Sorry about that.
I love you.
Thank you.
Vashti L. Ross died the morning of July 11, 2023 due to complications from ALS.
To learn more about her journey with this insidious disease, please keep reading, or see https://alsoregon.org/vashti-ross/.
If you would like to help with her final expenses, please visit https://www.gofundme.com/pruzh-dying-is-expensive.
In the early days of my disease, when encountering difficult things, or when someone would give me sympathy, I would say, “oh it hasn’t BEGUN to get hard.” For years. It wasn’t to be a doomsday preacher or anything, just acknowledgement of a fact. It was going to be harder someday, so I should both appreciate the good stuff while I had it and be prepared for when they did.
Things are officially Hard.
Several phrases describe me now that both hurt to hear and seem so surreal. “Late-stage ALS.” “Effectively paralyzed from the neck down.” Statement of fact. I don’t think that I get to have another birthday. True things. I am, technically, on a ventilator – while I CAN breathe without the AVAP, I choose to use it because it SO. MUCH. EASIER. But it all leads to I am capital D Dying.
Only.
Only I don’t FEEL like I’m Dying. Or even dying. I expected to be in a constant state of misery, when it got this far. I’m not. My body doesn’t work but nothing hurts. I feel FINE, it’s literally just that I can’t BREATHE. There is no deathbed, it’s just my tempurpedic.
My disease doesn’t feel awful, it just manifests as a thousand inconveniences. I would have posted months ago, but I was waiting to get my speech-to-text software running. Now that it’s installed and troubleshot and running, I find that it won’t work for me because my voice is too soft and the AVAP bakes be sound like I hab a code. It’s not the end of the world, it just means I must use the onscreen keyboard and type things out. Inconvenient. I can control my laptop using my eyes, but I can’t install anything because Windows’ little “are you SURE you want to allow this software to make changes “ prompt disables the eye gaze software so I can’t click Allow. Frustrating. But not a crisis.
Some day sooner than I would like, the ventilator won’t be strong enough. I’ll take the self checkout, because like HELL am I getting a ventilator surgically installed (you can fuck off with that ok thx bye. It is a viable option for a lot of people, but I absolutely do not want it). But that day will come, because I don’t fancy suffocating. And on that day, chances are I’ll feel fine except for breathing.
When I die, I’ll say goodbye, I promise. Until that day, expect more fuckery.
So two things. One, I did not die on the operating table. Two, that is the longest I have ever gone without posting. I apologize for that.
Actually, three things. I have not yet had the surgery. And oh boy is it a tale of woe and drama!
We arrived at the hospital and were wheeled back to what would be my room for my overnight stay. I got into my little dressing gown and took out my facial piercing and sat around for a long time waiting for them to come get me. Actually no, I’m misremembering. I didn’t wait very long at all for them to come get me for this one. I went back pretty quickly. They put me under, and I woke up.
Thank God right?
And then they were telling me about how they hadn’t been able to perform the actual surgery. Something about how my anatomy was wrong, how my stomach was tucked up under my ribs and they couldn’t actually get to it. My diaphragm had atrophied to the point where it was pushed up and my stomach was hiding under there and they couldn’t get to it the simple way. We were going to have to try again, with radiology.
That sucked.
What also sucked is finding out that they had used a skin prep for the surgery that I am allergic to. It’s called chlorhexidine and it’s very common in surgery. And because it’s very common in surgery, I make a very specific point to tell them that I am allergic to it beforehand. I kind of make a fuss about telling them that I am allergic to it. Because it’s in everything. When I woke up my stomach was covered in a brown mark, which I thought was iodine, which they should have used, so I figured I was in the clear, but two days later I was covered in a very very itchy rash, which lasted for 2 weeks. Weeks. I spent those two weeks in a Benadryl haze, covered in itchy medicine. Bastards.
The new surgery was scheduled for January 4th. Same as before, a small puncture wound to fit the tube into, minimally invasive, super quick healing, the only difference being that they were going to use radiology to guide them instead of the camera. Unlike the previous surgery, this was only scheduled as a day surgery. Again, traded in my civilian clothing and took out my piercings and made a huge fuss about the fact that I am allergic to chlorhexidine do not use it. For fuck’s sake. Jay joined me in on this refrain with the nurse. It is very very sucky to have an allergic reaction and be unable to scratch because your hands don’t work, and you also cannot apply lotion because your hands don’t work. So you have to wait for your best friend to get home from work so he can help you apply itchy cream because your hands don’t work. And also you lose two weeks of your life because your brain’s in a fog because of the medication. I was wheeled into the room finally and asked to scoot on to the operating table which I had to break it to them that I am completely unable to help them do that, so they hauled me over and I helped them as best as I could. They then asked me to lay down, and I had to reiterate what I had told to the nurse before, that I am unable to lay flat. They indicated that they had a wedge pillow for me, which set me at about a 15° angle, which was not nearly enough. I was actually kind of panicking about this. They sensed that, and put me on pure oxygen and the anesthesiologist started the calming medication. I was able to lie down and think about nothing but my breathing and force myself to pull air in and push it out and then I was asleep.
And then I was awake. And they were telling me that they were not able to perform the surgery. Because my anatomy was wrong. Because my stomach was tucked up under my ribs.
Pretty much the exact same thing I had been told before. I’m not entirely sure what the radiology was supposed to do for them and why it didn’t work but the practical upshot is once again I had been put under and nothing had come of it. So they sent me home.
And the next day I broke out into a very itchy rash because once again they had used chlorhexidine on me.
There are not enough swear words in the world.
So, the only option after that was surgical. Instead of going down my throat into my stomach, they have to go through my abdominal wall straight. It’s a bigger deal surgery, and they have to knock me completely out, and it’s a bigger risk of course. A longer heal time. We couldn’t schedule the surgery for a long time, because COVID took up all of the hospital beds and they put a hold on all elective procedures. We are going to try to do it. Laparoscopically, using a tiny incision and a tiny camera. Failing that, she will have to make a slightly larger incision to put the tube in, but she’s very confident that we can do this and it will be still minimally invasive. To be honest, I will be happy if they can do this without using chlorhexidine on me. My surgery is scheduled for April 4th.
I have to say I’m pretty freaked out about this one. The surgeon still thinks it’s a day surgery and I’ll be able to go home that same day, and I hope she’s right. We’ve booked me an overnight stay just in case, and will send me home if we’re able. She went over all of the risks to the procedure, of which of course one of them being not being able to get off of the ventilator and having to spend a day in the ICU until I can breathe on my own. A person in my ALS support group had this surgery and his vital lung capacity dropped 30% afterwards. He went in with 70% and came out 40%. I’m sitting at about 35%. I am terrified about coming out of the surgery and not being able to get off of the breathing machine and having to decide if I want a vent or not because at this point I think I would want to vent but we haven’t planned or budgeted or even seeing if we can afford a nurse to be here basically 24/7 to monitor the ventilator if I have to be on one. I’m afraid of going in for surgery and coming out on a ventilator being unable to eat, drink or talk ever again. I’ve been through this twice now and I’ve suffered no problems from the anesthesia but I haven’t been put under completely with breathing support and I’m worried about them stopping my breathing and me being unable to start it on my own again. Which is you know the reason we’re doing this now instead of when I actually need the feeding tube to get this out of the way. Basically: one guy I know has a horror story and it’s got me rattled. I shouldn’t be so freaked out. I know better. It’s probably going to be just fine. There’s just some worried little part of me that is having a field day with what-ifs.
Surgery is one week from today.
They sent me a cleaning kit for my body, two bottles of cleaning solution to be used the night before and the morning of surgery. To make sure that I am clean as a whistle before they go cutting on me. The cleaning solution is… 2% chlorhexidine. The surgeon herself had provided me with written instructions and verbal instructions and she had not mentioned sending me any kit; rather, just to wash up with a kind of soap called hibiclens.
Which it turns out is also a solution of chlorhexidine.
Luckily I called her up today and she told me I could use dial soap instead and it would be just fine. If I were to actually use the soap that they recommended, we would not be performing the surgery because I would be a red itchy mess. I had given some thought semi-seriously to having Jay write on my body: DO NOT USE CHLORHEXIDINE.
So anyway that’s what’s happening. The surgery hasn’t happened yet. We’ve had two false starts, 3rd and hopefully final attempt next week. If you’re the praying sort, pray for me. Hopefully I come out of this with an additional hole in my body and it having been the last surgery I have to go through.
Hopefully they don’t use any fucking chlorhexidine.
Well hello. I survived the surgery, it went really well and I am recovering nicely.
…Except for the part where the nurse used chlorhexidine on my hand when starting my IV. Despite the bright red wristband stating I am allergic to chlorhexidine and latex. So that was a weeks worth of itchy fun.
…Except for the part where the IV came out of my hand during surgery so they had to start a new one on my other hand.
…Except for the super nasty UTI that happened and went undiagnosed for a couple of days because I figured it was just irritation from the catheter during surgery. That sucked, really really bad. PROTIP: urine should not be dark and cloudy with red bits floating in it. Get that checked out.
…Except for the doctors really, really not fucking around when they say OxyContin causes constipation. Do not ignore this advice when they tell you to get lots of fiber.
…Except for my hands being unable to fasten and unfasten the elastic bands that keep the bag strapped to my leg. So the bag just kind of kicks it with me in bed.
…Except for the night before last when somehow the bag became unscrewed? And I secondhand peed the bed?
…Except for my body apparently deciding overnight that since I don’t HAVE to use the toilet to pee anymore, getting up off of the toilet is not a thing we get to do. Not easily. Helluva thing to discover at 1 AM due to getting stuck sitting on the toilet for 45 minutes until I finally managed.
All sarcasm and bitterness aside, this thing is fucking amazing. I wore proper underwear for the first time in almost a year. I did not have to put on a pee pad for the first time since October 2017. It’s taking some getting used to, of course – being able to feel balloon inside my bladder has taken some serious adjusting. I also wasn’t really expecting it to be literally a slit cut in my belly with a tube shoved in. There is no connector, no futzy plastic anything, literally a slit with a rubber tube sticking out of it. Thank your lucky stars I’m not about to show that to you. I now have the most hardcore body piercing EVER.
