Archive of ‘pills’ category

Ancient Brain

I’ve never let the pain get in my way. Or the wheels. (Sometimes I feel like a spider, a girl with 2 arms, 2 legs, and 4 wheels equals 8 limbs. Have you seen Monsters Inc? I ‘roll’ by my self like freakin’ Mr. Waternoose.) I do amazing things, and they’re almost bright enough to hide the pain of living, even from me. 


I have been so busy, I actually don’t have time to be sick. Illness is a major inconvenience! Who needs pill breaks and resting and insomnia? I don’t let anything stand between me and living fully, especially not being sick, but it requires a re-evaluation of life, changing the definition to suit your needs. Exchange the cloak of pain for a smile, and put the tension in your back pocket for a time. But like every magic tricks or slight of hand, the reality behind the make-believe can’t be hidden from the magician. 

I can’t figure out the best way to list all the amazing things I’ve been up to without sounding really conceited and irritating. And I can’t figure out a way of talking about the bone pain without feeling like I’m hosting a whiney pity party. Which is why I am writing all this bizarre preamble. I guess. I don’t know. Sometime my fingers take my brain for a walk.

Um…I actually started writing this post because I wanted to talk about the Greek and Roman studies class I was taking at UVIC. See….you can never trust your fingers, because they take you places that your terribly logcial mind would not. Without further ado…I’m auditing a class at UVIC (my 3rd so far!), called ‘Jews and Christians’, which is every bit as rich in primary sources and apocryphal books of the bible(s) as I was hoping! I’ve also been studying latin for the past 1.5 years, and it’s marvellous! I only wish I’d learned it before tackling French and Spanish, and Biology (and music! and literature!), because so many of these words and terms have latin roots. Although the meaning of words have changed sometime during their multi-millennia trek from Latin to English, knowing the root of words help to understand their meaning. Can’t wait to start reading Juvenal’s satires & songs of Horace, but I’m definitely not there yet. 

The teacher of both these classes has the sort of passion for his subject that I was starting to believe was impossible with adults ;). We met Dr. Rowe at a thrift store and started chatting in line about Lyme disease. I learned that he was a professor of Greek and Roman studies at UVIC, and when he asked if I wanted to audit some classes, I was so surprised, and excited. My love of Roman and Greek mythology started at an early age, when a family friend & librarian gave me children’s version of Greek Mythology, ‘In the Morning of the World’. When I grew a bit taller and could reach the top shelves of the library, I found Robert Graves’ Greek Mythology tomes, which are a beautiful rendering of a culture’s complicated myths. I’d wanted to learn more about Greek & Roman philosophy, history, and religion at university, but I never dreamed I’d be able to handle the coursework, or keep up with note taking, or even make it classes. 

Sometimes you can surprise yourself. 

I type (almost) as quickly as someone can speak and am learning to tolerate my robot ‘Bruce’ reading and butchering ancient sources (“Kay-zar” is one of my favorites, for Caesar. Oh Bruce-y.) 

For whatever reason, I can ‘learn’ Latin in the way I just can’t learn any other subject, with the exceptions of Music and Spanish (a different part of my brain? who know!? who cares!!). I still struggle with severe short-term memory impairment, which makes it fun when I know no ones name, or if they know me. So my secret is you treat everyone with kinds and with an open heart, and figure out from their facial cues whether or not they know you. It’s hard for me to think of answers abstractly to Latin grammar questions (I hate & spurn grammar. Could you tell?), but if someone asks me a question and I don’t think about the answer, it is there, waiting for me to express it. I love translating Latin…it feels the same as working out an advanced Suduko puzzle.; you solve little pieces and get a glimmer of how it all goes together, and then all at once you’ve solved the meaning of the sentence, filled in all the numbers. 

2013 Rhapsody, in A Major

A year of sailing seven seas, internal.
Year of the spirochete, infernal.
Mortal heart of a child, eternal.

