Unfurling

For the past year I've been under treatment for what I refer to as a plumbing problem. (I decline to bore you with the gory details, but if you want them, click here.) I've suffered from it for about 20 years. I'm lucky, sort of, in that it doesn't threaten my life, livelihood or mobility; it just hurts. A lot.

Or rather, it did. The treatment involves a highly restricted diet (no chocolate, coffee, cheese or tomatoes; no fruits except blueberries and pears; no pork; no vinegar -- do you have any idea how many condiments contain vinegar? -- and those are just the high points), a rigid schedule of fluid intake and outgo, four different medications, and biweekly visits to the doctor's office for additional treatment (it was one of these that kicked off the saga of Peter and Paul with which I regaled you the other day). All of which is an extremely royal pain in the neck, except for one thing: it's working.

At my first appointment a year ago I was asked how much pain I was in on a scale of 1 to 10, and I think I said about 3. Now that it's gone? It was at least a 5. I don't know how I lived with it all those years. I should say it's mostly gone: I'm down to 1, maybe 1/2 on good days, of which there are many. It's a minor nuisance, not a ball and chain.

I was spending a ton of energy keeping the pain at bay. Now that it's (mostly) gone, I feel like a leaf unfurling on a warm spring day. I'm not sure what I'll do with my newfound freedom yet; at the moment I'm just enjoying the sunshine.