On Bikram, stress, and my toddler-esque planning skills

I haven’t written in this for over a year, so kudos to anyone that is reading! Gold star for your interest. Golf claps.

I started doing Bikram yoga, and now I am one of those obnoxious people who is going to talk your ear off about how Bikram changed my life. J has been doing Bikram for a long time and I watched her transform herself through her practice. It was amazing to witness, but I still couldn’t get past how cranky I get during the summer; I kept saying I would hate it, and I wouldn’t try it. Two giant crazy things happened to change that:
1) I randomly thought to myself, “Self, what if I am saying that I wouldn’t like it, but really I am avoiding it because I think I CAN’T do it?” I really don’t like being defeated by things, so I had to make sure that it would be terrible and not just impossible.
2) A doctor gave me some of the scariest news I have ever gotten. See below.
I’ll back up.

In February, I had my first moment of feeling no pain that I can remember. That isn’t an exaggeration. I think I had a solid day where I didn’t have any of the radiating pain through all of my joints and limbs, and I cried because I was so happy. I can’t thank my amazing doctor at Penn for getting me on an effective medication – or my amazing partner for putting together an effective supplement cocktail – enough to actually make it clear how grateful I am to either of them. I have more functional days than not, and I thank my lucky stars for everything that made that possible.

The cocktail keeps the general pain at bay, but my knee, hip, and back have continued to be equally painful, leading me to think that there is probably something separate governing those joints. I had accepted that I was going to be walking with a cane and bracing my leg every day for the rest of my life. As it turns out, those things are probably true. But I was at a point of having resigned myself to it, and I think that was the problem…which brings me back to giant crazy thing #2. I went to the doctor to talk about options for physical therapy to try to get the knee/hip/back thing under control. She had me sitting on the table with my legs hanging down, and she came over to me and put one hand on each of my thighs. She squeezed each of my thighs for literally a second each, and then said:

“The muscles in your left leg have started to atrophy.”

OH. OKAY THEN. GOOD THING THAT’S NOT TERRIFYING TO HEAR.

So, I started Bikram, because I thought that regardless of how much I disliked heat, it couldn’t be any worse than having my leg muscles atrophy at the ripe old age of 26. Ha! It’s amazing the things we can do when we are properly motivated. As it turns out, Bikram has been amazing. I haven’t been up front with any of the instructors as far as my disability goes. I’m torn. I don’t want to make excuses for why I can’t do things, and I worry that being open about it will turn into that. But I also know that the way my body moves is very predictably governed by my disability, and a lot of that results in hyperflexibility, weakness, etc., which can really screw up a yoga posture.

I also, admittedly, still feel silly about claiming disability status, especially when the nature of said disability is still up in the air. I’m having more neurological symptoms – e.g. feeling like someone is pouring cold water down my legs, difficulty urinating (not incontinence–the opposite. Super-continence! I’m very continent), occasional stuttering/speech difficulties, pins and needles in my fingers – and I’m in the process of scheduling a battery of neurological exams to start to deal with that stuff. But in the meantime, it feels a little foolish to say, “Oh, by the way, I have Lyme disease, or MS, or some other weird neurological thing, or something, I don’t really know, uh…what was the question?” Also, there are a million yoga instructors, only about 3 of which know my name, so I also feel weird being like “HI, you don’t know me but I’m mostly broken! Word!” These are all things I’ve been dealing with since day 1; none of them are new. But it just feels like a new iteration of the same routines.

SO. But yes, Bikram! I lost something like 10 pounds and I’m starting to build strength in ways I didn’t think was possible. It definitely hurts, and it DEFINITELY wears me out – especially when  I am already feeling more fatigued than normal – but at the end of the day I am 100% always every-single-time glad to be doing it. I recommend it to anyone and everyone. You don’t have to be flexible, you don’t have to be strong, you don’t have to be coordinated. You just have to go and make an effort. It sounds cheesy but it’s totally true. You benefit just by being there. I mean it. Take it from this cripple: it’s worth it.

In other news…without fail, I am ALWAYS terrible at refilling my prescriptions. What the crap. It is partially because I take 4 pills every night, so…you know, the day before I run out of something there are still 8 pills in the bottle, so it never looks like an emergency until it is very much an emergency. But this time I called it in the day before I ran out! And the world was against me. The doctor’s office takes 2 business days to respond to refill requests – not counting the day you call them in – and in addition to that, the stupid pharmacy was out of my stupid medication so now I have been without it for THREE DAYS. I basically feel inhuman. I can’t sleep. I am so tired I can’t make decisions. I’m so tired that I can’t deal with watching movies I haven’t seen before because it’s too much energy to follow a plot. Hence non-stop Law & Order: SVU for the last 4 days. Seriously, fatigue is something you really can’t understand unless you’ve experienced it. It’s not just tired, it’s like…you can feel the blood moving through your veins because everything is conscious and everything is an effort. Gross. On top of that, my pain is back as of 2 days ago, which tooooooootally sucks. Once I get back on my meds (tonight!), it will probably take about a week for the symptoms to die down again, which will feel like it is forever but will eventually be over.

I feel like there were other things I wanted to write about, but I can’t remember what they are. As it is this post has taken me over an hour to write because I keep forgetting what I’m doing. YAY CRIPPLE BRAIN. I guess I will try to update this before summer of 2013.

Oh, also, I’m engaged! Did I write that in here yet? I’m totally getting hitched to my amazing shmoopy partner and I’m wicked excited. We are trying to figure out how to make an awesome wedding happen in the midst of both of us being in school and working two jobs. Any advice from experience would be much appreciated!

Thanks for reading, if you’re still reading! While I’m busy forgetting to write entries in here, you can check out my comic, Queers With Cats, at http://www.queerswithcats.com. Sometimes I say funny things. Enjoy.
Be well, everyone!