Archive for the ‘Illness’ Category
Just One Month
My husband and I are at war with one another right now. I don’t know how he found out, but he fished my medicine bottles out of the trash and got them filled, as well as the prescriptions for the two extra drugs that I didn’t want. Then he woke me up from my nap and sat me down at the table with the pills spread out in front of me, and said either I was taking them or he was seriously going to sign the paper behind the pills. I grabbed the papers; they were some legal documents from the Village Idiot and an actual divorce paper.
So my choice was either I can continue to take these medicines that aren’t beneficial and stay sick and comatose, or I can be legally separated from my husband and possibly declared psychologically ill and lose my RN, my credits, my children, and possibly never get any of those back.
How can people do this to others? Why do they do it? Why do they do it to the ones they claim they love? This isn’t love. While I was digging through my planner, I saw where my husband leaves on a business trip in February, after Valentine’s Day, for a memorial show for our daughter, as well as some other work. I will truly be alone. At least now we speak to one another, some times, even if it is edgy, but I really believe I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It doesn’t have to be this way. Does it?
In the end, I took the pills. I checked the locked medicine cabinet and found that the Seconal has gone down significantly since I last checked it. Hell, I can’t stay home and make sure he doesn’t become an addict again. I thought about flushing it, but then I thought different. I went back to my nap. I dreamed of stealing Oxy pills and naked Billy. They weren’t good dreams.
Cutting off the nose to spite the face
If there’s one thing that I am sick of, it’s the pain. I want to be pain-free. I deserve to be pain-free. I originally went to my current doctor to be pain-free, and since then (22 months, but who’s counting?) he’s skirted around the issue that is my pain. I have never had a single x-ray or CT scan that is related to the pain that surges down my spine. I can barely take a bath. I can’t have enjoyable sex because I’m usually cut off mid-orgasm due to the pain. I can’t drive long distances. I can’t relax in bed with a book because the pain is there, constantly.
However…
*I have been pumped with pills to treat high blood pressure (um, that would be the pain, asshole!).
*I have been pumped with pills to treat cholesterol. It’s never too soon to start destroying your liver! Although, I’d prefer it be destroyed with either alcohol or because of a hep infection, though.
*I have been given non-narcotic medicine that causes memory loss and nothing to counter act that memory loss. This cost me my 4.0 GPA a year ago. I got a B in one of my classes.
*I was “diagnosed” with diabetes during an office visit when the doctor was training a medical student. He was showing off for her and the “OMG! FATASS!” (me) in the exam room and demanded a blood-sugar stick. I was drinking a Dr. Pepper at the time. My blood sugar was about 110-115, and I had had breakfast and lunch that day plus snacks. That’s not a diabetic. But you can’t tell him that! He upped my Metformin to 1000 mg twice per day last month, so I have more nausea and vomiting! It’s worse than chemotherapy because your hair doesn’t fall out, and the puke tends to get caught in the ends. The endless vomiting is what eroded my molar so badly that it dissolved right in my mouth.
Since my doctor seems so clueless about our general health (giving and ex-addict an addictive medicine, ignoring my request for pain management), I flat out asked for specific medicines today. He laughed at me, said I was “irresponsible” with medicine, so he wasn’t going to prescribe it. But here’s a prescription for more diabetes medicine. Let’s not forget that I had an extremely low blood sugar a year ago–yeah, that’s a myth–but these also promote weight loss.
This is where I had to stop.
My pain is not caused by excessive weight. According to my height check today, I’m 6’1″ in crocs and I weigh 174 lbs. That’s not obese. That’s not something to panic about and demand to know why I haven’t signed up for gastric bypass. According to every medical text book and chart at the med school library, I am within normal weight ranges for my height.
My high blood pressure is caused by the constant pain I am in. Up until I was in that car accident with Josh, my blood pressure ran 110/75 or lower. I don’t get that pissed off in the real world. But since I was in that car accident, my blood pressure goes as high as 300+/190+. Any doctor who doesn’t know that pain raises blood pressure needs their license pulled. Especially the ones that tell their patients, who happen to be nurses, that their condition they ‘think’ they have is a ‘myth’.
