It is a painful irony that we’ve lived in some of the most beautiful tropical locations you can search out in this world during the last five years, yet my lymphedema makes it more difficult for me to fully enjoy them.
My feet are on my mind right now because on Tuesday this week I came down with cellulitis.
When that happens, it happens fast and quietly–sort of like a falling coconut. I was fine on Tuesday morning at 10am. At 11am, when I got up from my desk I was limping, badly. It felt like I’d strained a muscle, or wrenched a ligament (yes, while sitting down, typing. Don’t laugh. That’s really what I thought had happened.) At least, that’s what I thought had happened until I discovered that the lymph nodes further up my leg were painful to the touch, and then I guessed what I was in for.
By 2pm I was on antibiotics and the countdown had begun.
It takes 36-48 hours for the antibiotics to stop the spread of infection and to start to reverse things (a process which takes weeks to complete). Except, this time, things were not looking any better 48 hours later, and the doctors in the emergency clinic here switched drugs and put me on IV antibiotics.
They’re working, I’m happy to report. My fever is gone. The pain is drastically reduced. But I’m five days into almost complete bed rest, with six more to go, and it’s frustrating. Plus, I have caught the cold the boys have been sharing around, which seems particularly unfair. I mean, you’d think that all the extra white blood cells that have been marshaled to deal with the massive infection could at least squash a cold virus on the side. Right?
Anyway, that is the state of affairs here. I am on the bed. An under-the-weather Mike has dragged himself out this morning with two little boys who are themselves getting over colds. It’s sunny and sparkling outside. I am oh-so-grateful for things like money for drugs and doctors, air conditioners, and beds with soft, clean sheets. And I am also alone and restless and thinking about life limitations that I would wish away… if I could.
A couple of months ago when we were settling in here, we finally started to unpack some of the boxes we stowed away during the early months of our time in Laos. Five years ago, before I was pregnant with Dominic, I boxed up a lot of the things I knew I would not need in Luang Prabang—my work clothes from LA, some leather jackets and handbags, shoes. In the final stages of sifting and sorting in Vanuatu, we opened some of those boxes for the first time.
I expected it to be fun. I could hardly remember what was in those boxes, so I thought it would be sort of like shopping without having to pay anything.
It wasn’t quite like that.
For starters, about a third of the stuff was ruined. Leather jackets had molded. Some of the shoes fell apart in my hands—the soles crumbling into rubbery chunks when I picked them up. Anything white had turned yellow. Special things, packed carefully away, were now worthless.
The interesting thing was, I hardly cared. I’d been living without this stuff for more than five years. I don’t need most of it. I don’t even really know where to put it. Much more confronting than the ruin of some of my stuff was just how much stuff was in these boxes—way more than I needed, even back then. Some of the clothes still had tags on them, for crying out loud.
No, the primary sadness I felt as I sorted through those boxes didn’t come from the decay of my things, but the stark reminder they presented of the slowly unfolding decay of my body.
None of the shoes in these boxes (the ones that didn’t fall apart in my hands, that is) fit anymore. I couldn’t even get most of them on my right foot.
I try not to spend a lot of time thinking about my lymphedema. It does take some attention, of course. After all, I have to put on a compression stocking first thing in the morning. I need to go to therapy every week. I can never walk out the door in bare feet. As the heat and humidity rise, I must count the cost of being outdoors. I should elevate my legs at night, rub them down, and treat every scratch as a potential medical emergency. Within the immovable boundaries of this reality, though, I try hard not to give my feet too much attention.
Occasionally, however, something comes along that drives home the things that I miss. Walking barefoot on the beach, for example, and feeling the sand shift and scrunch beneath my toes. Wearing skirts. Shoes that fit well. Seeing my ankle bones. Being able to consider a four hour hike.
Most of all, though, I miss not thinking about my right leg. A growing proportion of the time, now, it’s uncomfortable. It’s there. Hot. Stuffed-tight-swollen. Stiff. Sometimes it aches, way down deep inside. Sometimes, particularly when I’m driving, I’ll shift my foot and pain will play across the surface of my skin like a brief, bright, flicker of sheet lightening.
Much of the time I can accept that this just is. I can focus elsewhere. I can turn easily toward gratitude. But, sometimes, boxes are unpacked that force me to recognize what has changed in five years—that remind me that things will only ever get worse in this regard. Or I’ll get up feeling fine and by nightfall I’ll be on the bed with streaks of red climbing my leg, running a fever, and consumed by joint pain.
I’m sure I don’t need to say that it’s much harder to ignore immovable limitations and turn towards gratitude in those precise moments.
But that’s the way with these things, isn’t it? When you’re burdened with an unpleasant constant in your life, you’re also tasked with a constant discipline—keeping things in perspective and not ceding too much mental space to dark thoughts and feelings. And whether you can feel grateful and chirpy during the lowest of the lows within your particular boundary conditions is not an appropriate yardstick to use when judging how well you’re doing at thriving overall.
No. The lowest of the lows is the time you get to acknowledge that things feel really sucky, and you wish they were different. It’s when you get to binge watch DVDs on the laptop, and read fluffy novels, and eat the chocolate ice cream in the freezer (assuming you can get up and get to it). It’s when you tell yourself that it’s OK, that you’ll start reaching for perspective again tomorrow, or the day after, or when the fever comes down and the needles come out.
Then, of course, when that day comes, that’s what you need to do. Start reaching for perspective, all over again.
