I'd been putting off this colonoscopy as long as possible. First it was fear, then it was the wedding, then moving, then moving again, and then the holidays, and then back to fear. I was primarily worried about the prep. A clear liquid diet for a day and a half doesn't contain a lot of protein or fat, even if you include broth, and for me, that's basically a recipe for hypoglycaemia. Hypoglycaemia is a trigger for my anxiety, as are any digestive difficulties. The entire thing seemed counter-intutive. "You want me to drink poison and purposely make myself ill so that you can figure out if I'm sick?" I agonised over this for months. Finally, it came down to the wire. On St. Patrick's Day, most of my friends were enjoying corned beef and various forms of alcohol and debauchery. I was swigging a vile liquid that tasted like sea water mixed with cough syrup and spending most of the day in the bathroom. I was on the toilet so long that both my legs fell asleep below the knees.
On the morning of the procedure, I had to wake up at 06:00 in order to drink the last litre of shit potion. Of course, I couldn't sleep the night before, and sleep deprivation makes me completely addle-brained and even more prone to anxiety than usual. It got worse and worse, as I sat in the waiting room for an hour and a half with nothing to entertain me but inane talk shows that made me feel as if I were losing IQ points by the minute.
When they finally called me back, I stripped and put on the regulation ass-less hospital gown... and waited some more. They took my vitals three or four times, then tried to hook me up to the IV, tried being the operative word. I warned them that my veins were deeper than they looked (my skin is so fair as to be translucent), and that they rolled. I advised them that alternate sites such as my hands and wrists were a better bet. Well, seven attempts later, and they literally gave up. At this point, it was past 12:00, and I was starving and dehydrated. I wasn't allowed any water, so the longer it took them to get a vein, the harder finding one was going to be. So, they decided to send me to the hospital. I got dressed again and headed across the street. Thankfully, I did not have to wait very long there.
So I stripped down again, and was asked all the same damn questions I'd already answered and sign all the forms I already signed. I was so tired by now that I had trouble remembering the date. After one more unsuccessful stick (totalling nine!), they finally found a vein right under the tattoo of a snake around my wrist. At last, they wheeled me back to the treatment room.
Now, at this point, I just wanted to be done with the procedure and go home. I did not want hours of recovery time. I did not want to be loopy all day. And I was downright phobic of being given a drug that would make me forget what I'd been through. My brain already does that. There are parts of my life that are swiss cheese because of my PTSD. I didn't want some bizarre drug to steal my memories. And I was actually really curious to see my guts. They told me that I could try it without drugs if I wanted to, but it wasn't recommended. I told them I was absolutely sure. Since they got the IV in, they could push drugs if I was in too much discomfort. Fine.
In the procedure room, I spied a tech who made me do a double-take. My first thought was 'Wow, he's cute. If I must be violated, I could do worse.' And then, I noticed his tattoos. He was covered in runes and Norse protective symbols! I was instantly more at ease. Though I could not carry on a conversation with him, I let him know that I was glad there was a fellow Heathen in the room with me. I felt my gods were watching over me.
The procedure was painful, but not so much that I couldn't make it through without the drugs. I just made a lot of grunting noises when they pumped air into my colon, which caused cramping. I was entertained by watching the whole thing on the monitor. They found no obvious evidence of Crohn's or ulcerative colitis, but they took tissue for biopsies and removed a polyp from my rectum. And then it was over. What was meant to be a two-hour procedure ended up a seven-hour odyssey of pain and setbacks, but I felt like a total badass for being able to get through it with minimal panic and no meds.
Matt then took me to get some food, because at this point, I hadn't eaten any solid food for almost 48 hours. With my belly full, I went home and took a long nap. I don't really remember what dreams I had, but when I woke up, and looked at my bruised arms, I realised that I had completed a kind of physical and spiritual trial. I had fasted and then endured complications and pain. At first, I had been so afraid of the procedure that I wanted to be fully anaesthetised, and by the end, I didn't need any help at all.
I think the lesson here was that I have more strength than I give myself credit for, and that I am capable of enduring far more than I believe I am, especially with my husband at my side. Matt was so patient, so kind, so focused on my needs... I love him more every day. There was also a little symbolism for me. In order to gain knowledge, Odin hung himself from the World Tree for nine days; I have nine wounds from my experience. I peered into my own guts without flinching -- metaphorically as well as literally. And what were the chances of my tech being openly Heathen? I think I made my gods proud of me.
