Apparently there are people who get paid as medical experiment guinea pigs to lie in bed, immobilized, for weeks. One of the purposes for said experiment is to see what effects such immobility can have on the human body.
I wish I got paid for that shit.
It's been about seven weeks since I started bed rest. There was a brief light at the end of the tunnel about two weeks ago, when my OBGYN gave the first optimistic update about the conditions of the fetus and his/her surrounding environments aka my uterus/placenta. I came home feeling unusually positive, and spent the following day sitting up to catch up on grading my students' homework and essays. Then, I started bleeding again that night. Back to the ER, back to full bed rest.
But I can feel it; I feel my muscles deteriorating. I got the sense that this is abnormal and somehow very wrong. I googled searched about bed rest and found medical studies that dithers about its benefits. My conclusion thus far is that bed rest for my condition (sometimes bleeding, sometimes not) is more of a "can't hurt might help why don't we try it" kind of treatment. Well, I have to say in my case, the negative impact of bed rest at this point might be starting to outweigh the potential--and I must stress only potential, not proven--benefits of this why not prescription. So about two days ago, I said F this, and tried to get up to clean the apartment, straighten out the fridge, and make home meals again for the family. I still did a lot of resting, as now the least bit of activity tires me out within minutes. I woke up the next day with excruciating back pain. Regarding pain, I know from my years of competing athletically that I have a fairly high pain tolerance. But by last night, I was a bawling mess as Daniel deep massaged my back. I really just lost it. I felt true despair. I suspect the source of the paralyzing burning is the muscle mass underneath my scapula. Because I used my arms to wash and chop up vegetables, and to stir the wok. Each pressing down of the thumbs on my back set off such spikes in unpleasant sensation that I was torn between wanting to vomit or split in half.
I'm trying to remember how much pain I endured when I first started running competitively, and how long it lasted before I could walk without stiff legs (about a week). I can take a week of excruciating pain. I just can't let the pain win. It woke me up at 3:30am this morning, and by 4:30am I figured there's no point trying to find a less painful sleeping position. So I got up and washed the dishes/cleaned the kitchen/search online for local activities to help Daniel keep the kids busy until the birds started singing, the sun came up, and the kids woke up.
Thank God all my students' grades are calculated and submitted. This past semester was a complete trainwreck. I'm so relieved to be done with it. For about two weeks, I fielded emails from apathetic students who suddenly started caring terribly about their final grades until my self-imposed deadline of submitting to the department on 1 July. I really appreciate the intellectual integrity and moral understanding about grades and the student-teacher relationship regarding them that my CMU director drilled into me. It stopped me from caving in after the eighth round of student pleadings for special treatment.
My body has never felt so disastrously broken. I guess I have had an easy life. I wonder if I will ever feel okay again about myself.
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