Trey Smith
Original Post Date: 1/14/10
Original Post Date: 1/14/10
I know that a few of my readers -- like me -- are afflicted with an invisible disease. Such conditions affect how we feel and how well we function, yet to the average eye, we look just like any average Joe or Jane.
I liken my Fibromyalgia to living in a haunted house with a phantom. You never know when the phantom will appear, where and for how long it will stay. Even worse, no one else in the house can see or hear it!!
Let me offer a typical example. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in front of my computer reading some of my favorite blogs. I had a mug of green tea that I had been sipping. I went to pick it up to take another sip and I almost dropped the mug because of piercing pain in my left wrist. The pain began to grow in intensity and, within the next hour, it had traveled up my arm to include my elbow.
By the time I crawled into bed several hours later, it had enveloped my entire left arm from shoulder to wrist PLUS the pain now extended into the left side of my neck. It even included the left side of my face which felt numb and twitchy.
If this had happened ten or fifteen years ago, I might have thought I was having a stroke. However, since symptoms like these are common occurrences, I simply
When I awoke this morning (Wednesday) the pain still enveloped the entirety of my left arm, but the symptoms in my neck and face had abated. It remained this way UNTIL I took a nap around 1:30 p.m. Upon arising, I realized the pain in my left arm had vanished...and was now lodged in the entirety of my left leg. I've spent the rest of the day limping around noticeably.
Who knows if and where it will be tomorrow? If it does decide to take its leave for now, I know it will return soon enough. I simply never know when, where and for how long.
Only the phantom knows.
(Needless to say, the phantom is alive and well today in 2012!)
Copy editor attack to distract you from your pain:
ReplyDelete"Chalk it up," not "chock it up."
Chocking something up ls using a wedge to secure something, like chocking a wheel. Chalking up something is to ascribe something to a particular cause.
I try to bite my tongue about things like this, and it's not a personal attack, you know. It's just that precision in language, which goes to spelling, punctuation, grammar and usage, is at such a premium anymore. You have your invisible disease; this is mine! (I mark up published books! That's OCD for sure.)
Linguistically it could have been 'clock' instead of 'chock' & not 'chalk' @ all . . .
DeleteI don't think so, clocking is sort of a measure; I think an attribution of cause was intended here, not a reference to how many times it happened. But interesting point.
ReplyDelete