There’s a couple of things I have to do to fully adjust, including hitting up my seamstress friends to help me build some kind of a cover for this thing – so that it doesn’t accidentally become unscrewed again, I don’t get super sweaty having this plastic thing that doesn’t breathe sitting against my skin, and I don’t have to look at a literal bag of urine sitting next to me all the time. I want to get some fat quarters of spooky fabrics and make cute little bags to stick the bag in and disguise it somewhat. Anything to make it look even a little less than exactly what it is.
For now though, I am obscenely grateful for having only to get up once or twice to empty this thing a day, which only involves me getting in the wheelchair and rolling up to the toilet to dump it. I don’t have to transfer all if I really didn’t want to, I have a receptacle to empty the bag into while still sitting in bed. But so far it hasn’t been a problem. I’m not sitting in my own pee right now. I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to be DRY. How awesome it is to be able to wear my cute underwear again. It was worth it. Absolutely no question about it. I’m so glad I did this.
And I’m sure you’re super glad too, because this is hopefully the end of my urine stories. I’m not even gonna make the title a pee pun. You’re welcome.
ALS is whittling my body, and marking it as it goes. Most of the changes to my body are slow, gradual shifts that are only noticed once the damage has gone pretty far. Holy shit, I’ll realize one day, the palm of my hand is concave at the base of my thumb. Huh. My calf just tapers from my knee to ankle, instead of the graceful curve it used to have. A slow, glacial injury without drama, but still with much import.
Some of the marks ALS has left on me were more sudden; sharp, violent signs of change. I’m no stranger to scars – I used to self-harm as a teen, into my twenties, and what is a tattoo after all but a pattern of scars filled with ink? Each of these little marks my disease has left me tells a little piece of my story – a concession, a loss, a search for an answer.
The first scar is the first nail in my coffin. One and a half inches, on the outside of my left thigh. A thin, straight line of white against pale skin, flesh tone once described as “ghost-ass white”. I’m regaining sensation there, but for a long time it was a patch of numb skin. I got this scar from the biopsy that sealed my diagnosis. A little chunk of flesh taken to examine for nerve degeneration, degeneration that was confirmed and my fate thus sealed.
The second scar was First Blood. An L shaped mark behind my right side, under my rib cage. I took a fall getting out of a car, catching my flesh on the corner of the door as I went down. My first disease related injury, and sadly not the last – but so far the only one to leave a mark on the map of my body.
The third scar is two-part. A dash and a dot. The scars of my port surgery. A dot over the right artery in my neck, where a line was fished through, snaked into my system of valves and tubes and blood, and connected to a bubble of plastic that rests under the second scar. A one inch line cut and pulled apart for the port to be shoved in and connected to the plumbing. This was a violent scar but a relief to get; it’s made infusions of medicine indescribably easier. My only visible to the public scar, a surgical badge of Legitimately Sick.
The fourth scar is one of persistence. A year of puncturing the port for infusion has left a pink dot under the incision line. Scar tissue building up with each stab, eventually making the stabs less painful. A welcome scar.
I have an appointment on the 20th of May to discuss acquiring my fifth scar, the scar that will hopefully make my life oh-my-GOD so much easier. I’ll speak with a urologist actually familiar with ALS and therefore not liable to suggest that I do some motherfucking Kegels to keep from peeing myself all the time. I’ll ask for a superpubic catheter to be inserted, and hopefully get approval and a surgery date. And hopefully then I can go back to wearing clothes that I don’t have to strategize how to get out of in 30 seconds or less otherwise they get peed on. I wanna wear my shark onesie again.
I’m willing to get a scar over it.
Excuse me while I slip into my patented Rants Pants ™.
I’m going to make a very simple, polite request of you, and then I’m going to share a maddening picture, and then I’m going to rant for a bit. Ready? Here we go!
A simple request: please do not use the phrase “wheelchair-bound” or “confined to a wheelchair”.
Here is the picture:
DISCLAIMER: I actually love the sculpture here. It’s a very sweet tribute, and a very impressive bit of engineering. The picture’s awesome except that caption.
Okay. Here’s the rant:
I get what the original picture was going for, and it’s a very sweet sentiment, and the person who posted that picture meant well. How-the-fuck-ever, it is not accurate, honest, or just. It is exactly backwards. The wheelchair is not the confinement, it is the freedom. The wheelchair is not the problem, it is the goddamn solution. Until there is a cure for ALS, the closest thing we have is motherfucking technology. This modern miracle of metal and plastic and circuitry is the only reason I have anything close to a semblance of a normal life anymore.
I ain’t confined to SHIT.
The only thing I am bound to is this defective body. I am beholden to this shit-tastic disease. I am not confined to my wheelchair. I am not bound to it. It is not some magical item that I need to spend willpower on to activate. (That was an nerd reference for nerds.) The only binding my wheelchair provides is in the very literal sense when I am seatbelted into it for safety.
My wheelchair, the $47,000 marvel of technology that is the SS Opportunity, is my freedom.
Without my wheelchair, I would’ve had to quit my job more than six months before I actually did. Because I had the wheelchair, I was able to stick it out at work and have the energy to show up every day and do my work and still have some bit of energy left at the end of the day. Without it, I often went without lunch because I simply did not have the energy to go downstairs – literally immediately downstairs – to get some lunch. Without it, I had to constantly bother my fellow employees to do basic tasks that were actually part of my job such as fetching packages and mail because I did not have free hands to carry those things because I had a death grip on my walker. Without my wheelchair, I had to agonizingly plan every aspect of my work day to best budget the limited energy I had with my walker to get around. Without my wheelchair, I would have missed every work meeting I was not able to dial into. I would have missed every break room celebration of birthdays. Without it, I spent every day dehydrated because I couldn’t bring myself to ask a coworker to bring me something to drink as often as I needed it. Without it, I literally peed my pants at work because I was not able to get to the bathroom fast enough.
Even after my disability deprived me of my job, my wheelchair continues to afford me amazing freedom. Without my wheelchair, there would be no quick trips on my own to check the mail. Without my wheelchair, I would have to ask other people to lay out my clothes for me literally every fucking day because without it I cannot get into my closet. Without it, there would be no getting out of this apartment when I go stir crazy to catch a few Pokémon or whatever. Without my wheelchair, I would be confined to bed. All the time. There would be no grocery trips, no game nights, no dinners out with friends. My wheelchair allows me to do these things. My wheelchair is literally the only thing that allows me to leave the house. At all. Ever.
I fucking love my wheelchair.
So please, please stop saying ‘bound to a wheelchair’ or ‘confined’ or any other limiting word that is the exact opposite of what a wheelchair truly is. Until medical insurance covers palanquins, it is the key to my independence and literally the most liberating thing that I own.
deep breath
Okay, thank you for coming to my TED Talk. I’m going to take my Rants Pants ™ off now.
I love you. Please go about your business. And enjoy your freedom, as I enjoy mine.
Man, what even IS my life anymore.
I got a voice mail the day after that last post from my awesome nurse. “Hi, I read your blog, and I have some ideas about the AVAPS.”
Uhhhhh..hi there. I forget that people read this, sometimes. I have the best freaking care team ever, you guys. I got contacted from three different folks to ABSOLUTELY ASSURE ME that the machine would get paid for, the rules are more bendy for folks with ALS so please don’t stress about it. And then thanks to Nurse Awesome, I was contacted yesterday by Providence Respiratory to adjust my settings remotely to ramp that sucker down.
OMG SO MUCH BETTER GUYS.
It had previously been forcing air down my throat so hard my ears were popping. Seriously. I can handle it now. I might even get compliance on my own without my awesome peeps having to argue for leeway. It’s still not exactly comfortable, but it’s so much more manageable.
Thursday was noooooooot a good day, there were a million things going wrong, including hurting myself by trying to lean over in the chair to pull something out from under my wheels. I felt and heard something go POP, and owowowowowow. Not a crack, though, and breathing was still ok, so I just rode it out and after a few days’ soreness I’m alright. Then Thursday night someone said something a bit unkind and I kinda completely lost my shit for awhile. Occasionally there’s a trigger and I mourn the person I don’t get to become. Five years ago, I had my very own house, I had just lost a lot of weight and was fitting in all my cute clothes again, I was going to school to further my career, I had all my shit sorted out and my life was pretty fucking great, actually. Thursday night I let myself grieve for her, because that future is dead, and I let myself be angry at people who say really stupid shit.
Friday I had the distinct displeasure of taking the sodding van in for repair. It cost me $919. I’m extremely grateful to Intel for their short term disability benefit easing me out of the workforce, because fortunately I HAVE that money. For now. Although now the brake light’s coming on. So that’ll be fun.
Saturday I did nothing but sleep and fuck around on the internet.
Sunday I did something SUPER COOL but is not my story to tell, so just believe me when I say it was amazing.
This morning my cat woke me up because I could hear him chewing on plastic. When I located him, he had a huge long piece of cellophane coming out of his mouth, and was choking on it a little. I could not get him to come to me for ANYTHING, and when I stood up and tried to get to him, of course he backed away. I took another step towards him and fell right on my ass. It didn’t hurt, even though I’ve kinda got no muscle in my ass to cushion the fall anymore, but it knocked a bit of breath away.
And then since I was on the floor, my fucking cat decided to come check me out and I was able to get the plastic out of his mouth.
Motherfucker.
The fall didn’t hurt, but getting off the floor did. I wound up sitting on my foot rests and using that wheelchair lift feature to get myself up off the ground, but even with the grab bar on my bed, the chair to push off of, and my walker on standby, I wasn’t able to get over up on the bed. I had to lower myself back to the floor and let myself catch my breath before I tried again, and was very, very grateful to the Depends company for their fine product and my forethought to start wearing them to bed otherwise I’d have exacerbated my situation by having to catch my breath sitting in a puddle.
