Day #31 of my Search for a Soulmate

The Wild Honeysuckle

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,

Hid in this silent dull retreat,

Untouch’d thy honey’d blossoms blow,

Unseen thy little branches greet:

No roving foot shall crush thee here,

No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature’s self in white array’d,

She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,

And planted here the guardian shade,

And sent soft waters murmuring by;

Thus quietly thy summer goes,

Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay;

I grieve to see your future doom;

They died – nor were those flowers more gay;

The flowers that did in Eden bloom;

Unpitying frosts and Autumn’s power

Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews

At first thy little being came:

If nothing once, you nothing lose

For when you die you are the same;

The space between is but an hour,

The frail duration of a flower.

Philip Freneau 1752-1832

And here you thought you were going to read a lovely, romanticism-era poem about the beautiful and fragrant honeysuckle!  Don’t you love the way one of America’s earliest poets gets you all bummed out and depressed?  So … American of him.

Saturday the 17^th of December.  I arrive at the Sutton Car repair shop in North Andover  for a DEC 2011 inspection sticker at 9 a.m. in the morning.  This is the place people recommended I switch to after GM screwed up their entire company and sold off the Saturn line, dumping all of the Saturn owners in a pile of offal.  The Sutton Car guys can’t get my horn to work, which means I can’t get an inspection sticker.  I suggest bringing my car back in the week I’m off work (Dec 26th), but noooo, after next week (Dec 19^th) , they’re closed until 2012, and I’m not off work next week!  I freak out. 

Now I have to figure out a way to get my car to the Sutton bozos on Wednesday, get myself to the train station to get to work, and get myself BACK to Sutton at the end of the day.  The Sutton people have already taken so long accomplishing nothing that it’s now noon.  I now can’t get to the bank to get my singles needed for the highway robbery at the MBTA commuter rail parking lot.  I go to CVS only to discover that the endocrinologist has NOT called in a prescription for test strips as she promised, so I now have the meter but very few test strips.  I freak out again.

I finally drive to the grocery store, cursing out the universe.  More Andover Demons have left their shopping carts all over the parking lot.  I’ve lived in quite a few places (New York, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois), and I can honestly say that North Andover, Massachusetts is the absolute worst, as far as being crammed full of narcissistic, fat, lazy women goes.  They weren’t even this bad in Worcester, and Worcester is practically a ghetto.  I have never lived ANYWHERE as bad as North Andover.  People were more polite and considerate in Manhattan and Yonkers, that’s how bad this place is.

Sunday the 18^th of December.  I have now developed a knot on my head, left side, up near my hairline.  There was a small lump there anyway, ever since the accident.  Now it has gotten a lot bigger when I wasn't paying attention to it.  I examine it.  Not an injury – it’s not tender or bruised; not a zit, it’s again not red or tender.  What the [bleep!] is it?  I decide to see if it changes (sinks or swims, as far as head bumps go), and do a post-breakfast blood sugar test.  And completely freak out again.  The number is so high it isn’t even normal for ME.  The number is so high we’re talking imminent death territory.  And this is a Sunday morning - naturally.  My doctor isn’t even alive on Sundays.

I have a choice:  the first option is to take myself to that charming site of infinite waiting and suffering:  Lawrence General Hospital.  I’d be sitting in their emergency waiting room, packed in there with the sneezing, coughing, hacking, stomach-flu vomiting residents of Lawrence and then have to pay them a week’s salary (assuming I was still alive) because Blue Cross/Blue Shield is too cheap to cover the visit.

The second option is to diagnose myself.  I figure I would be marginally better off taking a second shot of insulin than dying in the Lawrence General Hospital waiting room, waiting for 8 hours to be seen.  It’s a 50/50 proposition:  do I want possible death by overmedicating, or certain death in the Lawrence General Hospital waiting room due to being ignored all day?  Their commercials about how great Lawrence General Hospital is are laughable jokes to anyone who has ever been to the place.  A moment’s hesitation, and then I elect Door #2 and shoot myself up again.  I’m only supposed to be getting one shot a day, not two, but I still figure I’m safer injecting myself with an unprescribed second dosage.  I wait a half hour to test my blood again, and unbelievably, the number is still climbing, but very slowly.  Then, fortunately, it starts dropping.

What does a head lump have to do with blood sugar?  I know that my blood sugar levels go up when I’m sick, but I don’t FEEL sick; I just have a lump on my head.  On the other hand, I don’t know why I have a lump on my head.  Correct that.  I know WHY, I just don't know why it has gotten larger.

