Tag Archives: neighbor

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Taste

I am back in Colorado for another work stint.

I am in a different house.

I am in a neighborhood, of cul de sacs that don’t connect. My house is quiet in front but backs on a very busy road, an artery. The speed limit is 40 mph but people often go faster.

The house seems odd to me. There are curtains and shades on every window, all closed when I arrived. I open them, because I like light. There is a 3 by 4 foot television in the living room, another in the master bedroom and a third in a guest bedroom. There is a large kitchen with tons of shelves and cupboards, but a table only seats two, and there are two more chairs at the counter. This feels very odd to me. It seems as if the whole house is arranged to watch television.

I go for a walk in the neighborhood. There are many houses. There are beautifully trimmed lawns and there are flowers and some roses. What is missing? There are no people. Walking a mile and a half, finding the mostly hidden corridors from one cul de sac to the next, I see one man working on his lawn. Even though it is Saturday afternoon, I seen no children, no dogs, no toys. I see two garages that are open, one with a man and in the second I hear a child. Why are there beautiful lawns and no people? And many of the lawns have little flags saying, poison sprayed.

I do turn on one of the televisions after my first day of work. The living room one says that the antenna is not hooked up. The guest bedroom one works. I look on the service. Nearly every movie is about violence and conflict.

I do a little research on the internet. I go to the library and take out 8 books. One is Nonviolent Communication, by Marshall Rosenberg, PhD. Most of the others are fiction. Yet so much fiction is about conflict too. Good triumphing over evil. I am pretty good at nonviolent communication in clinic after 30 years: I want to meet each patient somewhere that is helpful. Sometimes they don’t like what I find, or don’t want to do what I recommend, but I have a deep and abiding faith that everyone can change, that they are smart, that I can make a difference and that they are capable. I think that belief helps daily in clinic.

I choose this book because I want to be better. Some of my family is estranged. I thought that was rare and horrifying at first, years ago. Now I think that it is horrifyingly common, much more common than I realized. How do we heal this? What can we change? I don’t want to be in a dark house with the shades down watching “good” triumph violently over “evil”.

There is a pond, man made, with a fence around it, half a block from my house. There are two male mallards, a female, and eight ducklings. They are fuzzy and delightful. I stop my car and watch the first time I see them, and I walk over too.

I haven’t seen anyone else there. I think we can change. I have hope. I have a deep and abiding faith that we can change.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: garlic.

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Changing season

My non-native maple, tipped by the sun, but also just starting to change colors. This is my second lot, the wild lot, where the deer often bed down at night. We have two families coming through. A doe with a younger doe and a pair of twins who have lost their spots, and another doe with some younger twins. We have a three point buck with one deformed and broken horn, and I had a young spike in my yard the other day. Looking polished and sharp, too. I kept my distance.

The cats are a bit cautious with the deer. Here is Elwha. He is checking that I am still there and that it’s still safe. This was taken in August.

Here is Sol Duc, checking out a buck, also in August.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: season.

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Damaged or blessed?

Am I damaged or blessed to have PANS?

Damaged because it has put me out six times? Four times with pneumonia, once with preterm labor, and once with mononucleosis. Plus getting really sick with strep A as a kid, an earache that had me crying with pain at age 8, coughs in medical school that would hang on for six weeks and not respond to albuterol. Only rest would help. A year this time and not better yet, 6 months out last time and then seven years working half time. In 2012 out two months. 2005 out two months. Preterm labor out 6 months. Mononucleosis: dropped ten pounds and did not feel better or gain it back for two months. How much income have I lost? A lot. Am I damaged?

Blessed because I am not dead? My sister dies of cancer at 49, my mother at 61, my mother’s father at 79. All three married people who had “anger issues”. And all three got cancer.

I think that they had anger that they could not reach.

I do not think that ALL cancer is buried, unexamined, unresolved anger. But I am starting to see a medical pathway that could lead from buried anger or other buried emotions to illness and death. The buried emotions are stressful. The body tries to hold the stress. The body works very hard at it. The conscious mind is not aware. This is the realm of the unconscious. The stress, the unresolved trauma, anger, grief, whatever, triggers antibodies. Heightened sympathetic nervous system, higher adrenaline and higher cortisol. Cortisol is the steroid system. Steroids help to lower inflammation but they also impair the immune system. The immune system is chronically suppressed, trashed, and then it can’t do its job. Anti lysoganglioside antibodies form and block the lysogangliosides. The lysogangliosides are supposed to clean house in the brain. They can’t clean house, they are paralyzed. And the brain forms plaques: dementia. Or some other antibody forms that blocks cancer removing cells in the immune system: and there it is. Cancer.

We all have cancer all the time, that our immune system is removing. That’s a little weird to think about, isn’t it? So we need healthy immune systems, we need the parasympathetic nervous system, we need to relax, we need to play, we need to laugh ourselves silly at stupid cat videos, we need to make ridiculous memes go viral on TikTok, we need to use the power of the internet to drive the cost of a share up just to fuck with the rich Bosses, because we are tired of them fucking us over.

So, says my sig other, or he who used to be. You need to avoid stress, in order to not get sick again.

Well. I stopped eating on Saturday a week ago and ate minimal calories and mostly high protein and fat. Because I was pretty sure he was breaking up with me. He felt the same about me. I was terrified when we walked two days ago, so I wore the dragon shirt. Most of all I wanted not to yell.

Neither of us yelled. We both listened. He doesn’t know why he has shut me out of three areas of his life, and the three most important ones. It isn’t me. He is aware that it is him. He was not really aware that he was doing it. I am trained to hide emotions, from childhood in my crazy family and then physicians are trained as well. I cry with patients sometimes, when we find that their cancer is back, or other things like that. The child dying. But I can hold a calm expression even when a person tells me that they are hearing voices telling them to kill themselves and would I please take out the antenna in their tooth. So I sat hard on my emotions for ten months. Until I thought the right time had come.

Even then, I did my best and screwed up. We’d opened up one thing and I thought the rest would be ok. I sent an email. Whoa, boy, it was NOT ok, and I got yelled at. I burst into tears. I didn’t feel like yelling at all, I was crushed. But it is ok, it had to come out. The Year of the Ox is almost over. I hope the Year of the Tiger is less horrible. But at the same time, I would not trade the time with him for anything.

Damaged or blessed? Cursed or blessed?

Both, I think. All of us.

I am submitting this to today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt, though it is not a hawk.