreseeable future.  

After returning from the hospital, our furnace started having problems... in the middle of the winter...  at night, after business hours.  We called in a service technician, after hours, to service it.  He managed to get it running by replacing some parts but it is rotted out and needs to be replaced as soon as possible.  We have already taken a fairly big hit financially on those after-hours repairs but it will be a significantly bigger financial hit when we replace it in the coming months.  We decided to attempt to wait until it is warm outside before replacing it so there will be no worries about delays and freezing pipes.  

As if all of that isn't enough, a week ago we started having significant problems with our refrigerator's ice maker.  This ice maker has been a problem since purchasing this high end refrigerator but, this time, it seemed to have damaged our compressor.  It is quite noisy now and, as of yesterday, it is no longer keeping the freezer below freezing so we emptied the freezer.  We stored all of that stuff in coolers in a secure location outside since it is the middle of winter.  Half of the stuff in the freezer ended up in the garbage because it was too thawed.  The freezer needed some culling anyway.

This morning, the refrigerated section is now failing so we had to move all of the contents of the fridge either to the garbage or our unheated storage closet that is typically in the 30s during winter.  After the problems we were having with the fridge, we expected it to fail soon but not this soon.  Fun.

Yesterday evening, Sheila and I quickly searched the internet for the fastest delivery of a new refrigerator that would come close to meeting our needs and desires.  We had to make some compromises on features but we have a new fridge arriving in four days.  In the meantime, we'll be keeping frozen goods outside and refrigerated goods in our storage closet.  

There aren't many refrigerators available at the moment just like most manufactured goods today,  The pandemic has had a significant impact on manufacturing especially for electronic components.  There is a significant backlog of manufactured goods ranging from small products to appliances to cars.  At the beginning of the pandemic, I estimated that this backlog might be resolved by the end of 2023.  We are now at the beginning of 2023 and I'm now thinking that we'll be lucky if manufacturing is resolved by 2025.  I have more thoughts on this but let's just leave it at my opinion is we need at least another two years to resolve this issue and it won't resolve itself on its own.

Fortunately, snowfall this winter has been rather limited and even scarce because, even on a good day, moving snow takes a lot out of me.  Since my hospital visit, I have only needed to move snow around the house and on the roof twice.  I needed to do this yesterday and that impacted my health again.  All through the night and so far today, I have been struggling with breathing problems and significant spinal pain.  Fortunately, my only life-threatening mast cell related symptom has been relatively mild breathing problems but any breathing difficulties are brutal.  Consequently, between the significant spinal pain and the breathing difficulties, I didn't sleep much last night.

Now, between moving all the snow and working on the refrigerator the past few days, my extensive spinal injuries are screaming more loudly that usual.  I'm walking around like I'm 80 years old and I'm in significant pain.  I'm always in pain but this is more severe acute pain now.  My two line-of-duty spinal injuries occurred almost 25 years ago but at times like now it seems like it happened last week.  

In the beginning after my injuries, just walking was extremely difficult and excruciatingly painful.  I needed extensive therapy (occupational, physical and emotional) eight hours a day, 40 hours a week for four to six weeks just to get me back to minimal function again.  I have been doing daily physical therapy everyday since then.  

I've written about this many times before but I should refresh everyone's memory on these extensive injuries since I probably haven't written about them recently.  My line-of-duty injuries resulted in two herniated disks, four bulging disks, six compressed disks, a broken up vertebrae and disk, and two areas of spinal stenosis.  The neuro-surgeon who evaluated me was very noticeably shocked that I was even standing after reviewing my MRI scans.  

On that day when we were reviewing my MRI scans, we were together in an examining room going from one vertebra to the next pointing out damage all through my spinal column.  I was standing there next to him in a hospital gown.  The surgeon just shook his head and couldn't believe I was on my feet.  He'd look at me...  he'd look at the scans...  then look back to me standing there with my hands on my hips... back the scans...  he'd shake his head in disbelief.  He told me that whatever I was doing in my daily physical therapy, I should keep doing because there are too many problems with my spine for surgery and that he is amazed that I was even standing nevermind walking.  

The surgeon then actually talked with my primary care doctor telling her how impressed he is about me being able to stand.  This surgeon is also a professor at the University of Vermont and he actually told me that I seemed to be far more knowledgeable of my spine than most of his students.  My primary care doctor told me that she was first shocked that this surgeon wanted to actually talk with her on the phone rather than just writing in my chart or sending her a message.  Then she told me that he really was amazed with my case, ie, still standing upright and still getting around on my own.  

Needless to say, I'm always in pain due to my extensive spinal injuries but some days the pain is excruciating again.  This always takes me back to just after my injuries when I was unable to sleep, unable to walk, and then in intensive daily therapy for weeks.  It takes me back to losing my career...  losing my marriage...  losing my home...  Considering how extensive my spinal injuries are, I'm really quite thankful to be able to still do some things rather than be in a wheelchair.  Although, I do admit to occasionally shopping for wheelchairs.  I suspect I'll need one at some point so I want to be knowledgeable of what is available.  Honestly, almost wheelchairs look horrible and they appear to be terribly uncomfortable.  They look about as comfortable as those collapsible camping chairs that are shaped more like a box than a chair.  Most wheelchairs look more like devices meant for torture from early 20th century mental hospitals.  The thought has definitely crossed my mind to design my own.  

This new year?  2023?  So far, it isn't looking good.