Embracing The Dark Times

I have to preface this blog by explaining why I am writing it at all.

I think there are many, many people out there that write because they are burning with creativity and the only way to let out some of the steam is to put their pen to paper or their finger tips to a key board, or now a days, even their voice to a recording device that will literate their words for them.  It's the same thing for dancers, who are compulsively compelled to move and stretch and fly in order to express their emotion; same for singers who are required to, at times, belt it out at the top of their lungs; just to make the point, I will even go as far to say that athletes have this same creative drive as the run or row or throw or flip. People express their inner selves the best way they can through these creative forms... I just don't think that's the real reason I write.

There are others that write, not because of the liberation they feel to expose their creative energy, but simply because they are damn good at it.  It's a much rarer reason to write, I think, since there are thousands upon millions of people who would love to "make it" as a writer, but really they just don't have the extreme and effortless talent.  When I look up at my modest shelf of books written by authors like Eggers, Palahniunk, Foer, Kerouac, Murakami, Sedaris, Robbins, Lamott, Thoreau, London, Whitman, I do not think they got as far as they have with their publications because they have repeatedly bared their souls in the only way they knew how, but because they worked hard, threw away the crap, and made examples of their excellence. They are Writers, real ones, because they are good and because they are masters of perseverance. That's definitely not the reason I write.

It has taken me several years to convince myself it was OK to consider myself a "writer" at all. Sure I've had a few poems and stories published in school newspapers and private printings, hardly the platforms to boast or declare credible value to my efforts. And of course when I'm feeling especially vexed I may open my little red journal or whip out my computer to rant about some personal or ethical dilemma, but trust me, I face a lot more dilemmas in my day to day life than my rants give me credit for. If I only felt on fire once a month or 2 or 3 times a year like this blog would suggest, I'd be a much more comfortable person.

I should clarify that I do write in part because it is creative, it takes effort and wits, it expresses something inside of me, and perhaps I am OK at it, better at it than I am at any other mode of communication or art.

The fact of the matter is, I write because I have depression.

I think I need to pause here because it is not something that most people with depression would like to admit. It is also a disease (be that a treatable one) that is severely minimized and depreciated in our society, even though an estimated 21 million children and adults are affected by the disorder annually.

Now, you may be thinking, like the rest of your collectively unconscious American peers, "This 'disease' (cough, cough) is merely a weakened state of mind which is over diagnosed because antidepressants are trendy and doctors aren't paid to care about causes, but treatments, as they are sell outs to pharmaceutical companies."

Well, I guess I can't argue that point. It's entirely possible. However, my point is that as much as people know, or think they know about depression, it is remarkably stigmatized here in America and all over the world.

Why do I write, I ask myself? Not so much to create, but to cope; not so much because I deserve a platform, but to build a platform for others so that anyone who's ever felt as crappy and lifeless and desperate as I have will understand that depression is not one's fault. Not to mention, typing it out here reaffirms this truth for myself, and I can't hear it enough. Major depression is an illness just as real as cancer. It will not go away without the right support systems in place, whether that involves medicine or family or friends or religion or time.  While I am still seeking an effective support system for myself, and while I am digging myself out of the trenches of this illness now, as I have been for several months, and while I carry a history of depression at different depths that go back in time as long as I can remember (I idolized Eeyore and my imaginary friends committed suicide, if that gives you any insight into my troubling childhood), I feel just as deeply that this topic should be discussed openly and freely, without shame, in order to conjure the support it takes to heal from the beast.

I recently heard a lecture discussing pessimism - a surprising topic, as most of us are trying to be the opposite - and the speaker quoted Nietzsche several times explaining that the proper way to live is to embrace the dark times we all face - the pessimism - embrace the lessons that suffering provides, and cultivate the relationships that are naturally built when one confesses their private selves.  This clever idea really strokes my sulking conscience. Embracing the idea that I should embrace my suffering encourages me to write about my depression as publicly as this blog will allow, not just for myself as a way to vent and cope and seek solace in the few friends who may read this, but for everyone who has ever been touched by the problem of depression, and I think that has to be just about everyone, period. I know most of my own friends and family don't know how to "deal with it," and I know a lot of my friends don't even know I suffer from it, since I, like my 21 million fellow melancholics, am trained to mask my truest emotions as much as possible and minimize sadness by calling it things like "a case of the Mondays" or "I was really burnt out from work so I just slept all weekend" or by only posting *happy things* on Facebook, even if they are completely insincere, because nobody wants to be cyber-friends with a Debby-downer. My hope is that my rambling thoughts to make these ugly truths more visible (even though I run the enormous risk of vulnerability and appearing as though the only way I can be emotionally intimate with anyone is by disclosing e v e r y t h i n g  to  e v e r y o n e) will give people a better understanding of what depression is, why it is, and how to kick start the healing process with the people they love.

What it is:

 (A journal entry from an unknown time)

It took me an hour to get out of my apartment today just to get a cup of coffee and write a little bit. It didn't take me an hour because I had to shower and eat a nutritious breakfast and have a pre-cafe coffee before hand... I was already dressed, my chores were done, all I had to do was put a few things in my bag and walk out the door. What slowed me was the dark pull that urged me to just stay where I was, close to my bed, and think about writing as I actually watched a marathon of Scrubs on Netflix. "Why leave? I have coffee here. I have internet and a computer and Netflix instant streaming and pen and paper, all the options are readily available."  I looked at my bed and at my writing chair, both flaunting my own, sad, Homer Simpson ass-impressions, which perversely attracted me. "I must get out."

I started to pull myself together and I looked in the mirror. I looked away, went toward my bag and stuffed my computer into it, then I went back to the mirror.

"God I'm ugly. I look sad. My fucking left eyebrow is so unruly.  I'm hideous. I'm definitely gaining weight. Who am I? I hardly recognize me."

I was trying to look further into my eyes for some deeper sense of recognition, but I couldn't. "I look empty. I am nothing. I hate myself. I hate looking at this. How can this be me? Why would anyone want to look at me? This is disgusting."

I went back to my bag. And back to the mirror. This is a masochistic game I can't stop playing. The dark pull is always trying to get me back into bed. The microbial hopefulness left in me is always quieting nagging and trying to get me out of the cloudy dungeon I've created for myself, but to little avail. It smells stale, like something is slowly dying. Even with candles and air fresheners thoughtfully placed throughout my abode, all I sense is decomposition. Even when all the shades are drawn on my window dominated walls and it's sunny outside, it seems gray and foggy where I am.  I feel like you could punch or stab me, and I would have no sensation of it. I think, "Can I get someone to try that on me?" Wadded up tissues surround me. I can't remember eating in over a day but I'm not hungry, though I could use a beer.  My legs and arms feel like I'm heaving logs to and fro when I try to cross the room.  There is a pile of clothes on my bed and on the floor, I sleep on it often because I'm so apathetic I can't bother to push one pile onto the other, and I just keep pulling my sweatpants of out the mass for everyday wear.  There is a pile of dishes in the sink. There is a pile of DVDs scattered across the carpet.  There is a pile of me staring at myself in the mirror again, trying to ignore the other piles and collect myself decently enough to go into public, where I can get a few shots of Vitamin D and fresh air and pretend to be a normal person.  The effort it is taking is all just so I can say I left my apartment this weekend... just so when a coworker asks me what I did this weekend, I can say "I went out for coffee" because at least that's something.

"That fucking left eyebrow - why is it so asymmetric from the right one? Fuck!"

