Total Disability

I had been unemployed for three months. For the three months I took up knitting for something to do but could do that only when I was not drinking. I ended up only knitting about three inches on the side of a sweater.

I would wake up at about nine o'clock and drink the remainder of the alcohol I had from the day before, and then sleep  to late afternoon. I then would go out, get some fast food and alcohol for the evening. After dinner I would go to either one of my neighbors who would drink with me until late, and then I would stumble home and pass out, another day making it through. If I had a calendar and crossed off day after day that I did this I might have realized how my life was passing by, but only by surviving the time that a day measures. That is what my life had become; making it through each day. What worth in life comes from daily survival from self induced complications?  The answer to that escaped me because I did not ask it. I kept drinking so that I did not have to because I was fearful of what the answer would command.

Then one day I woke up sick. It was not a cold with congestion and coughing, nor was it a gastrointestinal illness with nausea and diarrhea.  Every cell in my body screamed with pain. My temperature was up I'm sure as I sweated profusely. My body shivered. It hurt to move. Every joint jolted with pain if I tried to change position.   I had to weigh the result of pain from movement with the discomfort of staying in the same position for long periods of time when I decided if I would move or not.

I did not eat or drink anything. I was not hungry and even if I was I could not get up to get it. Even so, by body continued to function and provided the need to go to the bathroom to void. It took a lot of courage to move to get up and go to,the washroom. When I did my body more than shivered, it almost convulsed with chills.

I was thankful for sleep but was wakened by the need to go to the washroom. Again and again I mustered the courage to move, get up and get to the washroom, each time barely making it due to the pain with removing my clothes.   After some time passed, it did not matter if I could get up.  I lost control of my bladder and that caused the problem with clean up. I grabbed newspapers close by and placed them under my hips hoping that using and removing the paper when soiled would take care of that problem. Whether the newspaper solved my new experience with inconvenience or not I did not care, the pain I was sufferring was more prominent.

I shivered and shook for quite some time.   I had lost all awareness of time but once the fever broke and the shaking stopped and I reoriented myself, I determined that I was sick for three weeks.   Then something very unusual and concerning happened. I could not stand up or get up from my floor cushion.  Every time I would try to stand up, my legs crumpled from beneath me.