Why, G

As you know, G+ is an addiction of mine. The people are super-chill and there is a group or a page or a something for everyone. All mu buddies over there are supportive & they don't freak when I stop making sense while going through a Sarc moment. (Having one of those now, so try to read around any weirdness here.)

I just now went over to the G to see what was up & once again, I have a bunch of Adds that I neglected. I need to keep up with that. Here's the thing about people who Add me on G: some are so compatible with my way of thinking that I get why they did an Add. Some are just spammish, trying to get their marketing out to you. Those are funny because they are usually sneaky enough to throw a couple of interesting & normal posts in every now & then before they blammo you with their adverts. Some folks are way different from me, but still have a sense of humor or sweetness or artistic something that appeals. But some are just plain creepy. I shiver when I see the ones who have that crazy-looking picture on their profile & a bio that makes me want to call 911.

When I was offline for a couple days recently, I didn't expect that I'd be going back to a totally revamped site. Google is rolling out some changes to the look of Plus. I like it so far, but sure hope they don't go all Facebook on us & start changing everything up every ten minutes. I have a hard enough time focusing as it is.

So...

I have no idea what the heck this post was going to be about. I had an idea when I started, but it's gone now! Damn this 4a.m. wake-up crap. I promise to get my brain back on track and do a more coherent posting soon.

Peace
--Free

Old Loves. Old Love Songs.

One of my BFFs (J) called me today & we got to laughing & talking about being free of old stuff. while trying to be open to new stuff.

Stuff.

Yeah, okay. Stuff is work, love and laughing.

J has some new "stuff" (of the heart, if you know what I mean) and I've been giving her a lot of crap about it. Because it makes her smile and blush. So dang cute!

Anyway, we have both recently been cleaning out old stuff. We were talking about old loves & such & it dawned on us how much a part music plays in any kind of emotional "big-moment" situation. Think about graduations & the music. Weddings and the music. Funeral and the music (especially in my "Holy Roller" background!) Not so much for births, but I guess that's because it's usually some kind of romantic music that got the drawers dropped in the first place. (Sorry, I am being crude for some reason.)

A n y way...

J and I admitted to some of the songs that have gotten us a little carried away in past romantic situations. I thought some of hers were kind of odd (I mean, Peter Frampton is a guitar GOD, but, um... I don't see how anybody gets all heated up from his music.)

Some of my old favorites were so good to me, I actually went back and listened to some today. There was Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey" (don't ask), dang near anything by Lenny Williams or Teddy Pendergrass (as the comics say: Lenny cried you into bed with his "I love you, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!" & Teddy damn near made you jump in the bed with his "Turn off the lights!" Couple times I'd be mad at my husband & I'd forget what about once Teddy started crooning. I mean, really - "Turn off the lights, and let's get cozy" - what woman doesn't like to cuddle?), Barry White & Prince could just get nasty. Man, that's for grownups only. Al Green makes you want to snuggle a lot. And I love some Natalie Cole singing about how she "can't say no," but I start selling jewelry to support some bum when I listen to her. I can really just listen to some Shai or even some jazz to feel a mood... But that all kind of appeals to the body only. That kind of thing is great if you're twenty. At this age, I need to get my head and heart involved. (Don't ask me to tell you what J needs for that. You would fall over laughing and start Googling mental conditions to figure it all out. I will just say two words and leave you to gape: "Weird Al.")

Back to me and other semi-normal people... Some music just makes two people want to move in closer and just be together. Nothing complicated, no freaky-deaky, no mental gymnastics. Just a pure I-love-you-like-you-am-crazy-about-you-even-when-you-have-sleep-gunk-in-your-eye.

(Sorry. I don't know what's with me and the word-chaining today.)

My all-time favorite gets me deepest probably  because it's good for it all from I-just-love-you-so-much to I'm-sorry-I-was-a-bit**h (cos, um, I'm a little moody). Listen & tell me if this doesn't want to make you want to be in love...

*sigh*

I'm not even sure what the heck she's sorry about and I don't care that she's probably singing to a woman. Dang, that song just melts my heart.

By the way, I told this to J & that heffa stole my song! I tried giving her Prince, Etta James, Al Green - I was even willing to loan her Van Morrison, but noooo... She's decided that my song fits her and her new man. That's all right, I will come up with something new. Won't be telling J about it tho!

