I cut Violet’s nails today.
She’s exhausted.
You know how those kitty manicures can be.
Violet’s nails clipped—
front and back—
this morning.
Finally, she boxed me with
front paws
as I worked on
back paws.
She acted mad until
I played with her in the afternoon.
It is possible. Not easy. There could be payback, sort of like the tagger you actually catch in the act once. You’re so proud of yourself, that your middle-of-the-night meanderings to the bathroom actually produced something valuable: stopping criminal behavior. Then they bring their friends back in the next week or so and paint up every home, garage, and dumpster in your alley. Everyone of your neighbors hates you now because, of course, you bragged. Same with cats. You scold them and all appears well. The pattern of behavior changes for a week or so. Furniture scratching, peeing in a corner they targeted during a bout with bladder stones, stuff like that. (I let my cat get on counters and any furniture she likes, so that doesn’t count for me.) Then a week or so later, you come home in the afternoon after being gone all day (she hates that most of all about my behavior—why can’t I just nap with her every day?) and she’s been working on the most visible corner of the couch. For quite awhile and with nails that are two weeks overdue for clipping.
So now in the middle of the night, just like last night, when I hear kids talking and smell their marijuana smoke, I raise the window blind and say, ever so pleasantly, Could you guys move down the alley, please? Yes, I can hear you. And I say, in my sweetest, calmest tone, to my cat as she stretches her claws up the leg of my white wicker rocking chair, Cat manners, Violet, yes, good girl (as she retracts the Furniture Shredders).
My health is actually good and I’m getting accustomed to my diagnosis (like accustomed to “your smile”?). Since I was a teenager and studying anatomy and physiology, and my brother and I would have discussions about “the worst disease to have,” I dreaded liver disease. Now, I think that is weird, to kind of set yourself up for something to come decades later. Lately, though, I realized I wouldn’t even know I had it if it weren’t for such advanced techniques of diagnosis. I think my grandmother had the same thing—I know she had cirrhosis, non-alcohol-induced. She just didn’t have a pinpointed diagnosis of what may have caused it.
So. I eat what I want. I exercise, walk the outside perimeter of Wash Park 3-4 times a week. I spend time in the sun so I can help convert vitamin D to usefulness in my body, which my liver has a harder time doing now. I drink plenty of water. I play with my kitty. Just kind of normal stuff. And I make sure I eat Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—Karamel Sutra is my favorite, though Phish Food is a growing fave. I love burgers from Good Times (it is Coleman beef, never frozen) and usually go there once a week for the No. 2 Combo, cheeseburger with Wild Fries.
If I have 10 years, 20 years left before transplant or The End, I’m going to have daily pleasures. And write. I’ve returned to writing. It is a monkey on my back and when I don’t scratch that itch, I have a lot of anxiety that eventually turns into sadness and depression. Grad school has forced me into focused, structured writing, and I am enjoying the process and the results.
Searching for a reason, a name for what was happening to my body. And to my mind. Wondering. Since last May. Eight months later, on February 1st, I was given a name. Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis. Means my bile ducts outside and inside my liver are closing up, creating beaded mapwork that doesn’t move bile (waste) out of my liver as effectively as the system used to. The buildup of bile damages my liver, therefore the cirrhosis (scarring). The diagnosis was confirmed two weeks later by a liver biopsy (one more poke in the side, one more dose of anesthesia, but not a complete dosing this time). It showed tiny bile ducts that were forming in my liver to compensate for the closing ducts. Smart liver.
I felt sad, I felt relieved, I felt confused. I absorb information like this slowly, so it’s taken me awhile to get fully through the wondering and the what-now period. In the meantime, I also was terminated from my job. Absorb that information, too. I have felt overwhelmed at times. Graduate school, though fraught with its own difficulties, has kept me afloat—mentally, emotionally, even physically.
I’ll be adding to this topic over the next few days. I am still sad and confused sometimes. I don’t want sympathy, and I don’t feel sorry for myself. I want to go out with friends, talk about what I’m reading, hear about what they’re reading, what movies they have seen, walk with them, eat with them, drink coffee and tea with them. I play with my cat Violet who also curls up on my chest and purrs.
I like to be able to push against the world and get a push back, get answers, reality. I got a diagnosis, after not receiving more than a slight nudge now and then for almost a year. Now I can start pushing back and get more answers about how to deal with it.
From an email—Candi, I forgot to answer your first question - how was my procedure? Well, I got a nosebleed from hell and the doctor decided to cancel! Ha! I tricked them once again. Really, it was so dry that day and they were running late (& I was hungry, grumpy, and dehydrated). So around 4 pm I went to the bathroom and one of the things I did was to, ahem, pick my nose. Go for gold. I picked a real winner cuz it started bleeding and I thought there was some mistake, but lo, it wouldn’t stop! It took about half an hour of lukewarm nursing care to get it to mostly stop.
