things are a little confusing right now. i’m having rather a lot of tests done.

ever since march i’ve had this fatigue, and unusual bowel habits ranging in consistency from sponge to clotted cream. so i’m having it investigated.

normally you’d say that ‘your doctors’ are having things investigated, but in this case, my medical care is entirely self directed.

because of the little voice - sometime i’ll write about the little inner voice - i’ve had to learn all there is available about my medical condition so that i won’t be fed thru the machine like in some bad science fiction movie.

when a lump has been found, it was me who found it and took it in to a doctor asking what is it.

it may look like the doctor is in charge of this case, but it’s really me. i’m initiating the spending of loads of money and effort to run tests to see what is it.

so at this point, i’m having my diarrhea investigated by a gastroenterologist. the test results still aren’t back yet. i’m having the rest of my gut and indeed my whole abdomen and pelvis cat scanned to see what is it. those results aren’t in either.

i’m also investigating the possibility of having an aortic aneurism inherited from my dad and beginning to plague the siblings. which means an mra.

i went to the cardiologist in early may, and he ordered a sonogram and a cat scan. the insurance balked at the cat scan, and the sonogram was inconclusive, as it would be, since it kind of doesn’t see the part of the aorta i’m interested in.

when i came back for my follow up there was nothing to follow up because the cat scan didn’t get done and a few things fell between the cracks.

i’m beginning to think lots of things fall thru the cracks in that office, but okay, i don’t imagine i’ll be seeing a cardiologist the rest of my life like i will an oncologist.

but wouldn’t it be funny if i died of heart trouble instead of cancer? wouldn’t it be funny if i got hit by a bus?

why wouldn’t it be funny?

i think it’s funny.

anyway, because of cracks at the cardiologist’s, the doctor decided that there was enough abnormality in the sonogram to warrant some diagnosis that the insurance company was bound to accept, and, satisfied, the doctor left it to the nurse to get me scheduled.

i left the office still waiting. all sorts of places don’t take my insurance, and the poor nurse has to call around until she finds a place. she said she’d call me.

so she never did, and it’s been since june.

so i called yesterday wanting to see what progress if any had been made scheduling me. and the nurse was on vacation and the other nurse pulled up my records and couldn’t find anything about any mra scheduled to be done, no doctor notes, nothing.

okay. so then an hour later the clinic called and said this was a courtesy call to remind me that i had an mra tomorrow.

so that’s when it was. and i had no idea, and it had probably been schedled for a month, with both the scheduler and the doctor’s nurse thinking the other had contacted me.

or something more sinister.

so, today, in just a few minutes, i’m going to take a final dog walk, paste together a sandwich, and grab my book and go off to sit in a plush modern waiting room with the tv on (unless i’m the only one there. i get right up and shut the damned thing off with no permission from anyone).

i’m sure an mra has no effects other than a massive dose of radiation, and this is only the second time in a month that i’ve done that, so maybe i’ll see more hairs in my brush soon. (and i looked it up. an mri is a big dose of a heavy duty magnetic field, but that technology is too new to have risks and dosages quantified.

or something more sinister.

back soon.

well, i’m back.

the hospital i went to, a very famous atlanta hospital, was looking a bit ancient. brand new parking deck, but the concrete was already peeling and dusting off. the elevator smelled like new york city - body smells and axle grease, it was impossible to find a parking place, and once i was in the building i became immediately and hopelessly lost.

what happened to the painted stripes that used to run along hospital corridors? yellow for radiology. green for labor and delivery. they don’t seem to use them anymore. it was a great system, and i had a hard time getting lost.

not in this hospital. tunnels, corridors, branching corridors, double doors, waiting rooms, elevators, vending cubbies. sickly yellow, shiny walls and floors, acoustical tiled ceilings. everything echoed, everything glared.

they musn’t have been busy for a tuesday, because they whisked me right into the back, after my filling out 2 pages of interesting questions about what kind of implants i had in my body.

the list was very long and in very small type, and i was expected perhaps to go and tick each and every one of them ‘no’, or else assumed to just draw a line thru the no column like a sane person with a schedule to keep.

metal rods in arms and legs

pacemarker

implanted bone induction device

stray clips and surgical tools

there wasn’t an other category or i would have put alien probe.

the nurse was named latoya. i told her i would be writing this up. she said i should mentione her. she’s got 2 kids and so can’t quit the rat race right now, but she knew where i was cming from.

when i’m out in public i spend my time prosyletizing. i’m not a christian. far from it. but i do accost perfect strangers on the street, violently exhorting them to quit their day jobs. their employers are evil bloodsucking corporate aliens. the only way to fight back is by dropping out.

when i have the energy.

i showed latoya my now greenish bruise when she announced she would be interting my iv today. she tut-tutted about the nurse who did me wrong. she must have been bored that day, she supposed. happens.

our girl today was quick, commanding, and competent. she was also jolly, and we talked all the way thru the corridors to imaging. which was unfortunate, because i couldn’t for the life of me remember the way back.

i asked her how much radiation i was going to receive today, and she waved the question off. it’s no more than sitting in the sun.

but i’d just looked up the figures for alll the tests, so i said nonononononono a cat scan is equivalent to 500 chest xrays, what’s an mra worth? and she looked bothered. i mentioned the scandal of a few months back, she looked vaguely mindful. i said nagasaki and hiroshima and she looked blank.

well, she finally responded, they don’t make us wear radiation badges, so you’re not even getting as much as sitting in the sun. i shook my head. i told her all she had to do was google it.

we went down a whole bunch of corridors. i asked if she got a lot of exercise in these halls, and she says she often walks over to building A thru the tunnels. takes about 15 minutes. she greeted everyone as they passed, all the hospital employees. they all flirted with her, and she had a snappy answer back. i felt privileged to be with someone so in the know.

the girls in the imaging room weren’t quite as chummy. you’re getting it where? in the chest. okay, you don’t need to take your shirt off. you’re not wearing a bra? hell no. okay get up on this (way familiar) bed. shouldn’t i take my metal objects out of my pocketses? oh sure give them here. time for one more joke they didn’t get, and they had me on my back and were strapping me down.

it wasn’t exactly good cop bad cop, it was more like cop and cop’s boss. when one lowered the bed so i could scramble on and hang my feet over the wedge bolster, the other was deftly hiding the obvious torture harness, which i caught a glimpse of, swinging as the bed was lowered. the one settled me down and told me to scootch forward, while the other one slapped the torture device over my chest. are you going to strap me in? nobody ever leaves…alive.

they didn’t strap me in, but they wrapped my arm, the arm with the pounding, aching iv line in what felt like rigid carbboard so that it wouldn’t move as i was squeezed into the donut. i didn’t want it to move, because moving would involve edging the needle catheter out of my arm bit by painful bit. i was grateful that they splinted up my arm. i wasn’t so happy with the harness. it was a large, padded, gray openwork device that looked like football pads. the one lay it over my chest and did stuff i couldn’t see, denying the while she was strapping me in.

one of the questions on the form i had to fill out when i came in was, ‘do you suffer from claustrophobia.’

i was facing a donut, just like the donut i got my cat scan taken in. it was huge, the only thing in the room besides rolly carts and trashcans. it was grayish white, it was menacing without moving. it didn’t hum or glow or whirl, it just stood there in the low-lighted room with - was that soft jazz playing on the little boombox on the floor in the corner?

there was the same old robotic looking hookup for the iv. i asked what the contrast was going to be today. they said something, several times, that i couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to spell, and so couldn’t remember for more than 3 seconds afterwards. the nurse said to google mri gad, as in gadfly. here’s what i found out about the contrast.

they connected me and strapped me down, and told me they’d be in the next room watching over me (shielded from the radiation i was getting). they put earphones on me and gave me a rubber ball attached to an air line that i could use to call them with if anything happened i didn’t like. well, if anything bad happened. if anything of an emergency nature happened.

then the one spoke thru the earphones, and i answered, and all that was okay. then the machine moved me into the donut, and i discovered that it wasn’t just a donut, it was a very long, or thick, donut, which is i guess is some sort of mathematical shape, not just ‘toroid”

it was a very tight fit. i kept my eyes closed, because when i opened them i was staring at white plastic four inches from my nose, with a little opaque panel at the top of the inside of the tube. it felt very close, even tho there was an air stream around me.

