Tag: doctors

The Prompt You Were Supposed to Get This Morning

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is the thing you most hate to be asked?

Are You Lookin’ At Me?

My medical diagnosis is “alternating lateral isotropia.”

What it means is that my eyes do not track together. I do not have 3D vision, which means that I cannot place an object in its environment. I have no depth perception or angle of convergence. The way it is different from a strabismus is that neurologically, by brain switches “cameras,” thus fields of vision, depending on which eye it thinks can see the best…. leaving me with no peripheral vision and also no ability to predict what’s going to be outside my field of vision.

It also makes finding things I’ve just set down extraordinarily difficult, something I’ve struggled with forever…. again, rewarding neurotypical kids for things that are very hard for the neurodivergent. When a teacher notices you lose everything, you lose all respect with them. It affects grades where the letter is an abstract concept, like essays. I wish I excelled at math, because there would have been no fear of rejection with every paper and I could have felt better about myself without a teacher’s approval.

It doesn’t help that the real non-medical definition of my medical condition is “lazy eye.” That irritates me, too. I’m a writer. Why wouldn’t lazy be a trigger for me? Trust me, I may not “work” faster than you (universal) because I don’t know how neurotypicals do it, but I think faster. It’s not because I’m neurotypical. It’s that my entire job here is reacting to life, so I feel practiced at it and more comfortable in my skin. Lucky enough to be as old as I am because the good experiences only start happening after you’ve figured out how to avoid all the land mines first.

It’s good I’m still workin’ on that.

But back to this whole “lazy eye” thing. It makes me feel lesser than, and though I know that doctors use it, they should know that for some people it doesn’t feel particularly favorable…. like “MDT” in Appalachia.

If you’re not a doctor there, you’d never figure it out. It’s not really something you can google, only something they’ve seen a thousand times and you probably haven’t. My cousin got his DO in West Virginia. Because it’s local slang for something I feel is pejorative, I won’t say it here. I’ll let them keep it to themselves because it would seem really mean outside of an emergency setting. Mostly because I don’t want people to shoot the messenger, not that I’m not brave enough. I don’t have to live there, but they do.

That was all bullshit. Of course I won’t hold back on you. If they’re willing to use it in a public setting, I don’t care about their feelings.

MDT stands for “Mountain Dew Teeth.” It absolutely will rot everything in your head if you are completely addicted, and that kind of exposure to sugar can absolutely kill you when you wait until it’s an emergency and septic.

People have had this addiction since Mountain Dew was a home brew. Long, long before it developed into a nationwide phenomenon.

There are also lots of other things that doctors don’t want patients to know, but they have to have a black sense of humor to deal with the pressure. It’s not trying to be mean, it’s learning to breathe. Think line cook.

So, I don’t know what doctors say about me behind my back, but I know lots of things they would say when lives are on the line.

Doctors’ hardest jobs are the cleanup from not having universal health insurance. They are bound by the Hippocratic Oath, yet it’s not an easy job when you are starting with fucked up. The ER is full of complicated cases where people have gone to the Emergency Room at the height of their disease. The part where it gets harder and harder to tell people they’ll recover from this.

Death happens at random, but it’s more likely when the odds are stacked against you. You think something is wrong, and wait to go to the doctor until you’re in renal failure. Other countries don’t have this problem.

Having universal heath care would help a lot of doctors’ mental health…. because there’d be so many less emergencies. It helps when you have time to prepare a plan.

I know all of this through talking to doctors when they’re off work, not by being a patient. So, I’m not as bothered when medical professionals call it “lazy eye” because if I’m at the doctor I’m already thinking in clinical mode, anyway. The emotion is not going to affect me, at least not until it accumulates.

People ask me all the time if I’m looking at them, and I don’t fuckin’ know. Your guess is as good as mine, and I am not in the mood for your bullshit ever. It’s always said with this curiosity tinged with “that’s so weird.” That’s why Zac can get away with making fun of me and no one else can. His jabs don’t feel like he’s punching down when he is also disabled, something I’ve never had in a friend or partner.

