Disjointed Psuedo-Rant

Posted about 6 weeks ago on Facebook...

I am still grieving before... Insulin is not a cure... It is life-support. Please Heart, beat from love, not from fear...

Dumb and Lucky

"She made some comment about being thirsty at the end of school. It was right when it was really hot. Then the wounds that took a while to heal. And the insomnia... And I didn't know she had actually lost weight until they weighed her at the er. Each thing could be explained alone, and none was so glaring. But put it all together... I had an actual conversation with Rich musing that sometimes I thought she might be diabetic, but then put it off until her physical. I'm just so glad she wasn't in dka. I'd feel so guilty then. Now I just feel dumb and lucky."

This was a conversation with my friend C, written last night. This post will not be eloquent, or cogent. I'm too raw for that.

Isabella has diabetes. My daughter is a diabetic. MY DAUGHTER HAS A CHRONIC DISEASE. IT WILL NOT GO AWAY. IT MIGHT EVEN KILL HER. And I had an inkling, a hunch, and I ignored it. I wrote it off. I am a fucking paramedic and I didn't see it. My baby was sick. I did not see it.

I took Isabella to have an infected finger drained Sunday morning. In the evening she ran a temp so we went back to our local ER as per discharge instructions. They did a urine dip just o rule out a UTI. It came back. Our focus then changed. Massive amounts of glucose in her piss. A finger stick. 438. Fuck fuck fuck. There's no other real reason. An IV, labs,. Some good news, no DKA yet, only slightly elevated creatinine, her kidneys were not yet in a bad way. Transfer to boston, drive to MGH in the middle of the night because GOD DAMMIT I will not be that medically unnecessary BLS transfer at 1 am. Pedi ER, insulin, IV fluids, tears creeping up when she isn't' looking. Admission. Specialists. So many doctors. I give our history just like she was my patient, they call me on it. Time to be a mommy.

We met our team. Dr McGill is sweet and kind, reassuring. First round of education so we can go home. I give my girl her insulin. It feels unreal. I haven't slept. Rich went home, Kat came to be a ride home and the rock that she is. I pick up all of our medicine and syringes, we are discharged. Home. 38 hours. No sleep.

"I'll never feel like a normal kid again."
"I can't believe I have to do this for the rest of my life."

Me neither.

She is amazing, my girl. The next day she did her own finger stick in the morning, and by evening had done her own insulin injections. She's taking this and running with it. New normal. We will find it.

Let's talk for a moment about insurance and gratitude. Before insurance a month supply of insulin, both kinds, and the test strips and syringes, all the bells and whistles... TWO THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS. After...Two Hundred and Thirty. Gratitude.

HOLY SHIT. Isabella is diabetic. It sounds so strange. She tells everyone she meets, strangers. I ask her if she's trying it out, to see how sounds. She nods.

I blinked. Life changed.

Bearing Witness

There's a list of calls, the ones you hear about and shudder. The ones you hope you don't see but know if you work the road long enough you will. I've slowly checked various ones off, the eyes of those patients making a mosaic on the insides of my eyelids, the few of thousands of patients and families that I remember, with terrible visceral clarity. Those are the calls where as I step on scene, I have a brief moment where I wonder, will this be the one where I spit the bit, then I make my assessment and go to work, despite and because something terrible is in front of me. 

It's said this job makes you hard. I don't want that. I want to stay soft, stay present and human and bear witness to these moments. I want to shepard my patients and their families through these horrible scenes. There is a beauty in the spaces, in those moments where we know the soul before us is leaving the body, in the sound of a mother's heart breaking open. These spaces are just as important as the triumphant save, and they occur so very frequently. It's in these moments our humanity is tested, in the foul and the dark and the desperation. I want to hold sacred these places, in the minds of those left behind, that their loved one was valued and cared for, that there was some glow in their darkness. I want to be the person I would want there for me, or my family. 

Divorced

I got divorced today. I am divorced.

When this becomes final in 120 days I will have been separated for 2 years and 51 weeks. I have become so accustomed to the limbo, that this resolution is welcome but so foreign. There is relief, nostalgia, sorrow, joy, grief, unnamed swirling within. Mostly though the lightness. I can move forward now.

