A Difficult Life: Deirdre's Journal

Why I Cannot Live

deirdremorrison — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:43:29 +0000

16 June 2008

I know now why I cannot live. I know now why I cannot find a place in this world for me; there *is* no place in this world for me.

I am 52 years old. Half or more of my teeth are missing. I have no job. I am in pain all the time. There is no one who loves me, no lover or husband.

No one takes me seriously. I can’t see well, I can’t hear well, I can’t walk well, I can’t remember well, and I no longer can think that fast. It is easy for someone to twist my words, because I am too slow to realize it.

I have been marginalized. If I curse at some kid, they just laugh. I am not taken seriously; I have no power.

I cry all the time, and there’s nothing worse than an upset middle-aged woman crying and begging to please not cut down the trees that give her sustenance. It only gets you accused of guilt-tripping.

I will never own a home of my own. If I broke my arm tomorrow, I would probably have to go to a nursing home and lose my cats, because I can’t function without my right arm. I fall down a lot.

I forget what it is like to have personal power. I forget what it is like to lead. I forget what it is like to feel like I matter.

This is why I cannot live. Because I have no life.

Part Two: The Rape

It’s not that I never had laughter, or love, or power, or strength; it’s just that they seem to have vanished, a little more slowly each year, until there is nothing left.

The truth is that I am a caricature of myself. I am a caricature of the Crazy Cat Lady. I am a caricature of all those crazy bag ladies you see talking to themselves. I talk to myself sometimes; of course I do.

In my head, I am young and free, powerful, talented, loved, sought-after, thought highly of, sometimes feared, decently attractive, and each new day is an adventure.

In “The World” I am none of those things. In the world I am a crone, chained to too many things, powerless, with wasted talent and no love, hardly sought-after, never feared, certainly not attractive, and each day just brings the slowly dawning awareness that it will *NOT* get better; that it will only get slowly and painfully worse.

People actually hate me. People accuse me of things that are not true. People misunderstand me. People dislike me. People ignore me. It is a rare few that, to any degree at all, love me.

Sometimes I wonder what happened. Sometimes I *KNOW* what happened.

It’s not that hard to figure out. When was I that person in my head? When I was in college. When did I stop being that person in my head, I do not know. It swims in and out of consciousness. But the seeds of its death were planted with the rape, dark seeds that grew to nothing, much like my garden out back right now.

It happened a lifetime ago. Yet I do not forget. And I am damaged, cell by cell, daily by its horror.

He knocked on my door. He said his car had broken down and he needed to use the phone. Growing up in a small town in the 60s, it was considered common courtesy to allow them that phone call. He said it was busy, and asked if I minded if he rested a few minutes, and then began babbling about being drunk, and his mother was going to be pissed at him, and would I like some weed . . . .

And each moment I was becoming more and more aware that something was terribly wrong, or more accurately, that something was about to go terribly wrong.

I opened the front door (”it’s stifling in here and I want some cool air,” I said. It was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit). I started trying to draw him from the couch to the door, and thought I had just about made it when he fell against the door, closing it.

He acted as though he couldn’t get up without my help, so I pulled his one hand with my one hand while I reached to open the door again.

Then it all becomes a blur in slow motion and panic. He blocked the door and began choking me, telling me that we were going to “make love” and that I would “like it.”

I will never forget the look in his eyes. The hateful, evil fury on that face wanted to kill. Me.

I sat on the bed, caught my breath, and then started to cry. I babbled some incoherency about not understanding why he would do this time me, about believing in people and goodness in the world.

“SHUT UP!” he screamed.

I whimpered and lay there, on my $20 bed, naked and floating above myself. One moment it was “Come on, talk to me, I want to hear more of your beliefs.” The next it was “SHUT UP!”

It went on endlessly. My ill-conceived idea of rape was of the five-minute stranger in the alley variety. I had no idea a rape could go on for hours.

I started panicking, realizing it would be dawn in awhile, and having the strange notion that if he was not out of there before dawn, I would be dead, I started trying to clear my mind. I decided to first go with everything he was saying (excessive agreement, if you will), show no fear or anger, just act like this was normal. I was hoping that the next time I had to go to the bathroom, he would let me go alone (before, he had accompanied me each time). Which did transpire, but I could see no way out of the teeny window a child could barely fit through.

Luck played Her hand finally, when he passed me in the hall and said “My turn, now”. I gave it about two seconds for a pee stream to begin, and the next thing I knew, my legs had me propelled out the door, banging on the paranoid next-door-neighbor’s door; she wouldn’t answer it. He came outside and yelled “I’ll leave! Just come back!”

There was no way I was getting within reach of him. I ran to a neighbor’s across the street and pounded on the door. Luckily, they opened it. It wasn’t until that brought me a robe to put around myself that I realized I was competely naked. The freezing cold outside didn’t touch my unreal body.

He’d given me a false name but a real address. The police knew who he was. They promptly went down and arrested him, as I began the very, very long day ahead of me of hospitals and pharmacies, baths and women against rape supporters, a street confrontation with his sister, a blow-up about where to keep my cat, and a final drive home to mother’s, where I couldn’t sleep without Valium. She wouldn’t look in my eyes or hug me.

I can’t express what that experience did to me. I know it damaged me; I know I am permanently damaged because of it. I know that I probably never became what I might have been because of it. There followed medications and therapists and suicide attempts and moves, all in some slow-moving dream I had no control over. I had no control over anything. I could barely function for a year or more.

But we learn to get around the horror, we learn to get around the memories, we learn to get around the Thing We Cannot Speak Of. And we move on, and we move forward, and life goes on.

Or does it? Did mine ever move forward again? I wonder if it truly — truly — ever did.

I was raped six months before college graduation. The only reason I graduated was because I got myself mad enough to say “I am NOT going to let that little sonofabitch keep me from this!” And so I slogged my way through my last two quarters, and graduated, barely.

But in so many things in my life, I have held back. It is as though The Brass Ring is too out of reach, or the great leap is too far forward. I do small things, sure: I got to be a featured reader years ago at a poetry group at a local bar. I was actually paid an honorarium, in fact. But did I use that energy to move forward? No. I simply stopped and couldn’t go any further for a long while. I was afraid. I was afraid that people would see me for what I am: talentless, a hack, lacking in ideas, pedantic. And worst of all, if I did something major THEY MIGHT NOTICE ME. And being noticed — too much — meant the risk of some dark man following me in a dark car some dark night, or some man hanging outside my door, or that man in the alley. I wanted desperately to be noticed, and I was terrified to be noticed. And I have never resolved this.

I did carry on, getting a job as a managing editor, which lasted until the publisher unceremoniously dumped me, then asked me out — on the eve of his wedding. Next I was trolling for coins in fountains for cigarette money. One big UP; one big DOWN. Then I finally got a coveted job at University — good pay, benefits, the works. Back UP again. Then they took away my job because I couldn’t work part time, and they wanted someone fulltime. So they transferred me, I hated it, I got a job at a major research institution, and a horrible little woman I worked with told The Big Boss I was using the computer for my personal time (we *all* were, but she neglected that fact). I quit before they could fire me. DOWN the rabbit hole you go, Alice. And so on.

