December 24, 2014

Posted on December 26, 2014 by C. M. Condo

It’s almost midnight on December 24th. I’m in the new apartment, and about 75% unpacked. It took ten friends eight hours over two days to pack my things for transport. Despite an aptitude for number-crunching, I successfully labored under the delusion that I, alone, could unpack all of it by Christmas (three days after the move-in). That delusion was officially laid to rest this afternoon, when so many half-unpacked boxes and garbage bags and piles of stuff to store or donate were strewn about that I had blocked myself off from the bathroom, and needed to crawl over a mountain of crap just to get to it.

A couple of hours ago, I forced myself to redirect my efforts towards making the place livable (or at least, uncluttered enough that I could get out in a reasonable amount of time should the building catch fire). Anything that has yet to be assigned a permanent home has been compressed and relocated to near where I expect that eventual home to be, and it’s actually looking pretty good, so much so that I have promised myself I will not do any unpacking tomorrow.

Most important, I have located my hair dryer which, despite the fact that I am only able to use it for a few minutes at a time, is one of my most cherished possessions. I’d emptied countless boxes and bags over the last three days and it was nowhere to be found; I had grown worried it didn’t make it here. When I finally found it in a black duffle bag I’d chucked up on a shelf the first day I arrived, I literally hugged it to my chest.

Now, seated with my laptop – I’ve been on my feet all day – and I can see that I have, in fact, made considerable headway. When the movers left Monday afternoon, there were dozens of boxes and bags piled up to my head in every room. This evening I took a cart of the largest of the broken-down boxes down to the recycling area and tossed them one at a time (I couldn’t manage the lot of them all at once) into the bin on the loading dock six feet below. I counted twenty, and that didn’t include the smaller ones I had taken down yesterday and the day before that.

I realized that today I had unpacked more or less non-stop (there were breaks, of course) for twelve hours straight. As I pushed the empty cart back to the parking garage elevator, I was as exhausted as I could ever remember being. I can’t imagine what it must be like to do this for a living. In fact, the only reason I’ve gotten as far as I have is because I haven’t had anything else to do. Exams are over, and my lab position doesn’t begin until January 5.

So I’ve thrown myself into the unpacking (admittedly at a far slower pace than I would have before my shoulder disablement), staying up until midnight every night doing “just one more thing” and waking at 5 AM every morning to start again. And while it’s too much work even for someone fully physically capable, after being in intimate company with throngs of friends for three days straight, I am loathe to invite another human into my space right now.

Despite the needed solitude, once I no longer have unpacking to distract me, the fact that I am incredibly depressed and lonely reasserts itself with a vengeance. It’s Christmas Eve, and here I am by myself in a half-unpacked apartment, too tired to go out and too embarrassed to call someone and pull her away from her family just to listen to me whine about being alone again. Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides, the voice in my head reminds me. I usually do a decent job of that, but over the holidays, other people’s outsides look really good, and my insides feel really lonely.

Just – less than a week – before I moved, I started seeing someone I was more physically attracted to than I’d been to anyone in years. Our first few dates went well, or so I thought, but after the last one, he abruptly vanished. (I believe the term is “ghost.”) His disappearance came hard on the heels of the packing weekend where all hands were on deck and I was not exactly at my most charming or solicitous, but still, I’m ticked that someone in my age range would choose such a cowardly way to express his loss of interest.

But what I’m more upset about is that I had done a lot of internal work these last several weeks, preparing for another holiday as a single woman in a lot of pain who is unable to partake in much of the festivities and has little companionship because of it. I had actually gotten myself to a good place, choosing instead to focus on how nice it was to have so few obligations during a time of year when most people are redrawing the boundaries of space and time in order to cram in as many as possible.

Christmas used to be my favorite holiday, but in recent years, I’ve come to dread it, especially the long, lonely Christmas Eve, the one night a year when nearly everyone has the following day off and can be with someone they love, if they so choose. It’s been a while since I had someone to spend it with. I used to go to midnight mass, to enjoy the ritual and community following the service, but now pain keeps me home.

Tonight, undaunted, still trying for a little Christmas magic, I turned down the lights, lit a candle, set myself a small plate of cookies, and stood by one of my enormous windows looking down at the streetscape below. It was utterly beautiful, the tall, half-lit buildings, streetlights twinkling in the wet pavement, a horizon of trees separating me from the city proper. I should be grateful, to be here, to be safe, and warm, and to have friends and loved ones, even if I’m not with them right now. But instead, I’m overwhelmed with sadness.

The excitement of being attracted to someone – and having someone attracted to me, broken-down as I am – had lifted me up after what had been a long, dark autumn of so much pain and stress it had reduced me to mind-numbing malaise. For five days, I had a spring in my step and a smile on my face. And then, just as suddenly, it vanished. Like so much else in my life, a hope presented for the briefest of instances, and then gone. For it to happen now, right at Christmas, seems pointlessly cruel. I didn’t even get a chance to try my hard-won contentment on for size; the sting of dashed expectations is still too fresh to reestablish my center. Why, just when I had managed to make some peace with my life as it is right now, did I get that bauble presented and then yanked away? Haven’t I spent enough time sad and alone this past year? How many more nights will find me crumpled in a heap on the floor, wracked with frustration and despair?

This injury has changed so many things about me. The things I find important now have little in common with the same subset from a couple of years ago. But I’m still me; human, sensitive, flawed, and apparently, easily hurt, at least emotionally. I still want to have what I designate as a good life: close family, a career, a partner. The first two are working out, but not so much on that last one.

It doesn’t help that I’m not exactly a hot commodity, disabled, underweight, my child-bearing years likely behind me. But for a brief few days I allowed myself to believe that maybe I could still attract a mate. Now that, too, it seems, can be placed in the ever-widening category of things I thought I could still do but can’t.

I wish this holiday would disappear. I wish it was January 5.

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terms

Posted on December 12, 2014 by C. M. Condo

I have a new most hated phrase. It is “living life on your own terms.” It’s always touted as this thing to aspire to, as though it takes some special strength or perseverance to achieve it. As though it is something to be admired. As though we should all be a little more like the person who is described as doing it.

What a crock.

Living life on your own terms isn’t a choice. It isn’t something you get if you just put in enough hard work, like a Christmas bonus. It doesn’t make you a better person. As a matter of fact, it’s an incredibly selfish thing to do, if you really think about it. It requires a level of narcissism that most people don’t possess (or at least, don’t admit to). Demanding that your life, and all of the things in it, adhere to a set of parameters that you have created for your own maximum benefit isn’t just egotistical, it’s a fantasy. Life doesn’t work that way. Nothing works that way.

And it’s a good thing, too. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if everyone was able to mold their own personal universe to suit themselves? People would gorge on fried chicken and funnel cake without getting fat. Everyone would drive Ferraris and there wouldn’t be any traffic signals or speed limits. Few people would work. Trash would pile up on the sidewalks; everywhere you went would be dirty, recycling centers would be overwhelmed by all of the empty bottles of beer, soda, and wine, not to mention the huge increase in cardboard boxes as people gave in to the craven desire to buy as much shiny new crap as possible.

Whatever, Ape, there you go overthinking things again. Maybe. But the larger point still holds, and that is that despite what we tell our kids, we actually don’t have a lot of choice in our lives, particularly with regards to health, appearance, and socio-economic taxon. The only people who get to rearrange their life parameters to suit themselves are those that don’t have to work for a living and are physically able to take part in any activity that suits their fancy. And those people make up an incredibly small subset of humans, on the order of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

The rest of us are stuck with the cards we’re dealt. We have to live life on life’s terms, not our own. We have to suit ourselves to world we live in, and our contentment is measured in the amount of satisfaction we can derive from doing that. We don’t get to wake up every morning and do whatever the hell we want. We don’t get to change the rules. We don’t get to pursue our dreams.

We don’t have the luxury of embarking upon self-serving self-actualizing vacations in search of the meaning of life, as privileged people are always encouraging the rest of us to do. Most of us will never travel to foreign countries, or climb mountains, or backpack through the Serengeti, or scuba dive the reefs off the coast of New Zealand. We can’t take a few days off of work to go on a silent retreat and become one with nature. We can’t afford to spend money on flattering, stylish clothes and expensive haircuts so that we fit some appearance standard thrust upon us by cable TV. We can’t afford to go organic, or use environmentally responsible cleaning products, or cultivate heirloom tomatoes, or take pilates, or ever have anything that could be described as “artisan.”

I really, really wish that I could shut off the ever-widening spigot of media that is pushing us to do all of those things and to spend money on all of those things. If ever there were a time when the world around us is trying to make us feel as bad about ourselves and our lives as possible, this would be it. The holidays are particularly cruel, bombarding us with fake evidence of an association between stuff and happiness, encouraging people to go into debt to avoid being classified as a cheapskate or a Scrooge, bingeing on buying and pushing off the credit card bill hangover until well into February.