Welcome to the TMI Show.
Now, I have my awesome watch, so I was never stranded. I always had options. I’m just stubborn as fuck. I texted J but he was not immediately responding, so I tried the wheelchair lift again, and used it to ALSO steer myself right up against the bed this time, and was able to get in bed. And then after catching my breath, getting up to go to the bathroom to change my disposable shorts. I cried for like half a second, but realistically I know this is definitely going to happen again. Probably not the cat part, but there will definitely be another fall, and next time I very probably will not be able to get myself up. It’s twelve hours later and even though I’ve been in bed all day I’m still exhausted from the ordeal. So that sucks. If I hadn’t had such a huge meltdown Thursday, it would have happened today.
So that’s my life, this last week. Kinda a shit show, but there were definitely some good bits in there.
Also I wanna restate that my care team is amazing, especially my nurse. <3
Jeez, peeps, it’s been a month since I’ve posted. Good thing this blog isn’t monetized or anything. A kind commenter left me a little prod about being so quiet, and I realized I should get off my ass and say something. Or…get ON my ass, since writing involves that position. It’s been awhile that I’ve been in a place to be able to pace and dictate or whatever.
I digress.
The first couple weeks of October, I don’t even have an excuse for not posting anything except perhaps laziness. Well, obviously laziness. No ‘perhaps’ about it. The last two weeks were kind of rough if I’m being honest. Politics caused me a lot of sleepless nights, and I wish I had it in me not to care about any of it, but I don’t. I often say the one silver lining to this disease is that I get to check out early, whereas the rest of you people have to stay and deal with this. I won’t be alive to see California slide into the ocean, or Handmaid’s Tale cease being fiction, or Auschwitz’s rebirth in my own goddamned country. There is a small grace in that. It still doesn’t prevent me having sleepless nights just absolutely freaking out over everything I cannot change and crying a lot. I wish the only thing I had to worry about was my actual disease.
The main thing going on in the last couple of weeks has been transportation problems, and breathing problems. I had an appointment to get my new AVAPS sleep machine, which I was very nervous about because it’s a whole new goddamned concession to this bitch of a disease, and I’d asked J to go along with me. Unfortunately, when we got there I was not able to get out of the fucking van because the automated door mechanism decided not to work. At all. We were used to it being a flaky bitch and sometimes not latching closed properly, but this was new. The door would not open all the way even with J pulling it open manually, so the ramp could not extend. And so I sat in the parking lot missing my fucking appointment while Jay feverishly tried to figure out how to free me. The door mechanism has been kind of flaky pretty much since I got it, and she’s been in for repairs twice already. J managed to get the door to open all the way, but he missed work the whole day instead of just a couple of hours while we took her in for an emergency appointment. The mechanics there were able to temporarily Band-Aid the problem.
By pretty much breaking my door.
Their fix to my door not automatically opening was to simply cut the cable that opened it and turn it into a manual door. Which is not, of course, a fucking fix. It was a preventative measure to keep the cable from snapping of its own accord and shearing apart the motor. We got a proper appointment later that afternoon to see what could actually be done, and after having my van for over an hour they explained that the entire mechanism would need to be replaced. Oh and now also the cable. Which, after the last time the van was in for service, we already knew replacing the assembly was going to be the next step which is why I had previously asked them to replace the entire assembly in the first place, and they never called me back. A month ago. So yes please can we actually REPAIR THE FUCKING VEHICLE.
This was all after getting pissed off that the mechanic would only talk to J and ignore me – because I’m just stupid dumb woman who doesn’t know anything about vans LOL. J very politely asserted that it was only MY name on the paperwork and registration and I would be the one paying for the repairs, so really he should be addressing me, not him (J is a champ). Thankfully, the mechanic did speak directly to me after that. But seriously. Dude wasn’t even old, he really ought to know better. They always do that; they will look at the paperwork read my name, and then turned to Jason and address him as Mr. Ross (THAT IS NOT HIS NAME EVEN) and explain what needs doing.
BITCH I AM SITTING RIGHT HERE AND WILL BE PAYING FOR THIS HI HELLO HOW ARE YOU. FUCKER.
Moral of the story is that we agreed the door assembly and cable need replacing. I kind of had to insist that we do that – the mechanic was seemingly trying to talk me out of it like, the door is working? (HI NO IT IS NOT BECAUSE IT IS A MECHANICAL DOOR THAT IS NOT FUNCTIONAL AT THIS TIME) The repairs will be expensive? (I HAVE A FUCKING WARRANTY) We got our van back, with the door still needing to be manually opened and closed before the rant will work, and the mechanic sets to ordering the parts that were needed and getting warranty authorization for repairs.
…A week later he calls to inform me that the warranty is declined for the repairs, because my contract does not cover those parts. He thought it sounded fishy and asked to see my actual contract. I have agreed the hell it doesn’t cover the freaking door, I paid $2000 for that fucking warranty it had better, and agreed to send him a copy. Turns out my fucking contract does not cover anything but the ramp itself, and the drive train. Literally nothing else. I paid $2k for them to not fix anything but a catastrophic failure THANK YOU ARIZONA MOBILITY FOR YOUR USELESS GODDAMNED SERVICE CONTRACT. So I am on the hook for $1000 repair. I have an appointment to go ahead with the repair on Friday, and then yesterday the ramp itself decided it doesn’t want to work either and refused to work for a moment. And then did work. Much like the door itself would sometimes decide to close and sometimes not. So I probably get to look forward to getting that repaired soon as well. Theoretically at least that will be covered. IN THEORY.
After missing the breathing appointment, I came to find out that the respiratory folks would actually have been able to come to my apartment in the first place to set up the machine. THIS IS USEFUL INFORMATION I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE. YOU KNOW, BEFORE. So we set up an appointment for them to come to me, and last Tuesday they delivered my new machine. It is, as promised, the most powerful noninvasive ventilator you can get. It costs $6400. If I can prove compliance – by which I have to use this machine at least four hours a day for 21 days out of 30 – then my insurance will pay for it outright. Otherwise I’m going to have to rent this thing for $700 a fucking months Covered by insurance, sure, but my co-pay is about to reset in January and I will be goddamned if I am paying for this fucking machine on top of everything else. I’ll save my precious out of pocket money for the $17,000 a month infusion meds that aren’t helping. I guess. So I just need to prove to Providence I am going to use it when I sleep. Pinky promise.
That’s turning out to be much easier said than done.
This machine is indeed much more powerful than my old CPAP was. Too powerful. It’s kind of like breathing from a turbine engine. It has a ramp function, where it will slowly turn the air up, but even that is not exactly comfortable. By which I mean it is genuinely hard to breathe with that machine on. I can’t take a little bit of air, it’s like drinking from a fire hose. If I try to breathe shallow to prevent the machine inflating my lungs like balloons, it freaks out and tries even harder. Eventually I have to pull in a huge lungful of air, which the machine helpfully cuts off the airflow after a second and I have to breathe through my mouth to catch my breath entirely. I have fallen into a routine of putting the mask over my face and then just checking out the Internet or watching TV or something for an hour or so before bed to try to get used to it before I am actually attempting to sleep. Like, distract myself and trick my body into being cool with my new overlord breathing on my behalf. It’s not really working. The only way I’ve really been able to sleep with it is if I medicate myself either with Ativan or Ambien first. Even then, I wake up fairly often. I find myself constantly checking the machine to see if I’ve hit four hours of use yet so I can pull the mask off and sleep comfortably.
This machine has taught me what my actual limit for life is.
As I lie in bed struggling to breathe, I know that when this becomes my existence, and not just an artificial effect produced by a machine, I am going to be done. I cannot live that way. It is abjectly miserable, and it is impossible to do anything else when you are struggling so hard just to get air into your body. That is not going to be a life worth living. When the machine is doing my breathing for me, and there is nothing in my brain except an animalistic fight for control over the oxygen coming in and out of my lungs, that will be the time to say goodbye. Because that is not a life.
For now though, I have the ability to pull the mask off. I counts down the time until four hours has passed, when I can pull the mask off and sleep properly. For now life is still great. I have ideas and plans. Including a very important plan to call the respiratory specialists and see if there is some adjustment that can be made to make me a little less abjectly miserable when I’m trying to sleep. To make sleep possible at all without taking potentially addictive medications. Friday I will take the van in and try to get it limping along for a little while. I literally just needed to last a couple of years. Sunday, I get to do something really really awesome I am super excited about. I have things to do. People to see. Life to live.
One breath at a time.
Clinic was Monday! Let’s break down how it went, shall we?
PT/OT: My hands now no longer register ANYTHING on the strength test. Fuck. My arms are still plenty strong, though. My biceps are a force to be reckoned with from essentially doing push-ups on my walker every day. I have an appointment to follow-up with Deb the Awesome to reimagine my spider hand braces, since my wrists droop badly enough now they’re not helping much. It doesn’t do a lot of good to keep my fingers propped up if my hands as a whole are curling under. My finger joints are doing great though, still a lot of flexibility in them so I’m not going to be clawhands any time soon. Yay!
Dietician: (Hi, Kelly!) My weight remains stable, so I’m to keep doing what I am doing. I need to keep mindful of feeding myself while I’m at home, now, since I don’t have the routine of work to set that schedule for me. My mom doesn’t know to bring me food unless I ask her because she’s old as hell and eats like, a tic-tac a day and calls it a meal. (Hi, Mom, love you!)
Nurse: I forgot to ask her what my chair weighs. Dangit. It’s written down somewhere in my chart and I’m curious what that thing weighs without me in it. Combined, we are 627 pounds of geddafuggoutmaway. She arranged my appointment with Deb, and I didn’t otherwise have much for her. I rarely do. That’s a good thing.
