Author’s note: I wrote this over-long post a few days ago during a bout of irritated, daughterly love. It’s part rant, part crisis negotiation with myself. I thinknearly all adult children who care for elderly parents go through this inner struggle from time to time, unless they’re freaking saints. Anyway, I’m over it. This time, at least.

Morning.

I wake, swimming up from deep sleep, and open my eyes. After a while, during which I sort out the achiest spots on my sleep-stiffened self, I get up. Say “mornin’” to Mom in her room. She’s sitting up in bed with her coffee, newspapers and cats scattered around her, contented. Like a lot of elderly people, she wakes up terribly early in the morning, so although it’s barely dawn, she’s already been up for a couple of hours.

I stump carefully downstairs.

I pour myself a cup of coffee. Mmm, how I love that first cup in the morning! I used to drink coffee throughout the day, blithely going though three or four pots by bedtime, but now I drink only four cups a day, two in the morning and two after supper in the evening. The first cup has always tasted especially good to me, but now, well, it’s precious.

I swallow my morning fistful of pills, nearly all of them rheuma-related. I get a cup of yogurt out of the fridge—all those pills make for a cranky tummy if I don’t eat something with them—and a spoon to eat it with, and head for the living room.

I sit down, sighing with relief (my bursitis-hips have joined the rest of my joints in the cranky, daily, early-morning protest) and chuckle as Mouse jumps into my lap for her morning schmooze. When she’s had enough and hops down, I put my laptop in her place and power up, looking forward to reading the morning news.

Outside, it’s storming. The short, cool rainy season that follows summer here in California has finally, finally arrived, and the second in a series of four big storms off the Pacific Ocean is generously watering the drought-parched earth. I watch the rain run in rivulets down the windowpanes, watch gusts whip the branches of the twin-trunked redwood tree in the front garden, and listen to it moaning softly around the eaves. It’s so peaceful. It’s as if the rain, so long awaited, is watering my parched spirit, too.

There’s no woodstove radiating warmth in mom’s condo—a woodstove would be overkill, what with central air and heat and this ridiculously mild valley climate—but I still feel nice and cozy. I think maybe I’ll make a pot of soup for our supper tonight, even though this is a warmish storm. The daytime temp isn’t forecast to drop below 55. If I were to go outside, I’d barely need a sweater. Soup sounds good, anyway. And Mom, who’s always cold, will like it.

 It’s deliciously quiet. My rheuma-aches begin to ease a little along with the stiffness. I sip my coffee and open the browser on my laptop, preparing to settle in and read all about what’s happening in the world.

Mom suddenly appears at the top of the stairs, swaying. Under her arms are tucked clumsily folded newspaper sections. Her coffee cup is balanced on her cinnamon roll plate in one hand; she clutches her reading glasses, her crossword puzzle pencil and a pair of slippers that for some reason aren’t on her feet in the other. She starts gingerly down the stairs.

I hold my breath, riveted. There’s no point in saying anything about the scary precariousness of her descent; I’ve asked her countless times before to leave her left hand free when she comes downstairs in the morning so she can hold on to the banister rail for safety. She just won’t do it. Her argument is that this—not holding the rail—is how she’s always gone up and down the stairs, for years and years on end, both in this place and in the old house, the one she and my late father lived in for more than 30 years. Never mind that she didn’t have sciatica back then. Never mind that age and increasing deafness and recent illness have all left her with a really dicey sense of balance.

She reaches the bottom of the stairs without a mishap. Again. This time, I think, and I breathe.

And then it occurs to me how early it is and how I’ve only been out of bed for about 10 minutes, and … but … why is Mom bringing all her morning stuff downstairs so soon? Usually, I have about an hour of morning quiet, with me downstairs and Mom upstairs, both of us starting our day in our own way.

Hmmm. “You’re up and about early this morning,” I say conversationally as she bustles past me to the kitchen with her armload.

“Well, I’ve got things to do,” she replies. “I’ve got to get busy!”

Busy? At this hour? It’s barely light outside. I visualize our schedule for the day. Mom’s friend Myrna is picking her up around 11 for lunch and, afterward, a visit with one of their mutual friends, a woman who’s been ill. An AC/heat pump tech-guy is coming later in the afternoon to do some maintenance. But all that is hours and hours away. Busy?

