Baseball Season is Upon Us

And for me and Mr. SG that means many days at Comerica Park in Detroit, watching our beloved Tigers. We're not those fairweather fans that jumped on the bandwagon in 2006. No...we've been there much longer. We've sat through the incredibly rollercoaster-esque 80s and 90s. We endured the transition from Tigers Stadium to Comerica Park. We battled with the great losing season to end all losing seasons in 2003. Yes, my friends--we've been through it all.

Except last year and this year, chronic illness has crept into my weekly summertime getaway. In addition to the cheering and the score-keeping and the hotdogs and peanuts, I've endured pain, burning, fatigue and general malaise.

I was reminded of this yesterday on Opening Day here in Detroit. On an otherwise gloomy Monday afternoon, so many adults played hooky and made the day as teenagers in a wasteland for one brief moment. For all the good it did me to try and play along, it was a day I happened to be in pain.

I have realized that after getting home from vacation I've been lax about my treatments. I haven't been taking my Neurotonin and Flexiril regularly. I've been neglecting my TENS unit. I've been holding my bladder longer than I should. In other words, I've been pretending my bodily defects do not exist. As fun as it was while it lasted, it seems to have (pardon the pun) bit me in the ass in the end.

I'm looking forward to many more baseball games this season (and hopefully another trip to the playoffs). But as I sat there yesterday, I wondered what type of accommodations I will need to make for myself over the coming months. Am I no longer able to sit as long? Do I need a special cushion to bring with me? Should I take pain pills before even getting to the stadium?

More frightening is this question: Am I going to miss out on games because of my illness?

This one has so many implications. Not only are the games a summertime tradition in this budding family of ours, but they represent the rare times that Mr. SG and I have alone and awake. We work different schedules and we lead busy lives. If baseball is taken away--even for a week--it's not going to be a pretty picture.

So here goes another experiment in this larger test of The Body Chronic. It's just sad that I'm confronted with having to make accommodations just to have fun. But I guess I've been doing that for awhile now.

Maybe I thought with the dawn of spring, I'd have a revival of sorts where I didn't have to accommodate pain. Perhaps it was that I had a bit of a reprieve on vacation. Perhaps it was the sentimentality of it all. In any event, spring has sprung and I need to ensure that my patience with my body doesn't take off as well.