Social Worker: Have I waxed poetic lately about how amazing the ALS Association is? Because damn. Single-handedly saving my sanity more than once, and saving my ass multiple times. We arranged for them to pick up equipment that I’ve borrowed (FOR FREE) that I no longer need because my disease has progressed beyond their use. We then spoke about some other situations that are stressing me out, like the lack of social services for my elderly disabled mother, and she promised to dig up what resources she could for my mom in our area. She sent me an email not even a day later with a bunch of places to check out. THAT is how amazing ALSA is. My mom’s not even on their roster, but because helping her would help ME, they were totally on it. I LOVE THE ALS ASSOCIATION.
Neurologist: Usually I’d be seeing Dr. Goslin, but today I met with her new partner. I’d seen him talk at the ALS Research Symposium, and I’d been given his bio before when I was asked to write something up for him explaining why the ALS Multidisciplinary Clinic was such an awesome thing. It was nice to meet him, and the dude has one of those old-school doctor bags that J wanted to steal. Plus for geek. It was a general get-to-know-you kinda appointment.
Speech: These appointments always go fast because I’ve got no symptoms at all yet. Puff up cheeks, move your tongue, eat this dry-ass graham cracker so I can watch you swallow. NBD, nothing to report.
Respiratory: Yeeeeeah this is always my absolute least favorite, not least of all is because it’s actually HARD. I’ve actually been noticing decline here, and since this is the part of ALS that actually IS going to kill me, I don’t like having a concrete measurement of how shitty my disease is. And yet. I want that measurement, so that I know, so that I can plan, and manage expectations. I came to this appointment knowing my breathing has gotten a bit worse lately; it’s taking a bit longer to recover when I exert myself, and there’s been a few times I wake up in the night because my breath is a little short. I also had to report that my CPAP machine (which I am now supposed to use every night) is busted, doesn’t power on at ALL. We are going to get me a new machine, called an AVAPS and I have no idea what the difference is because I keep forgetting to look it up.
Hang on.
“Noninvasive mechanical ventilation with average volume assured pressure support”
That tells me nothing. 2 secs.
…Oh. It’s…basically a non-invasive respirator. So it’s hardcore. OK then. That’s…intimidating. But I had the choice between getting my CPAP replaced or getting this new hotness, and since I still have Cadillac Intel Insurance for another year, I really want to get the expensive stuff now.
With that out of the way, we did all the usual tests. First they stick a rigid plastic thing in my mouth and I exhale as hard as I can to make these little indicators move; it measures cough strength. Cough strength is still normal; it was down ten points from last visit but she wasn’t worried about that at all. The next test involves a soft plastic mask over my nose and mouth and inhaling sharply; I always ace that one by going beyond what it measures; I guess I’m really good at..sucking…? Monday was no exception. The last test is the worst. Both in what it portends, and the work it takes to perform. My dudes, it is HARD. It blew goats even when my lungs were as strong as ten oxen. It involves inhaling deeply, plugging your nose, and then blowing out as hard as you can, for as long as you can, while getting encouragement shouted at you to GO GO GO MORE MORE MORE MORE and then when you can’t possibly exhale anything else and you feel like you’re going to pass out, another sharp, fast inhale.
Do that three times.
It actually makes J a little uncomfortable to watch, because it’s so obviously hard. It’s intense, it feels like hell, and at the end you have a number that represents your average lung capacity. When I started going to clinic, my scores were over a hundred percent – a very strong set of lungs. Over the last year, I’ve watched that number go down. She wasn’t concerned, really, even 80% was still really good! and she had no recommendations for me except to continue with the breath stacking exercises, which is where you inhale as much as you can and then use a balloon and tube to squuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeze more air in. and hold. and release. And when you’re no longer light-headed, do it again. And again. I often describe it as reverse drowning, because that’s what it feels like. I do that, but not as often as I should. Six months ago at Clinic I hit 70% and she was a little less cavalier about me not doing them every day. 3 months ago on Clinic day, the machine was busted so I was spared. She wasn’t worried about it though, as my other tests were about the same as last time and she expected the same for this test, too.
I knew it wasn’t going to be the same. I feel a difference. When I eat too much food, I can feel that it’s harder to breathe – not that I’m short of breath, exactly, but I feel that when my lungs don’t have proper room to expand, there’s less strength in my diaphragm to bully the rest of my guts out of the way, maybe. It’s not harder to breathe, exactly, but I notice that I am breathing. And I was keenly aware that the breathing test this time was the hardest it’s ever been. I could feel veins on my forehead. She told me the result.
60%.
I’ve gone down 10% in six months.
I am now to do breath stacking twice a day, and sleep with the AVAPS every night, once it arrives. Next Clinic maybe we’ll do the respiratory early; having it be the very last thing in the day might have fudged my numbers a bit since I’d be tired. But somehow, I didn’t think that will matter. I didn’t take it well at all, and was in a shitty mood the rest of the night, and spent pretty much all day Tuesday crying or sleeping. I feel better now, hence why I have it in me to post tonight, but it kiiiiinda cemented something I’ve been thinking the last few months, something that I haven’t said out loud or posted or anything because I don’t want panic, either from myself or from any of you.
I am pretty goddamned sure I don’t have another 4 years.
I mean, it would be nice? But I’m not going to live to 50. I know that. I’ve been really fucking lucky to make it 4 years, and still be able to be on my feet awhile and wipe my own ass and everything. Some people with ALS don’t make it through ONE, and I’ve already had four, officially diagnosed, and probably closer to six since symptoms first appeared. I’m so, so fucking lucky. I get to see my death coming and plan for it. It was just rude as fuck to see that imaginary timeline become somewhat ..truncated, from what I was telling myself. But now, the part of ALS that will kill me has officially begun to kill me and I don’t have as much time as I thought.
You know what though?
That’s okay.
It really is. This is how ALS goes. This is normal. It’s okay. I’m alright.
Tonight, I am sanguine. There will be more freaking out; count on it. (See you at 3am, stupid brain) At this exact moment though? I have a clarity most people will never, ever experience. I see a world in 5 years without me in it, and it’s a good world and those I love are doing fine, in that long-term place. There’s a delicious release that comes with knowing so far in the future is officially Not My Fucking Problem. Today though, I am making many short-term plans. Hangouts with friends. An art show opening. The Walk to Defeat ALS on Sunday. A zoo trip with family. Neil DeGrasse Tyson – TWICE – in November. I still have a future to plan. It may be abbreviated, but goddammit I have SOME time. I get to make plans. It’s a fucking privilege to tell someone I’ll come to an event in April and know I can. After that. Who knows. My timeline is finite, truncated, and not guaranteed, but I have one. I can see what’s coming and make peace with it before it happens. I get the rare and amazing privilege to become friends with my own death.
And that is fucking awesome.
((I suppose I should be grateful. Instead of spending all day freaking out about tomorrow being my last day of work ever, I spent all day in a blind seething rage. It was a nice distraction, I guess, from the depressing AF thoughts that would otherwise have occupied my thoughts today. I knew halfway through this whole thing that 1) I was definitely going to blog about this, and 2) it was going to contain ALL OF THE SWEARS. You are hereby warned about ALLLLLLLLL of the swearing and anger contained in the following post.))
Today I am going to tell you about Jillian Mai Thi Epperly.
Maybe you’ve heard of her. If you haven’t, well, you’re in for a video treat in a moment. If you have, then this is NOT going to be the rant you expect. Oh no, it’s so much worse.
I met Jillian in fifth grade, at Faria Elementary School in Cupertino, California. She is one of the few girls I remember, because she was one of the few kids who actually was my friend back then. I was very strange little kid, and thanks to my genetic mutation I looked strange as well, and kids are horrible little monsters, so I didn’t really have a lot of friends. She was one of the few who actually spoke to me on a regular basis. I think we bonded a little bit, back then, because she was a super Asian kid with a white girl name, and I was a white girl with the super Middle Eastern name, and we just didn’t match peoples’ expectations. So we kind of matched each other.
She found me on Facebook a few years back. It was ..really strange to hear from her. She asked if I remembered her? Of course I did. You don’t forget a Vietnamese girl with a name like Jillian, especially when she was one of the few people who was ever nice to you in grade school. She said she remembered me, because when we were kids I had told her that the strange weather we were having was a result of El Niño. She told me she always thought that was the funniest thing. I was a little confused at that remark, since um…yeah, El Niño totally WAS the cause of a lot of weird weather we’d had? Why was a huge storm affecting weather patterns so funny, I don’t get it? But okay. I accept your friend request. I quickly learned that Jillian had become a rabid anti-vaxxer, and quickly blocked her from appearing in my feed but remained friends with her and honestly…kind of forgot about her. This was a couple of years ago, and I was a lot more generous and patient towards anti-vaxxers and pseudo-scientists back then. (Not anymore. SERIOUSLY VACCINATE YOUR FUCKING CHILDREN YOU GODDAMNED MORONS. PEOPLE ARE DYING OF PREVENTABLE FUCKING DISEASES WE HAD ALL BUT ERADICATED. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU.)
In my personal Facebook, I chronicle bits and pieces of this ALS bullshit journey, and post a link anytime I update this blog. Overall though, I purposely try to keep my Facebook page very light because the world at large is a fucking depressing place and I will drive myself crazy if I talk about nothing but politics and everything that makes me angry. So instead, every month I choose a theme and post related pictures. Usually it involves some kind of pun like Janusweary, with pictures containing foul language, or Gaypril, pictures of LGBT+ positive images. This month’s theme is Awwwgust, and I’m posting lots of pictures of adorable things.
This morning I posted an adorable picture of a kitten that looks for all of the world like it is smiling. It had not been posted for five minutes when I got two comments from Jillian (after not interacting with her for months and months, mind you). The first was link to her website, with a…sort of unhinged screed containing a lot of marketing language along the lines of “Are you tired of the cycle of dependence on drugs, supplements, and herbs spending thousands and thousands of dollars and you are still not feeling better 100%? ” I sighed inwardly, it was a lot of marketing babble clearly trying to sell me on whatever snake oil she was passionately involved in and wanted to evangelize about. The second comment, though, was this: “Remember I told you I’d find something for you well I created a protocol that could give you the opportunity to reverse your condition and I hope you’re open enough to read my book or at least my website before you buy the book”
I just sort of…stared at the screen for a second. Did she just…?
