Give My Regards to Hippocrates

I am hoping to pull myself back and get to my cheery, cheeky self... I hate when I hit the Pit of Despond. Before that, basic notes, just in case.

"We like to keep a watch on our thinner patients taking Topomax as it's got a tendency to stall appetite"... Well, my goodness, you are doing a fan-freaking-tastic job!

 Yelling at a patient who is asymptomatic that day but still tender is a bad idea, as you may have noticed when I almost fell out of my chair... it wasn't just shock and surprise. Do you know what loud noises do with the varying types of headaches?!

You have complained that
(A) I am sensitive to many anti-seizure drugs. Have you ever thought that I might process any drug differently, as a result of having less than the full compliment of inter-body filtration systems?!
(B) My CAT scans are 5 years old. In this case, it's not a bad idea to redo them
(C)Correct me if I'm wrong, but medical equipment that is a decade+ old is outdated, right? And "Inconclusive" usually means "You might want to retry that."

While symptoms getting worse is not your fault, although having an answer and perhaps something to keep me in check, rather than having to deal with both pain and medication side effects (Ps... the lecture on Lamictal, which we've discovered I am allergic to... some of those arguments were used for another Bayer Pharmaceuticals product in 1900. You may have heard of it, it's called heroin.) would possibly be effective therapy. You have a duty to ensure I am in the least pain possible. That I am treated as a human being.

 Your patient should not have a fever, chills, shaking, anxiety and worsened episodes as a result, or be screamed at, as I was, for reporting such. I should not be frightened of you.

I understand wait times. It's why I'm always prepared. But 30 minutes past appointment time waiting to be called simply to give my insurance information, an hour and a half by myself, and five minutes of an appointment in your enlightened presence, oh Hippocrates, (I am not worthy! I am not worthy!) seems a little odd to me.

I am terrified to fill out information sheets. I am terrified to list anything!

I do not feel like I am getting an exam. While I am in pain, I feel as if I am being watched, I feel disgusted with myself by absorbing your attitude, I feel humiliated. When you take my pulse, when you ask me to squeeze your hands, I feel like I've touched something filthy.
I cannot continue with your fine and enlightened presence.
My regards.

Space Oddity

There are the good days and the bad. I love focusing on the good... and if I have to, I really milk it: "I'm good enough, smart enough, cute enough... and gosh darn it, people like me!" Before I start doing Planes, Trains and Automobiles monologues, or a Sally Field Oscars speech...

Somedays, I must honestly say, are worse than others. Hey, it's a blog. What use if not an honest vent? I'm freakin' human... I'll get mad and frustrated here and there.
Ok. There.
Back to immature, bratty jokes on everything from whether blocking your left nostril (or so says science, honest!) can allow you to cheer yourself up, as you are naturally more... ebullient when you breathe from the right and you alternate nostrils multiple times daily... to waxing on the fun of how in 1712 in the Swedish Empire, thanks to gaffes with the new Gregorian calendar, and war, there was actually a February 30th... (I guess if anyone did as I do and puts some nastier stuff on hold against that day... like, say, kissing a squirrel, giving into illness-- NEVER SURRENDER!) they were royally screwed! and on why it's important to pay attention.

But there are days when I am just coming out of a shadow--- at this point, I am still a little funky and not quite me yet... like this past week, when rather than making progress, history got repeated... I drew a map, for the love of Pete!--how hard is it to do a freakin' scan! I can't freakin' live like this! Where for short moments, I may experience a sensation like I've forgotten how to understand speech--- it's a bit annoying, and how I know I'm truly stressed. I've shown what it's like this way, and if needed, it works as a party trick..

I have, in my list, both Italian and English versions of Space Oddity and My Girl- the latter being the sweet song I've known since I was a child and it was one of "My"songs, the former sounding even creepier. Now, if I am having fun with friends and a few drinks get passed, and Space Oddity en Italiano pops up on shuffle, an astute person might say, "Wait what?"
I like to start singing along in English and going, "I have no idea what you're talking about..."