I will need to remember this strength when Matt has his surgery on Friday. Dealing with my own fear is one thing, but I know Matt is more afraid of this surgery than he is letting on. I know that the odds are good that everything will be fine, but the "not knowing" is still quite stressful. I want to be there for him and be strong, just as he was for me throughout my prep and procedure. I know he will have the best care, but it's still disconcerting to think of one's spouse having his face sliced open and an organ removed with even the tiniest chance the results will show a malignant growth.
But we'll be okay. I think both of us have more guts than we think.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Magical, with lots of friends
I was treated like a bad kid.
You know that "tough love" people talk about, which is supposedly necessary for destructive, rebellious and otherwise "troubled" youth? Yeah. I got a lot of that. Except, I didn't earn it. Maybe my parents were both projecting emotions from stuff they'd been through when they were young. Maybe they did it as a precautionary measure, just in case I screwed up. Whatever the reason, it's how I was raised. Or rather, lowered. I joke that I was "lowered" Catholic, made to grovel and beg for mercy for sins yet uncommitted. I am not sure if the religion had something to do with how I was treated, but it was certainly a variation on the same theme.
I had no privacy at all. My room was very messy all the time because I probably had ADD, and I had a hard time putting things back where they belonged after I used them. So there were toys and books and clothes all over the floor. But sometimes, the mess was a fortress. My room was regularly raided, my drawers searched, my diaries taken and read. They did the same thing to me at school. I was so brilliant, they supposed, that the only reason for me not performing well in certain classes must be because I was doing something terrible behind their backs. On several occasions, after bad grades happened, my parents went to my school, emptied out my locker or my desk into a garbage bag, brought it home, dumped it on the floor in the living room and made me explain every single scrap of paper and toy and crusty piece of gum. Woe to me if ever I hid a bad grade from them; that just added to their suspicion. And any drawings or writings they found that were not directly related to schoolwork were seen as evidence that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, which, of course, led to punishment.
But it's hard to ground a girl when she isn't allowed to do anything anyway. I was eleven years old before I was allowed to cross the street unescorted. I was fifteen before I was allowed to spend more than two hours away from home without a parent or grandparent present. And we never went anywhere as a family-- not a single solitary overnight stay anywhere other than Perry, Ohio in my entire youth. So when I got "grounded," it was usually just from the phone-- my only real luxury-- and I was seldom allowed to call anyone but my grandparents to begin with. In fact, if I was talking to anyone other than my grandparents, I could pretty much count on my mother silently listening in. I heard the clicks, I knew what they meant. And if I'd said something she didn't like, she would go silent for hours, or say unkind things, or her tone of voice would change, rather than telling me what was going on. I almost feel as if she was saving up evidence to use against me later, you know, when I finally revealed my evil plan to ... what? I mean, I don't even know what they suspected! I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I didn't even know how to make friends.
You might wonder why I didn't rebel, why I wasn't a total delinquent, since I was being treated that way to begin with. It could have happened that way, but it didn't, and the reason is simple: I was terrified. My parents were the sun and the moon. If they treated me like this when I didn't do anything, what would happen if I did? So my rebellion did not come until I was 18, and my father had already left. I used the momentum of the storm of the divorce to carry me away from my mother's house. What happened after that was another story, but suffice to say, I spent quite a few years doing a lot of things I was told never to do, particularly involving sex. (Sex was, by far, the most heinous sin imaginable. When I was 11, I was immediately hauled off to church to confess when my mother caught me masturbating. Again, that's another story.)
I think that part of me is still trying to recapture what I missed. I take joy in things like toys and cartoons and silly computer games. Lots of adults do this, but for me, it's still fairly new. (For one thing, video games were forbidden in my house.) I have recently acquired one special toy. Her name is Shy Violet, and she was a doll from the Rainbow Brite series in the 80's. I liked her because she was smart and had glasses, like me, and purple hair, which was just cool. My parents bought me the doll when I was seven or so, and I loved it and took it with me to the strawberry festival -- where I lost it. I was admonished and punished severely for losing the toy-- most likely spanked, too, I don't remember. I mean, I felt bad enough that I lost something that I loved, but it cost my parents money, and the important "lesson" here was that if you cost us money, you're going to pay. I think it also stemmed from my mother's hoarding. She has always had what I consider to be a pathological attachment to things, and I am not exaggerating when I say she probably remembers every single thing she ever bought for me. She would ask me years later, "Where's that [thing] I bought for you? Did you lose it?" Sometimes she still does it. She can't detach love from objects, so if I lose or misplace or break something, it is a personal affront, an insult to her and her love for me.