i kept my eyes closed because subjecting myself to these ordeals, as prosaic and mild as they appear to be, takes a lot out of me.

getting my vein punctutred and walking around with the bruises of that stresses me out. walking endless corridors and striking up conversations with strangers takes a lot out of me. negotiating the fearsome parking decks freaks me right out. getting toxic waste pumped thru my veins makes me feel like my head is in a jar and my body is wanderig loose along buford highway.

i come home from one of these things and i have to take a nap and am worthless tomorrow. that’s why i only schedule one of these damn things a week, max.

the other one said we’ll be right here, thru my earphones, and they abandoned me and slammed shut what sounded like a freezer locker behind them, with seals and real weight in the door. safely isolated from all the xrays streaming around the room, stopped only by my body, my phone, keys and book in the corner, and the disposable trash.

the machine moved me into the center, the fucking thing began making noises all around me. all sorts of noises. i’ve never been so entertained. let me see if i can remember them all.

there was a calibration kind of noise, which was a bunch of various tones from company whistle to a fast-busy signal. then the one told me thold my breath, and the real noise began. a chunka-chunka noise, faster than my heartbeat, which i could tell by the pressure on the panic bulb in my hand was considerably elevated.

the chunka-chunka was a two step. there was a tone, somewhere in mid-alto range. a beeping noise, like of like a zylophone except not resonant. in the middle the thing went chunka and the bed shuddered.

there was another noise. this one was like a truck backing up, a different pitch, but still a beep. still about as fast as a heartbeat. i counted 29 of them. this was while i was holding my breath.

but nothere were other noises between the holding breath times, and these sounded like a band saw, an alarm clock, a fire alarm. very rhythmic. very loud. the earmuffs weren’t enough after they put the dye into my veins and took their real shots. it was a rising tone that got louder the longer and higher it went. this was also a hold my breath, and the difference was that the contrast was in my veins.

this’ll feel cold, the one said as she told me they were going to inject it now.

but i’d been feeling red in my chest, hot, warm, as if the harness i was wearing was heating up under the bombardment of the xrays. like a plate in a microwave oven. i thought it was the dye in my veins. but no, it was the coil inside the harness heating up. i just said oh when one told me this, when i could have asked why it heated up.

not always, but mostly my chest heated in the middle of some noise or other. i know there was a pattern, but i couldn’t tell, there were so many different noises. i was pretty dazed.

you really are helpless in the hands of the medical establishment.

once they injected the contrast, i could feel cold. not cold to where you’d draw your hand away, but nonetheless ice in my veins. it felt cold, i could feel it going up my arm, and i felt it hit my armpit and then i didn’t feel cold anymore, but i felt it moving thru my chest. my organs, my intestines i guess or my ovary felt strange, like it had a headache.

then i had to hold my breath again and bear the really unbearable noise. twice.

and finally they pulled me out and shooed me off, and again i was lost the moment i stepped out of the door. i’d managed to ask how many scans they did of me and she counted thru her procedure and came up with nine. that’s nine times how many chest xrays?

i deliberately took the longest, most convoluted way i could find, taking the worst choice at every branch, and got back to where i came in just in time to run into someone who looked very familiar, heading toward the same bathroom door.

it was carol, whom i know well enough i said i was in for an mri and she was in for something, but needed to tell me that she was now doing whatever i did, which is how she introduced her breast cancer.

people don’t know how to talk about it.

i don’t have the patience for that.

i immediately asked how big it was, and what they were doing about it, and she said that she was doing what they told her, and thank god it didn’t include chemo. she was doing radiation, followed by hormonal treatment, but not tamoxifen that i’m on but one of the other ones, arimedex or something.

i told her i didn’t do radiation or chemo, that i was involved in listening to the little inner voice, and that i found it necessary to know as much about it as i could learn, because doctors don’t know what they’re doing. she looked sheepish.

i asked about her surgery, she pointed to the side of her breast and talked about a divot. my divot, when i still had a breast, was alarming enough to some of the two-minute boyfriends i had at the time, but i eventually got used to it. the cavernous scarred hole i have now that the breast is gone is another level of alarming.

we talked about how it doesn’t matter if your breast was lopsided now. it was a small price to pay. and nobody notices anything, i said. it had been a great relief to learn that i could go out with only one breast, and walk normally without trying to hide it, and people wouldn’t point and stare. people didn’t see it. what a wonderfully freeing realization.

she’s still trying to get used to the change in her life. she was talking about living another 20 years. i said but it doesn’t matter. you’re going to die. it’s what you do with each day that counts. when is irrelevant.

quality of life.

doctors don’t much care about quality of life. they want quantity. they’ll start aggressive cancer threatment (which makes the patient want to die) just weeks before the patient gratefully dies. they shrug when you mention that chemo damages your heart. they shrug when you tell them the radiation dose they’ve just given you. they write prescriptions for narcotics because it doesn’t matter if you’re unconscious, as long as you’re not feeling the pain.

they’re so into pain management that you’d think insensitivity was the highest virtue and pain the worst horror. when in fact pain is a good thing, in many ways. i think they just want you knocked out so you can’t complain to them and distract them from important work.

i’m not at the point of thinking that anything i do is going to heal me of my cancer, or prevent it from every recurring, and return me to that glow-of-youth optimism about my body always staying young and firm, the scornful dismissal of old people as deserving of their fates.

i’m at the point where i’ve already accepted that i’m going to die.

when is irrelevant. it’s death that matters.

your relationship with your own death. the things you left unfinished, the loose ties, the things unsaid. it won’t make much difference if it’s next week or in 20 years. i’ll enjoy every day and make the full use of my energy, and relax and smell the roses, and go tickle my husband where he giggles.

in my old life, i walked around angry, concerned about fucking politics, worried about things that just made me worried and angry. now that i’ve gotten my death sentance, i don’t bother myself with petty everyday bullshit concerns like this current smoke and mirrors game of ‘the sky is falling‘.

as long as there’s a cloud in the sky, i’m going to feel joy. as long as there’s green in the landscape, i’ll feel love. as long as my sweetheart rubs my back at night, i’ll live another day.

or not.

i never thought, when i first got cancer, that i would become so familiar with the route to the hospitals, the corridors of the hospitals, the tunnels and passages of the hospitals, the large rooms with movable curtained partitions, the machines, the hums and thrums and noises, the silence of the hospitals.

for my first few operations and tests i was so pleased to be doing something about my affliction, and felt grateful to everyone for helping me when i was in need. because these tests and operations all made me weak, and feeble, and grateful for attention and aid.

so i’d take little prints i used to make and still have a lot unsold in boxes in the studio, and i’d take silk scarves i’d painted, and i’d go back to the hospitals and hand them out to the wonderful magical hospital staffs.

i still take notes about who helps me out, every time i go in for another test, but somehow they stay as scraps of paper around the house, because i’m just so procupied with work. then at christmas i mail presents to everyone i can think of, because i can, because the time will come when i can’t.

after all these tests and operations i know where to park. depending on which hospital or doctor’s building - st. joe’s, northside, that other place, there’s variations of location and price to consider. i like the shade and the shadows. i like to sit in my car after my appointment and appreciate the solitude. i don’t mind a walk to the elevator. i always forget what level i’ve parked on.

the hospitals are set off by themselves in the suburbs of atlanta, right next to all sorts of stuff but isolated by a mile or two of houses. at least it appears that way from the ground. this means they all built tollbooths at the entrances to their parking lots. there’s nowhere to park for free if you have to go to the hospital for anything at all. that’s why i like atlanta medical (georgia baptist used to be). it’s in the city, so you can find somewhere to park on the street. i guess it’s a trade off. city hospitals are grimy and gritty. these cluster of hospitals was all tarted up with wood and plush and padding. water features.

there’s actually a free parking lot in the area, but it’s patrolled, so you’re best off going into one of the buildings and coming out the other side, rather than walking over the hospital of choice directly from your car.

anyway, i got up to the lobby level and walked into a panelled and carpetted and spacious waiting room. abstract plush modern. the lady behind the desk gave me papers to fill out and took my cards. i sat down and filled out paperwork, and then opened my book.

and before i knew it there was someone at the door calling my name, shaking something in her left hand.