The Sutton fools finally fix my horn on Wednesday, although to accomplish this I have to pay one of their customers $50 to meet me at Sutton’s at 5 in the morning and then drive me to the train station.  Why not call a cab, you ask?  Sorry, the local “You Call, We Ignore You” Andover cab companies are not known for their reliability, and unlike their cab drivers, I actually have a REAL job.  That night when they pick me up, I’m informed I still don’t have a sticker, because I didn’t renew my registration.  Despite the fact that every other state in the union – or at least the ones I’m familiar with – don’t double-dip drivers, Massachusetts does NOT combine the registration with the inspection, makes you pay twice, AND never notifies you when your registration is due.

I spend a huge amount of energy trying not to scream out loud and am on the verge of doing a Charles Whitman and … well, I would have told you what I was thinking of doing, but I now know that the USA is no longer a free country, but The Police And Homeland Security Dominated States of America, and its repressed citizens can no longer say things out loud, or even think them.  The OWS movement has proven that you also can’t protest, or the police will club you to death, while conservatives cheer them on because our corporate owned media has told them that the entire OWS movement is filled with homeless bums and drug addicts even though everyone with a brain else knows they’re not.  But then any country filled with people so stupid they don’t recognize a constitutional right being ripped to shreds right before their eyes, or who buy our media conglomerates’ version of anything deserves to go down in flames.

Back to my car which still has no sticker, in a state where the psychotic North Andover police think the Egyptian military was within their rights to drag a defenseless woman through the streets kicking her unconscious, because they would think nothing of doing the same thing to a woman who didn’t get her car stickered on time in Massachusetts.  Grinding my teeth in rage, I renew my registration online – from work, by the way, because the Mass DMV is unaware that people have REAL jobs, and their website is only open during business hours, proving once again that Massachusetts is the most stupid and most corrupt state in the Union, after Arkansas.

I drive it to Sutton’s after work on Friday the 23^rd, two days before Christmas.  NOW they can’t sticker it for some completely unintelligible reason – something about:  I had to put more miles on the car to get the ‘black box’ in the car to record the correct information to feed it to the inspection machine.  I’m going “WHAT???”  I’ve had the car pass inspection in New York and Michigan and even once in Massachusetts and NEVER was hit with that story.  They tell me to drive it on a freeway to put more miles on the car.  I’m screaming, “I CAN’T FEEL MY FEET AND YOU WANT ME TO DRIVE ON A FREEWAY???”

Now I’m thinking of going postal on Sutton, while trying not to cry in rage and frustration.

So now they change their story.  They actually ARE going to work the week I’m off (after telling me they weren’t returning to work until 2012 a few days earlier).  I had already decided NOT to take that week off due to the huge volume of doctor’s appointments I had coming up in January.   I have to go make a copy of my car key at Ace and leave it in their dropbox, and then THEY would drive it on the freeway to be able to sticker it.

Keep in mind that the next day, Saturday, was the day before Christmas, which was packed to the gills with things I already had to get done OR ELSE.  Most of them were things I HAD to do the previous Saturday before noon, but had to cancel because Sutton kept me waiting in their shop until noon a week earlier, unable to fix the horn. 

I know what the roads are going to be like, jammed with road-raged assholes who decided to wait until the “day before” to do all their shopping.  To get to the bank and then to Ace and then to the Sutton drop box, I now had to cancel the fasting blood test I was going to take at Lawrence (“Come See the Skeletons in Our Waiting Room!”) General Hospital, which now means I have to cancel the appointment with the primary care physician and the neurologist, who were going to review the results of the blood test.

And the original date for the inspection?  The 17^th of December.  We’re now up to the 24^th.  And they STILL haven’t done SHIT, and they’re still feeding me bullshit as to why they can’t do it.

And on top of that, all of the insulin I’ve injected into myself hasn’t done a damn bit of good.  I’ve only dipped into the 200-range twice, and the endocrinologist raises the dosages in 10 ml increments.  I dunno – at what point do you think she should have said, “Well, DAMN Sam, this ain’t workin!”?

Fine, she’s Asian and wouldn’t employ euphemisms in a redneck accent, but I’m sure she could have come up with an Asian equivalent of , “This ain’t working!”  Hell, I even DOUBLED the dose once and it didn’t do that much good.

Really.  At what point do you say, “Okay, try 50 ml twice a day!” (I’m at 30 ml once a day now).  IT AIN’T WORKING!!  Get me in the office, give me a huge dose and watch to see what happens!  Don’t just raise my dosages in dribs and drabs and keep my blood sugar at dangerously high levels!  Stupid doctor.