All my blood work points to my cholesterol being in normal ranges. However, my senior citizen parents’ cholesterol is high, so I’m ‘at risk’. Never mind that I eat fairly well, and when they were my age, their cholesterol was pretty normal. I even told him to re-check my ‘dad’s’ records–the man is African American. I am not. He’s not my biological dad, but what does biology have to do with medicine? My doctor probably thinks high cholesterol is contagious, like a cold or the flu.
Diabetes would be if I hadn’t eaten all day and my blood sugar would range to 150+. It has been within normal ranges. Last year, I had an extremely low blood sugar during my night class, and didn’t think I could get myself home, never mind poor Matt who was running all over campus looking for a soda machine or vending machine to buy me something to eat, while at the same time trying to call someone to come and pick us up. I got this low blood sugar from medicine that isn’t supposed to cause low blood sugars in people who are truly diabetics. But it did me. That wasn’t the first time, but it certainly was the scariest one.
So…
When my meds run out, I’m not getting them refilled. I’ve thrown away three prescription bottles today that I was planning on getting refilled when I got my pain checked out today. I was perfectly healthy before I started taking them, and now I feel like shit. I can’t concentrate. I felt perfectly fine when I was pregnant the last time because then I even quit taking the psych drugs. I’ll go to my March appointment, and then that’s it. No more Village Idiot for me. I have a bad feeling that this new pain that I’m having is something else gone wrong, something bigger, but he won’t test me for any cancers. Cancer never comes out of remission, don’t cha know?
I have a small shock plan that I’m going to try when I go for my March exam. I should take video, if I can. 
A Year In Retrospect
Last New Year’s Eve I watched the celebration across the world.
From my bleak and lonely hospital room, my window held a distant view of bursting colors in the sky. I vowed then I’d be anywhere but where I was for the actual beginning of the New Year. I guess I can at least say, “I’m not where I was.” Geographically speaking, of course.
I teased my friend James that for 2010 I’d meet him in New York City for some serious celebrating. I hope his wife and him get the chance to go. Unless I can manage the great escape I’m pretty much stuck.
I spent almost 4 weeks in the hospital at the beginning of the year. That’s the longest I’d ever been and I almost went crazy. I came out knowing how wonderful freedom was. The smell of smoggy air never seemed so magical before.
I spent a week savoring the knowledge of remission. I searched my soul on the beaches of Corpus Christi and realised it would be so easy to start a journey and walk away from everything I knew. I wanted to. Something inside me changed. I’d sit watching the sunsets I’d missed and I’d cry at the beauty. I cursed the Cancer that wanted to make me run away from everything I knew and loved. I felt a new power radiate within me. A determination to make myself stronger. I felt I had many more things to do. And there was a fear that drove me. It was the fear of knowing Tomorrow is never a promise.
I returned home vowing to pour all my energy into my writing. I’d made a promise to myself and I intended to keep it. My battle was over, I had fought the great fight to the end. This final season would close the chapter of school. I’d be my best or I’d go down trying.
It was my best. And it was worth every bruise, elbowing, and burn I received. I let loose the warrior in me and had fun. It wasn’t about winning, it was about finishing. It was about walking across the stage with my head up and my smile telling the story of how awesome life felt.
There are a lot of lessons in life and I think I suffered most of them throughout the year. Love can stink but it’s also an awesome thing. Prejudice lives and if I could smother or strangle it I would. It affects everyone but unless we stand up to it it’s not going to back down without a fight. Heartache is around every corner, there’s no way to prepare for it. We have to ride it out and hope for the best. Shedding tears doesn’t make us weak, it gives us strength to go on. To every beginning… there’s an end and a new beginning. Everything has a price, nothing we receive comes freely. Know what you’re willing to sacrifice to get it. Life is truly awesome.
I guess I packed a lot of mischief, mayhem, and laughter in all those months. I feel like I accomplished many things. I suppose what I wanted most was quality. I don’t think I’d want to change anything, because even through the heartaches the quality of what I experienced was primo. So in that respect I don’t have regrets.
Did I have happiness? Yes. Did I lose my smile and the laughter? Sometimes but I always found it again. Were the tears worth it? For every tear I was given the brilliance of the sunlight, so yes, they were. Did I find the rainbow? In every friend, most definitely.
