Okay, you guys.
This is a little longer than I expected it to be(although not as long as my “T-Anon Explains the Metaphysics of His Life” post, thank God): but to me, this is CRAZILY mind-boggling. Like, I just keep sitting here marveling at the thought, and at how powerful of a realization it is. Shaking my head in absolute wonder. And since it has to be the most dramatic recent intersection of our metaphysics and this world’s circumstances, I REALLY wanted to write it down. So if you have time, take a look at it. Because to me it really is incredible. So very little about this is objectively quantifiable that something this specific is a huge big deal. (Plus, it’s good news for a change!)
So: my newest(let’s call him X) has been floating around since about mid-2016, and the intensity even *before* I allowed myself to acknowledge him was terrifying. As I’ve said so often, I’ve never had any luck refusing in these circumstances(not, to be absolutely honest, that I’ve ever really tried/had to try to any significant degree before). But in January of this year, he finally kicked the door open and landed with a flaming burst of wreckage, and since then has had the reins a startling amount of the time. (A little more on that toward the end of this post.)
He broke ALL the “rules” that I thought I’d known for 25+ years of dealing with the phenomenon: he, by just EXISTING, blew holes in all my expectations. (Kind of like — actually, EXACTLY like — racing motocross for a living and then being handed a bike that you only realize is powered by a fucking pair of jet engines once you turn the throttle.)
And whereas, say, I/we can spend whole days just chilling with (one of my wife’s people) (and/or, often, Company™️), reading or sketching or working on my designs, and while there’s intensity(oh boy, is there), there are also periods of calm— X does not “chill”. I don’t think he knows how(yet). So most of my time this year, particularly from Friday-Tuesday, has been filled with some of the most emotionally intense conversations, interactions, and situations I think I’ve ever endured.
Almost exactly three months ago — on the night of January 11/12th, to be exact, not that it’s significant *coughs* — a Major Shift In X’s Existence happened.
(Maybe we can call it the Quickening.)
On the afternoon of January 12th, I/the body had my last three-month appointment with my primary care doctor, and my last A1C check. I’ve been a “poorly controlled” diabetic for several years, even with Lantus and all my best efforts, and even the ER doctors kept warning me that with everything else I suffer from, kidney failure might be somewhere on the horizon. Or worse things.
Today, I had another three-month check. And despite worsening symptoms in other areas(some scary stuff, too, but let’s set that aside for just now), he sat back at the end of the appointment to tell me, “Now, for the positives”. I kind of hung my mouth open, because when was the last time a doctor said anything like that about my health? I think literally never, with the possible exception of “I don’t think you’ll die today”.
My A1C has dropped *multiple* full points since my last appointment. Never mind the fact that no matter what I did, I couldn’t make a dent in it before now. Never mind the fact that I used to laugh kind of bitterly and sadly when they told me to “change my diet” to manage it: if it wasn’t for the food pantry here, there are months when we’d literally risk malnutrition(for which I’ve been treated before). Not exactly a lot of options there.
And never mind the fact that I’ve just sort of been waiting for him to move me to short-acting insulin instead, and that was just that. No, he told me that I’m now in the A1C range of “manageable”. In fact, I’m now less than 3/4 of a point away from “not technically in full diabetic range”. (This might only be for now, okay: I accept that. It might well leap up again.) But.
There was a huge, dramatic shift in my health — at *least* in that one area — in the last three months.
The exact duration of X’s domain as Official Acknowledged Major Fronter #3, and his reign as person with the most time actively being in front.
And I realized with dawning amazement that of course this was not a coincidence. After all:
It was X that got me up and moving again more; apparently he paces like a caged animal when he’s talking about emotionally heavy subjects, ranting, or generally in the middle of something intense – which, if you hadn’t picked up on the implication, is pretty much all the time when he’s fronting. But I measured and calculated it, and in the last three months, that adds up to miles and MILES of walking. You can actually see the track he left in the carpet between the bedroom, our hallway, and the kitchen over and over and over.
And for someone whose body generally can’t walk any distance longer than a block without the cane, that is a Very Big Deal. He is notorious for pushing through pain, like my still slightly out of place hip(for which they’re sending me back to spinal surgeon guy, along with the eight hundred fucked-up discs in my back, the stenosis and arthritis, and everything else), and exhaustion.
He literally epitomizes that moment when you feel like you’re too tired or you hurt too much or you’re too weak to get up and do something— but instead you start that single forward motion that gets you up, gets you going until you realize that yes, you actually CAN do the thing: you just needed to kickstart the ignition.