But I have to cancel my appointment with her, too, thanks to Sutton screwing up closing my bank account and now demanding a copy of my car key, and tossing my fasting blood test out the window.  I’m almost in tears over the whole mess, one of the Sky Sadist’s “Top 10 Evil Accomplishments” of 2011.  And I still don’t have a &*^&ing sticker!

Note to self:  find another car repair shop.

11/23/11: The Day I Heard Sekhmet Roar

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor. (Aristotle)

Since my Grandmother came back from the dead and reminded me of her embroidery skills (see last entry), I was thinking of a somewhat creative endeavor.  I’d ordered a few yards of  on-sale white linen to make a cheap and easy robe (stole the basic pattern off of the Servants of the Light website); was thinking of trying to embroider some motifs on a stole I could use with it.

Shuffled off to Breaking Dawn, Part I  on Monday and then off to buy groceries.  Movie:  satisfying.  Really impressive:  the make-up and CGI (I assume) talent that turned Kristen Stewart into a skeletal anorexic as she got more and more pregnant.  Since I’ve seen her in interviews quite recently, it’s obvious she never looked that bad – it was all make-up and special effects, and holy crap, did she look dreadful.  Dumb women who really ARE anorexic should watch that movie just to see how creepy and sickening they really look.  Kudos to Kristen Stewart for being willing to look that skeletal and dreadful for a movie role, even if she really wasn’t.

Grocery shopping:  exhausting.  Attached a food grinder attachment to the Kitchen Aid MixMaster for the first time this morning.  Made Mom’s Cranberry-Orange relish, a Thanksgiving staple, which I’d never been able to make because a blender is not the same thing as a food grinder, I don’t care what anyone says; and I only bought the food grinder this year.   (Acually, I don’t know if anyone ever DID say that, I’m just heading them off at the pass should they get a mind to).  It still has to – what’s the word? – all I can think of is “settle” … “meld the flavors” … oh, who knows?  It has to stay in the refrigerator for a day or so, to taste right, for the flavors to infuse … or something.  The other Thanksgiving staple that has to be made ahead of time is Mom’s Thanksgiving stuffing, another dish that has to sit in the fridge for a day or so, to let all of the onions and sage and celery seed and other herbs and spices absorb into the toast cubes just right.

Tuesday:  Was supposed to get my back, feet and legs x-rayed  by the back surgeon.  I was depending on him too much to fix me, I know that.  But I was getting more and more crippled and was too young to be that way.

Ever see the movie, Vampires Suck?  He leaves her and she has a temper tantrum on the floor of the forest:  rolling around on her back, screaming, pounding her fists, kicking her legs.  It’s so over the top it makes you laugh.  Not so funny when it was me (in my own imagination, that is), after NOT getting my feet and legs x-rayed:  I hate doctors, I hate doctors, I hate doctors, I hate doctors!!!  Instead it was more medicine, more medicine, more medicine!!!!  I don’t want more medicine!!!  Fix me, fix me, fix me, you bastards!!!

But nooooooooo.  Back to the neurologist for another bout of tasering.  Another bout of physical therapy.  More intense medication, so strong he wants me to start it on a Friday, in case I pass out.  I was suddenly completely exhausted by it all.

Sekhmet’s Roar

After that round of unhappiness, it was off to the endocrinologist.  I should mention that there is one other teensy weensy insignificant little snag on the road to true bliss with a soul mate I might not have mentioned until now.  Cowardice.  By which I mean “needle phobia”.  By which I mean:  if I didn’t somewhere find the courage to inject insulin into myself by Wednesday, I was going to die a slow and painful death, which would probably make the search for a soul mate a moot point.  The oral medication had stopped working.  I needed insulin and I needed it now.  And the needle phobia prevented me from injecting myself with anything.

The needle phobia is a life-long problem.  One of my father’s most humiliating moments  was taking his five or six year old daughter to the pediatrician (can’t remember where Mom was) after I’d slid on a wooden floor in a pair of tights and got a huge splinter in the bottom of my foot.  Off to have it removed.  Next requirement: a tetanus shot.  The doctor and my father literally had to chase me around the doctor’s office, out into the waiting room, me screaming in terror at the top of my lungs – fear must have given me wings for me to outrun the both of them with a still-sore foot, but I did.  My father was completely embarrassed by my behavior, and both of us still remember that event.

