Month: June 2014

You see what I did there, right?

I have been watching way too many episodes of “Orange is the new Black.”  I finished season one late last night.

I have to say that I identify much too strongly with that show.  Perhaps that is a sign of depression or a sign of collective misery or something.  I don’t know. I just seem to love the drama.  Which is interesting in and of itself, because usually that sort of drama is a big turn off for me.  Weird.

I don’ t feel like me just now.  I feel like a husk of collected atoms that used to comprise the person I called me.

I am still struggling with the pain and hell of whatever the fuck is happening to my liver or not my liver.  If it isn’t my liver, it is just pain for no reason.  If so, let’s get on with it and send me to the loony bin where I belong.

Put me in the “Shoe” as they call solitary confinement on the show.  While there, I can think about all the ways I have done wrong and maybe come out reformed.

Or, maybe they will send me to the rooms with the special leather strapped beds.  I dunno.

Either way, I am there, with those women, in that make believe show about a prison.  I am an inmate.

I had a disturbing looping nightmare the other night.  My father, who has been dead for twenty years, was my chief confidant in life.  In the dream I am trying to call him from a pay phone.  I can hear him come on and pick up the line but then that voice cuts in “This is a call from a federal correctional facility, please press one to continue”
And I hear my dad’s voice and he says, “I can’t, baby.”

I had a friend who was in the federal pen for seven long years.  I stayed in touch with him.  I tried to always answer his calls.  I know what those calls are like.  They are limited to fifteen minutes in real life.  Also, the inmates can only use the phones at certain times of the day and certain times of the week.

The TV show makes it look too easy.

My subconscious, it seems, knows the truth.

I need to make a phone call from out of my cell and I just don’t have a number of where to call or a name.

I’ll stop now.

 

So, today is the day.  I am officially another year older.  As my dear friend and beloved mentor used to say, “It beats the alternative.”

She made it to 71 despite all of her health problems.

I am keeping her advice in mind today.  The last thing I want to have is a pity party for myself.  But I do have to admit to being a bit downy in the dumpsies.

At this point, after nine hospitalizations in six months, four surgeries and four removals of surgical doo-hickeys, I am still not well:   That makes me want to curl up and just sleep until it is over.

I can’t do that, obviously.  Besides, I have another avenue to explore with yet another team of doctors.  This is what they mean when ‘they’ talk about not giving up.

The next stop: Katie’s liver.  It seems that all this pain and ill health may not be my pancreas at all.  Maybe it is my liver, slowly giving way to my immune system’s melt down.  I won’t list the symptoms, here.  Let’s just say, it’s not nice.

I have one doctor who seems determined to keep looking into this and is going to refer me to another teaching hospital.  This week I have been gathering tests and evidence and my own research into the problem.  He called me on a Sunday, (nice guy!) and told me to fax it all to him tomorrow so he can look at it and see what our next step should be.

I really, really appreciate that.  But I also know not to hope for too much.

Where is God in all of this?

Frankly, Scarlet, I don’t know.

I have faith that there is a God but I don’t think that God is really into helping me out just now. I have to walk this road alone to wherever it leads.

I could really use some super natural strength because I am completely out of my own kind.  But, there is no choice but to put one swollen foot in front of the other.

Again, a depressing blog.

I feel badly about that but I just cannot do any better.

There are bright spots.  I love my family and the new dog and lots and lots of things.  I got to drive a new CRV today ( a loaner while my van is back in the shop) and I really, really liked it,

I am such a car freak!.

So maybe I will hit the open road and drive until I am out of gas.  That is a pretty apt metaphor for my life just now.

Just drive…….

 

 

 

Well, that last entry was a doozy, eh?  I feel as though I should redeem myself a bit.  But, then again, that is what a blog is for, isn’t it? Honesty?

That is the only way I know how to write.  I have been thinking lately I should try my hand at fiction.  I need to do something else with my brain;  besides dwell in my own pain.

That is not what I mean to do here at all.

I mean to traffic in hope here.

So, here is my idea for a fiction piece.  Warning: It is in the fantasy genre’ since that is what I enjoy the most.

I am working on something that has to do the domestic animals and how they act as intermediaries  between the human world and the world of the fey (faeries).  In other words, humans are sort of deaf and dumb to what is really happening around them.  Children, it turns out, are more tuned in.  Some people, however, can hear the or decipher what is going on past their childhoods.  It is sort of the opposite of Dr. Doolittle.  The animals have been talking all along and negotiating truces on our behalf.  There is a delicate balance, a war of sorts, and our domestic ‘pets’ are what keep it all in place.

Crazy?

That’s me!

I just have to get ‘er done.

I am happy to entertain ideas and comments.  I have started it but so far dislike the voice of the narrator.

But, getting back to the business at hand: I have been back in the hospital, both in Austin and in Houston.  It seems to never end.  Yet, it seems that it will all end sometime soon.

I don’t know what to say or think as I go forward.  I think I am learning that if I don’t live one day at a time; I don’t get to live at all.

I have another procedure right down the road.  I have more questions that need to be answered.  My body will never have a stasis point from which I can count on it to just “be.”

These are the facts.  And I cannot make peace with them on a broad basis.  I want to declare war: constant, unrelenting war.  But I have learned that in order to ready for the next battle, I have to gently ride each wave of relative peace and calm.

And so the Up Beat.  And the Fiction.

Godspeed, Friends.