Tag Archives: fear

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phoenix rising

Written in 2009.

Set a torch to me
Why don’t you?

It’s not the tearing sound of fabric
A small rip
And now a tear
That I feel

It’s the torch

I’ve been here before
A job where the idealistic came
As moths to the flame
Self-immolation
Because they had ideals

I watched and burned and rose

It’s the torch
The flames that rise
As the witch is burned
Tilts back her head
In ecstasy and knowledge
Eager to learn what she can
From these burning brands

In the burning we learn
In pain we learn
If we can remain open
Ashes fall to the ground
Buckets of water
Wash any remains to grey mud
Gone, punished
Relief for the frightened
An example has been set

No but what stirs at night
Moon or none
What rises from the mud
The ashes
Takes form
Takes flight
Laughing

Set a torch to me
Why don’t you?
And see what is created

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Judgement

Why are the roses caged, you ask? What did they do? Nothing, they are being protected. I found that rose and transplanted it years ago, but our deer eat the buds every year. This is the first time that it has bloomed in the 21 years I have lived in this hours. Isn’t it beautiful?

I am listening to this:

I wrote this poem today. This is one of the poems where I have no idea where it will go when I start writing it. I start writing about judgement and it never ever goes where I expect. The poems go where I want to go in my deepest heart, in my soul. I am never where the poem is, the poems show me the way….. Then I try to go there. And it can take years….

I am being judged
and watched

I have no issue with the Beloved

it’s the humans I don’t like

I twist people’s words
but not with malice

when the antibodies are up
it is hard to communicate
hard to explain
it is hard just to survive
and I might be focused on survival first
and comforting the people around me second

can you blame me?

how near to death have you passed?
and how often?

first pneumonia
heart rate 135 when I stood up

my doctor and I could not understand it

my doctor partners thought I was lying
in 2003

second pneumonia
after my sister’s death
which was bad enough
but the legal morass that she had set up
with her daughter as the center

pitting me and her daughter’s birth father
and my father
against all the PhDs in the maternal family
smart, smart, smart
yet emotionally stupid

my niece is not an inheritance
to be passed to whom my sister wants

she reluctantly came home
and the myth endures
that this is an injustice

third pneumonia
one year after I find my father dead
triggered by grief
and the outdated will
and the mess he leaves

and I don’t even get sued
about the will
for another year

endure that
endure endure endure
endure hatred
endure triangulation
endure meanness
unwarrented

I do not care
if you want to believe
what you want to believe
it isn’t true
and it hurt

and I learn to let go

with the fourth pneumonia

I see the liars surrounding me
downvoting
yes, it does matter
except that one that I trusted
that mentored me

has lied all along

that hurts too

let it go
let it go
let it go

and I let it go

each pneumonia is a time of change
creativity
I am lonely and sick
and not trusting

as I improve
slowly, slowly

I wander garage sales
estate sales

and find things
things that are beautiful
things that enhance my joy

at the start of covid
I was so down
I was so sad
I wanted to lie in the street
and give up

the Beloved sent a spirit
he says he is no angel

I see angels bright and dark
after all they all fall

just as humans do

we all fall
we all fall down

try to look perfect
try to look virtuous
tell yourself that you are good

that is the biggest lie of all

the bad parts of your spirit
locked in the basement of your soul
howl
howl and want to be freed

and if one gets out
and you reject her or him

he will return with nine friends
yes that is what the bible says

she will return with nine friends

he/she MONSTER
will free the others

and you will do bad things
you will be terrible
you will hurt people
while you try to contain
while you try to lock away
while you try to chain
your monsters
your evil
your self

let them go
let the monsters go
they are howling
I hear them all the time
when I meet you
when I speak to you
the monsters howl at me
begging to be loved

yes, they want to be loved
and I love them

but if I mention them

you get that look
of horror

someone sees
me
someone sees
my evil
someone sees
what I hide

I can’t help it
raised in alcohol neglect and lies
on my own
as soon as I can walk

but I can’t walk away
at nine months

so I find other escapes
words
songs
books
poetry
rhymes
numbers

and my sister
when she is born

I do all the mothering

that I have longed for

even though I am three

we were talking about your monsters
not mine

you must go in to the cave
where you have locked them

and free them all

fall on your knees

and say
forgive me forgive me

for I have sinned

bow your head

and hold out your arms

and what, you say,
will the tortured monsters do?

will they smite you?
will they burn you?
will they lock you in their place?

mine didn’t
mine were babies
grief, fear, shame
and I embraced them
carried them up to the light
and care for them

wash them
diaper them
feed them
wrap them in warm blankets

and love them

until they stop crying

and begin to grow

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you know you’re hypoxic when

… your oxygen tank doesn’t QUITE match the turquoise of your outfit. Dang. And it’s not a great photograph. And the mirror has water spots. And your hair needs combing. And you aren’t wearing “yipstick”. And you don’t care….

