The Other Me

On the hamster wheel that is my brain are a good many pressing thoughts and concerns.  Subjects which could weigh a gal down if she didn't work to balance them with joyous expression, humor and gratitude.  That there is why I spend time with my other blog, Push-Ups, sometimes seemingly at the expense of this blog.  My mind would wish to spend countless hours a day filling entries here, but my life requires me to maintain equilibrium for the sake of my family and the responsibilities I have chosen to accept as my part and parcel.  Posting pictures and waxing only mildly philosophical about the happenings on the home front requires less emotional energy and intellectual challenge.  Both of which I seem rather short on these days. 

But internally, I am here, feeling the reluctance of my station in certain areas, witnessing the continual unfairness which sucks like eternal quicksand at the heels of many around me, contemplating the realities which exist outside the boundaries of my third acre lot here in Jamison Place of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

While a certain fair-furred mutt leans into my legs while I embrace his lean and narrow chest, crooning those silly sweet-nothings that over-the-top dog owners say to their pets, I wonder what it would be to hug my youngest brother on a regular basis.  Instead of returning his collect calls, asking for the infamous Scratch from whatever client picks up the phone, and fighting the helplessness that threatens to overtake me while I listen to him fret, and rightfully so, about doctors who change diagnoses without warning and the doubling anti-psychotic meds without informing.  With a reduced budget which results in reduced staff and settles for less well educated professionals, the hospital reminds me more of a souped-up daycare. Instead of battling the ball in my stomach which contracts and expands when I must dial alternate numbers for hospital staff in positions of power of him, praying for my words to be right and the results to be correct, even as the realization sits heavily that I'll most likely be promised a great risen dough ball of assistance and delivered a flat pale disc of nothing in return.  Though I aspire to hope, I often surrender to frustration with the system and the system's often apathetic and jaded employees.  With their pat replies and pseudo-concern.  Because the good ones often leave.  The good ones can't handle the inaction which results from mounds of paperwork in triplicate which keeps the patients' needs at bay.  Though I keep right on trying, I fear I may have a dropped an important ball and missed it bouncing away, its rolling off the edge of the cliff that marks my brother's last shot at an ordinary life.

Did you know that for almost two months, I neglected to return the call of a social worker assigned to Gary simply because I didn't want to hear the same old runaround and play the same old "what can I say versus what can't I say/what will they tell me and what will they actually mean" game?  That's the new version of the tired me.  I don't care much for her but she's there.  She says that 'they' assure me family is integral to the therapy of the client . . . but they never call and include me in the staffing meetings, though the staffing meetings are really nothing more than a quick consult in a closed room whereby a nurse, social worker and psychiatrist tell Gary what he's done, what they are going to do, and then tell him they will address his worries later when they have more time.  They never have more time.  She wonders about the multitude of clients without family or friends checking in on them and offering a lifeline to an existence outside the fences and walls of the state-run institution.  She figures that as long as Gary continues to plod through his days, avoiding staff out of mistrust of their intention or distrust of his reactions, then she will await his signal to get involved outside of personal conversations and ordering socks (he marvels at the sport socks with the tight massaging middle that offers better arch support -- akin to the invention of sliced bread and canned soda pop for him). 

And then weekend arrives whereby a combination of suppressed frustration over meds, the dimming effects of the meds themselves, and confusion in a chance meeting with his medical doctor about liver medication had him thinking this was his opportunity to rail about the anti-psychotics he didn't want or need, resulted in his throwing the wondrous soda pop in the face and chest of the aforementioned medical doctor.  Bad move.  A move seen only in movies . . . in in psychiatric facilities.  This move gets Gary moved.  To another ward.  Rumors begin to circulate as to what may be in his future.  Talk of administrative meetings between people who have never spoken to me, who don't know Gary, who will decide if his next bed should be inside the walls of the maximum-security hospital in Atascadero.  AKA "ASH."   Only it makes no sense.  He's not a murderer or rapist or child sex offender.  He's not taken his fists into the problem-solving arena there at Patton State Hospital.  (AKA "PSH.")  Save for the one time that a child sex-offender tried to attack him and staff agreed that he was not at fault.  Setting aside my sisterly love, I can look at this objectively and ascertain that it is NOT a fair move based on circumstances.  It's the possible throwing away of a human being who exists as a polarizing force on their grounds who requires a good more work than they have time and resources to give.  And, to be sure, more than he has been willing to invest in himself, either.

This isn't very cohesive.  It's not even what I had hoped to write.  But I've visions of 'schizo-affective' versus 'bi-polar' diagnoses dancing in my head like bright red and green Christmas ornaments on some enormous evergreen sprouting from within the center of my brain.  And they are bumping up against an already crowded surface area of competing colors, lights, textures, dangling this-that-and-the-other things!  So, here it finally is, the OTHERS in my seemingly happy heart.  Those images and sights and sounds that don't jive with the cheery pictures and snapshots on my other blog site.  In essence, the other me.

In no particular order, the OTHERS.