And then, to my dismay, Mom drags her old vacuum sweeper out of the closet in the kitchen, plugs it in and switches it on. The thing’s high-pitched engine shrieks. And there she is, madly vacuuming crumbs off the kitchen floor. She’s got that slightly annoyed, determined set to her face that I’ve known and dreaded since my earliest childhood. She has Things To Do and I should be Doing Things, Too.

The morning peace? Shattered.

Trouble is, I don’t have any Things To Do. At least, I don’t just yet. Glumly, I set my laptop aside and sneak upstairs with my coffee. I’ll drink it in the bathroom, the only place in the whole condo that has a door I can close against the racket except the master suite, which is Mom’s room. Mine is the guest room, situated in the “loft” space. There’s no door. I sleep there, but the only privacy the room offers is provided by a standing screen.

 I’ll admit it: I’m frustrated, even a little angry at Mom for stealing this hour of peace from me. I value it. The television blares at top volume nearly all day every day, staying on until 10 p.m., when she goes to bed and I switch the thing off.  Mom has to turn it up loud so she can hear it. (She refuses to consider hearing aids.) So this early morning quiet, to me, is lifesaving.

And now, it’s gone.

Why, I wonder, is she so wound up already? I sigh, sitting in the bathroom on the toilet seat, warming my creaky hands on my coffee cup. She’s … old, I remind myself. While she’s perfectly lucid most of the time, Mom has moments when she goes odd and nervy. She’s always been the hyperactive type, rarely lighting for long. The last couple of years, as she’s battled such unaccustomed health problems, have literally been the only ones in her entire 81 that have ever grounded her.

She hates it passionately. “I’m so lazy!” she exclaims, frequently. “That’s all that’s wrong with me. Nothing but laziness!” Gads, I think to myself. She hasn’t got a single lazy molecule in her body. She must see me as a slug. I shake my head. We’re so different in so many ways it’s hard to believe we’re related sometimes.

I hear the electric sweeper racket stop, so I go back downstairs. As I write this, Mom is standing on tiptoe atop a chair in the kitchen, rooting through the cabinet over the oven, looking furiously for something. She already washed down the stove top, changed out the fruit basket, scrubbed all the countertops and tossed any elderly leftovers still hiding in the fridge into the trash can, their plastic containers soaking in a sinkful of hot, sudsy water. Mom’s in full toothbrush-the-corners mode. The kitchen TV is on. The Yapping Heads on Fox News are in full crank at full volume.

I might as well do ablutions, get dressed and make myself ready for the day. In the meantime, I’ll muse on my own home up in the mountains, with busy bird feeders just outside the kitchen windows, the warm, glowing winter woodstove and the wind that sighs, constantly, in the tall evergreen trees. I’ll dream about my own home, where it’s almost always quiet.  Where I even have a den, my own private refuge for when I need it.

Mom was sick yesterday and the day before, wiped out and stuck in bed with an awful headache and nausea. I know this morning’s frenetic activity is simply her way of making up for lost time. She’s restless. Antsy. Taking advantage of feeling so much better today. In her world, there’s no time to lose.

 I’m glad she’s feeling good today. Really. But I still miss my hour of peace.

 Sometimes I think semi-seriously about going back home. Mom’s health is much better than it was, after all. Her sciatica is mostly under control, her new heart pacemaker is ticking along nicely and her other ailments are being treated as well as they’re ever going to be. She’d probably be just fine without me (though she’d be lonely). I could call her every morning to check in, to remind her to take her meds (and which ones, and in which doses), go over what she’s got on the calendar for the day, and just yack with her for a while. I’ll call her again in the evenings, I tell myself. She’ll be okay, and I’ll be home. I feel like a fish out of water here. I always have.

But just as I allow myself to think Mom could mostly get along without me (and convince myself that she won’t lose her balance and fall down the stairs and lay there injured and in pain and utterly alone, unable to call for help), she has another sudden bad spell. It’s happened over and over again, and a few of them have been life-threatening. Her health is, simply, precarious. Her age is finally slowing her down. And I’m the only one in the family who can reasonably take care of her. My sister would help if she could (and frankly, she’d be better company for Mom, as both of them are birdlike and fidgety), but she lives several states away. And she has a full time job.

