The Belly of the Beast: Chronicle of a Crash

My aunt is dancing in circles around me. She’s cleaning and organizing any and everything around the house. She just brought oatmeal and medicine to me in bed for the ulcer that’s upset again. Now she’s painting the dark spots on the baseboard in the bathroom, and she’s humming while she does it. She’s like a little home-improvement fairy. Last week, it was my oldest brother Doug in similar shoes. 

He talks and makes jokes while cleaning the kitchen— wiping down the counter the way a good bartender would. He makes coffee, cooks breakfast, fixes the broken technology around here, then asks what’s for lunch an hour after breakfast. My mom and I groan. Neither of us think much about food, nor about life past the next five minutes. He volunteers to run out for groceries and pick up prescriptions. When he returns, he’s still armed with energy to cook the food he just expended himself on buying. Incredible. 

Each of them work so fast and seamlessly between small jobs. I just watch and listen to them in total awe. I am pathetically stagnant, in one of the worst crashes I can remember. I feel like the still, unmoving eye of a hurricane, and people like Doug and Amy are the winds and rain and sheer forces of life blowing up all around me. 

Meanwhile, I’m reeeeally helpful…

Hi would like yall like help doing the dishes? Just kidding I can’t stand hehe.

Their ability to complete tasks, one after the other, without having to stop in-between astounds me. Simple things requiring any iota of strength—running down the stairs for instance, which my brother does without a second thought—appear miraculous. I might as well be watching Doug walk on water.

Those stairs. They nearly haunt me. I crawl up them in the morning on all fours. I have to catch my breath at the top. I have to catch my breath all the time. 

I’ve never had shortness of breath this severe or last this long. We can’t figure it out. My o2 level is typically fine, though it drops in the 80’s when I’m upright. I cannot sustain a normal blood pressure. Every time we take it it’s somewhere around 80/50. My mom unwraps the velcro cuff and says Well, that would explain you feeling half dead. 

So often these last few months, I hardly feel like a person. I’m more like a spirit dragging around a clunky, metal, ginormous body that doesn’t work. It won’t go. It’s broke. But my mind is alive and wild as ever. I’m living mostly within the confines of that mind. The body cannot carry out what the soul craves, so nearly everything experiential is internal.

Anything requiring an outer effort is reduced to absolute necessity. Bathroom and back. Feed dog and lay down. Fill water glass, lean against the sink waiting, trudge back to bed. There is no room for recreation.

Monty Gets It

I spend 95% of my time supine. Never stand when I can sit. Never sit when I can lay. That’s basically always the crash mantra, but it’s so especially true now. I find myself craving soft surfaces and soft clothes. I have no idea why I love looking at dresses and runway shows online. I can’t imagine wearing them–No, I can only imagine wearing them. But I actually never would. Fantasy I guess. Still gives a dopamine kick.

I hear my aunts phone ring and she answers it, while working! My brother does this too—which is again, unbelievable. How can they talk and listen and continue their task? I forget about socializing because I’m so busy trying to, you know, breathe. I forget that we need it; we’re humans and we crave connection. I need it too, and yet the sound of my phone ringing almost makes me angry. Why? Who would call me? I’m a moron!

Mostly I’m just irritable; exhausted from continuously wearing out so easily. I have nothing left to give on the phone. I am a pretty clutch texter, though. I feel a lot like this kitten I saw on Instagram…>>>>

Only the people who I love and love me would call. (Pharmacies too, and a few scammers, too.) But talking takes energy. Even laughing takes it. Sometimes I take the plunge and pay the price. It’s worth it. For the sake of my soul it’s worth it. But right now, if my phone rings, I silence it and roll over.

This is how and why chronically sick life becomes so isolating. Relationships take maintenance. It’s why I’m so often a bad friend, sibling, aunt etc. etc. in terms of ‘staying in touch.’ And yet…

I’m lucky. I have understanding friends. An extremely supportive family. Most have learned my limits, or at least witnessed them and know what to expect. Even if they don’t understand it, the closest ones accept it and stick with me. I’m lucky as anything for all of them. 

How Doth Thou Resist?

I keep promising Monty a walk, but we never go. Just to the backyard where I clumsily throw a tennis ball and he’s as excited and focused as the first time he learned he could drop a ball in front of me, whereupon I would throw it, and repeat this action to infinity. His cheerful, eagerness for every day of his life brings me incredible joy.

He eases my burden so often, in a way only dogs can. Just watching his tail wag and touching his velvet ears lightens me. Softens things. He follows me everywhere, even the bathroom, which I read is an instinctual protective measure, and now it kind of makes my heart melt.

Hi I’ll Just Be Here While You Pee

 

I notice the healthy people never calculate cost. Physical cost. It never seems to be whether they have the energy to do something, only if they have the time. We all pay with different currencies. I cannot remember it. I cannot remember what that ‘energy-on-tap’ feels like anymore. I only know I had it once. 

I dream all the time about the day it comes back. I still believe I will have a life one day where a lack of health won’t be so consuming, so dominant. For now I feel like I’m standing in the same spot in the sand, the ocean of sickness coming in and out with the tide. The water crashes over me in waves again and again. Sometimes it relents, I will feel OK, (an extremely relative term) attend a family gathering. I appear ‘well enough’—healthy enough. Other times the waves wash over me and I nearly drown in them. I can barely see.  

I’m in that place now. I broke my own record for how long I could go without a shower/bath. The answer is way too long, mkay?! But this crash has been so powerful. So persistent. A shower just feels like a joke of an idea. My aunt keeps offering to wash my hair in the sink, but even that idea exhausts me, and I’d still feel dirty anyway. Poor Amy, I must really look rough. 

Sometimes it all becomes too heavy. Last week I lost it and the tears came out streaming hard and fast. I could barely speak—-couldn’t convey what was wrong. But because my mom is who she is, I didn’t have to. She patted my disgusting, unclean hair, not minding what an insane mess I was. “It’s OK Mary, just let yourself cry.” Her voice was shaky too and I thought how hard this must be to have to watch her kid like this and I hate that aspect so much. Love like hers is strong and remarkable and brings me back on solid ground. 

It’s easy to forget she has this disease too. And so does my sister. Watching her children suffer is worse than anything, including her own physical suffering, she says. I believe her. I also believe I’ll be well again. I’ll at least be better than the human disaster I am now. One day, the roles will finally reverse. I’ll be healthy and able to care for her. Take her blood pressure. I joke that as reimbursement for their long-term care, I’ll change her and Marcs diapers when they’re absurdly old. It makes all of us laugh, but I really do mean it. 

Even in a crash as devastating as this one, I have to believe I will come out of it, despite not remembering what I felt like before. Once I’m better, I won’t remember how bad this feels. It’s such a strange phenomenon. I can’t wait to not remember.

Note to self, this blows really hard.

Things will change, they always do. This will pass and things will improve. I don’t know how it will happen, though a few ideas float to the top each time. Must keep writing. Must keep trying. Must keep believing. 

For now, the challenge remains the same: finding the balance between surrendering to what my body needs, while pushing back on the things that I can change. That need changing. I won’t give up on pursuing health and trying to accept that my definition of ‘well’ will be different from others. I’ll contunue to try and recognize joy, meaning, and gratitude among the muck. Cry when I need to cry, but try to laugh more.

I’ll continue to pursue a version of myself that I can be proud of, even when I’m swallowed whole by this miserable beast. That part is the hardest, but most worthwhile. 

I won’t give up on fighting for the NIH to see us. 

My eyes are heavy again and my head is clouding up. Time to drift away to some tinkered version of here. I can hear my aunt in the kitchen, sweeping, chatting. My brother shuffling up and down both flights of stairs. My moms hand stroking my hair. Thank God for help. It will be OK. Keep trying. Keep going.

Health, Happiness, The Belly

 ***PSA!!!***

I am happy to report that after three extremely hard, very sick months, I have finally emerged out of the rock-bottom part of this crash. I can breathe again! I’m on two feet, thanks to prescription, altitude, and stress adjustments. I was finally cognitively capable of pulling some writing from the last few months together. Anyway, if you’re going through hell right now, in whatever capacity, I feel you. Keep going. It gets better.

2020 Hear Me Roar! Or Meow, Just Depending on Things

Even if the Holidays are officially over, (although Mardi Gras is just around the corner) there’s nothing like the mood set by a lit Christmas tree in a dim living room. Monty is sleeping beneath it, his long breaths almost in sync with the fade on-off feature of the lights–it all sets quite a scene. Like a Norman Rockwell painting in here.

what.

There’s something about quiet nights like this—just the dog, me, and the glow of the tree, that I feel I’ll remember for a long time to come. Maybe it’s this hidden fear that it’s all about to change, which is true, it is. You always end up missing the ordinary things.

I’m trying to ignore this headache and concentrate on the smell of the fern. It’s not really working, the headache tends to win out a lot. But I’m enjoying the atmosphere  nonetheless. This has been quite the Giving Tree. I only watered it once!

I say it every year, I know, but the Holidays still thrill me because people do nice things for no other reason than “Hey, it’s Christmas” and it’s always been one of my favorite things, ever. I’d been attempting to get a Christmas tree since Thanksgiving weekend but my health wouldn’t cooperate. Two weeks before Christmas my stepdad Marc showed up out of the blue at 2 pm, knocked and swung open the door jokingly singing some Christmas tune. He had a 10 footer in his truck just for me. What a gesture!

I named her Carol and we put her in the corner and she has been a real treasure. It was all the gift I needed really. Kidding—it’s about having family and friends to share Carol with, and having them here was great. Of course, it came at great risk.

A week before my brother and his family of five in tow were to arrive, their oldest came down with a stomach bug. Then the youngest. And on and on. One by one, each day, another would vomit. Another bit the dust. My mom and I would dart our eyes back and forth with news of the next man down, calculating their arrival date in our heads. Then on Friday, my brother Nick finally succumbed to it–they were arriving Monday. The ominous question no one wanted to entertain entered the conversation. Was one dang Holiday worth the rest of us barfing all night? Of course it was! It’s Christmas for Gosh sake!

Who could do without these cotton headed ninny muggins?

We justified it. We convinced ourselves. No, they wouldn’t be contagious by Monday. Couldn’t be. We’d wash our hands. We’d drink hand sanitizer and bathe in vinegar. Many people convinced me with enough handwashing we’d be in the clear. My mom was more skeptical, but eventually she said a bit defeated What can ya do? If we get it, we get it.

Well, at 1:30 am on December 28th, we got it. Or, I got it. Snuck right up on me. I puked so much tinsel I thought I’d puke again. And I did! It wasn’t tinsel, it was kale, I just thought tinsel painted a more festive image. I cursed Christmas, just for a moment, but then thought eh, what the heck. They’re worth it.

They make it fun.

Luckily the same fam who gave it to me, took care of me just as well. I thought Jeesh, being sick is so much easier with people around! That thing knocked me out. Since everyone left three days ago, I’ve spent every day in bed with a weighted exhaustion and deep ache in my bones. BUT, today was the first day I woke up migraine free and my old lady bones had calmed down at least a little. Progress!

I was thinking how it’s difficult to be in a position of needing help. Chronically that is. A stomach bug leaves, but this chronic illness stuff, it will ware you and your loved ones out. The idea of being a burden is a constant fear I fight. It’s so reassuring to know  your own autonomy and be able to rely on yourself. Losing those capabilities through illness is hard to know what to do with. Asking for and accepting help was more difficult than I expected, especially when you were once so independent. One of the tougher lessons in all of this, I think. But, it becomes easier when you stop resisting it. What you resist, persists, as they say.