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more grief and loss

Well, that’s the way it is.

The picture is from Lake Matinenda in Ontario.

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broken three

I drop the fragment of rock with the seam a second time. Now I have three pieces. I stop there. When I climb back up the bank, I have an oxygen tank, a camera and rocks. It involves quite a bit of swearing and stopping to rest while I try to get enough oxygen.

Hopefully I will get better. I don’t know when or even if. My friend B says he wants to know what the pneumonia was, that triggered this round of pseudoautoimmune misery. I shrug. “We know some things it isn’t.” I say. “It isn’t covid-19, it isn’t influenza A or B, it isn’t respiratory syncytial virus, it probably is not strep A though I still haven’t had the second blood test. It isn’t pneumococcal pneumonia. It could have been mycoplasma pneumonia or pertussis or a very long list of viruses. Doctors are practical scientists, at least, I am. If the patient is getting better, don’t chase an answer that won’t add anything. I caught something, probably in the clinics where people kept taking off their masks when they were ‘alone’ in the room. They didn’t realize that they were breathing out viruses or bacteria that could take me out.” We aren’t exactly sure if the combined penicillin and clindamycin, high dose, helped or not. I think it did, but stress makes this worse too and it was a very very stressful time. Mean people, you know, and mean family. I just don’t understand what they are thinking.

I really think that post covid-19, we should wear a mask if we go out in public when we are sick. Because you don’t know which people are the vulnerable ones. I normally have lots of energy and I don’t think people would guess that I have had chronic fatigue and that I am terribly vulnerable to infection. In the clinic I owned, after I was sick in 2014, I asked any patient who was sniffling or coughing to wear a mask. “I get pneumonia easily,” I would explain. They had the right to refuse and then I would not see them. After I closed my clinic and went to work as a temp doc, I could not protect myself. I asked the nurses to ask people to PLEASE keep their masks on, but people are people. They didn’t. I had a bit of a PTSD reaction every time I walked into a patient room and they had masks off. I wanted to run out of the room screaming but I was more restrained and just said, “Please, please, PLEASE put your mask back on, other people have been in the room.” I didn’t add “And you might kill me.” because I only had 20 minutes for the visit…..

The pieces of rock are beautiful, aren’t they?

Here is a great song. Got it from this blog: https://reflectionsofanuntidymind.blog/2021/05/07/icky/

This is all for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: workshop. I like working with rocks. I have to decide what work to do next, since it’s no longer safe for me to do family medicine. It SUCKS. I really miss my peeps.

I have to get well first. If I do, what next?

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Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)

Anyone can report to the VAERS system.

Doctors may be a bit nervous about reporting covid-19 reactions. Doesn’t matter. You can report on your own.

That being said, I don’t recommend reporting if you feel like crap for a couple of days after the second shot. If it is severe, you need an ambulance or it goes on for more than say, five days, report.

The first shot is about 80% effective. So, 4 out of 5 people are protected, and 1 in 5 doesn’t take. After the second shot, about 95% are protected. That means 1:20 is not.

So if you responded to the first shot, you will have an antibody response to the second shot. I ran a fever of 102 for an hours and cancelled my day of work and the next day. You could have fever, chills, muscle aches, joint aches, whatever. Take a hot bath or sauna or hot tube, because you can sweat the antibodies out.

I would report reactions that last more than two days or are severe. You can fill the form out yourself online and send it to the CDC.

For the folks refusing the vaccine: Hello. Are you going to have covid-19 parties to infect each other? If you do and you get covid-19, I can tell you that I am glad I am not your doctor. Also I don’t want you in my house. I don’t want to be around you at the Farmer’s Market either. And I think that once everyone has had the opportunity to get the vaccine, if you refuse and get covid, you might have to pay your own doctor and hospital bill. Yeah, that is what I think. And if it bankrupts you: well, you had the opportunity to get the vaccine. Why should insurance have to pay? Or you might die. Death rate for world is holding at 2 out of 100. In the US it’s “only” 1.78 out of 100. That is a fungkload. It’s a lot of people. Choose not to get your vaccine and you could be one of them. I just found out this week that a friend from medical school died in November: age 59. Do not tell me it’s all 80 year old “who would have died anyway”. Each of us will die anyway and I don’t want to die of covid-19.

I took the photograph in medical school: it’s my fellow doctor who was found to have covid-19 after he died suddenly, age 59.

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Aces again

I am singing: “You are coming up ACES!”

Ok, but, hopefully not. Because I am talking about ACE scores, Adverse Childhood Experiences. See the CDC website, this is all based on a ginormous Kaiser study in the 1990s.

Here: About the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study |Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDC

Yep. A very very interesting topic for a rural family practice physician.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: ACE.