Peace
--Free

Home Happy Sad Mad Manic

I was trying to think of the song in some commercial (for dryer sheets or laundry soap?) that goes like: "Take me back, take me back, to my family, my family..."

Wish I could think of it. That would be the perfect song for me this morning. I am back home from that overnight at the hospital. It feels good. I am starting to count hospital stays. Had almost made it to a 1-year anniversary of the first (and I hoped, ONLY) stay. Just a couple months more...

This sounds crazy, and I do realize that, but I am almost afraid to mention any symptoms or worries to the fam a friends now. They are so quick to rush me off to the doctor - and the docs, of course, are quick to want to find out what's  wrong. Yes, I know - they are being rational and I am not. I am just being me.

Here's a funny thing: once again,  nearly every doctor I saw in the ER was so new that they had to check their notes to figure out which questions to ask me. Maybe not just because they are new, but also because of the Sarc. One of them seemed kind of excited when he told me I'm the first person he's met with the disease. Not the first patient - the first person. *shrug* I think I was kind of happy for him. *SMH*

Th other thing that's going to be fun is having the higher dose of prednisone again. And higher methotrexate. Yay. This is now an equation set of my life for a while:

More prednisone = more weight, more awake, more bitchy. 

+

More methotrexate = more sick.

and

weight, awake, bitchy, sick

=

HELL for those who care about me

So, yeah. Yay.

Did I mention that right now I can't drive? This. Sucks. Skunk booty.

Still, tho, I close in

Peace

--Free

Our 5a.m. Man

Tried to post this from the Blogger app on my phone Saturday night. My brain was still too foggy then, but here it is,  D.J. in his favorite place - my sister's lap.


This D.J.
It's a quarter to six. He's been this awake for about an hour & a half.
The only dude I'm happy to wake up for right now...

With A Fight

Might be a while before I post again, but I am determined to do this one.

I woke at about 4:30 this morning because of a strange pain behind my left eye. Scared hell out of me. Have always feared getting sick or something while everyone else is asleep. The pain would not go away, but I didn't want to panic (even though my easily worried and half-hypochondriac self immediately thought of aneurysm, stroke, this damn Sarc!)

The pain went away (mostly) after about half an hour, but on my way out of bed and to the bathroom, I noticed a weakness in my arms and legs, and unbalance in my movements. Went past Scared Mode and into About To Be Terrified.

It's now about 7 a.m. I feel shaky still, typing is super-tedious, and I will be damned if this is the one morning my nephew wasn't up for work at the crack of dawn. No one is up - not the baby, not my sister down the hall... Of all mornings for everyone to turn Rip Van Winkle on me!

I am going to sit here very still and quiet. Have already mailed my one niece (who is up because of the time in North Carolina). Have checked in on G+ (am I too weird or what?), and have checked my email. Someone here should be waking up soon. I suppose I might have to do in to the hospital, but I am sitting here just praying that I am going to feel better before that has to happen.

And what is on my mind? My blog, my living and being and doing until I absolutely cannot. Will never go down without a fight for the life God has given me.

Peace
--Free

Feeling Solid

Do you know how when you are feeling down (or sick or panicked or whatever), you don't feel whole? As if you or your soul is out of focus and sort of there-not-there? Like Captain Kirk and Scotty when they are about to "beam" up? Well, I've been feeling that way for so long that I was unaware until something happened to make me feel solid again.

I've probably said it before (I am sure that I have), but there are times when this disease has made me feel as if I have gone insane. There is the terror that people will think that I am not in any way intelligent, that I will meet someone important on one of my bad days and they will walk away wondering what the hell is wrong with me.

Yesterday I met with someone who does not know me and, hopefully, had no prior reason to judge me outside a professional capacity. They declared me not "crazy. Oh, God bless them! They can;t know that I was having a pretty bad day with the disease. How I wish I could have made them understand how important that was to me.

I think - actually, I know that I have isolated myself quite a bit since this whole business of the invasion of my body. It's hard not to. Probably it's my pride, but I really don't like getting outside my little circle of comfort: family, friends, places, pursuits. This person I met with made me realize that when they asked about what kind of support I have and what kinds of things I enjoy doing. I had to struggle to think of anything. There was a time when I could have rattled off a thousand things. There was a time when I was so busy and occupied (and those are two different things, you know!), but now...

What I need to do is just allow myself to fail. I need to at least try things. I realize that and I'm going to work on it.

What kinds of things do I enjoy? Why can't I keep doing them, at least to the point that I can?

