Month: November 2024

Unplugging From Politics

Well, the election did not go as I had hoped, and those of you who follow this post know why. If not, read the section about the President-Elect here.

A feeling of dread grew as Tuesday night progressed, so I stopped watching the election results and tried to get some sleep before the dread turned into despair. When I finally got out of bed after a fitful night of tossing, turning and catching bits of sleep here and there, my emotions were raw, and my anxiety was in the stratosphere. The despair I had wanted to avoid landed with a thud when the outcome was confirmed shortly after I awoke. 

After stewing all morning and into the early afternoon while trying to concentrate on work, I had an epiphany. Life is too short, and I can’t keep pissing into the wind like this. I can’t continue to be consumed by national politics like I was in 2016, 2020 and allowed myself to be these last few months. It isn’t worth living and dying by who occupies the oval office in the MAGA era.    

This is not sour grapes. While I believe the nation’s decision is extremely misguided, that the electorate completely missed the long-term implications of their decision, and that we are about to enter a particularly dangerous period in our nation’s history, that ship has sailed and there is nothing I can do about it. What I can do, however, is control how I adjust and adapt to what will follow over the next four, long years. 

I’m heading into my late sixties, have fought the good fight, and it is time to move on. I am not going to torture myself anymore by following the news and being inundated with stories about the Armageddon that is coming and the chaos that is sure to follow. So, I’m done. 

I’ll grieve for a while and get that out of my system, but to preserve my sanity I’ve decided to completely unplug from politics. No more CNN, no more MSNBC, no more 60 Minutes, no more discussing politics, no more of anything like that. No more deluge of political e-mails predicting the end of the world as we know it, as I literally spent close to fifteen minutes last night unsubscribing from all the stuff that was lingering in my mailbox. 

I’m not going to bang my head against the wall with the MAGA crowd because experience has proven there is no reasoning or give and take with them, so let them own what follows. Reap the Whirlwind, as they say. It’ s time for the younger generations to take responsibility for their own future because mine is comparatively limited and they have the most to lose.  I’ll make my voice heard at the ballot box.       

I’ll stay informed at a superficial level about what is going on nationally by occasionally glancing at the titles of the news feeds that keep populating my phone and tablets, and follow what is going on locally and within my state more closely. I’ll dip my toes into the national waters the night of the mid-term elections, and of course in 2028. But other than that, it is time to move on. I’m putting the blinders on and will concentrate on what is truly important: family, friends, my health, and getting some Zen back into my life.

Sports have always been my fallback as a means of escape, but I will also watch more movies, read more fiction, and maybe write more than I have over the past couple of years. New England, which is where I live, is one of the prettiest regions of our country, so take I’ll take time to enjoy the beauty of her woods, beaches, lakes and hills/mountains more often. I’ll focus on appreciating the peace and wonder of what we take for granted, like the brilliance of the stars on a clear, dark night, the sight of fireflies flashing their lights on and off in a field of tall grass on a warm summer evening or standing outside in the tranquility of a winter’s night, watching the snowflakes fall on my illuminated yard. I need to begin appreciating life’s simple pleasures more instead of lamenting about what I can’t control. I also need to spend more time pondering the next stage of my life: retirement. I had a date in mind but need to get a sense of what might (or might not) happen to Social Security and Medicare, and if it makes sense to keep the original plan or keep working until that picture comes more into focus.

This new mindset has already provided a sense of freedom and relief. My deepest hope is that when I finally come up for air in 2028, the country will still resemble the one that I know and love.  

Hell on Wheels

When I learned that I had Primary Progressive MS back in 2007, I instinctually understood a day would come when a wheelchair became necessary.  I dreaded the idea, but “that day” was too far out in the future to fret over it. So like everything else, I tucked that thought into the deepest recesses of my mind and focused on navigating my new reality.

Fast forward seventeen years, and while the wheelchair remains unnecessary, “that day” feels uncomfortably close because I can no longer walk any kind of distance easily. Like a lot of things with the disease, MS is not the direct cause, but a by-product of it is.

I wrote a post a few years back on how arthritis had settled in the knee of my bad leg and was causing mobility problems, not to mention occasional pain. It turns out that years of walking in a fucked-up manner has now created arthritic hips, and the hip of what used to be the good (left) leg is the one that is most affected because I’ve lost more than 50% of the cartilage in the joint, and the ball that fits into the hip socket is no longer round and smooth, but rough and gnarly.

That leg has always been the limb that supports most of my weight when I am walking or standing still, and now it often hurts to put weight on it. This is especially true if I’ve been on my feet a lot, and towards the end of the day in general. I’ve tried to compensate by putting more weight on the bad leg, but that unfortunately gets the arthritis in the knee going and creates a pain so sharp that my leg literally buckles to the point where I will fall if I don’t have anything to help keep me upright. I therefore try to make sure that whenever I am in the house, I always have one hand free or am close to an appliance, a wall or a counter to prop myself up to keep myself from collapsing when it does.

While I can work around this when I’m home, I have become reluctant to go to public events because I move like an inchworm and don’t want to risk falling in public.

K had been suggesting a mobility scooter for a while, which I had dismissed because I’m stubborn. If I could reasonably get from Point A to Point B, I was going to keep doing it my way on my own two feet. To do otherwise would be giving into the disease and waiving the white flag. But once the hip issue became pronounced, I couldn’t ignore that I needed to do something because to do otherwise would be a different form of giving up.       

After doing my due diligence, I purchased the machine that you see at the beginning of this post, and it has improved my quality of life significantly in the short time I have had it. This bad boy, which I’m thinking of calling Moby, has a top speed of 6 MPH, which doesn’t sound fast until you are on it, has a tight turning radius, can handle uneven terrain and incline of up to 12 degrees. It can carry up to 265 pounds, is lightweight (around 37 pounds without the battery) and folds easily. Those last two items are key for any kind of travel.

I was self-conscious about being seen on it, but that lasted a nanosecond once I started using it. Moby makes going outside and doing outside things infinitely easier. Our town had its annual agricultural fair a few weeks ago and I never would have considered going without it. I’ve taken it to places like Lowes and Home Depot and it navigated the aisles and tight spaces easily. It allows K and I to spend more time together.

This is probably a temporary fix. I can’t use it any place that has stairs instead of ramps, and I’m not sure how it would work in a store that has narrow aisles. But I can still do stairs, so I don’t need it to visit friends at their houses. And I can negotiate distances and tight spaces provided there are places I can sit and rest once I get to where I need to be. The bottom line is my once-shrinking world has begun to expand again. 

It has been a liberating experience. I’m hoping this will also help reduce the pace of the wear and tear in my lower half (along with Physical Therapy) and prolong the time between now and when I must seriously consider a wheelchair. 

Of course, the possibility remains that I’ll never need one and the worst case scenario is I purchase another scooter to use inside the house. Wouldn’t that be nice?