assessing the damage

I jumped in the car this afternoon without putting sunscreen on my tattoo. It was the first warm day in a week (oh, New England!), and I pulled on cropped pants and sandals and slid into the passenger's seat while my husband held the door open. The sun beamed in through the windshield, highlighting my ankle. "Oh well," I thought, and then, "Oh."

Last summer I was absolutely neurotic about keeping my new tat "out of direct sunlight." I wore long pants, curled my legs beneath me, carried a stick of sunscreen everywhere. If I caught light glinting on my strawberry, I would feel a clutch of panic. "I am taking bad care of it. It's going to fade. I'm going to mess it up. I won't be able to read her name any more."

Of course that was actually about my dead baby, not her memorial tattoo. I can see that now, with a little distance. This summer will be different. I will keep my ankle covered when I can, and I should remember that sunscreen. But I will not panic about my tattoo anymore. That much of my wound, that little tiny part, has healed.

Other wounds have appeared, though. Maybe irreversible ones. They are part of the body I will live in going forward, part of the breakage that comes with grief.

I don't know why I am so surprised by them. I will be the first to tell you that grief is physical. But I never considered the long-term impacts. Somehow my body would get a free pass, because, you know, my baby died: "Hold on there, Universe. Just a second, Normal Aging Process. I am grieving. I'm taking this year off, or maybe two, to grieve, but I'll get back to that self-care soon. Promise!"

Until recently I was not wearing sunscreen. Fighting depression, I wanted all the Vitamin D I could get. I ended up at the dermatologist getting a mole biopsied. There are new sunspots on my face. The skin on the backs of my hands is cracked.

I have been sitting for a long time now. Over a year in fact. Sitting and reaching out, to and through my laptop for whatever comforts and knowledge the 'nets can deliver. So I now have a couch potato injury - pain, tension, stiffness through my left pec, shoulder and bicep. "What are you reaching for?," asks my massage therapist, "Be careful how you reach!" If only he knew. Maybe it is the reaching. But it's probably also the slumping. Folding over like this, I have hurt myself.

With the pain, also came the parasthesia. Icy hot numbness traveling through my limbs and torso, pins and needles in my legs. Oh my god, I thought. Oh my god.

Lupus. Thyroid Disease. Multiple Sclerosis. Rheumatoid Arthritis. Arterial Disease. If I'm really lucky, just a pinched nerve. Of course that's what I thought. Because I am both a) still pretty crazy with grief and b) no longer naive. And also there's this: Grieving is hard on the body. Grief and trauma can run down the immune system and trigger other health events. I am a perfect candidate for an auto-immune disease, because I am, in so many ways, eating myself alive anyway.

I wondered: Do I need to stop grieving, to save my own life? Should I go on antidepressants? Should I get a real job? A real haircut? Start running again? Take TTC break? Hire a nutritionist? Go back to my therapist? Should I get on with it before I break myself?

I spent some time with Dr. Google and my IRL doctor. Initial blood work and check up show nothing really wrong with me. Wait and see. But then I got a little intuitive nudge: vitamin toxicity, maybe? Sure enough, vitamin B6 can cause numbness, tingling, and all around weird nervous system problems. Apparently I have been madly over-supplementing in an attempt to become pregnant and to control the health problem that contributed to the loss of my baby. Oops. So this is my working theory, somewhat backed up by my B6 serum levels. I am weaning off and moderating some other supplement intake, and already I am feeling better.

But still, damage must be assessed.

I am not exercising. My diet is erratic. I do not drink enough water. I sleep so-so. I rarely stretch, or meditate, or even intentionally breathe. And I am pushing 40 and trying to get pregnant. I don't think I can go on in quite this way. At some point my body will need better treatment than this.

One of the beautiful things about this babylost community is how we give one another permission to grieve--to not rush, to not push, to not justify, to just be, to take our time. But now I wonder, where is my line? At what point does generous, gracious grieving tip over into crazy, lazy, sedentary introversion that is, well, bad for me?

I don't know. I'm trying to eat a little better this week. Wear that sunscreen. Drink water. Stretch. It is not easy. In my brain, things are a mess: "going to the gym" is entangled with "leaving my baby behind"; "finishing this work project" is entwined with "having to get over it." I need to unspool my brain across a clean work surface and tease apart those threads. Can someone else do it for me? It hurts too much to do it myself, without anesthesia.

Brian says I have to figure out how to make moving forward a way to celebrate her. I'm sure he's right. But you know, ouch. Not much choice, though. I have permanent heart damage now, but maybe this body can still be saved.