Disability is a relative term in the military. I don’t mean to imply that he is also unemployed. He’s classified as disabled, but he’s physically strong enough to work. It”s going to make a good pension for him, and I think he’s going to be really happy no matter what he chooses to do after this. It’s cool to be able to stand next to an adult when I feel like I don’t have it together.

Plus, there’s lots of soda in his basement, which adds to his charm.

Today, I’m going home because even though Zac is of and about, I wanted to wake up with Oliver. I wished Zac could have come with me, but the stars didn’t align for that one. I’ll just have to wait for Jason Moran at The Kennedy Center.

Oh, but here’s the best thing I’ve heard in a million years:

Leslie (texting a link): I know you’re not a huge fan, but I thought you might want to read my impressions of last night.

Lindsay: I AM A HUGE FAN.

I….. I did not consider this.

Ooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Awkward.

Today’s Not That Bad

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.

I woke up this morning, took a shower, and got to the doctor. Turns out, I was within the range to refill my medication, and I freaked out for nothing. I was worried because my insurance doesn’t cover my meds if I try to refill them before a certain time. I do not know how or why, but my count was off by a few days and I was panicking…. until I saw my doctor.

She’s so great. I think she’s actually a PA, but I wouldn’t see an MD as an upgrade. She really listens to me. What’s really funny is that I always call her “Doc,” because she’s a PA. The MD’s name is on everything. She never says her name when she comes into the room. Therefore, I have an excellent doctor, but I couldn’t tell you her name if my life depended on it…. Now I’m laughing to myself, the greatest part of an ideal day.

I’m getting a full work-up because when I came in last month, my UA was off; I was on my cycle (I hadn’t realized it yet, but the test did). Then, I remembered several years ago that I’d done a UA for rheumatoid arthritis years ago, and that had been off for the same reason. So, not only am I getting my hands x-rayed, I’m getting my theumatoid factor checked- which I would not have known to do if I hadn’t been a rheumatology MA for a number of years.

I remembered today because my knuckles are particularly sensitive/swollen today and my doctor agreed with me that we should rule it out. I realize that osteoarthritis is just as painful, but if I have an autoimmune disease, I want to catch it early.

It’s funny that if the test comes back positive, I’ll be using all the same lingo for myself that I’ve learned for everyone else. That being said, again, osteo is no joke and I’ve been taking ibuprofen a lot lately. I am also of the opinion that we’re just ruling it out, because I’ve had osteo in my back and knees for years. Cooking is not for the faint of heart.

My spine is just as weird as I am. It objects to that.

I also got neurology and psychology referrals so that I can do the thing with both those specialties. I need the neurology workup because I haven’t had one since I was 18 months old and I’m still just as physically weak as I was then.

You’ll also be delighted to know that since I’ve moved to Washington and left Portland behind, I’ve made impressive strides in my quest for a higher Vitamin D level. The last time I had it checked, it was 6 (it’s been a long time). After all these years, I am proud to say that I have worked my way up to 6.4.

Progress.

I said, “Doc, I have a funny story about that. When my stepmom read my lab report the last time I got my Vitamin D level checked, she called and congratulated me for having the lowest Vitamin D level in the history of her 30 year practice.” She said, “I’ve seen ‘4,’ but you’re top two.” We both laughed that that one. But to my stepmom, I was living in Portland and visiting, so I said, “I’d like to thank ‘location, location, location.'” Now I know that’s not true.

Perspective.

What I didn’t know is that there’s a once a week medication for that, and I’m on it now. The regular Vitamin D pills do not work for me. They never have (obviously). A normal level begins at 30, and I hope that this medication works. Vitamin D affects your mood and behavior so much, and I think I’ll be grateful to feel so much better in a few months.

I just had a Dooce moment. She once joked about writing like a Southerner and she said “I AM SPARING YOU THE DETAILS OF EARL’S ANGINA.” This is absolutely hilarious to me because basically, I’m not. I’m a Southerner who loves medicine, so I’m going to blog about it.

I have so many stories about the hospital/office living vicariously through my dad and stepmom. I wasn’t in the patient rooms, but definitely in the lobby when we were there for a consult. I wasn’t really joking when I said I went to medical school in the back seat of a Lexus. I overhear a lot. I pay attention to a lot.