I bought two pairs of aluminum pans with my groceries earlier this week, one to use as disposable cookie trays for parties, and the other to make lasagne to feed the army of friends coming through next weekend to pack up my stuff. The clerk in the checkout line informed me that I could get a third pair for free, and asked if I wanted to go back to the aisle and pick it up.

“No, I’m good,” I responded.

“Are you sure? It’s a really good deal,” she insisted.

“No, it’s OK. I don’t need it.”

I could tell by the look on her face that she wouldn’t have made the same choice. Consumerism culture runs deep. And I have to admit that the buy-two-get-one-free sign back there did give me pause. But I mentally ran through my activities between now and the end of the year, and I couldn’t think of a use for the extra set, so I didn’t bother. Because it’s just more stuff. And it’s become increasingly evident to me over the last several weeks of streamlining and packing that stuff does not increase my happiness in any way. In fact, the opposite seems to be true; the more stuff I get rid of, the lighter I feel.

I feel like everything around us is telling us things that aren’t true and aren’t real. Magazines, stores, the internet, reality TV, it’s all pushing a particular way of thinking and acting and being on us that’s completely divorced from, ironically enough, reality. It feels like a great big scam being visited upon us, a pervasive, hypnotic white noise meant to distract us from the meshing gears that are chewing away at our souls as we spend and emulate and aspire to an ideal that doesn’t exist, trying to mold ourselves into things we’re not, trying to act as though the world we live in is a way that it isn’t.

Life on life’s terms. I wonder sometimes if the hardest thing about it is figuring out what those terms are. Not everyone gets the curtain yanked away in such a dramatic fashion as a life-changing injury will do, all choice in the matter stripped away in one fell swoop, the big reveal being that there isn’t a man back there at all, that no man has control over the gears and switches and levers, and that any attempts to take hold of the control panel are doomed to failure. I suppose I should consider myself lucky, in that regard, such that even in the highly unlikely occurrence that I suddenly become independently wealthy, I won’t need to spend a month fasting in a Buddhist temple to figure out who I really am and what it all means.

Not that I’ve figured it all out. I’ve just managed to eliminate a pretty considerable number of possibilities. I can’t do whatever I want, or be whatever I want. I can’t trade the terms in my envelope for someone else’s. I can’t make up a new list from scratch. I have pain, all the time. Full stop. The details don’t even matter any more. I do whatever is in front me and that’s it. I buy what I can afford. I try not to judge or envy other people’s terms. I try to shut out the extemporaneous clamoring of an environment that insists that I need to do and be and have certain external things in order to be happy.

And what is this obsession with happiness, anyway? Who wants to be happy all the time? It would be like having your birthday every day; it wouldn’t be special any more. I just want to be OK. That’s my goal. I want to be OK with the pain, with the lack of choice, with the things I have instead of the things I wish I had. I want to be OK with the gross unfairness of being singled out as one of the people who gets to walk around in enormous physical pain all of the time. I want to be OK with my ugly, used furniture that doesn’t match, with my close, personal relationship with my DVR, with going into early menopause, with not being self-sufficient any more.

I want to be OK with life’s terms. That’s what I want. I wish I could go to a glittery department store and buy that. But it’s not for sale.

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the mermaid’s choice

Posted on December 7, 2014 by C. M. Condo

I can’t remember the last time I sat in a class and got absorbed in a lecture, so much that time sped by and I couldn’t believe that class was over already. I can’t remember the last time I sat in a restaurant with friends and relaxed after dinner, drinking coffee and talking with no thought of the time passing. I can’t remember the last time I stayed up all night reading a book. I can’t remember the last time I stood outside and watched snow falling into a cone of streetlight and let myself get lost in the beauty. I can’t remember the last time I forgot where I was or what I was doing, so absorbed in the moment of what I was seeing or hearing or experiencing, like a sunrise, or a beautiful piece of music, or the sound of my cat purring as I buried my face in her fur.

I can’t remember a life without pain. Nothing in my life is like it used to be. Oh yes, there’s been personal growth, and positive change in my state of being, in my contentment with who I am and where my life is going. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. But for some reason, lately, I’ve been missing the small things. Like standing at the edge of the ocean and letting wave after wave come swirl around my feet, turning up the sand so I sink, millimeter by millimeter, until I’m buried up to my ankles, just losing my self in the feeling of the cool, wet granules between my toes, in the sound of the ocean, in its salty smell. So strange, that salt has a smell; it doesn’t seem like it should. I miss wondering about things like the smell of salt in the middle of the afternoon and losing track of time.

I can’t remember losing track of time.

Sometimes, I can watch a TV show and not notice time passing for a few minutes, but then there will be a lull in the action and the pain pokes through and pulls me away. Before this happened, I always felt so rushed, wondering “where the day went.” That never happens any more. I am keenly aware of the leisurely pace of every passing minute. I never manage to lose more than a few at a time, here or there.

There’s not even the novelty of figuring out how I’m going to manage to do some task or another any more. It’s been over a year. I’ve done pretty much everything at least once. Before, at least, I was able to apply my mental faculties to the process. Now, I don’t even have that. I know how to sit, to stand, to walk. I know how to wrangle groceries in and out of my car. I know how to maneuver a heavy object by using my body weight as leverage rather than engaging my shoulders.

I automatically avoid the puddles when I drag my rolling backpack to class and back. Without thinking, I choose the handicapped parking spaces with the extra room on the passenger side so I can swing the door wide open and tilt out the backpack, or the hand truck, or whatever else I need to take with me. I have a special way of walking, opening doors, stepping on and off escalators, getting in and out of cars, pumping gas, donning and removing coats, using the self-checkout line at the grocery store. I know how to time my pain medication to line up with my activities.

And even though I do all of these things, I’m still in a lot of pain. The pain would be worse without them, of course, but it’s an awful lot of work for a relatively minor improvement. I suppose I should be grateful that I have the medications that I do, that the coping mechanisms have become automatic, that I’m no longer embarrassed to ask someone to do something for me. But over the holidays, when my friends go out and I have to stay in, I find myself missing awfully being able to lose myself in such activities. I just can’t do that any more. The pain never goes away.

Last night I consoled myself by melting some peanut butter in my chocolate melting pot and pouring it over a bowl of vanilla ice cream. For the ten or so minutes I took to eat it, I felt something like comfort. But my shoulder was there the whole time, just digging and digging, like it had a mind and a purpose from which it would not be diverted. If only I could be more like that. I still haven’t given up on meditating every night, but despite months of practice, I’m not getting anywhere with it. I try to just lie there and let the pain be a part of me, but my mind can’t resist wandering off, trying to put as much distance between it and my pain as possible.

I want to sit in a chair and be comfortable. I want to lie in a bed and be comfortable. I want to cross my arms and be comfortable. I want to be able to hold a plate or a book for more than a minute or two. I want to look up or down without the sudden, breathtaking slice of pain shooting up my neck and down under my shoulder. I want to lift something, hold something, lean on something, without having to concentrate on holding my shoulder in place. Because if I stop paying attention to it, it will creep out of position and the volume on the pain will turn up and up, and then it won’t matter how I hold it, it will just hurt until I can get up and move around, and if I’ve waited too long, even that won’t help.

A friend came over yesterday to help install a keyboard tray on my desk. Two different trays, actually, neither of which fit, shades of the HVAC debacle from this past Spring. We packed them back up in their boxes so they could be returned, and when we finished, she asked if I wanted her to go so I could get back to sorting through my desk. I insisted she stay and talk to me for a while. We chattered about nothing in particular while we went through the desk’s erstwhile contents, strewn in a pile on the floor (most of which wound up in a yard-sized garbage bag), and it was nice to be in the company of a friend, just hanging out, just aimless companionship. But my shoulder was there the whole time.

The desk was the last segment of the apartment to be thoroughly culled. As of when we finished, later that afternoon, everything that is still here is coming with me to the new place. I’ve lost count of how many boxes and bags of stuff I’ve given or thrown away, but it must be upwards of two dozen. Amazingly, there is still a ton of crap here.

That’s how I feel about my life. I’ve discarded nearly everything I don’t absolutely need in order to function. But there’s still a lot of crap in here that I can’t get rid of, mostly because it’s occasionally useful, and even more occasionally crucial. The most noticeable of these is the psychological baggage that accumulates as a result of the constant, unrelenting, physical torture under whose cloud I am forced to remain. Every morning, before I begin my daily business, I make a decision to discard all that baggage and start fresh. I consciously let go of whatever anger, regret, anxiety, and frustration I built up from the day before. Today will be better, I promise myself. I always do that. I have to. If I don’t, the day bottoms out far too quickly, and I’m done before lunchtime.

