In the movie Motorcycle Diaries, a doctor who Che and his friend are staying with asks them to read the novel he has been working on, saying it is the love of his life, after his family, of course. (Or wife, I can't remember.) They read it, and he asks them about it as they are leaving. The friend says it's "wonderful," "great," etc. Che tells him it sucks and that he should do what he does best and leave writing to others.
This is the kind of honesty I am asking for. Actually I think subsequent chapters may suck more than this one, but a few people have asked about it, and so I want to share the first chapter it here. If you'd be kind enough to give feedback, you can e-mail me from my sidebar over there where it says "say hi", or... you know where to find me!
CHAPTER ONE
There are 3 sections, in different fonts, but I didn't do fonts on the blog.
October 27, 1964
Franklin Walter Fritz was born October 8, 1960 at 6:38 AM at Stormont-Vail Hospital. At the age of three weeks it was discovered that he had Hydrocephalus. He remained at home until the age of eighteen months, at which time he entered the Kansas Neurological Institute. He progressed well while in the hospital, learning to hold his head up and eventually sitting up and feeding himself. He remained at the Kansas Neurological Institute until he died, on October 25, 1964.
-Mother Memorial Book
I first met Frankie in the family photo albums my mother kept on the living room coffee table. The eldest of my three older brothers, he died when he was four, before I was born. As a child I didn't know much about Frankie, but I did know he had a big head. He had "water on the brain" I was told. The most fascinating photo was the one where his huge head was held by a sling, attached to his walker, his mouth wide open.
Frankie's tragically short life and early death seemed to me, a distant sad chapter in my family's history. What I knew as a child was that my brother's life was separated from mine. Frankie had been different, sick, broken. That's why he was no longer here. The doctors could not save him. That's why Frankie was dead.
(Section 2 next page)
July 7, 2007
Emilie and Aaron,
Early this morning while you slept, I slipped out of the house and made my way to the Psychiatric Emergency Services at UC Hospital. I saw a doctor after two hours of waiting, got two prescriptions for sleep, and a doctor's note for a day off work. I felt relieved that I was half way home before one of you called. It was you Aaron, at nine-fifteen, wanting a ride to the car wash for the high school band. I was glad, this time, my condition did not have to affect my parenting.
You have watched me for over two and a half years now, trying not to have a condition. You watched me in withdrawal from the Klonopin after I swore off mental health services altogether. You got yourselves off to school every morning while I slept if I could, and I usually could, after being up for four and five hours in the night.. You have finished my sentences with understanding, when my tired brain could not come up with the right words. You listen with patience as I warn you against substances, whether prescribed or not. I have served as the best and worst example of why you shouldn't use alcohol, experiment with drugs, or put too much trust in your doctor's prescribing powers. A sensitive system, unbalanced biology, and susceptibility to stress are said to be passed along in the DNA. If that is the case, both your dad and I have given you compromised DNA.
This morning I caved. I gave up my attempt at normalcy. I recognized that in order to take another step, I would need to get some help.
-Mom
(Section 3 next page)
Reentry
I walked into the emergency room a little after five-thirty in the morning. At the intake counter I asked to see a mental health practitioner. I reasoned, since I couldn't sleep anyway, I might as well get this over with. Maybe getting through the system was quicker at five-thirty in the morning. This I wondered.
After receiving an striped identification bracelet, I was escorted into triage. When a short, blond nurse with thick orange makeup was finished taking my vitals, an older, motherly nurse came into the cubicle to get my information.
“What's the matter, Honey?” she asked as she positioned her pen on the paper, ready to write. I told her the facts: I was exhausted. I'd had trouble sleeping since I quit taking the prescription drug Klonopin almost three years earlier. In attempting to improve my life, I had taken on more and more responsibility: a job, house and car payments, and even a new marriage, on top of raising my two children. Their father had died when they were seven and nine. They were now fourteen and sixteen. I explained how I had called the Community Mental Health Access Point a few months earlier. They had taken my insurance information and said they would verify benefits and call back. After receiving no call, I had little energy to pursue it further.