I can still tell you about the patient whose son hit her in the head with a frying pan (she didn’t die, but she was never the same). I can still tell you who my favorite patient was to mimic, because her voice was so damn funny. Absolutely not a slam, I just love the way people speak and I pick it up over time.

I’ve picked up “valid” from Zac. It’s a great answer to everything.

I’ve picked up the occasional Canadian “eh” from Meagan, but I use it infrequently because there are certain times when a Canadian would say it and when they wouldn’t. I can tell where it would fit into a sentence just by the lilt of Meag’s accent, and when I know I want to use an “eh,” she reads the sentence back to me in my head so I can double check.

I can pick out a million things that have shaped me from all my friends, but those are my biggest examples. The current and the first. 😉

I decided to stop talking about medicine because when Franklin and I lived together, no one wanted to sit with us because we’d go off into the way doctors talk when they’re amongst themselves and no one could even enter the conversation because there was no concrete way to jump in. If I didn’t understand something, he’d explain it because he knew I was perfectly capable of picking up what he was putting down. As a result, part of my ideal day is spending time with doctors, because I can relate and am genuinely interested.

I think I would have been a good doctor in terms of patient care, but I would have struggled mightily before I got to that point. I didn’t even make it to calculus in high school.

I never saw anyone do calculus, you just have to make it through it…. plus organic chemistry, a different kind of math. However, most of what I’ve learned in a medical practice vs. a hospital is that there’s time. You pick up so much more through social engineering than you pick up through facts. That’s because you have to prescribe for them and hope to God they’re telling the truth about what they’re really on.

A great example would be not telling an anesthesiologist you’re high. The gas man doesn’t need as much, and has to hope they don’t kill you by putting you so far down.

A great example would be not telling your GP that you’re taking Sudafed and Adderrall at the same time.

A great example would be telling your doctor that you’re depressed, but neglecting to tell them that you’ve been taking St. John’s wort for months. Most SSRI’s react poorly to it.

This is basically a public service announcement to tell your doctors everything. They’re not going to judge you, they’re not going to call the police because you do drugs (unless you threaten to hurt someone else, yourself, or you’ve hurt your child). They’re not going to try and get you deported. They’re the ones you tell. Always.

I have now had my X-rays, and I took off a ring I’ve been wearing since 2005. It was very, very hard- again, swollen knuckles. I should stop wearing it, but it’s such a part of me. But eventually, it’ll get harder to remove it for X-rays. I just like having a silver ring on my thumb, and have since I stole it from Katharine. She knew I did. I doubt she’d know I still wear it. But, that’s how it came to be on my thumb. Her hands were bigger. 😉 It’s basically a fidget spinner, and I use it to stim. There was no way I was ever going to let go of it.

Then, I finally had enough to drink that I could do the UA, because of course the moment Doc wants it I’d just been to the bathroom. I went down and got my pills, then shotgunned a bottle of water and a Diet Pepsi. I was worried that my teeth would be floating by the time I got back to the doctor’s office, but no. I just hope I don’t have to do this again next month because it was too watered down to see anything.

But, as Matthew McConaughey says about beer, “I like to dehydrate while I rehydrate.” I know I couldn’t drink him under the table unless it was Dr Pepper, and even then I have my doubts.

But I’m constantly rehydrating like a Graves Disease patient, but there’s apparently nothing wrong with my liver and kidneys. Seriously, I can think of very few times in my day when I don’t have something to drink in my hand. I prefer cold cans and bottles so it’s not watered down. Unless it’s Coke from McDonald’s. Let’s not get stupid.

It’s good to know that my weight is under control and I haven’t dropped too much with the re-addition of the Adderall.

I have more in common with my Skyrim character than anything else, because I also look like an elf at this point.

However, I am getting to be a better elf.

This is the perfect day. I had such a significant increase in my Vitamin D level that it really boggles the mind.

#winning

The Zoloft Hug

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s your dream job?

