Another Alive Day Down

This year's Alive Day came and went. SO glad it's over. Sometimes it feels like we've been at this "new life" forever but when it comes to Alive Days we've really only had 5...and they are all so different. This year he started to feel it a month beforehand. Dean doesn't know what day or month it is most of the time but his body was knowing that something was coming. The night before the date was actually here (March 22nd) I had told him about his Alive Day approaching earlier as an explanation to why he was feeling the way he felt and he posted some sort of "Fuck the Taliban" message on his facebook. I guess a part of me felt happy for him that that was the position he was taking. The beer he was drinking was partially responsible for his harshness...but he deserves it! 

Another change this year is that once his Alive Day passed he was fine. No more fog, his new regular energy was back, he could see clear again. 

Alive Day is approaching

Well it's going on about 10 days of Dean in weird funk. He is admittedly feeling very strange everyday, no coordination, wiped out exhausted, can't think right, can't form words, can't even be mad at it (which is strange for him because normally when he's having such trouble I'll hear him cussing from the other room due to his frustration with himself), sleeping more, getting less work done (which makes him mad usually but again he's too wiped out to even be mad).

His "normal" is to operate at a 20% pace compared to a non-injured person and every 3 or 4 days be exhausted, need some more sleep, need to isolate even more, then he's back at it. But for this to be 10 days to 2 weeks of this exhausted state? If you take his normal 20% and make that be HIS 100%, I'd say he's functioning at 20% of his "new normal". This is getting bad.

We both have been trying to figure out...is he getting sick? No. Any med changes? No. Have we been having marital tension or issues with the kids? No. Any stressful events happen or coming up? No. Well......then it dawned on me that March 23rd is his alive day. Maybe this is him beginning to physically feel it coming? I mentioned it to him and he said "Maybe that's why I've been having flashbacks (he didn't even tell me he had been having them)....smelling the shit in the air, tasting the shit in the air, feeling the dirt on me again....".

What is weird is that here we are in our 5th year since his injuries and each alive day has been different. Mostly I feel they are a bigger deal than he does. I don't even think I mentioned it to him last year (or maybe that was the year before)? I don't know if anything will ever really settle in and be predictable. I don't know why I look for it to be predictable? Maybe it's just a natural human inclination.