I have the doll now, sitting on my desk. I look at her and she's just... a doll. But she's kind of a representation of me when I was little. Or at least, what I thought I wanted to be. Smart and magical with lots of friends. I'm closer to being that now, as an adult, than I ever was, and that's cool. But I wonder all the time what it might have been like to have actually grown up, instead of being forced to be an adult from birth.
You know that "tough love" people talk about, which is supposedly necessary for destructive, rebellious and otherwise "troubled" youth? Yeah. I got a lot of that. Except, I didn't earn it. Maybe my parents were both projecting emotions from stuff they'd been through when they were young. Maybe they did it as a precautionary measure, just in case I screwed up. Whatever the reason, it's how I was raised. Or rather, lowered. I joke that I was "lowered" Catholic, made to grovel and beg for mercy for sins yet uncommitted. I am not sure if the religion had something to do with how I was treated, but it was certainly a variation on the same theme.
I had no privacy at all. My room was very messy all the time because I probably had ADD, and I had a hard time putting things back where they belonged after I used them. So there were toys and books and clothes all over the floor. But sometimes, the mess was a fortress. My room was regularly raided, my drawers searched, my diaries taken and read. They did the same thing to me at school. I was so brilliant, they supposed, that the only reason for me not performing well in certain classes must be because I was doing something terrible behind their backs. On several occasions, after bad grades happened, my parents went to my school, emptied out my locker or my desk into a garbage bag, brought it home, dumped it on the floor in the living room and made me explain every single scrap of paper and toy and crusty piece of gum. Woe to me if ever I hid a bad grade from them; that just added to their suspicion. And any drawings or writings they found that were not directly related to schoolwork were seen as evidence that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, which, of course, led to punishment.
But it's hard to ground a girl when she isn't allowed to do anything anyway. I was eleven years old before I was allowed to cross the street unescorted. I was fifteen before I was allowed to spend more than two hours away from home without a parent or grandparent present. And we never went anywhere as a family-- not a single solitary overnight stay anywhere other than Perry, Ohio in my entire youth. So when I got "grounded," it was usually just from the phone-- my only real luxury-- and I was seldom allowed to call anyone but my grandparents to begin with. In fact, if I was talking to anyone other than my grandparents, I could pretty much count on my mother silently listening in. I heard the clicks, I knew what they meant. And if I'd said something she didn't like, she would go silent for hours, or say unkind things, or her tone of voice would change, rather than telling me what was going on. I almost feel as if she was saving up evidence to use against me later, you know, when I finally revealed my evil plan to ... what? I mean, I don't even know what they suspected! I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I didn't even know how to make friends.
You might wonder why I didn't rebel, why I wasn't a total delinquent, since I was being treated that way to begin with. It could have happened that way, but it didn't, and the reason is simple: I was terrified. My parents were the sun and the moon. If they treated me like this when I didn't do anything, what would happen if I did? So my rebellion did not come until I was 18, and my father had already left. I used the momentum of the storm of the divorce to carry me away from my mother's house. What happened after that was another story, but suffice to say, I spent quite a few years doing a lot of things I was told never to do, particularly involving sex. (Sex was, by far, the most heinous sin imaginable. When I was 11, I was immediately hauled off to church to confess when my mother caught me masturbating. Again, that's another story.)
I think that part of me is still trying to recapture what I missed. I take joy in things like toys and cartoons and silly computer games. Lots of adults do this, but for me, it's still fairly new. (For one thing, video games were forbidden in my house.) I have recently acquired one special toy. Her name is Shy Violet, and she was a doll from the Rainbow Brite series in the 80's. I liked her because she was smart and had glasses, like me, and purple hair, which was just cool. My parents bought me the doll when I was seven or so, and I loved it and took it with me to the strawberry festival -- where I lost it. I was admonished and punished severely for losing the toy-- most likely spanked, too, I don't remember. I mean, I felt bad enough that I lost something that I loved, but it cost my parents money, and the important "lesson" here was that if you cost us money, you're going to pay. I think it also stemmed from my mother's hoarding. She has always had what I consider to be a pathological attachment to things, and I am not exaggerating when I say she probably remembers every single thing she ever bought for me. She would ask me years later, "Where's that [thing] I bought for you? Did you lose it?" Sometimes she still does it. She can't detach love from objects, so if I lose or misplace or break something, it is a personal affront, an insult to her and her love for me.
I have the doll now, sitting on my desk. I look at her and she's just... a doll. But she's kind of a representation of me when I was little. Or at least, what I thought I wanted to be. Smart and magical with lots of friends. I'm closer to being that now, as an adult, than I ever was, and that's cool. But I wonder all the time what it might have been like to have actually grown up, instead of being forced to be an adult from birth.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)