Well, just when you think things can’t get any worse…
This morning before work (after my 2nd cup of coffee, when I became awake enough to see and feel) I noticed that the area around the aforementioned little red dot and bruise on my forearm (and yes, this is my RIGHT arm) has turned an angry red. There is a comet shaped swath of red swelling running up my arm from the place where they injected that dye. The tail of the comet currently ends about three inches above my elbow.
Not good, I think. I have called the doctor, am waiting for a call back. If he tells me this is nothing to worry about, I am going to march down to !@#$ St. !@#$ Luke’s and give him such a horrible wedgie, this mf is gonna WISH he was Tobie …
Wedgie time.
He did call. He said put a heating pad on it.
!@#$ % ^&%$#!! !@$!!!
Y’know guys, I’m really kind of losing heart here. I know that this is a horrible thing to say, considering how hard my friends – Red, Mike, RobB., Buff, Brett, Stewart, Sallie, Joe, El, Ken, etc., are working to keep me up, but that should give you some idea of how scary and worrisome this all is. I can say this – if it weren’t for y’all, I’d be up the proverbial scatological creek without a paddle, or even a frikkin’ BOAT for that matter.
Needless to say, I am in a place where laying up and taking care of my arm is not feasible, but one of my “customers” is bringing me a heating pad (moo.) and I will have some potential shift-relief this afternoon, so if it doesn’t start looking better (or hurting less) I can take off and go back to the !@#$ emergency room (maybe I can get ANOTHER !@#$ staph infection or what-the-hell-ever to put a heating pad on while I’m there…) this afternoon…
RAAR!
MOO!
I just want to lay on my couch, or on a blanket in my yard and cry, for about two weeks.
I want my dad to come and rub my back and tell me b.s. stories.
I want to be back on the top of the Ferris wheel with my brothers.
I want to be holding hands with Jeff in the Lord of the Rings.
I want to be back at GS camp with my sister.
I want Charlyn in the bed next to me, telling her old fever dreams*.
I want Bo to come and sit and gift me with his soothing presence.
I want my mom’s ham grits and aunt Sue’s singing in the kitchen and gramma Winnie’s lemon pie and gramma Bertie’s hair-brushing and papaw Joe’s smile.
I want someone to stand up for me with these stupid doctors and hold my hand through the needles part.
I want to be well and ok again so that I can bear my normal amount of hurt.
This is too much.
Too much.
I’m sorry y’all. This is definitely the real-life diary of a real-life girl. I promise you that no one is more sorry than I am that the rants are not less pitiful and more fun these days. Please bear with me. Y’all are my world, my hope, my loves, my family, my all. I know that I am spread too thin, always, even at the best of times. I need to call Charlyn, I need to see Sue and Winnie, I need to write Mandy, I need to make contact with the Austin folks, I need to write Rory, I need to e Shawn… and there are obligations and promises and work and desires here, too… I will never, even if I live another 40 years, manage it all. I’d like to try, though, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for not giving up on me despite how preoccupied and stretched out I always am. Alway Sam
Maybe a tour of the US is what I really need. Tennessee(Thornhills), Kentucky(Pablo), Georgia(Gaijin), Florida(Queen Bees), Mississippi(Kings and ‘Burgers and ‘CoastalFolk), Louisiana(Tedd), Texas(AustinPeopos), Arizona/NewMex(desert), Cali(J&E, Supaks, Unk) – and all the hot-spots and weird-ass tourist traps in between and above.
Well, at least as long as I can dream, I know I’m still in the game.
And I'll apologize now for all the apologies and the pleas for tolerance and understanding. It will probably get worse before it gets better.
All my love and gratitude for all of y'alls' concern, calls, letters (Mike, Rob.B. - y'all are die-hard, old-school, true homies. I love you dearly.). These are truly the things that are keeping me going right now.
-sam
*one time, the last time i had pneumonia, she lay in bed with me while my fever raged - 107 before they finally took me to the hospital - and she told me that once, when she had a bad fever, the ceiling tiles seemed to be shifting and sliding around and that it gave her a feeling "like biting into a marshmallow and hitting a brick". I felt that in my teeth then, even in the middle of a 107 temp. and i have NEVER been able to forget that. now neither will you.
heh heh heh...