Why it is:

The reasons people have depression varies greatly from one person to the next. Of course I could generalize some of the causes, or you can go look them up on webMD. But since I've written this much already, I figure I might as well keep going and confess why depression is for me - not to throw a pity party for myself, but to validate that it's real, to embrace my suffering, and to illustrate that it is in fact a disease beyond the control of my frontal lobe. And the reasons are:

1. There is no reason at all. I know it sounds like I'm playing some semantics game with you, but the truth is that for many, if not most major depression sufferers, it seems like they just woke up one day and there were all the previously mentioned symptoms and hopelessness.  Nothing extraordinarily bad happened - a few stressors, but nothing they couldn't manage before. It's like a wire gets loose in the brain and suddenly nothing "clicks" anymore. When I had my first major depression episode my freshman year in college it was a few days after a douche bag who I'd been on a couple dates with dumped me for my best friend. I can still remember what my dorm room looked like when I got the instant message that exposed the truth, what it felt like to kneel down in the middle of the room and scream and bawl while my roommate tried to study, what the other girls in my hall looked like when they came in to muzzle my madness. As if I had never been dumped before! I honestly didn't even like this guy that much. He was a terrible kisser.  And once the rage resided that night, I proceeded with my regular routine for a day or two, until something inside me shut off. I skipped my first classes ever. I slept through track practice, faking the flu.  I couldn't stop crying, even when I mustered up the courage to call the clinic and tell them I wanted to kill myself, I was bawling on the line and continued to do so until I got to the health center and they put antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills in my mouth. This is a long first reason, but depression really threw me off guard. I had been a 4.0 student and a track-star, and for those things to not matter because a sloppy kisser preferred my friend seemed outrageous even to me. But it was what it was. And it is what it is now. People always try to tell me to have perspective... I DO. I know there are good things happening around me, and there are many worse things that I could be dealing with.  I know I am "fortunate" in many ways. But fortunes are impossible to embrace when you feel like the walking dead for no reason.

There are other reasons though.

2.    Genetics. My brother has suffered from depression and generalized anxiety much of his life. My dad, too. When I asked my dad about our family mental health history, he couldn't go too much further than himself, since pre-1940's, even with Freud around, the stigma of mental health was probably at it's strongest, not to mention my dad's parents lived through a national depression, aside from a personal one, so no one dared discuss such things, but he suspects my grandma and grandpa were melancholics, too.

3.    Low-income. This is a reason my depression lingers as well as a reason it exists. I can't afford to take a lot of preventative vacations, get a bi-annual full body massage, or buy organic produce from the farmers market. Money is a huge stressor for me - I haven't been able to pay my hospital bills from 4 months ago; even though I do have insurance, it didn't cover most of the cost of my colonoscopy. Each co-pay I spend is half a day's pay (before taxes).  Each rent check I sign is over half a month's salary, and I live in the cheapest studio I could find that didn't have a toilet in the living room. There is absolute truth to depression rates being higher among low-income groups. C'est moi.

4.    Poor physical health. With anyone who has a chronic or terminal illness, there is a deserving need for profound emotional support, and others are generally game to play the supporting roles. I have no intention to exaggerate the severity of my health problems... I don't have cancer, I'm not going to die from what plagues me today, but I am plagued.  I've had over a year and a half of intense focus on my digestive system. I've lost count of how many doctors' visits I've been to, how many antibiotic pills I've swallowed, how many supplements and aids I've purchased to ease the pain of 18 months of diarrhea, constipation, anal fissures and thrombosed hemorrhoids.  If you bled from your ass nearly everyday, if you had to walk with a limp because of razor sharp pain in your rectum, if you've had bouts so bad you couldn't move an inch from your bed or your bathroom, I think you'd be depressed too.

5.    Circumstance.  This is the main cause for most depressive disorders. It gets called "circumstantial depression" to depersonalize the problem and place blame on the crap luck of life, and that diagnosis seems to bring comfort to people, so I'm ok with it.  Circumstance is just one branch of major depression though.  Or maybe a better analogy is it say that circumstance is the thorny bark of major depression.  My circumstance is that I live far away from my family and friends. I moved to San Francisco without a job and only knew 1 person, who quickly fell out of friendship with me in the first 2 months.  The job I have now is completely isolating - I don't have any coworkers in CA, all my communication is done through email, Skype, and an occasional phone call.  Coworker-friends from previous jobs live spread out across the Bay Area which lends me to see them once every 3 or 4 months if I'm lucky.  I've had really shit luck with roommates, and because of this, I've lived in 6 different places in 5 years. Most recently, I moved to be by myself after breaking up with my live-in boyfriend who said I was a hypochondriac and exaggerating my pain, among other vengeful, gas-lighting accusations (more on that in the near-future post).  Finally, I'll add that the affect of the winter holidays only strengthens my pessimism.  Not only is there less sunlight now to draw good vibes from, but there's the societal pressure to be with loved ones, or particularly, one loved one, at this time of year. It does not surprise me that the elusive single straight male is craigs-listing for a holiday girlfriend. The pressure is on to be happier than ever at this time of year, which makes it especially difficult for anyone who's ever lost a loved one. There's the memories of Thanksgivings and Christmases past that cannot compare to the punctuated loneliness felt without those loved ones. I always get especially blue in late November because three of my four grandparents died on Thanksgiving. Crap luck. Tie these circumstances in with poor health, low income, and genetic predisposition, then it should be easy to see why I'm afflicted so. 

How to help:

I think of my battle with depression as a lot like Frodo Baggins carrying the ring to Mordor. I know it's cliché to reference this trilogy, but none the less, the story fits.  Carrying the powerful ring is a struggle... a long, dark, burdensome journey... and it takes a huge network of allies to help Frodo get through the world so he can be done with the ring for good.  The evilness of the ring is always whispering to him, begging him to give in to it, to let the darkness win. If it weren't for the Fellowship and about a billion other friends that back him up along the way, Frodo would have certainly been lost to Dark Lord Sauron's cause.

Now, it's hard to speak on what the right magical ingredients are that can help the hypothetical sufferer of depression feel relieved of his/her burdensome journey; there are too many variables that play into any one person's affliction. But the underlying aid that I feel must certainly be there for anyone carrying the "ring" is a band of altruistic friends that will help guide him, have his back when circumstances get especially tough, and who will remain steadfastly determined with him, even when his own determination wanes, for the time when he can embrace ultimate freedom from the despondency and actually feel, perhaps for the first time, the lightness of joy, love, and happiness.

The billion of metaphorical allies might come in different shapes and sizes... some in a pharmaceutical pill form, others in vitamins and supplements like Omega-3 and St. John's Wart. They might come in the shape of a doctor or therapist. They might come as giant Redwood Trees. They might come as adoptable cats.  They might come as reruns of Seinfeld episodes.  But the best allies to depression I've seen are a few plain and simple friends.

I understand how tiring the role of ally to a depressive can be, believe it or not I've been on that side of the coin, too. It can be frustrating because it feels like nothing you say is getting through. You can say, "But you DO have so much to live for, you're beautiful and smart and kind and a hard worker..." and the sad one will say, "No. I'm not. The end." which can feel like you’re hitting your head against a brick wall.  It can be annoying because, hell, we've all got problems and stressors in life, and sometimes you'd like to have someone relieve you of that drag, but the depressive is pretty self-absorbed and it's nearly impossible to shake him of his own self pity. I do not always envy the lives of my friends trying to deal and cope with me, as I have become their heavy burden to carry. Depression is damn sticky and ugly, and it can ruin a lot of relationships all on its own.