But I’m so, so tired. Not physically tired, now, at least, not in the early part of the day, thanks to the coma-inducing meds, but mentally, I’m spent. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to do schoolwork; I don’t want to pore over the blueprint of the new place I drew on graph paper, moving things here and there in an attempt to find the most perfect arrangement; I don’t want to practice my music for the concert next weekend that will feature the little ensemble I rehearse with every week. All of my mental energy is focused on begging and praying to whatever is out there – if anything actually is – to please, please take the pain away, even just for a little while, so I can get something done and enjoy doing it like I used to.

And of course, nothing happens. The shard that has wedged itself underneath my scapula never disappears. It’s been there for so long that it’s not even interesting any more. It’s by turns annoying, upsetting, or soul-crushingly depressing, but there are no new impressions. I’ve gotten pretty good at compartmentalizing it, but the compartment is open; I can always see and feel what’s in it. All I’ve gotten out of this year-plus of experiencing it is improved skill at hiding it from the people around me.

Maybe this is what hell would be like, if there was one. Not some fiery pit, but a world just like this one, where you have to do the normal things everyone else does, but every single one of them causes you pain. Like the mermaid in the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale that trades her fins for legs so she can be with her prince, the price being that it feels like she’s walking on knives every step she takes.

I’m sure she thought it a worthwhile trade in the short term, but what if it never went away? Week after week, month after month, year after year, might she not come to resent the original reason for the exchange? Might she not look at him while he slept and feel the hate bubble and froth inside her? Might it finally boil over as she hacks him to death in his sleep with the sea witch’s knife and drips the blood on her feet to get her tail back?

In the original tale, she doesn’t get the prince; he marries a princess, and the mermaid throws herself back in the sea and dies rather than kill him to become a mermaid again. (Young people are so stupid.) If only she’d waited a few years; she might have come around to making a different choice. I wish there was someone I could kill to get the knife out of my body. Would I do it? I don’t know. Not at first, but how many years would I last before I gave in? Probably not very many.

But I’m not presented with the mermaid’s choice. I don’t have a choice. It’s just knives, all day, all the time. And it doesn’t matter if I’m tired of it, or if I hate it. There’s no such thing as a sea witch. There’s no-one to blame. It just is. And no matter where I am, what I do, or how I do it, I can’t ever, ever forget it.

Posted in Aspect II | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

big and small

Posted on December 5, 2014 by C. M. Condo

The pain is back. Nerve ablation or no nerve ablation, my discomfort is driving hard in the wrong direction. Notwithstanding the blank spot covering the inside half of my shoulder blade, the entire rest of the area is sore and inflamed, and it feels as though a knife is being pressed between my scapula and my ribs.

I’ve been taking so many medications to try to sleep despite the pain that my serotonin levels are off the charts, resulting in unabating night sweats that leave me and my sheets cold and clammy each time my pain wakes me up, which happens at least two or three times a night, much to the delight of my cats and no-one else. At least no-one shares my bed (other than the felines); the shame would be intolerable. I change the sheets as often as I can, but I’m too physically messed up to be able to change them every day, much as I wish I could.

In an effort to get my serotonin levels down a bit, I’ve been trying to rearrange my night-time medication regimen, cutting back on this, adding that, moving one thing to the morning, another to the late afternoon. That has not only not had any effect on the night sweats, it’s kept the pain from going down at night (or rather, kept me from being unconscious when it doesn’t).  So as of this morning I’m resigned to going back to the comatose-inducing regimen, during which I will at least only have to wake up damp and shivering once, when I get up in the morning.

To say that this has not had a positive effect on my mood would be a bit of an understatement. My mood is already quite low at the prospect of facing yet another holiday in immobilizing torment. I had thought I would be able to work over the break; clearly that’s now impossible. And so, just like last year, once classes end, I will be in virtual solitary confinement until the surgery, if not beyond.

In fact, I don’t know how I’m going to get through the last week of classes with my pain level this high. I don’t know how I’m going to manage to think coherently through my two-hour long finals, even while standing up. Hell, I don’t even know how I’m going to study for them. Last night I did my physics homework while sitting on my knees on the floor, my papers and laptop spread across the coffee table, because I was too tired to stand and too uncomfortable to sit any other way.

I feel like I’m so close to the end of a race, like it’s the last quarter mile and I just need to drag myself through it, never mind the pain and fatigue, but I don’t know how. I’ve been scraping the bottom of a barrel of reserves that is so dry I’m running on splinters. I felt pretty good after the nerve ablation, but now that feels like it was a lifetime ago, instead of just a few weeks past. By 3 PM I’m so run down from fighting around the pain that I can barely keep my eyes open. But even though I keep going to bed earlier and earlier, even though I’m more and more exhausted each passing day, it takes hours to fall asleep because I can’t find a position that doesn’t hurt.

On the outside, I still look OK. I’m moving a little more slowly, and my cheerfulness (such as it is) is a bit dimmed, but it’s Christmas, and I love Christmas, and I’m leaning hard on Christmas spirit to keep me going. People, good, nice people, ask me how I’m doing with genuine concern. I tell them “I’m doing OK,” or “I’m getting by,” but it’s a lie; I’m not anything like OK. I’m in horrific, unending pain, hour after hour, and nothing does anything more than take the edge off, not heat, or ice or rest or working out or distraction or the phalanx of pain medications in my cupboard.

On the inside, I’m terrified. Because now, I’m not just not getting better. I can tell that I’m getting worse.  And I think one of the reasons I’ve maintained my OK-ness on the outside is that I’m trying to keep from succumbing to the not-OK-ness on the inside.

For whatever reason, increased activity because of the nerve ablation, increased stress and anxiety from the end of the semester and/or the move, medication rearrangement, lack of sleep, or some elixir of all of the above, the pain has significantly increased in severity, high-pain episode duration, and geographical coverage just in the last week. Subtracting the Bermuda’s triangle of empty real estate from the nerve ablation, pain now reaches from my right ear all the way out into my right deltoid, halfway down my back and spine, and around under my right armpit. It is a combination of pressure pain and sharp, slicing agony. There are no conformations that make it better. (There are, however, a number that make it worse.)  This chips away at my already fragile hope that the surgery will make this all go away.

I know I need to get another MRI before the surgeon goes in and debrides and remodels my shoulder blade. This will be a chest MRI, one of the few upper-quadrant scans that hasn’t been done already. It will be the first time anyone’s taken one of the anterior, proximal face of my scapula; shoulder MRIs stop halfway across. I’m afraid of what it will show.  I’m afraid of what it won’t show. I’m afraid it will reveal a worsening bursitis that is slowly destroying the muscles underneath. Or worse, it will show nothing at all, that there’s nothing to fix, and that the surgery will not work.

Honestly, it is the last one that I am most fearful of. The surgeon is confident, and I was confident, at first, but the last week has eroded that assurance. It seems impossible that removing a small, inch-long triangle of shoulder blade could truly resolve the widening trauma pathway my injury is now carving out. Cut it off, I want to tell him. Take it all away. I’m once again courting the patently ridiculous idea of permanently disabling the area in order to get rid of the pain.

I can’t think like this. I have to keep going. It’s only one more week of classes and two final exams. I have to do this; I will find a way to do this, like I always do. Soon enough, I will be in a brand new apartment, in sudden and close proximity to more fellow humans than I even know right now, with a beautiful view of the city dressed up for Christmas in wreaths and lights from my fourteenth floor balcony. And it won’t make any difference at all.

Because my shoulder will be there, too, and so will my pain. I wish I could leave it here, lock it in the closet while the movers are here so it doesn’t sneak onto the truck; tape over the edges of the door frame so it doesn’t seep out and infiltrate the carpets as they’re being rolled for transport; set fire to the closet and burn away every last evil shred of the demon that has plagued me unceasingly for nearly fourteen months. But I could do all of those things and it wouldn’t matter.

That’s what makes it so hard to deal with. Stay in the moment, people tell me, meaning well. But this moment is just like the last one, and just like countless before that, and how do I keep from thinking about the endless string of moments that lies ahead of me, each one a red and hazy slice of an existence so marred by pain that it is barely recognizable as belonging to me; as belonging to anyone, straining credulity that anyone would choose to inhabit it rather than leaving this plane of existence entirely, preferring the spiritual unknown, devoid of physical pleasure, in order to be released from this physical pain.

I hadn’t planned to write a post this week, or next week either, because of my workload with school and the move. But I woke up in so much pain this morning that I had to. I have to get these awful thoughts out of my head before I leave for class. Skipping isn’t an option; there’s an assignment due, although how much of the class I last through after I turn it in remains, as they say, an open question.

And I have nothing else to do.  After sobbing on the floor while waiting for the heating pad to fire up, now I’m just standing here, reeking of dried sweat from last night’s serotonin-soaked, dream-battered sleep, typing and drinking coffee, waiting for the truckload of horse-sized pills I swallowed and scalding heating pad strapped to my back to make enough of a dent in my pain to allow me to shower and dress myself in fake good humor before I leave for class. Even a single level down, from a 9 to an 8, should be enough to get me through my morning obligations. As for my evening ones, I have no idea.  I can’t get there right now.