Once you start to release the idea of your self that doesn’t quite exist (healthy, reliable), you ease into the reality of being just the human you are. (A wasteland) The best way to handle this is with humility and gratitude. No one likes to help an ungrateful pain in the ass. But someone who is aware of what they require, can reach out for it with grace and acknowledge those who help them with humbleness, is more likely to receive kindness. People are more apt to tolerate and even enjoy your pain in the assness. That’s where being sick surprises me. It can bring out incredible things and open the door for doing good– not just in yourself but in others too.

Speaking of doing good, I wanted to end on a note about advocacy. Namely, what an absent advocate I’ve been this last year. I was sort of on a role, going to D.C., circulating the petition, begging for signatures like a desperate vacuum-cleaner salesmen. Do those still exist? Sending thousands of pages of names and stories to the NIH. Then what?

Besides spending the first three quarters of 2019 in the physical state of a trashcan lit on fire, it was more than a lack of physical health. I lost my footing. You have to find a very particular headspace with ME advocacy, and I sort of lost myself.  I became discouraged at the federal responses, the intolerably slow pace of things, and increasingly saddened hearing the repeated stories of such insanely debilitated people being dismissed, doubted, and deserted by the medical world. Shamefully I admit, it was just easier not to fight. At times I thought What am I doing? Is this going to achieve anything?

You can’t unring the bell, is the thing. Once you see how bad it is, how desperate this situation is, it feels negligent not to fight to try and change it. There are no guarantees in advocacy. But like always, I know inside it’s better to try. Maybe it won’t make a difference today, but our collective efforts are going to change things eventually. All a matter of when.

In the meantime, the fight is infuriating. You have to remain hopeful despite receiving responses from the NIH, like the one below, that tried very hard to list all the ways they were getting serious about MECFS, and even included a Press Release from 2015 to prove they meant business! Effectively their letter said this: We. Still. Don’t. Get It! Orrr, maybe they do get it, in which case their letter said this: We. Still. Don’t. Care! But thanks for writing us, and sending that cute box, haha! What a crock. You can (click) and read the letter below, or someone can make a fart sound and that would effectively be the same thing.

This letter can suck it.

Best be summed up

With a fart sound.

Their response wasn’t infuriating because it didn’t include a promise to immediately allocate $100 million bucks. (Although, that really would help us out GUYS) It was immensely tonedeaf but most of all it just didn’t hold true. I read the words over and over, grasping at vague promises and past “efforts” trying to convince me that they really do care. OK, great. But you can’t just take their word for it, so when you do your due diligence and learn things like NIH funding dropped 25% since 2017 for MECFS research— it’s easy to think OH What in the name of SAM HILL HELL ARE YALL THINKING? Ahem, excuse me. Like I was saying, proper headspace.

So, you get it. It’s tough. But the work is too important. I’ve seen what this disease has done to countless strangers, I’ve lived what it’s done to me, and I continue to watch what it’s done to my mom and most recently my sister. I just wanted to remind myself here at the beginning of the new year, and the twelve or so readers, that this fight is desperately still in need of all our help. It’s absolutely clear the NIH won’t act without a lot of outside pressure and heat and noise; I believe we can bring it.

I’ll do my best to stick with it and continue to try and be creative and positive throughout this fight. As always, I’m open to ideas! The petition is still live and well, but I’ll work on new ideas of how best to work with it.

Being shown and gifted so much kindness in my life, I think the best possible way I can pay it forward is to remain dedicated to this campaign, regardless of how little I think it may matter on one day or hopeless I may momentarily feel. At heart I believe the change we seek is possible. And Monty does too.

Health, Happiness, and the Roaring 2020’s

The In-Between

I’ve been writing at my typewriter way too long. Something about that bright red device with such mechanical three-dimensional features allures me to the window. It also helps that it produces something tangible at the end. Something I can read and underline and scratch out afterward. But it’s made me abandon my place over here! I’m pretending you care. At any rate…

It’s the mooooooost wonderful tiiiiiiiiime of the yeeeeeeear. I sing that around my house when I get a burst of energy. It makes Monty all feisty.

Christmas, finally! No wait, this year flew by. I think. Yeah, it did. It’s funny how most conversations are like “Something about time.” “Yeah, and something else about time!” “Not to mention the weather…” “Oh yeah, and the WEATHER!” Weather and Time, making conversations since the beginning of…well you KNOW!

Today my friend Matt and I are going to get a Christmas tree. And Monty too, if we can fit him in the trunk. Whoa, I meant to write truck. He’d never fit in the trunk. Anyway it’s really not a great Christmas-getting-tree day. It’s warm and soupy outside.

I should try and embrace it. I don’t think Colorado sees humid, soupy days in December.

Meantime I’m prepping myself for Christmas week. I so forward to this week where most the family reunites and we cram as much doing and going and seeing and visiting into one week and make a bunch of magical memories. Then at the end of the week everyone goes home and back to life as usual and I’m left with a body that feels like it’s been bulldozed for the next three months, at least. Sometimes I fear I’m becoming a human Kathy cartoon.

Ew.

The point is, I know there’s a better middle ground where I can plant my feet. The problem is it involves more saying no. Saying no means missing out, and missing out is really depressing when your family is finally in town but an arms length away. I’m the youngest, so I especially never want to miss out. It comes with the territory.

I think when you’re sick this long you forget what this need to Go and see and do and lunch and dinner and friends! and the zoo! and the park! what’s next?Let’s go!What’s next?Let’s go!– feels like. Wait no, that’s wrong. You do remember the feeling, psychologically–you still have it in fact. You just can’t deliver on it and you haven’t in a long time. That pace of life becomes slowly unfamiliar. And unsustainable. Suddenly you’re surrounded by people who wake up in the morning and put on their pants and go and go and go, and it’s a stunning reminder of what physical health allows. But you just can’t go at that pace, at least not very long. And not without paying.

As a person so physically limited, I live in a fantasy-land where everyone meets up and says “Hey do yall want to just hang around here and play cards and watch movies and throw the ball for that dog who we all love and adore so much and also discuss and agree about the direction the world is taking? Sounds good, I’ll get the hot chocolate going. Elf starts in ten.”

NEVER

GETS

OLD

A fantasy, of course. Healthy people want to go and see and do, and they should be allowed to do as they want and not feel like they’re leaving a soldier behind. But it’s just tough when you have sick family members and big groups of people. Each person needs what they need, and we have to learn to compromise where we can. The truth is, well, it sucks. I want to be able to do all of it. But then nobody, really, can do it all.

Ah wonderful, now it’s raining. Real great Louisiana! Wait, last Louisiana Christmas for a good while. Soak it in. Soak all that soupiness in. One moment, I need to turn the AC on.

It always helps me to break up the time I have with my family around Christmas into really small pieces. I try to recognize the specialness of moments (within the moment) and almost freeze-dry them in my head. Take a detailed note of everything and put them in my pocket for later. I have a few of those “nuggets” in my mind from the past that I’ll always hold onto. But it’s not easy. I’m constantly fighting between what the heart wants and what my crap body can handle.

Sometimes we concentrate too hard on making big plans and doing big things, one thing followed by the next and the next. We could probably stand to slow down and smell the poinsettias now and then. But too, it’s nice remembering some of the best parts are in the prepping of the big thing, or the resting afterward, or story time before bed. All the little in-betweens.

Since I can’t keep up with it all, as my body proves to me year after year, I will try and be highly awake for all the smaller, do-nothing moments. Take little snapshots along the way of enjoyable times, even the quick ones, give them a name and collect them like pebbles. It helps to write, of course. Then when your memory fails you, you can read a list of the happy moments you had. It’s about the little things, so they say, so it helps to capture and really treasure those as much as you do the big ones. You don’t always have to make it to the zoo to make a memory that lasts.

Then again, going to the zoo is really freaking fun.

What do I know? I’m still working this out. But it’s on my to-do list this year: Keep it simple. Let people do what they want. Enjoy the time I have with whoever’s around me. It’s obvious and yet, none of these things are done easily in practice. I challenge us all.

You know last year it was my goal to write shorter blogs but more frequently? I totally failed! That’s the nice thing about years, a *new year* always shows up. But usually I’m too weak to move by then. KATHY CARTOON! Ack!

Health, Happiness, Keeping up

 

Woah Is Me

The setting is a little funny right now. I’m outside on the porch swing, it’s only 6:30 but very dark. It’s warm and damp, on the cusp of a light drizzle. It might as well be July. Monty insisted we come out of course, without a care that it’s almost completely dark or mosquitoey or that it’s now in fact raining. The dog is such a happy distraction. My head is pounding. 

I’m tired of even saying that or thinking about it, but it’s hard to escape. A change of setting always helps, at least psychologically. But Monty helps the most. He cracks me up. He’s playing fetch with an old sock right now. Really. The dog will retrieve anything. 

I remember once when he was a puppy, we lived in these stupid college apartments, and we played fetch with a rock in a concrete parking lot. I remember thinking My God, the idea of this is so depressing. And yet there was Monty, flopping and running back and forth, proudly prancing after he’d pick up the golf-ball sized rock and spit it out to bounce back to me. Monty turned 12 last month. 12! He doesn’t look or act that age at all. You should see him fetching this sock. We might as well be back in that barren cement lot.

Time to go in Monty. Time to ice my head and wait for things to calm down up there. It’s like a storm is brewing in my brain, just like the real one setting in outside. It will rain tonight and be freezing tomorrow. All the small talk will change from how miserably hot it is to how insanely cold. 

***

It happened just like they said. Winter showed up overnight. Monty doesn’t seem to mind at all. My head was pounding when I woke up and I didn’t want to move. 

I’m not in great form today. This happens sometimes. I’m already missing the scenery here. What I see out each window. I’m already missing Monty. I know it’s stupid to think that way and I try not to entertain those types of thoughts for long. But it’s hard to pretend otherwise. I’m just afraid of the changes I know are coming. I am very afraid of moving. 

I’ve been in a sort of denial about it, because I haven’t had reason to face it head on yet. And when you’re in physical pain, you don’t really have the capacity to think so far ahead anyway. That can be a good thing. But the times when the reality of it does seep in, I feel so overwhelmed I can hardly move. They say pain stems from spending too much time in the past or too much in the future. It makes perfect sense, but alas, I am imperfect. I already know how certain things will hurt. I’ve been through them before.

We haven’t even sold the house(s) yet, but I know we soon will. For what could’ve been an easily “tragic situation”, this all turned out OK. No, I never planned on living in my parents pool house and wouldn’t have chosen it. And yet it turned out to be ideal, given the reality. Help is 15 steps away, as is my independence and autonomy. Monty and I have really grown up here, a second childhood of sorts. Adjusting to a new normal—a lack of health— has meant learning to be soft where I used to be stubborn. You just don’t have the energy to fight against things, to be so particular. And the relief comes in realizing 95% of the things you fought and fussed over were useless—petty or temporary or out of your control anyway. It’s been a hard but good and practical lesson. It can only go two ways when you lose physical reliability. 

Monty is the master adjuster. All 12 years he’s wagged his tail and followed wherever we were to go. Whatever he does he plunges into with openness and playfulness and I need to lean in to this kind of thinking. But fear takes me over at the idea of upcoming change. It’s not just one thing, like the fear of what will be. What could be. It’s all this I’ll have to leave behind, too.

Even the painful parts. This house is so filled with receipts of life and pain and revelation and hope. It’s strange that even leaving something painful behind is painful itself.  

When I think of the fact that we are moving back into the house I grew up in, in the town I grew up in and hated at the time, I feel sick. But that’s putting it all pretty crudely, isn’t it? As I’ve learned over and over, it’s crucial that we write the story and not allow a fleeting feeling like fear to take over the script. It’s all in how you frame things, I know it. And of course I can do a better job than reduced, negative summaries like that. It’s almost tragically hilarious, which seems to be the theme of my life. I’m 35 and moving North into my parents basement! Who could write this stuff? 

