2005-04-10 - 10:30 p.m.

i'm back!

"she's alive!"

i look like someone unsuccessfully tried to cut my head off.

and i feel nearly as keen too.

not to mention my stomache is distended from the internal backing up from the morphine.

seriously, i feel great that i'm alive and i can speak and breath. now there are other things missing.

where would i even begin...

we'll start with the day before.

my dad came out and i took him on a work adventure. trying to cram as much in as possible.

-to a boutique for a delivery
-drop off car to get fixed
-job interview
-buy racks to show goods at a sample sale from the asains
-buy leather wholesale from the persians
-pick up silver and first gold piece from armenians
-stop off for russian food
-go by the indian and chinese for some gems. bought my first bag of diamonds. also bought saphires.
-dropped off at setters across the street.
-went by the salvadorian leatherworkers new place to drop off leather.
-stopped by revolutionairies bookstore, amazing. so cool in the middle of downtown los angeles. i'm joining an anti slave labor, sweat shop group.
-went back to pick up car.
-ran to meditation.
packed day.

racing right into the quiet inevitable the next day. i picked up my mom and her husband. they stayed with me that night. i got up in the morning and packed with lizard here. it was difficult. the air was heavy and quiet. we were late. lizard of all people kept trying to get us on time. we get there, my dad is waiting. the slap an intake wristband in a stylish bone white on my wrist and off i go to the surgical room waiting area. i start to panic about getting an i-v in. this had been one of my worst fears. a big hole jutted into my vein. we are all waiting while i'm in my blue nightgown, nervous conversation vibrating spontaneously then dying with a sigh.

there was just too much stimulous. having both my mom and dad and her husband and lizard. i needed some one on one. i announced individual conferences, starting with the step pops. i thanked him for coming and said to keep that lady happy. he was sweet, stroking my like a lill' daughter of sorts. which, okay, it felt odd, but nice. then i said he was ton and to send in my next guest, mom. we had some private time. gave her a big hug and told her how much i loved her and respected her. (at this point the gravity sets in, the responisibilty that i should say what i need to now). then with my dad my heart starts to really crack. we had fought my whole life. ipushed him so far out. and now for a few years we've been getting in again.

he is so quiet and endearing and sensitive. i worried about him the most. next i got lizard in. i told her to look after my dad today. she was having a hard time, trying to deflect the reality.

i was taking my last good poooo when the nurse came by to put the i.v. in. nerves kicked in. i thought i was being so calm. deep breathing. not overly talking. but the nurse came in and said, the other nurse said you were nervous/scared. we can smell it on you. i thought i was doing sooo well. so calm.

they numb my hand, i squeeze lizard, they put the i.v. in and i'm on the gerny. they wheel me with my entourage down the hall to the wide flipping doors to the surgical wing, i give a hug to each as i wait for the 80 year old woman ahead of me to go in. i'm terrified.

hugs goodbye. as i'm wheeled past i see my sweet brown haired young dad flirting with the old women volunteer intake nurses in thw waiting room. i'm wheeled down the hall. the anthesiologist says soon i'll have the good cocktail and then it'll all be over. i ask questions. i get comforted. all the sudden we arrive at the surgery room and a warm something envelops my entire body in two quick seconds and i nearly sit up in the rush and say something half coherent about the best drug i've ever felt.

it was like x plus dope plus mushrooms in one smooth instantaneous rush without nautia or consequences. amazing. now i want to talk and get groovy with the team. i'm wheeled in and there are some women surrounding me in this large cold room with expensive machinery. the last thing i said was, "hey, do my a favor eh, whisper subliminal messages while i'm under, like, i'm an incredible business woman who will do great with my business." the laugh announce the surgen is here, i turn to look and see him and
bam!!
before i could even lay eyes on him
i'm
o
u
t
out.

they have that shit *timed*.

