If you find yourself moved to write me about something, you may reasonably expect to get an answer.
That isn’t likely to happen, though, and I’d like to tell you why. I simply cannot be your pen pal.
Three or four months ago I woke up one morning, showered, dressed, grabbed a cup of coffee and jumped in my car to go somewhere.
That was when I discovered that overnight, without warning, my right hand had so enfeebled itself that I couldn’t turn the key in the ignition.
The rest of my body seemed to be aswell affected, so I reached over with my left hand to start the car, meaning to ask my doctor what the hell was going on this time at the next chance I got.
I will start from the beginning I went to my own doctor and told her about my stiff fingers and being totally stiff in the morning hours.
As we came to the conclusion that I had mentioned this last winter as she looked through my files.
We blamed it on the cold and moisty weather and that it would disappear when springweather would come.
A few months later I took up the talk again as there was no progress in my situation.
There are good days and there are bad days.
It is getting so bad that getting up in the morning has become a challenge.
The morning stiffness is the biggest issue, after a hot shower I am getting slowly in motion.
I ended up talking to a doctor of internal diseases and an eye doctor, being subjected to various high-tech tests.
What’s going on appears to be a rheumatological problem.
Fortunately for me, they take their time about it, but they’re pretty thorough.
The fingers of my right hand are the worst affected so far.
What makes that annoying is that I use that hand for writing.
At least the first draft of a lot of my blogs was written by hand.
That option is no longer open to me, because my handwriting, always atrocious, is now often quite illegible even to me.
Also my job is getting to heavy and it is bitter if you have to give up on something you like.
One of the biggest problems is the fatigue attacks and the sleeping disorder.
Being tired all day is very heavy, but I am starting to turn things around.
The pain I am living quite good through, although it is hard sometimes.
I try to see the positive sides of my situation.
If I go out for a walk to get my body in motion, I breath in the fresh air and enjoy what nature is showing.
Remains the computer.
That still works for me, but not easily.
I can still touch-type with my left hand (in the old days at almost about fifty words a minute not superfast but good enough) but the right hand can only hunt-and-peck with the forefinger.
Not that I was that good in typing with all fingers something I never learned eventhough I had a course in it.
Isn’t life hilarious?
This is bad news.
It’s horribly slow and prone to a million mistakes, which I have to correct as I go along, and, worst of all, after a page or two my right index finger begins to get pretty painful.
So my writing time, whether for blogs, letters or any other task, is limited. Therefore, at least until I finish a couple of things I really want to write, correspondence time is squeezed even harder than my cervical nerves.
A blog like this normally took me one or two hours, now it takes up to four days.
And listen, this isn’t a plea for sympathy.
Hey, I’m 41 years old.
That means that I am far luckier than most of the people I know in being still able to write at all.
It’s just to say that if you ever happen to think you should properly have had a longer letter or mail from me, or indeed any letter or mail at all, it isn’t that I don’t treasure you, it’s just that my fingers hurt.
The Old Sailor,
