One fell poop

My life is all over the place, in pieces, disparate -- but my ass is firmly in the bed. My legs are acting up and if they aren't elevated, well, it ain't pretty. And it hurts.

Given that we have to hit the road tomorrow and Tuesday, I am trying to get them in as good a shape as possible. By Tuesday night, they will be frozen blue-black tree trunks.

Tomorrow, we have the Infectious Disease folk at 11 am, and then we get to tour the metro area of Tête de Hergé in order to pick up all my medical records in preparation for Tuesday's trip to see this Super Guru Specialist Dude.

Doesn't it seem like I ought to be dreaming about that whole process and not milky-blue glass chakras?

Supposedly, Super Guru Specialist Dude is seeing me at 1 pm Tuesday. It has yet to be writ in stone, though. I am not sure what the issue is -- I think it is as simple as entering my information into the Medical School's computer. Also, I guess she is still trying to work out the insurance issues. I was to have received a few phone calls of verification that never came.

Arg.

I am pleased to report that Uncle Kitty Big Balls (Sorry, but we are still waiting for his name to show up. I have suggested "Stumpy," "Gimp," and "Ragamuffin," and all three have been shot down. *Derisively*, I might add. So, really, he remains "Little Boy," "Pickle Head," and, most appropriately, "Stinky Boy.") -- that UKBB is happy, eating, sleeping, pooping, and playing. He looks like he has been through hell, and since he has been through hell, we think he looks just fine.

Every so often, he will land on that back leg, wince, and pull up short. The next thing you know, he goes flying by, in hot pursuit of Dobby -- who is thrilled to have another cat who loves speed and butt whacks.

Oops. Ignore the "butt whacks." It's a private thing.

Little Boy, like his sister Marmy, can create stink bombs that ought to part of a national military arsenal. I mean, Marlinspike Hall is nothing if not spacious and airy, you dig? And still... one fell poop by Little Boy and all creatures, great and small, start running for the drawbridge, praying that it is already in position over the moat.

I continue to feel guilt at my well-practiced inactivity. I did mop one of the kitchen floors -- twice, even -- and have done some laundry. Day before yesterday, I managed to rotate the mattress in our bedroom, and change the sheets and pillow cases. I feed and water the animals twice a day. I do the dishes.

But who are we kidding? That adds up to "not much," and the fact that after each task I had to rest and take pain meds sort of detracts from my usual panache.

I have a feeling that we still ought to be gearing up for a trip to Baltimore. But one thing at a time, yes? The thought of having to go has begun to panic me. How am I going to manage this alone -- because Fred will not be able to come along.

Dr. Go-To-Guy opines that we should direct our questions to the Infectious Disease Department there, rather than the Orthopedic Surgery Department. It makes sense when you study the breakdown of research interests within eact one. It makes even more sense when you consider that we will have taken the ortho approach already, given the upcoming visit with Super Guru Specialist Dude.

Dr. Go-To-Guy was no help, however, in helping me figure out what to do in the immediate sense. I think we are back to the point of everyone waiting for me to call up, saying -- "Okay, I am at the point where I cannot stand it anymore." Then ShoulderMan will go forward, even if he is still operating in the dark.

It has become too much of an onus, too much to ask of a patient. The only reason I have any expertise is because this is my body. But it shouldn't be up to me to determine when surgery ought to happen. There have been MANY times in the last 2-3 weeks when I was ready to lop off my arm. Then again, there have been hundreds of times when the idea of a DIY amputation of my legs has seemed like the best idea ever.

There is a task I dread doing, should I be sent on to Johns Hopkins. I had a sort of friend... that is the most honest expression... I had a sort of friend who shared one of my "conditions" and who repeatedly sought out a certain Hopkins surgeon. He's no longer there and did not leave for any reason other than dealing with a thriving career. She had as many as four or five surgeries per visit to Baltimore. Anyway, last year her story did not end well, but it did end. I had been a frequent vociferous voice of opposition to the excess of surgeries that never seemed to solve any problems. There was no joy in being right. There was no joy in the many painful months she spent at home, in pain, feeling useless, biding time until the next round of surgeries. Taking enough meds to have killed herself many times over.
If it was prescribed, Virginia felt obliged to take it, and take it often.

God, did I bitch at her.

Anyway, one of things Virginia did was research how to stay in Baltimore "on the cheap" -- so I need to go back over her emails and get the many details she graciously provided.

I wish I had been a friend to her instead of constantly taking her moral inventory. What a snotty bitch. I thought it was a *role* I was playing, as I watched other serve as "sympathizers." It was no role; Her life was no fiction, no drama. I had no right.

Dreaming Chakras

It just now occurred to me that the novel I am reading may have something to do with it: The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld. Freud and Jung figure prominently among the characters. Rubenfeld also includes G. Stanley Hall, Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, and Sandor Ferenczi.