next i wake to a very fuzzy room where i can only see a few fuzzy feet in front on me, like tunnel vision. i'm in a waiting area with other gernies and there is a nurse appointed to me, standing near me chatting with the other nurses next to their gerny. at one point, and this was amusing, i turn to my nurse and ask if she will hold my hand for a little while.

i gave the whole wing a real run for their money.

then i'm in my room and somehow my crew wanders in. i am cognizant enough to know the exact amount of time i had been gone and by my calculations, it took too long and that can't be good news.

i couldnt' move my neck. my jaw was in unbelievable pain. my throat, raw, drained, scratched, dry as a desert, in excruciating pain. i couldn't move my neck half an inch. next, people are surrounding my bed, i'm ghost white with the stuff in my nose, i.v in charge getting morphine shots. i felt totally coherent at the time. total verbal clarity. but i'm told i was nodding out half the time. i hated to see the gravity of everyones faces that surrounded my bed. i couldn't stand the weight. i talked to entertain them. got them talking across to eachother, like a good hostess. i got conversations started.

it was all too much for lizard, she climbed off to the bay window and took a nap. cat was there when i got out. people slowly left. i talked way too much. my mom asked to stay the night with me, i for the first time ever, put down the shield and agreed for her to stay.

next starts the worst night of my life. every two hours i'm awake with pain needing another vial of morphine in my i.v. and yet when i get it i get a wave of nautia which terrifies me and everyone cuz i am not to throw up under any circumstances as it would rip open my wound and the stiches. it was terror filled. i had to sit and just breath slowly to inch down the pain and nautia. i couldn't walk. i couldn't move. it was officially worse than i could of possibly ever imagined. it was heavier, more horrific, more debilitating and more painful than i ever came up with.

right when i was out i felt the concern on everyone. all was not good. and in a clenched moment i said, "i don't want to know." i didn't want to know what the results were. after about an hour i asked. they had taken everything out. the took out the entire organ. i knew this wasn't good.

*how* could this be. how could i possibly have something as grave as cancer? it was with everyone now.

by morning i could no longer talk or swallow. in the night i would almost stop breathing as they took me off the tubes to get my lungs going again. i couldn't swallow water or even my own spit. a nurse would come in and ask how i was and all i could do is stare at her. the most powerful point was when my mom was on one side of me and my dad was on the other. everyone else was gone. just us three again after all these years. they, bent into similar sullen shapes holding my hand. and i started to have terror fill me about the reality of what was happening and how i couldn't communicate. i starting writing on a pad how i was scared everything will change and about being on pills for life and how sad i felt and how i couldn't cry cuz it hurt to cry or even sigh. but the tears came and heaving came. there was just this moment with them. this healing moment.
i hated how it was for them. i could see/feel how hard it was to see their baby, but also their adult daughter, white with tubes, a terror in her world, incapacitated.

as the day went on i started to feel a bit better and this old school nurse came in and said i needed serious pain med's. the turning point was with chacquita. she came in while i was alone and shuffled me into the bathroom and subtly suggested i "clean myself up". i started to cat bath myself, then got into it and started rearranging my whole room, facing the bed to the window instead of the dead space on the wall below the tv i never touched.

i had visitors. the usual suspects. lizard my mom and i hung for a while, ate popsicles. any time i wanted anything it was a call button away. *bliss*. drugs, hot tea...
i remember just staring off for hours. for the first time in my life i was content to just be. to just sit. to not fill my time, thinking, talking, writing, reading. i just sat and stared.

they kept me a second night. i stayed alone this time, deciding my mom needed sleep and emotional space from it all.

that night i got calls from three friends who, get this, while i'm bed ridden in the hospital tell me their whole life story and all of their problems. now i'm to counsil them, nearly voiceless on morphine.

