My Normal: Am I There Yet?

I'm trying like crazy to return to "my normal."  

Garderobe, Peveril Castle, Derbyshire

This is a term now in my daily lexicon -- it used to be set apart.  (In that there field, yonder, a little farther, a little farther, more to your left -- LEFT, I said -- yep!  Right there!  Good job, Dear Reader!)  It used to be confined to exam rooms.  "So, would you say you're close to 'your normal'?" might be an insightful question for Dr. Shoulderman to ask after giving me a prosthesis, taking away a prosthesis, putting in a spacer, taking out a spacer, or removing the shoulder joint altogether.


The only intelligent answer is a one-sided shrug and a heart-felt muttered: "I guess so." Or just omit the shrug.  We never wanted to hurt Dr. Shoulderman's feelings.

It's that time that comes every three years or so.  My private long term insurance company that pays me 60% of my pay, post retraction of any bit of money due any agency (even my union dues!) at the level of pay I was receiving in the year 2000.  The following year, of course, was when Fred had to stop working because "someone" had to be here to call 911 in case I didn't feel like it. [Ha?]

I'm pretty sure they surveilled us and I bet that was a grand old time for some poor soul.

Anyway, now it's pretty much as my go-to-guy MDVIP doctor promised me it would be:  "No one, ever, is going to question your need for disability coverage.  This is permanent, this is not going to get better."

He actually does have a sense of humor, this devout man.  I've heard him laugh, even inappropriately (the true test of mental health).  I've seen him hold his head in his hands more, though.  And since he and his partner left their huge group practice to go off and practice excellence, he's felt free to say he'd pray for me.

One of his best jokes yet?  I said, "I hope you had a good Passover." He responded, "Did you go to an Easter sunrise service?"

I about died laughing.

So first thing I do wrong this time -- and I'm back to talking about getting re-certified as a bona fide gimpette -- was not notifying the disability insurance company that my phone number had changed.  Oopsies. (I'm channeling Rick Perry.)  So when my "case coordinator" attempted to call, and got the old "disconnected" message, her natural assumption was that I'd grown new arms, legs, bones, and a better brain and had run off to Mexico, living high on Mexican hogs via that aforementioned 60% bounty.  Plus the extra pesos brought in by selling my mail-order drugs.

That's right. I -- me -- moi -- am a cartel.

I knew I was up to something!

Anyway, this is always a time of stress, in spite of my humor-possessing but humor-skewed beloved doctor's assurances that I am "totally and permanently disabled." This is always the juncture when the neighbors might have mailed the company that tell-all video of Fred and me waltzing on the veranda, or me jogging off to teach my early morning yoga class at the community center eight miles down the road.

Hey!  Did I tell you that I have new whatchamacallits?  Elbow crutches, you know, with the cuff the fits on your arm?  Two of 'em!  One for each side, and yes, that part is tricky.  The goal is to be able to stand for three minutes (still don't get how anyone chose "three" as a goal) which I absolutely CANNOT do -- BUT I can walk around for almost that long!  Maybe half that long!  So long as I am within crash reach of the bed or wheelchair!  It's actually pretty cool, even if annoying know-it-all people around me keep changing the various length settings on the suckers.  Fred has never been man enough to accept that I am way-y-y taller than he is.  Way-y-y.

So the forms are here for me to fill out.  I keep moving them around.  I doubt I'll be able to write legibly.  Maybe I can type out the answers, print them, and attach that to the original document?  Or do they want to see me scribble?

On the phone -- we did "connect" -- Gladys, or whatever her name was, seemed thrilled that I still had the same doctor as three years ago, as six years ago, as nine years ago.  "That makes it easier!" she crowed.
I had to pause as a vivid image of the man, his head gently knocking against the doorframe, overwhelmed me.

Like Fred, he had told me he was "overwhelmed."

Neither of them know it, but both of those moments were... sea change.  Pearls, eyes.  But it doesn't read that way, seem that way, exist that way, for Gladys.

