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"Looking forward." Has PN taken that away from me, too?
Neuropathy | Last Active: 4 hours ago | Replies (55)Comment receiving replies
Hi Ray--At 77, I'm coming right up behind you. I'm hoping your loss of 'looking forward' is temporary, as I'm looking forward to looking forward. I'm continuing my work in Improv, though it's sometimes challenging just to lift my foot up a step, over a random cable, and on to the stage. I'm also taking a standup class and, in reluctantly viewing myself on tape, realized just how doddering I could appear to the untrained eye. I was slow, hunched and lumbering-- Quasimodo with jokes. At that point, I decided to lean in on being The Old Guy, and the audience seems to welcome it. (If they don't, their loss...) In any event, I'm looking forward to doing more to deal with this amorphous neuropathy thing. I'm re-upping for physical therapy, hoping that this time I'll pay more attention and actually do the exercises. I'm walking with my Lekis, though it sometimes hurts. I've got a trainer at my gym who's punishing my lazy-ass abs and pushing me toward some esprit de core. And I'm, of course, on the endless quest for the perfect shoe. But I do fall into melancholy sometimes, recalling the not-too-distant times where I could take a walk without thinking about walking, or scan a crowd on the street without lingering on the lady with a little hitch in her giddy-up, maybe a fellow sufferer...Anyway, as hollow as it often sounds, I truly mean it when I say...hang in there.
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Hello, chawk (@chawk)
Good to hear from you! We've had some similar experiences, haven't we? The way you described negotiating the stage reminds me of precisely what it's like, especially when I was doing my last few shows, before PN told me to stay at home and be content binge watching Yellowstone. I was especially reminded of the last time I was called to read against a few other actors (I'd already been cast as "Reynold, an elderly man") and, because I'd entered the auditorium from the lobby, I had to mount the stage from the auditorium floor via a moveable flight of plywood steps. I recall going up those steps ever so carefully, not wanting the director, who was sitting somewhere in the dark, to see me fall and think, "OK, sure, I've cast Ray as 'an elderly man,' but I was hoping he wouldn't be THAT elderly!" LOL
Good luck in re-upping for PT. "Re-upping" sounds like you're betwixt & between right now. That's the situation I'm in. I need to find a good therapist. By "good," I mean a therapist who's had some experience working with people with PN. I've gone through spates of PT in the past, long before I was diagnosed with PN, because of my "mysterious," worsening balance troubles. I'd gotten so used to working with therapists, all very sweet people, who'd tell me on Day 1 that they knew oodles about PN, only to demonstrate once our sessions got underway that their definition of "oodles" and mine was different. I've enough PT handouts here at home, given to me over the years, enough pages to represent the felling of a major forest.
As you might guess, I'm wondering do I want put myself through this again? Or do I want to put together my own D.I.Y. PT program? Each option has its pluses and its minuses. Work with an outside therapist: the plus, motivation! (and that's a BIG plus for me), the minus, the $$$ co-pays (not much, but still … ); a D.I.Y. program: the plus, no cost (and flexible hours), the minus, the need to self-motivate (oh, God!). So, what to do?
The quest for the "perfect shoe"? I was on that quest for years, long before PN (and I still am, to a degree, but far less so). I've decided –– in other to relax –– that there is no such thing as the "perfect shoe," not when you consider the gazillion varieties we have when it comes to feet; then you add to the mix the varieties of PN symptoms: it can become quite exhausting. Back in the days when I was hot on the quest I'd imagine myself as a kind of Capt. Ahab nailing a coin to the mast and calling out to his men, "A silver piece to the first man who finds the 'perfect shoe'!"
Just now I'm on the quest to find a perfect Wednesday. Here's wishing you one, too!
Cheers!
Ray (@ray666)