There is no one else.

When I decided to move back to California after living far away for so many years, it was because my parents were growing old.  As the elder daughter, I felt it was my duty to be nearby if they needed me. For a long time they didn’t.

Dad died seven years ago. She was okay for several years afterward, but Mom does need me, now. I’m glad I’m able to be here for her and I’m thankful that her health isn’t so bad that she has to live in one of those terrible nursing homes. Most of the time—even with the TV blowing my eardrums out—I enjoy being with her. I know the clock is ticking.

All I ask for is that short, peaceful hour, first thing in the morning, and I’m good to go.

Disquiet: A feeling of anxiety or worry. Synonyms include the nouns unrest and uneasiness; some synonymic verbs are perturb, disturb, trouble, worry, agitate or alarm.

“Disquiet” is the perfect word for the feeling I’ve had lately.

I’m disquieted by my aching feet. Perturbed because there’s no good reason for them to ache. The pain, which resembles (I’m guessing here, thank goodness) what it feels like after having the bottoms of your feet beaten for hours with bamboo canes, troubles me. I’m alarmed because my feet haven’t hurt like this for many, many years, and uneasy because when my feet did ache like this, I was also experiencing frequent, devastating rheuma flares. Disabling, crippling, whimper-eliciting flares.

So I’m disquieted, even though I have not experienced even one Frankenflare from out of the past. Nevertheless, I’m worried that one is lurking behind the closet door of the near-future. When my feet ache in the morning like I’ve been standing on them all night instead of lying in bed, sleeping quietly, it makes me feel sort of anxious.

I can’t help it.

I’m also concerned that by stressing over something that only might be imminent, I’m setting myself up to actually experience it. Is this just another vicious circle, courtesy of rheumatoid arthritis? Pain causes anxiety causes pain?

I think it just might be. You know the usual vicious circle: rheuma pain causes sleeplessness causes fatigue causes pain causes sleeplessness… Or that other vicious circle that goes: rheuma pain causes muscle tension causes rheuma pain causes… You get my drift.

So how do I ease my disquiet? I’m trying to ignore my stupid aching feet, but unfortunately, each time I take a step they remind me of their presence.  They also nag me when I’m sitting still, my weight off them. They grumble at me in a low, constant throb, for subjecting them to such punishment. Bamboo canes!?

But I didn’t do it! I cry at them. Leave me alone! Geez Louise!

I take my daily cocktail of anti-rheuma drugs faithfully, still hoping against hope to ward off  the Frankenflares. I also take painkillers ranging from Tylenol Arthritis formula to Tramadol to Vicodin, all with great care and only as needed, but not one of them has had any appreciable effect on the foot pain.

Which, of course, brings on more tootsie-angst.

Sigh.

Thank you, veterans, for your love for your country and your fellow Americans. Today is yours. We’re so proud and so deeply grateful for your sacrifices.

Today, so far I’ve: 1) jammed my little toe on that sneaky, hard maple dresser in the guest room in the darkest of the wee hours; 2) lost my footing on those wicked stairs down into the garage; and 3) had my forehead whacked by the edge of the evil washing machine lid.

I think I may have broken the toe. It’s quite sore, swollen and a blue around the base. But there’s nothing you can do about a broken toe. You can’t put a cast on it. And my little toe is so little I don’t think taping it to the uninjured toe next to it would do much good. So I’ve been icing it and trying to keep my weight off it when I walk. It makes for an interesting gait.

I was taking some recycling stuff to the bin in the garage. There are five steps down. Somehow, I mis-stepped on the second one, started to fall, grabbed the two-by-four banister and managed to stay on my feet as I slid/hopped down the other three steps to the floor. I twisted my back and my left hand is yelling at me for the unexpectedly heavy use. Lesson? Pay more attention on staircases.

There’s a sore, throbby knot just above my right eyebrow. That evil washer lid fell forward out of the blue just as I was leaning down and reaching into the tub for a single wet sock, one I’d missed while loading the drier. OWW!