Really? This is what’s happening?
I typed up a reply, deleted it, started to retype, and just…got…so ANGRY. I debated deleting her comments and blocking her for real and moving on with my life, but I am emotionally fried right now for obvious reasons and I was feeling petty as fuck and..kiiiinda wanted to see my friends happen at her. So I allowed her comments to stay, and let them let her have it. And they did, in spades, because I know some VERY SMART and VERY SNARKY people who, as it turns out, are very, very protective of me, and took great delight in dragging her ass, but that’s not what this post is about.
((I love my friends so much I can’t even tell you.))
I decided to respond before anyone else could, though, juuuuust in case I was misunderstanding. The comment I eventually settled on was, “…you’re seriously trying to *sell* me something you think might cure my terminal disease? What predatory fuckery is that??”
And then my friends were all up ons, having a fucking FIELD DAY with her, and that’s when I found out that she was actually a little bit of A Big Deal in the pseudo-science community with tens of thousands of followers in a self-described (!!) “poop cult” and had appeared on Dr. Phil to defend her aforementioned “protocol” cure. Now, I’m not here to talk about her miracle cure “protocol” of fermented salt water and cabbage. That’s not at all what this post is about, and a LOT of other people have already expounded on that subject. Each of those words is a different link that will open in a new window. Enjoy that light reading for later, if you feel like it. Though I WILL include this video link right here for you to watch:
((That man is very smart, and swears like a sailor, and is my new best friend. Because he is smart and swears, yes, and we have the same Bob Ross shirt.
His videos are Good Stuff, but his research on Jillian is amazing.))
Her response was, “Wow vashti wow all I’m trying to do is help you out because of your condition knowing what you’re dealing with but that’s fine if you don’t want to have an opportunity that’s fine you can stay sick and let your friends keep you sick good luck to you” and then, “Because you deserve better than what you have right now if you don’t think you deserve that then you deserve to have whatever you want”
An. Opportunity. To give her money? For information she thought might SAVE MY LIFE.
“….you’re asking me…as a FRIEND with a TERMINAL ILLNESS…to GIVE YOU MONEY to cure my disease. I DO deserve not to be sick. And I ALSO deserve to not be taken advantage of in a vulnerable state. Even if I believed for a SECOND that fermented cabbage water would cure me, it’s unbelievable that you are telling me to give you money in exchange for this information. I don’t give a shit if it works or not; if I honestly believed I could cure anyone’s death sentence, I would hand it over in all quickness. If I could cure a friend’s cancer I would carve out my own kidney for free before they even asked. You’re not trying to help me. You’re trying to make money off of me and that is fucking reprehensible.”
After sanctimoniously telling my friends, “I will let vashti block me I am not going to be bullied by any of you people because I’m trying to help and if you guys want to stay in your little environments with no hope and all sickness then fine”, she responded to me, “And I expect a lot more out of you vashti considering you and I went to school but it seems like your sickness really took you over and made you a very hateful person and I’m sad for you”
“And I expected you to be a decent human being,” I told her, “and not try to take advantage of dying people but WHOOPS guess we were both wrong today.”
And then she blocked me.
There..
There are not enough swears and throwing things and table flips IN THE WORLD to convey my anger. This woman is an absolute piece of shit. Again, NOTHING to do with whether or not her ‘cure’ works or just makes you shit forever until you literally die of dehydration. Just. As a human being. This woman looked at me, a woman she called a friend since fifth grade, saw my debilitating terminal disease, and thought to herself, “this is a perfect marketing opportunity.”
And then after blocking me, she crawled back to her facebook cave and wrote this, which a friend was kind enough to screenshot:
I…she… She felt it was acceptable to try to SELL a theoretical CURE to a DYING FRIEND, because…I am “still well enough to buy things on the internet”.
…
…..
AS LONG AS SHE’S STILL KICKIN’ WE CAN GIT SOME MONEY OUTTA HER YET, BOYS. YEEEHAWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!! SADDLE THE FUCK UP AND LET’S GIT ‘ER PAID!!!!
what the ACTUAL MOTHERFUCKING FUCK.
THIS WOMAN IS AN ABSOLUTE GARBAGE PERSON MADE OF DOG SHIT AND FIRE.
It’s not bad enough to sell false hope to dying people just to make a quick buck, and that is some REPREHENSIBLE SHIT, believe me, but – lady, YOU KNOW MY NAME. WE WERE FRIENDS IN GODDAMNED GRADE SCHOOL. YOU KNOW MY NAME AND MY STORY AND THE HORRORS OF MY FUCKING DISEASE AND YOU SAW THIS AS A MOTHERFUCKING SALES OPPORTUNITY. And then when that BACKFIRED in a frankly GLORIOUS WAY, thanks to my friends, you crawl back to your page and act like YOU ARE THE VICTIM??? YOU WERE ONLY TRYING TO HELP ME?? BY MAKING ME PAY TO BUY YOUR BOOK AND SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR WEBSITE?
You absolute PIECE OF SHIT.
I said just in my last post that I would never wish ALS on anyone, but holy FUCK is she coming close to a candidate. Cause not only allll of this, she is ALSO a goddamned hateful human being who thinks her bullshit will “cure” gays and trans and autistic people. BECAUSE SHE THINKS HOMOSEXUALITY IS SOMETHING THAT NEEDS TO BE CURED WITH SEWAGE. So. Yeah. In the name of science, I hope she DOES get ALS. It will be a scientific experiment. If it works and ALS goes away, we have a cure and she can have a goddamned Nobel prize. If it doesn’t, then the world is rid of a predatory batshit waste of human tissue who spent her final days shitting out her own stomach lining.
I’m good with those odds.
Three weeks, one day. And God knows how many times more I have to repeat this conversation:
“So what are your plans after you leave?”
“Well, for the first two weeks of vacation, I plan to sleep. I’m purposely planning to do absolutely nothing for those first two weeks. It’s going to be GLORIOUS. After that, I’m not really sure. I will probably volunteer somewhere. I will go absolutely crazy with nothing to do for too long. So I’m not sure. I’ll figure it out.”
“Well good luck to you.”
Cue uncomfortable undertones, awkward silence, shuffling to exit the conversation. In reality, here’s how I would like that conversation to go:
“So, what are you going to do after you leave?”
“Die.”
I mean, that is what is going to happen. That is why I’m leaving. I can no longer work because I’m going to die. But because we suck at conversations about dying and death, because our society is so uncomfortable with the mere mention of the D-WORD, in polite society I’m not allowed to say that. Even though we all know it’s true, and no shit, right? Medical retirement; I am leaving because I have a medical condition that is debilitating and ultimately, sooner than we want to admit, terminal. THIS DISEASE IS GOING TO KILL ME DEAD, IS ALREADY KILLING ME, I AM NOT LEAVING BECAUSE I WANT TO.
And so instead, I am forced to have the same inane conversation. And even though they know the real answer, the true answer, I go through the motions and come up with some stupid answer that denies my own impending mortality. I mean, what are they honestly expecting me to say? “Oh, you know, I figured I would take two weeks in the Hamptons. After that, perhaps pursue my scuba certification and do a week in the tropics. Learn a new language. Take up waterskiing maybe. Maybe learn a new vocation. Maybe finally get my baking business off the ground.”
For fucks’ sake. No. I’m going to continue to get my affairs in order, and eventually I am going to fucking die. I am going to keep losing abilities you take for granted, like feeding oneself and scratching your nose and breathing and not peeing your pants. In the meantime, I am going to continue to collect stickers, watch cartoons, and pet my cats until I can’t, and then? I am going to die.
Because ALS is a motherfucking terminal disease.
Three more weeks and one more day of this bullshit conversation replaying itself over and over. Three more weeks and one more day of pretending I’m leaving because I want to, and not because this disease is forcing me to. This has made me extra specially grateful for all of the people with whom I can actually have that frank conversation – the ones who don’t pretend not to notice that my hands are no longer working. The ones who, if they actually asked that question, I could out right tell them “die”. But they know better to ask. Because they already know. So instead they ask how my cats are doing (they’re good!), if I’ve found a house yet (not yet! The housing market in Portland sucks major ass), how well does SSI pay out (not well, but my job has awesome supplemental disability benefits)? Better, more important questions.
Death positivity kids. It’s sorely needed. I crave it like sugar and hugs. I want, I NEED to be able to have these conversations without feeling like I’m intruding on someone’s fragile psyche. Instead of what do I plan to do with my time, like it’s some summer vacation, I would rather people ask me if I have my affairs in order? (Almost!) Do I have a living will? (Yes! And a POLST form!) Do I had support I need the time I have left? (I think so!)
Three weeks and one more day. Before I can get on with the business of dying, instead of pretending like I have some plan for my future.
Because I don’t really have one, anymore.
And you know what? That’s okay. It’s normal. Not everyone gets to see 50. It sucks and it is sad, but it is normal.
Unlike this stilted-ass conversation I keep having with y’all.
Me: “Some diseases are invisible. Just because you can’t physically SEE pain, doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s not up to you to validate someone’s disability; no one should have to prove they’re ill. There are no ADA police to determine who qualifies as disabled or not.”
Also me: “Motherfuckers buying ADA seats at theater performances should have to fucking PROVE THEY NEED THAT SEAT. I am so sick of shit selling out because some bitches with no actual mobility problems bought out the only SIX goddamned wheelchair spots in the whole fucking theater! WHAT IS YOUR MOBILITY PROBLEM, MOTHERFUCKER, THAT YOU NEED TO SIT THERE.”
….This is why, anymore, I don’t ask friends to join me at events. I don’t wanna see five mobility spots taken up by four able-bodies schmoes and me.
One month as of tomorrow.
Four weeks and five days.
Twenty three working days.