I know, I know. I am lucky for so many reasons. I could always stay behind and see what living alone without any help from my parents would be like—then I’d see! Maybe I wouldn’t complain about moving once I saw how terribly worse this could all be. I’m fortunate to belong to a family who cares. To have family/friends who care one way or another. But I think that’s where the deeper sadness stems from here; The lack of choice that naturally exists from a lack of health. 

You really can’t complain when so many people are helping you. And as backwards as it is, sometimes you resent the help. Resent needing the help. You’re so grateful it makes you cry, and yet you’re tired of saying thank you. This is a feeling, not the truth, and I know the difference. Gratitude has saved me over and over. Maybe I shouldn’t give these feelings a voice. But they’re there, like a lump in my throat, and I thought maybe writing out the fear would help disempower it a bit.

I fantasize all the time about being on the other end of this. Of being the healthy person offering the sick person (or anyone) my home, my energy, my ability, my ear. I’ve played out multiple versions of a possible future. I am wearing coherent, trendy outfits in all of them, and my house is very clean. But who knows what the real one holds. Maybe I end up a success in dirty PJ’S?

I don’t mean to be whiny, I’m not so sure why this premature nostalgia and angst is hitting me hard today. I guess life catches up with all of us now and then. It’s OK to cry about it, although it makes my stupid pounding head worse. I should take it as a sign I’ve cried enough. I called Monty over and he yawned. Real nice Monty! 

Sniff sniff, wipe wipe. 

Tomorrow I see the neurosurgeon. We’re trying to find out if I have CCI, Stenosis, or other structural issues in my cranio-cervical junction. I have no idea what’s wrong, only that I probably shouldn’t be in so much pain all the time or have to take migraine medicine as much as I do and the idea that having an ice pack glued to my head has become normal is just absurd. We have entered the absurd, people! So, maybe we’ll find out something more tomorrow. I have zero expectations, as I tell most doctors I feel like I’m dying and they then tell me that my lab work reveals I’m the specimen of health! Perfect, if only I felt that way.

I don’t want to get my hopes up but then, why not let her fly? If nothing comes from tomorrow I’ll not really have lost anything. Just another box checked. In it’s own way, that’s progress. I think. I don’t know, my head is throbbing and my thinking is starting to fragment again.

Maybe tomorrow will be the start of change that I’ve been fearing but will actually mark the start of something new and great. We’re crazy to ever think we know how it will all unfold. I only know that hot or cold, New Orleans or Colorado, Monty is happy to be alive and play–with a sock or a rock. And that kind of adaptability is something I strive for. Oh Monty, will you ever know how insane and complete my love for you is? I hope.

Wish me luck.

Health, Happiness, I’m Not Crying You’re Crying

 

Turning It Off

Summer Part 1: The Bill Always Comes

**The Summer of The Winter of Our Discontent**

There’s this key moment in Sudoku, when you find a clutch number that gives way to the others and begin to just fall into place like a waterfall. Much like the card you play in solitaire where you know you’re about to crack it. I had just written in a 6 I’d been trying to find for way too long. So began the waterfall, and I filled in the other boxes proudly– possibly smugly because this puzzle felt like it was out to trick me personally and now I had it in my hands! Until I didn’t, and in slow motion realized I had two number 7’s in the bottom row, and I just wanted to hit myself.

I tried to work backwards to fix it, but it was irreparably blown. I blew it. So, there went the last two weeks.

Somewhat of a Doodler 

Of course, I’ve been up to other things. It’d be funny if after a month break all I had to show for it was a failed puzzle. Can’t all be winners.

For starters, summer reading. In July I was booklets after finishing Killing Commendatore, and sad I didn’t have more Murikami to lose myself in. Finally I scanned my own bookshelf for unread potential treasures and picked up Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent, which doesn’t sound like much of an apropos Summer read, but it’s just that. It’d sat idle on my shelf for years, even though that white house on the cover had caught my eye a thousand times. I had no idea the brilliance I was missing! It’s like suddenly realizing an old painting in your closet is worth some absurd amount of money. Once I dove in I didn’t want out, which surprised me when it shouldn’t have. It’s a classic, what did I expect?

The book was written in 1961, and given the passage of time I expected a natural  disconnect. I’ve been so wrapped up in modern fiction– for too long probably. Yet somehow the America and the People and Assumed Human Decency that Steinbeck depicted 60 years ago were all completely recognizable today. You wouldn’t have to drive long before finding a sister town to “New Baytown”or look very hard before confronting modern replicas of his primary characters. Ultimately he tapped into the problems, desires, personal demons and moral choices most all of us face at some point– it’s just astounding to me that Steinbeck unearthed such deep, quiet struggles and could discern which ones were engrained in us and would stand the test of time.

Maybe that’s a litmus test for what makes a book a classic; if the suppositions and ideas can weather the decades and remain solidly true, unbothered by time, then you’ve got yourself a winner. I guess that’s pretty obvious, but it felt remarkable to come across.

The book reads a lot like a memoir of protagonist Ethan Crawley, who is so likable, in the first place, it’s hard to put down. I felt a relief knowing there was someone else who felt these ways –about money and politics and social hierarchies and expectations. He makes a joke out of probably 85% of his replies, and rarely does anyone get it, or choose to acknowledge it with a laugh anyway. That felt… familiar.

I feel similarly when I watch SNL sketches that crack me up. It’s not in the scene itself, but in the imagining of the writers who wrote the sketch, and knowing that real people out there recognized absurdity the way that I do. It’s easy not to feel seen in the world, but knowing other people see things the same way you do, even perfect strangers, feels like the twin brother to feeling understood. One scene in the book hammered this feeling in…

Crawley and his wife have been invited to another couples house to discuss “business”, i.e. money, but they have to go through the obligatory song and dance first.  That means a formal serving of tea and then petty small talk. Everyone sipped tea and each delivered some anecdote on the subject of tea. He’s bored to tears. When it became Ethan’s turn to chime in, he brought up Danny, the town drunk, and a terrible nightmare he’d had about him. I laughed as he described feeling his wife’s quiet anger that he didn’t keep up the supposedly pleasant tea talk, and now everyone had to comment about a despairing subject. I wonder how many pleasant bouts of small talk I’ve Debbie Downer’ed with an some morbid comment that I found funny? Probably too many. Anyway, it’s a perfect scene.

A few of my favorite passages:

“So many old and lovely things are stored in the worlds attic, because we don’t want them around us and we don’t dare throw them out.”

I don’t suppose there’s a man in the world who doesn’t love to give advice.”

(Ethan)”Is Marullo part of the group?”

(Wealthy friend) “Certainly not. He goes his own way with his own crowd.” (The Italians. Marullo is an immigrant)

(Ethan)“They do pretty well, don’t they?”

(Friend) “Better than I think is healthy. I don’t like to see these foreigners creeping in.”

Sounds familiar eh?

“There is no such thing as just enough money. Only two measures: No Money and Not Enough Money.”

“No one wants advice–only corroboration.”

“I always put it down to fact that a wife never likes her husband’s boss or his secretary.” “All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.” “Not only the brave get killed, but the brave have a better chance at it.” “For the most part people are not curious, except about themselves.”

I must have underlined half the book.

Next I read Hemingways The Sun Also Rises, another of the greats that’d been collecting dust not far from Steinbeck. When finishing it I wondered why I haven’t read more of the classics, because this was a damn great book too. There’s no good reason I don’t have more of them under my belt, except that I didn’t take enough literature classes in college I guess, and I hardly know what the real classics are. So, I’ve begun a list. Who cares. Anyway I won’t go so far into this one. As tribute to Hemingway and his distinguished, succinct style I’ll say this: The book is rather great and you should read it. You’ll have a swell time. 

 

Especially if you love Paris, Spain, the Pamplona Fiesta, fishing, Bullfighting, and forbidden love. Hemingway was clearly a romantic. Did you know he was married four times? Only a true romantic gives marriage that many goes. 

The passage that stuck:

“I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on. …You paid some way for everything that was any good.”

If that’s not the truth I don’t know what is.

I kept thinking about it’s application to health. That very often, when you have your health, it’s free. They say your health is like your breath–you don’t pay attention to it until you lose it. I think back on life before the relapse, and how I’d done nothing to earn my state of ‘decent’ state of health. I’d also done nothing to earn the relapse that eventually followed. It felt like someone at my door, come to collect a bill every day, when I hadn’t purchased anything. When well, I was getting something for nothing, without even knowing it. Once sick I had to begin paying for those somethings, and surrender what I couldn’t afford.

My hope, and I think my belief, is that it doesn’t have to mean the surrender of those things that matter most. When you’re forced to give things up, it feels just that way. But learning to live without them has been an ongoing lesson in letting go of what I thought I needed in order to live a life I liked. You end up finding a whole other you behind those old roles. It offered a strange opportunity to see my own self without these external identifiers. That allowed me to see the world differently too. I’m (still) learning it’s up to me, more often than not, how I choose to see both.

But, as the man said, you paid for anything that was any good. Many things that allow me to feel alive and good come at a cost. It’s like a tax on fun, in the currency of health. Actually I also pay the tax when I haven’t had fun. REAL COOL BODY THANKS. At any rate, I feel fortunate I still have people and places and experiences to (sometimes) overindulge in at all.

 

Like him. He’s worth it.

I imagine everyone has their respective “things” or indulgences for which a bill reliably comes. And maybe depending on what point we’re asked, during the playing or the paying, would we consider whether or not the juice was worth the squeeze. For me, mostly, paying the bill feels worth it when I’ve decided to splurge. Girls gotta live sometimes.

Health, Happiness, Paying the Tab

The List of Broken Things

Everything has been breaking lately. The dryer, the tractor, my phone, the pressure washer, leaks in the ceiling, moisture stuck in the windowpane. (I could go on.) And for the last I don’t know how many months: me. Just add my body to the list of broken things. That was the thought I had while my mom listed everything going ka-putz on us.

I am getting in to bed and once again praying for the normal things, that we can find the right people to fix what’s broken, expressing gratitude for all I have, all I’ve been given, and a special intention that tomorrow will be better than it was today. A prayer I’ve been saying basically since Christmas.

2019 has been such an immense challenge. I feel like there’s some secret virus within trying to take me down, then I remember that Oh right, this is what a bad crash feels like, I’m just not used to them lasting so long. The last few weeks have been really trying.

I haven’t been getting out of bed until after 3–not really waking up I mean. As soon as I feed Monty then feed myself, I’ve reached my limit. The first ‘mini’ crash of extreme tiredness and weakness rolls in like a heavy fog, and I feel like I can do nothing but collapse under the weight of my newly dense body and immediately fall asleep. This isn’t so typical of my crashes. I rarely actually sleep that much at all. I’m horizontal, but not dead asleep. This feels new and I just can’t figure out what’s going on.

I’m writing this on my phone because trying to type on my computer from this position just doesn’t work. I have so much I’ve been writing and wanting to write and post, but finishing anything has been nearly impossible. I feel so angsty leaving the blog blank, so I figured I’d let it be known that I’m alive, I’m just probably asleep as you read this now.

It’s been hard accepting the strict terms of this crash, which has been very little upright time, and littler awake time, so it feels anyway. The weather has been beautiful, and this being my last Spring in this house, I’d prefer to enjoy more of it before I go. But for whatever reason I have really been taken down by such a “late blooming” crash. Typically by this time, the inevitable “Christmas Crash” has faded, and the good weather usually gives me a health boost. I don’t remember ever being so debilitated in the Springtime, but me no likey.