So while the ally has a big job to do, I can only say that with me, the simple efforts you make are by far the most effective. I can't swallow it when my friends try to fix my depression for me... force feeding me perspective does not ensure I can keep it down. Don't give me a laundry list of things I should be doing to take better care of myself. "Go make new friends. Go exercise. Do more writing. Get out of your apartment. Appreciate what you have" - I'm already ruminating about the things I should be doing to slay my depression, hearing it as a command only makes me feel even more like a failure. More obviously, you can't fight the battle for me or try to take away the stressors causing me pain (unless the stressor is you), just as Frodo's Fellowship couldn't carry the ring for him. But for all the ways you can't help, there are easy things you can do. I hope people can apply these things to anyone who's got the blues without much straining:

• Call, write, or stop by just to say hi and that you're thinking of them
• Instead of telling them to "think about other things," share what's going on in your life
• Go for a walk or run together - invite him to be your wingman for some physical activity [it is like swimming through molasses just trying to get out of bed for a solo activity, but I very rarely miss a date if a friend asks me to workout]
• Make dinner together
• Do not allow your own joy and enthusiasm to fade. Keep it high, and hope the one who's sad will eventually rise to your level of happiness
• Make her a mixed tape or CD filled with silly / happy / kick ass songs to help her keep her mood up when you're not around
• Smile
• Softly remind him of the things he used to find pleasure in - if he likes to play guitar, remind him how playing makes him feel, and encourage (without putting pressure on him) to play it maybe once a week
• Hug - virtual hugs are great too
• Just BE together, no motive or activity is necessary. Be ok with silence. Your quiet presence can tell someone a lot about how much you care

So now that I’ve written more than what is required for most college papers, I will conclude my lengthy confession.

As I try to summarize, I’m filled with quivering self-doubt and I’m wondering if all this rambling was at all useful or appropriate.  Have I over shared? Over exposed? Have I perversely sanctified depression (it’s starting to sound like a bad word again) as if it were something to actually talk about aloud? How sick is it – how disturbed will I be perceived – to have streamed my thoughts on this topic with oh so many words? I’m about to press “publish” on this epic tale and come face to face with the rest of the world that places no value, only stigma, on any health problem let alone a mental one, as if there was any difference from your bodily health and your brain health. I’m scared, to be honest.

I’m trying to remember why I have written all this at all… why did I preface this blog so many finger taps ago?

Because writing saves me.  And I hope so desperately that what I write can in some minuscule way save someone else – or at least teach someone a little more about the secrets I see about the world.  I do think health is important enough to talk about in public, and even online. I want to be a part of a braver society where we can genuinely be who we are and not hide ourselves for the sake of appearing “normal” or professional or unjudgeable. I have to accept that I’m being judged for all this, but the benefit outweighs the risk. I own my problem with depression, and that helps me deal with it; I hope my writing will help you help me deal with it, and I hope it can help you deal with it in whatever other way it may affect you in this lifetime.

I often wish I never had to deal with any sadness, ever. I frequently cringe when I’m forced to consider why anyone has to suffer at all. But it’s like The Lord of the Rings…

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.

Maybe, just maybe, I am meant to carry depression so I can be more empathetic and better help and serve others who are plagued with health problems. Maybe it will somehow make me a better writer. Maybe this will make me a better friend.

When I have another down swing and get a little a lost in the darkness, maybe I’ll remember I wrote this; maybe my friends will have read this and be a little more available in the way I need them; maybe I’ll just lean on what Frodo’s best friend and companion said in response to Frodo’s gloomy doubt…

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding onto something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world... and it's worth fighting for.

Holding on

One of a baby's first instincts, along with suckling and screaming, is holding on. A baby will hold her breath until the moment's right, and stick your pinky finger by her newborn hand and she'll grab it fast and tight. I remember babysitting a newborn once when I was seven... well, ok it was my oldest brother babysitting me and the newborn, but I played a part by holding the baby in my lap as she slept. And even in slumber, this child gripped my finger as if it was a life or death situation and letting go would terminate her dreamy existence.

Holding on is primal. You see it in every mammal species (I'm pretty sure, at least). And every time we adults see a newborn baby responding to instinct appropriately, we ooh and awe and reward her with smiles and cuddles and love.

So what the fuck happens to that sort of approval when we are reborn into a new life situation, boyfriendless and all, as adults?

A little back-story: Despite my catholic upbringing, I truly believe in reincarnation. I had a school bus conversation with my BFF, Caryn, once in 3rd grade. Somehow, on the way home from a field trip to the DIA, the topic of life after death came up. I remember wanting pretty desperately to believe in a plain and simple heaven like everyone else around me in my white, middle class, revived farming town brimming with happy Christians. It was the expected thing for a 9 year old kid to believe in there. Other suggestions had not ever been proposed that I can recall. But as I sat there dazing out the sliding glass window at the streets of downtown Detroit, trying to ignore my motion sickness, I found the concept of being in one cloudy place in the sky for all of eternity rather far fetched.

After several minutes of wrestling with the language in which to explain these radical thoughts, I said to Caryn, "It just doesn't make sense that all this LIFE we have when we're alive could just go away or float into the sky. How can our souls exist without our bodies? It must go into something new... it must get recycled somehow. The Earth must be able to sponge it up... right?"

A little stunned, Caryn quickly labeled my insight. "So, you believe in reincarnation?!"

Reincarnation? - Not a word I was used to. Not a word tossed around at my weekly CCD classes at St Andrew's anyway.

"Uh, what?" I asked.

"It's what you just said! Non-Christians believe when you die, you come back as something else. If you're bad you come back as a frog. I thought you were Christian?"

(Conversations like this would later explain why I had nightmares about not being a good enough church go-er, and I'd scream things in my sleep like "I CAN'T DO THAT I'M A CHRISTIAN" and highly disturb my parents and neighbors.)

"Oh... no..." I muttered, "I don't believe in reincarnation..."

Though I doubt any of my other peers on the bus were paying any mind at that time, this discussion was a pivotal moment in my social standing. I'd do anything to avoid being judged for my apparent non-Christian introspection; what would people have honestly thought of me? Even now the idea of this display of individuality and freedom of thought at such a young and impressionable age still lends me to a queasy stomach and chills down my spine. I would have leper-ized myself.

So I paused a moment more before on withdrew my previous statements and proclaimed the "truth." "No, I believe in Heaven. I guess our souls can be without our bodies. That does make the most sense. God! I hope there's a Heaven!"

And it was settled.

Years and years later, past my conflicted, Catholic-guilt driven sleeplessness, after experiencing tragedy and death and heart breaks and some growing pains, after depression and antidepressants and asking myself the really big life (and death) questions, I was reintroduced to reincarnation in a Christian-college philosophy course. The possibility of reincarnation made a lot more sense to me at a slightly more educated and experienced 19.

I recalled my childhood conversation and determined that my open hearted, honest 9 year old self instinctively knew something I couldn't admit for another 10 years.

How often do we get to say that, by the way? - That our child-self was right all along? Right for me at least. Whatever happens at the intersection of life and death is up to each of us to decide, if we want to, on our own, but reincarnation certainly edged out in the debate for me.

Without going into all the details of what it is or how it works, I can say the philosophy has given me calm in the most personally chaotic moments of my young adulthood. My mantra echoed in every crazed, stressed out, dire, mood-swinging, desperate moment: "Slow down... be good... your next life will be rewarded." I knew I'd screw up, lose my senses, I would feel the weight of the world, and I’d weave myself into an emotional blizzard again... "Slow down... be good... your next life after the next life will be rewarded. Live intentionally, be godly, and your reward will be just that: Being. Godly."

I can't tell you how much this has improved the quality of my present life. The fact I had this intuition as a child only proves to me that 1) Children are always right, and 2) I should always trust my instincts. I am grateful I held onto this particular childhood memory as it has crystallized my jig-sawed philosophy on how to live my life as an adult.

That moment in philosophy class opened me up. It inspired me to leave that Christian school and transfer to The University of Michigan, even though the campus was in my parents' backyard, because I knew the cultural and spiritual impact it would have on me, and that is what a college education is all about.

It was this decision that led me to post-college job prospects and big dreams and desires, and finally to the idea to leave Michigan and go to an even more progressive, cultured place on a tiny peninsula in Northern California.

It was this decision that has led me to the series of fortunate and maybe more frequently unfortunate circumstances with employers, roommates, boyfriends, and the ebb and flow of general happiness, which has then in-so-fact-o led me to write it all out with the stomp of my fingers on this here keyboard... and write, and write, and write I will.

(And it is writing that best allows me to tap back into my wide-eyed, childlike intuition and instinct; and good GOD it makes me feel better! It is really the best feeling I ever feel, and the best thing I can offer this world.)

