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The miserable thread

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10:57 / 18.05.07

Filth trough, I'll echo our esteemed Extreme Lenin and wish you luck on the exams. For that matter, good luck for the future in general, whatever direction that might take.

Ex

11:00 / 18.05.07

should I be bringing them up?

Well, if he doesn't remember, then certainly. Wouldn't you want to know if you were being incredibly unpleasant to someone you loved? The fact that you seem to feel bad about even mentioning - that seems as though you feel wrongfooted already about the situation. So to reassure - yes, you should be allowed to talk about it, and act on it, even if it only happens when your partner's drunk.

Sorry you have exams coming up - that seems to suggest that massive upheaval might not be helpful. Hope you can find some negotiation until then (could you stay with friends?) and then space and time after that to address this.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

12:00 / 18.05.07

"One of the nice things about looking at a bear is that you know it spends 100 per cent of every minute of every day being a bear..."

A bear, some hours ago, being a bear:

14:39 / 18.05.07

Cheers for hugs, thoughts, luck and reassurance. Its just the prospect of another weekend (as we had last weekend) isn't very appealing. Yes, not in great form for exams but equally I can scrape by with little effort or, indeed, make use of repeats when I feel in a little better headspace. Absolutely no need to stay anywhere else, I pay rent here and I'd feel much worse about the imposition on friends as anything else. Anyway I'll work it out and things will be fine, some tactical avoidance for a while will do the trick and things won't be so 'gah' tomorrow, eh?

Once again cheers.

01:02 / 20.05.07

I am stupid and credulous and weak. Stupid. Credulous. Weak. Stupid. Credulous. Weak.

01:33 / 20.05.07

Well at least you didn't fall over a stone and then have someone post a picture of it on a message board for all to see.

Hope you feel better soon.

02:13 / 20.05.07

Where is that can of Relativs-B-Gon. Where is it.

miss wonderstarr

10:43 / 20.05.07

hello again miserable thread! It's about ten days now until I go back into hospital to have my eye opened up, a couple of titanium plates removed and a new socket inserted. I'm hoping this custom-made mesh "orbit", based on a CAT (I think; could be MRI) scan of the good side of my face and reversed, will fix my eye, make it look the way it did on Aug 31st last year and enable me to close the fucking lid.

Because I'm hoping this will fix me, I feel semi-positive about going into hospital, and all the pre-arrangements (swabs for MRSA, blood tests and so on tomorrow) feel almost like the exciting stuff you do before a holiday. However, I know from experience that it is pretty grim being dosed up on morphine to cover the horrendous pain of having your eye cut open; sitting up all night nauseously because nurses wake you every hour to make sure your eye isn't filling up with blood; showering with drips and taps stuck in your veins, and so on. Not to mention the diet of heavy pills they put you on when you come home, and the exquisite sting of having eye-stitches taken out.

However! I'm here to ask... what do you think is a good attitude to surgery? XK posted something once, here I think, that really inspired me: that ze saw a bout of facial surgery as a Good Pain and was able to enjoy it. The attitude of channelling doomy fatalism into rebellious "last one standing" heroism sounded really powerful, too.

I have been preparing in various ways for this process ~ I've ordered a sort of self-comfort package today, of X-Men 1, 2 and 3 DVDs for me to watch in the week after my op, when I've booked time off work. The equivalent of soft food. I've bought two long books to read during the long hospital nights. And I've been exercising more, running more, toning more ~ more for psychological reasons than anything else, but the feeling that I'm building up a kind of physical fight and resilience makes me feel more positive about putting myself through what, really, is a trauma to the system (I'm sure the human body isn't really meant to be under anesthetic for five hours, cut up, fixed with metal and then doped up on painkillers). I guess it's just a small move to try to reclaim some power, and give myself some agency instead of going into this meekly and weakly.

Any more positive-attitude suggestions would be welcome.