it all came back with a flash. a screechy ‘no’ escaped from way at the back of my head, and i made the international sign of avoiding the evil eye with my fingers.

she came up to me with a bottle of radioactive poison that she wanted me to drink. all of it. all 40 ounces of it.

she ignored my moaning. she could tell that i knew the routine, and by my whining she knew that i knew i’d already lost, so she could imply the bullying she could do.

she filled a styrofoam cup with thick, evil, whitish goo, and slapped it down on the table in front of me, pointedly thumped  the rest of the bottle down next to it, and walked away.

so i sat there and sipped at the stuff, my face involuntarily contorting even between sips. if i hadn’t had a good book, if i’d been forced to read a magazine, or worse yet, watch a presidential press conference on the plasma screen at the other side of the waiting room, i would have thrown the cupful of liquid death at the tv and stalked out.

but i sat there, trying to be as engrossed as possible in my book so that not only would i completely miss whatever the president was saying, but i would also not notice the horrible nastiness of the drink. i could taste the petroleum distillate used to manufacture the dozens of natural and artificial flavorings they used.

they called it a smoothie.

it was clammy in my hand. it was less dense than it should have been, like a styrofoam rock. it was artificially grape flavored. it felt like melted plastic in my mouth. it tasted like 40 ounces of artificial ingredients, artificial fillers, artificial flavors, and radioactive poison.

i made a note to look up the ingredients later - did i mention that i’m one of those people who are sensitive to all the crap they put in our food? see my food industry rant blog. The flagrantly fake drink was made entirely of things that are bad for me.

i finally finished sipping down the cup of liquid wish-you-were-dead. i realized as i was looking around for a trashcan that i still had another full cup of horrible torture in a bottle that i had to down before they would take me in the back for more torture.

so i sat and sipped that. trying to be blythe about it, but everyone in there could see by my grimaces that i was there under duress, and suffering.

i chased it with a glass of water from the fountain, swishing around each mouthful to clear my palate oh my god i mean to maybe sluice off some of the felt that now coated my tongue and the inside of my mouth and in places i wasn’t aware were actual cavities inside my mouth.

then the nurse came to the door and called for me. another nurse. i think. maybe. she seemed to look everywhere but me as i gathered all my stuff and followed. at this point i was feeling ill from the barium sulphate smoothie, which i could feel working its way thru my guts, a-rumblin’ and a-tumblin’, a-burnin’ and a-churnin’ like a plate full of baked beans. so i followed after meekly, complaining tremulously about the chemicals they forced me to drink.

i checked. ‘have you ever actually drunk any of that stuff?’ i asked as we walked thru generic hospital halls. she admitted that she’d tasted some once. a small taste. followed by a guzzled coke and plastic tasting burps.

torture. i think there should be an outcry about techniques of interrogation used by doctors. certain procedures sit right up there with waterboarding as being inhumane and just plain sadistic.

and they smile so warmly at the front desk.

i was in a note taking mood, so i asked what the drink was for. it’s to give a contrast to the alimentary canal for the cat scan. i asked what about the iv she was fixing to put into my arm. that was for delivering the contrast to all the organs and blood supply and things.

she was fixing to stick an iv into my arm. she had all the bits and pieces laid out on the arm of the big easy chair (with hidden straps and a cattle prod for the unwilling) that she got me to sit on. my book and daybook where i wanted to write all this down were across the room. so i got up once to go write down optiray-280, which was the contrast she was fixing to enable. she didn’t like that, and resolved to stop answering my questions.

i remember from last time -

that’s the thing about the last time. it’s all so clear at the time, and you vow you’re going to remember so you’ll be prepared next time, and then you forget all about it until next time. which is what i did. first the ‘no’ in the waiting room as i remembered the horrible tasting crap. and now the much sadder no as i remembered the stuff in my veins that heated up everything from the nerves to the skin, probably the bones, too. it’s nasty. even tho it sounds like it might at least feel interesting, it feels bad.

the funny thing is that i didn’t remember any of this, horrifying as i now found the experience, until faced with the proof of it - the shaken bottle, the robotic-looking injection arm attached to the cat scanner that had “ioversol” written on it.

those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.

so this nurse, whose name i forgot immediately, tho i thought about writing it down so i could maybe send her, rather than show up and give her, a present for being such a kind human. anyway this nurse stretched a blue elastic band a couple of times, the way my dad used to put the two ends of his belt together and flex them until they snapped and popped, something that remind us that he could do it on us next.

this nurse wrapped my arm with the elastic band - the other arm, because i’m missing my lymph nodes on the one arm (right sided mastectomy with lymph node dissection.) she wrapped my arm to cut off the circulation, and gave me a little football to squeeze to pump up my veins, and then she looked at the crook of my elbow for awhile. the vein that everybody wants to use.

my vein has been used a few times too many in the recent past, and there isn’t a whole lot of blood pressure in that exact spot. the walls are full of holes and scar tissue.

i spoke up, saying how that spot had been used a lot lately, and directing her attention to the vein that runs up the back of the wrist by the thumb. it was so toasted back in 2004 with an iv that was in for days, that subsequent attempts to stick me there are repelled.

she looked at the vein. it was plump and juicy. she felt it. if it were full of scar tissue, she said, it would be all lumpy. it felt fine to her. but if i didn’t want her to, she trailed off.

she turned her attention to that vein that runs kind of deep up the inside of your arm halfway to the elbow.  she tapped at it doubtfully. she chose the smaller of two adjacent branches, and warned me to hold still as she brought a too-sharp, wicked looking needle close to my skin. this is going to hurt.

the vein was nowhere near the surface and i wouldn’t have used it. she dug for it slowly, feeling her way for the vein she could see as a vague blue stain below my skin.

then she started drawing the needle back out.

every tenth of a millimeter was painful, and she was going slow enough so that i could feel every tenth of a millimeter. it was a thousand insults to the flesh, continuously, so that i couldn’t get used to it.

try and relax, she said as she drew the needle slowly out, still hunting for the vein, let’s try a different path, she decided, and started back in.

i wasn’t relaxing. i watched as the needle momentarily showed some blood, but the flow stopped, and she was left with going in and out a few more time.

the fucker.

i could tell that she went right thru the vein, and probably was going to put yet another hole in my vein before she actually got a line.

as usual, having an iv hurts like hell. it’s not a sharp pain, it’s a throbbing drumbeat that hurts every time your heart beats, every time you breathe, every time you move your arm, every time you move your body, every time something in the room moves. and it gets worse the longer it’s in.

and it gets way worse when they put something vile into your veins thru it.

the nurse was going to tape the iv to my arm with clear plastic stuff, tegaderm, even tho i had told her i wasn’t allergic to latex but very allergic to that clear plastic bandage. but i caught her.

she was a little put out at having to use cloth tape, because she was wearing rubber gloves that were too big for her and she was having trouble with manual dexterity, which can be issues when you’re a nurse who deals with my blood and sharp objects. her fingertips of her globves kept getting caught in the tape that she wound around the catheter and then stuck down to my arm.

it hurt when she moved the catheter, which was a very thin plastic tube that went an inch into my arm and came out into a fitting that another plastic tube would plug into when they hooked up my iv.

it hurt when she taped it down. it hurt from then on.

and still the nurse didn’t really look at me. i wondered if she’d decided when i made a fuss about the drink that it would be okay to blow a vein on this one. maybe she was having a bad day.

having raped my arm, she had no further ursse for me, and told me to wait in the big comfy armchair for the man behind door number 3.

whom i would have taken, had he been the prize. he was cute, with a moustache, and strong arms. he’d be nice to dance with, i thought, glancing at his crotch. i was dizzy with the crap in that drink (if i have a dose of msg i have this reaction - i get really tired all of a sudden, things start to spin, and i have to go lie down right now).

the room was very warm. another innovation. i had been just about to ask for a blanket, because i remembered last time and how cold i was lying in the room with the scanner. but it must have been 85 degrees in the scanner room. the lights were down low, do i remember if music swas playing in the room? but i remember violins, so okay.

he pointed to the cot in the middle of the room and asked me to lie down. i tried to joke, but nothing came out right. i suppose i was feeling deeply anxious, somewhat disoriented, and woozy as shit from the evil potion that was poisoning my internal organs.