It’s only 1:30 in the afternoon. I’m almost afraid to move—and there’s nearly a whole day and evening ahead, hours and hours during which I might unexpectedly add more mishaps to the running list. And my middle name has always, always been Grace.

And it’s Halloween.

Listen, Halloween spirits: We have treats to hand out liberally when the time comes tonight, so please, no more tricks? Take it easy on me.

Now, I think I’ll go make myself a cup of decaf. I promise to be extra careful with the boiling water.

Last night,  for my birthday, Mr Wren took me out to dinner at a favorite restaurant. Afterward, rather than point the car toward home he drove it in the opposite direction. He refused to say where we were going. He just smiled mysteriously.

Eventually, we arrived at the Three Stages at Folsom Lake College in Folsom—and my sweet man produced two tickets for world-class Cape Breton Celtic fiddler Natalie MacMaster’s one-night-only, sold-out performance.

Oh, what a huge surprise! I absolutely love Celtic music. I love the jigs, the reels, the laments and the aires. I love the jaunty, foot-tapping liveliness of the beat and the whimsical, whirling complexity of the tunes. A live performance of Celtic music is guaranteed to burst with wild energy, a here-and-now, pull-out-the-stops, gleeful celebration of life, laughter and camaraderie. And MacMaster, a native of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, is one of the best Celtic fiddlers in the world.

She and her band were absolutely brilliant. So was her six-year-old daughter Mary Francis, who played an amazingly complex reel on a miniature fiddle. And when she was done, that talented little girl joined her mama in a lively step-dance. MacMaster grinned, fiddled and danced all at the same time!

The evening was such an unexpected and thoughtful gift from Mr Wren. He gave me happy music and a happy memory for my 56^th birthday.

Curious about Natalie MacMaster? Watch and listen to her here.

Late this afternoon I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for my mom, who isn’t feeling very well right now.  As I left the store and crossed the vast parking lot to my car, I suddenly heard, over the noise of cars and traffic …

Red-winged blackbirds. Singing. Trilling, filling the air with their songs.

I stopped next to my car, shopping bag with mom’s pills in my hand, and just listened, entranced. I’ve always loved birds and loved listening to birdsong, but I can’t really identify many of them. Was that a robin? A meadowlark? A flicker? A wren?

But I know the song of the redwinged blackbird by heart.

Many years ago I was canoeing around a pond at dusk while Mr Wren fished for crappie and bass from the shore. We were way out in the countryside, surrounded by low mountains, vast stretches of wildland and a few small farms, and it was very quiet.  I dipped the oar into the still water as softly as I could, not wanting to break the sweet silence even with the sound of a splash as I glided along. I was waiting for the muskrat I’d seen duck under the surface of the pond to reappear.

And then, to my right, a bird trilled. It was close. I looked, and there, in a thick stand of cattails was perched a red-winged blackbird, his bright scarlet and yellow shoulder caps glowing against his jet black feathers. He trilled again, his beak opened wide, his bright inky eye on me. I stopped rowing and sat still, watching. Listening. I was absolutely entranced. There was nothing in the world but me and that blackbird.

He flew off after a while. I didn’t hear him again. But that moment has remained utterly clear in my memory, one of those moments filed under “precious.”

And now, today, in one of the uglier places one can be in the world—a big asphalt parking lot in front of a ubiquitous grocery store—I was being regaled with not just a redwing song, but an entire redwing chorus. It sounded like there were dozens of them. A flock of blackbirds, every one of them singing the end of the day.

I looked for the birds. There were parking lot trees dotted here and there, but I could see no blackbirds in any of them. None sitting on the lightposts, either. In the end, I gave it up. The air was full of song, but the singers were invisible. I drove back to mom’s house, smiling like a goof and feeling like I’d been given a very special gift.

I’m grateful for it. I’ve been homesick lately, wishing for my own home in the mountains, where I wake up to birdsong instead of traffic noise every morning, and where I’m surrounded by a forest of evergreens, whispering in the breeze. Hearing those blackbirds singing today was like a cool balm to my soul. And I’m grateful, too, that autumn has finally arrived with her cooler days and nights and beautiful colored leaves. I’ve had more rheuma pain lately, no doubt because of the changing barometer, but with redwing blackbirds to listen to, I don’t mind.

