If you recall, back in May David and I attended a fiber shed festival and I bought some Wensleydale fiber there. Well, with huge thanks to Samantha Cook and her Thriving with Gastroparesis group, I am happy to say that I am both spinning and knitting again.
Samantha helped me realize that I don’t need to wait until I am feeling better to do the things I want to do. Don’t let my recent crafting progress fool you. The past few weeks have been absolutely awful. With pain in the 7s and 8s out of 10.
And I cannot do these things as I have in the past. I have to break simple tasks like choosing a pattern, choosing the yarn, locating the appropriately sized needles into smaller sub-tasks. Each of these steps can take days or even weeks. But by doing a little bit every day, I am back to doing the things that bring me peace. And for that, I am eternally grateful.
On the medical front, I am also back on a 3x day xifaxan for another couple of weeks and that is already bringing my pain back down to 6s and 7s (with unfortunately, still 8s in the evening — we have yet to figure out how to make evenings better for me) which is how I am able to write this blog post today. Once I finish this treatment course, I will continue a single daily dose of xifaxan with the hope that that will keep my Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) at bay.
Reading continues to be a real struggle. Just checking email and Facebook/Instagram/Threads for a few minutes can really do me in, with pain and nausea spikes. But, I am now at a place where I can listen to audiobooks for a short time each day. Right now I am listening to Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. Because epic poems are great for listening to while spinning or knitting (unfortunately, none of my looms are warped otherwise weaving would be the most appropriate fiber craft). Hers is an amazing translation and I recommend it to everyone.
Even this blog post took me several days. Selecting and downloading and then re-uploading the photos was a 2 day process. And now on day 3 I am actually writing the text. Like I said, doable. Just slowly.
This is a vast change from someone who used to run around and get everything done before I could finally sit down, take a deep breath and relax. And it is not an easy transition. Even 5 years into this illness, I tend to push myself to do things past when I should take a break. It is hard to stop when I am just getting into the groove. But I continue to practice paying attention to my body’s cues, even if I blow it more often than not.
Speaking of which, I feel like this post has taken too many days to get out and I am just going to hit publish now.