My parents are busy trying to prep the house to go on the market and cleaning and fixing things, yada yada yada, but I’ve been more of a useless flesh tube than ever! It’s crappy timing because I know they could use the extra man power, but luckily people like the amazing Matt has donated so much of his time to help any way he can. And I know friends like that are something to stay grateful for during all this.

And Miss B, the woman who cleans my house and literally makes it a sunnier place as soon as she walks in. She calls me “sugar” and “baby” and when she leaves she hugs me big and says “I’m prayin for ya Mary.” I tell her the same and she says “I love you, you’ll be better one of these days.” I tell her thanks. That I love her too. And that I believe her. And for whatever reason, I do. Cleaning lady? No, she’s like some angel who happens to clean up while she’s around.

She was here this morning and I slept through 3 of the hours she worked. The sound of the vacuum tracing lines in and out of my dreams. I never sleep while she’s here. We normally talk and laugh and even cry sometimes, covering all the bases while I drink coffee and she cleans in circles around me. I watch her energy in amazement.

Then Matt came around 2 and has been pressure washing all the cement around the house outside. Talk about back breaking work. I tried it for 10 minutes yesterday and had to come inside to take a breather. (Pathetic, I know) As soon as the machine started, I laid my head down and fell immediately asleep, not waking up until well after 5, feeling terrible. Matt was still working and I watched him outside as he worked, his headphones in and in his own little world as he managed to clean so much surface area. It feels like a miracle when I watch capable people do hard work. But these things that seem like miracles maybe actually aren’t–it’s just what you’re able to do when your body knows how to be a functioning human body. The miracle is the kindness of people who are so willing to help. I guess it’s just been so long, I can’t remember anymore what that physical capability must feel like. But let’s just say I fantasize about it more than ever.

I believe I’ll get there one day. That all of us will. I can’t explain it, but there is this solidity in my gut, magic ball that shows me living a life where I’m well, usually I’m outside pushing a kid on a swing. My kid? Don’t know, I hope. But I just have to believe this will happen in my lifetime. If I’m 60 well then, I’m 60. But my gut shows it far earlier than that. So just hang on yall. I know we will get there, we just have to make it through this ridiculous, tough middle part. It’s only like the 3rd hardest thing in the world! But we can do it. Our time of health is waiting for us. In the meantime, I’m lucky for people like Matt and Miss B, more grateful than ever.

So it’s back to my usual routine– getting in bed, saying my prayers and asking God to please, PLEASE (just to make sure she’s paying attention) give me some energy tomorrow and let my rest actually refuel me. There is so much I want and need to do. Like take a shower– it’s not asking so much! I know I will break from this crash soon, or I am hopeful and expect that outcome. I also know the toughest part of the game (for me) is surrendering while you’re in it. Remembering this too shall pass. Right? Right.

I feel I’ve been doing too much surrendering, and I wish there was a way to successfully fight back against this thing. But I’m out of ideas. And I’ve been sick long enough to know what happens when I do push against it. Might as well run my head into a wall. I can’t afford to pay anymore. I’m broke! Body broke. I know I just have to wait it out, and I will emerge eventually.

At any rate, maybe God reads blogs in all that spare time she must have. So maybe she can check this one out and throw me (and a few million others) a bone. Oh and Monty too, not because he likes bones but because he injured his leg yesterday and now he’s out of commission too. When I say everything is breaking, I mean it. Just great.

Anyway, I’m laying my trust in the universe, in an intelligence that knows more and better than me. But I am hopeful too, always hopeful, that tomorrow might be the day things start to turn around. And if it’s not, well, maybe I need to send a package of pill bottles and a petition to Heaven and get their attention up there.

A final thing- next to my bed is a medicine stick that was given to my dad by a traditional Indian medicine woman, back when we lived in Colorado. It’s made with a coyote skull on it and has a bunch of different symbolic items painted all over it, with feathers hanging down and other things I don’t know the meaning of. Of course my dad was sick and dying from cancer when she gave it to him. But I remember him in his compression stockings walking laps through the kitchen, living room and dining room, carrying that stick with him, with a smile on his face. Obviously it didn’t cure him, but maybe it made his struggle less. Maybe it gave him courage in the face of pain and fear. Maybe it gave him strength to fight for just the right amount of time before he knew his work here was done. At any rate, I look at that coyote face and ask my dad for my own kind of help, whatever kind I need the most. Hah, I don’t even know anymore. But it gives me hope anyway, having it here, having seen me through some very sick times and also seen me emerge through them as well. Not breaking. That’s about as much as I can hope for, for now.

OK, time to sleep for the seventh time today. I have many more happy things to write about, once I’m able to stay awake long enough to put them together and edit them properly. My mind of course has struggled too lately and been a bit scattered. It can hardly distinguish between dream life and reality anymore. Which makes sense considering how much time I spend on the other side of things. But I don’t think it will be much longer now. Hoping this coyote skull will bring some healing this way. Or at least the strength to smile through it, just like my dad did, who was up against far more than I am. Now that’s remaining unbroken. I’m so happy he showed me that was possible.

All the best to everyone, and I expect to be back on the up and up soon.

Health, Happiness, & Unbroken Things

Confronting Change You Can’t Control (Part 1)

It could always be Great. 

My mom told me to write that on every wall and mirror around the house. I was on the phone with her, basically in a downward spiral of apprehension about a major change happening this year that is mostly out of my hands. Allow me to rip off the band-aid: My parents made the decision to move to Colorado this year, back to my hometown. Pause for dramatic effect.  

Many reasons played into that decision, a big one being that a majority of my moms family lives there and we will have a tighter community of support. Given that 2/3rds of our fam is sick and one family member is a dog, the move makes sense. It can be a tad isolating out here on the ol ‘farm’.

My moms casual reminder that it could always be great was a nice departure from the supposedly optimistic adage “Hey, It could always be worse!” I’m not sure that phrase has ever really made me feel better while in the midst of a struggle. It’s like “Well hey, both of your legs could be blown off!” “Riight. That’s true. I could have zero legs right now. Cool, thanks. I feel better.”

So yes, I have both legs, but I am still pretty afraid of the whole thing and I guess that makes sense given the scale of this. It’s a big change, and since I don’t have the health to live on my own yet, it’s one that’s out of my hands, which always adds a pinch of frenzy. I’ve sort of tortured myself thinking of ways to stay here, but I just don’t have the physical stability to do it. This last crash that’s held me down since Christmas just reinforces how mercurial my *health* is and how unreliable  I am as a result. A few weeks ago the crash finally let up for roughly a week, then returned angrier than before, and I’ve been essentially a half-living disaster since then. Yeaaaah wooooo! 

You can see how thoughts like that (I’m sick, my life is chaos, I don’t have jurisdiction over my own life) can play with your mind the way a cat bobbles a feathery toy around. It can take your whole outlook and shape it in many variations. 

One of the hardest parts the last few months has been maintaining an open mind that this might actually be a good thing. It’s meant a lot of reigning in of my thoughts, which tend to go default mode into armageddon type thinking. It’s as though some small part of me decided early on that since I didn’t choose this, it wasn’t a good idea and it would end in disaster for my life. And it’s pretty crazy how easy and quickly those thoughts can assemble, pile on one another, and leave me completely convinced that I’m going to melt away and die in my parents basement…or some other absurdity. I don’t know where that fear stems from—I mean I’m pretty sure they have internet in Colorado. 

I’ve had to work to clean up the useless, unhelpful thoughts that tend to mess with my mind and sense of wellbeing. By that I don’t mean I dismiss all the thoughts or feelings I have about this—which are of course, a lot. Certainly there is a legitimate sadness and type of grief that comes from leaving what’s been home the last 18 years. Those feelings deserve their own validation and processing because, damn, it’s sad to leave the people and place you’ve come to know and love so much. Louisiana has felt familiar and comfortable for a long time, and it will be tough to leave, even if I do plan to come back. ;)  

What I am referring to are the haunting thoughts, the ones that make you feel bad about things that are not within your control.

This kind of thinking totally blurs and limits my perspective about the life I have. It dismisses all the good and incredible parts of it, doesn’t see possibility or feel hopefulness or gratitude. It downsizes the significance and value of people and things just because they aren’t in line with what I had planned. (I think humanity might have an addiction to plans but that’s another day) These are just hypothetical scenarios based mostly on fear and a future no one can actually know. Like Tolle says, it is always more empowering to face facts. Even when the facts are scary or we wish they were different, it’s in acknowledging the real and being present in the now that we have access to our innermost power and strength. 

I realized early on how incredibly contrasting the outcomes are that emerge just from framing things in my head one way vs. another. This is something I do have control over, and it’s become pretty important that I put this ability to use, otherwise the ugly thoughts take over and down the rabbit hole I go. 

It’s been a good but difficult exercise to step back and try to just watch the way my mind can interpret the same reality in two completely different lights. The modern mystics would advise to consider the circumstance from the point of view of an objective observer. Watch your thoughts, but don’t become entangled in them. Allow them to appear, then let them go. Easier said than done, of course. But at any rate, the mind astounds me in its duality. For instance..

Here is one side of my mind thinking about the move: Reiterate the story that my life is out of control, that the disease makes all the choices, that I have no say so about things and thus can’t really be happy because it’s not up to me. My personal growth and goals and contentment will all be stunted or I’ll cease to pursue them because my lack of health and other people have the wheel and I’m just a passenger to my own life. What’s the point in trying? As a passenger I don’t decide where I go and thus my happiness isn’t my option but one left up to others or whatever new circumstances materialize without my consent. I don’t want to go. It’s not fair I have to leave what feels like home. What about my family and friends here? What about my dream to live in uptown New Orleans one day? Now it will never happen. I guess I’ll go eat worms. 

I can’t tell you how easy it was for each of those negative thoughts to formulate, one after the other, building on each other like a lego tower turning into a whole city…

Now here is my mind consciously thinking about the move: Colorado? That’s cool, I guess I’ll get packing. 

Could the differences be that dramatic? And is it actually possible to participate in your own life that way?  In The Untethered Soul, Singer makes the point over and over that of course it’s possible! We don’t always decide what happens, but we always the ultimate say so in how we react toward the circumstances of our life. And it’s those decisions, not what happens, that leave us either content, at ease, joyful, whole, or bitter, angry, jealous and depressed.

All it took was a few negative thoughts to quickly unravel into my making the choice to play no part in my own autonomy or the trajectory of my life. Just because I’d be living somewhere else, I removed myself from having any accountability in manifesting a life I wanted or that I could be proud of. That’s a crazy conclusion to make! But when you’re present and you actually break down your thoughts, you see what a huge majority of them are insane and simply need to be let go of. That’s not so easy when you’re hit with an onslaught of frenzy and angst, like a whirlpool that takes you down, where there’s no clarity.

So I have to practice at disarming the egoic force from taking over in my head, which I do by sword fighting the air with a Star Wars lightsaber. Just kidding. Like Tolle teaches, whenever I have a future based thought made mostly of fear, I replace it in my mind with facts that are actually true. I try to repeat positive reminders instead of playing a record of apprehension on repeat with a sad ending.

In other words, I do the thing basically all chronically sick people must learn to do at some point: surrender.

As always by ‘surrender’ I don’t mean give up–ever. I mean to leave a neutral space open in your heart and your head where good things can happen because you allow a new path to be paved even though you didn’t design it. If I had understood earlier on in my relapse that reality doesn’t really care about your plans, I might’ve saved myself a good deal of pain from what was already such a hardship. I thought I could fight things that were already in place and moving quickly forward. Life was just waiting on me to catch up to what was real, instead of trying so hard to hang on to the way things were.