But I digress. I say ALL this so I can share an insight I had just the other day. You see, there's a photo going viral on the internet, and a story to that photo:

The picture [taken August 1999] is that of a 21-week-old unborn baby named Samuel Alexander Armas, who is being operated on by a surgeon named Joseph Bruner.

The baby was diagnosed with spina bifida and would not survive if removed from his mother's womb. Little Samuel's mother, Julie Armas, is an obstetrics nurse in Atlanta. She knew of Dr. Bruner's remarkable surgical procedure. Practicing at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, he performs these special operations while the baby is still in the womb.

During the procedure, the doctor removes the uterus via C-section and makes a small incision to operate on the baby. During the surgery on little Samuel, the little guy reached his tiny, but fully developed, hand through the incision and firmly grasped the surgeon's finger.

The photograph captures this amazing event with perfect clarity. The editors titled the picture, "Hand of Hope." The text explaining the picture begins, "The tiny hand of 21-week-old fetus Samuel Alexander Armas emerges from the mother's uterus to grasp the finger of Dr. Joseph Bruner as if thanking the doctor for the gift of life."

For some reason, this picture, too, reminds me of my philosophy. I was told once (by graffiti art on Haight Street) that every time I die, I am born again. Hmm. I'm thinking back on my last post about being reborn so...

It makes perfect sense to me that in every life we have, we have the opportunity to experience many mini or metaphorical deaths and rebirths. I suppose it's how you choose to frame it when shit hits the fan. But for the really really big things, when that shit hits and blows the roof off, you have an instant to choose, from your heart of hearts, "Do I want to keep living this way?" And if you don't, as I didn't, you can start over with a fresh set of eyes. Each life is a journey of its own that plays into a much larger and longer network of consciousness, and we really do have an opportunity in this one little life to learn and grow to our maximum potential.

Recently I seized the chance to let my old ways die. I had a 19 month long relationship with a man that I thought, or hoped, would last forever, but as the gods of chaos would have it, the relationship itself had to die, thus I died with it. And now I'm a wide eyed babe.

But even 21 week old fetuses hold on tight, it's unnatural not to, so I cannot be blamed that there are parts of my old life that are hard to let go of.

A month after I moved out of the apartment I shared with my boyfriend I finally gave back the keys. Even with 3 new keys dangling from the key ring, it feels uncomfortably light without the old ones.

I am relearning many new habits to replace those of my past life, like what exit to take when I'm driving home from work, what side of the bed is best to sleep on, how much rice to make with dinner, how tightly to hold the person sitting next to me on a Friday night, and so forth. Some of these habits are harder to extinguish than others... coming home to someone in a warm 1 bedroom apartment and hugging and talking about the days' events is a hard thing to let go. How much rice to make? I can probably figure that out sooner than later (though there is still an extra half cup of it sitting next to me now... but I'll get it right...)

Learning these new lessons and habits is truly testing my patience, but they are the most important lessons to learn, as they are lessons of the spirit, and that's what a life's education is all about. Though, while I learn them, I do feel bad and shamed and angry and annoyed that I still have loving memories of my past life. I miss a lot about the way things were; yet at the same time, I'm bitter that life got so off course and I didn't end up as happy as I planned. It seems like this bittersweet juxtaposition and emotional confusion may be slowing down the progress of my new life. This must be why babies don't make memories between birth and 3 years of age - they need a buffer period to get over their old knowings. Maybe check in with me 3 years from now - I'll be 30 1/2, and maybe I'll be totally over this destruction - creation cycle. Maybe everything that is happening now will be logged into my subconscious like a forgotten dream or as it is in Being John Malkovich, and I won't have any recollection that this time was swollen and bleeding with vexation. Maybe in 3 years my dreams will start coming true. But maybe not, I don't want to jinx it. 

Either way, I do know for sure that I will hold onto my philosophy on starting over. I will not forget that chaos happens, and all I have to do is slow down... be good... and remember things will be better the next go around. I will hold on tight to that truth. I will survive all the spiritual deaths before me, no matter how often they occur and no matter how terrible the stretch marks get. I hope they happen often so I can get closer to my full potential. I will hold onto the memories of my most recent life for a little while, but I'll hold onto hope a little tighter, and throughout all the transcending, I will write my truths down.

Home is whenever I'm alone...

My body had wandered off again. It walked out the door without saying where it was going. It roamed aimlessly, my self inside, imprisoned as a silent witness, for hours and hours, for days? weeks? - time is obsolete for the wanderlust. My limbs had wandered off so far and for so long that my silent self had been growing anxious... "How will I get back HOME?"

I walked barefoot across the beach and I stared out across the ocean, and I trailed up the cliff-lined path watching white globes of fuzz from the dandelion blossoms float abound the pebbly way, and then, where my body sat, I saw the glowing salmon-colored bridge pillaring mightily into the clouds while a perfect white sail boat bobbed beneath in it's shadow. The waves, the most beautiful, enforcing yet pliable, majestic waves stretched across the infinite blue and gold plain. My eyes watched them attentively as they slid into the rocky beach like sex in silk sheets then subtly but erratically shifted emotion to crash and drum against the already diluted boulders, making the sky and peace around my body jerk up in fear of danger. On a far off rock in the water there were birds that looked like small people trying to stay dry as they watched the sun fall down and patiently waited for the tide to curl back into itself as the moon filled the sky.

I later found myself sitting on an outside stoop in the dark smoking a 3-year-old Clove cigarette. A black woman who I had never seen before drove into a parking spot, got out, locked the door, and briskly walked past me as she held her breath and started into the building I was sitting in front of. "How are you?" I heard myself ask.

"Good. You?"

"I'm good," and I felt myself give a polite smile.

I was smoking a 3-year-old Clove cigarette, but I am NOT a smoker. How could I be good? Why did I lie to such an innocent stranger? She didn't deserve the lies my mouth automatically spat out. I needed to get back control of this body.

I read some old journal entries to get some perspective. Apparently in the time I was just going along with my body, 5 years and 29 days, I had wandered to the Lands End region of San Francisco on a Sunday in 2008, and several pages and bindings later and exactly 3 years and 17 days later, I had discovered disgust for myself on a Friday. That was 3 days ago. Within my California wandering, pen ink inscribed my movements and behaviors. I had:

• Moved into a new apartment 6 times.
• Started 4 new jobs, the most recent of which I had taken 3 promotions but never saw a cent added to my salary.
• Sued 1 landlord. I threatened another.
• Saved lives with passionate mentorship and suicide prevention, reproductive health, nutrition, and teen dating violence workshops.
• Witnessed death.
• Contracted a life-threatening bacteria and shat intestinal tissue and blood for about a year.
• Dated 20+ guys... 1 who had a self-tattoo of a skull and the letters "L.I.P" which stood for "Living Is Pain." One who was secretly involved with cocaine. I dated a guy for 2 months before we both officially concluded he was gay. I dated a guy for 1 week who weighed about 100 pounds and never slept, ever. Another guy I dated briefly lived above a car stereo shop and was making a documentary about the car made famous by Back To The Future, the Delorean. Most recently I fell in love with and moved in with a married man. Well... separated. Eventually divorced. Whatever. We were together for over a year and half and he was my first adult love. My first adult heart break.

Flash forward to present day confessions: I'm in a studio apartment that costs more than half my monthly income. There's a hornet that's crawled on the windowsill above my bed since the day I moved the bed in. The shower faucet has two settings: frost bite and hell. The bathroom smells like smoke, and that bothers me. Me, the one who smoked a 3 year old Clove. Those things are made with fiberglass! How did I get here?? How will I get back home?

I idealized my "home" to be like the home in Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zero's "Home," which coincides as my iPhone's ring tone...

Home, let me come home,
Home is wherever I'm with you.
Oh home. Yes I am home.
Home is whenever I'm alone with you.