the cot lays at right angles to the mouth of the big slowly spinning donut in the corner of the room, the cat scanner itself. the cot, it could be a gurney, oh yeah i remember figuring out it was a part of the entire machine. anyway, the bed arm was padded on both sides to hold my legs in place, and covered with sheets, and looked like a very inviting coffin. i sat down and he put a wedge under my knees, and i lay back on the pillow.

he bustled about. raise your arms above your head and set them on the table, he told me. this was painful, because moving my arm made the catheter shift inside my arm. owie. he adjusted my wrists for a moment, and it was only later that i looked to see a line running into my catheter. i had just then noticed the injection robot arm that held optiray-320 for injection and some other tube of something that i didn’t pay any attention to. probably saline. i was a little unsure of my surroundings.

i was beginning to have memories of my colonoscopy of last week. visions of them taunting me, putting my arms and legs in funny positions for their own amusement.

here’s my conspiracy theory. this stuff they use, it’s not an analgesic. it’s an amnesiac. it doesn’t stop pain, it stops consciousness. for all i know, the experience from the outside could be that of watching a blackout drunk dancing on the bar again, never able to explain how she got those bruises.

the bed device jerked into movement, thrusting me at inches per second into the maw of the machine, which now began to spin faster and make more of a hum. it loomed as i got closer. i don’t get claustrophobic, but i was way cramped in my spatial relation to that big white plastic thing.

i gathered my bravery and looked at the little plexiglas panel that ran all around the middle of the donut. dimly, a few inches inside the window, were circuits and connections and wires and junctions and screws and plates.

and radiation. what exactly do they use as a radiation source in a cat scanner? how many x-rays do they take in sequence? how many times do they run you thru that scanner, and how much radiation is that, in total?

does it really compare to the radiation that the people on the ground in nagasaki and hiroshima received? i find that a cat scan gives you the equivalent of 500 xrays, or over 3 years’ worth of natural radiation. with the barium drink i got a total of five and a half years of radiation in one day.

i didn’t have time to ask the guy. he was out of the room, and the loudspeaker was saying take a deep breath and hold it. the donut sped up into a fast whirl around me. the bed jerked into movement, and slowly slowly i was pulled away from the donut hole. it was several minutes later that the voice said you can breathe.

the guy bustled back into the room. do you have a phone in your pocket, he asked me. i must have tried to sneak it in. i had my phone. my keys. my wallet. i aske dif he wanted each one, and he said no and the guy in the other room yelled that i had something else, and in the end he put everything behind my head on the table. but why didn’t he tell me when i came into the room? was it my startling beauty? was it my groggy state that i ignored everything he said while lusting after his body?

he announced that he was going to start the contrast drip, and did something to the robot. it started right away. full strength. it felt like someone had driven a nail thri my arm. my body jerked vertically off the bed. the guy was right there, holding my arm down, soothing me with the firmness of his touch.

the good lord knows it hurt.

but finally the stuff left that part of my arm and went into parts of the rest of my body, and i felt an intense heat like being put into a toaster oven. i felt this heat everywhere. in my breath. in my lunghs and blood vessels and nerves and bones and organs. it’s indescribably except that it’s hot. it’s very painful as well, but this is masked by the hot so your body does’nt notice it.

while it was working its way thru my body the machine started up and delivered me into the flames of hell. i held my breath, caught up in the exquisite pain, and used all of my will to push the bad feeling out of my body. i felt the last of it go out thru my hands and feet.

i do not like this.

then i thought he was going to let me go. he disconnected the drip line, took the catheter out, put a cotton ball and some self-sticking ace bandage stuff (made out of paper, looks like)) around my arm, and told me i still had to lay there. for one more scan. more radiation. cool.

so they did it again. and this time he let me get up. i asked him if he ran that first scan just to find out if i had a phone in my pocket, and he said yes, and then i yelled at him for exposing me to extra radiation for their laziness, and he told me that no they had really had to run a calibration before they could do the real test so it wasn’t for nothing, and i asked him if he’d heard the thing about cat scans being as much radiation as hiroshima, which was a big scandal a few months ago. he might have heard about it, he admitted, but said no more and hustled me out of the room. drink loads of fluids, he said. eat whatever i wanted.

so there i was, gulping water from the fountain out front, the aftertste of the berry barium smoothie completely drowned out by the electric aftertaste of the optiray syrup of pain.

i left, muttering about medical torture.

i came home and debriefed to jim, and allen our houseguest. allen was appalled at the state of my arm, which was bruised all around and downstream of the puncute wound. i coulda done a much better job of putting that iv in. allen is a recovering addict and used to take drugs in the most sickening ways imaginable. there’s no respect for the body when you’re into the hard drugs. you treat it like a shell rather than a temple.

i’m not down with that. if i’m going to be in a body, i want to feel what the body feels, not go around in some sort of numbness, missing half the fun of being in a body.

but, being highly conflicted, i’ve got to say that i hate being in pain.

and at this point, my personal body was very sore about the left arm. i didn’t want to let it hang down, but spent the next several hours holding it to my chest, or using it to type into my blog with

i was still woozy from the barium suspension they made me drink. i didn’t feel right in the stomach, belly or gut, all night. my tummy felt funny. but i ate a full dinner, including some home made strawberry and banana ice cream.

i slept soundly, however, and had a lovely passage of the remains of the barium drink right after my first cup of coffee.

and now we wait for test results.

we wait for signs of radiation sickness from the big dose i had, we wait for the side effects of the barium suspension and the iodine in the veins to kick in.

i came back and slept most of the afternoon, stumbled around thru a dinner the houseguest made thanks allen, and fell into bed only to toss and turn from physical discomfort. i’d eaten everything i could get my hands on, all the good stuff, lots of fiber and water. and homemade ice cream. and water.

my arm hurt.

i woke up this morning after sleeping like a log, feeling pretty good. a new day. my arm hurt. the houseguest came up for morning coffee before we were ready to get out of bed but we coped, and here i am writing my adventures down that i think will only take a few minutes but with interruptions and phone calls to the house, ends up taking all day.

but hey. i’m an artist, i can use my days any way i see fit, because i’m working all the time.

unless i’m lying in the bathtub reading, and i need to do that for my health.

i still don’t have results to last week’s colonoscopy and endoscopy. let me go back a little.

after starving myself and spending hours on the pot the night  before, jim and i drove the familiar way to the hospital, and sat in the comfy waiting room and then i was in the back.

the last time i was there was in 2004 when they did a bunch of tests after the mastectomy, to figure out how extensively to treat me. if i’d had any signs of cancer in other parts of my body, then we wouldn’t do radiation but go straight to chemo, for example.

the last time i was there, in 2004, they had this nurse whose job it was to prep you, tell you to get undressed and put this gown on opening in back. it’s her job to stick the needle in your arm to start the iv.

this nurse, i hate to say it, was from new york, not there’s that anything wrong with new yorkers; some of my best friends are new yorkers, but you have to admit that they can be quick to come to the point. hell, they can be rude. and on purpose, too. like they’re more important.

this nurse was a nightmare. she must have been having a very bad day because her attitude was vindictive. this nurse, whose name i don’t remember, but about whom i tell this story with great relish to anyone who will listen - she was bossy and abrupt. she had a clipped, no nonsense, commanding accent, like i said, bossy, and she was not above swatting the patient’s hand away when her needle work became aggressive.

i don’t feel at my best when i’ve got a gown on and all my things are in a plastic bag and i’ve got an itchy blanket around my shoulders in a really cold room, and am sitting up on a gurney behind partitioning drapes, with other captives guarded by nurses who make sure you go to the bathroom, instead of bolting out the door. in your gown that opens in the back.

most of the victims accepted their fate easily enough. i lay in terror of the iv, which i knew would throb and hurt from the moment it was in, and the anasthetic, because i hate being unconscious when people are fucking with my body.

i always spend some time fantacizing what everyone will say when i die under the anesthesia, or whether i’ll float above the table and watch as they use desperate measures to bring me back to life. i’d be looking around and sticking my nose in it as usual - where’s that damn light?

the nurse was no help in easing my anxiety. she stood there and ran down a clipboard full of things i might be allergic to and conditions i might have had, fast and perfunctory, slashing no before i’d said anything, and moving on.