In 1909, Freud, Ferenczi, and Jung truly did travel to the United States, to a bustling New York City that was enthralled by the idea and actuality of skyscrapers, bossed by Tammany Hall, and obsessed by the idea of modernity, before continuing to Massachusetts.

Clark University, of which G. Stanley Hall was president, was honoring Freud with a doctorate and an invitation to deliver a week's worth of lectures on psychoanalysis -- for which Freud was pulling down a hefty $714.60. Jung was also to lecture. Ferenczi, a close friend to Freud and disciple of psychoanalysis, seemed to be along for the ride, thrilling to America.

After insuring his life for 20,000 marks--$4,764--Freud took a train to Bremen to join Jung and Ferenczi the day before boarding their ship. Hosting a farewell lunch, Freud ordered wine. Jung, a teetotaler, didn't want wine, but at Freud's insistence he agreed to have some. Curiously, after Jung capitulated and drank,Freud fainted.

(Jesus wept.)

While the three were in the city, Brill served as the primary tour guide. Jones came from England, via Canada, to join the group.

The first place Brill took his illustrious friends? Coney Island.

After the success of his lectures, and the receipt of his first, and only, academic honor, Freud spent 8 more days in the U.S., "...and most of it was downhill. He was in constant pain not only from his prostatic condition but also from intestinal disorders, which he blamed on American cooking. He felt that his hosts were not sympathetic enough toward his illness. He disliked not being understood when he spoke in German, resented the lack of Old World manners, disapproved of the inhibitions and prudery he perceived in most Americans. Forever after, Freud rarely had a kind word for the U.S. He told Jones, 'America is a mistake; a gigantic mistake, it is true, but none the less a mistake.' He told Hanns Sachs, who later taught psychology in Harvard Medical School, 'America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.'"

Rubenfeld couches his fiction in Freud's dislike of America and in a series of murders --which, of course, require the careful application of the new analysis.

A victim survives the murderous attack, but loses her ability to speak, as well as her memory for the event. Certain that the young woman is an hysteric (and was, prior to the attack, of course), Freud endeavors to cure her, so that she will be able to provide police with a description of her assailant.

I'm only about a third of the way into the book.

The book has to be behind it, don't you think? Behind the dream, my incredible dream?

I didn't think it possible to dream so intricately within a 45 minute period, a time marked by severe discomfort and a measure of indigestion from a surprise dinner of Chinese food -- one dish of which was coated with a questionable garlic sauce.

My dreams are notorious for their boring and literal nature. If I have spent the day correcting papers, by night I dream of working through essays with a trusty red pen. Even interesting opportunities for rich dreaming are made facile by my mind -- the day I first read Saussure and discussed the arbitrary nature of signs, I simply re-experienced a long walk down Shattuck Avenue, seeing once again the lone cast-off black patent leather Mary Jane shoe sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, pristine. Thoughts of a [one-legged?] goth with style. Worry for that goth. Was she alright?

Wow. Where in the world did that come from? The mind, the mind! What a wonder. Even one like mine, in decline, my mind! The arbitrary nature of signs has been the fundamental nagging element since the dream was dreamed.

Strange, isn't it, that I am psychically caught up in these early years of the 20tho century?


Fred served up a surprise dinner and you'd have thought we hadn't had proper food in weeks, the way we devoured it. We ate in that awful way -- with the television blaring, sitting up in bed, surrounded by cats. And not ten minutes afterward, I was asleep.

In the dream, I resided in a large house that may have been a museum -- it was empty except for a central area that contained only one piece. A piece of art? No... it was a beautiful thing but the sense was that it had utility. And was very important. I was its guardian.

My brother-unit TW arrived. There were moments of long silence, and we walked and talked on a rolling green lawn that stretched out from the back glass walls of the house/museum. From the outside, you could see that the house/museum was built of distressed white brick.

We spent a long while standing in the dark, out on the lush green (it sort of glowed), looking in at the lights and airy space inside the house. Always, though, our eyes were drawn to the careful kaleidoscope of color of the... beautiful thing.

I don't know what to call it. There was a moment there at the end when I knew precisely what it was -- in the dream. But, awake and remembering, I cannot see how it could actually be what it was.

We went back in and stood in front of the beautiful thing.

Suddenly, it was reduced to a single item, a lovely, gleaming glass bowl, full of highlights of various blues with swirling creams. I held it up, told TW that I was entrusting it to him "for keeping, for keeping safe."

"She will need it," I declared, adding: "It is worth 5.5 million dollars."

Don't ask me, I don't know -- who *she* is, why $5.5 million?

And I handed the bowl to him. He reached out to take it, but instead came away with what looked like a large coat button. The button, like the bowl, was swirling blue-cream glass, but broken. In half.

