My morning resting heart rate has been 56 beats per minute the last two mornings. This is very low for me (which is good). My morning HR has been one of the most consistent indicators of how my body is doing, how my sleep was the night before, and how the coming day will be. It averages around 60 bpm. After my Unisom “overdose” and, after the autonomic testing, my morning HR was 65 – 66 bpm for a few days. It doesn’t seem to change much in relation to my activity level or pain level and I haven’t figured out yet if it fluctuates based on what I eat. It seems to always be higher when I take drugs, even minute quantities, and it seems to be affected by hormones ~ higher midway through my monthly cycle (when, I assume, I am ovulating and my whole system seems to be jazzed up) and higher before my period when I am feeling terrible in every respect.

It is fitting that it has been so low the last few days because I decided I am going to get better now and I like the 56 glowing assurance. Granted, it is the week after my period and before my system gets all hormonally electrified ~ historically, a week of relative peace and hope ~ so, this “decision” could splinter at its core as soon as symptoms flare again. But, for now, I’m going with it. I’ve been sick long enough. Time for this to end.

This is my new year. It has been two years since that fateful night when I went to bed so chilled I couldn’t speak and woke a few hours later drenched in sweat and very grateful that the fever had broken so quickly and I wouldn’t be sick for days (imagine being grateful it wouldn’t last for days). Everything I read in the beginning of my illness said that if you improve or get better in the first two years, you have a better chance at “remission”. That two year mark has loomed in my mind since I became housebound around this time last year. I spent the first year in confusion, searching and fighting, and then this last year in stillness, implementing, healing… I hoped.

I hoped that this year of assiduity would pay off by the time November rolled around. Obviously, it didn’t and it hasn’t since I just moaned my way through the worst two weeks of my illness, however, today I think, maybe it has. This morning, for whatever reason, I was thinking about one of the restaurants I used to run in Portland. I was thinking about walking in the front doors, walking through the dining room, inspecting, chatting with employees, doing my job… and I was overcome with disbelief that I can’t do that right now. I can’t drive to Portland, check into a hotel, go into a restaurant, talk, laugh, eat anything I want… Mostly, it was that simple act of parking my car and walking through the restaurant that made me think, Are you kidding me? This is BULLSHIT! My best friend, E., awoke this morning in Wales feeling a disturbance in the force ~ a deflating release, coupled with a sense of loss. Of course, she and I are both psychic, so I take this very seriously and have decided it is yet another sign of assurance that the tides have changed. It is the loss of this life and release from illness.

I don’t necessarily think I’m destined for greatness, but I don’t think I’m destined for this. See that picture at the top of my blog? That’s a phoenix inside me. New year’s resolution: I will dare to rise up from the ash.

Image by ClintonKun