And relationships? I think of that Joni line “It always seems so righteous at the start/when there’s some much pleasure/when there’s so much spark/when there’s so much sweetness in the dark/waiting for a car on the hill”. Always UP. And always DOWN. Even most of my friendships. I lose them faster than I can make them, and carry very few old ones with me into whatever may come.

It’s all so confused. I don’t know how the rape screwed my life up so thoroughly; I just know it did. It would be easy to say PTSD (which yes, I have), but it doesn’t explain the wrong turns, the wrong choices, the missed opportunities, the wrong people — all of which have made my life the train wreck it is today.

I don’t think there is anymore. I don’t think there will be another love. I think there will be more health problems, and more pain, and more poverty, and more people screaming “Bitch!” at me (my lovely drunken abusive neighbor today; I have no idea what the reason was; he probably doesn’t know). I can’t take it. I can’t take it. I have had all I can take. My head feels like it is going to explode. I look around, and no longer care about anything I have, except a couple of things. All I want to do is lay in bed and watch movies. I don’t want to do anything else. I don’t *care* about anything else (except my cats, and yes I do take care of them). I cared about my garden until the landlord today told me they were probably going to cut down a bunch of my mulberry trees, pull down the Virginia creeper, and that there was nothing growing in my garden.

He treated me as though I were an imbecile. One more kick. One more loss. My beautiful, magical porch and yard will be gone soon, and it will look like everybody else’s place. He apologized to the lawn guys; but refused to apologize to *me*! I’m the one whose flowers they ran off, but the landlord said it looked like weeds to him too, and defended the lawn guys.

I snapped.

I know it is time to go. But there are some things I need to get in order first, and I am terribly worried about the cats. If I could get my friends on the cat group to agree to take and divide them up in case of emergency (e.g., my suicide), I could then change my will, give a key to J. and show her where the cat book is (on the pretext of my friend K’s. cats being taken away by her husband as soon as she became hospitalized, and because I fall down a lot). Write J. a letter, mail it, take my pills and beer, die like I should have two years ago, and know that the cats would be okay.

I wish I could get this done in time for Solstice, but I don’t think I can. And I am still not sure about the exact “how”. Last time, had I not called J., the mixture of what I had would have done it. Problem is, I don’t remember how much I had of what. I just know it was the right mixture, but I can’t for the life of me (pun intended) recall. 30? Or 45? 10 beers? Or 12?

I will have to think more upon this and begin to put things into movement so that I will be ready soon.

This world was never right for me, and the rape made it impossible. It is time to fly away elsewhere.

I Have Been Altered Forever, Part II

deirdremorrison — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:20:57 +0000

2 June 2008

I know I haven’t written much. I have sunk into myself so deeply, I can’t see my way out.

Before the surgery, I did nothing but fight and argue and scream and beg, none of it doing a whit of good. I did not want observers. I did not want a horrible tube down my throat. That was all I asked. Denied, denied, denied.

They say that in the time of the Witch Burnings, they were, in part, instigated by the physicians. The physicians did not want old wise women with their healing herbs, their midwifery skills, or their spells to tread upon what they believed was their territory. So it was simple enough to whip up a Witch hysteria, and scream “Burn the Witch!”, thus clearing the way for their superiority and the “superiority” of “science”.

I believe the above theory very much. Especially as a Wiccan. Especially as a Wiccan rape victim, having surgery on her exposed labia and vagina. With people watcing.

How sick are we in this culture when a male doctor denies a woman – a rape victim’s – right to privacy?

And yes, I know, I took the high road and he took the best tactic he could.

Doesn’t make the weeks of screaming, crying, begging, explaining, negotiating on the phone any better. That is what I was doing instead of writing. Endless rounds of phone calls, endless people on the other end of the line, and in finality, endless rejections.

Dr. C.’s medical secretary (or someone like that; I lost track of who was whom) was outraged by me. “I have NEVER in all my YEARS had such a problem with ANYONE!” Well, she had not yet met me, had she? “You called EVERYONE you possibly could!” Yes, isn’t that the point of trying to get help? “I even just got a call from MEDIA RELATIONS!” Yeah, well, I was actually trying to reach the Big Kahuna; have you ever tried to find out the name and number of the person in charge of everything in a huge hospital? It’s nearly impossible. Somehow, I got ahold of Media Relations, who promptly sent me to that godawful medical secretary as I tried to say “No, please,, NOT her!”

So between appointments, phone calls, the cats, freaking out, trying to wrap my mind around this, talking to a cancer survivor support volunteer, talking to friends – I lost my energy and time.

Wednesday the 21^st of May it was time. I was almost calm, as though the storm was over; I had lost, and could do nothing but put myself in their hands and in the Goddesses’, and in the many, many voices over the world prayer and purring and doing rituals for me.

It is unnerving walking into a cancer hospital. They had told me it would be at the main hospital; yet another lie, as they led my mother-in-law, my estranged husband and I into the cancer hospital.

Of course I had followed the rules (for the most part): no food or drink after midnight. With all the medications I take that dry out my mouth, that almost constitutes cruelty. I cheated and went 45 minutes past their deadline, as I knew my surgery would not be until 9:30. It’s the eight hours that matters, so my little 45-minute rebellion didn’t matter.

My other rebellion was smoking. Their rules stated that I should “stop smoking at 6 pm the day before the surgery”. I rolled with laughter until my sides hurt. Do they truly believe than a smoker under this kind of stress is going to quit smoking the day before a surgery? OMG, thank you for the laugh, you stupid hospital morons! I sucked down the cigarettes like candy, enjoying every single breath of smoke.

I think I got two-and-a-half hours of sleep. My separated husband got none. My mother-in-law got a few hours. So we were a lively group that morning.

I had warned them that I am not a morning person. They made it plain they do the “minor” surgeries in the morning (minor? This is minor to you? Gods, I wish I could turn you into a woman for a day.), and the major surgeries later (whatever those are). It’s just their schedule; it is as immovable as a rock (as all the rest of their rules seem to be), and I just had to deal with it.

I just told them I wanted to inform them that I am a night person, and therefore, early morning is my body’s low point, so I am likely to experience more risk and problems recovering. They went “Uh-huh” and probably didn’t even bother to write it down.

At any rate, our little sleep-deprived coterie (after being told to be there at 7:30 sharp) sat around for who knows how long before we were called upstairs. I was forced to put on one of those godawful hospital gowns, of course, and stripped of all my precious jewelry, some of which is magical to me. To my utter astonishment, they allowed me to keep my Mojo bag, and pinned it to my gown, so at least I had that, with my herbs and stones and magic in it.

I met so many people, I lost track of them. I think I met the intern. I met the chipper, happy anesthesiologist who was from Asia somewhere (I’m sorry, I like to think I can tell the difference, but I really can’t – I think she may have been Vietnamese). My mother-in-law nudged me and whispered “I have a great feeling about her. She is going to be wonderful.” I had no psychic mind operating at all at that moment, so I had to take her word for her.

Then the doctor sent in the young (young? She looked like she was 15!) student who would be observing. I was so upset, but although he did the wrong thing in allowing anyone to observe, he did the right thing in choosing a young woman, and having her come over to meet me. I squeezed her hand very hard, and told he “Whatever you learn today, please use it to help other women in the future.” She looked very serious and honest when she replied “I will.” I think she will always remember that. And there was absolutely nothing else for me to do but to take the high road.