11:44 / 20.05.07

I'm a terrible example (pain scares me, and most of my life I assumed everybody was in minor pain all the time), but a friend of mine is having multiple surgeries, connected with a very long-haul stay in hospitals around the country. He woke up, recently, while they were replacing bone and meat in his leg with wonderful artificial things I'll probably never fully understand, and stayed conscious and relatively un-numbed while they finished. About a half hour, one of the nurses told me, of him lying on a table quietly and periodically making a bad jokes, waiting for them to finish and deliver him to his room. Scared the nurse, apparently. My friend, however, said that when he woke up, he didn't realize it was pain, just something potent. If he thought of it as pain it hurt, but just thinking of it as this feeling moving up his body, it felt really good.

Another friend, having cancerous stuff excised, went from being visibly irritated with the sharp sudden pains she felt after surgery (and treated like they were a malicious act) to deliberately finding them amusing, to the point where she'd giggle after and refer to jolt in Star Trek terms; Ketracel-white.

12:06 / 20.05.07

miss wonderstarr: I'm always wary of offering advice but I have been blessed with lots of time in hospital and so had to get good at this stuff.

Time: I'm still good at doing traffic jams and long train journeys because of all the time I've spent sitting in random medical places waiting for things to happen. Try to get a bit zen about time - the time one has to be there before being able to leave; the time it might take to feel back in control of one's own body... Try to let go of all that.

Second thing: Enjoy whatever is available to be enjoyed to whatever extent it is possible to do so. One of the best things about being very ill for me is the way that time slows down and reality narrows so that I can really enjoy a wisp of a breeze or a pattern on the curtain.

Earphones plus ipod-or-whatever: Especially if you're sharing ward-space. Entertaining yourself is a good thing and so is shutting out unwelcome noise and so is listening to stuff that makes you joyous and/or transports you.

Medical personnel: It's good to have preferences and ask for things to be done in a way with which you feel comfortable. Do keep in mind that despite patients' charters and the like this is still fairly counter-hegemonic and any surprise you encounter from nurse/doctor folks is probably not unwillingness but unfamiliarity with having this kind of conversation. 'I need you to give me a minute please' and 'Do you mind if I have a bit of privacy?' are great, as is 'Please could you clarify that?'. Doing this is, circuitously, good for positive attitude because it can help in the quest to preserve one's own sense of 'personhood'. Doing it while also being kind to the medical person is an artform.
(Having said that, it's hard work resisting hegemony while also recovering from surgery, and sometimes the energy isn't there which is fine too.)

Helps? Not so much?

You sound as though you're preparing really sensibly and wisely.

12:08 / 20.05.07

I'll second the headphones. Zoning out in shared-ward has always proved helpful to me, surgery or otherwise. The curtains don't cut out the sound.

12:55 / 20.05.07

WS: A friend of mine had a reasonably similar problem, ms. Shot out pretty much all the facial structure behind her left eye, leaving her with a caved in socket and jaw. I'm not sure the exact method/number of reconstructive surgery entailed but aesthetically she's perfect (beautiful) these days. I'm not sure if that helps other than sharing a story where its been worth the pain.

I've grown to like my hospital stays. Its pretty much a chance to opt out for a little, womb-like/hermetically sealed, you can really enjoy the non-ness of it all.

+Audiobooks
+Crosswords
+Nintendo DS
+earplugs when not doing anything else
+Explore innerspace
+Sleep
+Try and channel some cat like sense of utter independance, self sufficiency and intractable laziness.

*Good luck and persevere*

(+ty, bear. Made me smile)

miss wonderstarr

14:57 / 20.05.07

This is interesting and valuable stuff, thank you. I guess I'm going into it with a kind of assertive, active attitude, but also preparing time and resources because I know I'll be weak and vulnerable afterwards. While at hospital, I find you have to make yourself pretty helpless and just (like you implied, whistler, I think), accept that you're a "leaf on the wind" in terms of the waiting time, the ferrying from one clinic to another, the passivity with which you have to allow yourself to be invaded or examined by machines and whitecoats. I've sometimes tried a mental exercise of retreating into a sort of... emotional selfhood, trying to detach myself from my body, allowing it to be worked on and manipulated, finding the core of my true identity elsewhere (in my head, my memories.) In fact, one thing I've done during each of my facial-surgery visits is keep a notebook diary. I've found I really get in touch with "Who I Am" when put in that sort of alienating, anxious situation. As if everything else has been stripped away, and all I've got left is my own inner strength. In a way, though it's by no means desirable, it can be quite useful and almost positive. I wouldn't go so far as to say enjoyable.