If we are going on true fantasy here, my perfect job would be “psychiatrist.” This is because I don’t want to talk to you about your problems. I want to manage your meds and let you verbally vomit all over someone else. 😉 However, I don’t think I would have done very well in medical school since I had trouble in high school chemistry. So, if I really wanted to, I could get an MSW or an LPC and indeed let you verbally vomit all over me, but I can’t think of a job I would dislike more. It’s not because people have problems.

It’s that I tend to take on everyone else’s problems as my own, and I think I would burn out easily. This wouldn’t be the case if I was a psychiatrist, because those are 15 minute appointments just like every other specialty. I like talking about diagnoses, protocols, etc. because I recognize patterns. I know the different classes of crazy meds and what they do, generally because I’ve been on it at one time or another.

Even if I went back to school to become a pychiatrist, I know that in some ways, I wouldn’t be happy because there are drawbacks to every job. I wouldn’t like working for Kaiser or any other managed care group. I wouldn’t like fighting insurance companies because generic makes my patient throw up all over the floor and brand doesn’t.

I also wouldn’t like that in today’s climate, my advice would mean as much as the ingredients on a cereal box. People go to the doctor differently now. I think that drug commercials being on TV has led to this. You spend years in medical school, internship, and residency only to find that Karen who looks at WebMD all day has “more answers than you.” I am all for being an advocate for your own health. I draw the line at telling my doctors what they should prescribe for me. I feel like you need a degree for that?

No, Karen sees something on TV that she just has to try and if she throws a fit in the exam room, there are too many doctors who can’t be arsed to listen to it and think, “well, it probably won’t kill her.” I think what I really mean is that I would have liked to be a psychiatrist in the 80s and 90s, before everyone with the IQ of bean dip decided they needed to be on the Internet.

I do not know what it would be like to go to medical school in today’s climate, either, because they don’t do much to prepare you for running your own practice. I’d probably end up working for a hospital just so I didn’t have to make ends meet all on my own. I think that med students are better able to advocate for themselves when they get tired, but that’s relatively new. Many, many interns and residents think you should learn like they did, and they are not fond of “the new rules.”

The thing is, the doctors aren’t happy, either. It’s like working in a kitchen- you don’t leave when the restaurant closes, you leave when everything is done for the night… you can’t leave anything in process. While the hospital doesn’t close, there’s lots of both up and downtime. For a doctor, all this translates into the limit of hours you can work…….. being on shift for 11.5 hours and having someone code. Are you going to take your break or take care of your patient?

Hospitals in large part haven’t changed since the 70s. Michael Chrichton wrote a great non-fiction book about it called “Five Patients,” in which he explains the ideas I’m talking to you about now in detail…. it’s a short book, though. If you’re interested or if you know someone going to med school, I’d recommend it to you or as a gift. It’s gritty and real, and though I don’t remember the other four, Peter Luchesi stayed with me.

But if I jump out of fantasyland, I think I already have the skillset I need to launch me into a more well-respected writer. I don’t know that I want to put energy into a different basket than that.

But whatever job I write about, perfect or not, that’s the point. The real job is not the doing, but the remembering…. and I have that covered no matter the subject.

Even medicine.

A Stroke, Hopefully of Luck

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

I just received word that my dad has had a stroke, but there’s a lucky aspect in all of this. That’s that one of his medications is likely to have caused it and the symptoms should go away. He’s having a bit of trouble speaking and moving, but his brain is fully intact. Therefore, it is less o a worry because he’s been like that for a few hours and nothing has gotten worse. The reason he has not already been through an MRI today is because you can’t have a pacemaker on while you’re in the machine, so they have to wait for a technician to turn it off. So far, the brain is clear. What you have to fear is not what you can see, it’s what you can’t. When you’re looking at brain activity from the top down, it spiders outward and one layer might cover up another.

I am hoping it is just a side effect, because I have a different reality now that my mother is dead. I know how serious all of this is, and to pay more attention. At this point, it’s not time to go home. And yet, I understand and have empathy for myself because there’s not a lot I could do if I was there. Everyone right now is just sitting around waiting, and I can do that from here.

