wobbly moments

I had a moment yesterday. A touch of the OhFuckingHellItsAllGettingABitTooMuchNow's.

I was taking the dog for her longer walk of the day at a local woods. The forecast was saying the day would be punctuated with very heavy showers, so we were prepared for a wet walk.

Recently my walking has not been good. Coupled with a weak and wobbly MS phase in the legs, I am suffering with short breath because of the recently diagnosed pulmonary hypertension thing.

It's still my job of the day, every day, to walk our dog though. At present, it's the only exercise I still do every day, and I've always loved doing it. But the truth is it's become a chore to do just right now because of the current health situation, rather than the high-spot of pleasure it has always been before.

When we arrived at the forest car park, the skies were looking threatening, so I opened the car boot up and I sat on the tailgate lip to pull my waterproof over-trousers on.

Having bent down to get them over my feet, I stood up and could feel the rain starting... it was going to be one of those days. I carried on getting ready and did my coat up. Then I felt a trickle in my nostril and I sniffed, but the trickling feeling kept coming.

I know what this is. Nosebleed. A common side-effect of being on anti-coagulant medicines is easily set off nosebleeds, although bending over to put some trousers on is at the lower end of what I'd expect to set one off.

As I reached into pockets hunting for a handkerchief and drips of blood were splatting on the car boot lip, the rain started sweeping down in curtains. The wind got up, and I could feel the temperature drop.

I was feeling weak, clumsy, and overwhelmingly tired all of a sudden. And I was holding my head back and pinching the bridge of my nose to try to bring the nosebleed to a stop. And I was cold and getting very wet, although sheltered a little by the raised tailgate.

Normally, feeling stronger, I would have probably smiled at the fates bringing me all of these circumstances together and throwing them at me at once – wind, rain, fatigue, nosebleeds, wobbliness. But, with the tiredness, and the effort that any exertion feels like at the moment just being so exasperating, and having my own little energy crisis, it all swelled up, and I found myself in tears.

It didn't last long. Seconds, maybe ten or fifteen. Just enough to release a load of built-up frustration with... just everything.

And then the smile returned. The usual laughing at the pointlessness of getting miserable about things I couldn't control. The heavy shower had blown over, the sun started to appear weakly, it warmed up a bit. The nosebleed had clotted and stopped, and Gwynnik was looking at me from her crate, wondering why we were still waiting when she could clearly smell squirrel and needed to try and catch one asap please.

We set off for our walk. It's still a chore at the moment, but like most things, that can't last forever.