August 31 – “Mush brain”

Today was the first day back to school for teachers at Seaside Christian Academy.  We got together at nine for a staff meeting.  It went really well.  Everybody seems willing to cooperate and be a team.  It's a good thing.  If I have to keep on as interim for much longer, I'm going to need all the team I can get.    Once again I found myself falling victim to my old malady of not being able to stay focused from one "urgent" task to the next.  I'd start distributing curriculum and realize that I was sitting in front of the computer trying to figure out how to operate in Windows Vista.  That proved to be a losing cause time after time.  I ended up making a list of things I couldn't do on the computer at church.  That gave me "plenty" to do when I got home.  Only problem was, by the time I got home my mind was pretty much mush.  I couldn't even concentrate enough to make a list of what I needed to prioritize.   I promised Chris I would call my neurologist this morning.  I read them the list of symptoms she wrote down.  Ten of them.  Pain in both elbows.  Pain in all my fingers to the extent that it really hurts to shake hands.  A place in one of my fingers that feels like a nerve is rolling over a little knot.  Fatigue.  Both big toes throb and are numb.  My lower back aches and sometimes has stabbing pain.  Sometimes the pain wakes me up at night.  I forget the others.  The lady laughed when I told her my wife made me call, but she read back what I had said almost verbatim.    Jachin and Micah were here when I got home, and Cailyn came over, too.  I played with them for awhile, but ended up falling asleep in a chair.  The neurologist's office called back not long after I woke up.  The first thing they said was to stop taking celebrex and motrin.  That seemed odd - no scary – to me.  If I am honest, that's what's making it possible for me to keep going every day, especially in the afternoons.  But she kept talking.  Instead of those medications they were calling in a different one.  Looks like for the next nine days I'll be on steroids.  I told Chris I guess I should start working out.  But right now I sure don't feel like it.  Right now I feel like mush-brain.  Hope this entry makes some sense.   Tonight we took a walk with Mom and the mosquitos.  She made it all the way to the end of the street and back.  I was proud of her.   2 Peter 1:5-9 says "For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins."   Father, here I am again.  Can you use a mush brain?  Amen.