One of my real fears, worse than going blind after surgery or anything, is waking up midway through. The bastards wheeled me into the theatre and left me gazing at all the knives and stuff last time, before they anaesthetised me. I felt that was pretty horrible: one of the worst five minutes of my life.

Maybe I'm being stupid but I don't like taking personal belongings into hospitals. I try to keep it to a real basic kit: I'm not even taking books I care about. Without locks or anything, I don't really trust the place with my iPod while I'm out of the ward.

I think time is something to really work on: zoning out. And the idea of being more assertive with staff is also important. Last time, a crowd of whitecoats filled my little room and once they had me surrounded on the bed (them standing, me lying in some stupid gown) they started telling me in detail about how they were going to shift the eye muscles around. I actually had to tell them I was going to be sick and didn't want to hear this gory shit. There is a real lack of sensitivity sometimes.

16:58 / 20.05.07

My thoughts are with you, MW.

Just got back from my Mum's, and she's doing okay, although she's got a long way to go before she's back to normal. I didn't want to leave actually as I think she could do with my company.

Fucking work.

We're just waiting on the test results now.

miss wonderstarr

21:05 / 20.05.07

Also when I was writing my first post above, I left Immac on for about 12 minutes. That's like twice as long as you're meant to. So my underarms are suffering.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

23:57 / 20.05.07

Wow. Good thoughts to all of you. I've been not reading the miserable thread lately because I've been feeling a bit blah myself, but may I say it's fantastic to see MW using the miserable thread to de-miserablifying ends.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

00:02 / 21.05.07

Miss W., I can't imagine what it must feel like to be facing all that again, but my thoughts are with you. I'm sure you will emerge from the ordeal looking nothing less that radiant.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

01:57 / 21.05.07

All the best to you, Miss W.

And be careful with that Immac. That's some hefty shit.

12:38 / 21.05.07

We're on "a break"

12:40 / 21.05.07

I wish I could say your armpits are going to hurt the worst. Be okay, Miss W.

14:27 / 21.05.07

Sorry to hear that, Trips

I'm of the opinion that "on a break" usually means you're over it's just that only one of you knows about it, and that's normally the person who suggested it in the first place.

That's not to say that I've never seen a relationship come back after a hiatus, just that it doesn't happen very often, and that it takes a lot of good will, maturity, determination and not a small bit of luck.

If you don't think any of that's really there - really, really there, not just a romantic figment - I'd call it a day.

Remember DIGNITY!

miss wonderstarr

14:37 / 21.05.07

I hope I'm not misusing the miserable thread with my attempts to prepare for surgery and build up my physical and psychic defences. I almost enjoyed my pre-op visit today though. It's surprising the difference it makes if you go into hospital with some knowledge and familiarity; how empowered, rather than vulnerable, it makes you feel. When I went for the same visit, prior to my Sept operation, I came home on the bus feeling spaced-out, sick, cut off from the world because I'd just had to sign a form accepting that I could go blind through a haemorrhage to the eye during surgery. Today I just shrugged it off as I signed the same form. I almost felt on a level with the medics, using their language (orbital floor, zygomatic arch, candesartan).

I would take it to another thread but this one has been and continues to be real useful for me to log this particular story of part of my life. So I hope nobody minds me keeping it going.

14:41 / 21.05.07

Cheers, Boboss and, don't worry, I have my eye on the big D.

The issue is, essentially, that she believes in no-sex-before-marriage which I'm fine with but, over the last few weeks, she's started to feel that, because I've already had sex*, she doesn't think she can fully invest herself in 'us'. Which sucks. We've talked about it at length over coffee but she doesn't know if she can adapt her viewpoint/beliefs. She's willing to give it some time to think about it so, for now, we're going to part for a few weeks and see where things are down the line. Still hurts like a mofo.

It's funny you should mention good will and maturity, what's made me a tiny bit happy is how decent and accomodating both of us have been about this. Hope, as the kids don't say, springs eternal.

* the final revenge!

