My List-O-Fears Has Grown Longer

I am now afraid to walk. A little while ago, I started to walk around the block...something that I do every morning to wake myself up. I only got about 50 feet down the street because I was just too afraid to keep walking. I was already afraid of everything else, now I've decided that walking is just as dangerous as all the other stupid stuff I do in the course of a day.

Actually, I already knew better than to walk willy-nilly down the street but it's something that you do so often that I just forgot to be scared. Either that or I just hadn't hurt myself badly enough to remember how dangerous walking could be. A few years ago, I fell on my birthday. I busted my foot that time but I've done that so much that it never scared me too much. Little did I know that the birthday tumble was the first of many.

My strokes never left me with dreadfully obvious effects. I was just left with occasional stuttering, constant forgetfulness, a numb left side and a messed up equilibrium. I figured out the equilibrium part around the holidays after I fell on my birthday. The holiday fall was on the street with my dog who never left my side. Some nice man in a pick-up stopped and took me and my dog home. After I got home I started thinking and realized that I had fallen 6 times from my birthday to the New Year. That meant that I was falling about once a month. I thought it was a coincidence until I noticed the pattern. There was always something that I could blame the fall on but I finally figured out that I hadn't fallen 6 times in my entire life, suddenly I was falling on a regular basis. That's when I figured out that the dizziness wasn't an innocuous side effect of the stroke, it was actually a nasty side effect that had the potential for some serious danger. One example off the top of my head...a broken face. So, yes, I have effects from my stroke, you just can't see them until I fall and break myself.

This is the first injury I've ever had where I actually spat teeth out. I broke quite a few of them and the surgeon pulled the broken teeth out. I had a dentist appointment on the 25th...I guess I won't need as many appointments as I thought I would require. I also have an appointment coming up with an SSI doctor. If this face doesn't convince the government that I'm incapable of safely maneuvering through a day, much less work as a nurse, I don't know what else I can do.

I was feeling badly about having to ask the government for some of the money I gave them over the years but I'll tell you, sitting here with a hideously broken face and sounding like Daffy Duck, I have no problem at all saying that I simply must get back some of the cash I earned over the decades. I used to curse at the government when I would look at a 5,000 dollar paycheck that was only worth 2,500. Today I'm OK with that, I just need to know how to make a withdrawal. They had no problem with the deposits, but getting some money back from the government is proving to be a bitch. But, if I can't get any money from the Obama administration, there is something seriously wrong with this country.

The only picture I have of the damage to my face is one that my roomie took of me with her I-phone. She sent it to my daughter. When I speak to my daughter, I'll ask her to send it to me so that I can post it here for you guys. In the meantime, I'm on the look-out for someone with a phone or a camera so that I can get a picture of the half of my face that resembles me and then another one of the half that resembles a huge faced freak of nature.

Well, I guess that's it for now, I have to get to Nebraska Avenue to pick up the money that my daughter sent me because she doesn't want me to recuperate in this icky place. I have to walk there and, as I said earlier, I'm afraid to walk. Man, I am a mess!