Saturday, September 27, 2003
Friday, September 26, 2003
It was something about seeing that white cotton ball taped to my right forearm, the same arm with the bar-coded plastic white name bracelet. No rings on my fingers, no bracelet, all my armor gone, suddenly I just felt mortal. Terribly big, soft, vulnerable, easily breached (those needles slide into your skin like water), and ultimately ending. The whole MRI experience does that. The tube is so small, and the experience so surreal. I was afraid, but also dazed. I was un-drugged – I’d even foregone caffeine and sugar for the day so that my brain might look as nice as possible for it’s photo. That hospital smell does something to you. And I spent a lot of time there as a kid, so all of that came back to me, too. Ken was there, and our lightest possible conversation (which, with Ken, is never too light – except for all of the soap-opera jokes) kept me from winding up too much. There was an elderly lady there, and her fear was heavy. We’d both been waiting long past our appointed time. The machine (which was in the trailer of an 18-wheeler in the hospital parking lot) had “broken” and we were delayed. Before I left with the nurse, she asked me to please hurry. I promised her and myself that I would do my best.
I suppose the extreme surreality began when we left the hospital and walked outside. I’d expected room, concrete walls, machines. When we turned the corner and I saw the trailer, tommy-lift down, music coming out, glimpse of strangely wallpapered (a giant beach scene with sailboats covered the entire inside, wherever there were no machine parts and cabinets) inside, and these attendants. I wasn’t sure how I was to get in there, and then I realized I was to step onto the lift. The man who operated it treated me as if I were elderly, infirm, lightly putting his hand underneath my forearm. They, this man and the very bovine (not so much in her size or shape, but the quality of her expression) lady who were the nurses, commented on my little friend, my Scrump doll I’d brought for physical comfort, something tiny and good to hold and squeeze. I tried to make it easy for them, and I think they were grateful. Papers were signed, some minimal description of the process, double-checking for metal items (they had to tape down the zipper on my sweater and take my safety pins out), and then they asked me about music. I chose classical, because they couldn’t pick up 88.3, and before they put me in I made them change the music because the first song was a classical rendition of that ‘Titanic’ song.
Yeah, right.
Better music chosen, big headphones on my head and then a big plastic cage, like a medieval helmet, maybe. Then the touchie boy nurse put pads around my head, and slid me into the tube. I opened my eyes long enough to know where I was and then I kept them closed except during the worst of the noise, in the depths of the surrealism, when my curiosity wouldn’t hold. I thought about beaches and skies, I thought about what the pretty Asian nurse had said as she walked me to the truck*, I tried to make exciting patterns for the MRI by thinking about certain things when I thought that it was scanning, and just squeezed Scrump and tried to be really still. After a while, they slid me out and without undoing my head proceeded to inject me with dye (which I had not expected and was not happy about). As soon as my head was out of the larger tube I asked the girl-nurse “What do you do about really fat people?” she answered, but I couldn’t read her lips through the bars and Dvorjak was drowning out her words. I said “I can’t hear.” And when the music was turned down I heard her saying that “Really fat people can’t have them. Sometimes they can do an mmmrmrmrm…” I gathered there’s some kind of ‘just-head’ open device thing. I thought – and told her – about dad.
The dye immediately made me feel swimmy, but no worse, and so I didn’t say anything. I knew that little old lady was waiting. I was desperate to be out.
Only minutes this time, and I tried to sit up and and felt woozy. I also felt that I’d been changed somehow. I felt smaller and softer and just different. I know now that it was the cottonball, from the place where she’d injected that dye. And the symbol of it, the symbol of having to have my brain measured and checked, the symbol of needing this nurses’ hand on my forearm, of having had blood drawn and tested, having been injected with foreign substance with a radioactive suffix.
