Denise's new diet is working. I have been hovering just above 200 lbs for over 6 months. Today I weigh 198.4!

When Denise drove Abi to Rebekah's so she could take her to the airport the next morning to leave for Dallas I was able to go along. We put five pillows into the back seat for Shelby so I could ride along. I was out until after 10 PM that night which is a first for me in months; probably over a year. It took lots of drugs to do it, but what a win. It is a tribute to the new drugs the doctor has me on.

I am at a critical/central/life changing place; and hot damn; what a joy, answered prayer to be at such a place and to notice it and be so clear about it all at the same time. (Truth is that I have been here for several months, and had better take a step in the "right" direction while I can still accomplish a lot with just a small step. The longer I dilly dally, more steps it takes to get to the same place on the road to keeping my life going in the right direction. Dr V keeps talking about the movie, "What about Bob" and the lesson to take baby steps. It looks to me that a person in my position gets a lot of positive change when taking steps in the right new direction before even knowing that it is a positive step in a new direction. Where I am now, having dawdled for as long as I have, I suppose it will take more "baby steps", "bigger" more courageous steps to keep going in the right direction. So, it is time get up off the virtual couch and to get quicky with the icky" (Japanese: to get going while the going is good.

I suppose that a lot of my newly created life will not look much different on the outside from my old life; because a part of my newly renewed undersstanding as to what is important in my life is what I have been preaching all along. But, having completely lost my faith; I now get to recreate it newly as if out of nothing. Like the new convert; the renewed convert gets to be an even deeper true believer. Like, the old "man of Faith" notice that the new "man of faith" is already so very good at judging and condemning myself.

So, here is today's renewed discovery: for me, my life has to have a significant relationship with the church. It is not enough to just be an occasional pew warmer. It is time for me to start giving back to and through the church; perhaps at least a baby step or two.

Well, its been about a month now since I had my botox injections. Lately, I have notice several things that I am crediting these injections with. I am not needing emergency "M & M" (meditation and medication) with my EMDR machine very much at all lately. I am screaming a lot less (crying like a baby, as Kaezen calls it). This is a big one. I have often screamed and cried out in pain in the past. My other meds seem to do what they are supposed to do more often. Before I would take everything and still not get a hold on all the pain. I am taking a lot less hot baths for the pain. I have more endurance; I still spend most of the day in bed, but I still have some energy at the end of the day so I can go out for ice cream (for example) if I want to.

I am not yet ready to ask for less meds. I am not yet ready to wear my legs much at all. These are at least a couple of goals I have not yet reached. Perhaps I will think to check in again in another month.

"Dignity." That was the subject of today's reading from the book, "Peace in the Storm." This is a book of devotions by and for those of us living with chronic, serious illness. As soon as I started to read, I had a flash back to the day Russell and I went for my most recent blood test. I immediately realised that, in situations like this--waiting in a medical office, I use humor to deal with the wait and uncertanty. I shift into "Wes, the clown" mode and am constantly looking for the next bad joke or pun. My radar is so focused on this that I cannot "be here now" with the uncomfortable situation. Shrink type people (and specifiecally Dr Oddy) have often picked up on this immediately and I have denied it, failed to see it, made another joke of it. Well, the joke, Dr Oddy, is that you were right all along.

PS
It doesn't take a "shrink type person" to notice this; only someone who is breathing. Everyone has noticed this but me. At least to the degree that I "got it" this morning.

Thank you, Lord, for the new depth of insight into my soul. I probably won't stop this automatic behavior, but maybe next time I will notice it more.

Hhm, "automatic behavior." That means I should put this new insight into the formulas of the cognitive behavior stuff and see what more, deeper insight I can dig up. An assignment for later. Now I have to get ready for lunch with a friend. (See, I did learn from the nightmare the other day. After writing about that the other day, I realized that that is a recurring nightmare that I have about myself and that the reality is not as bad as the nightmare. I do have friends, and called one up and invited him out to lunch right after writing about that nightmare here.).

I've been struggling to put into words what is the difference the Botox has made. I'm still using the same amount of meds but something in the quality of the pain seems different, if not in the quantity. This was the insight I had last night and couldn't think of this morning when I wrote then; but here it is. Since taking the Botox injections, more often than before I find that my meds are working. Before I was taking xyz amount of meds but often they didn't take care of the pain and I wished I could take more, but was already at my limit. Now, since the Botox injections, I still need xyz amount of meds to take care of the pain, but now more often than before that is enough and I do experience enough pain relief that I don't need anything more.

So, with the Botox, the other meds are working. They are doing their job. They are providing "enough" pain relief more often than before. It is not even that. Before Botox I very rarely experienced "enough" pain relief. Now, I do sometimes.