At some point they moved me to the operating room. One of the things I hate about hospitals is they are so cold, metallic and sterile. There is no life to them; only the instruments of life or death. There is no beauty; only the shiny instruments and harsh lights that are part of the surgery process. They are cold, and brutal places, and I despise them.

The “Happy Anesthiologist” told me they would make me very happy with the drugs in my IV. She ordered two of Verced (two of what, I have no clue). “I’m not happy,” I said, still wide awake. She ordered two of Morphine (two of what, again, I have no clue). “Um, I’m still not happy,” I said, feeling absolutely nothing. Something else was ordered, and I suddenly found myself waking up, everything over but to make sure I was ready to go home.

They told me I woke up once and screamed for pain meds, which they gave, then promptly went back to sleep,. The surgery took 30-45 minutes; the entire rest of the time (some time around four hours) was devoted to me sleeping off the drugs.

As soon as I woke up, I knew I had to get out of there as soon as possible. I hate hospitals, and I feel like a prisoner in them. All I want is my file to bust out of there! I put on my best face, but they made me breathe the oxygen deeply, and added a mask (which I hate) with some other medicine for my lungs, and when finally they were satisfied, they took me back to my room with S. and R. waiting, and after straightening out a few things I needed, a short visit from Dr. C. (done nicely and shaking hands – I really must have been high on meds!),

Recovering that first week was a nightmare. I had some wonderful, caring people, including R. (again, must be the meds – heh), B., and K. took two days each to deal with the cats, which is no easy task. I had written a book, along with short version (if you count three pages as short) of the meds and feeding schedule. It’s still crazy, because Cosmo still has his hematoma recovery going on, he gets Lasix daily for his heat problem, and Internet and Arthur get Prednisolone every other day for their asthma. Not to mention that Cosmo is on the Purina One urinary diet (since he’s a kidney kitty), Brando is on the Purina One weight diet (no need to state why, except to say that I have a lifting restriction that Brando is included in), and Arthur is on the Purina One sensitive system or whatever it’s called. Everyone else is on whatever I had the biggest bag of: Purina One Indoor, I think. Each cat has his or her own eating spot as well, and there is a logical order to feed them in.

Needless to say, everyone made a mess out of it all. I really appreciated their help, but Cosmo’s ear closed, so it needed lanced again (three times so far); somebody gave them one can of food instead of two (one can of food for eight cats????); they clearly took advantage of the situation (the cats, that is) and didn’t go to their right feeding stations, causing chaos; and Goddess knows what else. Pills were probably skipped, too. I feel so badly that they furry ones didn’t get one they need, and I appreciate everyone trying to help out, but this is so complicated I think only a nuclear physicist could figure it out!

But they are troupers, and they survived, although they have been happy to see me back and made that plain.

As for me, I have been on Oxycodone and in a daze, doing little but sleeping until yesterday or so. The messy part of this is that I have to sometimes wear a pad (I’m in menopause; aren’t I suppose to be done with this?), I have to wash my privates with my hand, and I have to rinse every time I go to the bathroom with a squeeze bottle full of water, drying myself with a cool dryer. I can only take showers (I’m a bath person; I never take showers), and S. was kind enough to loan me her shower seat since I have a tendency to fall.

I looked at myself. I cried. It looks to me like they took half the inner vulva lip. I don’t want to know yet how much they took of my vagina.

Every day, I cry. Every day, I think about killing myself. I was wondering today what it would feel like to shoot myself in the head with a gun. Would there be a flash of colorful lights? Would my life pass before my eyes? Would it be painful? Or would it be so quick my splayed pieces of brain wouldn’t enough know what had happened?

I take care of the cats, but it always seems to be late by the time I am done. And by that time, I am too exhausted to eat. I munch on pretzels and cereal and sweets. I don’t feel much like eating.

While I was going through all this trauma, I bounced four checks at the bank somehow. They gave me back two, with a not to never give me back another fee. “You came in here crying last month about something else, and here you are again, crying about your surgery. That is all we are going to do.”

I sat in a chair and cried. I couldn’t go outside just yet. I couldn’t walk. And then a woman came up to me and started talking to me. I remembered here from last month. She is a cat lady, and a landscaper, and lives in my neighborhood. I had given her my card, but she had never called.

She talked to me a bit, and then told me she would try to help me with the financial end of things. She told me she used to be a social worker. She gave me her card with her home phone number on it, and I eagerly took it, thinking she was an angel from heaven.

I NEED help. I need a lot of help. I need help with agencies, and phone calls, and forms and finances and cleaning my house. I NEED help, and I am asking for it, crying at the shame of asking. But I am asking.

I called her and left a message. She called back and said she was going to sleep early. I called again. I haven’t heard from her since.

I don’t think she wants to help me. And I sit and cry because I have been let down again.

There are pieces of my life I will never get back. There are pieces of ME I will never get back.

Where is the hope?

It is Over, and I Still Live

deirdremorrison — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:29:23 +0000

23 May 2008

This awful thing In my life Is now over, and I still live somehow.

The worst was the waiting, and the trying desperately to get someone – anyone – to listen to my fears, my concerns, my needs. They didn’t care about those things. They said all they cared about was my heath; apparently my mental health did not figure int their calculations.

I went round and round and round with my surgeon, his nursing staff, the anesthesiologist staff, and just about anyone who might listen. My last call sen me accidentally to the media relations staff, who sent me right back to P., the rude medical secretary who exclaimed in frustration: “I have heard from everyone; I even just got a call from media relations! I have never been through such a thing before with anyone!”

I guess I forgot to tell her I wasn’t just “anyone”.

Somehow, by the day of the surgery, I had calmed down. It was no longer in my hands. They had made that abundantly clear.

The neurologist seemed nice; a happy little Asian woman who promised me happy medicine. Except, as I predicted, it ddn’t go planned. Two of Verced didn’t even even touch me. Two of morphine? Nothing.

Something eventually did, as I crashed out.

But not before the doctor cheated me. There was a student. He sent her over to me, a young-faced, open-looking young woman. I grabbed her hand – very tightly – and made her promise that what she learned today, she would use to help other women. She agreed. If I am going to be exposed like that to a student, it may as well be a young woman who will learn t recognize the signs of this disease early and do something about it.

I’m sure I lost on the intubation fight as well, but as everyone else I talked to, I don’ t remember it going in or coming out.

I apparently woke up at some point complaining of plain, and was put right back out again.

Which is where I am now; Out of it and barely able to type this.

I think I shall go back to bed and try again tomrrow.

Cries & Whispers

deirdremorrison — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:03:39 +0000

6 May 2008

I didn’t.

Of course I didn’t. That bit of strength within me has been swallowed up by massive emotional beasts of fear, terror, anxiety, anger, hurt, pain, humiliation and sorrow. I cannot seem to deal with any of this without breaking down in tears, and sometimes, it frustrates me.

I am a cryer. I have always been a cryer. I burst into tears at any moment for any reason, and that has always been the case. I watch TV news, and I cry over someone else’s house burning down, I cry over the police officer who was shot, I cry about the child who died in the accident. I don’ t even know these people, but I cry for them anyway.