Although I do have those moments of “Jesus Christ, just come pick me up.” I’m not airing a grievance with my family, it’s just an expression I’ve picked up over the years when a situation is bad. It’s especially apt in this one because I don’t say it much when going in this direction. Most of the time it’s directed at Southern oppression and am phoning home to Maryland. It’s a coping mechanism, and it’s a good one.

It doesn’t take me long to get tired of living in the Bible belt, but I would return in a heartbeat if my dad needed me, and he knows that. It hits different when the universe knocks you on your ass by your losing one parent, because it makes you paranoid about the other one. It has nothing to do with how my dad is- all signs are good at this point. It’s a waiting game. It has everything to do with my frame of reference for the world being completely smashed to bits. When your parent dies, you are not the same person. Not even close. It rewires everything.

Knowing how much it changes you changes how you feel about other people’s deaths. You know it’s important to celebrate people’s lives and the time they had with you rather than desperately wishing for more. The universe has dice, and it is good at them.

Although I will say that in my grief over my mother, it was very much loss of the future we were building together because dying at 65 is nowhere near long enough to enjoy being retired. She retired in May and died in October. Her husband was 12 years older than her, and it never occurred to her that she would die first. It didn’t occur to him, really, either I don’t think. We were all shocked, therefore death cannot frighten me any more than it already has.

Your parent dying changes you more than it changes them, mostly because once you’ve been through that level of grief, you don’t want to go through it ever again. The main thing is acknowledging that my dad is just unwell right now, and we don’t know anything. I am not making things more serious than they are, just saying where I am emotionally.

When my dad gets sick, it’s natural to worry. It’s just not natural to think that him being unwell means he’s going to die immediately, because that’s my own echo chamber regarding my mother, not anything regarding his health. My mother had an embolism that wasn’t caught in time. She was almost DOA from the time that my stepdad called the ambulance. There were maybe 35 minutes between calls from Lindsay that my mom was being rushed to the hospital and the one where she was dead and I needed to come home. 35 minutes to process what happened with my grandfather’s death, which is that he lived so long he was ready to go. My mother died years ago, and he was fine until a few months ago. He died right before his 93rd birthday. There is no rhyme or reason with illness or death. You’ve just got to dance with them what brung you.

I’m glad I have a place to go when I’m internally freaking out and you know it’s not reality, because I’m not telling you the emotions of everyone in the room. It’s how everything is coming across to me, which is not objective truth. The only objective truth that I know is that before my mother died, I was not prepared for the reality of either one of my parents getting sick.

I am not spiraling out because my dad is sick. I’m rambling because I don’t have the blinders I did then. I do not have to worry that there are things left unsaid or anything like that, it’s just the natural thing a daughter does, just like he always does the things that dads do.

If he could speak properly, it would have been him who called me to tell me his complete history, physical, chief complaint, what is being done, what will be done, and three links describing the procedure and the protocol. We’re kinda different from other families, but we’ve all worked at the practice long enough we can hang.

It wasn’t child labor. We got paid. 😉

It’s also a completely different situation with my dad because he has one of the best doctors in the world watching over him, so she can translate from doctor to idiot quite fluently. That would be talking to people like me, if you were wondering…….

I pretend to know a lot more than I do, which is why if I am sent links, I will read them. They won’t be articles written by Joe from college, they’ll be official prescribing information or JAMA articles. If my stepmom doesn’t think he’ll get the proper care, she’ll move him until she does. His defibrillator is actually controlled by a company out of Boston.

Therefore, my worries are nothing more than my own. I just know you guys will worry with me, and I take all those good feelings in just as easily as I overexplain incessantly while waiting for news.

So far, I have to assume all is good, because if it was bad, someone would tell me to be worried and they’d be accurate about it.

But Jesus Christ, just come pick me up.

Anything Anywhere All at Once

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What job would you do for free?

Link to audio.

I will do anything for the experience of having done it, because I am a firm believer that you don’t say something is bad if you’ve never eaten it…. and that statement has many transitive properties.