So, I'm going to try to read more, no matter how little sense the words make and no matter how hard it is for me to see them. I am going to get back to crocheting my sad, useless little trails of stitches to be unraveled and re-done. I am going to spend more time with my fam and friends. I'm sure they won't care what my mood is. Ha! I know I can count on them to let me know if I am in a decent enough mood or not. I am going to blog and write more fiction waiting for the words to be perfect. I don't think that you guys will be too annoyed, will you? I am going to start back going to church. If start to panic or get bothered by the crowd, well, the congregation can pray for me!

I am going to stop hiding from myself inside this disease. I am going to start being as much me as I can manage. I don't know if this disease can kill my body or not, but I'll be damned if I let it kill my spirit.

Yeah. I so wish I could thank a certain person. I might never see them again, but I will keep them in my prayers always.

Peace
--Free

I Hate Love

I had to look twice when I saw this Neil Gaiman quote:

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Wow. That made me think, laugh, feel happy, sad, young, old, wise and ignorant - all at the same moment.

I'm not in love, but I am in  Silly Crush mode. I thought crushes were only for the young, but since crushes are only anticipated and imagined romantic possibilities, I suppose they are for everyone. I know now that crushes are about as exciting and horrible as being in love. Yeah, so I'm with Neil on this one: I hate crushes.

Hmmm.

I suppose I need to take a big, humongous, scary, heart-stopping, death-of-pride-defying leap of a chance. I need to take a deep breath and exhale some deep words. At least then I can get on with being either happy or sad, smiling or crying. Knowing would be good. I can drown in ecstasy or wallow in  broken hopes and survive either one. I can't handle my mind wondering and pondering, my heart tossing and turning and just not knowing. I need to say some specific things to a specific someone, specifically soon...

 But not today. Today I'm going to just deal with the idiocy of it all...

Peace (or something like it)
--Free

A Little Knowledge...

... Can be the most dangerous thing!

I have to brag on the clinic I go to. The people there are the absolute best and I can prove it. For one thing, I continually bug the piss out of them and they have remained ever so patient with me!

Example: My doctor called me probably a week ago to let me know there were concerns over my recent lab results. He has me set to go see a nephrologist. Great. A kidney doctor. I get this particular call from my doctor while I am with my sister at her dialysis treatment. I literally felt sick to my stomach. I was shaking while I was on the phone and felt like I was going to cry if I talked much, so I couldn't do more than verbally nod and mentally stutter. I have been afraid of the very idea, though and remote possibility of dialysis for myself ever since my mother and two of my siblings have had to have it.

I am pretty sure that my doctor explained every single thing about those labs and his reasons for wanting me to see a kidney specialist. I can be so sure because my doctor always explains everything to me. The problem is I barely heard what he was saying and what I did hear, I forgot. I do that - forget things. A lot. I remember that I forget things, but...

Anyway. I was pretty freaked out by the news, and I couldn't even think straight. I was trying to imagine how my life will be if I end up on dialysis. Totally over, comes to mind. That sounds shallow and stupid, but I am trying to be honest. The only thing that kept me from crying was that I was in a roomful of dialysis patients. I've gotten to know a lot of these people. I didn't want them to see me bawling. I did what I do when I am feeling my worst: smiled and made small talk.

On the outside, I was one big public smile. Inside, I felt like a human mass of mess.

I traveled in my mind to the outer edges of a place I call Next Door to Freak Out World. I spent most of the weekend sleepless, crying and burning all kinds of nervous energy. My niece hid the coffee and anything else with caffeine. My sister had a full-time job in keeping me from freaking out on a nuclear scale. It was a mess. I was a mess.

Then I get the lab results in the mail - standard practice. These are the same results my doc told me about, no surprise. The clinic always mails out a copy. (Told you they were good.) I guess seeing results in black and white sent me from the outer  edges to the inner Land of Freaking Out. I kept looking at the results and trying to get them to make sense. I sometimes can't get regular words to make sense; these were codes and acronyms and weird numbers. (I'm really, really bad with numbers. Acronyms and initials weird me out because my brain tries to make them into whole words.) Anyway, everything on those pages started blending and blurring and swirling around. They were incomprehensible to me. I hate this fucking disease!!!! I just wanted to be able to understand what I was seeing.

And then...

I got this bright (or stupid) idea to go to the internet.

Did you know that if you type into Google Search the words "CBC labs" that  13,500,000 results will come up? Did you know that I only used one of the results to find out more than I initially wanted to know about my labs?