i tried to crack jokes, partly to relieve my own tension, and partly so they’d have something bizarre to talk about when they got an idle moment. who was that masked man?

but the nurse wasn’t having any of it. her job was to get me prepped and ready to go as quickly as possible.

anyway i complained to everyone i saw about her when they came and wheeled me into number 3. that would be the anesthesiologist and someone who checked on the anesthesiologist’s procedures, and the nurse who was going to punch the buttons when the doctor found something to snap a picture of, and the nurse who was hooking the line up to my iv.

the doctor came breezing in as they were bustling around, and shook my hand.

i’m in love with my doctor. that’s why i insist on women doctors, because i don’t get roantically attached to other women, so i can think.

but this doctor has the most wonderful brown eyes, and the most polished latin manners, and he’s got wavy hair you want to run your hands thru. i’d give money to be transported to a ballroom for a night of being held in the arms of my gastroenterologist. i drool to think of it.

and, really, the relationship is kind of romantic, when you look at it. for the love of this man, i am willing to ly there on my side in a thin gown, with my knees as far toward my belly as i can bring them, my flank exposed and freezing in the operating room air, while a rooomfull of people watch my doctor probe my most intimate insides. if that’s not love, what is?

but i don’t know about all that, because i was out like a light.  the doctor turned away to his people, the iv nurse put a syring of stange liquid into a line connected to my arm, and said count to three, and i thought 1, 2.

versed, the drug they used to knock me out, worked imemediately, the moment it hit my X. it felt very very bad for the count to two, and then it stopped feeling. and the next thing i knew i was being waked up in the recovery partitioned section.

but that was the colonoscopy back in 2004. my doctor has ony grown more distinguished, and the chrinkles in his eyes betray heartfelt kindness. all of his nursese love him. i went to the prep area and stuffed my clothes into a bag and sat crosslegged on the gurney with a sheet around my shoulders, freezing, waiting, reading my book.

i wanted to know what happened to that mean nurse, and nobody remembered her, and couldn’t believe she slapped people’s hands away. i like to think i had a hand in lowering her score on her final performance review.

this day, last week, the nurses and techs were all wonderful, cheery without being plastic. the anesthesiologist reminded me of a friend of my cousin’s, but i didn’t tell her, because that friend’s in jail. she near talked my ear off, telling me about today’s anasthetic, propofol.

which felt not quite as bad as the other stuff, but i got to three and a little past, and had time to tell them, around the plastic mouthpiece, that it felt almost  as bad as last time.

and then i was awake, and the doctor had already gone to the hospital and wanted me to stick around. but i know what he’s like, an i just wanted to get home, so i didn’t know what the results were until yesterday..

the doctor called me up and in honeyed tones told me that i have gastritis in the lower quadrant of my stomach, and that he had found a polyp in my colon, like he did in 2004, and was having both finds biopsied and sent to the labs, and it would be abo ut a week until he knew anything, so he would talk to me later.

in the meantime, while waiting by the phone for the kind doctor’s call, i called up his nurse and asked her to send me a copy of the report, which arrived today, and so now i have little thumbnail pictures of the polyp and my stomach. oooh. otherwise normal. the report says that. back in my office in 2 weeks, in 4 weeks.

and all this is preparatory to today’s cat scan. when it was first introduced, i remember, probably somewhat wrongly, it was called a cat scan, and now it’s called a ct scan, and as far as i can tell it’s the same thing. so what does cat stand for, and when did it change to ct? well, it’s the same thing, a bloody lot of xrays manipulated by the computer to produce pictures. i just don’t know why it’s not called cat. it’s so much more melodic to say than ct.

i love the drive from my house downtown and the hospital zone up in buckhead. it’s superhighway and skyscrapers for awhile, and of course there was a morning accident, just past the peak of rushhour, that was making loads of people late to work.

just not northbound traffic thank god.

so when the toll road approached i got off the highway and went the rest of the way on the surface streets. which is a lovely stretch of old road lined with very expensive old houses, that goes up one ravineand down another for several miles, linking the peatchtree ridge with dunwoody.

because gas is so expensive, and just because i’ve always been a tightwad, i put the trucklet into neutral and coast down all the steep hills. thirlling, quiet, you can hear the wind, hear the crickets, mainly because the windows are down and the awful bleating engine is idling for a change.

i detest air conditioning. but that’s a rant. maybe i’ll write it in my rants blog sometime.

buckhead is full of new skyscrapers. midtown is full of new skyscrapers. a whole lot of them are using a particular shade of blue glass to clad their structures, and in midtown at least it looks like all the buildings are somehow connected, part of a campus. it’s kind of nice, for huge fucking buildings where there used to be small old buildings, and even a house now and then.

but i love atlanta. it’s green, it’s beautiful, the buidings are all unique and expressive. it looks great at night, cuirsing down the connector with all the buildings lit up, and past that nothing, the darkness of the hinterland all around.

like the forest moon of endor.

next: my cat scan

i’ve got to be at my gastroenterologist’s procedure suite tomorrow morning at 10. this is fortunate, because it turns out that they’d had me scheduled for last thursday at 6:30 am, and that was unfortunate. way too early. even before morning rush hour.

anyway, while they had me scheduled for last thursday, i had it down in my book for this thursday, and so it ends up being this wednesday after we sorted it all out.

so i’m studying for the tests they’re giving me tomorrow - poking me with a stick, and sticking fingers down my throat.

colonoscopy

endoscopy

how do i study? it’s as much like torture as any scholastic cramming. only the only thing i’m cramming into myself are salty little (well, huge fucking) pills, 2 every 15 minutes until i shit out everything in one rumbly brown lumpy stream of bowel irritation.

what’s in this stuff? you may know how i detest processed foods, additives, natural flavors. (see my food industry blog). i’m digesting a bunch of propylene glycol and magnesium stearate, along with the active ingredient, and suffering the mental tortures of the damned. my body hasn’t registered anything yet, and i’ve been taking 2 pills with a glass of tea (and vodka) every 20 minutes. the instructions say 2 tablets with 12 ounces of water every 15 minutes, but i’m sitting on the computer, and time goes by unpredictably. i wouldn’t hear the timer on the microwave if i’d bothered to set it.

so it’s been almost an hour of swallowing these pills. i’m trying to drink my tea down as fast as i can, but i can’t guzzle, and just end up taking forced gulplike sips.

so i go to the kitchen feeling guilty because it’s been longer than 20 minutes, and decide there are a lot of pills left, and i’m only supposed to take 2 courses of them, one at 6 and one at 10. but because i’m going to bed earlier than that, i’m starting them at 4 and again at 8.

of course, by the time i took the final dog walk i’m going to be able for for quite a spell, and by the time i got back and oriented toward the pill-taking regimen, it was ten to five. and so now it’s after 6 and i’ve got a lot of pills left to take. so what gives. 2 every 15 minutes, but there’s like 20 left over. shit.

i looked more closely at the simplistic instructions that i only cursorily glanced at before. instead of the 2 i was expecting, the diagram clearly showed 2 rows of 2, which as everybody knows, equals 4. (except for here)

grrrrr. an hour into something explosive like taking these salt pills, and i’ve only taken half? so i refilled my glass with water and ice, and took the handful of tablets i still had to take back to the computer, and am swallowing them as fast as i can, which is no more than one every 3 minutes or so, because i can’t bring myself to swallow that much liquid, and the pills are psychologically repellant to me. the sight of them makes me queasy. so of course i don’t want to take another mouthful of water AS WELL.

but i do, staring balefully at the goddamn pills and that sickly tea-colored glass of mostly water, and i can feel my eyebrows coming together in disapproval.

i once tried fasting. i was off on a 3-month vacation with my ex the ax murderer it was in the way north woods, in a mostly empty valley that i would wander up and down in, doing my version of leaving-the-bastard therapy, which consisted of loud echoing sobs as i hiked around the great north woods.

i ws unable to continue fasting beyond mid-afternoon. i felt hunger pains and remembered something about getting sick from released toxins if you don’t keep the fuel coming, and had myself convinced that i was going to die if i didn’t eat really soon.

it’s amazing how powerful the body urges are. they completely override conscious inhibitions.