I have no greater spiritual realization to accompany this post. If I weren’t in so much pain, I might marvel that I have the strength to persist in this endeavor of school and career despite considerable headwinds, that I am able to keep from screaming and crying in public, that I still manage to dredge up the inner reserves to keep smiling and keep plugging away, despite the pain and the black fear uncoiling in my stomach. Maybe it’s because I can’t think of anything else to do. I can’t even think through the rest of the day. I think I can get to about noon. I think I can do that.

Posted in Aspect II | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

the door

Posted on November 28, 2014 by C. M. Condo

This past weekend, I received an e-mail from the rock star researcher who has been heavily recruiting me for his extremely prestigious – and formidable – lab. He suggested I attend a talk by one of his grad students concerning a project trying to pin down a gene that codes for a particular enzyme.

Now, I had pretty much decided to go with the less prestigious (and also less strenuous) appointment that was more in line with my current interests. But I do generally find these sorts of talks interesting, and I have more stamina now since the most recent nerve ablation, so I figured there were worse ways to spend a Tuesday afternoon.  Plus, it might be an opportunity to talk to the rock star about why I was considering other options.

Of course, I still hadn’t figured out exactly how I was going to explain to Aerosmith that I planned to tour with The Black Crowes instead. (Er, no offense intended to either band.) There are conventions and protocols, and I don’t know any of them; one wrong move and I could wind up with nothing at all. Both researchers are professors here, where I am currently matriculating, and what’s more, they are colleagues, whose work occasionally overlaps.

And to be fair, the rock star reached out to me first, and is honestly the only reason I’m even considering pursuing a science master’s degree. Moreover, he has continued to court me heavily; perhaps it’s just a personality difference, but the same cannot be said for the other researcher despite my indication of interest therein.

Recognizing that I’d need some assistance as to how exactly to navigate this labyrinth, I emailed a mentor professor to see if I could stop by her office to get some guidance the week of the lecture. It seems ridiculous in retrospect to think that she’d have a moment of spare time Thanksgiving week, but whatever the reason, we were unable to hook up.

So I put my trust in the universe (or rather, tried to gird myself against whatever fresh anvil was about to land in front of me) and went. I had a class next door and was thus the first to arrive, and I took one of the seats near the back so my rolling backpack would be out of everyone’s way. As I watched the small, half-lit lecture hall start to fill, I realized that everyone there was a graduate student or a PhD. It was the first time that I’d been in such a setting, and it actually didn’t feel all that weird. I got some curious looks from a few of the other students, but I fell in to chatting with someone next to me, and before I knew it, the power point was blooming on the screen.

The lecture was even more interesting than I expected, and to my surprise, I was actually more or less able to follow the gist, although much of it was over my head. Emboldened, I saw a graduate student I’d been meaning to talk to about her work and was headed in her direction when the rock star walked right up to me and cut me off. After the briefest of pleasantries, he asked, “So, have you decided?”

Here we go. I took a deep breath, “Well, I’m definitely applying to the graduate school…”

I paused, trying to find the right words to elaborate, and he barreled forward, “Great! I’m very excited to have you in my lab; we’re actually already planning a space for you. Particularly if what everyone says about you is true…”

What? I smiled in spite of myself. “What? You asked about me?”

“Oh yes, I’ve been doing my homework on you. Everyone is telling me, ‘oh yes, she’s very bright, she’d fit right in…’”

Oh God. This was going to be harder than I thought. I attempted to discourage him from this line of conversation, “No, no, I don’t need to know what they’ve been saying…”

“So are you still planning to work with us in January?”

Finally, an opening. “Actually, I wanted to tell you that I’ve found a surgeon who thinks he can fix my shoulder, and I’ll be going in for surgery January 13th, so I’m not sure if…”

“Oh, that’s not a problem, you can just come in before the surgery and then come back once you’re recovered. Let’s see, January…” he pulled up a calendar on his phone. “You said the 13th? Here, you can work the week beforehand, starting January 5th.”

I had no argument for that, but managed instead to turn our chat to the lecture, a topic that despite barely following the content, I was much more comfortable discussing with him than, say, just about everything else. After a few minutes, I agreed to get in touch with him in the next few weeks to work out the logistics, and made my escape.

As I dragged my backpack down the handicap ramp towards the parking lot, my head was spinning. What the hell? I mean, this was an anvil all right, but instead of pulling me up short, it had vaulted me forward, towards a path I had already pretty much decided – for excellent reasons, I might add – not to walk down. I got that feeling again of the ground pitching under my feet. What was going on here? How was I supposed to know what was the right thing to do? Which signals was I supposed to follow? My two major life lessons were in perfect conflict: do I not bite off more than I can chew or do I not force my life away from the direction in which it’s headed?

A big part of me wants to just slide like a marble into this groove that’s being created for me and take the prestigious lab appointment. Yes, it would be physically demanding for me, but it’s also the path of least resistance. And it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I tried it out in January (and possibly beyond) and then decided it wasn’t going to work. Not even if I’d already been accepted to the program; it wouldn’t be the first time a student has had a change of heart, and I would know long before much time or money had been invested.

Still, I felt it would be unwise to upend all of my [quite valid] concerns about my physical capabilities based purely on the day’s new information. I decided that if I was seriously considering it, I ought to at least bone up on what the lab has been doing and see if any of it appealed to me personally. So I set myself about delving into the more lengthy of the two papers that he had suggested for me to get caught up on the last few years of research.

The article was long and challenging. The writer minced no words, and I had to open a new text window for notes so I could keep running track of all of the different enzymes and intermediates, and their significance to the pathways in question. It was more mentally taxing than the other researcher’s work, but I made it through the first two sections before getting sidetracked. Then I found a reference to the genetic disorders associated with a lack of one or another of these enzymes, and decided to take a break and peruse the internet for a sketch of their history and pathologies so I could get some context.

What I found was sobering. In fact, some of it was horrifying. Even mild presentations of these disorders cause bouts of extreme pain and significant neurologic events. A certain congenital form of the disease is disfiguring, excruciatingly painful, and fatal. The intermediates of the pathways are toxic, and a build-up results in the sufferer being poisoned to death by his body’s own metabolic processes from the inside out.  A few treatments can slow the disease’s progression, but they carry dangerous side effects, and can only be given short-term or intermittently; there is no cure. Fruits of this lab’s research could offer the first real hope for sufferers of these diseases.

That got my attention. Actually, I haven’t been able to think about much else since. All of the intricate, precise, step-by-step modeling I’d been taking notes on has acquired a sudden urgency. This work is important. It is more than important. What those people go through, being attacked by their own bodies, millennia of evolution gone horribly wrong by the draw of a bad genetic lottery ticket – there must be a way to help them. That researcher, his passion, his determination… out of context, I couldn’t understand it. But now I get it. I feel it.

And I realize that something’s been missing from all of my deliberations about my post-graduate plans. Given enough desire for something, I will work my tail off, but thus far, none of the numerous opportunities presented to me has sparked that kind of interest. But reading the descriptions of these disorders has ignited something in me that I haven’t felt in years. I could get passionate about this. In fact, I already am, and not in a maybe-this-would-work-for-me sort of way, but in an I-have-to-do-this sort of way.

While that’s been disastrous for me in the past, it is at least possible that this experience over the last year has alerted me to the need to stay in close touch with my body’s physical signals, so I know when I need to step back and recharge. And if I am able to do that, and if the young orthopedic surgeon’s unorthodox procedure can fix my shoulder, then it seems to me that maybe, just maybe, the more challenging opportunity is the one I’m supposed to take after all.

Because as I’ve mentioned a lot lately, I’m tired of everything being such a damned production. I’m tired of having to wrestle and massage and manipulate circumstances in order for me to be able to manage them. My condition makes some of that inevitable, but it still feels wrong every time, and I still approach it reluctantly and only after all other options have been exhausted. Here, for the first time in what seems like forever, I am finally presented with a situation where all I have to do is let go of the rail and roll downhill.

I thought the other lab appointment was the right thing to do. But despite all of the advice, and my careful lists of pros and cons, this appointment is the one that feels like the right thing to do. It feels like letting go; letting go of all of the anger and angst and anxiety about why my injury happened, letting go of the feeling that I’m wasting my life and my talent, letting go of the big empty hole in the middle of me that I haven’t been able to fill. Finally, something where all I have to do is put my head down and follow the road.

Of course, the work itself will be incredibly challenging, and mentally and emotionally exhausting. But the other stuff, the logistical stuff, the having to smooth and divert and rearrange the parameters of virtually every single task that’s handed to me; in this case, at least, there won’t be any of that.  I won’t have to scope it out first, or make sure it comes with bumpers and ramps, or work out plans B, C, and D before I embark on plan A.  I can just go in and do what I’m supposed to do.  Just like everyone else is doing.  It’s all I’ve wanted, since this whole thing began.  Since before this whole thing began, even.  To be just like everyone else.  Not special or different or needing to go a different way or find a different method.