All I know is that there is a pulse to life, a certain beat that resonates deep within us as individuals and as a collective. We can typically feel through that pulse a general sense of what direction life is moving in. We can resist. Be the fish swimming upstream. Or we can lean in and greet life with an open and adventurous spirit, despite limits and changes and things beyond our control. It’s true I am afraid and I’m sad to leave what I thought would always be home. But I have been shown over and over the miracle of surrender, of allowing life to ‘move me’ and the amazing outcomes that can result when we feel fear but move forward anyway. It always comes down to following that thumping compass we hear deep within and far beneath us.

Here’s hoping that it just might be great.

Health, Happiness, Hello Colorado

 

Why Is It So Hard to Pee Into Those Urine Sample Cups?

Is it just me?

If it is, then I should feel pretty vulnerable and embarrassed after this. I’m sorry mom. I really do try and make you proud.

Is it just women?

It’s hard to say but I don’t think so. I do think requires more skill on behalf of the woman, I would think. Then again I wouldn’t know, I’ve never peed into one of those “specimen catchers” standing up. It seems like all you have to do is aim and shoot. Though I imagine splash-back could be a problem. Also I’ve heard dudes talking about the “split stream”, which would make producing a clean catch pretty tricky. But that happens to the lady folk too. So I’m a making a leap of faith in assuming I’m not the only one who has issues here. Right? Guys? Right guys? 

I’ve had to give so many urine samples via those small plastic lidded cups over the last ten years, you’d think I’d at least have a technique mastered by now. But there’s just so little prediction in the direction that things will go once the golden exit begins.

You know the order of operations. First you go a little to see what direction your body has decided for the sample to go that day. Cool, you have a good idea. Place the cup in position. Aaaand begin. Aaaaand what is happening. 

Somethings gone wrong.

It starts to go awry when a renegade stream breaks off from the group for no reason at
all. Whyyyy. I can’t yell at my pee mid stream and direct it on where to go! It doesn’t respond to verbal orders or worried yelling.  Why would half of this small waterfall decide to break apart from the its fluid crew and travel backwards? Return to the team you idiot!

 

Obviously, things don’t get better from there. The cup can’t catch the rebellious run off and the original stream simultaneously because they’re too far apart, so now I have to guess which one has a higher volume and catch that one. And because I’m indecisive, I start to get a little panicky, I can’t tell which is better. Now I’m going back and forth with the cup between streams because I’m worried the collection isn’t enough, and I’m right. I often miss more than I catch in the chaos. Great. Now there’s pee in places I’d rather there not be pee.  It’s just my hand don’t freak out. (I’m talking to myself now) I mean urine is sterile, so I hear. That was the whole point of those deep breaths I took before beginning the process. You can do this Mary, just pretend it’s a game at the carnival, you’re a competitive gal.

I liken the stress to that of being on a motor bike and panicking that you’re going too fast but in the frenzy you keep hitting the gas, gunning it, instead of the break. You increase in speed until you crash and your shoe flies off. That actually happened to my friend Cody and I once. My shoe really flew off!

Anyway I guess it’s just the stress of getting it right and knowing there’s a limited amount

The Hell is she doing in there?

of material to work with that I end up internally yelling with my head down “WHAT. IS GOING ON DOWN THERE?! GET. IT. TOGETHER!” It’s like yelling at some kids I’m babysitting who I can hear are misbehaving in the basement. I hope I’m not accidentally
yelling that out loud in the stress of those 30 seconds. I can just see the nurses faces upon hearing the racket inside the bathroom, shaking their heads in resignation, Where did we go wrong with our children?

Now I have to place the cup on the counter, but why is the counter always wet? Is that someone else’s renegade pee? Impossible to know. Also, eeeew. So I awkwardly wipe down the counter, (still squatting on the toilet by the way), place the cup down, screw on the lid, make sure that’s wiped down and examine my sample. It’s like I want the nurses to be impressed with it. “Wow, did you check out Gelpi’s specimen cup? Not even a droplet on the outside!” I realize they’re wearing gloves and couldn’t care less about any of this.

Then you open that little stainless steel door to drop off your cup, and you see all the other specimens. Woah! I’m always surprised by the array of yellow colors that make up peoples urine. It’s like 50 shades of pee in there! I can only hope mine is the right shade of neon.

This is clearly Ms Gelpi’s perfect clean catch. How DOES she do it!?

It feels like an unnecessarily stressful event that I’ve had to do so many times, I just can’t figure out why I’m not better at it. Is there some method I’m unaware of? I had to give a sample yesterday just like I did last week and the week before that and a month before that, for all kinds of fun reasons. And still, I entered that bathroom, wrote my name on the cup, took a few deep breaths, and once again the urinary chaos began.

At least this time I didn’t fall. Yes, that is a true and exceptionally unfortunate story. It happened in the E.R. and I’m pretty sure they gave me a horse tranquilizer or something close to it prior to calm down the excessive adrenaline. I was in SVT (Supra Ventricular Tacchacardia) and flopping around like a fish out of water. Then I was tranked and expected to give a sample without help! So yeah, I fell. Let that image settle in and make the rest of your day happy.

Wait, where am I. 

Anyway, maybe I’ll develop a better method over the next few months. Or maybe giving urine samples will always just be one of those things we all have to do that are oddly more difficult than they should be, like hanging curtains. Don’t worry, because I know you might, I’ll let you know if there’s improvement. Stay golden yall! (I had to)

Health, Happiness, A Clean Catch

Lost: Life Force. Answers to ‘Mary’

*I Wrote this last week. I’m feeling better now ;)

Universe, God, sky, grey clouds, screeching frogs outside– helllp meee. Someone drained my life force in the night, and now I lack the will power to even use an exclamation mark. Not sure what happened. But I couldn’t go on letting myself be buried by the wet blankets of my mind. I had to do something. Something positive, and fight back against the road to stagnancy. I felt like I was slowly turning to cement! Hey look there, I used an exclamation point. 

Of course the weather is that in between weather that makes entire cities look like they could use therapy. Not sunny, on the cusp of rain but not raining, just a wet, grey, dish rag that drips sometimes and peeks the sun out in others and never definitively decides what it wants to do. So, can’t rely on the weather to help put humptey dumptey back together again. Find something else. 

I would bathe but I don’t have the energy. My arms are getting weaker. I need to lay down again. I’ll try to think of good things. 

***

OK, I’m back. It’s been almost two hours. I didn’t sleep. My willpower seemed to be dropping like a heartbeat beeping slower and slower on the heart rate monitor. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeep. She’s a gonner. It’s like all the feel-good, or feel-right chemicals in my brain have truly drained. The stuff that makes you want to go and do and play were drying up. Or already dried. 

While I’m a little weak, a little dizzy, the residual migraine still thudding behind my eyes, it’s not my body making today so hard. Well maybe that’s the setup for this mindset, but it’s calming my frenzied mind when I have no physical ability to match it that feels impossible to do. Keeping your mental sanity while waiting on your body to come back to you is probably the hardest part of all of this—a challenge that needs constant knowledgable reminding about from people who know better. I’m amazed how easy it is to forget simple truths. Clearly I’m still learning. I guess that should probably always be the case, if only I were a bit quicker at picking these things up. 

I feel the need to do so many things, but most of them aren’t doable right now. Then I feel doubly bad about not being able to do what needs getting done. I guess that’s why I’m sitting at this chair and typing, because writing is one thing I can do. 

I have learned that you can fight back against days like this. Despite nothing sounding good—for example, no type of music sounds decent to listen to, and the idea of watching TV or a movie feels even more depressing. (During the day) Even reading the book I’m thoroughly enjoying (19Q4) doesn’t feel right. I read fiction at night. None of these give the impression they would fit. If I were healthy I would go for a run, or to the coffee shop, change up the scenery and get those endorphins going. But since that’s a no-go, it’s another creative challenge to figure out that comes with the territory.

Sometimes just admitting that you’re having a crappy or hard time helps create the tiniest gap between you and the experience you’re having. This is what Tolle teaches—finding space between you and the circumstance so that you might see it from the outside objectively and not get lost in it and take all of it personally. (The Why Me Route) 

You can write it, say it, draw it, sing it, whatever it is. But transferring some of the weight onto some other medium helps prevents you from becoming tangled up and trapped in it—where every thought flowers at once and the idea of living the rest of your life frantically swirls around your head like a hurricane and feels impossible. The enormity of it all piles up because you think I can barely get through today…how will I ever get through the next three months? You start thinking 5 years into the future, your will power plummets, until something—in my instance, Monty scratching at the door— snaps you out of this useless futuristic angst and brings you back to right now. 

All I have to do is survive right now. Which sounds easy but when your willpower is at a zero, it’s actually a praiseworthy task to achieve. I survived another day!  I can’t survive anything 3 months from now, I’m right to think it will be impossible, because I can’t have a clue what will be in 3 months from now. It’s easy to think everything will be the same, and it might. Or it’s easy to see a dozen problems that all feel unsolvable. But all I have to do is look at the history of my life for proof that it can change in a snap, and 90% of the time, you don’t control the change, or predict it. You only go about figuring out how you’ll respond and adapt to it when you get there.

So how do I make now better? Unfortunately having a rebuttal for your mad mind doesn’t make it simply stop in it’s tracks and suddenly you’re grounded and fine. I’m not that good yet. Just knowing what’s helpful and what isn’t doesn’t immediately make you feel happy and give you your life juice back. But it might help slow that thought whirlpool down. It might allow for the smallest stillness to get through to you and allow the truth to calm your fast beating heart. Mostly it involves just having to live through the tension of the feelings and the knowing simultaneously that they won’t last. They may not even be true. As hard as it is to work against something inside you that feels like it’s actively dragging you down or drying you out, I know that trying anything is typically better than rotting on the floor like roadkill and trying nothing at all. 

On my two hour break, I listened to a podcast called Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell. I highly suggest listening to it, but it surprised me how just hearing someone else’s voice and someone else’s story can help pull you out of the thought whirlpool of your own. It’s nice getting out of your own head and being exposed to what people before you have met and endured in their life. I listened to Sammy Davis Jr.’s story A Hug Heard Round the World and hearing of his life and challenges put things in perspective, at least temporarily. This is the importance and power of story telling, I think. It straightened me out for a while.

I also downloaded some foreign language apps on my phone a few days ago so I can start to remember and re-learn french. I’ve forgotten so much of it and I miss it. I plan to visit France for a while when I’m better, so I’d like to get back to moderately fluent. I can’t wait to sit on the sidewalk again, drink my cafe au lait at at a table with a white tablecloth, and write in a fresh notebook Well, I’ve finally made it back to Paris. 

I didn’t want the invisible vacuum of thoughts inside me to win, so I had to fight back and share these crappy thoughts with you, sorry guys. I guess writing these thoughts out was my way to create the gap. The ability to step back and watch today unfold was my way forward. Otherwise I was slowly being swallowed and nobody wants that. This was my version of winning! Hey look at that, I used another exclamation point. That’s my comeback for today, using an authentic exclamation point. A sign of life. Beeeeep. Beep. Beep. She’s back people!

I think for now that has to be enough. 

Health, Happiness, Surviving

Day 7: The Final Day

Day 2

Day One

Seven Days at a Type Writer

A Few Things Happened

Let’s talk. I’m just going to write in list form. It’s easier on my brain for whatever reason right now.

1. I SHOWERED.

I can’t explain how good it feels to be clean to such a degree as an hour shower will get you. But even better is the smell of my shampoo emanating from me now. I have so little to brag about, but I have to convey how good it feels to smell this FRESH people. It needed to happen, I was too sick for a while, and now finally it has. I sat on a geriatric shower chair instead of taking my typical bath. My wobbly, cinderblock legs are smooth. My skin is clean and feels almost cottony.  I spent more than 30 minutes picking out Shampoo at Walgreens a while ago, searching for the perfect scent and I seemed to have found it. It’s left my hair emanating the scent of some subtle, tropical, white flower with tiny pink buds (and no nitrates!) Whatever that means. The scent is what Jennifer Anniston’s scarf closet would smell like. A shower is nothing, I realize. But in my bite-size, do-nothing world, a shower and this residual perfume of the Gods makes headlines. “Local Girl Smells Good!”