Of course I cry at sad movies. For some reason, I have never cried at weddings (that I recall); I guess I just don’t emotional about people getting married; it’s a nice thing, it’s a good thing, it’s a happy thing – why cry? I haven’t been to too many funerals, but I don’t cry too much at them, either. Maybe I am just too numb; maybe my funeral experiences have just been too strange (and they have, belive me), maybe it’s just so expected to cry at funerals that something within me says “Naw – not gonna do the expected.” It doesn’t mean I don’t cry later. I do. I once seared myself into a neighbor lady’s mind as utterly bonkers by crying and sobbing on my back porch at 3 am over my mother’s death. It was loud enough for her to hear me and come out and give me that “Linda Look”, which translated as “What the f*ck do you think you’re doing, you moron?” Once she found out, she softened, but a Linda Look stays with you for awhile.

I cry if someone looks at me wrong. I cry if I can’t find the right cat food in the grocery store. I cry over things that happened 40 years ago. I cry over things that happened in the country 40 years ago that had nothing to do with me personally.

Sure, as I get older, I cry a little less. I don’t care so much if someone looks at me wrong; it probably has nothing to do with me, anyway, since the truth is that I am not the center of everyone else’s universe; that person is probably thinking about something to do with his or her own life when s/he happens to look at me weird. So, okay, I don’t really do that anymore. The rest of it, I still do.

With all the tears that have poured from me lately, it astonishes me that there are any left. But there are.

They came today, much as I tried to stay rational, calm and assertive as I called my doctor’s assistant. I had her card, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember who she was, other than someone connected with the gyno-onco. I couldn’t remember what she said or did when I was there. My mind is trying to blank out a lot of this terror, and doing a damn fine job of it.

I asked her who she was and what she did. I suppose she was offended, because when I then started to ask her about arranging to not have any student observers there for my surgery, she cut me off with a cold “You and Dr. C. already discussed this.” Now I’m crying again, just typing that. I tried again, pleading that I could not have student observers there; I’m a rape survivor. For heaven’s sake, can’t they understand this? Apparently not, because she then suggested perhaps I may want to see another doctor instead.

I was shocked. I was shaking. Another doctor? Another exam? Waiting who knows how much longer for this to be over?

The tears poured. “But – that – would – mean – another exam – and – I – can’t – keep – waiting for this!”

Okay. Next question. I am getting nowhere but halfway to hysterical.

I try to tackle another question, about the pre-op test results.

“We already talked about that,” she snaps.

My Goddess, what in the world is going on here? Do these people hate me because I don’t want observers staring at my completely exposed tender flesh as it is being brutally cut away forever? Do they not understand an iota of what I feel? Do they not care?

Apparently not. I tried again, with another issue.

I want copies of everything. I always try to get copies of everything when I can. They have a department that does nothing but copy CDs of MRIs and X-rays and the like. I always ask for them. Of course, I tell them they are for my doctor, but he doesn’t care about them. I do. I want my own medical records. They are mine, they belong to me, and I want them.

I had asked the anesthesiologist for a copy of the notes from my colonoscopy doctor, and he refused. Utterly refused. Like he couldn’t just run off a quick copy from the computer while I was there? No, I have to go to another office and request my records. For which I am sure they charge. I don’t have money to take a damn bus right now. I sure as hell don’t have money for copying charges.

“We gave you the copy of your consent form. I don’t know what else you are talking about,” she snapped.

Well, how about the copies of the blood test results, the EKG, the several forms I signed, not just one? I didn’t bother asking.

Okay, let’s try one more question. I thought they had told me the surgery wasn’t set for that date. She assured me I was wrong (well, it was pretty obvious by now that she thought I was wrong about everything); it was the time that would not be set until the day before. Okay, fine, no problem.

Problem.

I ask if I can request that it be scheduled in the afternoon. “No. We don’t do surgeries in the afternoon.” Sigh. Okay. “Can it be scheduled as late in the morning as possible?” “No.” (I am getting tired of hearing the word “no”. I don’t like hearing the word “no.” It pisses me off hearing the word “no”, especially over and over again in the same conversation.) “The minor surgeries get done first” (minor? Is she out of her mind? To me it is beyond major, and to call it minor is an insult. Fine, I will allow that that is the way they look at it, but her snapping tone offends me by calling it “minor”). Mine will be scheduled between 7 and 9:30 am.

I point out that I am not a morning person, and that my body is at its worst in the morning. I point it out twice, just to be sure she understands the implication of this. It will be a harder surgery, I will have a harder recovery, and it will be on their heads. I do not threaten; I merely state that my body is weak at that time of day. They should be able to figure out the rest.

By the time she is done shredding what little strength and dignity I thought I had today, I am a weeping mass of human being. Nothing is going right, and no one is listening to me.

Tears again. Stop it, damn it! I can’t even write about tears without the tears flowing.

I don’t know who to call, but I am calling someone. I stare at the phone book, the huge listings for the medical center, and I have no idea who to call, and no one is going to give me any help to tell me who to call. So I call the generic number.

A few numbers later, crying through each and every person, I am speaking with J., who has something to do with women and children and the hospital. I am too upset to get it clear. But she has a gentle voice, but strong, and she speaks to me softly as she asks me a few questions after hearing me out. She says she will speak to Dr. C. (the gyno-onco) about my concerns. I have little faith that this will get me anywhere other than dropped from his patient list, leaving me where I was a month ago, and forcing me through yet another exam, another scheduling, more weeks of extreme anxiety. But I do not know what else to do, so I give her my permission to speak with him. She says she will also talk to the nursing staff over there and see if they can help me. I ask her if she understands why I am so upset about this, and she tells me she does. The validation helps.

So I ask her about the intubation. She falters on that one, and I don’t push it. One thing at a time. I will deal with that later.

Her gentle voice ends the conversation as I thank her.

I do not know what help she may be. I do not know if Dr. C. will get angry, and dump me, or take his anger out on me during the surgery; a thought which terrifies me. I do not know what to do.

I am still crying.

There is something strange about the tears I shed these days. They feel different from the tears of the past. They taste different. They feel more real. They feel very, very deep. Sometimes, these dark days, they whisper me to sleep.

Power

deirdremorrison — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:39:04 +0000

30 April 2008

I can’t stop trembling. I can’t stop crying. Everywhere I go, everyone I talk to, gets five minutes of peace before I break down.

Today was my pre-operative nightmare. I was handled by so many people I feel like I have disappeared. That is the way they make you feel: as though you, as a human being, do not exist.

They wanted my temperature. They wanted my blood pressure. They wanted my blood. They wanted to hear my lungs. They wanted to hear my heart. They wanted to radiate my chest yet again (how much radiation from x-rays does it take before you get cancer because you’ve had so many x-rays?). They wanted my history, several times. They wanted my allergies, several times. They wanted specific details on every time I was under anesthesia and what happened.

What happens to me under anesthesia? I never know. Sometimes, I am fine and silly. Sometimes I am waking up under it to a nightmare. Sometimes, I wake up fine except that I feel deathly ill.

The anesthesiologist tells me the “twilight state” thing they have done for my colonoscopy and some of my dental surgery is not anesthesia. Okay. I don’t see the difference. They both put me to sleep, in terms of my brain at least. It sure seems like anesthesia to me.

The first time I had anesthesia, I was five. Back then, it was routine to take out perfectly healthy tonsils of very young children. I do not know why; it makes no sense to me. However, mine were far from perfectly healthy. My tonsils and adenoids were so infected and swollen that I was going deaf. Something had to be done. I was five years old.