I barely dare believe it. I remember, many months ago, one of the ladies in my support group came up to me when I was feeling really low, and said “I know something really good is waiting for you. Deep in my heart, I know it.” My eyes filled at the time; it just seemed impossible.

But now the impossible seems possible. And it doesn’t even involve me having to choose correctly. There’s a door open, and a bunch of people on the other side encouraging me to walk through it. And that’s all I would have to do. Just walk through.

And I think I should. And I think maybe I will.

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to try is not to do

Posted on November 22, 2014 by C. M. Condo

It’s a little after 5:00 AM. I’m up because I want to be, though, not because I have to be, although as soon as the wake-up light nudged me from a disturbing dream in which I kept running in and out of bars looking for cigarettes (I quit years ago), my shoulder and neck started slicing and poking away. But having some [relatively] low-pain time to myself in the morning before my daily grind begins is one of my few pleasures, so even though I don’t have to go anywhere for another couple of hours, I’m up anyway.

I have an appointment for another nerve ablation this morning, and one of my saintly friends will be here at 7:15 to drive through heavy traffic to get me there by 8:00 AM. Because it’s technically classed as a surgical procedure, although there are no scalpels or other such instruments, I can’t take my usual anti-inflammatories and opiods until afterwards. The pain is already up a little high, probably due to my anxiety about what will be an excruciatingly painful, if briefly so, procedure, in addition the lack of analgesics on board.  Undoubtedly, the car ride to the surgical center will not push it in the right direction, either, but then again, it’s not like that’s all that different from any other day, lately.

Pain has taken over my world again.  It’s been so high and so constant over the last few weeks that it’s filled almost my entire field of view, and it’s worn me down to my bitterest, most despondent self. I’m tired. I can’t live like this. It’s why I scheduled the nerve ablation; it only lasts for about six weeks, but it will cut my pain in half, and get me through finals, and the move, and the holidays.

It’s also why I went to see the orthopedic surgeon a couple of mornings ago (another trip with the saintly friend). I’d made a lot of noise to other apes about how it would be the first time he could get a comprehensive and unvarnished look at the extent of my pain and injury, but the real reason I went in was to talk surgery. I had been dead-set against it, but walking around with a daily pain level of an 8 for the past few weeks has considerably softened my resolve. As in, if there’s a chance to fix this – really fix it, not just alleviate it or make it something I can live with – I want to consider that.

The orthopedist is quite confident. His version of the procedure involves more than scraping off the subscapular bursitis he suspects is the root cause of my pain; he has pioneered a technique in which the part of my shoulder blade that adducts to my top rib is cut away, thus preventing a recurrence of the bursitis. He’s not had to do it very often, but he’s had 100% success with it thus far. Also, because he is able to do this through a small incision in the muscle, rather than by cutting it apart, which would be required for the arthroscopic version, the recovery period would be short. The only “drawback” would be a scar. Four weeks in a sling, another 4-6 weeks of physical therapy, and no reason I couldn’t be back in the pool by next Spring.

In fact, the doctor believes that once I’ve recovered from the surgery, I should be able to go back to doing most of the things I did before the injury. Certainly, I wouldn’t need help with the kitty litter any more. I wouldn’t need the handicapped parking tag, either. Most important, I could finally stop taking all of the pain medication, as in all of it, not just the reduced dose the nerve ablation enables. I could be well, really and truly well, something I thought was off the table.

As liberating as that sounds, I’m unable to suppress my anger. Really? All of this time learning how to be a disabled person in constant pain and *ping* now you’re fine, have a nice rest of your life? What the hell? It makes the entire ordeal seem brutally pointless. Was my life so dangerous the way it was going? Was my old car about to explode? What? What possible crisis could I have been diverted from that would be worse than what the last thirteen months have been?

I also feel as though I am at a crossroads. Despite the decimation of my faith, my superstition remains unscathed. I have undergone more change in the last year than most people clear in ten. What if there is a point? What if I’m being specifically channeled onto a precise and narrow path that I would not have otherwise found my way to? That would mean I need to be very, very careful about the choices I make between now and when I have the surgery, if I do, in fact, choose that option, for fear of making an incorrect choice and having it fall apart.

Case in point, I’ve narrowed down my post-baccalaureate options to two different biological science masters programs. One is highly prestigious, but also quite demanding, and would entail regular ten hour days in the lab, never mind classes and homework. The other is in a lab by a far less well-known researcher, but lab sessions are no more than four hours per day. That one also happens to be in a discipline of much greater interest to me than the prestigious one.

Making the right choice here, for some reason, seems crucial.  It’s as though life is presenting me with a final exam; a test on the life skills I’ve acquired over the last thirteen months. What’s more, the choice should be easy. After all, haven’t I learned that even under the best of circumstances, I’m not built for burning the candle at both ends? That my ego cannot be trusted with decision-making responsibilities? That if I try to do more than I’m capable of doing, I will suffer drastic physical consequences? That if I just do what’s in front of me, things will turn out far better than if I attempt to plan for things that may never happen?

Well, I may have finally come to an intellectual grasp of that fact, but I’m still gritting my teeth. Of course I want the prestigious lab appointment, even though the subject matter doesn’t excite me. Of course I’ve enjoyed the exclaims of delight from my friends upon divulging the offer. Of course I want the opportunities that would bloom like wildflowers in May upon completion of said prestigious program – if I were able to actually complete it, of course.

And there it is. What if the surgery doesn’t work? The graduate program applications are due by the end of January. Even if I got the surgery as soon as possible, which would be the week after Christmas, I’d still be in the recovery phase by the time I had to submit; there’d be no way to know if my eventual capabilities would allow for ten hours a day at a lab bench.

And underneath all of this insanity is the fact that one of the programs interests me – a lot – and the other one doesn’t. Hello. Duh. Am I going to learn this or not? As I look back on my life both before and after this injury, the running theme has been the self-destructive sequelae that result from my attempts to have a life I’m not designed for, just because I want it, just because I think I could do it, just because it looks so good on someone else.

It’s the reason I changed my hair color all the time. The reason I used to accumulate such high-fashion clothing. The reason I used to keep my apartment spotless. The reason I used to make myself physically ill pulling straight A’s semester after debilitating semester. The reason I wanted to compete as a long distance swimmer. Even, possibly, the reason I wanted marriage and a family. Because other people did those things, and had those things, and they looked so wonderful, from the outside.

But they didn’t feel wonderful to me, not on the inside, and sometimes, particularly with regards to appearance modification, they didn’t even look right on the outside. I wanted to teach because I wanted people to admire me for teaching and I wanted kids to grow up and say I changed their lives. I wanted caramel-colored hair because it looked so pretty on other women. I wanted my home to be neat as a pin because I wanted people to think I was capable and not slovenly. (The idea that other people might find it intimidating was a bonus.) I wanted straight-A’s and a PhD in a science discipline because I liked the idea of people calling me Dr. Ape. I thought that would make up for the sting of the music career failing to pan out in my twenties and early thirties. I wanted to compete in a four-mile swim so I could tout it as evidence of my physical strength and endurance, not to mention fearlessness.

None of those things were, or are, as wonderful as I thought they would be. And when it came to many of them, like school and swimming, my body simply was not capable of them. I cannot be whoever I want. I am not pliable; I cannot jam myself into a mold from which I wasn’t cast. Just because I don’t like my own mold and can’t keep from envying other people’s molds doesn’t mean I can make them my own. It never works. There are always unpleasant consequences.  Always.

My mold has a lot of stuff in it that I wish I could toss, like my exercise intolerance, like how easily I become dangerously fatigued, like how arrogant I can be thinking I can do anything I want simply because I want it, like how manipulative I can be in service of that goal. But I have to admit there are some sweet spots. I have a beautiful voice. I’m intelligent, perceptive, and kind, and I make a good companion when I’m not in so much pain I want to drag every person who dares interact with me over a roll of barbed wire. I’m good with animals. I’m funny.

I need to enjoy those features, treat those features as things worth having. I need to stop needing to be the best at something, or the most important person in a given situation, or the most interesting person in the room, the person everyone wants to know or be around. Basically, I need to completely reset the way I’ve been approaching my adult life. I need to exchange eagerness for bitterness, gratitude for envy, wisdom for regret.

It’s easier said than done. It feels like unscrewing the back of an electrical device that you’re never supposed to take off and poking around in it without a manual, trying to re-purpose it for something else. Or perhaps, in my case, trying to undo all of the re-purposing that’s been going on and see if I can get it back to simply doing what it was designed to do. I’m worried I’ve already damaged it so much it won’t ever work right again. It occurs to me that that might be inevitable. But if I can disconnect some of the unproductive associations, like accolades to happiness, or loneliness to self-destruction, I think I might be able to get it back to something like normal functioning.