Good mercy. This internet-world-at-your-hands stuff is scary.

Tell me why I get these bright ideas to research this particular thing on a Friday -  after hours... I immediately wanted to call my doctor, but couldn't - not without sounding like such a panicked, paranoid head case that he'd next be referring to a psychiatrist. I didn't want to say anything to my sister because she was resting up from dealing with my neurotic, sometimes-hypochondriac ass all week.

Damnit.

Turns out I didn't have to tell my sister. Or at least I didn't have to bring it up. She pretty much guessed that something had me back visiting my imaginary friends in Freaking Out. So, I admitted what I'd done. Once I got started telling her, I did what I do when I start talking: kept going on and on until my mind and mouth were pretty much emptied out.

Dumbass.

That's my favorite word to hurl around at those who annoy me. My sister took it from me and beat me over the head with it. After that, she questioned whether I deserved to have access to the internet. Then she insisted that I just write down my questions and call the clinic.

Yeah, like I want to admit to my doctor that I'm a raving idiot who forgot everything he probably had already explained to me. I wasn't going to call. I don't want to be "that" patient. I swore I wouldn't call.

I called. Just a little bit ago. But I was sneaky. Instead of trying to reach my doctor, I decided to speak with his Medical Assistant. The assistant is a sweet young lady. I think she thinks I'm being treated for a mental illness along with my other problem. She might know something I don't. Whatever, I figured she would be the one other than my doc who'd know what was up with the lab tests.

This was a great plan until someone answers the phone. Right off the bat I'm told that the M.A. is on another line - and I'm told this by some lady who says that she can help answer questions about labs better than a medical assistant could. Well, hell. I don't know this lady, but I figure she must know something.

This woman has some good info. It's not like she told me not to worry at all, but she did answer the questions I had. She also told me not to be freaked out. And she didn't seem to think that my questions were silly or unusual. Whew!

Can you spell "relief" without being corny like a commercial? Wow. I guess I need to just chill. The lady explained things in pretty general terms, but I think it was her own sense of calm that helped get me down off the chair where I was stringing up a rope. 

I feel better. Kind of. Actually, I still feel a little bugged out, but I'm trying to stay chill until I have the appointment. 

My advice to anyone who is tempted to use the internet as source of serious medical information: Please don't. It will drive you insane. If you need to know something, call your doctor. You're going to need one anyway if you get hold of just a lit-tle bit of knowledge.

Peace
--Free

On Being Me

I saw something over on G+ and, as usual, I have more to say about it than fits in a comment box. This is the Cantonese proverb that was imposed over a sketch of a woman.

"When sleeping women wake, mountains move."

That touched me. Hard. How could it not?

Then I read the G-Plusser's own preface of : "It's not about shoes, finding the right guy, or worrying if your butt looks too big in those jeans."

I get the point they were trying to make. Really, I do. First of all, the sketch and proverb shows as coming  from a Christian site.. (*shrug*) I am, believe it or not, a Christian. For a while, I was so hard on myself - trying to be a super-Christian. I even blogged about it (from my high horse, of course). I tried not to think of anything that even smelled of sinfulness. Tried to be a water-proof, bullet-proof, totally immune Christian.

Guess what? I couldn't do it. I couldn't not be human.

I am a woman, I am flesh and blood. I do think about things like food, water, shelter, warmth, love, touch, sex, sad, happy and right and wrong. I do think about finding the right guy, worrying if my butt looks too big (or small), or if my hair is pretty or if I smell nice. Of course I think about all that. I just try not to make it such a priority that I become a worthless human being, no good to anyone else because I'm too busy thinking about myself, but... I hope you get my point. (By the way, I ended up going back in and deleting a lot of those self-righteous posts on my blogs. I even shut down one of the blogs entirely.) 

The way I see it, Jesus died for my sins, for my being human, and he didn't stop loving me when I become his. I become Christians, but I didn't stop being human.

Now, do I go out looking to be "bad"? I don't, but I had to stop trying to be perfect. If I ever do reach "perfect" then I won't need Jesus. But I do need him. I need him as much as I need to be human.

No offense intended toward the G+ poster, and I don't even know for sure what their personal comment meant. I just wanted to address - for myself - what it made me feel.

Peace
--Free

Easy to Forget, Important to Remember

This is something that everyone - no matter your race or nationality - needs to see and remember. 


Peace
--Free