i’m on a diet today of clear liquids. it started with black coffee with a little honey this morning. nasty. then i progressed to more coffee mid-morning. and then i heated up some broth i’d made yesterday, in anticipation. yesterday it was soup, with chicken and bison simmered with onions, celery, carrott and tomato, potato and white beans, and herbs, and i ran out of garlic, damn.

last night i ate the vegetables and meat, squished up and with tomatoes and spices and i called it chili and everybody ate it.

today it’s just whitish broth. it’s supposed to be clear, but i can’t bring myself to it. there’s potato starch and animal fat. i can avoid drinking the sludge perhaps.

last time i did this, the doctor yelled at me. i ate one tiny spoonful of sherbert late in the afternoon of the day before, and it left milky streaks all over the inside of my intestines. oops.

this time i’m being more careful. altho i did the indian thing of heating up spices in some oil and adding it to the soup broth. i used cinnamon and cloves and nutmeg and coriander and ginger and chili powder and garlic powder, and browned them in butter, and then tossed some vinegar into the broth before i drank it.

i’m not used to horribly hot foods, and this was one broth that made me think of fire, and got jim up to refill his water glass unexpectedly during lunch.

the spices were probably something i’m going to get yelled at for, this time. cinnamon is red. cloves are red. chili is red. the instructions clearly state you’re not supposed to have tomatoes or grape juice or beets because the red will show up looking like blood when they take the camera in rhere.

and i ate loads of them. i did however avoid the sludge on the bottom. i feel virtuous. and i spat out all the coriander seeds, too.

i’m beginning to feel the slightest rumblings in the ascending part of my large intestine. i’ve just now downed the last pill for this round, and will wait on the effects. i’ve done this before. purging is a very interesting experience.

i rememeber one time when i was getting a colonic. i receommend them heartily. nothing like cleaning out the built-up accumulations of toxins in the lining of the gut. mmm good.

i was getting a colonic, about 5 gallons of warm water was being irrigated thru my large intestines, i was positioned on a clinical table with my butt end clearly visible in a mirror that i could use to watch. or not.

i always like to watch. whether it’s them putting a needle into my veins, or whether it’s watching the operation i’m in surgery for, i always insist on being able ot see what’s going on so i can make sure to ask all the stupid questions i want. i am quite capable of making the surgeon forget what she is doing.

maybe not so enlightened.

anyway, in the middle of this colonic. it was about 45 minutes into the procedure, and i suddenly fetl as if a muzzy cloud had lifted off my brain. all of a sudden i could think better. it was like moving thru a veil. it was incredible, the difference. logic was easier, intuition was easier, clarity was crisp and easily communicated. everything was clean and crisp and apparent. and this state of awareness lasted all day.

ah, i can smell jim in the kitchen. not himself, his smell isn’t that strong. i can smell dinner. when i don’t make dinner, he cooks his old standby, which is skanky frozen burgers from sam’s club. our houseguest allen must have gottten back from his new construction job, and must be hungrey, because it’s smelling awfully good in there.

i’ve pretty much stopped eating red meat, except for bison. and i’e just realized that bison is made the same old horrible way regular beef is made, so i don’t really want to eat that anymore.

grass fed beef is your only man.

anyway, i’m fasting, drinking nothing but liquids all day, and i’ve just gone thru this ordea l fo swallowing 20 pills in about an hour and a half, and now there are searing meat smells coming back here from my kitchen. waaaaaah.

which is why i’m drinking even tho they specifically tellll you not to. so i won’t mind as much because i’ll be in an altered sttate.

i hongry.

they used to make you drink this horrible bottle of liquid and wait to shit it out. now it’s pills. they’re horrible, and salty, but better than the liquid. the flavors and texture additives were poison. with the pills it’s necessary ato drink lot s of water, to give your bowels something to flood thru them. you don’t want to be dehydrated and take these pills, it’d be like processing sandpaper. roto rooter.

how boring life is without food. i spend the morning dog walk thinking about breakfast, and then pick and nibble thru the morning, and dream up something nice for lunch, and spend maybe several hours planning and contriving dinner, and i’m always thinking of desserts but seldom making them.

i learned while cruising thru the catalan countryside with my friend francis, that all activities are merely ways of killing time between meals. eating was the highest good, that and drinking a bottle of wine at every sitting. and good conversation. the real, true values of life.

the grumbling has begun, so i’m going to finish this up and go sit in the bathroom with a good book.

* * *

well, it’s several hours later, and i just can’t keep it in. i simply must let my feelings out or i shall explode.

thus my enlightening experience with intestinal purging.

it gets to the point where you don’t know if you’re shitting or pissing. it sounds the same. you’ve drunk so much water that it feels the same. you just can’t tell.

this can be a little disconcerting. except for the fact that you’ve been going thru this so long that you’re thoroughly tired, exhausted, and jaded. physically, if your asshole dropped out of your body you wouldn’t feel much surprise.

so, grumble grumble grumble, then you feel this pressure, like you have to fart. but at this stage, you can’t be sure. so you rush to the bathroom, and make it just in time to hear what sounds like a gallon of water hit the bowl all at once.

it’s exhausting, fasting all day. the hours go by so much slower than when you can eat. life is so empty without food. thank god we’re organic beings. life as a rock would hold no temptations for me.

all day i ate nothing, and then in the end i crammed down as many pills and as much water as i could hold.

excuse me, i’ll be right back.

thanks. that’s better. it’s certainly better waiting out the cramping episodes sitting here at the computer, rather than relaxing into the false sense of security that is my dark bed, the false promise that is sleepiness, next to my jim, who is sleeping thru all this getting up and lying down stuff i’m doing every five minutres.

i throw the sheet off of my legs, and swing them onto the floor. then i get up heavily and stagger thru the dark to the bathroom, sit down, release the floodgates, pick up a book, and sit there, my rectum aching and stinging, a fetid, organic, homely kind of vegetable aroma all around me, all those spices i stuck in the soup. the results in the bowl in fact look remarkably like the soup broth i had for lunch today.

that was funny. lunch. 2 cups black coffee with honey, and then a bowl of broth, thin, watery gruel, more spices than taste, took my mouth awhile to calm down afterwards. and then nothing to look forward to. oh, i could have paced myself, led up to a dinner of more broth later. but i put the rest way, and just decided to drink water, because i coudn’t stomach the pretense of trying to drink hot water and pretend it was food.

hamburgers. steak. stir fry.

i started fantacizing shit i don’t even like to eat - french fries. onion rings. fried chicken. milkshakes, gooey artificially flavored ersatz ice cream. mmm.

and eventually, after 20 pills and one gallon of water, i was bloated, nauseous, hiccoughing, farting, feeling drunk and off balance, stumbling thru the dark to go to the bathroom. AGAIN. and after an interminable time, i flushed and turned off the light and staggered back to bed, and crawled up next to jim and pulled the sheet over me and plumped my pillow and sighed, and started to relax and drift.

and then felt pressure moving toward the outer airlock. captain, she’s going to blow.

.

and for what? so i can get up early and be hungry for maybe 4 or 5 hours before they open my veins and knock me out with something that feels really bad during my last second of consciousness, cram cameras and scalpels up my ass and into my stomach, and then revive me while telling me what they found (and me not able to retain it or ask any questions - hell, in my book) and send me off too shaky to drive.

jim is going to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the recovery room. he’s my hero.

i keep trying to end this on an upbeat note. i keep getting interrupted by pain and anguish.

this last one was intense nausea, followed by the usual urgent pressure in my rectum, followed by having to decide whether to shit first, or throw up. i was really sick for a few minutes there.

i threw up second. it was all salt water, of course, and i felt so much better after i had done it, like that kid in the sixth sense.

i feel like a mindless thing leaking life energy, like a chicken with its head cut off, reflexively, spasmodically, violently flinging my insides out.

and as soon as it stops i’m going to have a lovely night sleeping thru the hunger pains.

maybe i’ll try for sleep now.

ever since i got cancer, i don’t worry about the small stuff. like, i used to have this varicose vein running year by year from above my knee up the inside of my thigh. and it would pulse a little, and bother me sometimes, and i would  obsess on it like i was going to die.

but then i was faced with an actual life-threatening affliction, and suddenly who the fuck cares about a varicose vein? i don’t even notice it anymore, except to pat it like an old friend and laugh about how i used to worry.

so, the perspective of knowing you’re going to die. you’re doomed. DOOMED.

and this takes a great deal of the worry out of it, if you can only see it that way.