It’s not the prettiest device; it’s not the one I would have picked. But it’s mine. And who knows, maybe some other people would look at it and find it desirable, even the way it is now, a little busted-up, some of the edges worn down, a few sparks and breakdowns every now and again. I don’t know why, but that never occurred to me before. What if other people were looking at my mold and wishing they had some parts of it? What if I didn’t have some of the things I have? Maybe I would want them, too. Maybe I would even be willing to take the less-desirable parts that came with them.

I’m trying. I keep saying over and over in my head, trying to understand, trying to find a purpose, trying to fit the strange sequence of events over the past year into a comprehensible storyline, with a plot and resolution, with a deeper meaning. But that, too, is something this machine doesn’t seem to be designed for. Trying is not doing. Waiting is not living. I don’t want to try to live. I want to live.

An acquaintance, thinking she was being helpful, said to me a few weeks ago that she had a friend who became disabled in her twenties and has still managed to have “this amazing life.” I remember replying that I would be happy just having any life at all. And I meant it. So somehow, I have to learn to be it.

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anergy

Posted on November 14, 2014 by C. M. Condo

anergy |ˈanərjē|

noun
Medicine. Absence of the normal immune response to a particular antigen or allergen.

“Are you still here?” I glanced in the direction of the comment and saw a lively, older woman, probably about my mother’s age, walking towards me with the help of a cane at my physical therapist’s office. I was seated, back straight, with a heating pad draped across my right shoulder. Had we met? I didn’t recognize the woman. “You were here all the way back when I came in for my Achilles tendon! When was that, March?”

I managed a half smile. I had been much more outwardly friendly when I first started the therapy this past Spring. Undoubtedly I had struck up a conversation with this woman, back when I was erroneously ranking my condition as a temporary setback. “Yeah, I’m still here. Probably be here for another year or so,” I said, trying not to sound too morose.

I was unable to summon enough energy to get defensive about it. I’ve spent entire posts railing about such seemingly innocent comments, like hers and like the one I get every time I leave the gym. “Done already?” the guy at the front desk will ask. My former self would have approached the desk, pulled the guy aside, and explained as politely as possible why that was judgmental and insulting. But now, I just say, “Yeah, that’s about all I can manage,” and keep walking.

I feel empty and dull, as though even my reserve supply of animation has been depleted. I’ve spent the last week unable to come up with a reason to write a weekly post. And it’s not like I need much. I’ll write even when I only have the vaguest idea what I’m going to write about, because often, these posts are shaped simply by the process of articulating thoughts and arranging them in a specific verbal order. But my head is thick and my mood is low, so I’m just typing away aimlessly, no rudder, no direction.

The impending translocation of this great ape has cost me too much sleep this week, and that, coupled with an elevated pain level that refuses to back off, has sapped of so much mental juice that even my snark is muted, indicating an exceptionally low level of functioning for me. Generally, my attitude is the last thing to go; even when I’m running on fumes, I can still usually find the wherewithal to take someone down a peg. It takes so little energy to be mean, not nearly as much as to be thoughtful, probably because thoughtful is a two-step process involving a filtering phase, whereas rudeness can be supplied straight from the tap.

Be that as it may, I’ve not been lacking for petulance, my new favorite word. I have a major exam in one of my classes this week, and I’ve barely studied at all, despite the fact that I’m barely hanging on to a “C” in the class, and really need to do well on this exam. The recent pain uptick means I need to call the orthopedist to take another look at my shoulder and have a serious conversation about the surgical option, but the thought of having to play nice with the receptionists and then auction off the privilege of driving me to and from the appointment to my friends makes my toes curl.

The list doesn’t end there. I need to go to the gym. I need to get someone to help me get more kitty litter. I need to take the car for an oil change. I need to pull together my grad school application; specifically, I need to start hitting up professors for letters of recommendation, because they’re busy, and the letters take weeks to process. I need to run back through the disabled support services red tape gauntlet to get my handicapped status renewed for next semester. I need to take the fur balls to the vet to get their vaccines updated so I can register them with whatever property management company I wind up renting from. All in all, I need to do a whole host of unpleasant things, and I don’t want to do any of them, nor anything else, and it’s hard not to fall into doing things that require zero effort instead, such as watching DVR.

I feel as though I’m being dragged reluctantly through some grand practical joke, and now that I’ve figured out it’s a joke that appears to be on me, I don’t want to play along any more. My shoulder is screaming, my school plans hang in the balance, and considering how little improvement there’s been in my pain level despite the several months of physical therapy, it appears as though even my modest career aspirations might be out of reach. I should be angry. I should be fighting. I should be planning and conniving and trying to manipulate the situation to work out some sort of advantage, but I’m not.

I remember early on in this process, how I would scour PubMed for hours, hunting down primary research on treatments and prognosis for my injury. The condition is so rare that little research exists; sample sizes are small, and samples are so heterogeneous that it’s impossible to draw any conclusions about what a typical progression might be. I was able to glean that most patients recovered in about 12 to 18 months. I remember that those whose condition went untreated for six months or more tended not to fully recover, and that at five and a half, I was right on the cusp of that [more or less arbitrary] boundary. I remember that some patients recovered from the pain but never got all of their strength and range of motion back. I remember that some patients had the reverse situation; strength and range of motion came back, but the pain remained.

I remember worrying that that might happen to me. But worrying about it and experiencing it are not the same at all, and by the way, the former, of which I did plenty, doesn’t do a damn thing to prepare you for the latter, which appears to be the direction in which I am headed.

In other news, my left shoulder is improving. This is a good sign, particularly since the right one remains on the bench, and I am reassured that while the one part of my body has gone to pot, the rest of it still seems to respond normally to physical therapy, manipulation, strength exercises, and stretching. However, it does throw the situation at my right shoulder in an exceedingly hope-dashing light. My left shoulder is almost completely recovered after a couple of trigger point injections and about six weeks of physical therapy.

But. I’ve had over a dozen injections in the right shoulder, along with eight months of physical therapy, and we are nowhere. Worse, the now-increasing pain is starting to lock up the surrounding muscles and tendons again, threatening to undo all of the work my physical therapist and I have done to restore my ability to turn my head and maintain good posture for more than a few minutes at a time. Hence the visit with the orthopedist, which, if all goes poorly, which I imagine it will, will be followed by another nerve ablation.

And then six months later, another one. And so on, ad infinitum.

Remember how I wasn’t going anywhere with this post? I’m still not. If I weren’t so exhausted, I might be able to construct something like a temper tantrum, where I invent new and creative ways of screaming and stomping on the ground and sobbing about how freaking unfair this all is, and why did this have to happen, and worse, why did it have to happen to me, and how I’m sick of everything, from asking fellow students to help carry my back pack up the stairs to the dirty looks I get when I park my car in a handicapped space.

But I’m just too damned tired. This post is about all of the tantrum I can manage. I just want my whole life to go away. I want to go to bed and sleep and sleep for hours and hours, and then wake up and find out all of this was a long and convoluted dream, and I’m back to my old existence, getting ready to graduate, getting ready to teach, looking forward to a new crop of kids and all of their funny personalities. Even though I can’t remember what that was like any more.

I’ve given up so much, and I’m having trouble being happy about what little I have left, especially when it appears that even that might be taken from me, and I’m too tired to do anything about it. So take it all, fine. Finish your stupid practical joke and laugh and post it on the internet, I don’t care, just please, can we be done with this already? Because I’m not having any fun any more. Even complaining about it isn’t any fun any more. It’s all a big giant ball of lame, and I want nothing more than to kick it away.

That, however, is the one thing I’m sure is not going to happen. I’m going to be stuck with it and it will be dragging at me, forever. And I’m already tired of it, and in the grand scheme of how much life I have left (under ideal circumstances, of course), forever is too monumentally depressing to contemplate. So I think of nothing, feel nothing, and do nothing instead. Including this post, a rather unimpressive ramble on nothing.

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incertainty

Posted on November 7, 2014 by C. M. Condo

That used to be me, I thought. It was as though I was speaking of some time of my life long since gone, like childhood, not the “me” that I was up until late last year. The jogger passed me and continued down the avenue, probably headed towards the park at the bottom of the hill, which is where I myself used to go jogging. When this injury was still new, that thought would have stung me with regret, but after so many trips through my mind since, the edges of it have been worn down, and now it comes and goes without leaving a mark.

I had the same thought when one of my girlfriends, who had accompanied me to the local big box store to help me purchase (or rather, carry) kitty litter, easily hefted the 25-pound boxes into my car one-handed. I used to do that. How interesting. I might as well have been speaking of another species, a particular strain of human capable of using her upper body to lift herself and anything else she might need off of the ground, or the table or shelf, while my breed struggles to maintain the proper conformation while pulling a pitcher of water out of the fridge. I’m not that other species any more. That other species does all sorts of things that have been segmented away from me.

