I know some people who, when they are sick or suffering an injury, remain so stoic about it, that you can’t even tell they are hurting. I admire them so much. The discipline it takes to not be one of those complaining, whining, self-pitying, slightly aggressive by proxy kind of people who let EVERYONE know when something is wrong in their life.
God damn it…I know I resemble that description.
I try hard not to get sick. Like, very hard. If I know there are waves of yuck going around town, I will opt to stay in more often. I mean that’s what Doordash is for; feeding yourself while hiding from various types of contemporary plague so that you don’t die, or WORSE… get sick.
The fact that I hurt myself badly (it’s been two months) pisses me off beyond what I can describe, without dangerously skirting the boundaries of my ridiculous resolution for 2024: DO NOT COMPLAIN!! Seriously, what the fuck was I thinking? Highly verbal, contemptible extrovert moi?
My only consolation having failed miserably after less than ten days into January, is the fact that as a non-attending but still incredibly Faithful Catholic girl, I can try again. For Lent.
The hardest irony to face is that had I not been a bad girl, going to the gym to blast calories, I wouldn’t have hurt my arm. Or maybe, as the body is really an exercise of timed obsolescence, maybe that part of my arm was worn down and needed a tune-up? Who knows.
But it’s been incredibly painful (even though I act pretty tough). It’s one of those places where no matter how you sit or stand, or position your arm, there is almost no relief. It’s annoying AF.
Seriously, and trust me, I have tried more angles than Pythagorean…FFS!
After one primary care and then two different specialists (turns out I have a trigger thumb on the hand of the same arm) I was referred for an MRI. Like, three weeks ago. So I’ve been wearing a brace now on my left hand for one month.
Welp… the mucho time I spend at my desk (usually working, sometimes playing) with the jacked left hand and tricep, or tendon (or both of them) has been a little much. I’ve had chronic pain before with endometriosis. I’m a tough guy. But it’s been a while, and I have realized that the left-hand-born lady who was forced to become a “righty” because left-handedness was abhorrent, truly does use her left hand, arm, and fingers much more than her right. Go figure.
I thought it might have been better if I had buggered up my right arm. But then I tried a quick experiment; I tried to edit a document using the mouse with my left hand. Complete disaster! So now, my right hand, arm, shoulder, and the lower part of my right back are very sore, because the left arm has a free ride for the time being.
- Please don’t let it be surgery.
- Please don’t let it be surgery.
- Please don’t let it be surgery.
Bunny trailed there, again. Sorry. Anyhow, because of the catastrophic loss of my left arm, I was scheduled for an MRI. I had health fun for a couple of years and had two. But that was about four years ago, and I don’t think I did it right.
A Haunting MRI Experience
I’d like to start by saying that the young black woman who works the front desk is a very good human being. I liked her a lot. Also, my MRI technician (or whatever you call them), was very cute. An older woman, very intelligent and well-spoken, but commanding in her presence. She may have been Russian. Is that racist for me to say? Exotic. She was interesting.
They treated me very well, and I couldn’t have asked for better.
The truth is, that I have severe medical anxiety. Funny for someone who has specialized in medical marketing for a million years. I know, but it’s still true. But if you think about it…wow, that kind of makes sense that I steered in the direction of health advertising. Hypochondriacs may make the BEST healthcare marketers. *shrug*
Anything doctor or dentist or diabetes (dreaded DDDs), doesn’t send me into the kind of panic that you could notice. Instead, I get calm, my inner comedian comes out, and you would have no idea that my heart is racing, I am seeing sparkles out of the corners of my eye, and praying to God I don’t pass out. Because I can, unfortunately, do that to myself. It’s a skill I mastered. #YayMe!
Let’s say, I took something OTC to help with that anxiety.
Don’t freak out. Brent drove me.
The OTC was delayed in its effect. Sitting in the waiting room, filling out 10,000 pages of forms, despite the fact that I submitted it all to them four days prior… (sigh), I was fine. Disappointedly on the cusp of an anxiety attack. So, I talked too much to the MRI technician, got changed, and met her in the room with the Death Star.
I got up on the bench. It was tricky because of that left arm… yeah. We tried all the Pythagorean angles too, to get my shoulder into the slot. But the interesting thing was that I began to feel very calm, and I actually didn’t feel any pain from the incessant maneuvering. Until three hours later.