Which seemed to be the defining characteristic of my condition: a massive energy crisis from which I was rendered powerless to take another step. Although I dropped to part-time employment, giving up some responsibilities as a personal care assistant, I still couldn't function well at any of my jobs. I guess I'd had it. After nearly three years of attempting to function in spite of sleep deprivation, something inside me decided to call it quits. This part of me knew better than to act on fantasies I'd had in the week prior to this emergency room visit. We would not be jumping from a bridge into the Ohio river, she and I, nor would we be stuffing my Tuesday lady into the trunk of the car and forgetting about her, instead of being a dutiful attendant. I had kids to think about. Plus the fact, in my right mind, I was actually very fond of my Tuesday lady.
After giving the nurse this explanation, I was registered. I provided my address, insurance information, and three signatures. It was already six-forty-five when I entered the waiting room.
At ten after eight I approached the woman who was at the desk behind the thick panel of plexiglas. Speaking into the small hole the size of a child's cup-on-a-string phone, I inquired about going outside, and if they could call my cell phone when the doctor was ready. I was nearly frozen from sitting almost an hour and a half in their air conditioned waiting room.
“Wait just a minute,”she said as she looked up from her novel. She turned to who I presumed to be a doctor, standing behind her, reviewing a handful of papers and charts. “All we have is this one, and him over there,” I heard her say through the little hole in the plexiglass. “He is sleeping, so you may as well see her now.” It was true, there was a man, probably in his early twenties, who had somehow been able to make a bed out of two chairs. He had been lying there, like someone homeless on a park bench, since before I came in. He had one shoe off and his arms out of their sleeves, wrapped around him inside his red striped shirt. I wondered about his story. Was he a regular at this hospital? Did he live on the street, this being a respite from harsher realities for him? Whose child was he and did his mother still think of him? How could he sleep there with his neck cranked, the side of his head against the hard wood of the chair arm? I struggled with the fact that he was a black man who waited several hours, while I was a white woman about to get preferential treatment.
I had been getting an earful of another man's story who, upon returning to the waiting room, was unloading his grievances like a misunderstood hoodlum leaving the principal's office. I care, which now was not a virtue, but a weakness. In a topsy turvy ridiculous way, after landing in the emergency room with my own exhaustion turned breakdown, my caring left me undefended in the path of his expression of angst. He needed to tell it and I was there. As usual, I couldn't say no.
Finally the doctor unlocked and opened the door. My name was called. Thoughts of all other sad cases left me as I took up my energy-less self and walked into her office.
~ ~ ~
Medication was on a list of three things I expected to get from this visit. From past experience, I had a pretty good knowledge of what to expect from anti-depressant, anti-psychotic, and anti-anxiety drugs. I came to the emergency room, for one, to ask for Seroquel. I knew from taking it years earlier that it would help me sleep. Secondly, I wanted a doctor's note. I had accrued sick leave for over a year but had no way of accessing it, save I get sick, and bring a doctor's note. Thirdly, the most surprising of my three wishes, was for reentry into the mental health system. For nearly three years I had struggled in an attempt to be free from services, and there was no record of this struggle anywhere. I felt crazy. I needed to be seen.
My first request I didn't even need to ask. My story opened up an entire psychopharmaceutical medicine cabinet, the doctor suggesting a whole host of medications. Lamicial, Topamax, and Depakote were used as mood stabilizers, as were Neurontin and Lithium. Cymbalta, Effexor, and Wellbutrin were another class of anti-depressants, any of which could be mine for the taking. All I had to do was choose one and then work out the details with the doctor she would refer me to. My report of anti-depressant induced panic attacks didn't slow down her pitch. Before she was finished, she had given me an entire lesson on brain function and chemistry, left and right hemisphere, for free. Having known me ten minutes, she told the exact method that could straighten out my particular brain. Until that could be worked out, she would prescribe the Seroquel, and an antihistimine called Hydroxyzine for anxiety.
My second request proved much more difficult to negotiate. It had only occurred to me when I remembered my job's benefits that a trip to the emergency room might be worth it. It was four in the morning and I had gone hours without sleep. This was common, and I usually had to go to work whether I slept or not. This was the most exhausting aspect of my condition. Then I thought, Oh yeah, I have sick leave for just this kind of thing. I was glad I finally thought of it.