But now that I'm alone, actually alone, I can see that song is bullshit. God bless it, it is a great song, but it's a song for happy people in happy relationships and big 4 bedroom houses with white picked fences and a 2 car garage with a riding lawn mower and 2 yapping mongrels pissing on everything. It's a song for the illusioned who are also going along with their bodies and buoyantly bobbing through the Bay believing they can BE someone. HA! It's impossible. The home I've propelled my body toward is a manufactured fallacy. Home does not exist... not for the wanderlust... not for the mind-tramp.

Not that home anyway.

Something in the act and motion of breaking up with my "partner," saying goodbye to his family that had welcomed me in, and saying adeau to the friends he had temporarily shared with me, and moving all my furniture and things we shared out of our tiny abode, and letting go of the dream of building a home and a family with him, something in all that has allowed something else to awaken within me. The plug that connects my mind to my body was reattached.

Reattaching is an interesting process. Watch anyone coming out of a coma and you know what I mean. They open their eyes, that's usually the first step. Then slowly... very slowly they regain conscious function of their digits and voice, they become aware of their senses, and they reclaim their human power with their human spirit.

For me, my reattachment (one could even call it my rebirth) began with opening my eyes, gasping for breath, and crying. I wish there was a stronger word for the type of crying that took over me, as its violent nature was incomparable to the cry of cut skin or broken bones, or to that of the misfortune of being laid off from a job you actually like. I heaved with sadness and sobbed until my stomach ached. Reality was too harsh for my vulnerable new self to accept at first glance - I wanted to go back into the womb of my relationship, where happiness was make believe, but at least it was happiness.

I cried until I fell asleep, and when I woke again it was like only parts of me were turned on. I could use my body when I told it to move, but it felt numb. I could follow through with previously arranged appointments, but even meetings with friends looked hazy and ever dream-like. Waves of tears would crash into me unannounced, taking total siege of my attention, and then slowly drift away. I rode this ebb and flow of dazed emotion for weeks.

Then one day I opened my eyes once more and I saw light. There was light at the end of my tunnel vision where the image of the boy used to be. I don't really know why it suddenly appeared - maybe just a credit to time - but I told my body, "Go towards that!" and my body followed. My mind called it's first shot in years, and my legs and torso and butt did as I commanded, and I trailed toward hope.

Still, I had a lot of relearning to do. Specialized therapists needed to be scheduled to help my mind take full and confident control again. I had to take extra vitamins to help my soul stay fueled through the exhausting process. I had to dig deep into my memories to remember what self-love and compassion and intentional, spiritual living felt like, and I had to trust that those feelings could be rebuilt inside my current, previously mindless, machine.

Reattaching is a process and I assure you, I am not yet fulfillingly self-actualized. It's a path to be on - a journey not a destination. Occasional slips of unconsciousness take hold... hence the 3 year old Clove... but I am making a practice in leading with my mind and my heart, not with my body.

Living this way feels like a throw back to my senior year of college, which was the last time I actually lived alone. It was the best time of my life. My heart was free. I walked through the world with a slight skip in my step and a smirk on my face, and I patiently waited for the "real world" to arrive post academia. That was the year I felt truly, indescribably blessed with life; I had very keen awareness of what was important, and I felt the presence of god daily if not moment by microscopic moment.

The circumstances are right again - I'm single, I'm living alone, and my eyes are wide open for the next big thing. With this re-found worldview, each step I take on this journey is a step in feeling more alive, earthed, and whole. Every place I plant my foot, I feel a little more me, and a little more home.

on being patient

Patience is a virtue. Patience is a form of despair, disguised as virtue. I am full of patience, and fully occupied with being a patient. And broke because of it.

The newest medical update is that I definitely had a UTI last week. My doctor looked at the results and sarcastically asked me if I knew I had one, “and boy do you.” She put me on Nitrofurantroin. But it didn’t work. Half a week later the symptoms came flooding back, straight to every toilet and porter potty I came across as I wearily strolled through The City streets during Fleet Week. What do they call it when you’ve been on antibiotics for five months and can’t drink alcohol or enjoy coffee or eat dairy when everyone around you is having a party and you have to excuse yourself every half an hour to pee blood? Patience.

Sunday, the day of rest, I anxiously called my doctors office three times and left messages articulating my patience for the matter. Then after a several hour exercise in patience, a doctor called her patient back. “Oh did you see me last week?” She said.

“I don’t know…” I’ve been a patient of 12 doctors since May, don’t expect me to remember their names, as I no longer expect them to remember mine or appropriately advocate for the bits and pieces of me that are falling apart.

“I’m the big fat stupid blond lady...?”

“Oh yes. I did see you.”

“Did we get a culture done for you?”

“Well, you said you would, but I didn’t get any results…”

Today I dropped into my doctors office and patiently waited for those results, but when another new doctor made time to speak with me, and after sending her nurses on a wild goose chase to find said results, the conclusion was that no culture test (the protocol test for patients with complicated medical histories that figures out what bacteria is actually the cause of an infection and what the proper treatment would be) was done. 

“Great," I drooled, proving that patients can be sarcastic, too.

The new doctor gave her patient two white pieces of paper with scribbles on them that pharmacists magically recognize as prescriptions. The notes were for - you guessed it - more antibiotics. We are in the 6^th round with Cipro in one corner, and a broken bladder patient in the other. Simultaneously the 7^th round is underway with another left right uppercut combo from Metronidazole that aims to knock the broken privates patient down down down. 

According to the World Wide Web and the warning label on the bottle, Cipro “may cause a severe intestinal condition (Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea) due to a type of resistant bacteria,” along with yeast infections, thrush, and irreversible tendon damage. Dairy and vitamins/supplements should not be taken as they may bind with the medication and totally screw up its effectiveness. No vitamins or supplements means no probiotics which means I have nothing to shield me from relapsing with C Fucking Diff for a 3^rd time. A 3^rd relapse means it’s time for this patient patient to get her ass back onto the doctor’s table for a transplant. And all THAT means is I am shit full of despair.

See a doctor once for a condition and you can call me a patient. I can tolerate the waiting room, the smaller waiting room after that where I have to sit naked under a paper robe, the $60 copay, the $45 prescription, and the lack of intelligence displayed by the doctor during the guessing game we call medicine. See a doctor 12 times for a condition and the 5 conditions that have spurred off as side effects of not effectively treating the main condition the first time, you may no longer call me a patient. You may call me anything but. First try calling me irritable, depressed, and extremely pissed off; I’ll respond to that.

I’m still waiting, though, for someone to tell me how to cope with this much physical and psychological damage. I’ll be verbosely honest in admitting that I am run down and beat up by the happenings of the last 13 odd weeks. I am not accustomed to being ill for any period of time and was not previously prepared for so much suffering. 

On top of all the side effects and debt from copays and prescriptions, there’s the emotional trench I’ve naturally fallen into. Coupled with a bunch of new beginnings at work, home, and relationships, all I can see of myself is a swollen shadow of who I used to be, a mere fraction of who I want to be. I don’t see how to handle all the new beginnings with the shit-tinted lenses my brain is giving me. If my body is too dependent on antibiotics and too fatigued to operate it’s immune system, how am I supposed to defend my soul? I feel like I’m under the weight of the entire Pacific Ocean to overcome these obstacles and be “happy,” be “successful,” be “good.” And all my doctors keep telling me to be patient with myself, and cross my fingers. Is that the best solution? Is all else lost?

Like a scab that won’t heal, the one thing I know how to do right now is remain open. I am stretching my arms out wide for a virtual hug from the world and a real validation that things are going to be OK. I’m writing, but mostly, I’m listening. I’m pleading with the gods to give me a resolution to this jagged despondency. I can’t stand being [a] patient anymore. I want to be me. I want to open because that’s who I am, because it’s godly, not because I’m desperate to achieve health and sanity. I want my wanderlust mind babbling to be more about how the sunlight reflects on people’s skin and how humans tattoo themselves on the skin of nature without regret, not about diarrhea, side-effects, and self-loathing. But that’s where I am. This is “now.” Now is crappy… now I have to take more antibiotics and keep holding my breath for that infamous moment when all is right with the world, when living life the way it was meant to be lived doesn’t require so much patient patience.