What If An MRI Was Like A Black Hole?!
Left shoulder concocted, and a headset on that smelled like bleach, piping in gentle rock oldies. Then I freak out, because they are playing music from the 80’s and 90’s, and I am thinking… Gentle Rock Oldies? What the actual fuck!
I am only fifty.
The last instruction before she sent me into the static-filled black hole, was “Don’t move!” There was that forceful Russian, or whatever her accent is, again. I actually nodded, instead of replying. Kudos to her powerful essence, man, she messed me up psychologically.
Then she said, “Squeeze your right-hand alarm if you need to stop and come out. If it is too much for you.”
So here I am thinking, “Why the hell would she imply that I can’t survive a simple scan?” Girl, pleeease! Then I hear her talk to Sky Net, “Set [bla bla bla] for twenty-five minutes”.
I was so focused on the 25-minute part that the first blast of nuclear waves over my body startled me. Straight up almost had an accident (but did not!) #Victory. I thought maybe… five minutes tops?
But just as a wave of terror rose like a crescendo threatening to cascade into my soul, the OTC kicked in. Seriously. Kicked. In.
My plan seemed pretty good before the appointment. Take something to chill out, ergo, you will not be terrified, ergo, you will not embarrass Brent or yourself, ergo… take something. So I did. I did not increase the dose; it was the same stuff I always use to help with anxiety. But it hit me like a Mac Truck.
A Spirit Walk Experience (With Slight Terror)
So, unfortunately, I find myself in a state of a slightly higher level impairment than the intended “take it down a few notches” benefit that this OTC provides. F*ck! If you said that word 250 times in under two minutes, that would have been the narrative no one else could hear. In my brain.
My big, high-energy, beautiful, creative brain. Where all the trouble starts… :/
Paranoia came in the first wave of the invasion…
- How much space is there around me?
- Would I get a burn on my skin if my hand touched the side?
- Is this going to make me blind?
- She didn’t make me take my rings off!
- Do MRIs give you gray hair?
- What if it makes me infertile?
- Oh yeah, I have menopause. I’m already infertile. And now things are breaking!!!
Fear and Self-Doubt came in the second wave…
- I wonder how many people fink out, and squeeze the alarm thinger?
- If I do that, will they charge me twice as much because I f*cked it up?
- It is probably going to suck your rings off your hand and wreck them.
- You’re not supposed to wear metal in these things!
- Do I have any metal fillings anymore? Shit! I can’t remember!
- What if I have a heart attack in here? Will it cook me?
I know! I don’t ask for these narratives, and you can blame being a writer, and creative, or being just “me”, but that was what was going through my mind. Helped of course, by the OTC I take regularly for anxiety, which decided to go apeshit in my body on the best night ever!
What an elegant complaint.
New Year’s resolution #4… BUSTED! 🙁
Realizing that I was breathing really (really fast), I started to meditate. I know this sounds so stupid, but this is what happened. I told myself that:
a) You are freaking out
b) Why the f*ck do you freak out?
c) Dying of a heart attack in an MRI would suck!
Maybe I detected a little mocking in the deep marginally terrifying voice of the MRI technician from Russia. Like, “You can tap out if you are not strooooong enough, woman.” The ego flare was much better than the freakout, and that helped me turn the corner a little bit. WHATEVER! Yes, I can do this.
Inner Critic: “You’ve done this shit before!”
Me: “Shut. UP.”
Meditating and Channeling Non-Magnetic Vibes
Did you know that if you close your eyes tightly in an MRI, you can see patterns of nuclear warship waves of Deathstar poisonous energy? Not lying. Try it next time.
My brain was working overtime. My body, slightly fearful of the Russian MRI technician, remained steadfast and ridged. The hardest part was when my nose started to ich. But I am pretty sure it was near the end because the first thing I did was scratch my nose when I was ejected from the death pod. With my left arm. Which is the really badly hurt arm! But I didn’t feel a thing! 🙂 Until later. 🙁
In more than one instance, I felt that the width of the pod was no greater than the circumference of a basketball. Not kidding, it’s the first thing I said to Brent when I got back to the lobby. Several times, I felt the glass was a millimeter above my nose.