Click here to listen to a redwing blackbird sing. Scroll down a bit to find the recordings of the various calls and songs.

I went to live in Germany in the fall of 1986, just seven months after the ill-fated nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, USSR melted down and spread deadly radiation across the region and high into the atmosphere, where jet-stream winds wafted it over much of Europe.

But no. It probably had nothing to do with my RA because first, there’s no proof that radiation can trigger RA, and second, Germany measured only harmless, trace amounts of radioactive fallout as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and third, after seven months even that tiny bit of radioactivity was, for all intents and purposes, gone.

Right. I scratched Chernobyl off my list of possible reasons for my RA a long time ago.

Still, if you’re anything like me, you sometimes wonder what triggered your RA (or any other autoimmune disease, for that matter). While it’s not terribly rare, RA isn’t nearly as common as, say, osteoarthritis, the “wear-and-tear” variety of arthritis that most people develop, to varying degrees, as they age.

I was thinking about it all again last night. Why? Well, yesterday was a pretty good day, rheuma-dragon-wise. In fact, he hadn’t made an appearance all day. Only the hip bursitis bothered me, and even that had turned itself down to merely annoying background noise. It was sorta nice, you know?

Yes, I know you do.

So. There I was last evening, reading a news story on my laptop and enjoying a lovely after-dinner cup of coffee. I was working the laptop’s scrolling keys with my right hand. My lefthand was wrapped loosely around the warm coffee cup, which rested on the arm of the chair I was sitting in. I lifted the cup to take a swallow …

… and a breathtaking stab of pain flashed across the back of my hand and through my knuckles. My delicate metacarpals screamed with outrage and my knucklebones started an angry, insulted throbbing. I put the cup down fast and massaged my suddenly painful hand, frowning. WTF? That coffee cup hardly weighed anything!

“What happened?!” Mom asked from the sofa, startled.”What’s wrong?”

“It’s just my RA,” I sighed. “No big deal.”

And that was the truth. It wasn’t a big deal, except that lifting a coffee cup doesn’t usually hurt like a you-know-what. Once again, the rheuma-dragon had totally ambushed me.

As my hand twinged and throbbed I thought about it all again. Scary Chernobyl, while it sounded good as a reason for my RA, was out. I let my mind wander back to our arrival in the Old Country. It was Autumn. It was cold—far colder than we’d anticipated, so within two days of arriving, we’d had to run out and buy much heavier winter coats than we’d brought with us from the mild West coast of the U.S. We also bought ourselves some serious hats, scarves and gloves.

Our second weekend in Germany, my husband’s Air Force unit sponsored a Halloween hayride for off-duty personnel and their families at a German farm. My six-year-old daughter had never been on a hayride before, and the whole outing sounded like fun. Our German hosts were planning to serve grilled brats, pommes frites (French fries) and hot apple cider. I was excited.

Everything went great until it was time for the hayride. Drawn by a gigantic draft horse, the hay wagon was a huge affair made of rusted metal. It sat high off the ground, too; the lowest rail was about chest-high on me. There were no steps or any other obvious way to get in. My husband boosted himself up and over the rail, into the wagon. I handed Cary up to him, and then, hoping I wouldn’t make a fool of myself, I jumped and hoisted myself up.

Maybe I overdid it a little. With my waist at the top rail, my legs swung beneath the wagon bed. I hit my right shin, hard, against something sharp. The pain was excruciating; if you’ve ever barked your shinbone, even lightly, you can imagine it. But I didn’t cry out. I was too conscious of all the strangers around me; I was embarrassed. So I just climbed the rest of the way into the wagon and sat down on a hay bale next to my daughter and husband, forcing a smile and wondering if my shoe was filling with blood. I didn’t tell them I’d hurt myself.

My injured shin burned and throbbed for the rest of the afternoon, but no bloodstain ever showed up on my gray wool trousers (or in my shoe. So dramatic!). After we got home that evening, I closed myself into the bathroom, hiked up my trouser leg and looked, finally, at the damage.