But David Bowie is creepier in Italian.

How Do You Judge?

I'm posting this because every time I see it, I'm utterly fascinated watching the transformation. I love how it was reversed so that in "cleaning him up", they actually brought out Rick Genest-aka Zombie Boy-'s tattoos. Like tattoos, hate them, have tham, want them, dislike them... whatever... I just think this is striking and beautiful.

They ask: "How do you judge?"
Good question. One I'll answer for myself.

I'm not a huge fan of house music, either, but I did buy the song... "There Is Hope"- Zoo Brazil Ft. Rasmus Kellerman- because I often need something to kick me out of the doldrums.

What Now?

The search is on... in the race to better help myself, I also have to know when to say "WHEN!" (Which no one ever really does... you can be pouring forever, and no matter what, you'll catch "Stop," "Whoa," and "Enough..." but no one ever says, "when!"

I've been on a search for a new neuro since tests were brought up "You haven't had a CAT scan in 5 years..." but never done, when the 14 year old portable EEG machine messed up, and the medicine debacle.

I've dealt with the issue of "If I am in pain, and I am trying to more than simply survive, when I can't stand sunlight, when I have been made very sick, when I can barely eat, when I am worried I may have a seizure in public, I get anxious. If I am anxious, I am in pain. And so on, so forth." Also, if a drill sergeant with PMS is more charming than your doctor who makes you wait an hour past your appointment time, then condescendingly shouts "How often do you take excedrin!" at you... (Uh, have we forgotten WHY I'm here in the first place?!) and walks you out in five minutes.. asking for all of your other doctors' reports and insisting, "well, sorry, we don't know... see you in 6 months!" DAMN IT! Well... been here before. Calmed myself considerably---took time and I'm grateful I wasn't having a symptomatic day today although I got very scared when he shouted at me... something about a man in a white coat coldly holding my wrist and screaming in my face that I am his most difficult patient is frightening. I'm sure my pulse rate went through the roof. So, 6 months, new neuro.

Back a while ago, I dealt with similar issues. Turns out 1)The food I'd been eating was poison to me. It also took me turning a color that is often seen in corpses and walking like Groucho Marx to greet my mom one day--- I was summarily taken to the ER, where I passed a kidney stone---to get them to realize, "Oh, it's not just HER." I just had massive medication reactions... to a medication that quote "Is so good it never causes issues!" (Except that lovely rash that made it necessary for the info packet to include lurid photos, septic meningitis, anxiety...)
Nope. Not happening. Family doctor wants to run her own tests, and is standing by patiently, along with a priest, pastor, assorted friends, nurses, etc. Me? Research, and staying far from Dr. Google.

Murky Polaroids and Helping Myself Help Myself

I like to liken the brain to a computer--- In many cases, it lets you see bright, glossy graphics, hear beautiful music, smell beautiful smells. Let something go wrong, and the processor doesn't have a clue.
When the brain thinks it's in danger, it starts downloading information from the memory banks... "Help me! Does this work?" "No, Brain, that's Alan Rickman. And I was quite disturbed when you sent me that dream where he kept calling me liebchen. Try again."
(Dreaming, incidentally, is another time when my brain likes to run through tasks, unfortunately, as a result of watching classic horror films and perhaps one too many vintage psychological reports or story of lurid murder, it sends me the weirdest things. I tend to be thrilled when I go for a while minus nightmares. Alan Rickman flirting with me in German was by far the most disturbing. Even more so than the one with Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear, a Smart Car, and Miss Havisham, of Great Expectations fame. For those who wonder, we took her night-clubbing.) So it's asking me, constantly, "Does this help? Help me! Does this work? Hey! What about this?" And that is why I can't turn my brain off. However, when it restarts itself, it's scary and then I'm left with "Murky Polaroids" in the memory, and in dreams. I'm working on helping it... and on helping it help itself. I'm also hoping to quit being a slave to it.