I have a physical therapy exercise where I place my hands on a counter in front of me and then rock side to side, transferring my weight (or some of it, anyway) from one hand to the other. I can do about ten of those in a row before the shoulder gives way. It’s a far cry from my former capabilities, like swimming and rowing and rock-climbing.  Or push-ups. Real push-ups, not the easy ones with your knees on the floor.

I used to help people push their cars when they were stuck in the snow. (Speaking of, I used to shovel snow.) I used to lift 65-pound dogs on to the examination tables at veterinary clinics. I loved impressing people with my strength; I was first to arrive to help someone move, bringing coffee, slapping on some gloves and going to work. I used to think nothing of moving a piece of furniture in my own condo to get something out from underneath it. In fact, I used to rearrange my furniture whenever I wanted, an ability I will sorely miss when I myself move in a couple of months, and will be stuck with whatever furniture arrangement I designate when the movers carry the stuff inside.

This will be the first time in my adult life that I’ve had to rely so heavily on assistance from other people to move. I’m going to have to let them pack up virtually all of my things, in addition to lifting and carrying them, and I have no idea how I’m going to keep from fussing and micromanaging. In an effort to streamline the process, I’ve been combing my current place for items to get rid of, which has resulted in several bags of trash and even more bags of donations to the local community center. My friends will have enough to do packing my necessary crap; they shouldn’t have to deal with my unnecessary crap as well.

The last time I moved was eight years ago. I remember how excited I was to finally have a place of my own. I found exactly what I wanted, a condo just outside the city, and had fallen in love with the neighborhood, with its liberal, colorful avenues, nearby creek and trail, small-town friendliness, and prevalence of locally-owned businesses rather than chains. I will miss those things, but they, too, have been relegated to the category of useless crap, just like the stuff I’ve been donating by the metric ton.

I don’t need to be close to a park; I need to be close to a gym I can visit that’s safe to be in no matter what the time of day or night. I don’t need to be a five minute walk from a bead store and a vintage guitar shop; I need to be a five minute drive from the drug store, and the grocery store, and a gas station, post office, bank, dry cleaners, and anywhere else I need to go.

Once I move, I’ll be farther from the city, and the subway, which my condition has made it virtually impossible to ride, but closer to the highway, so friends (and my parents) who come to help me don’t have to wend through a half-dozen pretty neighborhoods to get to my place.  I’ll also be relinquishing home maintenance tasks for the foreseeable future. Because honestly, I just can’t do them any more.  I’m not even certain if I’m up to  working and being a graduate student at the same time.  Concessions must be made.

There was a life I thought I wanted, that followed a particular trajectory that now seems as distant as my formerly physically capable self. I thought I was walking a path that would take me to marriage and possibly children, and work with animals in some capacity. I imagined living much farther away from the city than I do now, perhaps in the mountains, and being able to look out my window every morning at beautiful scenery instead of neighbors and a busy street.

Never say never, but none of those things are on the horizon any more. I am not in a relationship and am no longer physically capable of working with animals, nor is it wise for me to be so far removed from the services and conveniences that a certain population density entails. I used to idealize what it would be like to be truly self-sufficient, not needing other people for much of anything other than company, and now that goal is truly out of my reach.

Do other people feel their fences as keenly as I do right now? Are they aware of the narrowness of their own trajectories, of the lack of choices that inevitably result? Or do they simply follow the path in front of them because all of their friends are there, never bothering to look side to side to see if there are other roads, or to wonder where they lead? If only. I can’t remember the last time I was on the same road as a bunch of other people; I certainly am not now. I’m in the uniquely lonely position of needing an entire passel of other humans just to help me function while having little in common with any of them.

Every day I’m faced with some opportunity or another to discover that I’m alone on this path; that in fact, there is no path, and I’m hacking my way through unexplored brush in hopes of cutting through to the only goals that remain possible; finish school, cobble together a writing career, try not to let my injury ruin control the entire rest of my life.

It’s a journey that doesn’t come with guides and maps, or people a generation above mine to help point out hazards and pitfalls, or pull me back upright when I stumble, or nudge me back to the road when I’ve wandered off and lost my way. Being taken so low by my condition this past couple of weeks, I am newly troubled by the sense that I don’t know where I’m going, nor if I have any business trying to get there.

There isn’t a whole pack of animals out here doing the same thing; I’m all alone. So I have no idea what a creature like me should do to try to function in modern society. This pushing, this trying to find a living situation to accommodate my disability, to manage my class schedule so I can still go to school, to keep grasping for a career of some sort… I don’t know if this is what I’m supposed to be doing or not. I’m all too wary of having the carpet yanked out from under me again, as it has been so many times over this last year. I wish I knew if I was supposed to be expending all of this effort or if I’m just wasting my energy, deluding myself into thinking that there will ever be a point where I’ll be able to assert a routine out of all of this.

Because I don’t know or see anyone else that has done it as I am doing it. Is that just because it’s rare, or is it because it’s impossible? Is there any way to tell the difference? How many more failures do I need to accumulate? How do I know when I’ve tried hard enough? I’m not certain of anything any more.

Actually, that’s not true. I’m certain of a whole bunch of things I can’t do and shouldn’t try. What I don’t know is what I can do, or should do, or how much more to try. And I suppose there’s only one way to find out; the hard way. As usual.

Well, at least I can be certain of that.

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says who

Posted on October 31, 2014 by C. M. Condo

Saturday morning, I went to the drugstore to pick up a refill for one of my pain medications, only to discover that there weren’t any refills left on it. This particular medication is the linchpin of the chemical arrangement that makes my functionality (such as it is) possible, and I was suddenly faced with the fact that I was going to run out. It being a Saturday, there was no-one at the doctor’s office to call for a new prescription (lesson being, do not refill prescriptions on Fridays), and worse, because it was technically classed as a narcotic, I’d actually have to physically show up at the office in order to get a new prescription, likely Tuesday at the soonest.

I simply did not have enough to tide me over until then.  In fact, I only had just enough to scale down in order to avoid the unpleasantness of withdrawal.  And despite my perpetrations towards weaning myself off of the pain medication a couple of months ago, I haven’t actually been anywhere near that eventual goal.  But it seems I was about to get there, just like that, in less than a day, in fact.

The pain broke through Sunday afternoon.  Monday, I contacted my doctor and found a friend to take me to the doctor’s office Tuesday morning. By then, the pain had been holding at pre-nerve ablation intensity, somewhere in the 7 to 9 region, for nearly thirty-six hours. The drive was excruciating.  The next few days weren’t much better, as I waited for the medication to build back up to a point where it got ahead of the pain again.

It is now Friday morning, and while the pain is still not back to where it was before, it’s far better than the intervening days between Tuesday and now. During those intervening days, my shoulder knifed and clawed at me with impunity, no matter the time of day or the task at hand. Sleeping and eating once again became low-frequency activities. I was virtually house-bound as well, missing classes, unable to meet my evening obligations, and on one particularly humiliating day, requiring help to change the sheets on my bed.

Suffice it to say, it’s been an illuminating three days.

First, I’m glad that such extreme pain is no longer my normal. Yes, I have pain all of the time, but it’s not so much that it forces me to keep my right arm immobile, or that I can’t find a comfortable sleeping position, or can’t concentrate on my studying for more than twenty minutes at a time. It’s not so much that I find myself at home with too little to do and too much time to do it. (Bright side, I’m caught up on my school work. Whee.)

Second, I had thought the nerve injury had been getting better with the increased strength and range of motion in the surrounding tissues. After all, the physical therapy, brace, and a maintenance pain regimen had gotten me up to a level of functionality that permitted me to take a couple of classes and manage getting to and from most of my appointments by myself. My pain level was generally quite manageable for at least the first half of the day, lulling me into a sense of undergoing gradual but observable improvement.

Well, not so much, it turns out. This past week, normal functioning – even though my bar for “normal” is set pretty low – was all but impossible. The nerve pain, the root of this injury, is still no better. It may not register as the horrifying emotional experience that it was when this all started, but by and large, the actual physical component of the pain has not changed, casting doubt on the ability of physical therapy alone to mitigate the injury itself, whatever that injury happens to be, which, of course, is still an enigma.

It’s got me reconsidering the surgical option. (Not that there would be time for that any time soon; I refuse to take myself out of play in the middle of the semester.) After all, if the postural adjustments and muscle strengthening that were supposed to help the nerve entrapment haven’t, then what else is left? My orthopedist has some good ideas, and he claims he’s had patients like me who’ve had good improvements after surgery where he files down the proximal edges of the shoulder blade, but I remain skeptical. While it’s certainly possible that would help, I’d prefer to have some visible evidence of the radiographic or ultrasound variety before he cuts me open.

It’s also just as possible that it wouldn’t help, and that putting my less-than-resilient body through such a procedure would be a grave mistake. Of the many things I’ve been forced to admit through all of this, one of the most important ones is the fact that I am not like other people. On the bell curve of injury resistance, I am out in the tail at the wrong end.