i am woken at four in the morning to get my vital signs checked. i grab the african nurse who is trying to check my blood pressure and i start sobbing. i woke abruptly from a warm, perfect sleep to this cold, room in this unbelievable state. newly remembering the incision on my neck, the life change, the i.v. logged in my arm. i was alone and terrified. and she just kept asking if i was okay, as in physically. then she left. i called my dad who had left town as he's an early riser. i talked to his partner. freeked him out. later he called and actually was crying. i guess before he had left for the airport i pulled him in close and said, 'dad, i love you so much and i want you around for everything. i want you around for my wedding and when i have my first baby..' he was shocked by the mortality all it all, the fragility, the tenderness. the fear of seeing me in that state, of feeling the unpredictabilty of life itself within his own body. he was crying, appologizing that i'm the one layed up and he's crying to me. i said that i understood, that i've seen how it is hard on everyone. i see lizard need to digest it and get quiet. i see my mom get wound up and in a panic say she's just so nervous, that it's her lill' girl.

it's so wierd. all of it.

there's more complication. my lill cousin/girl and i talked while i was there. she told me that her mom got violent with her at easter. it's her mom that is my favorite aunt. she was coming to visit and stay at the hotel with us. so was upsetting.

the last day in was torture. i was ready to leave and they kept threatening to keep me as my calcium levels kept dropping me. they poked me so many times to take blood i lost count. each time, as a way to calm, i made the blood tech tell me alll about themselves. i heard about one mexican village more times than i care to think about man.

my aunt and her little first grader come to be with me. "little" gets in the hospital bed with me and is fascinated with they took blood and when she pulled the i.v. out. she's a trooper. she drew a picture of me in the hospital with a big purple cut across my neck.

they had to wheel me out to *my* car in a chair. to be wheeled to the very thing that has always been a metaphor of my independence. wheeled to my own passenger seat.

last n;ight we stayed in a great hotel and ordered room service and three girl friends came and stayed too late. i slept all today and mta came to visit and we had a poolside sit down. i think i was too hopped up on the V. i also talked to an old college friend. i'm amazingly sweet and emotionally giving on this stuff. he brought me some cracked ass flowers.

btw, my brother had called before i went in to say that he was with me. i was still too pissed. but like i said, once drugged i loved the world and called him and told him i loved him.

at one point my mom dad, cat and lizard and i were all hanging and chatting for hours. just enjoying being around eachother. there was rumor that my bro tried to send flowers and for some reason they weren't being delivered. finally a delivery comes and i glance behind me and there is the biggest bouquet you've ever seen and i turn to my crew and say, 'now that's one guilty fucker.' and they burst into laughter knowing the backstory.

my mom is snoring in the other room. biggy smalls curled up to my right. my neck in pain, throat soar. during surgery they treated my neck like a pig on a hawaiian bbq. they jutted my neck wide open, head slung back, with a too large breathing tube shoved down my throat. no wonder i'm in pain.

i have this new slice across my neck. i still can't move much or look up too high. it pulls at the fold. the scar. it's covered by some surgical tape that will fall off in about a week or so.

i feel so vunerable. i have felt like an old person with slight movements and no trust in their environment. i can't imagine being out in the world. i am afriad of someone even bumping into me. i feel so vunerable. i don't know how i'll ever walk with this new area wide open again. i feel like now more than ever i will curl my shoulders in to protect. to hide. to shelter. i want to learn again to hold my head high and open it all up.

long entry eh? i didn't know i'd be this flattened. i feel like taking the whole week off and yet my mom leaves tuesday. i don't know who will drive me. i thought they were saying for everyone but ineb, when they said i couldn't work or drive for a week. i don't know how to ask for help. i feel like i've asked enough. i don't know how to go slow now. i don't know how to feel so maleable. i don't know how to move through the world feeling so fragile.

0000000000000000000000000000000000
thank you so much for your warmpth and wishes and being there with me. i want you to know, right before i ran off to the hospital i read all of the gbook entries and it meant the world to me. amazing. :*)

can you believe i now have one less organ? i can actually feel the gap in space in my neck. not wtih my hand, but in my neck region. i can feel whats missing.

we find out the "results" tomorrow.