I had bad postnasal drip. They didn’t count on that. I woke up during the tonsillectomy, a terrified five-year-old. I couldn’t see, because there was a sheet over part of my face. I could see the bright light behind it, though. I could hear my doctors talking, the ENT and my regular doctor and another I didn’t know. I could feel pain and burning and a scraping feeling in my throat. I tried to talk, and I couldn’t. They realized what was going on, and said “Uh-oh, she’s waking up.” Suddenly, I was asleep again.

When I awoke, all the other children that had been with me at the beginning were gone, home in their nice warm beds, home with their parents and dolls and television shows, home in comfort and safety. I was alone. And worse, they wanted to keep me overnight for observation. I wasn’t bouncing back like I should. I couldn’t keep anything down. I was sick and miserable. But I knew one thing: I was absolutely not going to stay in that hospital. I knew, in my five-year-old mind, that if I did, I would die.

I don’t recall what I did to somehow let my mother know that I could not stay there. But somehow, her face became as terrified as mine, and she suddenly insisted to the doctor that she was going to take me home. I remember both my parents and the doctor on the back stairs of the ancient hospital, arguing about the risk they were taking in signing me out of the hospital. My father was livid at my mother, believing she was doing the wrong thing. Our doctor was livid at my mother, believing the same. I only knew that home was the place I needed to be, and that home was where I would heal.

I lay on the couch with my new doll, feeling like death warmed over. But my heart was calmed and I knew I would survive.

I did, of course. It took me nearly a year to get back all the weight I lost over this traumatic experience. Eventually, I was fine physically, but bore an emotional scar that would never heal.

Not long after that healing, I had to undergo another battle with anesthesia with an oral surgeon. Even that young, my teeth were terrible; they always have been, and I have asked for years for dentists to just pull them all and give me dentures. Of course, they refused. Now I am missing half my teeth, and what is left is rotten. Had they listened to me long ago, when I had the money to pay for everything, I would not be in this condition. But they never listen to me, doctors, or dentists. They talk beyond me, over me, around me. They do not ever see me, or hear me.

I had to go to a larger city to get my first oral surgery, because there was no facility where I grew up that could handle it. It was nearly an hour’s ride there and back. I remember the dentist putting a mask on my face, which terrified me (I am asthmatic, and have been all my life; no one should ever ever do anything to an asthmatic that threatens to rob them of breath. It is incredibly cruel.). He was telling me some fairy tale to put me under. I fought the mask, but the mask won.

When I came to, I felt like hell. And then I had to get in a car for an hour. I spent most of that time vomiting. I never got over the memory of that awful mask and the sickness I had to endure after the surgery.

The next time I had to have oral surgery, I nearly screamed at them when they came out me with a mask. One of them sarcastically said “Would you rather have a needle in your arm?” And without hesitation, I answered “Yes!” I took the needle, and for the first time, I woke up when it was over, feeling only a little giddy and nothing else. It was a tremendous relief to have that happen for the first time. I thought the needle was the key, and that ever afterwards, I would be fine.

It wasn’t to be. The next oral surgery, I awoke, sick as a dog, vomiting again. The one after that used Versed, and put me in the “twilight” state. I felt a little sick and had a lot of pain, but it was not as bad as the one before. The next time, it was a colonoscopy, and the same twilight sleep. Except that they did not listen to my strongly written warnings about my problems with anesthesia, including waking up, and did not give me enough medication, or pulled back on it for some reason I still don’t know. What I do know, is that I awoke during the colonoscopy, and in spite of what Katie Couric or whoever might say, for me it was excruciatingly painful, and I screamed until they put me back under. I awoke screaming. They had to call my husband back to try to calm me down, which didn’t help much; he is lousy at helping calm anyone down. He can’t even calm himself down. At any rate, the doctor who did the colonoscopy strongly suggested that should I have a recommended endoscopy done, it should be done under general anesthetic. I have yet to have that endoscopy.

I told the anesthesiologist all this, and the only thing that seemed to interest him was the vomiting. “We’ll give you something to help with that,” he said, as though that would take care of everything. Will it erase the horror I have gone through? No. Could he guarantee I would not be conscious? No. What he did guarantee was that, with general anesthesia, they would have to intubate me, and put a tube down my throat.

Among my many anxieties, one of the worst is my swallowing/choking anxiety. I cannot take a pill, even a small one. I have to dissolve or crush any medicines I take. Or get them in liquid form. One doctor decided to be a smart-ass with me one time and said “Well, you swallow food, don’t you?” I sighed and said “You have no idea how long I chew before I swallow.” It takes me at least a half-hour, if not an hour, to eat a sandwich and a side.

The idea of a tube being stuck in my throat, in addition to the anesthesia terrors, and, worst of all, the idea alone that someone is going to cut into the tenderest flesh I have, in the most private part of me, was just too much. I started sobbing.

He did not understand why I was so upset. I was too upset to try to get him to imagine that he was going to have a tube rammed down his tender throat, waking up choking on it and terrified; dangerous drugs poured into his body that may kill him; have no idea if he was going to wake up during surgery, and have to live with the horror of being aware of the cutting and the pain and the humiliation; and that the surgery would involve cutting out a part of his penis, while students watched, that could likely render him unable to ever have a normal sexual relationship again. And that he would probably have to go through all of this more than once. Had I been able to get him to think about this, maybe he could have understood.

He didn’t, of course. He just thought I was some kind of blubbering, anxiety-ridden nutcase.

I asked him for a copy of the notes written up by the doctor who did the colonoscopy, so I could find out what went wrong. Couldn’t do that, he said; rules, hospital policy, you understand. No, I don’t understand.

He suggested a spinal. I showed him the paper I finally found last night, showing that I have spina bifida occulata. He said they could still do it, they would just have to do it higher up. I said it would be painful (which is true in every single thing I have ever read from anyone who ever had a needle stuck in the their spine); he denied this. I pointed out I would still be awake, and I wanted to be completely, totally, absolutely unaware of anything. He said they could also put me in the twilight state. Sure, that’ll work – just as well as it did with the colonoscopy.

Three hours from the time I arrived, I was done. And still knew as little as I did when I went in. I was emotionally and physically drained. I went to the bus stop, looked at the schedule, and realized I had just missed the bus – the one that only runs once an hour.

I fell apart. I smoked a cigarette, and tried to decide what to do. I was not thinking clearly, but all I could think of was to try to walk somewhere I could catch a bus home. I walked, weighed down with my backpack and my jacket and my bag and my hat and my cane, and sobbed, lost and alone.

A woman in a campus police cruiser got out of the car, and asked if I was alright. I sobbed “No” and tried to tell her what was gong on. She asked where I lived, and bless her heart, she offered to give me a ride home, which she did. I don’t think I could have dealt with anything else. I needed, just like that five-year-old, to be home.

And now I am, and sit here writing, feeling more and more shaky about this whole thing. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it.

I am so sensitive, too sensitive for this world, it seems. My heart cries out that if I do this terrible thing, if I allow this mutilation, that I will never be the same, and will wish I had never done it. I think, in my awful state, that death may be preferable to living with one more terrible trauma. Yet I know that I will probably go through this, some medical martyr, because they tell me I will die otherwise, and I truly do not want to die just yet. I hate them for making me feel this fear, and for making me feel trapped. I hate them for talking down to me, for not seeing me as a human being. I hate them for using that word “cancer” as an excuse to mutilate me forever. I hate them for having power over me I did not give them.