Most writers work for free while they’re doing something else for money, and everything I do for money feeds this web site in more ways than one. So whether I’m in Global Information Services or trying to be a cook, I’m still me. To really understand me, you’ll have to read “The Sol Majestic,” which explores the idea of ivory tower vs. hard work. I am both sides of the equation. I am blue collar and an academic because one feeds the other. I do not need a job that captures any more of my attention than is necessary to feed myself, because I don’t live on earth most of the time. My head is in the clouds, and I am constantly wandering for a foothold.

In the clouds, there are no footholds. Blue collar work is an anchor to keep me from flying too close to the sun. Brandon Sanderson says that if you want to be a writer, lay brick or similar, because you need something that your body can do independently of your mind. I agree, because you can get into a rhythm while at the same time giving your characters room to play. I only have two fiction projects in the works and trade off between them, and it’s slow going because I’m a blogger. It’s not that I’m a bad writer, it’s that I’m so inexperienced with style and structure.

At some point I will have to borrow structure from Jonna Mendez, former Chief of Disguise at CIA and in my opinion, the best non-fiction writer that ever lived tied with her husband. Here’s why. Jonna and Tony have the ability to capture what fiction does without writing it. Their books present like spy capers and you get lost in their movies, internal videos that play as you’re reading. I didn’t just read about trying not to get caught in Tehran and Moscow. For the length of the book, I lived it.

Then I met her in person and the books changed yet again, because not only could I picture her more completely in her stories, they were scarier because I really, really liked her. It’s one thing to read about strangers in peril… quite another when you have an emotional attachment to the story. It made me a bigger fan, though. I have two copies of each book by Team Mendez, autographed paper and Kindle.

If it seems weird that I have both, it’s that the Kindle versions came first and the autographs are keepsakes. Plus, I don’t like to write in the margins of my books and it’s not because I’m a purist and think writing in books is bad. It’s that if I want to make a note about something, I want data I can use. If I write a note by hand, I then have to type it. Wasted energy when I can just attach a keyboard to my tablet or Kindle (yes, Kindles support them). I wouldn’t have thought of this unless I’d reviewed so many books that it was necessary. So much easier to copy and paste text from my notes, and it syncs with Goodreads and a few other programs so I can access everything on every device I own.

I would like to say that I love reviewing books, but I don’t. I’m a voracious reader and therefore, my standards are extraordinarily high. I also don’t want to hurt any writer’s chance of making more money. Even if you’re a shitty writer, you still deserve to eat. It’s a different perspective for me because I am also a shitty writer who deserves to eat, so I probably empathize too much when I should be ruthless.

Speaking of which, I still owe Finn Bell a couple of reviews, because he’s one of my favorite writers in the entire world…. mostly because he writes characters and mysteries that you don’t want to end and there are too many questions running through my mind as to what happened after the story ended. I asked him about that, and he said he couldn’t tell me anything because he was keeping things tight for future stories.

I get it, and at the same time, “AAAAAAAAGH! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PRIEST, FINN?!?!?!?!”

Speaking of priests, preaching is another job I’d do for free as long as I didn’t have to do anything else. It is ultimately the reason I changed my mind about starting a church. I realized that I was too immobilized by grief over my mother’s death to do things like pastoral care when I was the one that needed it so badly. You can become a wounded healer, but only up and to a point. It’s a balancing act of being empathetic and not getting your own crazy spatter all over your congregation. Don’t think it doesn’t happen. I have watched it on many an occasion and didn’t want that for myself.

It was hard enough coming unglued with no one watching except readers who weren’t in the room where I type. I could say what I liked and process “verbally” without feeling like I had a responsibility to keep it together for everyone else.

Here’s what you don’t know before your mother dies that you sure as hell know afterward. If you are the oldest, you are the new matriarch of the family and it might not be because your family wants or needs that. It’s your own mother lion protection mechanism because you were the one your mother trusted with “the rest of them.” You aren’t prepared for that kind of responsibility and if your siblings are also adults, they didn’t give it to you. You took it because that’s what you’ve always done… sacrificing self to take care of everyone that came behind you.

You feel alone in a way you never have, because now it’s all on you…. even when no one needs you and the responsibility is an illusion.

