Loose Laces

No matter how many hopes and dreams I have; no matter how high my head is in the clouds; no matter how well I feel; when that little needle pricks one of my arms each Friday, reality manages to sober me from any intoxicated belief that life is good and somehow worth the effort of staying alive. All my years of building a tolerance to pain, all the days of making believe that I am really ok, and all the minutes of self-satisfied perception come crashing down with the stick of a very small needle that most of the time causes me negligible—if any— hurt. The needle prick is just a symbol of what my life has become over the past twenty years. I was once a fairly strong man, even though my mind never was a bastion of fortitude. At 6'5' tall and 220 pounds, I didn't dream of anything I could not accomplish. I didn't have the big, broad shoulders of Joe the Plumber, nor the biceps of Ahnold, but I did have some awesome leg strength, and if someone told me I couldn't do something, I went ahead and did it, not so much to prove them wrong, but to prove to myself that I was a man in control of his body and mind. Doing things I should not have done proved to be my undoing, or at least a big part of it. Then the RA I've had since childhood hit me hard in the late 70's, but I was able to get on with a semi-normal life until about 1987, when I had to have the bottom two knuckles of each finger on my left hand "cleaned out", and a plate implanted in my wrist to strengthen it after having some of the bone removed. Everything went down hill from there until in 1993 I found myself unable to walk without crutches. My hip joints had deteriorated so much that any movement caused great discomfort. In June and December 1994, I had the diseased joints removed and replaced with metal and plastic. In 2001, I had my left knee replaced, and now the right one is in dire straits, and I have a mental problem making myself do anything. Maybe a notion of "doom looms" is the best way to describe how I feel most of the time. You can help me overcome this living dread by voting for Barack Obama for President of the USA!