It'll Slay You

In New York City, a serial-killer themed open house will be going on this Hallowe'en. It includes the sound of people being electrocuted, killers jumping out at you (If I had a dollar for every time my brother's black-clad and strange-looking friends jumped out at me under cover of darkness, I might have a million to pay for the rapid heart palpitations I suffered.)

Families of victims of serial killers from John Wayne Gacy's to the charmer and former suicide phone-line operator, Ted Bundy, to those of Jeffrey Dahmer, are saying, "Um... woah..."
One particularly lurid image, even in flat 2-D is one "honoring" Elizabet Bathory, the Romanian Countess who forwent standard treatments at her time, and thought that the pain, and the death and blood of young girls trusted to her care was better for her skin, which is shown here: the Gothamist

The operator says: "Those (relatively recent murderers) are mythological by this point, and I didn't use anyone in the Tri-State area!"

People like to be terrified. To an extent. A very old murder, so old, its' photographic evidence is a shade of fading peachy-orange-to-black, where dossiers on the criminal are quaintly oversharing: "He is 32, with a medium build, sallow complexion, syphilis scars, black hair and black eyes that look like slits." in graceful handwriting you'd be hard-pressed to see come out of a male these days, where the lurid and sometimes shocking details acquire a patina of age, are interesting. Not something I'd look into re-creating, but interesting,
"We shouldn't mythologize murderers!"
Well...
Leonidas was tossed in a discussion somewhere---a needless massacre after the battle of Sepeia.
William the Conqueror? He had his share of blood on his hands.
Henry VIII! Not just the unfortunate Catherine, who was sick and neglected, but Anne and Katherine the Second to Last. And the Bishop of Rochester. And  Thomas Cromwell, after the disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleeves. Thomas Moore. A sketch of him on a talk show had the producers bringing his "friends" out to him on stretchers and wheel chairs.
Of all the mothers in laws at the end of his life when his 6'3"  frame packed on the pounds, while they could all say, "This is my fat, syphilictic son-in law"- only a few were right... he was legally married only 3 times.
The Borgias---although the song about them is adorable, and kudos for having Alexander VI played by a man stuffing his cheeks Brando-style and still singing!--- we are alternatively turned off, shocked, disgusted, but never far from curiosity. (They say Mario Puzo vaguely based his titular godfather on Borgia... but the cheek stuffing was Brando's own.)
While we're at it, many cheer for mobsters! They're fascinating!

What does this say about us as a culture?
We live to thrill ourselves, we love a shock. We can't live in bubble wrap. But how much a shock is too much a shock? Where does that end and good taste begin? Is there good taste on Halloween?

Every costume has the capability to irritate someone.
For all of you going as Strawberry Shortcake, think of all the poor little cupcakes out there who toil ceaselessly, never getting their due...

Running To

Let me not focus on monsters and lightning storms
But dreams of the Diomedes

Let me be as comfortable in both jeans and a T-shirt, wandering, let not mud or weather stand in my way...
As I am in a dress and heels

I won't focus on can'ts and don't knows
But on what nows and where tos.

Let me not look back in anger
But look forward
To never become content when something feels wrong
But to stand strong

Let me never get hardened by the world
It's no crime to feel
And it's a bigger crime to let the certain horrors fill you rather than to love what's good, and focus on what's right

I will not become comfortable, content, in darkness

I will, raise my glass, you bet your ass--- to the light... and thank those who taught me, even accidentally, to stand for me.

Let me never rest until I know I have found that hearth I can call mine, and not laden with the baggage of a thousand wars

But yet, let me know, peace exists in the sweet and simple, a quiet creek, in sun-dappled leaves... in greeting a gentle but boisterous friend, in loud music, in the silence if I remember to take time out for it.. in a hushed nave filled with candles, by myself, smelling dust and old paper, the secrets of the centuries... in the fresh, effervescent fall air, in the brilliant leaves, orange, red, yellow... it is not in running away from, but in knowing where that strength and center lies. And running to.

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