Two cards down

Another interpretation of The Tower is the human spine - the ivory tower. The Tower is a card about... structural failures. Let that sit with you a moment. 

Then let me tell you that about 18 hours after my last post I was sitting in the ER (alone, due to covid restrictions), because after twelve days, the neck and shoulder pain was getting worse despite flexeril, then valium, then robaxin, which did absolutely nothing but make me groggy. I got an IV of toradol and another baby dose of IV valium, and a handful of prednisone. I also got an XRay and CT scan, all showing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary with my rib, collarbones or shoulders, but showing "osteophytes" and disc thinning in my neck, which might be why this keeps happening.

Just in time for Halloween, here's some skeleton parts

Prednisone is magic. I woke up the next morning feeling better than I had in weeks, in sickening parallel to a grotesque politician I could name. (I have not yet gone on any all-caps Twitter rants however, so I think I'm doing better than he.) But the dose is a tapering one, and the comedown is apparently predictably terrible, and now on day four, it feels like it's um, starting.

I now have an appointment for an MRI and a neurosurgery consultation. I'm a bit freaked out about what all this means. I'm not better yet, I might need surgery(?!), I haven't started physical therapy yet, and along with that I still haven't gotten the final billing for the allergy testing and CT imaging for that earlier this year, so adding an urgent care visit, emergency room visit, and three more imaging types to that sounds... financially terrifying.

But... While the DPO did not go well on day 1, nor 2, 3, 4, etc etc etc, yesterday, a full week later, I woke to the pleasant surprise of having sold some stock at my lowest acceptable price. Today, as recompense for the failure on day one, I was allowed to sell some more at a slightly higher price (regardless of the actual market price). It's not a lot of money after what I'd been hoping and dreaming of, but it's also not nothing, and it's not the end of my holdings either. 

It feels both like, and utterly unlike a windfall; both sudden money that I didn't quite plan for, but also money that is shaving little flakes off a chunk of my life that I stored away like pemmican in a cellar; it feels like the Little Mermaid watching her voice float away, like Wesley watching years drop off his life in that torture machine. It is a piece of myself that's gone now, and it didn't do what I'd hoped, but at least i got something for it. One way or another though, it's an ending to something that's gone on for years, and its decay will hopefully bring some fecundity.

(I mean, it also feels very much like not-a-windfall because no money has actually hit my account yet. And I worry that it'll end up being "enough" to keep up with the medical bills and not enough to ever get *ahead* per se.)

But things seem... to be getting a little better.