I want my power back. I want my life back. I want to be strong, and stop sobbing, and tell them exactly how I feel about their cold, sterile, heartless attitudes.

And maybe I will be able to do just that.

The Sentence is Pronounced

deirdremorrison — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:53:33 +0000

26 April 2008

Yesterday, I met for the first time with my gynecologic oncologist. It was a nightmare.

The first bus I had to catch was ten minutes late, which meant that I probably was not going to be able to catch the second bus to get there on time, and which meant I would have had to stand in the middle of nowhere for at least 30 minutes waiting for the next bus. I was freaking out when I called the bus company. Luckily, I got ahold of my quasi-friend there, M. She and I have talked a few times, and she calls me “Pearl” because there is a street in my city called Pearl which she swears is on the map but doesn’t exist in reality. She sounds like an older black lady, and has a wicked sense of humor.

This time, we weren’t joking around. “M., it’s ‘Pearl’. I have my first meeting today with my oncologist, and the bus was 10 minutes late, and I don’t think I can make it. Is there any way I can?” “Well, hon, hang on, just let me see what I can do,” she said. She got on the line with the supervisors as I watched the stops coming and going.

For ten minutes, she was on and off the phone, as I kept her updated on what stop I was at when. She told me the best they could do would be to hold the bus for one minute. No more. And it didn’t look like I would make it. But as she tracked my bus and the next one, somehow, I was suddenly at the stop I needed. “Hon, are you off the bus? Now look down the street – do you see a bus coming?” she asked. I can’t see much of anything most of the time; I’m about blind as a bat. “No,” I said, crying. “Wait – I see one!” I said. As it came closer, I saw it was the one I needed. “M., bless you, bless you, bless you, you are wonderful! I said to her.” “Well, if you want to tell my boss that, that would be a good thing,” she said. “You bet I will,” I told her. And I will. First thing Monday.

I got to the clinic, and it was as cold and sterile feeling as possible, in spite of the fact that they had put up bookcases with books, and two computers. They had no signs, and the computers were off, so I was afraid to use one or even to ask. It felt sterile. It felt disconnected. It felt all wrong.

I waited. I played Sudoku. I waited. I read “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” I waited. I went outside and smoked. I waited. I waited close to an hour and a half to even see the doctor, by which time I was a teary, shaky, mess.

Gynecological matters freak me out. I’m sorry, I am just one of those women who curls up into an emotional ball every time I have to get a Pap test (and quite frankly, I often go years without one; in recent years, I’ve had to keep up with them, because I also have an ovarian cyst, and my gynecologist wanted to keep a close eye on it for a couple of years, so they happened in conjunction with each other.). I feel violated. I feel abused. I feel humiliated. I feel raped.

I don’t know why I feel this way, but I do. Perhaps it is because I have been raped, and of course, one of the things that happens after that if you report it is that you must have a gynecological examination. Perhaps it is because I had to have a gynecological examination when I was a young child. The details are unremembered; I vaguely seem to think I had a very bad staph infection throughout my body, and somehow or another, that required a gynecological examination. I really don’t remember well enough to know. All I know is I was about six or seven, and it was a terrible trauma, made worse by my mother being there, wringing her hands and repeating over and over “Oh, she shouldn’t have to go through this so young. Oh, God, she shouldn’t have to.” Or perhaps it simply is a humiliating, invasive examination, and I am hardly alone in feeling the way I do. I do not know.

I do know I have spent years avoiding male gynecologists. For many years, I got my exam from an LPN at a low-cost clinic; I called her my “Gyno-Nurse”. She was a Quaker, and a lesbian, and very gentle and calming. And she was about the only reason I was able to get through a number of Pap tests over 20 some years.

But here I am, with no female gynecological oncologists on my insurance list. Why aren’t there, I wonder? Why is it that there are a disproportionate number of male gynecologists, period? I do not understand this. The old “Saturday Night Live” skit, “Mel Gibson, Dream Gynecologist” aside (which even I admit was very, very funny), I can’t imagine most women wanting strange men poking around in their most private areas, with their too-large hands and lack of gentleness.

I am having a meltdown by the time I am called in to his office. I have gone prepared, complete with a list of my meds, a list of my medical problems, copies of my family trees with ages and causes of death and medical problems, a list of questions, and a cover letter explaining what I do and do not want. He shuffles paperwork, and does not even look me in the eye. He asks a few questions, and gives my answers to my questions too quickly for me to write them down. He draws a very bad graphic to show me where the area is that will be removed. This does not make me feel any better, as it is involves not just my vulva, but part of my vagina as well. He tells me there will be scarring. He tells me there is a high risk that I will go through all of this again, as it will come back. If I do nothing, he says, and do not quit smoking, I will have a 90% chance of this becoming cancerous within 10 years “and believe me, you do not want that,” he says darkly.

He cannot do a laser surgery because of where it is located. It will have to be by incision. I have clearly stated in my letter that I want to be completely knocked out by anesthesia and be completely unaware of anything, yet he seems to misunderstand that, and tells me I will likely have a spinal anesthetic and won’t feel anything. I not only do not want to feel anything, I don’t want to know anything. Luckily, I remember that I found out a few years ago that I have spina bifida occulta, and I tell him this. “Oh,” he says. “Then you probably will have to have a general anesthesia.” Which is what I told him specifically I wanted in the first place.

He clearly is angry that I am demanding that there by no student observers during this procedure. “This is teaching hospital,” he says (yes, I think, didn’t I say that in my letter? “I do realize this is a teaching hospital, but . . . .”). “They have to learn. This is how I learned.” He is clearly annoyed, and it doesn’t help when I burst out in tears saying “I don’t want some pimply-faced 20-year-old idiot watching this!”

This is not going well at all. I have been here for close to two hours, dreading the inevitable exam, and it has not yet happened. I am pure nerves; I am barely here, translucent skin and no bones.

It is time for the examination, and I am a wreck. I am not told ahead of time what to expect. Right off the bat, he tells me he will be applying vinegar for 30 seconds; he does not tell me why. It doesn’t register in my mind how very, very painful vinegar on my vulva could be. I nearly scream and vaguely am aware that I am holding the nurse’s hand and feel I am having an out-of-body experience. He is murmuring “I am sorry to have to cause you pain,” but I wonder if he means it. My skin on my vulva has grown so thin with age, that when he pulls away the vinegar-soaked cotton, some of my skin comes, too. I bleed. He tells me I will be bleeding for a few days most likely. I feel deliberately harmed and mutilated yet again.

There is, of course, always a speculum involved. They are never pleasant; they are always cold and at the very least uncomfortable. For an over-50 woman with a broken pelvis that has probably not healed yet or healed right, with osteoporosis, whose bones have moved tighter together, whose skin has grown thinner, whose vagina is dry and tight with age, it is a nightmare. I nearly scream and cry again from the pain. I am still throbbing from the vinegar, and still don’t even know why he did that.

Finally, it is time for the finger examination. Even that hurts, his too-large digits poking around my tight, thin, diseased opening. And it is humiliating. No one but a spouse or a lover should be there, should see this, should touch this way.