That’s a lot of rainbows. It’s been an awesome year.
Three Years
I didn’t sleep last night. Not last night. Just like three years ago. I’m wearing the same blue night shirt, laying on the same pillows, thinking about the same things. I wasn’t surprised when the bright sunlight came in through the curtains, telling me that the dawn had come. The snow clouds soon choked out the sun, casting a haze over the sky. The snow storm is more than ten hours away, but the clouds have completely covered the sky.
I think back on the night, three years ago, and the tears don’t even come. As hard as I try, I am jaded from the scene. I cannot cry about it anymore. I’ve exhausted all angles of what happened three years ago, and I can no longer find myself guilty of anything wrong. There is no reason for my sorrow. There is no reason for my tears. So why couldn’t I sleep last night? Were the ghosts of one of a thousand regrets walking the halls, scratching on the door to the bedroom? What did they want? The answers?
I am tired now. I think sleep will come. I have my morning meds to take, and then it’s off to bed, to sleep away the day. Sleep like I did three years ago. I have forgiven myself, so I can repeat my past. I can re-enact it every year and try to change what I do. Change the past so I’m not forced to remember how it really is. Take a few blue pills to erase the memories and numb my brain. Become a living corpse, walking the halls with those ghosts late into the night.
But I cannot lay down and sleep.
I don’t deserve to sleep.
No matter how many of those blue pills I take, I cannot erase the memories I want erased. They pick and choose what parts of my brain that are permanently gone, and I have no choice in the matter, except the choice to take the pills. Those memories I want gone haunt me. Perhaps they are the ghosts that keep me awake at night?
The most haunting is what she did and said before she died. What my little PoRo said to me before she died. When she became sick with cancer the first time, she was happy. She said cancer was nothing and when she got well we could be a family again. Momma wouldn’t cry anymore and daddy wouldn’t be ‘away’ as much anymore. She got well. Then she relapsed almost a year ago. This time it was different. She was sad before we even took her to the doctor. Before the diagnosis ever came. After the diagnosis, I asked her why she was sad. Surely a second battle with cancer wouldn’t scare her.
What she said made my heart ice over… “Momma…I’m not going to make it this time. I’m going to die, and there’s no Rainbow Bridge, there’s no misty field surrounded by mountains where we play while we wait for you and daddy to come. When I die, I’m going to be gone forever, and I’ll never see you or daddy or anyone ever again and they’ll never see me again.”
Those words hit hard when I woke to the silent house, when PoRo was gone forever. “…I’m gone forever and I’ll never see you again…and you’ll never see me again…”
Those words don’t bring tears to my eyes. Am I immune? Has my soul dissolved in a beaker of acid? Or will they just scratch at my door late at night on the eve of December 28th, 2010?
Over Christmas, I visited PoRo’s grave. I brought her blue flowers. She loved blue flowers, though blue wasn’t her favourite colour. Her grave was decorated. Kids from her class had been by to leave stuffed animals, letters, someone had left her a can of Pepsi, propped against the cold, icy marble stone which bears her name, the dates, and her favourite Lord Byron lines. I knelt down in the snow, the coldness immediately radiated up my knees and through my shins and legs. I brushed some snow aside and laid the flowers on the slushy ground at the foot of the stone. “Merry Christmas, PoRo…Where ever you may be. Momma still loves you,” I whispered. Her daddy approached me from behind and told me it was time to go. I wasn’t wearing a coat, I wasn’t wearing gloves, I had walked most of the way there, in crocs, no socks, the snow had soaked the legs of my jeans through. How long had I been kneeling there? I don’t remember the walk back to his car. I don’t remember what he replied to me when I asked why he didn’t bring his little girl something. A blanket, a stuffed animal, didn’t he know she was probably cold and scared down in that dark grave covered with snow?
I recovered, eventually. I slept for a few hours. When I woke up, I played with my Christmas gifts. I ate candy. I frolicked in the snow with what’s left of my family. But the ghosts returned. PoRo hasn’t even been dead a year, but she has joined the ghosts that haunt me on this eve, and forever will.
Hostess
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