I know it’s hard to see, but I AM an orc-girl. I am a giant, part-troll, made of rock and wood, just enough blood and bone to keep me pretty. Ogre-Queen, with my earrings and bracelets and rings, copper, metal, silver armor. Tusks, under bite, topknot, and throne. This is how I see and feel myself; it’s how I have to, to make it through each day. My forearms look normal, are scarred and pale underneath, but they feel like warm, bark-stripped branches. But this morning, seeing this tiny bruise above that blue-green vein, the red dot where the needle slid right in, with no resistance, remembering the nurse apologizing for having to search for a place big enough in my small veins (they had to use baby needles to draw the 8 tubes of blood) and seeing my naked wrists, fingers, ears; staggering a little as I walked alone – well, with Scrump – back into the hospital on a fine, strange fall day, I realized that I am very human, and can be very easily broken and destroyed. I realized that I am on my own, and as vulnerable as anybody and I am very very scared.
When I was little, I learned quickly that to be anything less than SuperWoman was foolish, and dangerous. You could not slip, mentally or physically, or you would be taken down in the worst ways. Locked up, held down, cornered and brutally manipulated, and then abandoned. Thus a spiky Ogre Queen grown inside a cute, bouncy, rosy girl with eyes that probably should have been water and sky, not smoke and steel. I can’t express how painful it is to me to see that there are some things that even I can’t fight. Men with fists and sticks and intentions are nothing to me, but my own humanity and mortality – a cottonball taped to my arm – is enough to bring me to my knees.
I will still fight. I don’t know how to do anything else, but no matter what turns out to be wrong with me – and I know they may even say ‘nothing’ – I am changed. I know something now that I can’t un-know.
I know this, too. I have not seen enough of the world, of even my own country. I have not seen enough of the people I love and the people I don’t know. I haven’t seen a desert. I haven’t been in a boat on a river in far too long. I haven’t eaten in enough truck stops, walked enough roads with my dog, or seen The House on the Rocks, or the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, or New York. I do not want to die – next year, or in 40 years – with this kind of regret. With this kind of shameless waste and fear. I am so scared. Scared of what might happen, but far more scared of what might not.
I’m sorry y’all. Bear with me. And forgive me if I make seemingly foolish decisions based on fear. I know that no one can or will take care of me, and I hope y’all know that I will never do anything to purposely scare or hurt my friends. I’m not trying to scare y’all, either, but maybe I’m saying “don’t be surprised or disappointed with me if I finally get the nerve to get rid of all my shit and hit the road with luna and my camera and 200$.”
All my love – and bravery and trust (it was hard to write this)
-sam
*she said “Just pretend you’re on the beach, with a guy, like, mayyyyybe, that guy you’re with…” aaah! Ken’s a pimp!
I suppose the extreme surreality began when we left the hospital and walked outside. I’d expected room, concrete walls, machines. When we turned the corner and I saw the trailer, tommy-lift down, music coming out, glimpse of strangely wallpapered (a giant beach scene with sailboats covered the entire inside, wherever there were no machine parts and cabinets) inside, and these attendants. I wasn’t sure how I was to get in there, and then I realized I was to step onto the lift. The man who operated it treated me as if I were elderly, infirm, lightly putting his hand underneath my forearm. They, this man and the very bovine (not so much in her size or shape, but the quality of her expression) lady who were the nurses, commented on my little friend, my Scrump doll I’d brought for physical comfort, something tiny and good to hold and squeeze. I tried to make it easy for them, and I think they were grateful. Papers were signed, some minimal description of the process, double-checking for metal items (they had to tape down the zipper on my sweater and take my safety pins out), and then they asked me about music. I chose classical, because they couldn’t pick up 88.3, and before they put me in I made them change the music because the first song was a classical rendition of that ‘Titanic’ song.
Yeah, right.