The phrase “even if no one needs you” is not wiping the blood off my cross or anything. It’s that at adult age, “need” is relative. For instance, I want people to want me, not fall apart because they think they can’t function without me. So many people confuse desire with need, and it ate my lunch for a while as I walked toward the new normal. The pace never accelerates. I have run toward nothing.

I’m not sure there’s ever been a sense of loss as great as continuing my own life afterward, because it was so painful. I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to live because who cares? That’s the other part no one will tell you. When the person who brought you into the world leaves, a huge part of your tether develops a rip and you aren’t carrying a needle and thread.

Of course this is magnified by my bipolar disorder, but I do know these feelings are also universal. Specificity is measured in tiny increments.

I’d be a grief counselor for free. Nothing fills my soul faster than a mutual stitch and bitch, because if you haven’t lost a parent, there’s no way to understand. I am not being pedantic. You just don’t even know until you get there. It will hit you like a head on collision where you’re driving a Trabant into an oncoming train, and this is true whether you liked said parent or not, because those two people made you. I am not speaking literally. Adopted kids go through the same stuff.

It’s that the core personality is set by six years old, according to Erik Erickson, and generally your parents are there for that. Even your facial expressions and mannerisms take on new meaning when you realize that you are indeed looking at your mother (in my case) and you aren’t offended that she’s staring back, because you’re not a copy anymore. You’re what’s left.

If you haven’t lost a parent, you can empathize with me, but don’t you dare say you know how I feel. I wouldn’t even say that to another person who lost a parent. Just because their parent died doesn’t mean they’re having the same experience.

The one thing we have in common is that “hell is other people.” They don’t know what to say and you can’t get mad because you know they mean well…. even though when they say “I would fall apart if my mother died” you want to scream “WELL IT’S A GOOD THING I’M GOING THROUGH IT AND NOT YOU, JACKASS.” Don’t get me started. It isn’t helpful to get angry, just to say to people the best thing they *can* say to someone grieving is “I’m so sorry.” Don’t add anything. Let those words be humble and enough because they are….. and let me explain why.

When MY mother dies, it’s not your turn to have emotion. It will be your turn, but it is not in that instant. To focus on how you would feel if it happened to you is bullshit to someone to whom it has happened. It will come across as “God, I am so glad I’m not you.” It’s also frustrating for people to say that they don’t know what to say and avoid you when you are literally handing them a script with only two or three words.

When I was in the thick of it, just deep, deep grief, I needed people to do things for me. Two problems with that. I didn’t know what I needed and couldn’t ask for help because it was too much energy… both in the figuring it out and in the asking. I was alone in my room for months because no one is prepared to have their mom die. No one. At the same time, I wasn’t prepared in the slightest. It’s not like anyone could have predicted an embolism because the doctors didn’t know they needed to look for one. I can imagine the notes:

Patient is a 65 year old white female presenting with moderate pain and limited mobility in her left leg. Waiting for x-ray to confirm fractOH MY GOD SHE’S DEAD.

Speaking of “white female,” I’m laughing because one of the doctors I work with decided to create a macro in a word processor that would automatically change “if” into Indian female. Hilarity ensued. EVERYTHING in medicine depends on “if” and “it depends.”

My analogy for this is that all doctors are half programmer, half waitress. All of them. Doesn’t matter the specialty. It’s soft skills and “if, then.” So many medical problems are just spaghetti code (everything loops back around into a tangled mess).

And then you look at psychologists/licensed counselors and the spaghetti code analogy gets even stronger. People aren’t machines, and logic isn’t emotion.

It’s honestly why I’d cook for free, and I proved it when I was willing to do it for eight bucks an hour. I needed a logical job so that my emotions were a separate part of me. The place I kept to myself because I already had a place to vent and a partner to help carry the financial load (absolutely the most important reason to keep Dana in the back of my mind if and when I start making real money).

So if you ask me what I’ll do for free, I have touched on so many subjects that the answer is anything, as long as it serves a purpose. I think it’s good advice. You can have it.

Free.