I'm still having gastrointestinal bleeds on an ongoing basis, particularly when I don't follow the strict instructions not to take the drugs which help my bone pain the most.  I am doing so less and less, until the next time I cannot use my legs due to pain, cannot straighten them, and definitely cannot stand on them.
Here's something funny.  You know how people lose socks?  That great eternal mystery?  I lost the ankle brace that was making my right ankle fracture bearable.  No, I am NOT kidding.  And I always thought the punchline was that socks had PAIRS.  I only have the one sweet, little brace -- it has no sibling.  My theory?  It's here.  Somewhere.  Yes, that qualifies as a theory.  What do you want?  There was a thief in the night (swam the icky algae-afflicted-as-never-before moat, jumped into Marlinspike Hall via a well-used garderobe -- eww! -- bypassed the small golden museum quality pieces scattered about and took, instead, my damn ankle brace?  Here's the blatant flaw in your version, bud -- I am not sleeping, not since the return of the suicide-inducing spaz attacks.  Even the cats are staying away.  And since I've started guessing at how much insulin I might be needing, I've been in a jolly blood sugar roller coaster kind of mood.  A bit of advice for you:  don't take insulin, then half eat half a salad.  You might be unlucky enough to fall asleep.  I -- being forced awake -- simply transformed into Hulkette, snarling and green.  Fred did the bright thing and ran to get the jalapeño, red pepper-flaked with Thai chili sauce brown rice to shove down my throat... running right past the left over holiday peppermint candy.

What I dislike most about episodes of the sort?  I get paranoid afterward.  Fred must hate me.  The Domestic Staff seems distant.  Bianca has a sudden extra shift at the bar (the opera was among the first and hardest hit by Tête de Hergé's plunge into forced sequestration -- damn this proclivity for copying the politics of governing exhibited by failed and dying systems!).  Buddy came, but decided I'd be best comforted if he deposited his Maine Coon ass right where my shoulder used to be.  Buddy left shortly thereafter, as in:  Buddy fled.

I dunno.  Am I back to "my normal" or not?

What?  You afraid I'll bite your freaking head off if you try and answer?

I want to be tucked in, and read to.

My gut is bleeding again, and again I am disgusted by the weakness of my will.

I want to be held.

I want to hang on.

I want to be tucked in, and read to.

I want to be held, briefly.  A strong clench, a soft rub, and a letting go, something as close as can be to a shove.

I want to hang on, but I want to let go more, and who wants to be in the middle of a mess like that?
(That's why the holding must end in a push, away.)

I want to be tucked in by someone who knows how to do it, who won't wave the fabrics in the air, won't make a wave of any sort, with anything.  Someone who knows the length I will need at the top, to hide my face but not interfere with vision and the seeing of things.  Someone who knows to lay the weave down all straight and normal, no creases, until just above the knees because that's where and when we need to consult, try this, try that.  Under no circumstances should the quilt or coverlet or sheet land with any added weight.  It must be placed, lain, and rarely will my feet or lower leg be covered.  You need enormous patience and I am sorry.  You may have to identify left and right for me, but do that last.

I am in the mood for Yeats, which is the equivalent of red and flashing lights.

An early Easter Uprising, I want tragedy in brogue and examples of wasted greatness. I also think that I should be Pope.  You can call me El Papa.  I think we should all stop saying "pope" in favor of "El Papa," even if we are not Spanish speakers.  It's jolly sounding.  And though I am a girl, I want to be El Papa -- there's no need for a psych consult, it's a passing phase.  By the time they get the flue working in that slapped-together stovepipe -- I'll be over it and they can have any old el papa that they please.

This is what to read me after the arduous process of tucking me in under my one quilt, or the more complicated two, if I have a high fever.  It doesn't matter how I feel about the poem, the poet, the event, or whether "the high tomorrow will be whenever I get up" {waving::at::george} -- All that matters is right now, and this is what I want, "Easter, 1916."

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born. 

-- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

When all of that is said and done, it will be time for a lullaby, and, right now, this is what it's gonna be -- something easy from Neil Young's album, "After the Gold Rush."  Unless you can get my monks to phone in Compline?  Could Brother William slip away, d'ya think, if he's not in trouble?  Can I have Fig Newtons for Christ's body, again?

Hey, hey

Cripple Creek ferry

Butting through

The overhanging trees

Make way

For the Cripple Creek ferry

The waters going down

It's a mighty tight squeeze.

All alone the captain stands

Hasn't heard

From his deck hands.

The gambler tips his hat

And walks towards the door.

It's the second half

Of the cruise.

And you know he hates to lose.

Hey, hey Cripple Creek ferry

Butting through

The overhanging trees

Make way

For the Cripple Creek ferry

The waters going down

It's a mighty tight squeeze.