Day 1, Part 1: The First of Many Miracles
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Jeremy, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."—Sheralee Purcell, 2003
Content Warning: Bodies being gross—my body in particular. Frank and somewhat harrowing medical talk.
I went to bed early on September 8th, determined to get a good night’s sleep. And to hopefully say goodbye to the wobbliness, weakness, and tremors that troubled me all day. I went to sleep around 10 pm (which is early for me) and slept without waking until about 6 am when I had to pee. I know that this is TMI, but believe me when I say that the TMI is going to get so much worse as this series progresses. Instead of my tremors going away, they seemed to have strengthened in the night. I had a hard time making it to the en suite that is no more than eighteen inches from my bed. I manage to pull myself through the doorframe into the bathroom while white knuckling an extra dining room chair that has been repurposed as Jennifer’s makeup and hairstyling seat on her side of our two sink vanity. At this point my tremors are so violent that the incredibly sturdy metal chair is shaking like an 7.6 Richter scale earthquake has localized in the bathroom. I deathgrip the sink and pull myself over to the vanity where I inch my way sideways until I get to the next sink which is less than a foot away from the toilet. I am shaking so hard at this point that I am facing a dilemma. Shall I potentially fall while trying to sit on the toilet? The toilets in our apartment are fairly low, so will I even be able to get back up from a seated position provided I don’t brain myself on the corner of the marble countertop on the way down? Shall I pee standing up and risk falling from a greater height? How do I lift the toilet lid and seat safely? Also, do I risk the mess of trying to micturate from a standing position while having uncontrolled tremors?
Gentle reader, I opt to stand.
I stand, mostly out of a lifelong habit. It is partly prompted by the fear that if I fall while trying to sit down I am not certain that I would be able to get up off of the floor safely—or at all. I would have to holler for Jennifer to call 911. And the nice firefighters or EMTs would have to come and get me off of the tiles then examine me for injuries while my pants are down around my ankles. My pride will not allow this scenario. While death gripping the leftmost sink with my rightmost hand I do my best to stand stock still. I concentrate hard on keepin my limbs still—focusing my will as though I were trying to make a sack full of charcoal into a bag of uncut diamonds through force of brainpower alone. In the first of many miracles on the day of Friday, September 9, 2022, I manage to pee without falling to the ground or making a horrible mess.
As I lay in bed the night before, I made a plan for the day.
Take a shower.
Get dressed in my office.
Go sit in my recliner in the living room while playing Microsoft Mahjong on my iPad until it was time to feed the kitties at 7:30.
Cook breakfast.
Eat breakfast with Jennifer. I would have a couple of leisurely cups of coffee.
Take my meds.
Relax until we leave at 10:00 or so for our vaccination appointments and Jennifer’s dentist appointment downtown.
A glorious ride on the CTA’s finest conveyances downtown.
Get our updated Covid boosters, flu shots, and TDAP vaccines at a nearby Walgreens.
Potter around downtown until Jennifer’s teeth cleaning is finished.
Find some lunch at a place with outdoor seating.
Jennifer invited me to go pet foster kittens at Stacey’s condo. Depending on how we felt after our vaccinations, we would either go to Stacey’s, or we would head home. Or Jennifer might go alone to Stacey’s and I would go pet kittens another day.
Write a consecutive blog post for the first time since May.
As an afterthought I decided that I might message my doctor on the patient portal about my tremors if I still had them when I finished publishing the newsletter.
That was the plan.
After the unnerving trip to the bathroom I opted not to take a shower, thinking that adding a wet surface to my wobbling leg and random extremity tremors situation was not going to make me safer. Besides, I had just taken a shower on Thursday. I can take one after the tremors go away later in the day.
Instead of taking a shower, I inched my way from the bathroom sink—I washed my hands—I’m not a monster—to my office using the counter, walls, doorframes, our bed, and anything else that looked like it could hold me up (and a few things that probably could not) as handholds. I made it to my office chair without falling with only a few close calls. I logged onto my computer and immediately began asking Drs. Google and WebMd to diagnose my tremors, weakness, balance issues, and unclassifiable “wobbliness”. Just for a lark, I search to see if these new symptoms could be related to the inexplicable gradual weight loss that I’ve been experiencing since the early days of the pandemic. I also googled to see if the horrible “stomach problems” that had been plaguing me for months could be related. “Stomach problems” is my go to euphemism for the explosive diarrhea that had me using Imodium once or twice daily for over four months. By the way, you are not supposed to use loperamide (Imodium’s active ingredient) for longer than two weeks.
Oops.
By the way, I will be using “stomach problems” for the remainder of this post and in any subsequent posts in this series that follow. Believe me, Gentle Reader, you will be glad that I will euphemize this particular phrase as it will occur often. Sorry about that, but since I lived it, y’all can read about it, right?