He looked at it, quizzically. "It's a chakra," I said.

"It's a broken chakra, and we have to have it fixed."

At that point, TW delivered a speech, the content of which is fading.

That's a lie. It's not fading, I just don't want to remember it.

It was about feeling unworthy, and sad at having missed so many occasions of import in *her* life.

Uncomfortable listening to him, I shushed him by saying that he had been chosen to safeguard this gift, this broken chakra, worth so much. He obviously mattered, he obviously was a part of a whole.

Transformed back into the bowl alone, TW and I carried the glass swirl of a beautiful thing out the back, down across the long, long lawn, and out onto what looked like a busy old-timey English village -- consult your own subconscious for that visual!

We took the first road to the right, which dipped down into a sudden, unexpected forest. Suddenly, we stood before a wonderfully stereotypical cottage -- right out of Hansel and Gretel. A very nice, and obviously fairy-tale wise, elderly woman invited us in.

Somehow, we knew she was An Expert. In Chakra? In beautiful things? In brother-unit feelings of abandonment and worthlessness? I kept waiting for her to fall fully into her role of wise and wizened matron, hoping, to be honest, that she might serve tea.

The bowl turned back into a broken glass button. I handed it to her, and she smiled, then did magic.

The button became whole, vibrant, shiny, milky-blue, smooth.
It grew, with a sound like a ((pop)) -- but was only briefly in its prior incarnation as a bowl -- it kept going, morphing.

I think it had a copper wire "skeleton," the structure that resulted. From the copper wires were hung many bright sterling silver beads and filigree -- delicate wire work, again in silver, but some in gold. Metallic lace. I have the impression of woven baskets supported by all of that airy interlacing wire.

Impression, because when I focus my eyes, they are no longer woven baskets, but rather an expanded set of those magical glass bowls -- now golden swirls along with cream and blue, a deep but distant teal.

Without any of us discussing how it could be so, we agreed that it was the most beautiful bassinet we had each ever seen...

and that *she* would love it.

Clin J Pain. 2009;25:273-280

The Natural History of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
Robert J. Schwartzman, MD, Kirsten L. Erwin, BS, and Guillermo M. Alexander, PhD

Objective: Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a severe
chronic pain condition characterized by sensory, autonomic,
motor, and dystrophic signs and symptoms. This study was
undertaken to expand our current knowledge of the evolution of
CRPS signs and symptoms with duration of disease.

Method: This was a retrospective, cross-sectional analysis using
data extracted from a patient questionnaire to evaluate the clinical
characteristics of CRPS at different time points of disease
progression. Data from the questionnaire included pain characteristics
and associated symptoms. It also included autonomic, motor,
and dystrophic symptoms and also initiating events, ameliorating
and aggravating factors, quality of life, work status, comorbid
conditions, pattern of pain spread, family history, and demographics.
Comparisons were made of different parameters as they
varied with disease duration.

Results: A total of 656 patients with CRPS of at least 1-year
duration were evaluated. The average age of all participants was
37.5 years, with disease duration varying from 1 to 46 years. The
majority of participants were white (96%). A total of 80.3% were
females. None of the patients in this study demonstrated
spontaneous remission of their symptoms. The pain in these
patients was refractory showing only modest improvement with
most current therapies.

Discussion: This study shows that although CRPS is a progressive
disease, after 1 year, the majority of the signs and symptoms were
well developed and although many variables worsen over the
course of the illness, the majority demonstrated only moderate
increases with disease duration.

French Semis

In semi-final action, little Cibulkova just won the opening game, breaking big, bad Safina's service.

Cibulkova hits nice and deep, pretty flat, and is moving Safina around, at will.

I'm just sayin'!

Could be a trend. (I *do* like Safina; More than individual players, though, I love a good match!)

Serena may not know what to say next about rankings...

On the men's side, I continue to have trouble pulling for Federer. Don't know exactly why, given that Nadal is not around to divide my loyalty.

Wing Suits/Base Jumps

Fred urged me to watch this last night. Afterward, he said, eyes glistening, "I am going to do that before I die."

And he smiled a very happy smile.

toujours, ce sacré miroir (et moi, là-dedans...)

I don't know what I am doing with this blog anymore.

Honestly, I'm not fit for human company. Unwashed, in the same clothes I wore yesterday -- I hurt so badly last night that washing and changing were unimportant. Sleep mattered, that was it. Even so, sleep came in spurts of 45 minutes. She's down! She's up!

La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore gave me a look of pure disdain this morning. "Que t'es bête, prof... complètement bête."

To her, it is a matter of will, getting better, an area in which I am found sorely lacking. The fact that there are ungrowable pathogens destroying my bones, and apparently getting into some soft tissue (one side of my face is swollen, to the point where I have a permanent headache and my glasses are digging into the side of my head)? Not pertinent to The Castafiore.

