Category: healing

“Because I’m sure most patients prepare their past history as if they’re doing a TEDtalk.”

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

Sometimes I am so obtuse about my own self. Sure, everyone is, but I’ve done bunches of work on myself (whatever the hell that means) and believe I’m fairly clued in about myself. And I am, except when I’m not. There seems to be a neverending supply of blind spots.

Recently I went to a follow up appointment with my new primary doctor. Everything went fine, but I noticed something curious about how he treats me and it took me awhile to figure it out because of how foreign it felt. He was kind. And gentle. And oddly hesitant about ordering run-of-the-mill bloodwork.

Back story: my favorite primary doctor retired about a decade ago. She was one of the few medical people that didn’t auto dismiss me. My retired doc listened and the thing that made her different was her willingness to be wrong. She acted on that willingness. When she told me she was retiring I was happy for her and sad for me.

Since her retirement I tried out different various primary docs, a PA, a nurse practioner, and none were willing to be wrong. I’d get shrugged shoulders. If I’d found a way to manage a symptom that was deemed good enough. But it wasn’t. My whole daily life was built around not doing things to exacerbate symptoms. Because of this my life became small and very curated, while I masked as normal because my body was a mystery. I told few ppl about being sick. It wasn’t worth the reactions.

Fast forward to my first appointment with new doc 6 months ago, who I told about previous medical encounters,  the plethora of tests that showed nothing significant, and named my litany of various and seemingly disparate symptoms. I allowed my frustration to show. I talked about what medicines had worked well for more than a year even when I was doing very poorly.

This doctor was my last shot at trying to get help because I was exhausted by the dismissals and what at times felt like derision from the medical community. It takes an awful lot of energy and forced hope to see someone new, retell all the the things. To be ignored, dismissed, or thought to be a malingerer afterward was too disheartening to do any more if this guy blew me off, too.

I left that appointment with a tentative diagnosis and a script for the one thing that had been working and now I’d be able to take daily, consistently. Honestly, I don’t care if the diagnosis stays tentative because I have treatments that work. I have big parts of my life back that I thought I never would. I’ve had to give up some things, but that’s from covid ravaging what was already broken. Can’t have everything in this body, but I’m better with some symptoms than I have been in many years.

So, back to realizing my recent blindspot. When I left my new doc follow up appointment a week ago I said to my husband, in a surprised voice, “he treated me like I had medical trauma.” Husband said, “yeah!” in a tone that implied it was ridiculous. I was about to agree with him when my brain clicked and I thought “oh”. And just like that I knew, as well as I know my name, that the doc was correct in treating me that way.

I was simultaneously gobsmacked and disappointed in myself for not having seen it. I was relaying this new information to a friend of mine in terms of “curve balls and realizations”. When I said something about “everyone else had medical trauma. I had bad luck. Or something. Gawds. lol” they had the absolute nerve to respond, “Because I’m sure most patients prepare their past history as if they’re doing a TEDtalk.”

~zing~

I cracked up, loudly. Then I responded in the only way one does when they’ve spent bunches of time building an intimate friendship: “Fuck off”

Medical trauma. I have it. Maybe, with more time, it won’t have me.

Mindfulness is bloody hard

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

This is one of the most difficult concepts for me to not argue against. What do meeeeaaaannnn I’m not my thoughts and feelings?!? Of course I am! Oh wait, thank gods I’m not. With a brain that runs a hundred directions at once, really, thank gods I am not.

My essence, my love that is life force, the whatsit in us that drives and powers all that is, I know are not my thoughts and feelings. It is so much more and so much less than the story in my head. In those sparse and atm rare moments that I remember this, I find peace within.

Disparate trauma hold hands

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

Watching the 3 mile island docuseries on Netflix and remembering the shadow cast by it. The fear you couldn’t control with reason because you’d spent grade school diving under desks in nuclear bomb drills. I was 18 when the 3 mile island “accident” occurred and I went to see the movie “The China Syndrome”. The audience collectively gasped at the line about an area the size of Pennsylvania being uninhabitable if it occurred. The unknowable around the effects of the deliberate slow daily release of radiation to shrink the hydrogen bubble to avoid an explosion and core meltdown. Then it fades into a memory of a near miss except for those close by who were poisoned in high enough doses to see physical manifestations. Three years later when the core was examined we learned we were a mere half hour way from our nuclear nightmare. Then they pretended a cleanup years later.

Forty years later a global pandemic and that old fear you can’t control with reason rises to visit for a much longer stretch of time than 3 mile Island cultivated. Familiar, and no comfort in that familiarity. Gods know I don’t have the level of naiveté I possessed when I was 18. I wonder what terror my remaining years will witness. And still I hope…

Looks like witches still need to tend women’s health – SCOTUS change coming

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

June 28, 2018

Years back there was a rumbling on the Internet in regards to states passing draconian abortion laws. People were organizing, in the background and out of the public eye, a network to help women travel to a different state to get an abortion when their state closed so many clinics few could use them, or a new state law prohibited that needed medical care.

Con’t. at link

It’s been a long couple of months

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)1 Comment

I’m not up for details of the complicated nature of our relationship at this point, but my brother Scott was dead within a week of being told he had stage IV cancer. (DOD: March 3rd, 2017) He lived in CA. His remains were donated to research, then he was cremated and the ashes shipped to Chicago where my sister lives. We rendezvoused there and held a service this past Saturday. I returned yesterday with him.

Welcome home, Scott.

Manifesting to Fullness

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)1 Comment

At times I forget how much the Universe enjoys assisting in the process of manifestation. Speak your desires, take actions to support them, and notice when the Web of All That Is shakes the strings a bit to facilitate what manifests. For maximum manifestation of desires to be achieved I believe we work hand-in-hand with Creation, each needing the other for fullness.

I’ve been clearing my spiritual plate of all the items that were too shiny to pass on in the moment, but don’t serve the direction I’m heading in. I desire to make room for what is most fulfilling, what brings me the most joy, and what sends useful energy out into the world – the three of those together are the criteria for a thing being an emphasis in my life.

Discernment can be quite difficult when you are attracted to all the glittering bits and I was being easily distracted, so I wiped the plate. *boom* Empty. The decision of what to add back, what new things to plop on it, felt very intimidating at first, so I rode that scary part like the experienced rider I know that I am. I created my criteria to facilitate success from my end while trusting the Universe when something unanticipated is removed from my plate without direct action from me.

It’s an interesting time. Some things I feel will again be in my life in a few months, others I’m releasing indefinitely. In the meanwhile, I can feel the return of space in my breathing, that small pause between inhale and exhale where anything feels possible. What a delight!

“The Barefoot Artist” (movie)

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

I came across this movie on Netflix and the description was intriguing even though I’m not generally one to be intrigued by documentaries. This one hit all of my points of things-I-find-comfort-and-use-in. Artist me! Witch Me! Community Me! The Dead Me! Ancestral Healing Me! Philosophical Me!

It is a portrait of one privileged fallible authentic Chinese woman as she struggled to find the place that her passions intersect with humanity. So worth watching, even if you disagree with how she decides to engage that intersection. I am happy to have seen it.