2. Secondly, in insanity news, the SAINTS JUST LOST. (Pause. Pour some beer out.) It was no one’s fault, it’s just that sometimes a defender leads with his helmet and interferes with a receiver in order to prevent a reception and somehow he doesn’t get called on it and essentially the whole outcome of the game changes. The non-call smelled like the opposite of J Anniston’s scarf closet. It smelled like what an old Southern man with leathery skin would say as he put down his beer with his eyes glared at the TV: AH HORSE SHIT!

3. Oh good LORD, my hair. This foresty, soapy, new car yet feminine fragrance…How is it even possible?!

4. OK. It’s not like the Saints losing was any one persons fault. These things happen. I mean just like sports writer Jack Baer wrote “If it wasn’t pass interference, the helmet to helmet hit almost certainly should have been called a personal foul. Either way the Saints should have received a 15 yard penalty and a fresh set of downs with a minute 45 remaining, which almost certainly would have effectively ended the game.” See? These things just happen.

5. Idea. Maybe I could charge money for people to smell my hair up close. This is how I can pay for the research that the NIH will not. $100,000 per whiff. It’s also how I can earn some kind of money if my Sofia-Dorothy relationship with my mother goes South or she dies in her sleep and I need to make money to keep the farm afloat. Either one. (Kidding mom, you know you’re my hero and you can never die)

“Hey Can I Smell Your Hair?” “Yeah, it’ll be $100,00. Make it quick.”

6. I can’t believe that non-call just happened. I still feel so shocked and bummed about it. At the same time I feel so hashtag blessed to smell like flowery beechwood that it diffusses the sadness a decent amount. What if I smelled bad and the Saints had a playoff game that was STOLEN right out from under them? Talk about feeling crappy and smelling like craigs-list. I mean I wouldn’t say the game was stolen from us…it’s just that

7.

The New Orleans Causeway Tonight. We’re subtle with our emotions.

8. Monty has gas. I realize Monty always has gas, but this seems specific and particular gas. It’s smells sad. It feels like especially offended gas that could only be expelled for a special occasion. He’s looking more sad than guilty, as though farts are the only way he can physically grieve. They are the tears of a game getting blown. The gas makes me sad, but then I smell my hair and feel glad. It’s funny that smells can make us temporally happy or sad. The realm and cause of human emotions is really pretty extraordinary.

9. Were we really supposed to lose that game or was it a comic hiccup? Some existential mistake? Tolle would say it was no mistake that we lost, because it’s the experience we endured. “The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness,” he says. But I fear tonight the light will burst from cars lit on fire and a ref that requires a 24/7 security detail. I joke I joke. I believe

10. I wonder if my shampoo truly comes from Maui. Something tells me it doesn’t. But due to the beautiful potency of its scent how could I care from where it emerged?

11. Cleanliness is Godliness.

12. Monty’s gas has begun to transition into “It will be OK. But that call was true and authentic stinky bull-dung.”

“Just can’t help my grieving gas!”

13. Like my mom says, at least we don’t have to be tense next week.

14. BUT MOM I WANNA BE TENSE I JUST WANNA BE TENSE WITH REFS THAT MAKE SURE THE PLAYERS DON’T BREAK EACH OTHERS HEADS!!!!!! Fine I’ll go to my room. No, YOU’RE being obnoxious! …Yeah I have some darks I need washed.

15. Saints, I’ll be your forever fan. Next years is ours. But on a personal note, you’ve given so many of my Sundays a happy distraction from what hasn’t been an easy year or years. Watching you play has energized me to a happy place, and I’ll always BELIEVE DAT you’re a team of good men, win or lose. I’m grateful you’ve made it as far as you have. You’ve been the joy of Sunday’s for much of my family and I, and I hope you feel the pride of the whole city behind you, my dog Monty, and me. See you next season.

Health, Happiness, Who Dat

Thank You for a great year! 

 

Meaning in the Mud

Family, Friends, Strangers, Enemies, Grandmas, and the future class of 2019: hi. I’m not dead. Figured I should get that out of the way.

It’s been so long. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed writing here. I have an underlying angst that eats at me when I know zero words are emitting from the blog of roughly 12 readers a day. Still, I don’t like it. Mostly because I still so often spend hours a day writing, , but reading it back over it the next day, the coherency is lacking and it’s clear my spaghetti brain is hindering a collective blog, so I don’t post it. The next day I write, I try to edit, and the process just repeats itself. All of it resulting in DEAD AIR! Boooo.

Anyway, as you might’ve guessed, I’m still crashed. Or on very shaky ground anyway, and I’m not really sure why. Weakness comes and goes, my restless legs/crawly skin is constantly flaring, but it’s this damn pain in my head that is consuming, constant, and just plain exhaustive. More than weakness or any other symptom, it’s a resilient pain like this that keeps me from writing long enough to edit and post, which makes me hate it all the more.

This head/face pain started to get to me psychologically a few months ago. I’d find myself looking forward to sleep given the escape it offered from the pain. That’s not a grrrreat way to live, but it is A way to live, so there’s that. It’s just the reality right now, but I do genuinely believe we’ll find the answer to this. Or we’ll at least find a remedy for the pain. Even if it is some South American JuJu bean sprout mixed with Norwegian honey bee oil and antler-fuzz brewed into a tea. I’d drink that crap-tasting tea 10 times a day. The point is, I know it won’t feel like this forever, so I’m just hanging on and HOPING THAT A FIX COMES ALONG PRETTY QUICKLY. Sorry I thought if I shout-typed it that God or someone might hear me better.

For now there is pain medicine, dousing my face in peppermint oil, and putting a frozen ice pack on top. Then I lay there, like a useless slug waiting to get stepped on. I’m destined for greatness!

#Useless Slugs Unite

On Monday I had my face injected with steroids and lidocaine to see if that would do anything. I do think it helped the back of my head, but so far not a lot of luck on the face or top of the head. Although the injections did give me temporary human horns, appropriately in time for Halloween. This picture is actually after they’d gone down a bit.

She-devils Unite!

Walking back into the waiting room I told the secretaries not to judge my she-devil horns and they burst out laughing. I guess in a place that is usually so serious and nearly tense like the sign-out counter at a doctor’s office, something about that interaction made me feel lighter. 

Other than that, life remains a constant search for balance in-between hope and despair. Obviously, it feels much better to be hopeful. But damn if despair doesn’t grab you by the feet like an anchor and drag you under. It can be so easy to fall down that hole, and much harder to make your way out.

I know I write about it a lot, but it’s because chronic illness is such a marathon. Staying optimistic, believing your life can be good, finding meaning in the mud, laughing when it’s funny even though it’d be just as easy to cry, are all your job on top of the physical battle. It’s so hard not knowing where the finish line is or what it even might look like once you get there. If you’re like me, you’re always trying to calculate how your life might go if you’re sick 2 more years, 5 more years, 20 more years. It’s infinite…

It’s an impossible hypothetical that will only leave you confused and anxiety-ridden. Marc Nepo said confusion is the result of trying to make sense of things too soon, and I am constantly trying to do that. Make things fit before they’re fully formed. It’s hard to trust that wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be, and yet in hindsight, it seems that somehow it always turns out that’s the case, even when things have resulted in pain or anguish.

Nepo also said the repeated hindrance to joy in his life over and over has been hesitation. So I’m continually trying to just live the moment I’m in–1 because honestly it’s all I can handle. But 2 because when I start thinking too far into the future or assuming I could possibly change things that have happened in the past is when I actually suffer. When I interrupt my thinking and say Mary, all you have to do is make a cup of tea right now, I’m brought back to the only thing that matters and where I have any power, which is now.

It’s been an interesting experiment, this whole chronically sick life thing that I think I may have signed up for ambitiously before I was born because I’m stupid and don’t think things through. Still, it’s interesting, because it’s a perpetual challenge, especially creatively and in thinking. Like this idea–that you can be in a lot of pain, but also laugh hysterically in your living room, alone, at something you’ve seen twice before. This week I was watching jeopardy casually with my parents and I filled up with an overwhelming sense of gratitude, and despite my raging head and restless, squirming legs, such a strong positive feeling made it’s way to the surface anyway.

The same happened when Matt brought me lunch out of nowhere on Tuesday, because he happened to be eating at a place nearby. I had a migraine, but when I woke up I had a meal to eat and didn’t have to think about it or muster the strength to make one. Just deciding on food can be totally exhausting. My gratitude was overflowing. And when Monty was afraid during the rainstorm and I laid with him on the floor, because I could, petting his velvety ears as the poor guy shook with fear at the rumbles of thunder, the love I felt for him welled up inside me, to where I could feel an actual warmth in my chest. I think how lucky I am to have such incredible people (and dogs) in my life and it makes the physical pain feel less powerful.

There are many, small moments like that, where gratitude and humility and laughing out loud at something stupid all pop up and show their beauty despite whatever physical pain I’m feeling. The dichotomy of those two things and experiencing them at once is an intriguing piece of the puzzle that’s teaching me how to be a human being. I think I’m getting pretty good! But I’ll never be as good as Monty, the happiest, most grateful, and present person I know.

Actually Destined for Greatness

Case in point, he was not at all upset when his ball became stuck under a huge flat rock that was filled with muddy rain water underneath. He spent 30 minutes digging and splashing and maneuvering for that ball, and a half hour later he came trotting to the porch, a newly chocolate lab, victorious with said ball that was almost a goner. Seeing how happy, proud, and brown he was made me laugh so hard, I couldn’t help but feel happy to be alive, despite feeling like death. Witnessing the fulfilled, unflinching life that Monty lives, it’s fair to say that dog does not hesitate or miss lifes’ moments. His joy is infectious, and I will always be grateful he’s been by my side for as long as he has.

My head is starting to fill with pressure and expand like a balloon, or so it feels, so it’s time to slug it up for a while. Then maybe I’ll enjoy Wheel of Fortune with my parents. See? I have to laugh at it. Was this the life I envisioned at age 34? Would I have chosen this? Maybe not. And yet I am learning, learning, how to find a sense of fulfillment and wander in the unchosen existence that is uniquely my own all the time. Each time I inch toward trusting this experience, the more momentous life becomes, the brighter the mundane moments explode into something special, and the more my soul awakens at how incredible it is to be here at all.

Health, Happiness, Muddy Waters

Need Some Funny In Your Life?

I have not seen this film, and I don’t think I actually need to. This trailer is so extraordinary, I think it might ruin how much laughter it brings me if I were to cross the line and actually watch it. If you need a good laugh, please watch this trailer, from a real movie made in the 80’s. (Not ironic) GYMKATA promises to bring a lot of things to the table. I don’t know what all of them are, but fighting from a pommel horse in the middle of a village and laugher are foremost.

Just knowing this film exists brings me comfort and is somehow a reminder that everything will be OK, even in times when it feels far from it. I don’t know how, this is just the power of humor people! And I believe in it, wholly. So, here it is, the film trailer that will save us all. Or at least make us laugh, which counts for something.

Health, Happiness, the 80’s

*Thanks to Matt, for showing me this glorious trailer one boring afternoon. It has brought me so much joy.