It was X who cared again about the function of his body to fight and train, and spent hours(slowly, but there) back at training that I haven’t physically been able to do more than five minutes of since 2011. It was him who inspired me to actually use some of that years and years of martial arts training and go through Kendo routines with my better half. (There are a majority of days when I still can’t, despite his best intentions, but I never would’ve gone back to it at ALL, even for the little bit of time of which I’m capable right now; they’re sending me back to cardiology for my weird little arrhythmia and the strange, terrifying congested-heart feeling I’ve been having).
(And I HAVE to be honest: the… “extracurricular activities” that have been going on quite a bit more than was usual for me with my illness, can’t have hurt either. After all, it counts as exertion, right? 😉 )
But in all seriousness, it was also X who’s been caring enough about not only his body function but his body *image*(or, at least, the shockingly jarring discord between his memory of his own body and the one he sees now), and his fluidity of motion, that got me checking my weight more closely, making sure I take the diuretics, and — as almost impossible as it is on a fixed income and utterly no room financially to spare for error — trying my damnedest to change my diet enough to make the smallest difference wherever I can.
Like, eating more protein and salads, keeping the water going, making sure my portion sizes are healthy, and paying attention to my blood sugar and how often I’m actually eating. (Sometimes, like now — when we are doing the end-of-the-month scrape and have literally no food in the house, it IS impossible, and I have to eat whatever I can afford. But.)
X who has the self-control, shockingly enough, to refrain from indulgences. (His control is absolutely shitty in a *lot* of things, but as far as deprivation-as-training, he’s a pro. 😕 Whereas (Y) runs the show a majority of the time, but ohhhh boy, is self-indulgence his forté.)
And it’s X who has done a good majority of all these things because someone believes in him, and motivates him to run on the proverbial treadmill to keep going. Through a lot of nights(and days) of ranting and tears and screaming and talking and pacing and arguing and then lying in the dark realizing that something monumental has shifted, is shifting... can you conjugate your own evolution? Regardless.
(I’m not going to get into what it’s like to have “a bad guy”, or justifications or explanations or any of that here right now; if you want to know, you can always ask. 24/7, you can leave questions or comments or anything. I’ve just found that very few people actually care enough to do it. Very few people care to try to understand. Just know that it is WAY more complicated than you probably know, not at all easy or simple or “fun” — but then again, who among our people is, really? Meh — and a LOT of things are being worked on, kind of like pulling teeth with a chainsaw. But it IS happening. Just not publicly.)
My point is(and I think I’m documenting this in so much detail because I’ve started to think of these explanations like blog posts, as opposed to just more noise on Facebook or Twitter, etc., where “nobody wants to read a novella”): no matter what else, my diabetes was a raging garbage fire. Even with long-acting insulin, even with as much care as I tried to take, my A1C leapt to what my former cardiologist called “appalling” levels and then went to 9.7 and stayed there. No matter what I did.
With my clotting history and my blood pressure and everything else, every fucking insurmountable obstacle, I was consistently marked as an “uncontrolled diabetic” by the hospital, and it was pretty much assumed that it would just continue to get worse; I’ve had sugars of almost 400 pretty regularly until this year(and no, it was NOT directly reactive to my diet; it kept happening even when I was barely eating). I didn’t dare take steroids I needed for my lungs and several other things because of the risk of escalating my high sugars further. I get constant infections.
And now, after three months of routinely constant X Time™️ — I realized this amazing fact because I realized my last three-month check was literally the day after Monumental Things Happened And Began — my levels have dropped to what my doctor says is “what we call ‘managed’ diabetes”. Had it dropped another three-quarters of a point, I would NOT TECHNICALLY EVEN BE IN DIABETIC RANGE ANYMORE. I know I’ve said this already, but I just need to say it again in this context. My strange existence succeeded in accomplishing something that none of my other efforts could manage. And in a very specific, actually measurable way.
I’m not holding my breath that it’ll stay down, not yet. And my heart and GI stuff have started giving me more severe problems again: today I also got referred both back to cardiology and back to GI for a scope(and he added an MRA to the MRV order for my brain condition and sent them over). So I *am* still scared. I’m by no means “cured”.
But with ALL of my co-morbid conditions, and the risks that come with the absolute shit!net of issues that I have, I kept getting warned by doctors and the ER that the diabetes could be the thing that pushed one or the other over the edge. So, that being said: I can say without hyperbole that it is absolutely possible that having X amongst the Triad of fronters might actually have ended up saving my life in the long run.
I’d really like to dedicate the little celebration we’re having of this to all of the cruel people and armchair psychiatrists that want/ed to tell me(and my wife, of course) that we’re wish-fulfilling nutbags that should die(and that’s the nicer way of repeating some of the thousands of messages I’ve gotten over the years) or whatever Insult Flavor of the Day is cool... for the last twenty years. 👊
I mean, SHIT.
The universe has its reasons... even though right now the cosmic joke seems to be keeping my body alive so that X can finish whatever he’s here to accomplish.
...Okay then.
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