14:52 / 21.05.07

Well that's good then.

MW, I say keep on in this thread. Glad it's helping. Go you.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:13 / 21.05.07

EXTREME LENIN MUST RETAIN HIS DIGNITY, OR THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON.

Miss W, of course you're not misusing the thread. It's supposed to be for people going through bad times to help themselves through them and maybe get some words of support. You're probably using it better than anyone!

15:17 / 21.05.07

MW, I don't think anyone begrudges you posting in this thread. Keep on, if it helps.

15:54 / 21.05.07

MW, I agree that your use of the thread is probably more accurate/purposeful, and if not, it is accurate and purposeful, and by asking for coping/prep suggestions, you let a little happy business get into the thread, which can't hurt.

ExLenin, here's hoping it works out and the relationship becomes the best it can be of its own thing.

I went through something recently with someone who wanted to get together with me, but was worried because I was kinda floating in open relatonships and they believe in no-heavy-physical-stuff before it's serious. We danced around it for awhile, she was worried I would be disappointed/upset (ignoring how lazy I am about approaching sex), I reminded her we were together a lot without sex coming directly into it, mentioned there wasn't particularly anything different about her projected situation with us together, and the situation we were in anyway, and it seemed to smooth over.

My point is, it worked out, and I hope you two can make whatever your relationship ends up being work as that relationship. No point in trying to make any one fit the shape of any other, after all. We all need some large injections of vitamin D, sometimes, but you seem to be handling it fairly well, from what you've posted on the subject.

18:16 / 22.05.07

I've just been dumped by another friend, just when I thought I couldn't possibly lose any more.

And this is someone I've known for five years, someone I've been very close to, someone who knows what I've been going through lately. He's made it pretty clear that he wants nothing more to do with me. And he didn't even tell me personally.

Right now I regret every single minute I ever spent with him.

I just once, just once in my life, want to meet someone I can trust. Someone who doesn't just leave.

Closed for Business Time

12:24 / 23.05.07

This makes me ineffably sad, scared and angry. Read it. Are we damned? Ask yourself. Are we damning ourselves?

18:52 / 23.05.07

I just once, just once in my life, want to meet someone I can trust. Someone who doesn't just leave.

Ah, mouses.

I heart you. It's sad when people go away but it's so awful when they just keep going away and going away... I know how it is.

/...feels weepy in sympathy.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:43 / 24.05.07

Mice! I'm so sorry.

07:31 / 25.05.07

Sorry about my rather melodramatic post. I read something quite upsetting on someone’s blog and went straight to the miserable thread.

I’ve been contributing to internet forums for almost ten years and I still haven’t learnt these two very basic principles: 1. Think (& calm down) before you post. 2. Don’t post anything you think you might later regret. (There’s also 3. Don’t post anything too personal. But I tend to ignore that one.)

Again, sorry.

08:07 / 25.05.07

I'm setting my orbiting DoomSat to "cuddle" and targetting everyone on this page who's feeling down.

18:13 / 25.05.07

Is is normal to spend 2.5 hours on a Friday evening curled up under your desk at work (literally) from 5 to 7:30 wanting to die and being furious with your boyfriend for organising a pub meet with pals who have specifically gone out of their way to text him with the meet info rather than you because you and them (the pals) are trying to get your relationship back into some sort of acceptable state after months and months of you organising things to do together (with boyfriend) resulting in him constantly saying he's tired or he forgot or he feels too down whilst he's also, during that period, been taking every single opportunity that presents itself to go out on his own with other people that you don't know well enough to organise meets with, his tiredness, forgetfulness and blue mood mysteriously lifting every time? Or am I weird?

I want to stay at work to punish him. This would also punish the pals. I'm fucked up.

Janean Patience

08:50 / 26.05.07

Never contributed to this thread before or shared anything so personal with the wider internet. Got up this morning excited about flying to New York for a week's holiday tomorrow. Checked the flight details, which I've printed out and emailed and everything in the last week, and saw for the first time the flight left today. It left and we've missed it. Bought new flights for £800 we don't have. We're still going but we fucked up so massively. I keep wishing this was a bad dream. It's all my fault.

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