Later that evening, going to bed early, I squeezed my nose, but not gently enough, and it just started gushing. Yeek. I got my neighbor Aimee to help me. My bathroom looked like a crime scene, but after 35 minutes it still hadn’t stopped. The nurses had told me I’d have to go to ER, call 911, if it started again.
So Aimee called 911. Then we realized, omigod, a million good-looking guys will be arriving very soon. As soon as I heard the siren, I said, Aimee, brush my hair! She said, geez I have to change clothes! We were giggling and laughing and I was still gushing. I had Aimee tuck little Violet into her carrier so she wouldn’t get lost or stepped on. And here come 5 giant, gorgeous heroes into, yes, my bathroom! Whoa! Too much excitement.
I got a ride in the back of the ambo (I love ambulances, working in them - really!) and dropped off at Univ. of Colo. The docs there couldn’t stop the bleeding either and they finally shoved a nose tampon up my left nostril. Ew! Tampax works. I had to go around like that for 2 whole days. Uck. Gack.
If anybody wants the longer version (about 750 words), let me know - waterbear7@aimhigh.net.
Oh, the peas. My cousins and I stuck soft, mushy peas up our noses at a Thanksgiving meal when I was about 4. Couldn’t get them out and had to go to my mother. She said, in her succinct way, just blow! Ah! Have you ever stuck anything up your nose?
Covering miles of river canyon
The mighty Sipsey River
Beauty lost forever.
I remember picnics at Slick Rock
Slipping, sliding across the river,
giggling, screaming, laughing, competing.
The pickup truck being driven across
the river to the overhanging
cliff on the other side.
I recently received a pair of fluffy and shiny baby blue pajamas that will be perfect for winter nights and my favorite, napping. I can hardly wait for winter now! It really takes some imagination to wear the right thing for a nap. SARK, author of The Nap Book (How to Change Your Life Without Getting out of Bed), swears by cotton pajamas, very simple, for her naps. I think it depends on the kind of nap you want and the time of day you are taking it. (Yes, of course there are morning naps!)
If it is morning and I’ve been up since 5:00 a.m. because that’s when Violet the Cat decided I should get up and play with her, at around 10:00 a.m., it’s snooze time. For that one, I try to lie very still on the couch and not make any wrinkles in what I am wearing. If I am still in my pajamas, though, that’s perfect because I can curl up and moan and nod off for a nice little 20-minute cat nap—since that is the reason I’m needing one.
If it is early afternoon, and I want to do something right after it, I still might try the lying very still technique and tell myself, 20 minutes only. Sometimes that works and sometimes I drool and turn and wrinkle my shirt or blouse. Then I wish I had just changed into my midday pajamas—cotton drawstring shorts and a t-shirt for summer, sweats for winter. Then if someone knocks on my door, I look like I’ve been cleaning, just working out, or just plain working (like for me, reading or writing).
A mid to late afternoon nap is one I can be shameless about. For that I turn off the ringer on my phone, get proper pajamas on, and choose couch or bed, depending on how each one feels or looks to me at the time. This is not to say that I feel ashamed of my other naps. I have chronic pain (and I’m a chronic pain in the ass) and it’s tiring. Also, I just like to escape from reality for awhile sometimes. More on napping soon.
Whenever I’m facing a writing project, I find myself instead deeply involved in a complex cleaning project. It has many layers. I develop goals which take on greater complexity as I clean on. I am avoiding writing. But soon, I tire of cleaning. At least sooner or later, depending on how insecure I am about the writing to be done. There are two good outcomes here. I do get some cleaning done. (In my last bout of writing avoidance I polished all of my silverplate flatware - an absolute necessity, of course.) And I get physically revved up to write. I consider writing a physical activity anyway. Sometimes I start writing, think of things to clean, and then reward my 20-minute writing spurt with a few moments of cleaning. One task only. This is all a deep, dark secret, by the way. I always swear that I hate cleaning. Secretly I adore it. It helps me to write and think.
I am the Queen of Naps. I NEED naps! My dad was a napper, and a good model for me. He could nap anywhere and he napped regularly. Partly because of his migraines and partly because he just liked napping. It suits our personalities. My mother, on the other hand, never napped and my two sisters took after her. They are in constant motion. I can just watch my sister Diane and feel the need in me grow to find a place to nap. She tells me, if you want to nap, you’re on your own. Which is how I like to nap anyway - well, except for an animal or two close by. They love napping humans. At the word “nappy,” my dog Poohbah would find a place nearby and curl up into perfect napping form.
People are different, though. Like the difference between my nephew Jay and his sister Dayna. Pretty basic stuff. I can picture Jay napping; I can’t picture Dayna even sitting. Sibling differences are pretty amazing sometimes. Oh, my brother David liked to nap, too, and was well-known for his naps during educational movies he showed in his high school science classes in the early afternoons. His students apparently roamed the halls freely. My sister Diane, on the other hand, was born loud and in constant motion. I never remember seeing her nap.
I will be napping. Soon.