If the cube move happens on schedule, which I doubt, ten more in-office days.
And then two weeks of paid vacation.
And then?
The rest of my abbreviated life, I suppose. The real work begins to find the home I’m going to die in, to make it a place I can live in until that happens, and then finally – FINALLY – my immediate life can be all about just dealing with my symptoms as they come. To deal with my abilities as they go. To actually live the rest of my life until I’ve had enough.
Some not-insignificant part of me is grateful to have an Out of the workforce. It’s a forced retirement, but it’s an escape from the 9-5 capitalist bullshit that has eaten the prime years of my life. The prime of yours, too. I’ve always been a damn Liberal, but more than ever, I am seeing the absolute stupidity of the 40 hour workweek. The need to work, to justify your living with a paycheck.
And it IS a justification.
I’ve seen sneers turn into surprised respect when I tell people what I do for a living. Yeah fucker, this weird-haired, pierced and tattooed bitch has a real life respectable job that requires actual smarts. I earn more money than you, asshole, surprise.
And with the surrender of my employment comes a surrender of that piece of me, that legitimacy in the eyes of strangers that should mean fuck all and yet…it does. It really does. I wish it didn’t. I know it doesn’t mean anything, not really, but our fucking capitalist society has keyed so much of our identities into our paychecks – and who provides that paycheck – that it is going to be really hard to let that go. From being respectable to being a goddamned leech on our social security system even though I HAVE PAID INTO IT MY WHOLE WORKING LIFE, YOU ASSHOLES, I DESERVE THIS BECAUSE I PAID FOR IT AND IT IS MINE. I paid to let your grandma afford her groceries, would have paid more, gladly, as I earned more, to share what I have. That’s what social security is FOR. That’s why we have it. And yet now that it’s time to cash in, even though it will be a very limited time, I feel less than deserving. Am made by much rhetoric and many conservative motherfuckers to feel like I deserve nothing.
Believe me, fuckers, I’d rather be working instead of dying.
One more month of being valid.
Four weeks plus five days plus two weeks vacation.
One more month of being a job instead of a person.
Six weeks of being justified in my existence.
This is such unbelievable bullshit.
I have about 9 weeks of work left (7 weeks of actual work and then 2 weeks vacation). Until that time is over, I can’t exactly be as candid about work as I’d like in certain situations, and be public and honest about all the reasons I’m very, very, very glad to be leaving. Dumbass CEOs firing 10% of the global workforce to please the shareholders, lecturing his employees about business ethics and integrity after getting busted doing insider trading, and THEN getting caught having an affair with an underling aside. (Bye, Felicia)
I can tell you, though, that I’m really, really glad to be leaving my particular job. I’ll miss the idea of work, the regularity, the sense of being needed, and a lot of the coworkers that I’m leaving behind, but I’m very glad that an end is in sight to my working career. Frankly, the job’s become kind of a piece of shit lately and the universe is telling me it’s time to be gone.
Perfect case in point, my manager asked what I would like to do as a goodbye celebration. I told him I wasn’t sure I even wanted to HAVE one, since I’m not exactly leaving for very happy reasons, and I really don’t want to be around a bunch of people crying or looking at me with pity for a couple hours, or talking about literally anything else. Not my idea of a good time. I kind of just… want to sneak out the back. Coworkers that I had personal attachments to had their chance last year to say goodbye at my wake. He said that was fine, but I should know there were lots of people who wanted a chance to say goodbye after almost ten years of working with me, and if I did not want to a going away thing, then that was my choice, but I needed to let him know so that he could inform me coworkers in Arizona that if they want to say goodbye they would have to make their own arrangements.
I flat out told him that was emotional blackmail. But I conceded that a going away thing wasn’t about me at all and I would think about it. He told me to pick a time and a place and let him know when I’d made arrangements.
…
…
…The FUCK I am going to plan my own going away party.
It’s already shitty that for almost the last 10 years, I’ve been performing the team’s emotional labor on my own (practically. James was really good at picking up some of it and made a point of not treating me like a fucking admin, while he was on our team). I am not going to plan, organize, and make reservations for a party – for MYSELF – that I don’t even want. I’ve been sending flowers for every, birth, wedding, and death in my team. I got nothing when my father died. …because I wasn’t there to send *myself* flowers.
It’s definitely time to go. If I weren’t leaving the team, the company, the workforce as a whole, I’d sure as shit be leaving this particular team anyway. Probably the company. We ceased giving a shit about each other a long time ago. That really sucks, because I miss the team we used to be. The team that hung out after work together for Beer Tuesdays and invited me even though I think beer is gross. The team that genuinely gave a shit about each other and had fun even when the work itself sucked so much ass. I miss that camaraderie.
The old team sure as fuck would not have told me to throw my own goddamned retirement party.
I was told twice yesterday that I had been unkind. Once about a caustic post I’d made that I didn’t realize had such a caustic tone, which I didn’t intend at all. Once about letting in-character anger spill over into an out-of character moment during a game.
It’s fucking with me more than I want to admit out loud.
I want to think I’m patient and a nice person. I want to BE a kind and soft person. With swearing as needed. I also want to think I can take constructive criticism. Both times, I tried to take the information in with a whole mind and open heart. I freely accepted valid points, admitted areas of ignorance – I genuinely did not realize my irritation with a sub-group of people spilled over into a perception of complete disdain and impatience for a related whole category of people. I vowed to be more aware, and work on it, and thanked them for bringing it to me. It’s a brave thing, to tell a friend they’re being a bit of a bitch.
But it’s fucking with me.
I don’t want to be unkind. It bothers me that someone would think I am. It bothers me that I speak without careful consideration, to have words and actions misconstrued.
So I lie awake until 3AM mulling over every interaction I had that day, wondering who else thought I was being a bitch, and what I can do to make amends. Usually these criticisms are self-inflicted, so coming from an external source, that knows me well, is especially jarring.
Before I moved away from Sacramento, several friends told me later, I became a bit of a bitch. My joking a little too caustic. I wondered if it were a subconscious self-defense mechanism, distancing myself from people I cared about in an effort to make it less shitty to leave.
I’m terrified of doing that same thing, knowing that I’m dying. From Diagnosis Day I have been fearful of being that embittered person in a wheelchair, lashing out at loved ones because I’m afraid to leave them. To be remembered as a total and complete bitch at the end of my days, in an effort to somehow distance myself from them so that the parting will be easier. Knowing it won’t help a goddamned bit. I do not wish to be a caustic person with nasty words where my love should be.
I’m glad my unkindness was called out. I’m glad I have time to work on it.
But until I am nothing but kind, it’s gonna fuck with me.
Four years ago, I was told I was going to die.
Everyone dies. To know the mechanism of your demise, though, is a terrible and powerful thing. Oh, certainly, something else might kill me before ALS squeezes the breath from my body, but there is now a subtitle to my timeline, a definite path. The future is a language tainted with exceptions and qualifications.
I took the news and buried it deep in my chest that day, taking the bus home alone. I don’t remember what I was thinking. I remember tripping over a curb walking home from the bus stop. I remember wincing internally, absolutely certain that was going to be the catalyst for the meltdown to come. It wasn’t. I picked myself up, and thought to myself, “There will surely be much more of that.” I got home, looked around the house I had just bought, the house I would no longer get to keep, and wondered how the ever loving fuck I was going to break it to everyone.
My life is a timeline of things lost, now, a perverse sort of baby book in reverse. Vashti’s last unaided steps. Vashti’s last time putting on makeup one-handed. Vashti’s last time dressing up all by herself. Vashti’s last time feeding herself. Vashti’s last words. Vashti’s last breath, someday.
For now, I can still speak, and breathe, and feed myself mostly. I need help cutting food these days, a job my friends do graciously. It’s very sweet, even. Walking with a walker is still possible, but exhausting, and it feels more precarious than ever. I stay in the wheelchair when I can. I have the motorized one now, but no way to transport it (but I’m working on that!). My hands are just about useless; I type with two fingers that have very little strength left in them. I need two hands to lift a soda can to my lips. I bought a hand strap yesterday to put eating utensils in because I’m almost unable to grip them. Bladder control is almost completely a thing of the past.
But you know what? Fuck this disease. It doesn’t own me. I have to make allowances for its dumb ass, but it’s not who I am. I am still going to eat at all the fancy places. I am still hanging out with my friends. I am still working. In one week, I will have another birthday. I am still planning for a future, even if that future has heavy caveats.
Because fuck that shit.
Even four years later. Even knowing what it’s going to take from me. Even though it would seriously be so much easier to end it now, before it gets REALLY hard. Fuck that shit.
My saddiversary has come around once again, and it’s one more year I can give this disease the middle finger. It doesn’t fucking own me. Even after I’m a non-speaking, drooly, pees-my-pants useless lump of meat, it won’t own me. Even if I decide to take my own life before it gets that far, it doesn’t win.
One more year down. One more point for me.
Fuck yeah.
So uhhh I have my port installed. It was …an adventure. Lemme tell you all about it!
When last we left our intrepid heroine, she had a really nasty reaction to the adhesives on her PICC line dressing. We moved to a different type of dressing that didn’t adhere for shit. The day I was done with the 14 day initial run, my awesome home infusion nurse came by to change the bandaging. She recommended we get the PICC pulled ASAP so I could get the dang adhesives off my skin.
It took a little convincing to get the nurse to refer me for a port; she was concerned that if I had a reaction to the adhesive as it was, having a port would be just as bad. I was concerned about not having tubes sticking out of me at all times; at least the port would give me a 2 week break every month. We eventually secured the referral, and my surgery was scheduled for 12:30 on December 27th, with a separate appointment that morning at 8:30 to get the PICC removed. When I told my home infusion nurse, she arranged to come by that evening (after her company holiday party, even!) to pull the PICC so we could get the wrappings off me and let my skin recover a bit. We love Deena, she’s rad. It was surreal to see her pull the line…it kind just kept coming out, like a magician’s scarf of surgery and horror. It was MUCH longer than I’d thought. And it was friggin’ DELIGHTFUL to have all that out/off. And the shower I was finally able to take was goddamned MAGICAL.
