Today marks the seven week mark in my recovery from Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Things are getting better slowly. I have more good days than bad, with more good hours than bad. That’s a sign of improvement.

If I overdo it, I do pay a price. Monday, I worked for about 4 hours, and about 5 on Tuesday, with some other personal chores thrown in. Today I worked 5, and then I fell apart for a few hours. I feel a little better now, but it probably won’t be until Friday that I get back to Monday’s base level.

I did go to my optometrist last week, and will be getting glasses (just for reading, not bifocals), and I can’t wait for them to arrive so I can start reading, and hopefully writing, again.

Lisa and I have an outing planned this weekend to go and see The Hunger Games at the movie theatre. So very looking forward to that. I tried getting out of the house last Saturday to grab a coffee at the local Starbucks, but that somehow backfired and the caffeine jolt left me a numb-nerved blob on the couch for most of the day. I vow not to do anything crazy while at the theatre to set me back.

The only other news this week was that I made it onto John Scalzi’s blog today as part of his Reader Request Week. As I told him, it’s kind of like getting my name up in lights on Broadway. I do hope, however, that this is not the end of my 15 minutes of fame. I’ve got a lot more writing to do, and I hope to be a guest blogger there sometime in the near future.

These updates are getting a little repetitive, so this will be the last one on GBS unless something huge happens. I appreciate all the support I’ve gotten during this time. Hopefully, I’ll be able to repay it in some way down the road. From here forward, I’m going to try to return to topic oriented blog entries. I’m tired of talking about GBS. Maybe if I ignore it will just go away.

Yesterday was both the six week mark since I felt my first effects of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and the one year mark since my ‘Year of Pain’ began. You see, on my way to catch the train home from work on March 14, 2011, I slipped and face-planted into the sidewalk, splitting my chin and lip open. The cut on my chin eventually became home to a rather nasty staph infection that took five and a half months to cure. A week after my fall, I had surgery on my left foot that hobbled me for two months. In August, I dislocated my left shoulder, postponing the surgery I had scheduled for my right foot from August to October. I was hoping the Year of Pain ended December 31. Alas, February 1, 2012, GBS snuck in.

Okay, so the Year of Pain respects no calendar, but it must be over now, right? 366 days (giving it the benefit of the doubt for the leap year). I’m done with it. Life may now resume some sense of normalcy.

Not so fast, Mister. We still have this GBS thingy to recover from.

And how is that going, exactly?

Well, the week didn’t start off too well. I had three bad nights of sleep in a row, and that lack of rest made my symptoms worse, and that made me grumpy and angry and frustrated. Then, I had two good nights of sleep in a row, and I felt energized and the symptoms lessened. Today, I actually had to be careful I didn’t overdo it and set myself back again.

The numbness is now pretty much confined to the front of my left leg as a constant, and pops up in my feet and hands after immersion in hot water. My nose goes numb if I talk too much. My eyes still take a lot of energy to stay focused on text, so I haven’t resumed reading yet, though I am on my way to my optometrist this afternoon to see if I can get a temporary prescription for glasses (BIFOCALS!?) to get me through until my eyes get back to normal. Really. Just till then. I am not THAT old.

I wake up between 1 and 5 every night with little splinters of pain in my fingers and toes. It never lasts long, nor is it very intense. Someone on the GBS Facebook page described their pain as little kitten bites. That’s pretty accurate. Every once in a while, it’ll feel more like a lance of molten metal running under my skin, and those will wake me up, but for the most part, it’s not as bad as I’ve heard it can get. It’s all part of healing. I hope.

I’m not sure if it’s because I am not in deep sleep a lot during the night, or a result of the GBS altering my brain, or the fact that I am not writing these days, but my dreams lately have been very intense. The bolt-upright in a sweat kind of intense. I expect it’s a little of all of the above. As much as I appreciate the muse from the dream-world, I’d really like to get sleep right now. Come back later, please.

I’m still just working part time, 3-4 hours a day. Some days a little more. Some days a little less. Perhaps next week, I’ll hit 4-5 hours a day, but I’ve learned to set no expectations. I do what I can, so long as it isn’t so much that I am not healing more everyday.

Two weeks ago it would have taken me three days to type this entry. This took me less than half an hour today, and though my fingers are a bit fatigued, they aren’t numb. Still, now is a good time to stop. Before I hit that ledge.

So it’s been 5 weeks since I was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Recovery is progressing. As I have found out from the members of the GBS-CIDP Foundation International Facebook Group, GBS also stands for Getting Better Slowly. The group is really supportive, and gives me hope that I will eventually get better. It has also made me realize, again, how lucky I was to be treated when I was.

Taking last week off from work (pretty much), really did help me to gain a new base level. By Sunday, I felt like I was at 80% of normal base, instead of 40. I still don’t have much of an energy reserve, but enough for 2-3 hours a day of work. I’m trying to approach it from the standpoint that I must still try to feel better every day, and fit work into whatever time/energy is left beyond that.

I’m still watching a lot of movies and a lot of British TV shows. I recently started Doctor Who for the first time in my life, as well as Collision, Inspector Lewis, and of course, Downton Abbey. I’ve also started listening to baseball games on the internet again, which is a welcome relief from three star movies.

I wish I could read more, but reading tires me out as fast as anything. My eyes still aren’t quite right, and I have a fear that I may need to get glasses sometime in the near future to allow my eyes to relax when I read, but my neurologist suggested I wait for all my symptoms to settle down first before trying to hit a moving target.

I did the tiniest bit of editing last weekend, and hope to do a little more this weekend if I am feeling better.

I have a ton of blog other entries I want to write as well, but that also takes energy. Maybe next week.