Not so, the doctor. When I mentioned sick leave and that I wanted time off, her generous, drug pushing momentum suddenly slowed to a more cautious, authoritarian approach. Like a child caught sneaking cookies, I became quiet and waited to see what would happen.
“How many days do you think you need?” she asked, as if she, the doctor, had no idea of how rest might be connected to recovering from exhaustion. I was thinking weeks, not days, though she seemed entirely unaquainted with this approach. I lamented that my health care system did not come close to matching the generosity of those in other countries like France, the UK, and even Cuba, where publicly funded health care allows healthy amounts of restorative time off.
“How about a week?” I blurted out anyway, disappointed I was only asking for seven of my fifty-one available sick days.
“I can only give you three,” she said, writing this on her prescription pad. “Is there another doctor you can ask? Maybe your primary care physician?”
It was Saturday morning and my weekend job didn't count. My sick leave was for Monday through Friday. I walked out of the emergency room with two prescriptions and a note for one day's sick leave (pending agency approval). After nearly three years of struggling alone, I was back in the system. A system I tried to abandon; the system that abandoned me. More an outrage than a story, to whom can I tell it? I might not believe it if I had not been so unfortunate to live it. Yet who can deny a fact?
posted by Laura 10:23 AM
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Holocaust Mascots
What is a holocaust denier? I recently heard the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one. Invited to speak to students at Columbia University in New York, he was vehemently condemned by many in the US for being a holocaust denier, among other things.
I decided to look up the words. I found that a holocaust is a thorough destruction, especially by fire. The Jewish holocaust was the specific one mentioned, although the term is not limited to the Jewish holocaust. I looked up deny, and it means what we all know it means: that a person believes, states, or acts as if something isn't what it is.
I thought about this for a while. The Jewish holocaust loomed large in my consciousness, bringing up images of emaciated bodies, pointed guns, and barbed wire. I took a deep breath as my thoughts settled into an uncomfortable physical heaviness. To deny the holocaust is to deny a people, I thought. It is like hearing the report of a brutal rape and saying to the victim and the world, "It probably wasn't that serious. Do we even need to concern ourselves with it?"
Was this crazy, or was it ignorant, or was it arrogant? I thought it was more than all of these. The word diabolical came to mind so I decided to look it up: extremely wicked or cruel, evil, of the devil, it said.
Yes, it fit. To deny a holocaust in which millions were cursed as the enemy so they could be systematically eliminated – to deny the theft, murder, and destruction of a people and their lives – this was, I thought , in every sense, diabolical.
After having been given a strong dose of many American opinions on just what people in this country think of the evil, Iranian holocaust denier, President Ahmadinejad boarded his jet that carried him back to where he came from, to Iran where he belongs. Far from the American soil.
Friday night in the American homeland things were business as usual, where communities gather on fields and in stadiums to support their children's sports teams. In this proud nation, bordering both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific Oceans, between Canada and Mexico, hundreds of US teams with names such as the Braves, Bombers, Chiefs, and Redskins, pull out sweet victories while their thousands of supporters cheer wildly in the stands. This, a decades long tradition in all forty-eight states, plus Alaska and Hawaii. A Bombers team proudly sports an emblem of a mushroom cloud, like the ones that hovered over the death and carnage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I myself watched the Walnut Hills Eagles get savagely slaughtered by the Norwood Indians before and after my son's marching band show at half-time.
No, it's not crazy. It's not ignorant. It's not even arrogant. After all, there were good reasons for why our country has behaved the way it has, and even if some people were wrong, do we need to concern ourselves with it now?
It will surprise me if we haven't begun the bombing of Iran by the start of next year's season.
posted by Laura 8:51 PM
Friday, September 14, 2007
Capitalist Gardener
I felt that my flowers betrayed me After I planted them in the sun; Perennial smart investment- Low maintenance, easy care, Yielding crops of blooms while I do nothing.
I felt that my flowers betrayed me Lying horizontal after the rain; Leaning heavily upon Stakes and string and me, Well into the drought That wiped them out.
I felt that my flowers betrayed me As I flew to Boston; Polite society walked past Acting responsibly- It was no one's job to water them. One week. Record temperatures. No rain.