I've been struggling to put into words what is the difference the Botox has made. I'm still using the same amount of meds but something in the quality of the pain seems different, if not in the quantity. This was the insight I had last night and couldn't think of this morning when I wrote then; but here it is. Since taking the Botox injections, more often than before I find that my meds are working. Before I was taking xyz amount of meds but often they didn't take care of the pain and I wished I could take more, but was already at my limit. Now, since the Botox injections, I still need xyz amount of meds to take care of the pain, but now more often than before that is enough and I do experience enough pain relief that I don't need anything more.

So, with the Botox, the other meds are working. They are doing their job. They are providing "enough" pain relief more often than before. It is not even that. Before Botox I very rarely experienced "enough" pain relief. Now, I do sometimes.

first, last night's insight

Over the years, I have learned to listen to my dreams. They are one of the clearest ways my subconsciouness talks to my conscious self. So, this morning I woke up at a difficult time for me--9:30 AM. That is too early for me to be in good shape later in the day (I hope I get a nap and that helps). However, it is sometimes too late to go back to sleep for another couple of hours, especially if my mind is going strong, and boy is it today. The nightmare that woke me was a haunting one. I guess that means the subconscious was trying to hammer today's lesson home; and it got the conscious mind going strong in response to it. Thus I am writing this instead of going back to sleep.

The dream was about the "good old GSLP days" (Guest Seminar Leaders' Program for the est Training). In the dream I was trying to "close the sale" trying to get someone to sign up for the training. In the dream (unlike how we were trained to do it in GSLP), the "guest" kept saying "no" and all of us were gathered around "handling his/her considerations." You know; for everything this person said we had another reason why that meant they were perfectly in the right place to sign on the bottom line. Sometimes I was the assistant trying to signing up the guest and sometimes I was the guest. It didn't matter. I was being hounded and pressured just as much in the dream.

When I woke up and asked myself what that dream meant, I realized that I had never made any lasting friendships with anyone at Landmark all those years. In California we lived a distance away from both centers where we assisted. Shucks, Michele and I practically helped build the center in Orange County. So, we would drive nearly an hour, do our job, maybe go out to eat with some of the team and then go home. We were too far away to just hang out with anyone. The only thing that changed when we moved to Golorado was that we were even farther away and participated less.

Abi and Genea often talk about people they know from Landmark who are friends that they hang out with in other settings and so who are real friends; not just people with whom they assist. I never had anyone like that at Landmark. I now see that perhaps this was one of the things they were trying to help us create in seminars when we had teams; but that was usually about how many guest we could bring. I think that it probably wasn't much different all those years in the church. We still have a few friends from Ogden, that we obviously don't hang out with too often. We have a handful of friends from Estes Park, but even that seems to be too great a distance for some friends. Denise will still go out to lunch or even dinner in Estes when she is up there for work. But the only time I see anyone is when they are down here in Ft Collins shopping and they have time to stop; which doesn't seem to be any more often that we might see someone from a former church from out of state. Lee has been good about stopping in to see me, but he is about the only one who even calls just to see how I am doing. With any other friends I see them when they call and set something up, which is about as often as when someone from out of state calls to set something up when they are passing through town.

So the lesson from today's nightmare, little grasshopper, is this: I don't have many friends. I mostly have acquaintences from work or some other way in which I was using people to meet some other purpose in my life other than friendship. In fact, it may not be going too far to say that Wes Pixler doesn't know how to make friends because he doesn't know how to be a friend! To wake up realizing that is enough to qualify as a nightmare, I think.

Well, we did it! It must have been about 12:15 pm by the time the doctors got it done. Yes, we had a real para-docs going today. Both Dr Sisson and Dr Yeager participated. Each one injected one leg. I fealt better immediately and walked out of the office at about 1.0, or even less, on that infamous 1-10 pain perception scale.


We went out for lunch and I stayed at that low level of pain through the end of lunch. Then I went and stood in the bathroom for about 10 minutes. That was enough to hurt quite a bit. Now it is about 4:30 PM and I have had one Actiq lollipop and still hurt a bit. Much of the pain is different from the usual pain. A lot of it seems to do with having a needle stuck into the end of my stumps several times. I suppose this pain will go away in the next couple of days; and that also by that time, I will have a better idea what it is going to be like on a permanent place. It seems that if I think I need more I can get another shot later on.

I believe this certainly is an answered prayer.

But first a little by of catching up. I recently realized that I tend to "let go" and crash when there is a new hope on the horizon. So this is what I have done for the past month or so. I have been too at the end of my rope to even journal about it.

Yesterday was the worst. I had flu-like symptoms all day long. I was so bad that I forgot all about my usual aches and pains. Denise had to spoon feed me apple sauce and chicken noodle soup I couldn't even lift my own spoon. I did manage to make it to the bathroom in time for vicious diarreah all except once. Of course I slept all day so I was awake half the night.

Now for the good news. First, I think I will live. Next, Dr Sisson's office called and I am scheduled for botox injections in my stumps on Friday. This is the long awaited new hope for which I crashed the past month as my psychological mechanism to prepare to be disappointed. Still, this procedure is supposed to relieve a lot of pain and the doctor said the results could be permanent.