* * *

my dad died of a ruptured ascending aortic aneurysm - his heart shredded inside his chest. he said it felt like being hit with a baseball bat, and he drove himself to the hospital. he had to be dying at the time, he would never have gone to a doctor otherwise.

turns out it’s hereditary. my little sister has one. and she’s been begging everyone to get checked, so i added it to the list.

i told my nurse practitioner, a wonderful woman who reminds me of an old hippie mother teresa. any way, i recounted my family history, dweling on my sister’s fanatical insistance on the worst possible outcome. she raised her eyebrows and sent me to a cardiologist, who has started in on what promise to be an endless series of tests.

we did the echocardiogram. it’s an ultrasound all over your chest wall. it bruised the hell out of the ribs on my left side. the tech and i had a lovely conversation, and she said she saw nothing except a little valve leakage, nothing abnormal given my age, 52.

that was 3 weeks ago. the following week we were supposed to do a cat scan of my chest. but the insurance company balked, and wanted more information, which nobody has gotten around to giving them.

i learned this today because i went back to the cardiologist for what my daybook says was another echo, only to be told i’m just following up. 

i got put in an exam room. at least i can’t say i was kept waiting in the waiting room.

i sat in the exam room and finished my novel. an hour or more. good thing i come prepared.

then the doctor came rushing in. they’d only just paged him five minutes ago, he swears, and apologizes up and down.

no, i told him, no apologies needed. i just now this very second finished reading my novel (an interesting thing about britain in the 70s, ending in something straight out of finnegan’s wake.) it would be late back to the library if not for this opportunity. thank you.

i caught him up to date with my chart. the tech hadn’t found anything, an the insurance balked at paying for a cat scan. this surprised him no end.

then he left me to go look at the results of the echo. and came backall smiles, because he looked at the results and saw an enlargement, just a slight one, but just at the large end of normal, which he could call a suspected enlargement, and the insurance would have to allow a cat scan then.

hurray.  i’m so enthusiastic. i personally felt that it wasn’t wasting my time to be told that they hadn’t followed up on a few things they should have taken care of, and while i really shouldn’t have had to come in, in fact i stopped at the fabric store on the way in, and i finished reading my book, so i couldn’t call the time a total loss.

and now there’s a cat scan to schedule, an <angiogram. i feel tired.

wait. there’s more.

i got home, and was told my gastroenterologist’s office had called, so i called back and they’ve scheduled me for a cat scan of my abdomen and pelvis for the middle of july. so now i’m going to have 2 cat scans. what did they report about cat scans and hiroshima? maybe i can combine them. i’ll go to my little nurse practitioner warrior woman.

and when he said there was a slight enlargement visible on the echo, what he was really saying was that he’s seeing an aneurism, because that’s what aneurysm means, enlargement. neat sidestepping, doctor.

so if i feel like someonebody’s pounding me on the back, i need to rush over to the hospital, where they maybe don’t freeze your body to stop your heart so they can go i and sew it up anymore.

so maybe i won’t die of cancer, after all? does that cheer anybody up?

but why should i mind which way i die? it’s over so quickly, what does the type of death matter?

what does the quality of life matter? if we’re all going to die, what does any of it matter?

well, it doesn’t. it matters more how you take it, what you make of it, so that you’re happy with how you managed, and don’t have too many regrets. whatever kind of life that takes.

i try to schedule one medical procedure a week, no more. i spent 3 hours not seeing the doctor today, and that ruins what little i can get done of my very important artwork. very important simply because it’s what i’m doing, and what i’m doing is more important than 99% of what anybody else might want.

the coolest flag they can put on your chart in the hospitals and clinics is ‘hypochondriac.’ i’ve had ‘trouble’ used on my chart before, and it elicits a different response from the staff, but if you’re a hypochondriac, then the best thing to do is to humor you, so that you go away reassured, so that you go away.

so they’ll run some tests, no problem. especially if you’re nice about it, and i always try to take them little presents and talk about their personal lives. just so they’re not bored all the time. they can have a dose of me to talk about later.

who was that wierd patient? what did she say?

the downstairs tenant is having a construction party tonight - they’re making a kissing booth as a promotion for her pin-up business (all very tastefully trashy), for some gig they’re doing tomorrow to celebrate their 2nd year in business. makeup, hair, photo shoots, the glamor business. she and a few friends are out there constructing. in the alley between the houses, right beneath our bedroom.

so we simply moved the whole party into the spare bedroom, where we normally watch movies. dog on the bed, dog under the bed, me, jim, schyler, smudge. they’re all in there now, and i’m out in the computer room in the back hall, and it’s getting late in the evening, and they’re making noise on one end of the hosue and my people are sleeping peacefully in the room behind the door i’m sitting here on the computer guarding from bother.

at least, it feels like a holy mission to me. but really it’s that i can’t get comfortable, the whole restless leg thing, which i remember was never a syndrome at all until they’d developed a narcotic for it, which i won’t take, because i don’t trust prescription drugs or the companies they came from (that’s another blog)

where was i? so i’m up. the time of night when your worst fears take on new dimensions. but i’m not in that kind of mood right now, so never mind.

i’ve been working on a breast cancer joke. now, these are difficult to come up with, because nobody thinks breast cancer is funny.

you’re a vicitim, first thing, and everybody feels sorry for you. it’s like your’e missing some other body part, an arm or leg, half your head, and people don’t quite meet your eyes they’re so sorry.

you are forced to hide it by wearing a prosthetic device or getting jellied bags of plastic stuffed under your skin, or losing half your abdominal strength to fill out a skin pouch that never quite matches what they’ve taken away.

and besides, you’re an ex woman now that you’ve had such a vital part of your sexuality ripped from your chest. which is totally untrue, i’m here to tell you. it’s just the general expectation.

besides which, you’re going to die now, because you have cancer, and no matter what they say about being in remission and being cancer-free, once you develop cancer in your body, you’ve got cancer in your body. it’s a little bitty cell, and you’ve got loads of cancer cells running around in your body, i don’t care who you are. everybody’s got them, just waiting to be triggered.

cancer-free or in remission, you’re just waiting for the next musical set of your dance with cancer.

it’s too bleak to think about.

which is why nobody has any breast cancer jokes. i wonder if there are more just plain cancer jokes, or is this a taboo in our culture? what with the rising rates of cancer worldwide, caused in my opinion by all the chemicals in our food, air, water, and ground, plus a frightening dose of electromagnetic exposure - you’d think cancer would be something we’d all just kind of smile shyly and nod our heads about. yeah, me too.

well, it will be soon. so, let’s have something we can laugh about. not laugh with world-weary amusement, like that song dad used to play at night, peggy lee. not laughing nervously and looking away, but really letting loose and shaking the house guffawimg.

anyway, i’ve been working out this joke. it’s got to do with having only one breast. the idea is that i’m going out for the brazilian olympic archery team, and have cut off a breast to qualify.

i’ve tried this joke several ways, but basically nobody knows anything about the amazons, fierce tribe of warrior women who kicked the shit out of the ancient greeks. they cut off their right breast so they could shoot their bows and arrows with more efficiency.

nobody’s heard of the amazons? why has it always been an important reference for me?

anyway, this time, i have to confess something awful here, which i’ve probably mentioned casually earlier, but the last time i had a mammogram they didn’t have gowns anymore, and no paper shirts you leave open at the front, but they had these cute little cape things with pink ribbons all over it. and it was a half-circle, and easy as hell to make, and i just had to copy it, so after my mammogram, i put my shirt on over it, and walked out.

i stole a mammography cape.

anyway, i came home and have started designing clothing based on the thing. but i got a great idea. it’s really comfortable to wear, so i’ve been wearing it, and nobody notices. and i’ve been thinking about my joke. and i realized that i had some iron-on transfer paper, and pretty soon i was looking thru my character map trying to find exactly the right font. i wanted something sharp and poky, something that evoked knives. i forget what i ended up with, something called viner hand.

i wrote on the back in big letters - amazon

i wrote on the right breast - brazilian archery team - and put a set of olympic rings in pink above it.

