Sleep!

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I made great efforts to sleep, even trying an old trick that I prefer not to use.  It just won't happen.  What's worse is that I am dead bone-deep tired.  It will happen when it happens, I guess.  Today I feel old, but more just tired and sore from being awake I think.  Actually that is rather rare.  Then again, even when I was young and would push things, I would feel just this way.  Yeah, I remember some things.

I looked up diabetes, on a number of sites.  I really just don't fit that diagnosis.  My guess is there are those with diabetes, and those with a condition that can be similar but is based on something other than the actual disease.  The heart, of course, might not get enough blood to the organs that need them to make the body use the blood sugars as they should.  Or the organs aren't getting enough oxygen to supplement the "burn".  While it looks like diabetes, at times, it... really isn't, at all.  Further, if I had to guess, I go through various stages of many illnesses all the time.  A diagnostician, without knowing about my heart, would pull out his hair trying to figure things out.  And, well, they did.  The thing is I never know what will be next.  Will my liver start quitting for a bit, pancreas? brain?  Everything is up for grabs, I think.  My body does the best it can do but it is perpetually in short supply, so something has to... be allowed to suffer.

You know though, I am actually fortunate that they did not realize I had a heart condition back when this all started.  They would definitely have insisted on a heart transplant.  Recipients only live, the max as I have heard things, about nine years.  Okay, do the math, that means I would have been dead about 16 years ago.  And, yeah, I would have followed the doctors instructions and advice back then.  Now, in one sense, that might have been a kinder way to go.  But on the other hand, who wants to be dead?  *grins*  Perhaps I did then, but it is as much because I didn't know what was wrong with me as it was that I was ill.  Or, that I thought I was mentally ill.  I had... things to do.  And I couldn't.  All of that combined.  I'm much better now, and glad to be alive, even on days such as this.

I still think I have another couple of decades in me.  But, to be honest, this last part is going to hurt.  If I live past that, those last years are going to be absolutely brutal.  I'm hoping I don't lose any limbs, but so far I have lost no feeling in them.  Actually, as I said, they are quite sensitive.  But the dark skin on my shin area...  I know what that means.  They have recommended compression socks.  But beside adding great heat to the area, they are also rather expensive and difficult to maintain.  Further, the material is just absolutely perfect for growing bacteria and fungus, something that would ensure a foot loss, or two.  And I don't have the strength, or strength of will, to learn to use a prosthetic leg.  Too brutal, and I am too old a dog in too many ways.  My friend is having trouble with that himself.

It's hard to believe but my mother turned 70.  While she is 70, she also very much isn't.  Several people who were told her age suggested that while she is 70, she isn't that old.  Oh, I know she feels it at times.  But she is still the woman/girl she always has been.  She might not skip and hop, after two major back surgeries (the last quite successful), both knees replaced, a hip surgery, and several foot surgeries, I can't really blame her.  But she might as well be skipping.  She is rather amazing.  I have to think I gained some of what I am from her.  And, I forgot to call her on her birthday!  Gah!  I'll stay up and call this morning.  Unless... I mixed up her birth date again?  Never mind.

Good day, and soon, maybe, hopefully, good night.