.
…tl;dr: it’s spring. Somewhere.
My fortune cookie just told me “You will live a long and happy life.”. I laughed and laughed and laughed.
It has been a year since I lost feeling in the toes of both feet, thanks to the diabetic polyneuropathy. It’s always a weird thing to be marking an anniversary of something you’ve lost.
Like most things that are wrong with me, it was mostly my fault. My diabetic numbers got out of control for a few months (January to March, 2016), and that was that. And now I can’t feel my toes. It’s something I’m still learning to live with.
There are things I will never fully recover from. Like the physical and mental consequences of going through the “severe uremic neuropathy” and “myopathy“, or like the manic depression, and the diabetic polyneuropathy that wrecked my feet. I can learn to live with these… ‘difficulties’. I can live inside a ‘new normal’, and learn to live within the new physical restrictions. Like I’ve learned how to live with the mental restrictions of manic depression.
On the other hand there are things I will fully recover from… like the kidney transplant. My latest blood work shows my creatinine levels are better. Over the past three weeks they’ve been under 100. Normal, for a dude, is 70-120 μmol/L, so my new kidney is working perfectly.
I met a man at my last visit to the hospital who was quite happy, four years after his transplant, to be sitting at 180. He also told me he was able to play volleyball again. Someone else told me they had their new kidney for ten years, and were participating in something called the “Canadian Transplant Games“, which is kind of like the Olympics for people who have undergone a transplant. Both of them had spent years on hemodialysis.
I’m still relearning how to walk again after three months of being in a wheelchair. Still trying to find my ‘new normal’ in so many ways, so I don’t think competitive sports are in my future, but it was nice to hear that other people have found a ‘new normal’ that was getting back on pace with their old one.
.
…anyway, this is one of my favourite songs:
“Haunted”, by The Pogues (feat. Cait O’Riordan) from the Syd & Nancy Soundtrack (1986)
...really cold milk. 
Hahaha, I am always referring to having to adjust to a new normal. I used to feel frustrated and scared going into yet another clinic appointment because I knew it would be something else that would change my life to another new normal. After awhile I started simply accepting that it is a part of my life. My new normal is continuous change with my body. Today I am adjusting to severe osteoporosis and cell death due to anorexia. The latter can be changed with consistent food and sticking to no exercise, assuming my body will still have some resilience in it. I’ve destroyed my bones, I have chronic pain due to over exercising, and then there’s bipolar and all the other crapola. And so I understand. It is kind of comforting knowing someone else understands even though I wish no one else experienced this type of life. I’m quite grateful for your sharing this in your post.
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…I’ve been adjusting to ‘new normals’ my entire life as well. Most of it is constantly adjusting to the bipolar, and the side effects of living with a disease that is consistently working against you. Without learning how to adjust… how to live within a new normal — learning how to make use of the moments of lucidity afforded to us when the mental illness is at its weakest, for example, we’d never have made it into our recovery’s. Thank you so much for your comment, and thanks for understanding…
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Hmmmm I’m the one that’s not going to be serious because well, I’m not. Thanks for sharing the song. Smile while you listen to it. I am.
You’re not restricted man, you see brightly and honestly.
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It has always been one of my favourite songs… at least since 1986, anyway.
“The first time I saw you,
Standing in the street
You were so cool,
You could have put out Vietnam”
…awesome.
Thanks for commenting, Bats, it’s great (!!) to see your avatar again.
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