Suddenly I was facing the prospect of giving daily injections to myself, and the fear was eating me up inside.  I already knew that the needles were so small I didn’t even feel them, but it’s a phobia I’m combatting here – logic didn’t really apply.  I printed out an article on needle-phobia for the doctor, as I don’t think either one of them – doctor or nurse practitioner – know how debilitating it is.  I was so stressed out on Wednesday morning I forgot to bring the printout with me.

Wednesday, November 23^rd, the Day Before Thanksgiving.  Back to the Endocrinologist for another round of insulin injections.  I’d stopped at CVS only to be handed a bunch of nonsense I couldn’t identify:  a pen which was not the injector, a bag of needles I had no idea what to do with, and no insulin.  I headed back for the doctor’s office, feeling confused, nauseous and frightened.  To make the stress worse, there was an inexplicable traffic jam (in North Andover?) which made me ten minutes late.

On the other hand, I remembered that I did manage to combat another phobia a few years ago, so maybe there was hope for me.  That one was thunderstorms.  How did I do it?  I got tired of it, plain and simple; it ran my life so totally I got tired of it.  I thought, maybe that will work in this case.

I’d printed out a Charge which reminded me of Sekhmet generally, and specifically (“and the fear that coils about your heart in the times of your trials”) concerning what I was facing.

I am the Queen of Magick and the dark of the Moon,

hidden in the deepest night.

I am the mystery of the Otherworlds

and the fear that coils about your heart in the times of your trials.

I am the soul of nature that gives form to the universe;

it is I who awaits you at the end of the spiral dance.

Most ancient among gods and mortals,

let my worship be within the heart that has truly tasted life,

for behold all acts of magick and art are my pleasure

and my greatest ritual is love itself.

Therefore let there be beauty in your strength,

compassion in your wrath,

power in your humility,

and discipline balanced through mirth and reverence.

You who seek to remove my veil and behold my true face,

know that all your questing and efforts are for nothing,

and all your lust and desires shall avail you not at all.

For unless you know my mystery,

look wherever you will, it will elude you,

for it is within you and nowhere else.

Behold, I have ever been with you,

from the very beginning,

the comforting hand that nurtured you in the dawn of life,

and the loving embrace that awaits you at the end of each life,

for I am that which is attained at the end of the dance.

I am the womb of new beginnings,

as yet unimagined and unknown.

The Charge of the Crone

written by Jim Garrison

I remembered pleading with Sekhmet to roar when I met the psychic.  Was she even standing behind me somewhere, or was she doing things her own way, in her own time?

As I was sitting in the doctor’s office, clutching my plastic CVS bag of nonsense, I whispered, “Sekhmet, please help me.  Please give me a tiny crumb of your courage,”

I could envision her on the wall.  The Sekhmet I saw on the wall merely regarded me implacably, not moving, not speaking, just watching me.  I knew that the fear had changed somewhat, to a fear of shaming her, of disappointing her, but I wasn’t aware of the meaning of the shift.  I thought it was just that she had no use for cowards, or for whiners.

The doctor came back into the room, preparing to give me an insulin dose.  Since CVS had so utterly messed up the prescription, the doctor decided to give me a set of freebies:  an injector and two bottles of insulin.  Before I could talk myself out of it, I asked her to show me how to load the syringe.  A little surprised, she quickly consented.

I loaded the syringe myself.  5 ml.  10 ml.  I withdrew the syringe from the tiny bottle.  The doctor prepared to re-take the syringe and inject the insulin herself, knowing darn well that I couldn't do it, and pleased that I had done that much.  We were discussing taking myself off to Lawrence Hospital on Thanksgiving to have them give me insulin.  The problem was, we were pretty sure Blue Cross/Blue Shield wouldn’t cover it.

“Show me how to load the injector,” I said.  And she did.  Without looking down, I pressed the injector against my skin … looked at Sekhmet’s face on the wall.

“Sekhmet, I love you,” I said softly, pressed the injector button … and injected myself wth insulin.

The doctor’s jaw dropped in shock.  “You DID it!” she cried.  “You actually did it!!”  This was the woman who had watched me literally unable to do it for the last 6 years – well, as long as I’d lived here, but believe me when I tell you, I couldn’t have done it before then, either.

I of course burst into tears, but the phobia had broken – just like that – and I had suffered from the phobia since I was a small child.

Sekhmet chuffed softly, turned, and strolled away from me calmly – she’d done her part and had other important things to do that day.  Apparently, dissolving a life-long phobia that meant the difference between life and death in her fiery breath was worth her attention.  Getting the attention of a psychic wasn’t all that important.  Lesson learned.  She doesn’t roar for the fun of it.