I felt that my flowers betrayed me As I put them out of my mind; In Boston, pursuing self-interests, In lockstep with a society That leans heavily upon Trickle down theories, And notions of all the world's poor Pulling up by their bootstraps.
I felt that my flowers betrayed me As I butchered them in my disgust; In a rush, my face flushed Out of sight- Soon out of mind, As I must have been out of mine At planting time.
posted by Laura 5:40 PM
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Monkey hear monkey speak
Notice how many people have been saying "Gotcha!" lately? Come on! Do we really have to do this?
My job consists of "helping" people. I get monetary compensation for this help, which is only right. Let me never lose sight of the fact I'm a person in need of help, too.
It's taken me a while, but I've finally recognized that people who need help, who I am paid to help, don't always need my help, nor in the ways I think I should help. This helping business gets a bit tricky, come to find out.
How so you ask? I find myself repeating a pattern. It goes like this: I go the extra mile...then I get shat upon. Yeah, yeah, co-dep 101. First things first, and first you gotta see it.
When it all comes down, I have generally helped people because I want to feel good about myself, not necessarily because of the person's need. I mean, there are good reasons, and then there are real reasons for doing the things we do. To get to the exact nature of what's going on in my life, I have to confess that the real reason has everything to do with the fact that, by myself, I don't feel very good about me. My love, then, has tended toward being more a compulsive reaction to the needs of others in order to feel good about myself, rather than the mindful, constructive action that I would like for it to be.
Can I be more specific? Not really. I'm not saying my good-doing is so useless as to make the airing of it desirable. Anyway, this is not all I have discovered about the nature of my giving.
It is true that when I was growing up, I suffered intensely between ages four and seventeen. I even had a conscious desire at times for someone to take action on my behalf. No dramatic rescue was performed, however, until I took action myself, and at seventeen I got the hell out.
So the mystery of other's suffering, why God allows unimaginable injustice to occur in the lives of innocents, doesn't hit any distance from home. I continually wrestle with this mystery, and as I do, I want to rescue those who hurt.
I know there's a lot of talk nowdays about people being God's hands and feet in this broken world. The idea has been suggested that instead of us asking God, "WHY," God might just ask us that very question. I like that. I believe in that.
Yet in my own suffering and subsequent compulsion to rescue, the only way God has factored into the equation has been by apparent ABSENCE. Acting as if God couldn't or wouldn't take care of His own, I have attempted to fill in for God's supposed absence. I should know better. I do know better.
Why is there suffering in the world? Why doesn't God do something? When I try to be God's hands and feet, why do I end up expending all of my energy until I am totally burnt out and spent? Why do I get kicked in the face by those I try to rescue?
Maybe the more approperiate question is: what has prevented me from learning and consistently applying principles that enable me to quit running on self-will? Perhaps learning to cooperate with God is a better use of my time and energy than my mindless, compulsive "helping."
posted by Laura 12:12 PM
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Glad you asked
Q. I was wondering why you don't have comments on your blog anymore.
A. A couple of reasons..probably the first being addiction. I literally had a compulsion to check my blog several times a day, especially when I first posted something. It is simpler for me to remove the feature than to try and resist one more compulsive behavior.
I also felt that no matter what I wrote, if it appealed to someone, they would leave a comment like, "Wow that was a great idea," or "Wow you are a great thinker," or some other kind of pat on the back. Something about receiving that kind of feedback publicly made me uncomfortable. Without any real debates or discussions going on, it started to feel unbalanced.
I learned a great deal in the days I was an overactive blogger because of the interesting comments and discussions. Since my blog habits and topics have changed, so has my audience. Fewer people are reading and only a few are commenting. This had become somewhat grief producing. My old "life" is gone and I miss my old friends, of whom you are one!
posted by Laura 10:33 AM
"blah blah blah blah blah blah"
our father in heaven,
your name is holy,
so we honor you alone.
display your world,
set your purposes in motion
before our eyes,
just like you do beyond them.
surprise us today with what we need,
and as we forgive others
take our sins away too.
don't lead us astray,
but be present in our suffering.
which is all that counts:
your world,
your provision,
your presence,
now and forever.
--ko
th visitor today.