Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Defeated by Grocery Shopping

"Some people meet people in the grocery store, but I get my tomatoes and I'm out." ~Ryan Seacrest

Grocery shopping has always been the one thing I felt I could still manage on my own.  I was still capable of bending to the lower shelves and reaching to the higher shelves.  I could even manage to position the cart just right so that the dog food would fall almost exactly where I needed it to into the cart.  During flares, I would take one of my kids or my husband to do any extra running back for forgotten things or to do the heavy lifting.  But, I was still managing it.

All of that has now changed.

I can't handle the grocery shopping.



Thanks to Hurricane Sandy and an upper respiratory infection, I am currently coming down off of a shoulder, rib cage, hips, and back flare....rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia respectively.  However, life must go on for my family, which by the weekend includes my son going to his dad's house, my husband going to his dad's house (who is very ill....we go to relieve Chris' sister who is there 24/7) and taking along my other son/stepson because he needs to spend some time at PawPaw's house.  On Saturday, I had been down and out for 2 full days and thought I needed some fresh air and sunlight.  What better reason to get out of the house than to go to the grocery, right?  Go out with a purpose.

Grabbing the cart to have something to lean on, I began to meander through the store.  I didn't have a list, which is unusual for me, but looking back that should have been an indicator that I wasn't feeling up to this.  Normally I'm on a mission, but today due to the lack of list, I instead took to wandering through each aisle to see what we needed.  We have the mainstay items.  This week we were in need of snacks.  Two pre-teen boys require a lot of snacks....some healthy, some not. And I digress......

By the time I reached the toilet paper aisle, I couldn't lift it.  Think about that for a minute....I couldn't lift a package of toilet paper.... At this point, I had come to the conclusion that I couldn't really lift anything above waist level or anything large and awkward that may be below waist level.  When I tried, every muscle and joint from the waist up locked up and I was gripped with pain.  And I still had to get milk, dog food, some 2 liters of soda....heavy things for me.  And extremely painful things for me.

When I tried to lift the milk into my cart, I felt like I was going to fall to my knees.  You know, that scene where  milk spills everywhere and I just lay there waiting for the pain to pass.  Now, that didn't really happen, but I could see it happening in my head.  It took me a good 3 attempts to get a gallon of  milk into my cart.  And then I needed to get another gallon.  Oy vey.

 So, 2 hours later, a lot of  heavy breathing, crying, sweating....I make it to the check out counter.  At this point, I could care less that I'm over budget and I could care less how many fuel points I'm going to get out of this trip.  What I do care about is the bag boy.  The one who it seems I've interrupted his doing nothing to load a bag of dog food into my van.  And as we stand in the cold damp parking lot, with the back of my van opened, sitting in a handicapped spot.  He throws the bag of dog food in the van, looks at me and says, "Is that it?"

No.

And if I had the energy I'd smack you in the back of the head for asking.
You're already here with me....obviously struggling....just help me load some groceries into my car.

If my children act that way.  I will punch them.  In the face.