The Reward and the Wake of ME/CFS Advocacy

Two weeks ago, my family came together for an advocacy event coordinated by incredible friends and family in our old hometown, Grand Junction Colorado. The function was a success and took a lot of hard work by people who cared and put in major time and heart behind the scenes. My sisters friends Avery and Jordana, Jordana’s dad Harry (awesome dad name) and my Uncle Mike who was under the impression that months earlier he’d retired (Nope!) Besides them many more came together, helped fund, offered services, and sponsored the event in order to make it happen. As for me, I sort of just had to show up.

Beyond friends and family that put in the effort to sort out logistics doing an incredible job, the article in our local paper impressed me majorly–not just with it’s advertising of the event, but by publishing a full page color spread, covering our families stories respectively and including a digestible narrative about the reality of MECFS and giving it a wider context. I felt happy and surprised to read this article right out of my humble hometown, when such a surprising amount of press from noteworthy and “big league” media can completely miss the mark.

Noice!

Autographs for Uncle Mike bc I have No $ For Him

The dense, nearly unbelievable history mixed with present political roadblocks and numerous scandals all under the M.E. umbrella make the disease particularly hard to write about and convey in one article without writing a novel. Not to mention the personal, human interest side of this, and the toll it takes on patients and families. Very few articles contain both, and many more are simply clumsy, neglecting essential facts or even accurate data. Due to our general lacking presence in the media, I know someone might think “Well any press is good press, right?” But I struggle with that adage. When you’re fighting a thirty year old false narrative, not all press is good. In fact it can easily be bad by perpetuating fallacies, inaccuracies or misconstrued data, and even celebrate studies (like the PACE Trial) or treatments which have done the MECFS community incalculable harm.

So I guess, no, not all of it’s good. Too often I’m excited to see press about MECFS only to be disappointed beginning just the title, which will call the disease “chronic fatigue” or in the first line, inaccurately label the number one symptom as tiredness. *facepalm* But I digress, I didn’t mean for this to get into the media missing the mark, or the missing media in general, because today is about advocacy. And when people with this disease, their caregivers and loved ones, researchers and doctors are out there fighting for it, none of them will get it wrong. All of them know the numbers, the history, the truth, and the unfortunate personal toll.

The event in Colorado was a success. And maybe I’m a romantic and would call it that if even 3 people showed up, because that’d be 3 more people who were aware of something that is so rarely seen, heard, talked about, or understood. But many more showed up, family and friends we hadn’t seen in decades, strangers too, all to learn about a disease on a Sunday night, when it would be so so so easy to stay home and just forget it. It’s hard to express the humility and gratitude you feel seeing people show up, tell you they’re thinking or praying for you or your family, or even a stranger offering his hope and encouragement for the future. It all meant a lot, really. So THANK YOU again and again.

After the screening of Unrest, the 3 of us (my mom sister and I) spoke and were followed by Linda Tenanbaum, the CEO of the Open Medicine Foundation and human firecracker, who infused hope back into the audience, who were probably mostly thinking Dang, this is a shitty situation. Shituation?  She closed out the night before it was on to the reception. The firecracker (Linda) is an amazing speaker and doer, and having her attend the event only amped it up. Getting filled in on the OMF’s work and most up to date findings was a truly optimistic breath of fresh air.

The OMF is at the forefront of research and work purely off donations, as in every cent goes into the science. All participants–brilliant researchers, doctors, scientists and logistical coordinators work on their own dime. Why? Some of them have a child or loved one with this disease, others just a determination to find answers to something with so few. Due to the explicit lack of urgency in the government when it came to MECFS interest, when submitted applications for funding biomedical research were repeatedly turned down by the NIH, these guys got together and decided it was time to do the work themselves. And thanks to the generous donations of so many people, they’ve been able to achieve and find incredible things. There is still a lot to do and this kind of science will require a lot of GREEN. But hey, maybe the #MillionsMissing protestors out there today in the streets will help change studying a disease with public charity to adequate funding provided by the Agency whose job it is to fund.

When we attended another event much like this one in California in October, it took me roughly 30 days to recover. I know because I videotaped myself everyday for a month to track how each day went after we returned. It’s a long trip and these events, while incredible and worthwhile, take a toll. The socializing alone is just like physical exertion, and the event in GJ lasted roughly 6 hours. While I’ve recently undergone an upswing in my health, I watched my mom that night—speaking and catching up with many old friends. Sitting as much as possible, not having even one glass of wine or “playing with fire” by any stretch of the imagination. She played it safe and did what she could to pace herself. You’d never guess anything might be wrong by looking at a photo from that night.

Yours truly, My Sister Amelie, Linda Tenanbaum, Mama Gelpi, and my Aunt Amy. You probably know her.

Yet at 6 AM the next morning, I woke up on the couch just in time to see her collapsing, my stepdad with his arms outstretched underneath hers, catching her as she slowly went down, muscles twitching and trying not to pass out. She’d woken with a crushing migraine and often if she doesn’t take her medicine in time, some epic vomiting is soon to follow. She’d taken the meds but sometimes the migraine wins and all you can do is endure it until it’s had its way with you. She’d run to the first bathroom feeling her mouth start to water and knowing what was to follow, but my brother had just moments earlier gone in to shower before his early fight home. (Way to go NICK)

So she was on a quick race to the bathroom on the other side of the house, but midway through started to black out, and was luckily caught by my stepdad from behind while her muscles seem to go limp and the room blurred in and out. I can’t remember what was said but I knew she was going to spew quickly and ran as fast as I could for a bowl. I made it back just in time, with a casserole dish, which isn’t the best of bowls to puke in if we’re getting technical, but hey, better than the carpet.

After a nice little vomit session on the floor, we both pulled her up to the chair where we put ice on her neck and wrapped her feet in heat packs to try to get the blood to flow downward. She sat with her eyes closed, as though she were concentrating hard on something. But when you’ve experienced that kind of pain, you know just what it looks like, and that was it. She waited and Marc sat nearby for anything she might need. After an hour she was finally able to walk back to the bed and eventually get back to sleep. So, that was her morning.

And from what? From doing what healthy people do all the time. Watching a movie, catching up with friends, eating, hanging out. This is what put her over her envelope. Watching her I just kept thinking about the invisibility of it all. That no one would guess the woman they were with last night was in the extremely painful and scary position she was in now. But this is the story MECFS and those who suffer with it live it all the time. You see us when we’re well enough to be seen. Otherwise most of the suffering goes on behind closed doors, and no one presumes otherwise.

Today is #MECFS Awareness Day, and thousands of people around the world are taking part in the #MillionsMissing protest thanks to MEAction and many more. I wish I were one of them but I just couldn’t make it happen. So I made my sign with shoes attached on behalf of the three of us in the family to represent. It was only a tweet, but it was the best I could do.

I hope anyone reading this who participated in the #MillionsMissing event knows the immense gratitude and unity from millions of us who couldn’t physically be there. This kind of advocacy isn’t easy, particularly on those who have the disease. They will all pay for it in terms of their health in big and small ways. And yet it’s what must be done in order to make the invisible seen, give the silenced a voice, and the truth a solid platform on which to land. My gratitude runs so deep to all those who organized to make THIS happen, and you know as well as I do, it doesn’t end here. We’ll fight even if we’re left beat up until things change the way they’ve needed to for decades. Hang tough, all of you. The Gelpi’s are with you in spirit. Thank you for your bravery, for caring, and for risking your own health so that we might all have a chance at actual health in the future. Thank you, in every language ;)

Health, Happiness, In Solidarity–Happy May 12th

Restlessness, Unrest, Doin Your Best, Zombies

For nearly  a month now, I’ve been writing a blog that would normally take me a few 3-4 hours to write and a few days to edit, if I were in “regular” enough health and other things were ordinary. I catch myself in a strange predicament, so I’ve abandoned that last post, which may have been THE BEST THING YOU EVER READ because I can’t damn well get more than a paragraph written on a good day, and the editing has become arduous for numerous reasons outside the one I’m about to describe, but to the point where writing, my one constant among chaos has taken a further hit. And since I’ve learned, for me, writing a simple status of things in my own life is easier than trying to put some thesis about technology together (one day) I’ll just bring you up to speed, because I’m not sure how long it will be like this. 

If you read in my past blog, you saw I’ve been fighting some switcht that seemed to turn on a charged degree of restless body syndrome and skin crawling, which have been part of my symptoms for years. With a switch of pain medicine that didn’t seem to improve anything and cause the hugely uncomfortable side effect of skin crawling and an insatiable necessity to move my limbs ,Unfortunately, when we stopped the medicine and returned to the regular regimen, for some reason, the RLS (or restless body syndrome + skin crawling) did not, which turned up a conundrum. 

We’ve yet been unable to find out what “fliped the switch” that made these symptoms turn on with the cherry on top of skin crawling, and why stopping the med that seemingly caused it to start wouldn’t naturally cause it to turn off. If anything the symptom has stayed the same and many, many restless days and nights become worse, and well, hellish. Waking up to squirming legs and little charges running through your body with your skin crawling on top, Is Foldiers in your cup! Kidding, its awful. I think I’d prefer pain. And since the pain has continued, now I get both, yeah! But if i had to pick between the two, I’d choose pain. It’s discomfort is different from that of squirming limbs, electrical bolts and your skin feeling like the audio equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, if that makes any sense. Besides all that, for whatever reason, the medicine I’ve been taking for nearly a decade that has controlled the symptoms 90% of the time, seemed to just suddenly stop being effective. It’s as if this clinically same symptom is originating or set off by something else in the body, and that has rendered my old meds useless. 

Where I am lucky, is that we found a medication that has been effective in controlling these symptoms, which truly, at times, feel more tortuous than pain. Where I’m a little unfortunate is that the medicine which calms down the lightning/snow/hail storm going on inside me, is the same medicine I’ve been taking for sleep for the last 2.5 years. At night it has done me wonders, since for years, even with the help of a sleep aid, I rarely made it through a full night a of sleep, saw a lot of sunrises, and often had tangible nightmares and at times became trapped in night terrors. (NO fun) Luckily this RX has not only worked best for my quality of sleep out of all the meds I’ve tried in the last decade, but it also seemed to reduce my nightmares, or at least made me sleep so well, I don’t remember them, which is, you know, fine by me. The obvious problem is that when you’re taking a pill so incredibly effective at helping you sleep, but you’re now taking it at 10 AM…you’re going to run into some issues. Like, um, what’s that word? Functioning, that’s right, you’re going to have problems functioning in daylinght. But without the meds, life is even less functional with misery stirred in. I wish I could say I were stronger and I could do it without the meds, but believe me, when you feel like you’re being tickled from the inside of your skin and your legs wanna kick and squirm and flex outta control when you just want to sit or lay and some strange shock or charge is making its way from head to toe frequently, it’s just not doable. You’re fighting the whole day. 

So, I went from misery and fighting, to z o m b I f i e d and tired and unbalanced (pysically) because that’s some of the med’s effects, which I”ll add, are HUGELY more tolerable than life without them. But, taking a sleep med during daylight, as I’ve explained, is draining me. I move slower than before. My cognitive ability feels like it’s being run by a fat hamster with heart disease. I can feel the effects that I know are from the meds, but it takes just the thought of one morning in January to make the “pick your poison” choice easy.

At a bitterly coincidental time, I was told to ween off that pill by my doctor because the FDA had been coming down hard on physisicians and who they prescribe to and how many doctors are prescribing to one patient could compromise their license. Sweet. I’d have to wait to find another doctor to prescribe it before I could refill it (I’ll write more when I’m not so z o m b i f i e d)  I found myself stuck between a few pills left and a hard place. The only thing relieving me from the misery was this med, but because of new regulations, only certain doctors were allowed or were choosing to prescribe it out of caution. I was prescribed some other conventional prescriptions to control RLS (Miripex, Bacloven and others) which did nothing, and my Lyrica and then Gabapentin had for whatever reason ceased to worked. Now I was stuck. 

