Progress | Dysfunction Junction

I remember the very first time that I couldn't feel my fingers. It began in my middle finger that morning. The finger just got increasingly numb until I couldn't feel it at all. Then it moved into my fingers next to it. Eventually it also moved onto my thumb.

The very first time I experienced it I cried out of pain, but by the third time I cried out of fear. I was scared that I was going to lose the use of my hand, but, of course, I haven't. My hand is still working, just not at full capacity.

For the past couple of weeks I've been noticing a pattern, but not recording it in my journals because I'm scared again. I'm beginning to lose feeling in my legs. It started with my feet going to sleep. I recall them doing that more a few years ago, but the doctor said that was due to having diabetes. Since I've been controlling my diabetes with an organic diet and marijuana I haven't experienced my feet falling asleep until a few weeks ago. It began happening daily. I massaged them and noted it in my head.

Then I started losing feeling in my legs. I noticed one day that I started scratching my legs and wondered briefly why that was. Went on my merry way until I began to notice that I didn't feel how hard I was doing it and my legs ended up with bloody scratches all over.

Tonight I massaged on some coconut oil onto my feet because they've been uncharacteristically dry lately. I didn't feel my feet really. It was like they were there but it wasn't my body part. I rubbed the rest of my body. Sensation has diminished significantly in the last two weeks in my entire body.

And, so, I cry out in fear again. But I'm not just crying over the loss of sensation.  I'm losing something worse. I'm losing my words and thoughts. I've been having memory problems for a while now. I'm having difficulty accessing commonly used vocabulary words. Instead I find myself hemming and hawing while I try to think of an alternative. I find these memory problems annoying and upsetting, but nothing prepared me for what happened today while I was writing.

I was working on my bio for a flyer because I've been asked to speak on GMOs. I had to take the bio off of this website and somehow get it down to two sentences and have it speak to who I am and somehow convince readers to attend the class. Kind of tricky writing, but not horribly difficult. I had to look at the paragraph several times. Not only could I not piece together the sentences, but I couldn't understand my own writing because my brain was confused.

It was truly devastating, but I haven't cried about it. I don't think I can wrap my head around the fact that this may be the best my writing will ever be. My brain will start deteriorating. It's a fact that happens with most neurological disorder patients. The sooner I accept it the better.  I have a family medical history of Alzheimer's, so it was going to happen anyway. I always thought I had more time, but it doesn't look like I do.

This illness seems like it's on a fast train with a missing conductor. All I can do at this point is get out of the way. I'm not going to cry about my writing. No matter how much it hurts me to see dyslexia type typos, no matter how many sentences I have to fix, no matter how many angry tears I brush aside I will never stop trying to get my brain to function and I refuse to give into fear. Fear is a small measly man sitting on a doorstop waiting to pounce on it's next victim and I solemnly refuse to let that be me.