I received a call from St. Vincent’s hospital the next day – the surgeon I’d been scheduled with wasn’t actually going to work that week, could I go to Providence Portland instead? At 9:30am? Sure, no problem. The next day, they called again – sorry, could we make it same time, but back at St. Vincent’s after all? No problem. J worked that day, so I asked my sister-in-law-of awesomeness Jeanette to be my ride.
And then I made a terrible mistake.
OK so I’m a smart person, and with intelligence comes curiosity, and I wanted to know exactly what I was in for with this port. I watched a video of a woman demonstrrating how to access a port; no big deal, kind of persnickety with regards to keeping everything absolutely sterile, but whatevs. And thennnnnnnnnnn I watched a video of a port install surgery. OK, I am not really squicked out by surgery, and I found the whole thing fascinating until the phrase “BLUNT DISSECTION” came up, and the surgeon LITERALLY TORE A HOLE IN THE PERSON BY JAMMING HIS PINKY IN THE INCISION AND WIGGLING IT AROUND. HOLY FUCKBALLS. My brain went NOPE, FUCK THAT, FUCK THIS, AND FUCK YOU FOR SCHEDULING THIS MOTHEFUCKING MEDIEVAL-ASS SHIT. Intellectually I knew it was fine – MORE than fine, because I was gonna be hopped up on Versed and remember NONE of it and get some good drugs afterwards – but the actual crux of the mistake had been watching this video righe before bedtime, so my brain just did donuts in the parking lot for awhile.
The morning of the surgery, I got a call from the hospital – would I mind coming in early? It was 8:30 and I was scheduled to check-in at 9:30, so I was a bit confused, but I told them I’d be there as soon as I could. We parked too far away and I was a sweaty mess when we arrived at check-in, where I was told…I was scheduled at the OTHER hospital, still. I explained the conversations, they luckily sorted it out. I went upstairs, put the goofy little gown on, and waited. The nurses came in, partly to take vitals and start an IV and make sure I wasn’t pregnant, and partly to play peek-a-boo with my adorable niece. The doctor came in to introduce himself and ask if I had questions. he was delighted that I referred to the Huber needle I’d be using to access the port as “the crooked needle”. I was delighted by his use of the phrase “twilight sleep” to describe the conscious sedation I’d be under. They’d give me benadryl in my line along with the sedatives and a dose of antibiotic, he said, hopefully I’d just sleep through the whole thing.
I remember them wheeling me into the surgery, and seeing the GINORMOUS fucking monitor he’d be using to make sure he was placing the port properly, with x-ray. It was weird to see my name there. The several nurses had their A-Game banter going, and we were having a great time explaining names and tattoos to each other. One nurse thought I had an accent, and asked how long I’d been a Yankee. “My whole life?” A male nurse/technician/whathaveya scrubbed me down with a blue solution, making me the world’s least convincing Smurf. I was freaking cold, despite the warmed blanket they’d put over me. The IV nurse told me he was putting the antibiotics in my line now, and I felt the cold sting. he told me he was starting the sedative now, and then I…
I do not remember a thing after that.
I woke up with a very large image of my x-ray on the monitor, showing the line running into my artery. I was shivering. They wheeled me back to the recovery room, and I slept a bit. Jeanette had taken my niece Jewel to get some lunch or something. They brought me a turkey sandwich, which I devoured. They had put the dressing on a bit shitty; I couldn’t raise my head all the way, or turn my head much because of the way my skin was taped up. It itched a bit. I was given discharge instructions and no pain killers (“Just take some Tylenol”). My sister came back, I got dressed, she took me home, and I slept some more.
The next morning I was aware something was up. I was naughty and pulled the dressing off a bit to allow myself the ability to raise my fucking head, and where the dressing had been tugging was now an angry red wound. I was very itchy. All over my chest. Angry red hives, all over my chest, up my neck, and across my chin. Tylenol, it turned out, did not fucking suffice, so I took some of the hydrocodone I had leftover from breaking my ankle that the doctor hadn’t wanted to give me either because ibuprofin should be fine. YOU JUST TORE A HOLE IN ME BIG ENOUGH FOR A 1 INCH SQUARE MEDICAL DEVICE AND ALSO CUT MY NECK TO SHOVE WIRES INTO MY VEINS – NEWSFUCKINGFLASH TYLENOL AND IBUPROFIN ARE NOT SUFFICIENT FOR THIS. BLUNT. DISSECTION. BITCHES. I slept some more. I woke up to even angrier hives, annnnnnnnnd my eye was a swollen bag of fluid.
So uh…yeah. I was having an allergic reaction to something. It couldn’t be the dressing itself, since the hives were everywhere. It got worse and itchier over the night. I had a different IV home nurse visit that day, to change the bandage since they’d thoughtfully left a needle in the port for me to start the infusions, but I’d bled a bit so there was gauze under the dressing which needed to go. She was very concerned about the reaction, namely that it might be a reaction to the port itself. My delightful friend Lizzie was coming over that day with delicious food for me, and she kindly picked up some Benadryl on her way in. Luckily I had a doctor’s appointment already scheduled for the next day, for an unrelated issue and holy FUCK will I rant about that in a bit. I took Benadryl, ate delicious home made food, and slept a lot.
My PCP is a cool guy, and didn’t mind dealing with the reaction as well as the initial problem we were scheduled to deal with. He suggested two more antihistamines in addition to the Benadryl, and to contact the hospital if it didn’t clear up by Tuesday (Monday was New Year’s). Luckily it did, mostly. I think the problem was the smurf shit they scrubbed me down with, since the hives pretty much appeared everywhere they used it. I have no explanation for my eye becoming a blister, tho.
We’ve now completed the second round of infusions, the port works beautifully, and we pulled the needle out last night. I am once again dressing-free for two weeks. The scar is already nearly healed up, and the itching has almost entirely subsided now that I’ve got no more adhesives on me. I can feel the port under my skin, and it’s weird.
Now I am become cyborg. beep bloop bleep.
Fun fact: I AM A GIANT NERD.
You already knew this. Probably. Almost definitely. If not, welcome to me; I’m a giant nerd.
Most every Wednesday, I play a table top role-playing game with a group of guys that have become good friends. We are virtual murder hobos, adventuring and killing monsters and arguing amongst ourselves about which monsters need killing, and it’s a lot of fun. I absolutely adore the group. The only hitch at all is that my stupid disease gets in the way a lot – I’ve had to miss a lot of games because of appointments, or a couple of times I’ve fallen and hurt myself, or sometimes my mana is just too damn low to deal, or once or twice Sadbrain said nope. Luckily, they’re very cool about me missing games; they understand. We had a talk once to just make sure that it wasn’t that I was not enjoying the game but was too polite to say so, so I was making excuses; once they were assured that I absolutely enjoyed the game but my disease is stupid, we were all good.
Part of that hitch is getting to the place we game. It used to be at the storyteller’s house, which had two steps and no rail. It was…not fun getting inside. Luckily before that became an impossibility, we switched to another player’s house, which has just one step. Much easier. Still an effort, and some days a Herculean one, but better. This last Wednesday, I had low energy, and I sarcastically complained to J as we were heading over, “Tim needs to get a fucking ramp.” If J didn’t drive a little car, I’d probably have bought one of those portable ramps to just carry around with us for these occasions. It would definitely make things easier. I’d never actually expect someone to modify their home for me, obviously. But some days it probably would be the final straw in deciding if I had the energy to go to to game or not. Stupid disease.
We pulled up to the house, and everyone was standing around outside, which was…odd, because it was cold as hell. We usually start game at 5:30, but we were told tonight was a late start, so maybe everyone had just gotten there. I got out of the car, and they all kind off…turned to face me. Matt, the storyteller, told me that they all understood that I had hella circumstances and that it made it really hard for me to get to game sometimes. For a moment, I thought, “OH shit, they’re kicking me out of game because I’m unreliable. Well, I can’t really blame them.” He continued to say that they really appreciated the effort I made to show up, and that they all wanted to make sure that I’m able to continue doing it for as long as I can, so…they all parted to show me something behind them.
Guys.
GUYS.
THEY BOUGHT ME A FUCKING RAMP.
To get in to the house. A ramp. For me. And they even put stickers all over it.
For me.
One of the worst things about acquiring a disability is feeling like you’re a burden. Your friends and family have to make plans around your diminished abilities, suddenly old traditions have to be abandoned. Even though everyone insists – INSISTS – that you’re fine, they want you there, they’re happy to make the changes, you can’t help feel guilty that they’re missing out on cool things because of you. A lifetime of Sadbrain convincing me that I’m not worth the effort in the first place does not help the matter, and I’ve worked my whole life to make that voice be silent, with very mixed results. In the meantime, events are missed, changes are made, things are rearranged, and my friends and family do their best to accommodate me and tell me it’s alright.
Funny word, accommodate.
It can mean providing sufficient living space, or making a compromise, or adjusting to something new. It means somehow going out of your way for someone. In my world it’s usually got a slightly cynical sister word attached, “reasonable”, when dealing with work and places of business. Reasonable accommodation. Legally doing the absolute bare minimum in order to convince ADA enforcement laws that you’ve done …something. (I’m a little bitter, yes)
When it’s your friends, though, and you know they sure as shit didn’t HAVE to do anything, that they made an effort because they legitimately want you around, and here is absolute proof? Yeah I totally teared up. It was an amazing thing. A selfless thing. An important thing.
It makes dealing with it easier. It makes being alive easier.
It makes it WORTH it.
Ok seriously, this is a TMI warning. There be candid, unglam talk about pee and even some butt stuff. So uh. Yeah. Proceed with discretion.