This is my year. It begins now.

Some Days

Some days it takes all my focus to keep the tattered threads of my self neatly in place so I still resemble some kind of cloth. These days I wake up doubting if I can smile through the frustration, uncertainty, pain, furor, sadness, enough to speak a complete sentence. Days my heart races, the tears sit fat and hot on my lashes, panic rising until it presses hard at the top of my palate. Days it hurts to take each next breath. Days I wish I could sleep and sleep and never wake.

Today is one of those days. There are so many of them, it seems.

Spring Lilacs

Despite our wacky winter that wasn't, and summer in March, the past few weeks have really felt like spring - verdant, fresh, new. My dear friend C has the most beautiful yard, whimsical and earthy, and her lilacs defy explanation. The fragrance is unreal, one of my favorite smells.

I walked around her yard a few days ago, and saw this butterfly, and thought maybe I will fly away soon too, new in shape and form. Maybe my spring is here.

Returning

How things have changed in six months, and my, how they are still the same.

Divorce is a long, ugly, painful process. I am still getting divorced. It is a soul-sucking process. Some days I wake up and marvel that there is still any light in my being. But then I think that fire is a purifying element. I am walking through hell, and will emerge stronger, distilled, free. Even this, as awful as it is, is better than what I was living in for years.

But I don't want this space to only be tears and woe. I am multifaceted, and there is much joy and beauty in my daily life. So I will still post about food and knitting and yoga and school (I am finally back in school - my life on my terms!!) and kids and politics and triumphantly crow from this soapbox.

So pull up a chair, let's brew a pot of tea and chat. Welcome back.

Old familiar friends

I have a really colorful mental health history. I have spent this half of my life constructing different paradigms, learning appropriate coping mechanisms, being on various medications, learning to live without those medications, because detoxing too fast while your insurance runs out really fucking sucks.

But, at the end of it all, and first in my mind, is that these shadowy ways are my first line of defense. Life gets difficult, the pressure mounts, and I. Cease. To. Function. Too much intensity. So much FEELING. Too much. Can't. Feel. All. Of. This. Can't. Can't. Fuck. This. Need. To. Feel. Something Different. Need to put the feeling somewhere else. Compartmentalize. Give the amorphous nebulous web of flying thoughts a definitive place, a home, something physical to label it, make it real and definable. Beg to have some control of my mind, my life, the shit storm that has exploded.

I, without trying, have lost a noticeable amount of weight. But it feels really good. To have spaces that are absent of flesh. To be negative space. To see the cage below my collarbones. It feels familiar, comfortable. I find myself enjoying the gnaw of hunger at 3 in the afternoon, the buzzy feel of faintness. That scares me.

It scares me that I have put an elastic on my wrist to snap it, to make it hurt. Because all I want to do, all the god damn time, is to cut something. Somewhere. That my kids can't see. To give all the hurt a certain undeniable location, form, cause.

Now, before the choir begins to sing concern, or blame, be quiet. 

I AM SCARED. 

And that is very good and very healthy.

So shut the fuck up. 

Let me flounder. I will figure my shit out. I take responsibility for my part in allowing my life to become this cesspool of blame, cause and dysfunction. I pray that those close to me try to understand what part I didn't have in it. That there is a greater evil; Addiction ruins wonderful people - doesn't matter what the substance is, it's the behavior that breaks down the living. That there are multiple victims. That I am not completely to blame. That I am broken down (4, 11, 12, 19), and need to find a way to grow out of the muck. I do not need concern, or pity. I need compassion. And understanding.

That is all.

Visiting a Friend

Strange walking through a cemetery I had not returned to in 13 years. It was so much larger than I remembered, and for a minute I was terrified I wouldn't find you. But I kept walking, and like some magnetic force was pulling me, I found your spot once again. I brushed the bits of lichen off your name, stunned you have been there long enough for that to grow. Watered the flowers with my tears, kissed the stone. I miss you, every day. And love you always.

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