There was a small hole in my shin about the size of the fingernail on my index finger. I’d worn pantyhose under my trousers for warmth; the nylon was stuck to it. I soaked it free, gently, and put some antibacterial salve and a adhesive bandage on it. The wound stung and burned, and my shin was tender for a few days, but I didn’t worry about it further. I didn’t see a doctor.

Fortunately, it didn’t get infected. Over time, the wound healed, leaving a shallow dent in my shinbone beneath the skin.  A couple of months later the first symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis started.

Could that shinbone injury have triggered an overactive immune response? Maybe. Last night I googled this question: “Can an injury trigger rheumatoid arthritis?” I didn’t expect much, so it was a surprise when pages of information showed up. One of the first five was this one:

http://rheumatology.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/3/262.full

Titled “A case–control study examining the role of physical trauma in the onset of rheumatoid arthritis” in Rheumatology, the official journal of the British Society for Rheumatology, the authors of this paper believe that yes, physical trauma, such as an injury like I got that day on the hayride, can trigger the onset of RA.

Read it—it’s an interesting study.  There’s no way of knowing, so many years later, whether my injured shinbone started it all or not, but the possibility is there. Does it make any difference?

Only in that I can, if I want to, call that long-ago day out at a German farm the probable reason I contracted severe rheumatoid arthritis when I was only 31 years old. There’s a certain comfort in being able to blame that rusty old German hay wagon for the debilitating disease that’s shaped so much of my life since, and that continues to shape each day, like it or not.

The big difference now is that the RA pain—after that first, savage bite—generally subsides to an annoying but bearable, twinging throb. Gone are the horrific, tortuous flares that lasted for days before fading as quickly as they’d started. Gone are the days when I limped on the right foot, then three days later limped on the left, no doubt making my co-workers think I was faking it. Gone are the times when walking at all required gathering all my courage.

And gone, thank goodness, is the awful, creeping, bewildered terror that accompanied each flare. Not knowing is awful. But now, thanks to the Internet and many good online blogger friends, I’m educated about RA and–just as important–I know I’m not alone. And I finally have a weapon—an Arava, sulfasalazine, and plaquenil bomb— that works just well enough to blunt my rheuma-dragon’s fangs.

For that I can thank medical research and studies like the one I cited above. Maybe one day they’ll come up with a cure.

Crrrrack! Bam! KaaaBOOM BOOM BOOM boom kaabam boom …bamboom… boom…

Silence.

I lay awake in the dark, eyes wide, heart beating wildly as my mind reeled, trying to make sense of the stunning, fantabulous racket that had just jerked me so rudely out of a sound sleep. I blinked. There’s a busy road, one of just two main thoroughfares that traverse this densely populated foothill community from north to south. It runs just a hundred yards or so behind Mom’s condo. Traffic moves fast. You can hear cars whizzing by even during the darkest hours of the night.

Had there just been a horrific accident? Should I get up? Look out the window, try to see past the back yard fence and through the screen of trees t? Were there a couple of cars—at least!—laying crushed, mangled and upside-down out there? People hurt? Could anyone have survived such a catastrophic, violent collision?

I tested my sleep-stiffened hips and legs, gingerly preparing to sit up and go to the window when there was a startling flash of blue-white light. Almost at the same moment came the explosion, another otherworldly crashing, ear-splitting cacophony of booms, as if giants were rolling house-sized boulders instead of bowling balls down the road just outside my window.

And suddenly, I knew. It was thunder.

Thunder.  Now I remembered the weather guy on the evening news talking about thunderstorms possibly moving through the area overnight. No big deal, really, except for the threat of random wildfires caused by lightning strikes.

So the ear-splitting noise that had torn me so suddenly out of my sleep was nothing more fearsome than the concussion of sound caused by bolts of lightning.

Still. Thunderstorms are fairly rare in California at any time of year, but even more so in the summer. Along with their rarity, for some reason the storms have always been some distance from wherever I happened to be. For me, thunderstorms were nothing but rain, lightning flashes and thunder that was merely a soft rumble in the background.

Well, this was no quiet rumble. It sounded like the storm was hovering 10 feet or so above the roof.