My husband spent two hours undergoing a radioactive scan of his gall bladder and associated digestive system parts (small intestines and liver) to rule out other scenarios which might compete with the possible diagnosis of a non-alcoholic fatty liver per an appointment and an ultrasound last week to ferret out the cause of ongoing stomach-region pain in the form of dull intense aching.  My husband spends very little time in doctors' offices unless it is to swab his sore throat during cold and flu season.  Outside of a bum knee back when he played semi-pro football for the Pueblo Crusaders before we were married in '89, he's had no need for scans and such.  I've encouraged him into taking advantage of annual physicals on our insurance, but sometimes he has neglected such opportunities.  Now, though he tries to quell his apprehension, he goes straight to the Cancer worry card at the bottom of the deck of illnesses that could be causing his discomfort.  I pull every other card of possibility and then show him my hand.  Because he's heard of people receiving a synopsis of their scan results from the technician on-site and this technician said she had to cull the images and information into a cohesive report and had no information for him directly, he sees that as a bad sign.  A billboard in red planted right in front of his life.  I say wait for the call from our doctor tomorrow once the report is in her hands.  But I'd rather not see my husband go through the anxiety he presently suffers.

Per my own health, I wonder how I would fare if I had to return to the work force outside of the home?  Mainly due to the monthly encroachment of my uterus upon my ability to think and walk.  I couldn't very well take three sick days every 21 to 24 days.  My name would soon be stricken from the payroll, methinks.  Hormone treatment, i.e. birth control and the like, have not been successful for a variety of reasons.  In previous entries, I've outlined this topic to the most finite of points.  One of my close friends continually insists that I should take the bull by the horns and do whatever it takes to be rid of this female problem once and for all.  She says that one day, I may have to miss something of great importance in my life because I'm debilitated by my period.  Like maybe a wedding.  Or a graduation.  Or a round-the-world trip.  And it is true that I look ahead, ticking off the small squares of my calendar, whenever we are planning a trip or party or even when I agree to volunteer at church or school.  But I fear the cure will involve separating my uterus, and most of my accompanying female parts, from my body.  Forever.  That particular scenario scares me.  Turns me cold.  Causes me to fidget in my chair.  How do you spell 'heebeegeebees?'  It's a part of me.  It's not cancerous or rotten or malfunctioning.  It's conducting a vital function of the female of my species.  It's just rather intense.  I understand that proclivity.

Truth be told -- you will find this odd as I somewhat do, too -- I would miss my period.  As mean as it sometimes is.  As bossy as it becomes with my schedule.  We've been together for longer than I've been married.  Over three decades.  What happens in the wake of such a break-up?  Would I stand perpetually on that familiar monthly shore, awaiting the ferry that would never again land at the dock to disgorge its antsy passenger, my company for a time?  The same aforementioned close friend has a theory which suggests that I can only fully relax and disengage from my busy-busy when I have the acute pain and befuddlement of my period as a viable excuse; she would like to see me give myself permission to simply take the same amount of days off from everything without pain and without the guilt I would experience in the absence of my valid excuse.  Oh, I don't know.  I just don't know.  I'm not there yet.  Perhaps I'll take a poll.  Research.  Start asking pertinent questions at next week's annual physical.  Call my insurance about coverage and the like.  Or . . . forget about it all until the next cycle come around and derails something minor or major.

My final OTHER of this entry hits closer to home in terms of parallels between tragedy, mental illness, death and societal feelings.  A friend of mine experienced a personal heartbreak which played out in California news last week.  Her son shot and killed a sheriff's deputy and a locksmith who had come to his apartment to carry out an eviction.  The notice had been posted on his door 5 days prior.  He remained in a standoff with police for roughly 11 hours before a fire of unknown origin (not sure if he started it or the police did, unintentionally, with non-lethal grenades thrown in his windows).  When his body was recovered, it was determined that he had shot himself to death.  It appears he intended to have it out with authorities as copious amounts of ammunition with varied accompanying firearms were found with him.  And he was dressed for battle.  Unfortunately, he was a very mentally sick man who did not see himself as thus, and therefore never received any help for his problems.  The fact that eviction was imminent reveals that things were not right in his life for whatever reason.  The police also took note of outside mounted surveillance cameras positioned by this middle-aged man.

There is enough pain to go around in all of this.  Grief for the two victims and their families.  Though the public servant intentionally took on a job where danger could occur at any time, that poor man there to change the locks had no clue his life could possibly end on that day.  Death surprises most of the time, and tragic death, unexpected death, cuts deeply.  And bleeds most profusely.  Confounds the mind.  Befuddles the soul.  Challenges the faithful.  And then there is the category of suffering for one who knows their loved one caused such loss and hurt.  And an even more specialized category for mothers who suffer the death of their children before their own passing away.  The combination of mourning heaped upon mourning, grief upon grief, pain upon pain . . . it would be far less agonizing to stand directly in the face of the sun's heat.

So in the midst of my beach wanderings and postings of shell finds and heron sightings, I commiserated with my friend and her daughters.  With those two other families.  Remembered my family's headlong crash into holocaust.  And discovered a way to remain whole in myself without divesting so much of my empathy that it left me bereft.  I must allow room for the idea that the burdens others must bear can be handled without me accepting more than my fair share of that load.  A most compassionate and empathetic man I know worried that I internalized the suffering of those close to me more than was good for me or necessary for them.  He requested that in this instance I suffer for a time but compartmentalize so as not to deprive myself of the healing I had experienced.  That to enjoy my rare time at the beach away from my worries was an okay activity even in light of this terrible news.  And he was, and is, right.  I know this because I would never want my loved ones to internalize my pain and suffer as I have in those searing moments of unfair worldly absolutes.  I would desire their support, their ear, their words, their hugs, their ongoing friendship, their reminder that life will endure and one day I will return to myself. 

I pray that for my friend and her daughters.  And for all of you, whatever your OTHER may be.