strobe light

I went to bed and fell asleep nicely.  Then woke up at 1am with pain from my pinched nerve.  It's not so bad like anguish but bad enough that I can't sleep.  When it's worse than this, I do sometimes cry, a combination of pain and frustration.

It's been seven years.  I had no place to live, at the time.  Some would call that homeless, and we did sleep outside a few times, but it was more camping.  Ming's friend's house in Rio Linda was in foreclosure.  We slept there for a week or so on the hardwood floor on yoga mats.  Oops.  That's when it started.

The pain comes and goes, but the numbness in my right arm and hand is constant.  It's in my pinky finger and the right half of my ring finger, a certain nerve, can't remember its name.

The MRI showed the nerves in my neck on both sides are too big for the holes they pass through.  My left one doesn't hurt.  My dad had the same thing.  They told me surgery--I said no way.  I used to take naproxen or ibuprofen--nothing helped.  I tried benadryl to help me sleep through the pain--it just made me really drowsy and in pain.

Lately I feel like we've all been dealt our unique set of health problems that don't necessarily have anything to do with our behaviors.  I'm crazy, have a pinched nerve, and now a stomach ulcer.  I think my anemia from the ulcer will be healed soon.  Ming's crazy, has narcolepsy, and now an eye problem.  It got somewhat better and now seems somewhat worse.

People try so hard to be healthy.  I weigh many pounds, but none of my health problems is caused by the heaviness.  My grandpa had an ulcer also, and he was thin as a rail.  My friend has a pinched nerve like mine, causing pain, and he's skinny also.

A friend has arthritis and degenerative discs and is in a ton of pain, and she's young.  It seems unfair, but then I realized I didn't do anything bad to cause my crazy, pinched nerve, or ulcer.  Ming also didn't behave badly and then get crazy, narcolepsy, and an eye problem as punishment.  People seem to believe if you do the right things, you'll be healthy, but I see lots of evidence to the contrary.

I read about someone exercising on her treadmill and she dropped dead--turns out she had a heart thing no one knew about, something she was born with.  People bewailed the tragedy--she was young and had kids and had worked hard to be healthy.   I feel like people were saying, Oh, how unfair--she was thin!  This shouldn't have happened to her!

People make assumptions about my diet based on my weight--like I go to McDonalds all the time and eat a lot of bacon.  I haven't had bacon since 1993?  My mom used to put it in her rice--she would make enchiladas, beans, and rice for my birthday, and she stopped putting the bacon in, for me.  Thank you, Mama.

The lights in this motel are weird.  I put on my dress and noticed a strobe effect, that the light is actually turning off and on however many times a second.  Who makes lights like that?