Recovering Slowly

It has been almost six months now with Valley fever. For the last couple of months I have been extremely tired day and night. I have been sleeping twelve hours at night and still taking three naps a day of an hour or more each. Over the last few days though I have suddenly started to wake up again. I am down to one nap during the day and only sleeping around eight or nine hours at night. That is still a long way off from the three hours a day that I have slept for the last fifty years but it is a lot better than sleeping sixteen hours a day. My muscles and joints still hurt but that seems to be getting better also. The doctors told me it would take about a year to recover and even after that I could have relapses.

My advice to anyone that does not already have Valley Fever is to just never go into the areas in California and Arizona where it is found because it is just not worth the risk of getting this awful disease. Almost all the cases in California are in and around Bakersfield. In Arizona it is concentrated around Tucson. A friend of mine went golfing in Tucson then went home to the East Coast and when he started getting sick none of the doctors knew what was wrong with him and he ended up getting it in his brain and passed away from it. Of course the Chambers of Commerce in those areas do not want to hear anything about not going to their areas. Myself I think it is wrong that there are no warnings posted anywhere in the areas where this disease occurs. If I had know this could happen to me I never would have come to this area-just common sense to me.

I am taking the train back to the Bay area to see my kids and grandson this weekend. I actually seem to enjoy the train rides now. Five and a half hours to go only 223 miles seems like a slow way to travel but the time seems to go by quicker than that. I enjoy watching the world roll by and meeting some of the other passengers.

Summer is winding down now and winter is going to arrive sooner than I want it to. I live in fear of winter. The cold wet weather makes my pain go up--often times way way up. I am not so sure I am going to be able to tolerate the next spike in pain. I have had a couple months now of relatively low pain and my mood has gone way up. Lately every little twitch of pain makes me wonder if it will spike up this time. When my pain goes up my mood goes down an equal amount. I am trying to prepare myself as best I am able to for the inevitable pain return as the weather cools down but I sense a dark doom approaching this time. I am just tired of living with this monster on my back. We will see what happens when it hits the fan. Time is ticking.