For more than an hour I fall into a deep google, wikipedia, and WebMd K-hole of searches about tremors, “temporary tremors”, “weight loss and tremors”, “balance problems and tremors”, “stomach problems and tremors”, etc. The results run the gamut from “not serious and temporary” to “gravely serious and possibly fatal”. According to healthline, general causes of tremors can include:
aging
injuries
prescription medications
Medical conditions that can cause tremors include:
At this point I am having tremors any time that I try to do anything with more large muscle movement than typing. Even using my computer’s mouse can start a tremor—more than once I accidentally flung my mouse into my iMac or onto the floor. While retrieving my mouse off of the floor, I discover vertigo that is truly disconcerting. I am immediately glad of the wisdom of skipping today’s shower. Besides, I can take one later today after the tremors stop, right?
I promise that I was not planning to catastrophize as I went down this list, but almost all of the less serious causes could easily be explained away:
Muscle fatigue: I had just awoken from a relatively long sleep, and my general exertion level and movement as of late was somewhere on the scale between potato and veal calf.
Ingesting too much caffeine: Unless I sleepchugged a pot of coffee in the night, I had not had caffeine since breakfast on Thursday.
Low blood sugar levels: I had not taken my blood sugar yet, but I was certain that it would not be lower than the 90 mg/dL that is considered the beginning of low glucose levels.
Stress: I mean, yeah, but who isn’t stressed by living in a late capitalist failed state? Seriously though, my mood was much improved in all categories for the last couple of weeks. I was feeling more resilient and having better distress tolerance than I had in months. I don’t think stress was it.
Aging: I suppose? I don’t think that forty-nine is the age where the wheels fall off of this particualar cart, but what do I know?
Injuries: Again, unless I fell while sleepwalking, I cannot recall any injuries of note for years.
Prescription medicines: This is not just plausible, but also likely. I take a fistful of prescribed pills daily—meds that have been prescribed by a handful of doctors. Some of these meds may not play well together. I think to myself, “I’ll have to ask Dr. Gilleon about this the next time I see her. Or maybe Dr. Raida?”
These were the least alarming possible explanations. Instead of looking more carefully at the one’s that had some merit, I dove headlong into the next list. I am getting increasingly emotional as I read down the list. Tears begin to roll down my cheeks as I get about halfway down the list.
Medical conditions that can cause tremors include:
Traumatic brain injury: About eleven years ago I was an unwilling combatant in a street brawl in front of the touristy brewpub where my work Xmas party took place. I was on team Bookselling Dorks vs. Angry Line Cooks. I’ll let you figure out which side won. I got a black eye and an eyebrow cut, but the EMTs said that I didn’t sustain a concussion. Unfortunately my poor suit jacket sustained mortal injuries that night. As far as I know, I have not been hit in the head since. I think that we can rule this one out.
Stroke: God I hope not. I have none of the other symptoms, and my weakness and tremors are bilateral. Not today, Satan.
Parkinson’s disease: Holy shit, please don’t let it be this! Please! My maternal great grandmother and maternal grandmother both had this disease. It is not likely that I do because it usually emerges very gradually and is usually on one side of the body and my tremors are bilateral. Not likely, but I’m freaked out nonetheless. Really freaked out.
Multiple sclerosis (MS): God I hope not. Like stroke, I don’t have any other symptoms.
Alcohol use disorder: I have not been a regular drinker since Obama’s first term. I rarely drink at all, and only to excess once or twice a year. This is probably not the cause.
Hyperthyrodism: Negative. I had been checked for this within the last few months to see if it was causing my weight loss.
Anxiety: Yeah, and this ain’t exactly keeping me calm.
My tremors are so bad now that I have a hard time getting dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. I have to sit in a chair to dress for fear of falling down. I am barefoot because bending down to put on socks and outdoor shoes seems fraught with peril and my Adidas slides that are my three season house shoes feel like walking on particularly squishy marshmallows. I slowly and carefully make it across the hall to our bedroom. At this point I am really wishing that I had a cane or walking stick squirreled away somewhere. I wake Jennifer and let her know about how my tremors and other symptoms have gotten worse in the night. I tell her that I cannot safely bend down to feed the kitties, nor can I stand still. Nor can keep my arms and hands from tremoring long enough to safely make breakfast. I am openly weeping now and I have convinced myself that I have Parkinson’s or some other chronic, even deadly ailment. Jeremy, don’t panic!
I panic anyway.
Jennifer ask me to go sit in my recliner—and do I need help to get there? I say no, but I tell her that I really wished that I had a cane right now, and that maybe I should get one soon. She says that that is a probably a good idea. She also says that she will feed the kitties and make our breakfast.
