Ethereal
Zu sits off to my right, between the white curtains, staring forlornly out the window. This has been her custom in recent weeks, when I am on the computer. I never see her do it any other time. There have been a few birds floating back in for whatever reason, probably confused because it feels like spring, but really isn’t. She’s fascinated, like only a young cat can be, by their flight patterns. It probably doesn’t help the birds out much that the trees are still barren and so the nests that are hanging out in the branches are exposed. She looks over at me every now and then to check and make sure I’m there. If I had my camera handy, I’d try to take a picture to illustrate.
I start my new schedule today, so I am home early to work on school. Not getting to far on that… Part of it is a motivation problem. I have so many other distracting things that I would rather be doing. And I feel tired. When ever I go to the doctors to get my immunatherapy shots, my body automatically thinks it’s time to go into hibernation mode. Can’t blame it really, I keep introducing things that it doesn’t like… I’d want to curl up and sleep or die too. I have to leave shortly for the project site, so no time to squeeze in a nap.
So, some good positive news? The physical therapy has been working for my hands and I might be able to avoid surgery after all. We are trying to build my muscles up to get my grip strength up. Currently, in both hands, I can grip with 65 pounds of pressure or something like that. My goal is 90 pounds. I have been forewarned that if I want to keep that final grip up, I have to continuously work out - strength training wise. I am already prepared for this. I have also been forewarned that I shouldn’t attempt to do what I was doing before to an extreme. Quite honestly, I do not want to be put back out to field work unless it’s engineering related (i.e. supervisory, coordination, scheduling, etc). But, when it comes to training others in the tasks I use to do, I need the strength built up so I can actually show them properly, especially if they’ve never done it before. This is my primary goal in strengthening my grip. I’ll know if this is a possibility in a few more months.
I’m able to do a lot of things that I had to forgo since starting physical therapy. For instance, I can spend more time on the computer, I can hand write a lot more, I can crochet again, I can do some simple wire work in jewelry as long as I remember to take sufficient breaks.
I think that’s a really big improvement considering how much pain I was in nearly 2 years ago.