Still puzzling...

Devastating, unexpected, harsh news on Thursday left my body trembling violently until some time during last night.  Even when the tears stopped falling, my body still mirrored the great upset in my mind.  I tried to calm down.  Truly, I did.  And I was rather bothered Friday afternoon when I was still trembling.  However, by Friday night, still trembling despite having John 6 fall into my ears via Fred and several doses of Xanax, I decided that I would just have to wait it out.  I did so because for all the puzzling I have done over my cold spells, I simply have to wait them out.

Eating such small meals is rather tiresome, as is trying to remember what I have eaten when so as to balance things out.  However, having spent far, far less time writhing on the bathroom floor has made the battle of accepting the permanent change to my body, learning how to deal with my dysautonomia-wrecked innards, a blessing.  Would that it were I could do the same for the cold spells.

Last night, while still trembling from swallowing the news, I was lying in bed with chills spreading across my body.  They are deep chills, nothing akin to goose bumps.  Almost...almost...they are painful.  At times they are like waves crashing upon a shore, one after another, overlapping, relentless. Truly, I have no words to clearly describe what I feel, what my body experiences. Or the frustration...discouragement...even despair that washes over me as well.

Last night, I was wearing two pairs of socks (one cotton, one wool), bike shorts, leggings, pajama pants, sweats, two tank tops (one tight, one loose), a long sleeve cotton pajama top, a sweat jacket, ear muffs, and gloves.  I was lying beneath a cotton blanket, a wool blanket, and the heaviest weight down comforter sold by the Company Store. And yet for nearly two hours I was so unbearably cold that all I could do was wait it out...no reading, no listening to music, no watching online television. My nose grows so cold that really, at such times, all I do is wish for some sort of cover for it.

Part of the reason for all the layers of fabric is because my skin becomes so cold that any part of my body touching another part makes the cold seem worse, brings about even more chills.  Part of the reason for all the layers of fabric is because any part of exposed skin, any part of skin not completely covered with fabric so that not a single molecule of air passes across it, expands the misery, heightens the cold.  Air, even that trapped beneath all the blankets and such, feels like a mighty Arctic gale blowing against my skin.

I will often lay on my side and draw my knees up to my chest in an attempt to concentrate my own body heat, tucking all the layers as tightly as possible.  Doing so does not make that much of a difference, but still I try.  I will also often curl my body about Amos, trying to leach off his body heat.  Am I a churlish wretch for bemoaning the fact, for even resenting the fact, that Amos simply doesn't radiate enough heat to help me?

All day yesterday, I could not handle the cold.  Winter has been fairly mild to me, less snow and warmer temperatures than my first one here.  We have had days, though, this winter than have been far colder. It was 36, a day usually almost balmy to me.  However, each time I took Amos out for his business, I found myself racing to huddle over the grate on the kitchen floor with a blanket wrapped around me to trap the heat blasting about my body once back inside.  Teeth rattling, body trembling, a pitiful figure one might expect to find on a mountain top in the Swiss Alps.  My tepee solution does warm me up after being outside, but it does not help when the waves of chills begin.

The fainting, I understand.  The disruption to the autonomic process makes sense.  The digestive issues, I (now) understand.  The disruption to the autonomic process makes sense.  However, the cold spells remain a puzzle to me as to what is taking place in my body. I struggle mightily not merely with the misery but also with the mystery...the mystery that feels like a betrayal of sorts.

I gave up the battle of the anguish tremors.  I accepted that there was little I could do, that this is part of my life now, where my body reflects the things I would rather keep hidden, where my internal processes are oft made external, even against the strongest act of my will.  I wonder, then, why it is that I cannot accept the cold spells, the chills, the misery.
 

I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!