Better music chosen, big headphones on my head and then a big plastic cage, like a medieval helmet, maybe. Then the touchie boy nurse put pads around my head, and slid me into the tube. I opened my eyes long enough to know where I was and then I kept them closed except during the worst of the noise, in the depths of the surrealism, when my curiosity wouldn’t hold. I thought about beaches and skies, I thought about what the pretty Asian nurse had said as she walked me to the truck*, I tried to make exciting patterns for the MRI by thinking about certain things when I thought that it was scanning, and just squeezed Scrump and tried to be really still. After a while, they slid me out and without undoing my head proceeded to inject me with dye (which I had not expected and was not happy about). As soon as my head was out of the larger tube I asked the girl-nurse “What do you do about really fat people?” she answered, but I couldn’t read her lips through the bars and Dvorjak was drowning out her words. I said “I can’t hear.” And when the music was turned down I heard her saying that “Really fat people can’t have them. Sometimes they can do an mmmrmrmrm…” I gathered there’s some kind of ‘just-head’ open device thing. I thought – and told her – about dad.
The dye immediately made me feel swimmy, but no worse, and so I didn’t say anything. I knew that little old lady was waiting. I was desperate to be out.
Only minutes this time, and I tried to sit up and and felt woozy. I also felt that I’d been changed somehow. I felt smaller and softer and just different. I know now that it was the cottonball, from the place where she’d injected that dye. And the symbol of it, the symbol of having to have my brain measured and checked, the symbol of needing this nurses’ hand on my forearm, of having had blood drawn and tested, having been injected with foreign substance with a radioactive suffix.
I know it’s hard to see, but I AM an orc-girl. I am a giant, part-troll, made of rock and wood, just enough blood and bone to keep me pretty. Ogre-Queen, with my earrings and bracelets and rings, copper, metal, silver armor. Tusks, under bite, topknot, and throne. This is how I see and feel myself; it’s how I have to, to make it through each day. My forearms look normal, are scarred and pale underneath, but they feel like warm, bark-stripped branches. But this morning, seeing this tiny bruise above that blue-green vein, the red dot where the needle slid right in, with no resistance, remembering the nurse apologizing for having to search for a place big enough in my small veins (they had to use baby needles to draw the 8 tubes of blood) and seeing my naked wrists, fingers, ears; staggering a little as I walked alone – well, with Scrump – back into the hospital on a fine, strange fall day, I realized that I am very human, and can be very easily broken and destroyed. I realized that I am on my own, and as vulnerable as anybody and I am very very scared.
When I was little, I learned quickly that to be anything less than SuperWoman was foolish, and dangerous. You could not slip, mentally or physically, or you would be taken down in the worst ways. Locked up, held down, cornered and brutally manipulated, and then abandoned. Thus a spiky Ogre Queen grown inside a cute, bouncy, rosy girl with eyes that probably should have been water and sky, not smoke and steel. I can’t express how painful it is to me to see that there are some things that even I can’t fight. Men with fists and sticks and intentions are nothing to me, but my own humanity and mortality – a cottonball taped to my arm – is enough to bring me to my knees.
I will still fight. I don’t know how to do anything else, but no matter what turns out to be wrong with me – and I know they may even say ‘nothing’ – I am changed. I know something now that I can’t un-know.
I know this, too. I have not seen enough of the world, of even my own country. I have not seen enough of the people I love and the people I don’t know. I haven’t seen a desert. I haven’t been in a boat on a river in far too long. I haven’t eaten in enough truck stops, walked enough roads with my dog, or seen The House on the Rocks, or the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, or New York. I do not want to die – next year, or in 40 years – with this kind of regret. With this kind of shameless waste and fear. I am so scared. Scared of what might happen, but far more scared of what might not.
I’m sorry y’all. Bear with me. And forgive me if I make seemingly foolish decisions based on fear. I know that no one can or will take care of me, and I hope y’all know that I will never do anything to purposely scare or hurt my friends. I’m not trying to scare y’all, either, but maybe I’m saying “don’t be surprised or disappointed with me if I finally get the nerve to get rid of all my shit and hit the road with luna and my camera and 200$.”
All my love – and bravery and trust (it was hard to write this)
-sam
*she said “Just pretend you’re on the beach, with a guy, like, mayyyyybe, that guy you’re with…” aaah! Ken’s a pimp!