Slinging and Hash

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

My coworkers are so young that I was sitting at the bar after my shift a few months ago, having a beer. The man next to me told me his name and that he was a sound editor at NPR. He asked me what I did, and I told him that I “sling hash here.” The bartender, young enough to be my son, said, “I thought you were a cook. You’re a drug dealer?” The sound editor nearly fell off his bar stool laughing and said, “I think that’s old diner slang.”

But today’s entry is about a different kind of sling. My left shoulder has been bothering me for a few weeks, but the pain has been fully manageable with Aleve and Tylenol… that is, until yesterday morning. I woke up in so much pain that I couldn’t stop crying, and didn’t until I got to Urgent Care.

I couldn’t possibly see how I was going to cook and wash dishes, so I gave Chef a heads up as to what was going on, and could he possibly find someone to work for me? To his absolute credit, for which I will thank him publicly, he told me to get to Urgent Care and let him know what they said. He’d find a way to work it out, even though there was no one to take my place. It created a tiger mom loyalty in me, and by the time I got to Urgent Care, as the tears flowed, I said, “there is no possible way that I can miss work tonight. If there’s any way you could treat this as a sports injury and just shoot it up with something, let’s do it.” If chef was willing to work a man down that night just so I was taken care of, the least I could do was try my hardest, exhausting all possible options, before staying home. I knew that I was going to either be miserable at work or miserable at home, so why not at least try to be miserable and make money at the same time?

The Urgent Care that I went to is incredibly risk-averse, the doctor told me, so he wasn’t allowed to put steroids directly into my shoulder, even though he thought it was the best course of treatment for what I needed in the moment (doesn’t work long-term). Instead, he did a long and thorough physical examination, determining that I had strained my rotator cuff, and that I should get it imaged with an Ortho to confirm it was just a strain and not an actual tear. If it’s just a strain, his recommendation is physical therapy. A tear requires surgery that, from what I hear, is relatively quick and easy, but the recovery is hell on wheels. One of my mom friends said that her son tore his, and just like the friends my age, had a difficult time with it. So I am definitely praying for a positive outcome, and if you’ll pray with me, send good vibes, use black magic, whatever, I’m game. Anything that taps into the power of the universe is fine with me. I know all of my readers can’t possibly believe in God, but even if you’re an atheist, believing in doctors is my first choice as well. Faith doesn’t come without shoe leather, and their work is as close to God’s as I’ve seen on this earth (there’s a reason I donate to MSF every chance I get).

As for the treatment I got yesterday, I chose a clinic that was close enough to walk to work from there, so after an IM injection of Toradol and oral Vicodin 5/325, I actually made it to my shift 30 minutes early, where I briefed Chef on all that had happened, and he thanked me profusely for coming in anyway, especially since my arm was in a sling to take pressure off my shoulder. I don’t wear it while working or typing, but other than that, I don’t take it off. I also realized that 325mg of Tylenol was probably not adequate, so I took an additional one. The doctor said that by the time I got home from work, the Toradol will have worn off, so I took two Aleve as well. Anything to relieve the inflammation, especially since I probably added to it last night. Even with Vicodin on board, everything still hurt like hell, especially after cleaning the kitchen, particularly sweeping & mopping. It was at that moment I thought, “maybe a desk job is for me,” and then I remembered that I was in just as much pain there, because the repetitive strain injuries never stopped, as well as more often than not, having a bad chair that always, always caused sciatica, as well as agitating the arthritis in my back. I absolutely understand that not all offices can afford Aerons, but so far, those have been the only chairs that don’t cause me pain. Even the knock-offs work, as long as they’re good ones and not the cheapest available.

I promise, I’m not snobby about it. Just worried for my own health. Even though osteoarthritis isn’t nearly as bad as rheumatoid, it’s no joke. It makes you feel like a very old person, no matter how young you are. Going from the kitchen to a desk job is just trading one type of pain for the other, equally severe in their own ways.

I definitely need to follow up with physical therapy, because with my level of activity, I’m likely to tear the rotator cuff up real good (if you’e going to do something, do it right).

And on that note, it’s time for a nap, provided I can find a comfortable position.