Girl + Infection = Outcome Unexpected

Girl + Infection = more pills than Lego pieces, per capita

Rectangles, round, ovals, gel caps,
    pasties, sublinguals, compounded, and tablets.
    (to navigate the bottles, you’ll require maps!)

Yet…

I’ve swallowed more handfuls of pills
    than fears.
I’ve dripped more drops of medications,
    than tears.
I’ve flown beyond this body,
    but always come back.

If life = chronic infection:
    hold close the light: it’s more illuminating than blackness
embrace love: let it heal and guide you
    follow you heart, to your path
lead with hope, and courage will follow
    find this moment, and you’ll receive the present
trust in happiness: it never left
    welcome life, your old friend
live in your life: you’ll discover it’s waiting

open your arms, and embrace your future
open your mind, and wisdom and perseverance will arrive
open your heart, and love will fill it.

The beginning of the journey never promised
    a fairy-tale ending,
But
    the truth? At the end of five years?

Girl > Infection.

A note: This poem came to me this morning while watching the clock change from December 31, 2012, 11:59 PM to January 1, 2013, 12:00.

Fall Lunch

Can you believe that midterm exams are almost in full swing? Not like I’m in school or anything, but when I tried to plan a weekend luncheon with some friendlies, it turns out that people are scrambling to study already. Hasn’t even been a full month of school. Wow. Having said that, and snickered a bit that friends are hitting the books, I would love to be baking study-group cupcakes, and complaining how much my textbooks weighed.

Angela and I went out to lunch at “The Reef”, a Caribbean restaurant with rocking food. Curry veggies and jerk tofu wrapped up in roti for me, and quesadillas for Angie. Fantastic! Nice to get caught up on everything in each others lives, and see the latest knitting projects!

I has been so bitterly cold these last fews days. 13 C doesn’t sound too chilly, but on the West Coast that means take that number and subtract a whole lot for windchill and damp cold. I was in full winter regalia. And still found it within my stubbornly sun-loving heart to complain of the cold. Nothing new there. I feel like if I could just be walking around, I wouldn’t notice the cold so much, or I could stomp my feet to get warm. I really want to get walking. I have been sick for so long…so lame!

The yoga does warm me up nicely. It feels really good to stretch. I am getting better, and the gals even introduced a few new moves this week, which is exciting! My hips are very weak…where there should have been muscle and fat at my side is now a hollow place. Lack of strength in my hips does make it hard to walk, or balance, so hopefully by strengthening there I can get walking that much easier and faster!

I only have to take this one kind of pill for 3 days, and then I take a break for 30 days. The catch it that I take 8 doses of this mediation per day. 8 little yellow pills that taste of chemically death. While I’m on these, I feel particularly awful and exhausted, something I didn’t realize was possible. I thought it couldn’t get much more terrible than doing IV meds twice daily, but for some reason these oral meds just push me way over the edge. Talk about frustrating! They also make me super nauseous, although for some reason today’s curry lunch hit the spot. Ironically, whenever I am feeling super terrible, I crave curry, and usually feel better afterwards. Wouldn’t it be sweet if I was craving the ayurvedic healing powers of turmeric and curry powder, coriander and ginger? Interesting thought, no?

Wake…ZzZz…Up

There are some days where its a push to get out of bed. I may be exaggerating…if you’d ask my mom who has to bug me to get out of bed, everyday is difficult to get up. The few hours in between the time I’m given my late ‘morning’ pills by Mum, to me actually sitting up, pass in a sleep-drug hangover. It makes me rather annoyed that the pills don’t work at the time I’d like them to, but keep working long after I wish I was awake. By the time I do get out of bed, around 3, I have to  start my IV, otherwise the timing is all wrong for the rest of the day. I feel like I’m always on drugs, but when I stop and think, I am.

I sometimes let myself wonder what life would feel like, if I was well. Sometimes late at night, when I have much “along-thinking-time”, I suddenly panic when I can’t remember what the sensation of running was like; what the emptiness of a fern covered forest smells like on one icy winter morning; what the exact sound a water-bomb smashing into your arm makes. Its these sort of things that keep me up at night.

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