Will it all away.

She is something of a changed woman these days -- being an out-of-work Diva has been both a curse and a strange blessing. Fred and I admit to appreciating the decline in the ear-splitting frequency of L'Air des Bijoux, and that blessed mirror, that laugh approaching hysteria.

You see, Bianca only sings L'Air des Bijoux from Gounod's Faust.

Not that this is at all out of the ordinary, an operatic star fixated on one role, one lyric, one composer. We all can get stuck on our favorite things, certainly on a cherished ditty. But..."Ah, je ris de me voir si belle, dans ce miroir..." -- ad infinitem? ad nauseum? I want to reach through the time and space of fiction to shake that stupid Marguerite, to point out the obvious devil traits before her in the unctuous Faust, all in the hope of getting La Bonne et Belle Bianca, the Milanese Nightingale, to shut up!

So she thinks I am an idiot. I can take it. She has called me worse things, in the middle of some madcap caper or other, usually seeking the approval of Captain Haddock -- what better way than to throw the extraneous French professor under the bus?

Feels like I've nowhere but *here* to emote; My thoughts are hardly worth noting anymore -- repetitive tripe.

I am spending the day making and fielding phone calls from doctors' offices. Now that there is a workable plan to put in place, there's nothing much for me to do except fret. And I am almost too tired and in too much pain to do that.

The current task is the assemblage of medical records that I am to hand carry to this guru of a medicine man, a mere half-day's drive from Marlinspike Hall, deep deep in the Tête de Hergé.

Ah... a wrinkle. Yes just in the space between the last paragraph and this. My MDVIP Go-To-Guy called to say I will likely see the Wizard next Tuesday. He paused and then regaled me with the heartwarming story of how, seeing that the Wizard-Guru Man has just relocated here from Ohio, he's not had time to establish his insurance connections. "That might be a problem for you," opines my Go-To-Guy. Bull Crap Bull Skeet of Tête de Hergé is an imposing monolith of a health insurer, indeed.

YOU THINK? GAWD...

Am I so sick that I am supposed to be able to magically bankroll this consultation? I have spent over $20,000 thus far this year on health care -- and that money came straight out of my investment account, the account that was not to be touched because it will hopefully, one day, have enough in it to comfort, shelter, and feed The Fredster and The Castafiore, as well as the Four Felines. It was never meant to be money spent on BCBS, hospitals, doctors, repeatedly unhelpful tests, and month after month of intravenous vancomycin...

That money was supposed to survive me, god damn it.

ah... je ris... je ris... de me voir... si bête, si bête... toujours dans ce sacré miroir...

The expert we are consulting doesn't even have an established surgical team, barely an office -- he is a new prof at the medical college there. Yonder. One of the administrators is going to attempt to get his provider numbers with Bull Crap Bull Skeet of Tête de Hergé tomorrow.

But everyone knows my situation vis-à-vis the paddle and the creek -- so I may have to write a magic check.

Henckels Professional "S" 5 1/2 Flex. Boning Knife

Two long days, finally over. Ahhh. I know it sounds pitiful, that two days of moderate activity should take such a toll -- ask me, though, whether I care!

A great plan has been hatched -- thanks mostly to my intrepid orthopedic surgeon, the famous Dr. Shoulderman. He has tracked down a colleague who specializes in people with weird joint infections... and said person just happened to have recently relocated within a three-hour drive of Marlinspike Hall, deep deep in the Tête de Hergé.

In other words, if said person can work the promised miracles... there won't be a tiresome trek to Baltimore. Think good thoughts, cross your digits, do whatever it is that you do.

I remain... the same. In my mind, I feel worse, I feel desperate... but no, I am not worse. I am consistently bad. What makes me feel desperate is the stress of unrelieved pain, sleep in spurts of 45 minutes or less, and fear.

Sometimes I think seeing Dr. Go-To-Guy every 3 to 4 weeks, emailing him weekly, is definite overkill.

And then I realize how blessed I am, because between those appointments and the back-and-forth of emails, my anxiety is kept at bay, and the little sanity I have is preserved. He knows my hold on reality is becoming... let's say... tenuous.

Do you know what I did last night?

Of course you don't!

Intending to get some fresh water in my trusty Hillary Clinton for President water bottle (holds over 32 ounces!), I wheeled to the kitchen sink, unscrewed the top, and proceeded to dump the "old" water on the floor.

Yep.

Listen, when I get beaucoup tired, as well as beaucoup sick? Weird doings, strange goings-on.

We are still looking for our Henckels Professional "S" 5 1/2 Flexible Boning Knife -- that I absconded with during a night of fever and sweats.

As well as about three spoons.

When mind and body decide to merrily decompensate -- I have a thing, apparently, for culinary items.

We even went through the trash, searching for the boning knife. Hmm.