i thought it looked cool. i wore it out that night, and most people never noticed anything unusual (i swear some of them have never noticed that i’m missing a breast).

i did get a chance to talk about having breast cancer while waiting in line for the bathroom during the break, and one woman admitted that she’d lost hers, and she was so uncomfortable talking about it, and so brave for making herself speak up, and i was so happy to see her pushing past her discomfort to share something with me. it was really cool. i’ll talk to her next week.

so okay i arrive at my surgeon’s, and there’s been all hell, and the doctor is in emergency surgery with this really sick kid, and i voluntarily ask to reschedule. i’ve waitied in that room before, and knew i didn’t have enough of a book left to read to justify what ‘an hour’ really means.
i did show the girls my rash, and said that since my period started three days ago, it has faded, for the first time in, let’s see how many weeks.
three weeks ago i took the rash to my oncologist, and i’d had it about three weeks at that time. a week later i went to my primary, who referred me to the surgeon to biopsy, so that’s a month and a half.
and the lump in the right breast that hurt, hurt as i was beginning to bleed, and so that’s hormonal. it’s only if the same thing happens again in the same spot, next month, that i need to worry about it.
but i’m going back next tuesday, and she’ll scrape off any skin that’s still rashlike, and she’ll mush around in my breast tissue, and if necessary do an ultrasound on that, so i’l still being a good girl and getting everything checked out.
so nobody needs to fuss at me for what i’m doing or not doing. okay?
but for the moment the thoughts of oh my god it’s back are in the background, where they’re really so much more comfortable. and i can go back to my work, finishing my sister’s wallhanging, which i’m finding much more interesting.
until the next thing.

like i said before, every twinge and you think it’s back. but what happpens when it does come back? then it all becomes real.

and after all the trouble and hassle of getting it checked out, it turns out to be nothing, just good old hypochondriac me.

but what if it doesn’t turn out to be nothing? changes your life in an instant, every time, even the false alarms. just thinking about it changes your life. that’s why people don’t like to think about death. it brings it closer.

but i learned in my castaneda that death advises you, informs your decisions, and is a good friend to have around. and be sure to watch reruns of dead like me.

so i’ve been extra special fatigued since march, when i got into a creating frenzy before my sister’s wedding and way overdid it. my fault, of course. but look at what i accomplished.

so i’m not getting much accomplished at all, the fabric work i’ve been doing has been slow and painstaking. i make progress, but can’t stamp them out like i used to.

about a month ago, in the 100+ degree heat spell we had, i developed a little mosquito bite of a rash on my chest wall, where my right breast used to be. and so i watched it. and it didn’t go away, and so i took it to various oncologists and doctors and am now going to get it biopsied tomottow.

on top of which, my left breast, the breast that’s left, gave me a sharp pain last night, and i felt one of the miilk ducts complaining, so i massaged it and went to bed, and now it doesn’t hurt unless i press on it, but i can still feel all those ducts and fat cells in there, and they’re all lumpy. it’s how old lady’s breasts get, like mushy peas in a sock. and i’m worrying about everything when it all comes to nothing. i’ll get a headache next, and be convinced it’s a brain tumor.

so i have something to worry about, and that is that i’m getting all worried, actively panicked, every time i get an ache or pain. and at my advanced age, yeah, i’m only 52, i’ve got aches and pains everywhere, constantly. which suits my hypochondriac side very nicely.

this is way before any biopsies or sonograms can be done, mind you. i’m getting all panicked out in advance. which is in a way, a wish for it to come true.

when (if) the cancer comes back, then i’m going to be required to do the chemo and radiation that i put off last time. this means my hair will fall out. so i’m thinking i’ll shave it, donate it to locks of love, and get a tattoo on my scalp. maybe a little fairy whispering into my ear. it’s likely to hurt, but i know loads of people who routinely do painkillers, so i can always dose up and make jokes while the girl drills into my head.

i think of these little, fun, rebellious things to do. i knew a woman who had chemo, and she or a friend knitted herself a cap that said ‘fuck cancer’, and she wore it everywhere.

when i got a mastectomy, i debated whether to let them reconstruct my breast. it would have meant another 6 weeks of recovery time. it would have meant either tearing out my abdominal muscles or putting foreign substances in my body. it would have meant nobody would ever know that i’d had breast cancer.

and this somehow didn’t sit right with me. i didn’t want it to be a secret. i didn’t want to hide. i didn’t want people to pretend nothing was wrong, different, unusual.

so i decided to be the poster girl for mastectomy. i haven’t yet gone as far as getting a mastectomy scar tattoo, but i have refused to wear my screw-on prosthesis (okay, a blob of silicone in a bag in a bra). i have always hated wearing bras, always disliked the unnatural sillhouette, always detested the way bras make my shoulders and back feel. so the idea of wearing a big fucking heavy sweaty bra every day of the rest of my life, when i had shunned them before, was a very difficult idea to come to terms with.

that was another reason not to have reconstructive surgery. i’m 52. my breast sags. not down to my belly button, but it rolls into my armpit when i lie down (which is actually pretty comforting). if i got a fake boob, they would put it where breasts usually start budding, which is near the top of my ribcage. and it wouldn’t have matched my existing breast. so they might have offered to take the real one up to match the fake one. and that was something i just couldn’t stand the thought of. so forget it.

all of the reasons i should have had reconstructive surgery were bad ones as far as i was concerned. and the worst one was the one my ex gave. if you don’t get a new breast, he tried to convince me, no man will ever look at you again.

bullshit.

so i go around looking lopsided. i suffer from self consciousness at the best of times. sometimes when i go out, i recall halfway around the block that i’m a freak, and that people must notice from far away and stare at me, and get all bothered by my appearance. the embarrassment is excruciating. but i do it anyway. and eventually i forget about how i look and just be myself.

i have family members that challenge my decision. they think i’m trying to shock people, to make them uncomfortable, to shove my breast in their faces. they think it’s the height of rudeness to go around making people take notice of my disfigurement. it’s not polite. it’s not socially acceptable. in this society, you have to look normal, like everyone else. these are the same family members who think i should go around wearing makeup on my face, who think i should use deodorant, even tho it’s very bad for you. their feeling is that you should do things that are bad for you if it makes the people around you feel more comfortable.

where’s that at? what kind of stupid idea is that?

i’m going around without my screw-on prosthesis because i feel more comfortable that way, i feel more complete. i am me, and i accept the things that have happened in my life. and the family members don’t understand, and put the comfort of strangers (what will the neighbors think) way above my own comfort. but i can’t do that. even tho i’m horribly embarrassed at times, i can’t go around pretending nothing has happened.

and you know the frightening thing about it? practically nobody notices that i only have one breast.

people don’t look. people don’t notice. people are too absorbed in their own shit to see me. i’m invisible. partly because i’m 52. i know this is a phenomenon. young people don’t see old people. but people my age see people their age. you’d think. but, really, i can stand around talking to neighbors in the street or members of my choir, and they don’t ever look down at my chest.

or else they’re pretending not to notice, because they think it’s not polite. because they think it’ll bother me. because they were raised not to talk about the elephant in the room.

but i welcome conversations about cancer. i have a lot to say about the subject, i have a lot to share. i want people to notice, ask questions, make observations. we don’t face death and disability in this culture. we don’t meet the eyes of people in wheelchairs or people with missing arms or legs. we ignore them and hope they go away because we think somehow it might be catching. or something stupid like that.

i’m actually glad when i run into people with missing limbs. i can slap my empty chest and say hey, i know where you’re coming from, and we can have a conversation and two members of a constantly growing club. and they don’t look at me as if i’m normal. they look at me as a person with scars, a person who’s been marked by their disfigurement, who has an extra dimension to their personality.

i wish normal people would notice and ask questions. i long for someone to ask me to show them my scar. i want to help them face the fact that they’ll probably get cancer too, because these days, with the environment and our diets the way they are (don’t forget cellphones), everybody is going to have cancer sooner or later. and we all might as well get over our horrible fears about it.

do you want to live forever?

the response is always, ‘no you didn’t (fool).’ but i believe in mind over matter. i believe that words have power. i believe that god listens.

after 9/11, i was appalled that america reached for the gun instead of stopping to wonder how something like that could have happened. no introspection at all, no realization that the