I am done, and sobbing as I get dressed. I feel dirty. I feel like I need to wash off the awfulness of this day. But I am not done.

I have agreed to my own mutilation. Three doctors have told me it is the best way to deal with this. I feel that I have no choice. They have hung that ugly “C” word above my head like a Sword of Damocles, and I look up and see the sharp point of cancer, and look down, and see the mutilated being I will become.

I wonder why it seems that mutilating women is such a big business with male doctors. Pregnant? Let’s cut it out with a C-section so I don’t miss my golf game. Breast cancer? We’d better make sure and cut off your breast, just in case. Some little problem after giving birth? Let’s cut out all your inner female organs. Cut, cut, cut. Do they get some perverse pleasure in feeling they are striking back at women? Do they hate us that much?

Now I must sit with someone else and make appointment plans and get information. I am emotionally and physically exhausted. I want only to be home, so I can cry on my bed, wash myself off, and try to feel human again. But paperwork must be handled, and the deed must have a date.

May 21^st. That is the date of my mutilation. That is the date I no longer will be the woman I am, or once was. That is the date after which, I will always wonder if anyone will ever want to touch me or love me again.

Ironically, I have an appointment with my psychologist that day. I tell them, and they snap “That is the only day he can do it.” The only day out of 365? That seems rather odd to me. But, like the good little girl I was brought up to be, I do not question. I write it in my little calendar, trembling, sealing my fate.

I am the last patient to leave. I have missed both buses I had schedules for, so I am lost in time, not knowing when one will show. I sit in the grass, and wait until one comes, some 25 minutes later. I wait another 15 minutes for the second bus. I should have taken a different bus, gone to the ATM, gotten out some cash, but I cannot face anything right now. I just want to be home.

The second bus driver is alone on the bus. I have had to start using my cane again, because I have begun to fall again. Before I can even sit down, he starts the bus, driving quickly, probably as late as everyone else was that day. I have had enough. He stares at me, and before he can tell me to move behind the line, I say “I cannot move well with my cane, so I am waiting until you stop again before I sit down.” He snaps that it will be a long time before he stops again, mumbles something under his breath, but pulls over for about two seconds – barely time enough for me to sit down. I want to smash his head in.

I finally am home, and shakily walk up the steps. I wonder why I am acquiescing in my own destruction.

Barely inside, I notice Cosmo has managed to dislodge the tube in his ear. I cannot take this. I cannot take anymore. But he is my baby, and I have to deal with his medical problems. I look at his ear, with a sick feeling in my stomach (a sick feeling I have carried with me since being at the clinic), looking at open flesh in both the top and bottom sections. I call C., the vet tech, and tell him what has happened, asking him if that will be a problem, since I was planning on bringing Cosmo in on Monday to get the tube and stitches out anyway. C. is one of the gentlest, sweetest guys I have ever met. He accidentally hangs up on me. Of course. I call back, and he apologizes, and says he hopes I forgive him. “Never!” I say. “I will be mad at you for the rest of my life.” He catches the tongue-in-cheek nature of my comments and laughs, then tells me as long as the openings in his ear stay open (in other words, I need to keep using the medication) and it keeps draining, it should be all right.

I have no extra money to spare, but this night, I do not care. I pay the fee to get cash out of the ATM I can walk to, and I pick up a 12-pack of Rolling Rock and go home again to order a pizza and watch the second version of “The Wicker Man” that I picked up the other day for $5. (It’s not worth it, by the way. The original is so overwhelmingly better, this Nicholas Cage version is almost truly awful. The only bright light for me was that Ellen Burstyn was in it.).

I know drinking isn’t the answer. I know all it will do is make me feel lousy the next day. Which it does. But somehow, I don’t care. I am shattered into pieces and desperately clawing to find my dignity and humanity again. I have been stripped bare emotionally as much as physically. I will strip myself further until there is nothing but raw emotion, and I will let it out safely at home, sob and scream and allow myself to mourn this coming death.

I Am Not Only the Darkness; Sometimes I Am the Light

deirdremorrison — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:34:26 +0000

18 April 2008

It does seem as though the darkness seeks me out. I wonder sometimes how much one woman can take at once? I know that others have taken more, but my ability to deal with things is as flimsy as the excuses I sometimes tell myself about why I can’t deal with more.

I teeter on the edge, always. It has always been my way to seek out the darkness, to know its name, and to befriend its terrible power. It is easier to deal with the enemy you know, as “they” say, than the one you do not.

I am not normal. I try to tell people that, but they seem to insist that I must be normal, as though it was required on my birth certificate, as though “normality” is something anyone can define, as though normal is something that anyone is. Everybody is slightly left or right or up or down or curlicue of the center that represents “normalcy”. The fact that I am in entirely another Universe from normalcy does not escape my attention, nor does it escape others’.

I am still trapped in that bureaucratic nightmare of doctors/pharmacies/Social Security/HEAP/help that isn’t help at all. And I instinctively at every turn try to get around the hoops they like to watch me jump through, and when I do, they get angrier.

My psychologist tells me to call this oh-so-helpful quasi-social worker I have spoken with before. She’s certain she will be able to help. So I call, and leave a message. And wait a week. And call again. And leave another message. And when we finally connect, I tell her exactly what I need help with. She sounds astounded that I would ask such things of her. So she gives me yet another phone number (do you have any idea how many phone numbers I have scrawled in how many little notebooks around here? I can’t make heads nor tails of any of them right now), and says she will call – one – just one – group that is supposed to help me with medical co-pays. The group she recommended to me the first time she talked to me. And guess what? I still have heard nothing, either from the group (who called two weeks or so ago and said they would mail me something “in a day or two”), nor from her. I just want to beat my head against a wall sometimes.

My gynecologist hates me now because I sought the advice of another gynecologist in another state. I suspect I am no longer her patient because I didn’t do things in the appropriate, expected manner in these things. Sniff.

I am sick and tired of the flotsam and jetsam of humanity that resides in the awful redneck bar down the block every night, so I call the police. Who refer me to the mayor’s office. Who refer me to a different police department. Who say it isn’t their jurisdiction, either, but, hey, they’ll pass along my complaint.

I can tell the officer thinks it amusing that I am trying to shut down a nasty redneck bar all by myself. And I won’t be able to, of course, but then, you never know.

This is what I do when I start coming out of a depression. I admit I get depressed; it’s pretty much a chronic condition for me, and I live with it. I think there is no coincidence that the use of antidepressants has risen dramatically during the Bush years. We want our women quiet and nice, you know. No drama queens, no histrionics, no weeping, no questioning. I’d rather cry and question than be the Stepford Wife. Again, this does not mean that I think no one should take antidepressants; I know they have been a godsend to many, and more power to you if they are for you. But they are oversold, and a recent study proved it. Make your own judgment.

At any rate, some time before I start coming out of a deep dance with the dark, I begin to be a bit obsessive about something or other. Usually it’s a computer game; sometimes videos (a series, in particular); sometimes genealogy. None of it is particularly harmful to me, short of wasting a bit too much time on that particular interest. But I do dive into it with something akin to passion, spending hours and hours locking horns with monsters or watching the “Homicide” staff solve another murder (or not). This time it has been genealogy. There is a reason for this period before the depression falls away, and it is not to show that I am also obsessive-compulsive; I am not.