I’ve never been claustrophobic. I mean, who actually likes tight spaces and reduced mobility? I’ve decided that, at the age of fifty, I am too old to induct any new types of phobias. Nope.
Yes, I Know How To Meditate! Just Because I Talk A Lot …
It was scary. So I sent my mind to three places I could walk through, with visual accuracy, in my mind. First, I went to my grandparent’s farm. My mind parked the car in front where I always parked, slightly blocking my father and his ideal parking angle, leading to a snarky comment or two at dinner.
The blue and white Madonna in plaster, worn after years of adorning their Italian home. There were a few statues on pedestals, just like there was a wall hanging of a Holy Cross, with a tiny well of Holy Water, that my grandmother would top up always, until her much later years, when that stuff didn’t matter anymore.
A red brick wall-to-wall fireplace, not quite covered but stained with soot. To the left, an old couch with both the original plastic sealing in the furniture piece, but also a large coverall blanket. Red with gold strings, that looked a little Asian if I am being honest. It was red mostly, and I loved it. But between the brick and the end of my favorite couch was a pile of split wood, random cereal boxes, and cardboard, some kindling he cut and stored himself, and all the free newspapers he lifted from the grocery stores he visited about three times per week, to shop the pasta specials.
My mind walked out of that room and down the imported Italian tile floor that was mostly brown, with some flecks of beige, and excessively flowery, overall. But it was when I got to the kitchen, and I turned the corner and they were all there. My Nonno and Nonna. All my Aunts and Uncles, and the legion of cousins who grew up like brothers and sisters, together, with us.
My very special Aunt. With her reddish brown hair, her wrist with twenty pounds of gold bracelets, and her hands adorned with beautiful rings. Comfortable pants and a short-sleeved sweater, with brown and orange stripes.
My Mom with her long beach-curled blond hair, and some fucked up kind of 70’s maroon jumper (with flowers), and my Dad with a blue dress shirt, a couple of gold chains, and one button too many unbuttoned to show the top of his hairy chest. He only started trimming that shit, after my parents got divorced and he was dating again.
What do you say anyhow, to your Dad bringing home a twenty-nine-year-old? When you are like, twenty-two? It was gross. But so was watching him transform slowly, into what he became. Realizing later that he always was that, underneath it all.
And then the tears started. Fear and paranoia came back because I had read somewhere that there was metal fiber in waterproof mascara. I was terrified for a moment, that my eyelashes would be ripped out. I already did that with cheap lash extensions in 2022, on the bad side of Eastside Austin.
It sucked. They grew back thicker. 😉 I digress.
I calmed myself down. But not meditating on my childhood home in the country. I could draw you every square inch of that house, and isn’t it just so silly, that my heart would go elsewhere? Even if it choked me up, that meditation put me back there, at the age of I think ten.
Black Cats And Sneaking Meatballs
When the kitchen became too much for my heart, my mind walked through the sliding door, to the back veranda. Concrete and never finished off for over twenty years, it was often littered with those white styrofoam inserts they sell the grocery store meat on. My Nonno used those to feed the barn cats that gathered around his home.
He hated cats or any kind of pet you couldn’t derive food from. No hate; that was his generation. For all the animals you named mysteriously going missing, I did acquire valuable skills. I can make my own Italian sausage and stuff.
I sat down on the dirty old stained concrete, with the legion of black and gray kittens and mother cats. I saw some fleas jump, but I did not care. Everyone deserves a soul-home, where they can travel, and peel back time to be with the ones they love again. When they want to feel safe, and protected.
Almost Forgot…
The other two places?
My horse Monday’s stall. She was tackling me for carrots, with her white blaze, big bluey brown eyes, long black mane, and black raggedy tail (no matter how much horse conditioner I put on it). Sticking her nose into my winter coat to fish out apples, horse chunks, and almost an Oh Henry bar, once.
And the wood with green rope swing set, with the extra soft white sand underneath, where you could dig up acorns with your toes. Sometimes you would find the old toys, from my mother’s childhood at the cottage.
The brass army trucks, tin soldiers, and army Jeeps. I used to “discreetly borrow” one of my sister’s myriad “My Little Pony” dolls and place it in the sand. Then declare holy war on sparkles, pink, and all variants of intermingled rainbow colors.
Gross.