As I laid there awake, I became aware of the RA and bursitis pain in my hips, hands and, oddly, ankles. It was relatively mild pain, a naggy throb that sort of waxed and waned along with the roiled air pressure accompanying the storm. At one point I could feel the pressure building up suddenly inside my right ankle, so intensely that I thought, a little wildly, it’s going to explode! A few seconds later the pressure eased back and it returned to that irritating little throb.

I considered getting up to take some tramadol, but a glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand reminded me that not enough time had passed since the dose I’d taken just before getting into bed. It had been about four hours, long enough for the drug to have mostly worn off, but I needed to wait for at least six hours to take any more.

I sighed, shifted and turned onto my side, cuddling down deeper into my pillow and blanket. The storm seemed to be moving along. There were no more flashes and thunderclaps. I drifted off, hoping vaguely that I’d just sleep on through the pain until morning, and that there would be no more storms to wake me up.

There weren’t. I slept.

Today, with the weather still very unstable and the big low pressure area stalled in place over northern California, I’m one big ache. It took more than an hour for the overnight stiffness in my joints, particularly my hips, knees and ankles, to ease. And while I’m certainly not moving like a nicely oiled machine, I could probably beat the tin man in a race to the liveoak trees down the street as long as I hid his oilcan.

The low pressure and unstable weather is supposed to move out later today. I’m anticipating some additional discomfort as the air pressure rises, but once it stabilizes I expect most of the pain to dissipate along with it. I’m never without some level of pain these days—so different from how the rheuma dragon used to attack me, when the intermittent flares were huge and intense and always disabling, and almost always lasted several days at a time before suddenly disappearing without warning or explanation—but I’ve learned over time to cope. Even given the intractable hip bursitis I live with now along with the rheumatoid arthritis, it could all be so much worse. I’m deeply grateful for the RA drugs  I have now that keep it under control. And grateful for tramadol and, occasionally, the stronger painkillers that allow me to keep on keeping on.

Autumn is on its way, and after that (if we’re very lucky; cross your fingers?) the western rainy season should begin. Bring on the thunderstorms. I can take it.

… finally. Relief from the cat-bite infection, which turned into cellulitis around the bites and along my shinbone to the ankle. Blessed relief from the 100-degree-plus, week-and-a-half-long heat wave (today it barely topped 80 degrees). Relief from repeated runs to the VA medical center for emergency care, from the hospital stay, and from follow-up appointments. Relief from IV needles, blood draws for tests and cultures, and blood pressure cuffs.

And, best of all, relief from worry.

Today, the infection is but a tiny glimmer of its former bad ‘ol self. The punctures have completely scabbed over and are drying up, and the angry redness under and around them, while still present, shrinks smaller and smaller each day. There is absolutely no pain any longer, even when I press down near the wounds or along my shinbone. The huge needle-caused bruises on my inner arms are fading slowly. And instead of feeling like my get-up-and-go got up and went, I feel normal. Not trembly. Not low. Normal.

As Martha Stewart used to say, “this is a Good Thing.”

Of course, my RA hands and bursitis hips are back to their normal, too, which is stiff and twingy and achy. Hey, no prob. I can take it. But I still think it’s amazing how the body can abandon its usual joint-and-bursae-bullying to wage war in earnest against a real enemy. I’m thankful that it does, too.

And I’ve learned another thing about fighting off a serious infection while being 55 years old and immuno-suppressed: don’t think you can just hop up and resume your normal routine after three days in a hospital bed connected to IV antibiotics. It’ll take you another week to recover from such feather-headed foolheartiness.

I’m going to try shopping and cooking for my aunt and uncle again tomorrow. I think I’ve rested and healed long enough this time.

…the entire weekend, which I spent in the hospital when the cat-bite infection went south on me. I went to the ER on Friday afternoon because the bites looked like they might be getting worse, expecting nothing more than a stronger antibiotic prescription. Instead, they put me in the hospital for a round of stronger IV antibiotics and so they could keep a close eye on the infected bites. I came home today, armed with more oral antibiotics.  The condition of the bites  is back to about how they were at this time last week. I’ll write more when I’ve got a little more time, gang; probably tomorrow night. Right now it’s getting late and I’m due at my aunt and uncle’s house early tomorrow morning …