One thing after another

Since my last little novel was posted, it seemed like things were getting better for me. To my optimistic self's surprise, my health remained seated for the roller coaster ride. It's been a bumpy, turmoil-ridden experience to say the very least. But when do I ever say just that?

1. I did get the re-promotion, or un-demotion as it really was. Lots more work, no more pay, but I shouldn't complain... because as our wise old predecessors in their high pitched, nasally, dreadful sounding voices always say, "In this economy, you should be grateful to have ANY job. it's hard to get a job at McDonalds these days!" Meh.

2. Took a week off from the work for a road trip up north. I wish "up north" had the same meaning as it did in Michigan, where a few hours up I-75 meant Pine-lined lakes, hammocks, rednecks peacefully shining their shotguns on their stoops, and ultimate bliss. This time, however, up north was by way of Bend and Portland, OR and Seattle, WA. The facebook pictures are nice, I'm sure you agree.

3. Retested for C. Diff, and it was positive. ("So I've got that going for me.") Started on Vancomycin and the 4 more weeks of antibiotics plan.

And with #3, today's story begins:

When my doctors say positive, what they really mean is esteem-destroyingly negative. After 16+ weeks, I still had the toxic bacteria eating me up from the inside out. So I wasn't going to hesitate any further to do whatever it took to be rid of it. The 4 week plan was this: 4 pills a day for week 1, 2 pills a day for week 2, 1 pill a day for week 3, and 3 pills a week for week 4. Sounds like a cake walk, right?

But after week 1, I was still experiencing the runs in a fashion un-writable. Imagine saw-dust.... ewwwww, now you got the picture. So I called up my specialist and he exasperatedly told me either I don't know what I'm talking about and going crazy (in so few words), or that the "Vanco" (abbreviations make people sound smarter/cooler, I suppo.) was not working for me, which would make me the first person in history to not be positively (or negatively?) effected by the drug, or that I have some other problem on top of having C. Diff - like Crohns Disease or another nasty colitis. He told me to come in for an urgent colonoscopy. Too bad for him I was going on my vacation in two days, so he wouldn't be able to stick his probes in my no-mans-land. But it was too bad for me, as well, as I stuck to my 2 pills a day stage of the plan for an extra week and sucked up my discomfort throughout my holiday, and hoped that I get more constipated than anything else in order to veer away from the subsequent plan: a fecal transplant. On a side note, it was alarming how many of my friends and family stepped up to donate their fecal matter for the potential operation. Seriously alarming.

Back in the Bay Area again, I went in to see Mr Specialist. 60 bones for the copay - 5 minute consultation. "You look fine!" my doctor exclaimed. Apparently the modern medicine is based on outward appearances and who can afford to actually get such stellar advice. "Go to church, say your prayers, be nice to strangers, and hopefully you won't have to see me again. But if you relapse again, you know how to find me." If only I was a church going nice person who knew strangers!

With no surprise left in me, I have had a repeat of the runs since the breakthrough medical opinion was shared that September afternoon. But I also have had a lot of time this summer to examine the different types of runs one emits, and I know that these runs are different runs than C. Diff runs. Now the cause of my perpetual discomfort is a diet issue. Lactose Intolerance is the culprit. It's a crying shame for this milk loving cheese eater. Pizza, quesadillas, cheese-burgers, milk shakes, ice cream, and morning cereal are all serious no-nos now, among alcohol, coffee, and most regrettably, popcorn. Even if I do get better next month or some day and time over the rainbow, I know my life is less full because of the May through October (or beyond) in 2010 without such edible essentials. It's like taking away worms from a bird or Steve Irwin from the crocodile that ate him. How will I possibly get along?

With rice, rice cakes, bananas, and most recently added to the list, cranberry juice. Sounds like a diet for an old person who wears depends , unquestionably. But that old person is me, trapped in a 26 year old, Hottie McHotterson's body.

So what does cranberry juice do for a dame with intestinal problems? It helps her urinary track infection! I woke up yesterday morning at 5 am (aka way too early) from a bad dream that involved finding the ladies bathroom to discover the urgency of finding my reality bathroom asap. When I found it, I also found the classic symptoms described on wikipedia of a bladder infection, which I'll highlight for anyone who has also never had such problems: urgency without much product, cloudy smelly urine, severe pain, and a desire to cut out your insides. I couldn't get back to sleep because any way I laid I felt pressure on my bladder and I felt like getting to the toilet again.

It was a memorable scene, me sitting there slouched over my lap wishing I could stand up or lay down for more than 5 minutes without rushing back to the porcelain bowl. It was a scene I've played out a hundred times in 4 months. The only luxury was that this time I was focused on a different hole, and nothing was coming out.

I cautiously went about my day with a third eye on my bladder, but except for some upset stomach and general ickiness, which I've grown accustom to, I ignored the early morning signs of danger as a fluke to having bad dreams.

Today I woke up at the still ripe hour of 6 am and history repeated itself. I gotta pee, but I don't pee. I gotta pee, I can't freakin pee!

So I called the doctor - she must think I'm a hypochondriac - and made an appointment with her for tomorrow. About 10 minutes after that, my bladder announced it had to be relieved again, so even though I knew too well what would result, I plopped down on the porcelain again. Trickle trickle pause trickle stop. Wipe. Blood?

I moved my doctors appointment up for two and a half hours from now. Blood in urine, I'm pretty sure, is frowned upon. After all this, I may very well become a church going nice person who stops every stranger on the street for a hug. I need a freakin miracle. I know, and am scared to death that I'll be prescribed more antibiotics for this UTI, antibiotics that will rip through the walls of my stomach and intestines and persuade C. Diff to return with unstoppable vengeance.

Why me? What did I do in this life time or the last one to deserve this? Why am I not getting better?

Before all this, I was a healthy, vivacious young woman who had her own share of ups and downs but over all had a good thing going. And now... what am I but a cesspool, an ill-shaped patient in a dozen doctors offices across the Bay Area without a glimmer of hope or end to the internal wreckage?

It's just one thing after another. If you can stomach it, start praying.

The painful skinny

The blog is back! Several months have withered away, void of the tick-tick finger dance that I once so enjoyed, and behind the monitor a significant number of changes have taken hold of my reality. I make no attempt with this re-found ability to type to make this posting fluid with wise nectar... yup, no interest in that. This is all about facts for friends, in no particular order.

1. "promoted" to Regional Program Manager at work. no upgrade in the salary, just a phat-er title that can easily be mocked with quotes from the Office.

2. DEMOTED... same title, less salary. It's called poverty, bitches.

3. Met the very best man in the whole wide world for me.

4. Moved in with the very best man. No, I am not engaged or pregnant, and do not plan to be for a very very long time.

5. Moved in with the very best man because of item #2, and that my crack-head "psychiatrist" landlord kicked me out of my SF apartment. oh, well, because we're in love, too. I'm now a resident of the hood.

6. Got into a car accident and was dubbed a racist because some guy hit me.

7. I was possibly re-promoted (?) details on getting my hours and salary are still pending.

8. And then I lost 20 pounds by sitting on my ass! the doctor's notes on that are a joy to share...

It started at one of two or maybe both times and places. I got the dreaded SWINE FLU (I wish blogger came with sound effects because I can think of a good one to put here) back in December 09. The rumors about it are true, by they way, it is a terrible terrible flu that forced me to curl up in the fetal position on my futon for a week, watching - but mostly falling sleep to - old Seinfeld episodes on DVD. I felt weak for a month and never even got in to a doctor's office because it was just too much of an epidemic in SF. (A month into feeling better, I was 'diagnosed' with H1N1 during a routine physical. how's that for top-notch, speedy Western Medical Care?) Sob sob sob, that was just a warm up.