In the second of many miracles that day, I safely make it to my recliner from the bedroom by inching down the hallway ever so carefully holding onto the wall and our industrial-sized shoe racks. I plop down in my blue chair and wait for breakfast. My hands are shaking, but I can still use my phone, so I look at the socials. There is a lot about the late QE2, who died the day previous. My Facebook and Instagram friends are pretty evenly matched on “Team I ❤️ HRH Regina Elizabeth II And I Am Sad About Her Tragic Passing at Ninety-Six”, and “Team LoL The Queen Is Dead, Let’s Make The Jokes”. My team is “Team Didn’t We Fight At Least Two Wars So We Don’t Have To Give A Shit About What These Inbred Germans Are Up To?” We’re not an actual team, mind you. We just sit in the stands bemused about the carnage on the field below. My Twitter timeline is all jokes all of the time. Twitter is dark, y’all. I love it.
Though my shaking is quite pronounced, we eat breakfast without incident, but I am obviously shaken—no pun intended. Jennifer says that I definitely need to call Dr. Gilleon’s and let her know after we run our errands. I agree, but then I wonder out loud “I should see what Nurse Jessica thinks.” Jennifer agrees, and I text her the following:
Me: I can’t stop shaking when I stand or walk. It started yesterday.
Jessica: Hmm.. any changes in medications?
Me: Not recently.
Jessica: Hmm.. blood sugar ok?
Have you ever been able to start using a cpap again?
Me: Yes. 150 this morning.
No. I have not.
Jessica: I wonder if your CO2 is up. Mom’s legs get shaky when hers is.
Are you sleepier than usual?
Me: I’m also having uncontrollable spasms/jerking.
I’ve been waking up early, but no.
Jessica: Btw.. mom is in the hospital again for some shortness of breath and elevated CO2. She was admitted yesterday. I fell asleep before I got around to texting you. Sorry.
She looks better than she has on other admissions, so hopefully it’s a short visit.
I would get your labs checked. Sounds like electrolyte issue or CO2 elevation
Are you peeing more than usual or having diarrhea?
Mom also gets the spasms and jerking with elevated CO2
Are you peeing more than usual or having diarrhea?
Me: I was having exceptionally bad diarrhea last month. But it’s been ok for the last couple of weeks.
Jessica: It could have depleted some electrolytes
I would definitely been seen today somewhere to have them check your labs.
*be
I tell Jennifer about the potential carbon monoxide situation, and she gets the pulse oximeter out of the IKEA hutch that we use as a medicine cabinet/gardening supply cabinet/general household flarn* hutch. Jennifer bought the pulse oximeter during the height of the pandemic to test whether we needed to go to the hospital if either of us caught Covid. So far neither of us have had Covid—knock on the biggest piece of wood you can find, so she put the batteries in the device and tested it on her. Her oxygen level was somewhere in the high 90s, and her pulse was in the mid 80s, a bit high probably, but she is in a stressful situation, and we both had coffee with our breakfast. We then try it on me, and this is what it read:
*Flarn is a term coined in the 2000s by either our friend Tonya or our friend Mark (neither can remember who coined it and they both say it was probably the other one—not exactly a Newton and Leibniz inventing The Calculus simultaneously situation, but it is as close as I’ll ever get to one) to describe the things that are too expensive to throw away, but that you don’t really ever use. You don’t really notice flarn until it is time to move or reorganize the house, and then you realize that it is just everywhere. Go forth and use “flarn”—it’s a great word—it even sounds like what it is.
Jennifer takes the picture and sends it to me and Jessica. Jennifer and I think that there must be an error—after all I am really keyed up and caffeinated, so she puts it back on her finger and it has almost the same reading as last time, with the pulse being slightly more elevated.
We try my finger again, and the pulse is even lower. . .
¡ ¡ ¡C L I F F H A N G E R! ! !
See y’all next week for part 2.
I will send out info very soon on the Zoom party in a separate post.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Drop me a line: jeremydnichols@tooearlyoldtoolatesmart.com
Follow me on Twitter: @jeremydnichols
Follow me on Instagram: @germynickels
Follow me on TikTok: germynickels
My PayPal: PayPal for Jeremy Nichols
Discord server: Too Late Smart Newsletter Server
Jeremy’s Guitar Fiasco: Jeremy's Guitar Fiasco
Email for Jeremy’s Guitar Fiasco: jeremy@jeremysguitarfiasco.com
Twitter for Jeremy’s Guitar Fiasco: @guitarfiasco
Facebook group for Jeremy’s Guitar Fiasco: @jeremysguitarfiasco
YouTube Channel: Jeremy's Guitar Fiasco
Yikes! This sounds so scary and glad you are better!
Jeremy, thank you for sharing your story. I have been silently rooting for you and I figured I should root legibly. I found you through Captain Awkward and I enjoy your writing so much. Thank you for your bravery in a) living through it and b) writing it with so much humor and vulnerability for internet strangers. Reading your post helped me today, so thank you.