After four months of success using the Fabrifoam Superwrap bandages on my lower legs to reduce my lymphedema, they have suddenly quit working. My legs are still wrapped 24/7, but they are swelling anyway, pushing on the bandages until they become tighter and more uncomfortable, instead of looser as the fluids diminish. I have no idea why I am having this severe inflammation—I thought when the summer heat subsided that things would substantially improve, not get exponentially worse.

My plan was to wait for cooler weather and then begin wrapping the upper legs as well, to start reducing the entire leg. But I’m so uncomfortable from the renewed swelling that I don’t know whether I should even try.

I’m beginning to think that I’m going to have to go back to considering surgery as a viable alternative instead of as a last-ditch effort. But the thought of the pain and the long recovery time is still so daunting to me that I can’t bring myself to get started on that. Meanwhile, it looks like my mentor Carol has ghosted me permanently, so I won’t be getting any advice from that quarter.

I feel like there must be a specific reason why things have gotten so much worse all of a sudden, and I’m wondering if it’s a supplement I added, a new food allergy that has manifested from something that once was benign, too much or too little of some nutrient or ingredient in my diet…but I don’t know how to figure it out. I really need a naturopathic doctor. But I also really need to be able to go to a doctor; this past week I had a procedure scheduled at my cardiologist’s—a stress test with dye to discover what shape my heart valves are in—and I had to cancel because my right leg is so big and heavy that I couldn’t throw it up into the car and drive with it. There’s always Access, but you have to arrange that at least 24 and preferably 36 hours in advance, and I never know from one day to the next what kind of day it will be.

I slept nine hours on Sunday night in two lengthy chunks of five and four hours with a two-hour “break” between, and felt pretty good, and then on Monday and Tuesday nights I slept a total of 90 minutes each and felt lousy. The swelling is exacerbating my knee pain and has moved to my veins; my ankles hurt when I walk, and last night I had stabbing pains in the ball of my left hand, and a persistent headache (that last is probably from no sleep).

I wake up some mornings (when I sleep) from dreams in which I can still run and climb and move freely, and wonder how, exactly, I got here. Stuff pops up in Facebook “memories” that reminds me how things were just five short years ago, and I can hardly believe the difference.

I’m not writing this for any specific purpose; I think I just needed to bitch about all of this “out loud.” I’m feeling discouraged. That is all.