Straightening Out Physically

My body has been a challenge from the moment I got sober.  Things bother me that I would never have noticed before.  And I don’t know if it is that I’ve totally damaged myself from my years of crystal meth use or if I’m just some kind of unluckily predisposed to illness kind of being.

Early in recovery it was respiratory stuff; bronchitis, sinusitis, that sort of thing.  It didn’t help that I was still a smoker.  Getting through the first winter sober required several rounds of antibiotics.

The second winter sober required several rounds of antibiotics, too, but I guess they didn’t do much good if I ran around with pneumonia for 3 or 4 months, eventually needing a couple of major surgeries to get me better.  I don’t know how better I got.  I still have pain from the surgery.  I look at my back and side and I feel like Frankenstein.  And all that time, those 2 months of recovery, laying in bed, taking vicoden (as prescribed – but so what, that shit is hard to do when you’re “sober”) losing faith, losing hope, losing “conscious contact”.  All of that is normal, I’m told, for anyone in recovery going through what I went through.  But it’s been a year and some months later and I’m OK.  I don’t have the Burning Bush kind of Higher Power that baptized me into recovery.  It’s quieter now.  I have to look for it.  I miss the Burning Bush – but what I have now is OK.

I have convinced myself that my head is OK – but my body says otherwise.  A week ago last Saturday the skin on my leg became really sensitive, but there was no rash; nothing to indicate that something was wrong.  I thought maybe it was the length of my shorts rubbing that part of my leg or maybe my new detergent wan to blame.

Last Saturday I woke up with a full-on, huge case of shingles that was spreading before my eyes.  I went to the doctor immediately and I started taking medication to stop it within hours, which I guess is a good thing.  It continued to spread, in spite of the medication.  It seems to finally be calming down.

It makes me wonder, am I really the same as I was before I had half my lung hacked out?  Am I still so completely unaware of my mental and physical state that things like this happen.  I thought when I straightened out spiritually I was supposed to straighten out physically and mentally.

I thought I had been taking pretty good care of myself; three meals a day, going to bed at a decent hour, etc.  I thought that I was handling beautifully the pressure I’ve been under at work.  Then my body tells me what’s really going on.

I know that I must be recovering from my drug addiction because when I was using I might not have even seen a doctor.  This could have been much worse than it was.  Like that terrible relationship I almost got in to, I recognize when something is wrong now and I take action.  I put “first things first”.  The first thing to do when you can actually see the blisters forming is go to the damn doctor.  I guess that is what progress looks like.  One of the differences between me on drugs and me sober is that I see a doctor when I need to.

Maybe – just maybe – God is doing for me what I cannot or will not do for myself; slowing me down.

By the way, don’t get shingles if you don’t have to.  This hurts like a . . .