But there’s more to it than that.  Something inside me is fighting the option, not intellectually, but emotionally, and now that I’m aware of it, I’m doubting my logical-seeming reasoning. Do I have my thumb on the scale? Am I so comfortable with the way things are now that I’m loathe to change them, even if they might be improved?

It’s an odd situation, to be weighing my options while trying to accommodate for the tricks my mind likes to play on me. It’s like trying to play yourself in checkers. You already know what the other player’s strategies are, and he already knows yours. You try to play both sides fairly, but at some point you start favoring one side or another, and then that side wins. An argument with myself will fall out the same way. At some point, I will choose one side to favor and then that side will win and more likely than not, it’s the side I would have picked anyway.

Now that I think about it, a lot of my decisions probably get made that way. I think I’m objectively arguing equally for both sides, but chances are I’ve already made my decision, and the argument phase is simply a way of justifying it, to myself, and to those around me who might offer feedback. And I have to admit, I have been catching myself having these little arguments in my head a lot lately, even over silly things like when to wash my hair or what to eat for lunch. It’s as though the voice in my head that used to bully me has now turned into a petulant teenager that’s trying to get out of doing anything she doesn’t I don’t feel like doing.

I suppose the smart play would be to simply stop having these mini-debate sessions entirely. I like to think of myself as open to feedback, as willing to consider another point of view in the face of new information, but apparently my intellectual elasticity doesn’t usually translate into action.

Which means, with regards to the surgery option, that since I’ve already “decided” that I’m going to be like this for the rest of my life, any arguments about whether or not I should undergo a surgical procedure in hopes of improving it are all going to end with me deciding in favor of the side I’ve already picked, which is to leave things as they are. It took me such a long time to get used to being the way I am now that I’m unwilling to have to go back and learn how to get used to something different all over again. Surgery might make me better than I am now (and of course, “same” and “worse” are also options), but I’m still reluctant.  There might be good reasons for being reluctant, but those aren’t the reasons behind my trepidation.  What’s really going on is that I just do not want to mess with the status quo, even though the status quo isn’t all that great.

Fortunately for me, there’s no point in weighing the possibilities at the moment, since I don’t see the orthopedist again until the end of December. I used to be such a worrier, but pain and fatigue have a way of breaking you of energetically expensive and low-payoff habits. I probably should at least address the idea in some way, look up primary research, find some people to talk to, but I just don’t feel like it. But how much of that is because I rightly feel that there’s no point in opening this can of worms right now, and how much of it is petulant teenager unwilling to disrupt her little routine?

It doesn’t matter, I suppose, because whichever it is, I’ve already decided.

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anniversary

Posted on October 24, 2014 by C. M. Condo

October 21. The date is emblazoned on my memory as though it were carved and backlit. Today is October 21. Exactly one year ago, today, I woke up in so much pain I could barely breathe. Exactly one year ago, today, my life changed utterly and completely. Exactly one year ago, today, the few remaining vestiges of young adulthood I still perpetrated were quenched.

And so it seems fitting, somehow, that my beloved old lady cat, now 17 years old, is also looking towards ending her time with me. I’ve had her since I was 24; she’s been a constant feature of my entire adult life. Now, her kidneys are failing, and this week she was nearly taken out by an ordinary bladder infection. She’s recovered somewhat, but she’s lost even more weight and appears more fragile than I’ve ever seen her. There’s no avoiding the fact that she won’t be here much longer.

I expected myself to have more emotional resistance to it, but it turns out that I’m surprisingly level. Close friends have offered their sympathies to us both, but apart from a few stomach-dropping moments, when she was on the edge, it hasn’t been all that tumultuous, for either of us. I don’t have any resentment or longing surrounding her failing health, and certainly, neither does she.

The situation has put me in mind of one client in particular that I remember from a vet clinic I worked a few years ago. The woman was elderly and quite disabled, and she brought her even more elderly and disabled cat in twice a week so we could clean and feed it. The cat was emaciated, and so stiff and wracked from illness and arthritis that she could no longer groom herself, feed herself, or avail herself of a litter box. We handled the animal as gently as possible, combing her slick, matted fur, tending to her inflamed nether regions while she winced and whimpered, administering fluids, and force-feeding soft food with a syringe. Even those small mercies seemed to cause her more pain. It was with heavy heart that I would lift the little thing, nothing but a small bundle skin and bones at that point, and gently place her back inside the carrier each week.

I remember being furious with the owner, although I never let on once I brought the carrier and its passenger back out to the waiting room and set them in the basket atop the woman’s walker. How dare you selfishly insist that this poor cat, who should have slipped this mortal coil long since, remain with you in this wretched state? I would think. I contemplated various [illegal] compassionate interventions such as slipping a narcotic into the animal’s fluid bag, or hooking her up to the sedative air exchange mask we use for surgery, but despite my considerable empathy for the miserable creature, something inside me prevented me from taking such measures, however well-intended.

Now, I’m thinking perhaps I should have gone and done something after all. Being old and ill sucks. My cat has been losing weight steadily for over two years. She’s never been active, but lately she’s been less so than ever. As long as she was still eating, begging to be let out [or in] every ten minutes, and taking the occasional swipe at the younger cats, I let her be. Now, though, it seems we’ve reached a turning point; she is considerably weaker after her recent ordeal, and is less social than ever, avoiding her four-footed roommates and largely remaining under the furniture, where I’ve placed folded blankets and cat beds so she can stay warm.

As recently as this Spring, when she began to really slow down, I laid down next to her and asked her not to leave just yet, because I wasn’t ready. But now, I’m comfortable with what happens either way – whether she rallies and goes back to her windowsills and roommate-bashing, or chooses instead to take her leave.

If only I was as willing to part with the life I had before the pain onset a year ago. Why can’t I have the same gratitude for it as I have for the years spent with my cat, the same calm assurance that the timing is right and the change is only natural? Why am I so desperate to cling to some tiny fragment of my young and blissfully ignorant self? Why am I still so angry, so upset that it’s gone?

At veterinary hospitals and clinics, once an animal has been euthanized, it is wrapped in a heavy plastic bag and placed in the freezer. Once a week, a special truck picks up the freezer’s contents and transports them to a crematorium. These facilities are often specifically designed for the purpose, maintaining a sort of pet potter’s field nearby for the ashes. Some owners want their pet’s ashes returned to them; in that case, the technician who helped with the euthanasia places a tag marked “private” on the bag. Private cremation is more expensive, but many people choose to do it anyway, so they can keep a little memorial to their furry friend in their homes.

I feel no such urge with my own cat. I have her in my heart. I have pictures and memories. I don’t need the leftover bits of a a temple she no longer occupies. I face the loss of my old self, however, with no such equanimity. I’m not ready. It doesn’t feel natural. And so the grief is different, a blade still pressed to the wound, which bleeds afresh each time I run up against a new obstacle.

Fortunately, emotional reactions do not have discrete boundaries. My calmness about the forthcoming passage of my beloved feline has had a dampening affect on my bitterness surrounding my physical condition, such that I’ve been less anxious over the last few days. I’ve even seen little glimmers of my former kindness and patience in my interactions with friends and other apes, including other drivers. It seems strange that an event that would have caused me so much distress just a few months ago is now a link to a tiny corner of serenity.

Perhaps it’s because, with regards to the cat, I know exactly what to do. My years as a veterinary assistant have me well-prepared for this eventuality. I’ve witnessed dozens of euthanasias, and they are nearly always peaceful, if sad, events. I have no foreboding or dread about what will be required of me. I’ve seen enough old and ill animals to know that when they’re ready to go, it’s best to spare them the last few days of pain as their bodies shut down.

But for myself and my own condition, I don’t have any years of training to apply. I don’t know when, or how, or how much to let go of. I don’t know how much pain I’m causing myself by hanging on. Pain of all sorts has become such a feature of my normal existence that at this point it’s mostly background noise, like a faint ringing in my ears that I’ve learned to ignore as long as the volume remains low.

I’m still terrified that I will lose some essential part of myself if I turn my back on the old me and leave. While it’s possible that whatever part of myself I leave behind wasn’t doing me much good anyway, I have no way of knowing that. In fact, I have no way of knowing if there’s even anything else to leave on the side of the road, after all of the things I’ve already let go. It’s possible that I’m clinging to shadows and hallucinations, and that whatever I think I’m holding on to is long gone.

I wonder if, once my cat finally lets me know it’s time, and I stroke her fur as she slips away, the finality of everything that’s happened will hit me all at once. Perhaps the two events are linked not just by my response to them, but my perception of their significance to me. I do feel stripped of most of my former casing. All that’s left is for me to step out of what remains, just as my old friend will step out of hers, and let it go. The cat has no regrets. Maybe, if I can learn to focus on what it is in front of me instead of what is behind me, I will be able to part with mine, too.

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