Living With… Stuff: 17 April 24

Yep, still living with it!

Things with my throat are still iffy and it makes eating somewhat of a trial-and-error thing since my throat ain’t feeling acidic stuff, like tomato-based foods and, oh, yeah – lemonade. Gives me chills just thinking about that last one and more so when I had a dragonfruit/pomegranate drink the other day that I didn’t know had lemonade in it… until I took that second sip.

The first sip was tangy and not really all that sweet; the second sip had my throat on fire and I could taste the lemonade beneath the other two flavors and… fuck. I still drank the whole thing and I paid for it, but that dragonfruit/pomegranate pairing is actually pretty tasty.

Live and learn… and read the whole description. I’ve got an MRI coming up to see what the fuck is going on with my right shoulder and connected stuff; the orthopedist seems to think that maybe radiation zapped some nerves and caused some muscular atrophy and, yeah, it’s possible but just one more thing I gotta deal with in this post-treatment phase of, hopefully, kicking cancer’s ass.

When I had my stroke in 2006, it left me with neuropathy on my right side and from head to toes and it’s been a bitch dealing with the sensations that feel like pain and really wants to fuck with me when it’s cold because the neuropathy makes me think, say, that my right hand is freezing when, in truth, it isn’t; my left side is saying, “Dude, it’s not cold and your hand is nice and warm – stop bugging!” but there are too many times when my right side feels cold and convinces my left side that it’s cold – and all I can really do is laugh at how that works – but neuropathy is no laughing matter on the whole of things because there’s nothing that can be done about it other than taking medications that, at best, manage to take the edge off of the 24/7 pain.

Chemo was “nice” enough to give me neuropathy on my left side and it may or may not be permanent, which isn’t making me a happy camper because I feel the effects of neuropathy more… in my feet, which makes sense since they’re the farthest away from my brain. So, when I go to bed – and the time of year doesn’t make a difference – it’s bad enough that I have one foot that is trying to convince the rest of me that it’s freezing cold – now I have both feet doing it but when I touch my feet, both of them are nice a warm and I can find the pulse in my ankles so other than the neuropathy, everything’s fine.

Enter… the weighted blanket. I was on Amazon and ordering some more Carnation Instant Breakfast when my eye happened to catch a blurb about a weighted blanket and the blankets I was using, well, they weren’t really keeping me as warm as they used to but they’re old, been washed a lot, so I need a new blanket and… what’s the deal with a weighted blanket? I read that they can keep you warm or cool (yeah, not really but stay tuned on this one) and if you get one, you should get one that’s from 5 to 12% of your body weight and I said, “Fuck it – I’m gonna get one to see if (a) it keeps me warm (or cool) and (b) if it really helps you sleep better.”

So I got one and I got one that’s 12% of my body weight – go big or go home, right? – which means my weighted blanket weighs 20 pounds. I will admit, at this point, that I screwed the pooch with this blanket: It’s too short for me although weighted blankets, for some reason, are a little shorter than a normal blanket but I’m pulling the blanket up to cover more of the top of me and… I could see my feet so I wound up getting a new blanket that’s long enough to cover my feet and especially when I’m stretched out. Now the fun part: Moving a 20-pound blanket around and one that wants to keep sliding off my side of the bed.

With my older blankets, I could use my feet to pull them back up where they’re supposed to be… and that’s not as easy with a blanket that really does weigh 20 pounds. The blankets have pockets that are “filled” with glass beads and, yep, I can feel the little beads and, yep, they make moving the blanket around… interesting. And since misery loves company, I got my lady one, too – just sharing the love and all that. My poor feet… gets warmer faster with the weighted blanket but, man, moving it around is like wrestling with a small child… and it feels “weirdly comfortable” to have this weight on you and you’re sleeping and I’ve found myself being so comfortable that when I start to wake up, I… don’t want to get out of bed because the blanket is also quite comfortable although the blanket I replaced my first blanket with, well, it’s “fuzzy,” and I’m not sure if it’s the blanket or just the weird weather in our apartment but it does keep me warm… and then, it gets too warm and now I’m playing “wax on, wax off” with a 20-pound blanket.

I can verify that a weighted blanket will keep you warm but the part that says it can keep you cool? I don’t know about that part but what I do know is that the parts of me that are the most affected by neuropathy… seem to be quite happy with the weighted blanket. My lady and I both agree that “wrestling” with our weighted blankets is giving us some exercise to go along with being able to sleep comfortably and, for me, not feeling like I’m freezing when I’m not really cold, well, not until I manage to get from under the blanket and now, I’m in the cooler air of the room.

I’m sure there’s some science at work that makes sleeping under a weighted blanket a good thing to do and, normally, my inner science nerd would want to know all about it but, nah, not really and not this time; all I need to know is that I can be warm and comfortable under its weight and I do get some exercise when I need to pull it up or just moving it to make my side of the bed. To look at these blankets, they don’t look like they weigh as much as they do – and they do make them that weigh more than 20 pounds and come in all the sizes except California King – but who knows – someone probably makes one that size. I can’t imagine what it would be like to sleep under a blanket weighing 25 pounds or more when doing so under one that weighs 20 pounds is interesting enough.

Whether it’s going to keep being beneficial to me or not remains to be seen; what I do know is that I don’t have to worry about kicking the blanket off of me and onto the floor because kicking it around… ain’t that easy.