February through April I had my odds and ends of colds, flues, peculiar viruses and throat infections that gave my doctors a scratch on their heads, but the illnesses weren't tooooooo outrageous to be believed for the Average Joe. For me, at the time, I was growing wearisome since my typical pattern is: get a mild cold flu in December, get over it 4 days later, get healthy, run amok for 11.5 months. Then again, I was suddenly sharing a world of germs with my studly boyfriend, so I suppose it was all expected.

May 16 (happy wedding day, Allison!) kicked off the worst series of negative health events I have ever faced, and probably, hopefully, ever will face. My throat was sore in the slightest of slight ways before I went to bed the day before, and I wondered about it the way you wonder what is in a jewelery box you get from your Great Aunt Martha on Christmas. Tacky fake gold is the best you can hope for then, and I was crossing my fingers and swallowing my pounding instinct that it was just a flair of jet-lag. Alas, I woke on the morning of May 16 with swollen glands, oozing white patches on my tonsils, a neck ache, a fever, and a head-ache for the memory books. Swallowing my instinct had a gnarly side effect! But it didn't stop me from putting my high heals on and giving my boyfriend his debut at Allison and Patrick's wedding.

Post the ceremony, pre the reception, things took another turn for the worse. I felt like a Chinese finger trap and invisible forces were pulling at me from both ends. John and I stopped at the Dollar Store and picked up some Pepto Bismol and ibuprofen, which each cost about $3.74; I nearly puked from the horror of false marketing. Or maybe it was the McDonald's across the street that was inflaming my nostrils. Or maybe it was just me. Either way, the pit stop was useless. We went to the reception and I sunk into a puddle of "muh" and "ughhhhhhh" until everyone was served dinner. I ate about half a salad and 2 green beans before I decided my presence at the party of a lifetime was not doing anyone any good. Back home, I crashed at 9pm and left dear boyfriend twiddling his sweet Californian thumbs with my oblivious and careless parents improving their sedentary ways in front of the TV.

The next morning, after not sleeping most of the night (the crash lasted maybe an hour), I woke up, then asked God to shoot me. Everything was in throbbing pain. My dad called to give me a chore, in which my response was tears and a desperate cry for help. His response was, "talk to your mother." My mom then called to figure out what was wrong and quickly made a doctors appointment with good old Brian Federonko, family medical practitioner. The best boyfriend in the whole wide world took me to meet my fate.

At the doctors, first the nurse said "oh yea, I've seen this" and blah blah blah, like she knew the kind of hell I was in. Then the doctor came in and said, "hum, ho, oh I don't know. It could be Mono!" (John interjected with a fair and classically concerned "she only kisses me, she can't have Mono.) Then the doctor mumbled on, "well, it could be anything. But I don't think it's strep," and proceeded to give me antibiotics (Clindamycin) for strep, plus some simple steroids (Prednisone) to make me feel buff whilst in hell. I then got nauseous, cloudy, and passed out.

By the time I got my prescriptions for death and got back to my parents house, my temperature was 103. I laid limp on the couch and my very best boyfriend ever rubbed my feet while my mom force fed me Pediasure and cooled my forehead with a wet towel. This, I've heard, is really the classic way for your boyfriend to meet your parents for the first time. I'm happy I got to experience it the same way it's done in the movies.

So... la de da, I actually started getting better. The next day John and I flew back to CA, and I stayed on my antibiotics diligently, 2 pills at a time, 3 times a day, 10 days in a row.

To cut short the un-shockingly disturbing part of this story, I'll just say that a couple of weeks went by and I was feeling relatively normal. My poop.... well... it wasn't looking quite normal, but when does a lady like me ever raise concerns about her poop to the public?

Then about 3 weeks post my bout with Clindamycin, the full-hearty diarrhea took siege. And it wasn't just any 'I ate too much cheese and now I've got the runs' kind of diarrhea, this was 'hey look at that - my intestines are in the toilet, they're yellower and more pussy than I expected' kind of diarrhea. And still, as the lady that I am, I resisted showing my concern for another week, until I realized that the situation was making me lose weight. "7 pounds, gone?! That's curious! Something must be wrong. I'll go to the doctor."

Once at the doctors office and 3 hours later, 1 confused and frantic nurse practitioner later, 1 rectal exam and 1 blood drawing later, and 4 viles for stool samples filled later, then 24 hours later, it was confirmed that the cause of my reckless weight-loss and month of disordered bowel movements was the rare and life threatening presence of Clostridium Difficile (or C. Diff) thriving in toxic 'I'm gonna kill you' mode throughout my colon and large intestine. In Amy-talk, what it really meant was that the antibiotics I took so diligently for the non-bacterial, possibly viral infection in May destroyed every good bacteria my colon needed to be happy. Without the good bacteria, the mean old bad bacteria, C. Diff, that many people have in itty bitty insignificant quantities, tore up the house and decided not to leave.

Metronidazol, a different antibiotic, is what my doctor gave me to kill the bacteria my old antibiotic gave me. Medicine is clever. The kicker was that the new antibiotic to treat my nausea, weight loss, and infinite diarrhea has side effects of nausea, weight loss, and infinite diarrhea. So for 10 days, 3 times a day, I took this shit that made me shit. I was too nauseated to eat, so I dropped 10 pounds. And of course, I wanted to die.

When I finished the Metronidazol, John was out in the back country being terrorized by devil teens. The 4th of July was upon us so and I went "fishing" with some friends, although we didn't get any nibbles. I was sitting pretty on the row boat when I saw the email from my drug addict landlord who was writing from Eastern Europe on a major bender that told me he needed to vacate my unit so his mother-in-law could have a place to stay when she's in town. The immediate realization that I'd be homeless and only making about 25k a year, before taxes, with my demotion prompted me to detach from my body for the day, dropping some tears on the way out.

When I got home that night to rest in solitude, I returned to my body when I recognized my bloody intestines were projecting out of me again with uninhibited violence. That, and my tongue was gathering a fuzzy white patch near the back, which made me choke and gag as if a colony of popcorn grissels had taken fort in that hard to reach place. I used mouth wash and brushed feverishly to no avail. And the next day, everything was worse.

So with boyfriend in tow, I went back to the doctor, or, I should say, to the waiting room of my doctor's office. It was 2 hours before my doctor actually came in to see me, spitting her emotionless apologies for being so far behind with other, more important, patients. I told her my symptoms, and she looked them up on webmd, then prescribed me a second round of Metronidazol... this time, for 14 days instead of 10. "This should kick it out of you... the website says relapses happen in 10% of patients with C. Diff." So this is what it feels like to be a minority - hmmmm! Exciting. My doc also looked at my increasingly white and fuzzy tongue with suspicion and uncertainty. She gave me some lozenges to take every 4 hours, except while sleeping, and told me my thrush really wasn't that bad. I wondered, "how bad does an oral yeast infection have to be in order to get rid of it? I've been gagging on it for days, that seems bad enough to me!"

So I took the shit that made me shit and want to throw up every night even though I couldn't eat anything all day for 14 days. The lozenges I could have done without. Not only were they unreasonably flavorless (like they couldn't have coated them with bubblegum sweetener?), but they made no impact on my fuzzy tongue at all. The only notice I did see was when I ate a blue sucker and my tongue stayed blue for 2 days, even after brushing my teeth/tongue, rinsing my mouth, and trying to scrape it off with my fingernails. Otherwise, the medications perhaps, maybe, seemed to do something for my digestive track. I lost 10 more pounds.

