Shell shock...

Even before Marie told me this bit about the Monday Thursday, Good Friday, and Saturday Vigil services really being one service, I had this very, very, very small ... and daring ... part of me that wanted to go to all three of them.  By, Saturday afternoon, though, I was rather exhausted.

In the early afternoon I tried to sleep some more, but it was as if I did not take the erythromycin.  I am convince, by the way, that that one bottle was not mixed properly or was too old, because after I fetched the last bottle from Target and started a new bottle, my innards became more manageable.  At least until Saturday.  Then I had writing and ensuing plumbing concerns and was feeling rather poorly.

Then, a deep plunge blood sugar crash in the mid afternoon left me shaking and slightly stunned.  It was one of those suddenly-I-know-something-is-terribly-wrong moments that left me staggering to get to the kitchen.  After shoving food hand over fist into my mouth and collapsing on the kitchen floor, I feel a bit of shell shock.  What just happened, with all those fighting-to-survive primal reactions in my body, is overwhelming to me.

But I wanted to go.  And then the migraine started.  SIGH.

I tried very hard to pretend that I did not know I was having a migraine. I have so very much pain in my head every day, nowadays, since the wonkiness in the nerves of the back of my head is now present in those on the side of my head.  I have bent my new glasses so much that if I lean down, they fall straight off my head.  I try and not wear them as much as possible.  Since I have been waking up with headaches each day, I also stopped wearing my sleeping mask and have just laid a cloth napkin over my eyes to block out light.  I basically was not going to have a migraine.

But I did.

The Vigil service was interesting, not so much for the sermon, but for everything else.  I suppose you could say that I did not participate in the first part, the Service of the Light, because I went straight from the car to the pew and did not bother getting a candle from the box.  I did not want the strain of holding it.  I did, however, sing the liturgy of that part of the service.  The next was this rather large swath of readings, with interludes of prayer and singing.  Following that was the Service of Baptism, which left tears streaking down my face.  Then the sermon and the Service of the Sacrament.  As has been my custom of late, I left right after the Agnus Dei.  Watching others receive the Lord's Supper is just too hard for me.

But in the liturgy of the Service of the Sacrament is the Sanctus.  Normally, I hear this from just about 20 folk on Monday night services.  But there had to be at least ten times that number at the Vigil.  I am not sure, really, if merely the additional volume carried what I could not hear before.  But I have never heard the Sanctus sung with such ... hope?  rejoicing??  I am not even sure how I would describe it.  I just had chills racing up and down my body and those darned tears fell again.

For the long service, I lay in the pew and I wore my sunglasses, to minimize the light.  But my head got worse and worse.  When I came home, I still tried to "push through," which is about the worst thing you can do for a migraine.  I gave into the pain and took my medication, then succumbed to needing the big gun pain killer, which means my lower innards will not function for a few days.  The pain was too great, the pain and the nausea and the abject misery, that I had to go head and take the extra medication.

The migraine storm finally passed Sunday, after an incredibly miserable night, and I spent the rest of the day in the rather great shell-shock that follows the assault of pain in the head that affects every part of your being.  I did work hard to rest and try to stay relaxed, so as to avoid a bounce back migraine.  I kept my glasses off and tried not to use my eyes much or have much light around me.  And, of course, I kept up the icepacks on all parts of my head.

On Facebook, today, everyone seems to be posting Easter family photos.  I thought that with such a tiny number of "friends," I would not have to face that family stuff much.  Apparently, though, I am getting all the photos that all my friends "like."  Feeling a bit poorly and downhearted about I posted a photo I took on Easter.

Amos is such a good little nurse.  He squeezed in next to me and modeled resting all the day long.  He was quiet when the migraine pain was so intense and he lay next to me on the kitchen floor.  He seems to know when things are really, really, really bad and adjusts his enthusiasm for draping himself across my person.  Instead, he presses his back against mine or hooks a paw around my arm or squeezes himself in some tight space between me and the side of the GREEN chair.

This morning, once again, I awoke to him sharing my pillow, forehead pressed against mine, paw across my shoulder.

I am really weary and still rather shell shocked.  Sometimes the physical battle within in my body is so great that the absence of it is somewhat of a battle itself.  It is hard to explain, but it is also an experience that I would not wish on anyone else.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!