Tag: mental-health

“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.

Grief is Chaos

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

Grief is a slippery, dancing, horrible, unavoidable thing. We have so many ways to talk about it, even us deathworkers. We talk about moving with and through it. We say blessings to others of peace and strength. Sometimes we discuss “getting to the other side” of it. Grief isn’t a wall you scale (though it can feel that way). There isn’t a line you finally step over where all of present life returns to the sharp focus of before the grief. Your first grief (though you were too young to know its name) is like your first time having sex, the you afterward can never be the you that was prior to the experience. There is no returning to them. 

When the world shatters you into grief, it is chaos. Loving someone, some thing, any thing means you’ve struck a bargain with grief. When it stomps through the door, it shoves you down, hard. You struggle for air, the rooms are topsy turvy. Everything tilts, shimmers like mirages, and nothing fits – furniture is uncomfortable, clothes rub the wrong way, sounds are deafening or whispers. You are upside down, floating in a debris field you cannot dodge. 

As time moves around you there is less debris, but you see it in the edges of your vision. Chaos lessens, but doesn’t become order. Eventually it settles into a still pool deep within you. As long as nothing ripples the surface, you do feel some peace and can plot your way through this new normalcy.

One pebble. That’s it. One tiny pebble and your still pool splashes that grief back up through your soul, scorching, shoving you down, teeth bared, gleefully taking its next chunk. 

What time does is make the splashes smaller, mostly. Until the pebble is a rock. Then, chaos. Grief doesn’t give way to order. Grief gives way to knowledge. Grief imparts wisdom from that still pool that stays behind. Grief schools us on surviving loss, on the price of love, and on our blessed mortality.

I’m not quite cruel enough to say, “embrace the chaos”. You can’t fully prepare for it. Everyone gets the chaos, there is no secret back path around it. You can expect it. However, walking around every day expecting grief is no way to live. Best when chaos hits to simply remember it. Remember, because you’ve encountered grief since you were born. Remember eventually it settles into a still pool. When it does, embrace the life you’re living as well as you’re able to in that moment until it’s disturbed, again. 

As a Deathworker and intimate partner with Chaos, perhaps you were hoping I’d have better advice, a faster fix. This is the best I’ve got because I too signed those contracts with the blood of incarnation – to love means to grieve later, to take a first breath means to exhale a last one. May we all love and live fully making those contracts worth our blood. Hail!