Soooooooooo the main reason I have not been posting is two-fold, with the reason being DEEEPRESSSSHUNS, stemming from 1) my stepfather dying and now my mom lives with me, and 2) a new symptom which is KICKING MY ASS in all kinds of fun physical, mental, and emotional ways. My surprise roommate situation – that will get its own blog, don’t you fret. Things are actually settled and pretty ok on that front now; that’s the GOOD part about avoiding blogging during a crisis – you get to walk in at the end of the story!
Ok so I just checked the archives for the first time I wrote about this thing and it was March of 2016. So I need to stop calling it a new symptom. Duly noted, self. Well. It was kinda a one-off thing, it happened a couple of times? But the last few months it’s been a serious deal and I am seriously not dealing well.
As you may have surmised, it’s about this:
“Urge incontinence”. Only…there’s no “urge” part anymore. It’s closer to say that it will occur to me that I haven’t peed for awhile and should prolly do that, or I kind of have to go, and then before I can get to the toilet, I am just peeing. Everywhere. I’ve had to leave work early because I had to change my clothes, I’ve had to change clothes I literally just put on. And it’s not like I’m peeing in my chair, oh no, it fucking WAITS until I am alllllllllmost to the toilet and then just lets itself out all over me and the bathmat in front of my toilet before I have the chance to undress, much less sit the fuck down. Unless I physically cross my legs to contain it – and often, even then – there’s a mess.
I’m 42 and I wear incontinence pads every day now. As I posted previously, a lot of the articles about ALS say that usually bladder and bowel function aren’t affected. I took a lot more comfort in that than I realized. Like..sure I might be choking on my own spit someday, but at least I won’t be sitting in a puddle of my own urine. But no, I’ve not even begun to have speech or swallowing problems yet, but I have left trails of pee from my room to the toilet – while WEARING a fucking pad. They only hold so much, and I’ve peed through even the overnight Poise pads more times than I can count.
Fun fact – Poise pads are rated by flow, just like menstrual pads, onle they don’t use words like “light, medium, and heavy”. They use words like “drips, dribbles, spurts, and gushes”.
Additional fun fact: menstrual pads and incontinence pads are NOT THE SAME THING. Ask me how I found out! At work!
So, last clinic, I brought this up, and we started the road to Figure Things Out. It has NOT been a good road.
Like, at all.
We started the easy path, with a medication. That did nothing. We upped the dose. Nothing. I was referred to a urologist. He had me pee in a cup to make sure I didn’t have any weird infections – this is not easy any more. You kinda need functioning hands to maneuver this, and remember this point. It becomes VERY important later. He then did an ultrasound on my bladder to make sure I was emptying it completely when I peed. I do. He shrugged and gave me samples for a new med to try. I did. They did nothing. He gave me another months’ supply in samples, and said he was previously going to do a couple of tests that day, but given my whole situation, he instead referred me to his colleague, who could do an ENTIRE workup. He said they’d call to schedule that; it’s an hour and a half appointment that involved probes and a scope up my urethra, soooooo be prepared for that I guess.
A week later, I get a call to make the appointment, and they send me a pamphlet of what to expect, and a sheet of instructions on how to prepare. The word “enema” is involved. Two enemas, exactly. One the night before, and one the morning of. The informational pamphlet says they’ll be sticking a scope into my bladder, to take a look, they’ll also be doing a flow test which means I sit on a commode and pee to determine…something, I guess. How fast I pee? And then they’ll be filling my bladder with sterile saline and stick a probe in both ends, and then have me do some tests like bearing down, and standing up. I guessed there would be puppy pads all over the room for that part. I was not looking forward to this, like, at ALL.
And so, the weekend before the appointment, I had to muster the courage to ask J to take me to the store so I could buy a freakin’ enema. He’s actually been amazing about listening to the really awful details of this whole bullshit Godzilla Disease, and took it in stride, and sympathized about the scope part cause he’d had that done. We bought what I needed, and then the night before the appointment, I set forth to do the thing.
OK. Here is where it is important to remember the part about “you kinda need functioning hands”. If you’re not familiar with an enema, it is essentially a flexible little bottle of saline with a thoughtfully, pre-lubricated plastic tip. You insert the thoughtfully pre-lubricated tip into your butt, squeeze the contents of the bottle in, and then wait for nature to do its thing. The bottle, for reference, is smaller than a standard soda bottle by a lot. It’s also full of water, which is heavy. Sooooooo don’t actually picture this, because gross, but…entertain a brief thought about what kind of difficulties a person with ALS may have in this situation. Especially when she is also overweight, and seated on a narrow, raised toilet seat with bars that prevent her from say, separating the knees as far as one might wish to get access to that business.
If your imagined, hypothetical scenario included dropping the bottle in the toilet more than once, and then ultimately only managing to squeeze maybe a third of it in? Congratulations. Now do that again in the morning.
The night before the appointment, after dealing with the ahem..effects..of the ordeal, I have a worrying thought. The clinic has more than one urology office location. There’s the one at the hospital in NW Portland, where I’ve been seeing this dude, but they ALSO have a location in NE Portland, where Dr. Goslin is. The urologist just mentioned a colleague. Same office? I scoured the paperwork I had, nothing had an address on it. It was Monday night at 10. I couldn’t call anyone. I checked the web portal for the clinic, and they had NOTHING about upcoming appointments anywhere. I could check every fucking thing else in my medical files with them, but nothing about an upcoming appointment. They hadn’t called with an appointment reminder.
I took my chances and went to the same clinic. And…yeah, you already guessed it was the wrong fucking hospital. Amazingly, they had another opening at the right hospital the very next week, so I made that appointment. After the month I’d been having, and the whole enema ordeal and the humiliation of that and the frustration of my hands just not fucking cooperating enough to do this, and the nightmare scenarios of thinking I’d ever have to ask someone for help with that, and paying $30 on a Lyft to the hospital and knowing I was going to have to spend another $30 to go home….I went into the hospital bathroom and sobbed a lot. Then I went home and took a nap.
The next week, I had better ideas about how to do the prep work. It went better, but also involved having to do the thing twice, since I could still only get a half dose in. The morning of, I had a complete incontinence issue and peed alllllllllll the fuck over m,y bedroom carpet and the bathroom tile and the bath mat and the toilet seat and everyfuckingwhere. And then after I cleaned it all up, I had to deal with the second dose of enema funtimes, and then got dressed and called my Lyft. It is 20 miles from my apartment to the hospital, mayyyyyybe 45 minutes with traffic. I left around 7:30 for an 8:30 appointment. There was a 25 minute traffic delay. I got to the hospital at 9AM. When I realized I was going to be 10 minutes late, to a 90 minute appointment, I thought about calling them to apologize but didn’t think I’d missed the appointment It was an hour and a half, and they always keep you waiting 10 minutes in the lobby anyway. When Waze bumped the arrival estimate to 8:45, I contemplated having him just turn around and take me back home. When the arrival time hit 9AM, I just kinda…turned off and knew I was showing up just to reschedule with the receptionist. I got to the office, explained what happened to the Eastern European lady, told her I realized at this point I was probably going to have to just reschedule the whole thing, and she looked at me like I was stupid.
“You have to PLAN for these things,” she told me like I was a child. “You can’t think traffic isn’t going to happen.”
“I planned a 15 minute buffer,” I told her. “It took 45 minutes longer than it should have.”
“You have to think about traffic,” she shook her head at me, exasperated. I guess she realized I was very, very close to tears, because then she said “I’ll see if they can get you in. But I don’t think so.”
Cue about 8 minutes of me leaning against the counter while she talked to the other office folk about how I seriously expected to be able to show up 30 minutes late and then a muffled conversation around the corner with the nurses, and I was JUST about to tap on the glass and remind her snarky bitch ass that I had ACTUALLY apologized and asked to fucking reschedule in the first place when I GOT THERE when she came back and said they could do PART of the appointment today, and maybe if the next person doesn’t show up for their appointment, we could get it all done.
We did not, in fact, get it all done.
Wanna guess which part we did not get done? The part that required the enema prep? OH WELL DONE YOU GET A PRIZE. We DID get the part done where they put numbing gel in my ladybits and then jammed a camera scope in there. I got to see the inside of my apparently healthy bladder, and even watched my kidney spit a blurble of pee into it. I did the pee-over-a-cup-on-a-scale test, too, and then sat in the room alone with no underwear on while we waited to see if the next guy showed up. When he did, I was ushered out to the lobby to reschedule without being given a chance to put said underwear back on, and then stood at the counter with a breeze up my dress while I waited for Ms. Thing to get me another appointment. At least she was equal opportunity bitch, because another dude came out of the office and needed some followup something, and she barked at him to just sit down and she would get to him in a minute. And then told me that she just couldn’t STAND when people just HOVERED like that. And then she tried to be sweet and called me darling when she found an appointment a month away “so much quicker than I thought for you” and made a point of scheduling me for the LATER time, and wrote my appointment time as 15 minutes earlier for arrival on the reminder card. Like…yeah, I GOT it, bitch. I WAS LATE. And then I went outside and got a Lyft home that cost $40, like the ride in, and I guess the worst part is how everyone assumes I have a magical support network for free that can help with enemas and free rides where I need to go so it’s just an inconvenience to THEIR asses when I get caught in traffic or they send me to the wrong fucking hospital in the first place.
Oh, and this was on Halloween.
So now, I get to wait a month, do enemas again, and in the meantime just continue peeing myself all the time because it’s not at all disruptive to my life? And then pay another $80 in Lyft fare to have probes shoved in me? And in the meantime, the urologist’s advice was to do some Kegels. IF I COULD CLENCH THOSE MUSCLES IN THE FIRST PLACE, LADY, WE WOULD NOT BE TALKING TODAY. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE FUCK ALS EVEN IS. It’s when you try to use a muscle and CAN’T. BECAUSE THE MUSCLE IS GONE.
So yep. I’ve not been living my best life lately. This has been really hard. And humiliating. And a big fucking mess. In every sense of the word.
Next time I’ll tell you about clinic day and all that. This was a difficult post to write. I’m going to go look at some cat pictures or watch some jellyfish for awhile.