macular degeneration, macular, diagnosis Now What? – My Macular Degeneration Journey/Journal

Now What?

Do you ever watch sword fight movies? You know, the main character is fighting a horde of orcs, Imperial Stormtroopers, name your favorite bad guys and he suddenly runs out of bad guys. Usually the good guy looks around concerned. Where is the next one coming from? Then he looks around perplexed and a little deflated. Now what?

In every good sword fight movie there are “now what?” moments. My life is not a movie, sword fight or otherwise, but I seem to have come to one of those moments.

I am getting to my activities and to work. Missions accomplished there. Now what?

It has been two months since I completed the application for public transportation. Still not approved. I called but no immediate response. I wait. I could get all Rambo on them, but the ride situation is in hand and it might be a waste of a good rant.

I have not heard from the mobility person but I have received the invoice. I know he has been approved so I suspect I am waiting on his schedule.

My habilitation worker wants to come week after next. A definite time but it still seems so far away.

And speaking of so far away, I still have not heard a word about the clinical trial research. I looked. It has been nearly six weeks since ‘my’ researcher told me six months. I arbitrarily picked October 1 as THE DATE. Six weeks is ¼ of six months. I am a quarter through this purgatory of waiting. Maybe. They could move it back another six months and I would have no recourse but to wait. Good grief!

So I wait. I remind myself the AMD is an important part of who I am now but it is not the only part. I can use activities to distract. I can use mindfulness to stay in the moment and really participate in my life. (All DBT concepts, by the way).

Waiting – in my case lack of targets, er, I mean goals – is not often seen as distress, but it is. It’s a quiet, niggling kind of distress.

Which begs the question: what happens when all the bad guys I can defeat are vanquished? What happens when there are no other supports or treatment options to pursue?  What happens when it is as good as it is going to get?  Yikes.

The Serenity Prayer is a good one:

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can change and the wisdom to know the difference.

Working on it. Working on it. Sigh.

Next: CHRISTMAS IN MAY

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