The Perfect Cocktail

I have been having all these aches and pains with a variety of different descriptors, such as sharp and stabbing to dull and achey. I can't tell which is the most bothersome as they are both very uncomfortable. I was questioning a site to see if I have arthritis and found one full of women talking about how much pain they are in and how many different sensations it causes.

Some of the women listed their medications, the latest cocktails, and prognoses for those issues. I may as well have been looking at my previous perscriptions, because I have run across many of those meds in the last 20 years. Lexapro, neurontin, synthroid, vicodin, steriods, lithuim, fentanyl, cortisols, diclophenac, prednisone. And the diagnoses include: hypertension, obesity, depression, GERD, hysterectomy, hernia, gall stones and the list goes on.

I wanted to post a question asking about their childhood. Was there a lot of stress, fear, anger or denial? Was there violence? Worse?

In recovery therapy it is thought that 90% of obese people have been sexually abused.

Why do so few take the majority of the meds? Why are most of them women? I take seven separate medications daily, not counting the few that wait in the wings (example -- water pills and other pain meds). What is really going on here?

My first thought is that we complain about so many seemingly vague symptoms and doctors, who just want us to feel better, give us what they think will work. Yet how does a doctor know if it's fibro or arthritis? Is that why we use so many common ingredients in our cocktails? They throw the same meds at us for different diagnoses, kinda like throwing spaghetti on the wall to see if sticks. And what about the different ingredients we go through to get the correct cocktail? And the years that takes? It was 9 years for me alone.

My fibro symptoms seem very similar to those with arthritis. I bet the majority of us have other similarities as well. I mean body type, mind set and history. And with all this in mind I must say I'm not really complaining. My perfect cocktail keeps me off the couch and on my Trikke. That's the most important issue to me right now.

"So Happy I Could Die"

This is a song title by Lady GaGa that struck a chord with me. Her version is about her "addiction monster." My first thoughts were far from that.

I remember a day in Jr. High when I had a hall pass for some reason or other and I ran into my "omg, if-he-talks-to-me-I'll-just-die" crush -- Craig Lunsford. He was cruising the halls without a pass as usual.

I don't know why but he stopped me and we had a conversation. He was nice and I forgot my quietness and chubbyness. I remember thinking that if I died right at that moment, I would be complete."So happy I could die."

This is a concept that has puberty all over it. Those years when everything was at a high pitch and immediate response was not soon enough. And yet being "so happy..." has a timelessness to it. All those insecurities and fears are dimmed.

I recently added the song to my play list. Yesterday it came on and I thought of Craig Lunsford. I remembered that feeling of utter fulfillment, a feeling of completeness that a teenage girl gets from a teenage boy. Back then it carried me away.

It's been a few decades since a teenage boy started my heart racing. My trikke carries me away these days. "So happy I could die" now has to do with the wind in my hair, the warm sun on my skin, the completeness that fuels my trikke and me to go forward.

Ms. Trikke USA

When I trikke I take the attitude of a beauty queen on a float. It's not because I'm feeling really beautiful that day or anything like that. When people look at me while I'm on my Trikke, they are looking at me through the eyes of their inner child.

Most people light up when they see me, asking "is it fun?" My smile, also furnished by my inner child, conveys yes. For that brief exchange it is two adults forgetting who they are for a few minutes letting the playground days come back. It really is magical, and it really is fun.

I'm a big girl now, with a big girl helmet and a track that is not limited to the school blacktop. It is great fun tooling around my coastal city. I know where not to go and where to spend most of my time. Being an adult has its high points and low points. Being a trikker is all golden.

Need I Say More?

Can a bike do that?

Breaking Through

Yesterday I went on a trikke ride, the first in a week. I went as far as my last trikke-trip. I still wanted to go farther, but I thought I had better not push it, so I stopped. Today I feel fine and ready to go again. My neck is pushed up against that glass ceiling.

Will it be today I break through my self imposed limitations? I keep bumping up against that imaginary limit and thinking that is all I'm good for. I have a new perspective today. I need to keep bumping up against that ceiling and I will eventually find a crack. After all, I am not trapped under water hoping to break through a wall of ice. It's just another goal.

I think trikking is a barometer into what is going on with my everyday life. Some days I can't get on the trikke, and then there are days like today when I can't wait to get out there and on that. I am aiming for the pier. It's about six miles round trip. Watch out for falling glass...

Sidelined

My knee started whining again last week. I don't know what I did, I was just innocently trikking. When I stepped off the Trikke I stepped into pain. It went from my knee, up to my hip and back down to my knee. I had to walk home on it, 6 blocks. It was hard to breathe my leg hurt so badly.

What happened? I have no clue. I didn't fall off my Trikke, didn't step on or off incorrectly. I have no idea what I did. But it sidelined me for a week, just when I was getting stronger and was pushing through to the next level.

I have been suspicious about this next level and how I fit into it. I seem to revisit the top of my highest level and am never able to break through to the next. Something happens and I find myself starting over, again and again.

I've recognized this pattern in other aspects of my life. I feel good, no, I feel great, and then I catch a cold. I'm down for a week and have to restart my fitness gains over again. It happened in my professional life way, way, back when I had one. I never broke my own glass ceiling. And especially in previous dieting attempts, I get down to a certain number or average and then I trip myself up, gain all the weight back, get frustrated, eat like a bear before hibernation and then hibernate. I hide until I get my fight back, and then the whole cycle starts again.

Stop! Stop I say! I want to do things differently this time. I know I can do things differently this time. I will do things differently this time. Admitting the problem is the first step, right? And so I plan on trikking later today. It has been only 7 days off the Trikke so I should be able to step back into the level I was at during my last ride. Right... ?

Look...

The Dreaded Question

It is easy reconnecting with people from my past with the latest technology. Thanks to Facebook, it is not just the alumni association that can keep up with me after years of being a ghost.

I get a thrill from finding a long lost pal. I also get a thrill out of discovering what they have done with their lives. Unfortunately the dreaded question follows, "what have you been up to?" They want to know the same about me.

The path I chose is far from traditional, even when the lack of marriage and kids is off the table. I remember that one decision that would forever change the direction of my future. In 1993, I called in sick and never worked again in my chosen profession. I was stripped of my executive status and for a year or so worked temp jobs where office skills weren't so important. From account executive to advertising director to answering phones.

It was a pesky major depressive episode. They don't call them nervous breakdowns anymore. It was the reason I called in sick that fateful day. Next was the nine years it took to get the meds right, then the next six years trying to get my fight back. We are talking 15 years of focusing on myself. Most don't choose that path, I was plunked down right in the middle of it.

I couldn't help myself one day, on Facebook. I looked up an old friend. I was taken by her success. I just had to comment on how happy I was for her. Her reply to me was "what have you been up to?" Innocent enough and yet how do I answer a question like that on Facebook, the Xmas newsletter of everyday living?