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Ok, peeps. Here’s the dealie-o! if you would like to see pics of BRIAN AND ANDI’S BRAND SHINY NEW BABY GIRL (!!!) – Miss Aeryn McKinney Allen (!!!) – here’s what you can do:
Go to yahoo groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/), go to the spot where it says “join a group” and enter “amusesam” (no quotations) and then, sign in please, and join me.
when you get in, go to photos and look for "aeryn pics". please feel free to browse the other albums, too.
-I must ask a favor, though – NO FAIRE BUSINESS (or other business at all) POSTED HERE. This is my personal page, for my dayoff stuff, and I’d like to keep it like that. This is my private little whee, fun geek spot, and I want it to remain unsullied and protected for lovely things like art goofiness and BABY PICTURES!
Much love,
Beaming Ridiculously Proud Aunt Sambro
Go to yahoo groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/), go to the spot where it says “join a group” and enter “amusesam” (no quotations) and then, sign in please, and join me.
when you get in, go to photos and look for "aeryn pics". please feel free to browse the other albums, too.
-I must ask a favor, though – NO FAIRE BUSINESS (or other business at all) POSTED HERE. This is my personal page, for my dayoff stuff, and I’d like to keep it like that. This is my private little whee, fun geek spot, and I want it to remain unsullied and protected for lovely things like art goofiness and BABY PICTURES!
Much love,
Beaming Ridiculously Proud Aunt Sambro
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
i could talk about some yukky stuff, and catch y'all up on what's going on with me, but i'd rather not. today i have GOOD NEWS!!!
yesterday was the equinox, as i'm sure most of y'all know. i spent a good deal of time outside last night, lighting my candles, sending up my prayers, looking at the sky. i thought about a lot of stuff, mostly good, some skewwy, but it all ended with "no matter what happens to me, there's now a new person in the world, who, in my opinion, has what it takes to pick up my slack!"
Aeryn McKinney Allen was born yesterday a little after 3:30. Buffy called me to give me the news as I was standing at my altar in the kitchen lighting the candles for outside!) She is 5 pounds, 4 ounces, 18 and a little inches long, and sweet as pie. Andi told Buffy that she looked like she was gonna have her mama's beautiful, beautiful brown eyes! (YAY!)
Andi had called yesterday a.m. before I went into work, to let me know that she was going in to the doctor, that this baby might be ready to come (they'd said they might induce on thurs.) and i said "Well, it IS the equinox!" she said "Is it?"
yup! She went in for her appointment, and while she was filling out her paperstuff, her water broke! Aeryn said "MAMA, IT'S TIME!"
I will go see them tonight, as soon as i get offa work, and Brian said there's already pics to share!
Happy equinox, all! Happy birthday, Baby! Congratulations, BrAndi! YAY, US!
xoxoxo
-sambolina
yesterday was the equinox, as i'm sure most of y'all know. i spent a good deal of time outside last night, lighting my candles, sending up my prayers, looking at the sky. i thought about a lot of stuff, mostly good, some skewwy, but it all ended with "no matter what happens to me, there's now a new person in the world, who, in my opinion, has what it takes to pick up my slack!"
Aeryn McKinney Allen was born yesterday a little after 3:30. Buffy called me to give me the news as I was standing at my altar in the kitchen lighting the candles for outside!) She is 5 pounds, 4 ounces, 18 and a little inches long, and sweet as pie. Andi told Buffy that she looked like she was gonna have her mama's beautiful, beautiful brown eyes! (YAY!)
Andi had called yesterday a.m. before I went into work, to let me know that she was going in to the doctor, that this baby might be ready to come (they'd said they might induce on thurs.) and i said "Well, it IS the equinox!" she said "Is it?"
yup! She went in for her appointment, and while she was filling out her paperstuff, her water broke! Aeryn said "MAMA, IT'S TIME!"
I will go see them tonight, as soon as i get offa work, and Brian said there's already pics to share!
Happy equinox, all! Happy birthday, Baby! Congratulations, BrAndi! YAY, US!
xoxoxo
-sambolina