As I have said, I am not normal. In fact, I have been called “weird” by a number of people in my life. I have math anxiety, and yet working Sudoku and logic puzzles focuses my mind. And that is the core of it.

When I start “obsessing” with something, it is always something that either requires thought, or forces focus, or both. It is a lot like working a math problem when you are very comfortable with the rules; it’s almost zen-like in its purity. This is what those things do for me. They force me mind to focus, force me to think rationally, force me to think period. And somehow, that lays the foundation for my Phoenix routine.

I am not depressed every minute, despite the way I may sound. I just don’t write as much when all the lilies are blooming and love is in the air and the babies and puppies are sooooooo cute, if you know what I mean. I tend to write when I am depressed. Or angry.

And that is the next step to my Persephone-like rebirth from Hades’ dark home. I get angry. About something. Anything. Usually something small that I – maybe, just maybe – may be able to do something about.

I have done it before. I fought City Hall and, damned if I didn’t win. Okay, so it was the Traffic and Parking Commission. Close enough. Long story I won’t go into now. But it ended with me (along with help, of course) forcing them to overturn a change in traffic that had caused innumerable problems on my street.

Give me a cause and I’m there. Although I sometimes feel like the “Rebel Without a Clue” in Bonnie Tyler’s song (“Standing on the corner in my boots and my leather/A little over the edge, a little under the weather”), getting mad and getting somebody to do the right damn thing can often pull me right out of the dark mire I so often live in.

It isn’t that I am out of that now. But you see, I don’t think it’s the depression that is the problem; I believe the problem is stress. I have marriage/divorce stress; I have financial stress; I have health stress; I have friend stress; I have cat stress; I have stress on the bus, and stress at the store, and stress on the phone. Just about every single day. And I have had it.

That’s why I wanted this one “helpful” woman to just give me some help, damn it. Make a few calls for me, make something happen for me, just get me a little de-stressed.

The only way I know how to de-stress is to stop the cause of the stress. And that’s impossible to do when I feel like I am twirling around inside a circle of doctors and pharmacies and agencies and attorneys and people, all yelling something at me I can’t hear because there are too many of them and only one of me.

I do feel like if this doesn’t stop, I am going to go over the edge. I can’t cope anymore; it’s all too much.

This week, the worst of it was my beautiful, beloved cat Cosmo. All of my cats are beautiful and beloved, of course, but Cosmo is special because he was the first of my ten to arrive. He has been with me the longest, and he is the only one who knew any of my last (much smaller) group of cats.

I went to feed him late dinner and found his ear looking like a balloon. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t something I could allow to go; I had to take him to the vet.

It takes me three buses, and an hour and a half to get to the vet, and the same coming home. The last thing I want to do with a sick cat is put them through that, but what choice do I have?

I latched his carrier to the “stuff” carrier I have, and went to the bus stop. Where I promptly managed to somehow fall down, including knocking Cosmo’s carrier on its side. This was the second fall in less than two weeks, and the same knee and elbow got scraped up yet again. I hit my fingers, wrist and ankle, too, judging by the pain I’ve had since then. I have decided to go back to using my cane; when I used it, I did not have these episodes. I had an MRI on Tuesday, and hopefully my neurologist will have some information for me on Monday about why I’m starting to fall down again (all she will say is “Well, it could be MS – but I don’t think it’s MS. It could be that you’ve had a lot of TIAs, although you’re awfully young for that. I can’t rule out MS, but I don’t think that’s what it is.” Just make a decision and diagnose me, please!).

At any rate, I am thinking this is an abscess on Cosmo’s ear, or something I have never dealt with before. I wish it had been an abscess.

Cosmo will be 18 years old in July. He has chronic kidney failure and a heart murmur, both of which he was diagnosed with eight years ago. I have been very lucky – he has been very lucky – to have lived this long period, much less with those diagnoses. He is probably the last good candidate in the cat world for major surgery.

It was not an abscess. He had scratched his ear to the point where he had blown a blood vessel, and had a hematoma in his ear. It was causing him a lot of pain, and the vet said they could drain it, but it would just fill back up in an hour, and the only real alternative was surgery.

I like my vets (it’s a two-guy practice). I have been going there for over 25 years. They know me; they know my situation; they know my cats. They know I am going through a divorce and have no money. They know I don’t know how I will pay them. But they have always been willing to work with me, which is one reason, among many, that I still go to them.

I felt like I turned to water as they told me he would need surgery. I knew it had to be extraordinarily risky for a cat Cosmo’s age and in his condition. It terrified me. But I could not let him suffer, and Cosmo has too much life left in him yet to let him go: it’s in his eyes, and his little nips, and his ravenous appetite for food and treats.

Crazy as it seems, I had to go with the surgery. It was the only choice I could see that gave him a chance to not be in pain and to live out his personal lifespan, whatever that will be.

I was a wreck. I sobbed until I couldn’t anymore. I’d left him at the vet (what kind of sense would it make for me to put him through that bus madness with all this going on?), and every time I looked over at his favorite place on the couch, I broke out in tears. When I fed the other cats, and had to leave his place empty, I sobbed some more. I was so afraid that this would end badly, and in most cases, it probably would have.

But Cosmo is a tough guy. And I have a wonderful cat group, that sends out purrs and prayers and white light or whatever energy each person’s individual spiritual beliefs dictate whenever one of us or our cats is in trouble. They have done studies on the power of prayer, although they have only bothered with the Christian groups. They should study our little group, mixed up of Wiccans and Sikhs, Jews and agnostics, as well as a variety of Christians. I have seen miracles from this group, and I was praying to the Goddess Bast for one more.

And I got it. Or rather, Cosmo got it. When they called me after his surgery, they told me he had come through it just fine. I was still a shaky mess, given that I had lost a cat while coming out of anesthesia, so until he was out of the anesthesia, I wasn’t sure I felt all that secure with being relieved. In fact, I wasn’t going to be relieved until he was home. Okay, so I will not be relieved until he is fully recovered.

I called, and he was out of the anesthesia, again, just fine. They kept him the night, because they inserted a drainage tube, and wanted to keep him there for a bit for that to kick in and function, and make sure there were no other problems.

Yesterday, I finally got to pick him up. My first husband is a cab driver, and I asked him the very large favor of taking a little time off work to bring his cab around, pick me up, stop at the store to pick up cat food, and then to go get Cosmo and bring him home. Did I mention my first husband is a really nice guy?

Cosmo seemed really glad to see me, and I was beside myself with joy to see him. I couldn’t stop petting and talking to him, telling him how incredibly strong and wonderful he is, and how proud I am of him.

Everyone at the vet’s seemed slightly amazed that he had done so well. The vet said (and I’m not sure how much he was joking!) “You know that cat group that sends out the purrs? They’re really good. I may need them some time in the future!”

I have to put some medicine around the tube in his ear, and also in his ear, for 10 days to two weeks, and then he will get the drainage tube removed. I am praying he leaves it alone and does not tear out the stitches; so far, so good. I am keeping my fingers crossed, too.

Today, it was beautiful and sunny, and 80 degrees outside. I took my daily walk before feeding the cats, and noticed all the buds and blossoms that weren’t there just last week. I smiled at seeing Persephone returned to the world, out of her dark place and into the light.