Once I was through with the antibiotics, again, I went back to my doctors office for a follow up. I wanted to be sure the C. Diff was outty, and to see if there was anything else I could to do demolish the thrush. This time, the office was gracious enough to replace an actual doctor with a medical student wearing a hybrid hipster-professional wardrobe of skinny slacks and pointy black boots. The picture on his ID badge proudly displayed a purposeful 5-o'clock shadow and a once-was dishevelled hair do that was particularly placed with a presumably high end hair gel. The trim hair do he toted to the appointment made him look much more serious. Hipster student proceeded to read my charts and sound out the syllables of my diagnoses, "Looks here like you have clah-clah-clah-strid-eum diff-ih-seal. That's a toxic infection in your colon," which he followed with an eager look as if awaiting a gold star and round of applause. I gave him my renowned half grin and tilted brow to reiterate my obvious disinterest in his presence. I told him my tongue was still bothering me, that my back and joints had become very tender, I now had an excruciating hemorrhoid, and my excrement were still under the weather, to which he told me I'd probably have to schedule a second appointment if I wanted those symptoms addressed. (As Alice in Wonderland would say, "This place just gets curiouser and curiouser...)

At last the real doctor emerged from her lazy day in the staff lounge to give me a new prescription for my thrush before she shuffled out again without question. John, who was once again faithfully and patiently sitting in the corner for profound moral support, practically grabbed her sleeve as she attempted the exit, and we bombarded her with questions. According to this doctor, I didn't need an exam, a test for C. Diff, or a second glance. She told me the bacteria probably still was in my system, but that it was working itself out, and a test would inaccurately show it's crawling departure. "BUT," she said, "if your diarrhea comes back, come back in immediately."

The next day, my diarrhea was back. BUT I didn't let that phase me. 1 day of diarrhea at this point was a good day. And to be disgustingly honest, the runs felt a lot better on my hemorrhoid than the nice solid dumps healthy people take. The day following I was back to being constipated, and thus assumed I was on the mend.

Life kept going on: I went to my other best friend's wedding in Michigan and actually avoided getting violently sick that time. I managed to chug down two-thirds a glass of wine over 3 hours, I danced the Macarena with gusto, and I even caught the bride's bouquet, so all in all, things were starting to look up.

THEN, last Thursday (drum roll please), the slippery slimy smelly mess started sliding out of me all over again. The mere thought of a second relapse made me imitate the effects of Metrodinazol with gags and fatigue. I held my breath hoping it was just a fluke day and I'd be back to my happy constipated self on Friday. Naturally, that was not the case.

Friday morning I woke up and jetted to the bathroom. Describing the experience exactly would probably be too much, but I would say that it felt like a stampede of angry bulls with nails on their hooves were running through my intestines and taking a swipe of every tender, red thing they saw. I'd sit down, let the bitches fly out of me, feel a little better, stand up, feel a second stampede kick off, sit down, and repeat. For. Four. Hours. Throughout the day I watched the chaos tear through me over 20 times. Many bull fighters met their maker in the process.

Saturday. Doctors office waiting room for 1 hour. Doctor visit for 15 minutes. It once again was full of joy, if joy were a synonym for being raped in the rectum and being rushed off to the lab to get blood drawn and get viles for another thrilling poop sample. Luckily (and I mean this part with sincerity), this doctor actually felt inspired to help me. Since I had been on a waiting list for a GI specialist at UCSF for 2 months, my new doctor told me she'd make some calls and get me into a specialist on Monday. I didn't completely believe her but...

On Monday the doctors office called me a few times and explained their annoyance with the receptionists at the specialists, which I empathized with completely, and that she had made an appointment for me at the East Bay Center for Digestive Health on Tuesday at 1:30. "Well, I'd have to reschedule my hair appointment, but I guess could make that work."

And when Tuesday rolled around, I was off first to my gynecologist for my regular thingy ma-bob since I've had pre-cancerous cells show up in the past. My gyno was an hour late and came in emotionally spitting her exhaustion and the set backs of her day. I reminded her to look at my chart, see I am a fucking C. Diff patient, and told her to get over herself, which she promptly did. More or less. Then she told me I have Mollescum, a skin virus that kids and HIV patients get. Then she told me the yeast infection I thought I had was not yeast, but bacteria. Yes..... I said bacteria. Not C. Diff, because if you know anything about the vag, it does not easily accept bacterias from other parts of the body. Vaginas have brick walls and are reinforced with cement and a whole lot of rage, so I knew that this unexpected situation was a problem all of its own. But what does my emotional gyno want to prescribe me? CLINDA-FUCKING-MYCIN! I told her fuck no, and held my breath to gage her reaction. She said "ohhh.... I can't, you're right." When I explained WHY I will never take Clinda-fucking-mycin again, (remember? Because my retard doctor in Michigan gave it to me blindly and gave me the toxic-turn-amy-inside-out syndrome?) her face, like all my other doctors, got all scrunched up and she judgingly and appropriately proclaimed, "He gave you THAT for THAT? That's odd." Then she was about to prescribe me Metronidazol, but she saw me break down into a puddle of bacteria ridden tears. Instead of a new antibiotic, she told me to buy... get this... Boric Acid on Amazon.com, put it into capsules, and keep that in my vag for a month.

From Wikipedia:

Boric acid, also called boracic acid or orthoboric acid or acidum boricum, is a weak acid often used as an antiseptic, insecticide, flame retardant, in nuclear power plants to control the fission rate of uranium.

Well alrighty then. I think I'll get a second opinion on that.

Later on Tuesday I skipped over to my new GI specialist, who looked at me and asked, "What is a healthy 26 year old woman like you doing in my office, and how do you get C. Diff?" Well wouldn't you like to know, Doc! He explained it all... what my colon was sure to look like (yellow and pussy), why my shit was green and slimy (sorry, this is a graphic novel), why I've relapsed again (if you relapse once, you're bound to relapse again), and what the plan was for me to get better (3 more weeks of really really expensive antibiotics, called Vancomycin, and perhaps an eventual fecal transplant, which is exactly what sounds like). It must be nice to be a specialist... you can talk shit about all the doctors your patients have seen before you, then charge them an arm and a leg for talking about shit for 20 minutes. I may have my new career plan laid out right there!

So, to wrap this shit up (and yes, I'm using the word poignantly and adding this explanation in parentheses just to exhaust your eyes that much more), I am currently the valiant carrier of:

• Clostridium Difficile, though the poop samples actually came back today saying I was negative for it, everyone holds the firm belief that the tests are not accurate anyway, and I must still have it.
  
• Bacterium Vaginitis
• Mollescum Contagiosum
• Thrush... it came back
• Lactose Intolerance
  
• and an Ear Infection

It was confirmed I do not have (though how much should I believe the tests for this?):

• HIV
• Parasites
• Salmonella poisoning
  
• Celiac Disease
• Ulcereal Colitis
• Crohn's Disease
• or any STDs (holler!)

In the past 4 months, I have so far taken 2 different antibiotics for a total of 34 days, and if I'm able to find and afford the new prescription, we can make that count 3 antibiotics for 55 days. I've taken 2 different drugs for thrush, and 2 of those medications failed. I took steroids and got weaker. I've been prescribed to buy Boric Acid on Amazon... that's worth repeating. I've seen 8 different doctors (including one hipster). I've sat in waiting rooms for roughly 8 hours. I've spent nearly $300 on co-pays and prescriptions. I've had 2 total strangers stick their hands up my ___________ (madlibs). I've lost 20 pounds. I've embraced the fact that Hell frozen over looks a lot like San Francisco in July.

But with perspective, I've been to 2 of my best friends' weddings. I've moved in with my best friend. I took a little time off work. And I was inspired to write again. Like the ceramic key-holder decoration my mom got me says, "There is always, always something to be thankful for."

I am thankful for my support friends and family, and especially for those who dared read through this colossal blog post. I am thankful that I now have a doctor who will advocate for me until I am better, and then will probably advocate some more. I am thankful I have a place to live and enough money in my accounts to buy soft, easy to digest baby food. I am indebted to my boyfriend who has loved me through this entire ordeal and has sacrificed with me to ensure I get healthy and happy again.

Today I am sick. But, shit, I'm grateful!