I tried to talk myself into the belief that slowly weening off the Central Nervous Depressant and changing to the Bacloven that I could rid myself of this new, annoying, persisting symptom if I just believed hard enough the new meds would. But by the time I had taken the last pill and it was all up to the bacloven, I went 1.5 days and did what I guess we could call, ” possibly acceptable” but not at all “controlled” on the symtome scale. The morning I woke when I knew the last of the weening med had left my body, I was in hell. Really. I thought if I couldn’t get rid of this feeling, which was the truly inescapable task of needing to crawl out of your skin and also throwing all your limps off, I could see how and why people ended it. I know, that sounds extremely dark, because it is. But when you’re in that much extreme discomfort, you finally see why people could have it in them to do something that seems so far away and impossible in your own world. I wasn’t in hell, I had help and luckily one doctor to prescribe a partial dose until my appointment with the neurologist. Saved. 

But that morning for those hours where I tried everything I could think of and could not find relief, I thought of the many who came before me and those now who experience similar symptoms to a much higher degree and do not have the safety net of their health systems or family to fight for them and find them relief of their pain or quell their discomfort. This letter from a past advocate, one I never knew until I read her letter, who experienced unspeakable greater pain and hell than I did, and lacked the help of her countries support of MECFS more or maybe as much as the US had me thinking how in fact fortunate I was. At the least, I had a family that would step in and demand or find a solution I wouldn’ve have been capable of myself.

Another thing stuck with me. When leaving one of my 14,000 doctors, one who is actually very good and informed particularly in the filed of dysnautonomia (a huge aspect of ME/CFS for most) he said something. “You need to be getting as ltitle medicine as possible from as few doctors as possible, otherwise, you and I will be flagged.” I felt such anger on that ride home. This is where so many MECFS patients are stuck. It’s suspicious of us to have too many doctors all prescribing different meds, and yet, there’s no one doctor for us to go….This disease multi-systemic, and most patients, if they can make it there, have at least 5 different doctors monitoring different parts of their malfucntionng bodies. How on earth would we break this puzzle without research and education to show these medical entities the truth about a disease it simply does not undestand, and who some are plainwright just choosing not to look at.

I always try to take as little of the meds as I can because I know they will wipe me, which would make a lot of people, then find a way to withstand it or another solution. We’ve tried magnesium, checked iron levels, yes I have lyme disease, I take multiple supplements and I’m pretty sure I can’t The Shape of Water-it and just live in a bathtub for eternity, so for the time, this is my limited option to escape the suffering of this strange, insidious symptom that we just can’t figure out. Last month I saw Dr. Klimas, (my hero!) who is running a whole scope of tests, and all our fingers are crossed that we may find answers.  Not everyday is spent zombified, but my mom recently told me she was worried because every time she came over I sounded like a zombie and not myself and I said “maybe that’s just cause you come over at zombie hour” and she said that couldn’t be ruled out. But we both knew.

So, I try to get rid of the guilt that there is so much more I could be doing but that I am held back by from the very medicine that makes life bearable, but that can also make it very a slow moving, zombie-esque and unproductive experience. We can only do what we can do. When you’re already fighting “fatigue” (a really shitty word to describe a symptom of a really shittily named “chronic fatigue syndrome”, hmmm) a med like this is like 4,000 cherries on top. I definitely believe that either my body will very slowly adjust from whatever through it out of whack in October, or that I actually will be able to ween from these meds and get back to the thing I love more often—writing, advocating, and creating. 

And by the way, check this out! If you live in Colorado, please come to this advocacy event; it’ll be a good time with a good cause. The Gelpi’s will be there, Grandma Bell (you’ll know soon enough) and lots of others. Not Monty, sorry to disappoint 90% of readers :(

Read more here about the event. And read more HERE for the write-up on our stories in The Daily Sentinel. Thank you Anne Wright for the article and for everyone who has helped make this event possible, which has been many, but especially Jordanna, (her dad) and my Uncle Mike who thought he was retired. Haha, sucker! Love ya.

Health, Happiness, Keep On Zombie-ing On

Miami, Migraines, Diners, Doctors

I am sitting at a booth in one of those themed diners in a shopping center, adjacent to the clinic where I saw the specialist on Monday and had what looked like hundreds of vials of blood taken today for more testing. I figure I should eat even though I’ve no appetite. I never trust a menu this long, so I play it safe and order the soup and salad, which is neither good or bad. I guess that’s what you’re really asking for, a meal to quickly forget.

The music is too loud in here and I find myself strangely annoyed with the gimmicky decor. License plate style plaques fill every inch of wall space boasting phrases like “Stressed is Dessert spelled backwards!” and “Soup of the Day: Whiskey.” I stop. I just close my eyes a minute. Adjust. The problem is not the restaurant. It’s me and this body I have to animate—it doesn’t fit in the world in comfortable or easy ways. It’s like dropping a wild tiger in suburbia, except maybe the opposite. It’s like trying to build suburbia in the middle of a jungle, then complaining the tigers are noisy and sometimes scare the kids. No one else seems bothered by the music.

“Hey, you don’t belong here.”
“I might say the same thing about you.”

I don’t want to be this young and think like a curmudgeon. Better to let go. It’s because it’s 11:30 and I’m on day 9 of a migraine cycle and I’m wearing real pants. I had to get blood drawn and I don’t normally exist before noon. Mornings are just constantly, reliably painful and tough.

Everyone has days where life feels so tired, so repetitive, that you want to hit snooze and wake up under some alternate sky where there is no weight to carry. No gravity, no effort required to move. Where everyone looks each other in the eyes. We listen. We don’t say the words “Sorry” followed by the word “but…” or “if”. Our hearts resonate with each other, and our heavy bodies have shed like snake skin, like the useless, heavy weight they’d become. There is a lightness in every capacity.

Tolle says this alternate side of the sky I am referring to is possible here on this side. And I believe he is right. But it takes so much practice and learning and presence. Presence. How easy it is to walk into a cheap diner and complain about decor. That kind of observation lacks creativity. Not to mention, it’s very counterproductive to complain about these things when you’re already feeling down. So I’ll tell you what I like about this costumed diner. All four booths in my vicinity are filled with at least parties of two people eating, and all of them are talking to one another. None of them have their phones out. A phenomenon! Particularly this couple across from me.

They are in their 60’s, and somehow it seems obvious they’ve known each other a long time. I could be wrong of course. They could be divorcees who met on ourtime.com and newly in love. But it’s not the sense I get. In my mind they’re in their Act III of their marriage with grandchildren they have pictures of on their phones to their friends at Bridge. I like that they haven’t run out of things to say or lost some kind of delight in the simple pleasure of each others laugh. They seem to laugh a lot, casually, throughout their light hearted conversation and this feels so good to watch. I always used to fear I’d marry a man and eventually he’d lose interest in me and I’d find his stories boring and then we’d be at a restaurant eating one day with nothing to say to one another. As though there was nothing new to discover about the other, or that we’d lose curiosity in the way each of us experienced the world.

But I know that only happens when we’ve decided we know a person completely and with total certainty. And if we’ve decided that, the issue is not the other person.”The human mind mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for truth…but it is no more than a viewpoint, one of many possible perspectives. Reality is a unified whole. Thinking fragments it into pieces.” Tolle says a lot about the “thinking” mind, and that it’s very useful in our world. But it’s also “very limiting when it takes over your life completely. It’s only a small aspect of the consciousness you are.”

Sometimes I seek the daily, thoughtless things about a person with such aggressive interest I think I might be dumb. Their calendars, notebooks, what they keep in their cars. One of my favorite hobbies is to take apart a guys wallet, piece by piece. All the useless receipts he saves. The frequent customer cards. An old crumbly picture, maybe. Movie stubs. Concert stubs. Their license—are they smiling in the picture or does it look like a mug shot? What made the cut for making it into the billfold and what didn’t. All tiny stamps of a person and his non-sequitor, paper trail of places he’s been. You can have the same fun or more going through a woman’s’ purse. Many clues in there. But these are little traces so few people see. Instead we go to dinner and say “Uh huh and what do you do? Oh interesting, tell me more about your boss. What a jerk!” I think first dates should be silent a exchange of wallet for wallet, or purse for purse, or wallet for purse, whatever. You get the picture.

My last boyfriends wallet, unless I’m remembering incorrectly, was a basic brown leather wallet that seemed to old for him and contained some concert stubs, because he was a music guy and not a whole lot else because he had a straightforward way of being in the world. A wallet was a thing to hold money and his license. But maybe more memorable was the night we went to dinner and left Monty and his dog Gracie home. When we returned, his wallet that he’d left on the coffee table had been chewed. His license, a credit card, social security card, and a one dollar bill perfectly torn in half littered the living room floor. We both loyally defended our own, claiming that “100%, my dog would never do that.” I thought it was kind of funny—a mystery we’d never know the answer to. Maybe it was Monty (it wasn’t), telling me Run! This thing isn’t gonna work! Mayday! Owell. Fun while it lasted. I still have the half chewed dollar.

I could say that the two buzzing gnats flying around my side salad are concerning, but you can basically always reduce these impulses to complain or feel disturbed by something or “talk to the manager” to nothing, because when you start to break them down, they just don’t mean all that much. We forget that so much of our devoted focus, particularly when it’s negative, is essentially meaningless. I am one person, and I chose to eat at a diner where children under the age of 12 eat for free between noon and 3. There may as well be a sign that says FREE BUGS. This isn’t the RITZ. The meal costs $10 and the waitress is nice.  If you’re always making noise about your tiny discontent, you just become a human gnat. We should ask ourselves what our questions or actions or statements are intended to do for five minutes before we go running to every manager. It’s so often just a thoughtless impulse. Gnats! We could just as easily forget about it and move on with the day.

I take an Uber home, and I find myself alone in the back of Ubers quite often. ‘Often’ is a relative term. I’m appreciating that the driver isn’t trying to engage in conversation. “It’s hot out!” “Yes, it is hot out! Also, I have a doggy!” I’ll tip him more for that.

Miami is a picturesque place, and I like the sidewalk traffic. Watching the world through   the window feels so much better than TV–and no commercials. Bonus! I see a couple kiss while they wait at the crosswalk. Then they smile and she says something that makes them laugh. I love seeing people kiss. Creepy? Maybe. I just like that kissing exists in general. There’s traffic, which is another easy thing to complain about. Tolle says complaining is one of the ego’s favorite hobbies. (Also being right.) But I’m in a quiet car. All I have to do is sit here, one of a few things where I’m actually quite skilled. Many beautiful things pass us by at a stop and go pace. I try to imprint the sights on my brain to take home with me.

I try presence. Just being aware of all my senses. I am grateful to be out in the world at all, when so often I am indoors. I try to remember how lucky I am that I was able to come here. What a gift it is to see a doctor who understands, who listens and looks you in the eye, who can help me find answers. (Thank you Dr. Klimas!) That I have my brother and his beautiful family to stay with and help care for me. That it’s time together we wouldn’t have had were I well. Yes, I have a body that feels like a decomposing pumpkin at times. And I actually feel I may look like a decomposing pumpkin at times. (See video below) But so many moments to be grateful for. So many gifts. Count them. Keep counting. They add up faster the more awake you are.

Keep fighting. Last year was hard. I believe somewhere in my depths, this one will be better, no matter the directional trend my health takes. I know we’re getting close. I tip the Uber driver and leave feedback. “Thank you for the quiet.”

Health, Happiness, Counting

All awesome artwork by Eugenia Loli

*Bonus*: I’m on Day 9 of my migraine cycle! Here is a clip of yesterday morning. It was kind funny in that tragically comical way.