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miss wonderstarr
15:05 / 01.09.06
This could go on "angry" thread but I was attacked and (eventually, after being punched to the ground and kicked in the head) robbed of my money and cars by three men last night in a street 2 minutes from my house. So I've just come home from hospital with one eye like a squashed grape, looking like I've had tins of purple and red paint thrown at my face, with a diet of painkillers and an appointment for surgery on Tuesday morning.
Just sucks in a whole lot of ways. Except I didn't let them get my pink ipod. And that hospital staff are so patient and kind they make up for the random malice of some other people ~ and that after banging on two doors I was let into the third house I appealed to, by a lovely young couple who let me bleed on their sofa while they called the cops and ambulance.
miss wonderstarr
15:41 / 01.09.06
Thanks I will be OK. I almost think that being the kind of person who wants to assault and steal from a stranger is karmic punishment enough for the people who did it ~ I can't imagine being that kind of person. Unfortunately it is going to make me feel paranoid in my local area... I have had people try to rob me before, but never quite this violently. Unfortunate also that I've now got 3-4 days to just wait before another bout of hospital.
I am going to take it easy and get back to bed now, thanks for your words though.
miss wonderstarr
10:04 / 03.09.06
Thanks for thinking of me, everyone. I am being looked after as much as I can stand, being an independent and stubborn soul. With my hair unwashed and on end and my face still all clagged with scars and dressing strips, and coloured under the skin with weird purples that bust out at places into dark stars of dry blood, I look quite punk, almost like *koff* almost like *wankers* like Pete off BB.
It is frustrating to be in pain or to be dozy with painkillers, and to not have your money and cards, and have your clothes spoiled etc, but I am healing pretty quickly I think which makes me think I was fit and healthy, and makes me feel better. Also I feel good about not feeling any hatred towards the men who did it.
That criminal compensations site ~ thank you I did look at it on someone else's recommendation and though it says you may have to wait YEARS for any comeback, I am going to get a form from a police station when I can.
Sorry this is more an upbeat post than a miserable one but I don't quite belong on "gives me a happy" thread yet.
miss wonderstarr
10:08 / 03.09.06
robbed of my money and cars
Oh by the way they didn't take my cars. lol! My cards, I meant. (including Nectar, Boots, Cineworld, Rivoli Ballroom Membership... you're welcome to them) I am not a millionaire playgirl with a fleet of vehicles.
miss wonderstarr
16:39 / 03.09.06
Can I ask you a question? How aware were you that an attack was coming? Was there any precusor to it - verbal or eye contact, or was it just out the blue? Feel free not to answer if you wish, or PM me.
I'll answer if you like, of course. The lead-up to the incident is that I was walking quickly home from a railway station, along quiet residential streets at 11.30pm, when at the junction to the next street I saw three men aged about 25-30, standing spaced at intervals across the road almost like wardens or guards, with a kind of possessive/blocking air about them. But there was room to get past them at one side. They were black, and I think the thought crossed my mind ~ no reason to see them as a threat... a group not a gang... these guys are probably just chilling out talking to each other.
I've been attacked on the street before though (not as seriously) and I knew as soon as the one nearest me started walking along quickly with me, making some pretext at conversation, that everything was going to go pretty much the way it did. So, basically as soon as he wouldn't let me get away, it was all ... you know, it was all horribly inevitable really. Although when I realised I was on the floor being kicked in the head, I did think "this is now quite serious."
I might sound quite matter-of-fact but it's not pleasant to think about.
miss wonderstarr
17:20 / 03.09.06
I don't want this thread to become my solo whinging thread either! It's gone on for a page already. Providing I don't have to have any real surgery on Tuesday when I go back into hospital (it is a fracture to the cheekbone somewhere below the eye) I'm sure I'll be fine within a week or so. I do very much appreciate the really kind thoughts from everyone, but don't worry too much ~ I feel quite strong about it all and I am being cared for.
miss wonderstarr
10:18 / 04.09.06
Bit miserable again. The swelling has subsided and now, with greater clarity, I think my cheekbone has been pushed in, "depressed" by a punch or kick; the left side of my face is sagging. Unfortunately I had this happen once before, and the way they fix it is by opening your face up through the mouth ~ maybe I'm just squeamish but I didn't relish it and having it done again is not something I look forward to either. It would another couple of nights in hospital when they find me a bed and book me in... which means waiting a few more days like this, hating the gruesome distortions of my own face, and then long, grim hours in a shared ward waiting to be put under and opened up.
I know that if that's what it takes, then it has to be fixed, of course ~ but also it's the waiting for it to be fixed, and the fact that to fix you, they have to hurt you worse in the short-term.
And after going out for the first time in 3 days, last night ~ going out in a cab to someone's house, coming back by cab ~ I realise I've become incredibly paranoid and fearful of the world outside, especially after dark. I didn't realise that when I was at home for three days solid, in a blur of painkiller dose, comfort food, dozing, taking almost guilty time off, watching my superficial facial injuries heal gratifyingly fast. I didn't realise I'd actually become quite scared of the street and the night. But my body told me yesterday evening that was the case.
I went through this whole thing two years ago, when a guy I was close to ~ who I think had some anger and cocaine problems, to be honest ~ broke my cheekbone. A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking how much better I was now, two years later ~ how glad I was, on this second anniversary of that bad fortnight, that it was all over, that my face was fixed, that I'd fully recovered.
Two years and two weeks after that occasion, I think I'm seeing the same again in my face ~ the same signs. The sagging I tried to tell myself was swelling, but it's not swelling. My cheekbone's gone flat on one side. At least I suppose this time it's not such a shock.
But I don't know what I can do to make sure this never happens to me a third time. I just don't think my spirit could handle this happening a third time, in my whole life. At times I feel like I should never leave the house again ~ and that I don't want anyone I care about to ever leave their house, either. I was recovered, and then through absolutely no fault of my own, walking home, I was fucked up.
So, yeah, I think I'll stay on the miserable thread for a while, if nobody minds.
miss wonderstarr
14:52 / 05.09.06
I don't feel I deserve a reserved space here or anything, but people have been very kind and thoughtful to me on this thread recently and I guess they might want to be updated ~ I hope that doesn't seem at all self-indulgent.
Good: I walked around the streets for about ten minutes on my own during daylight for the first time since Thurs. (This wasn't a deliberate exercise ~ my escort had to go to work).
Bad: I couldn't fully understand the details that the medic muttered blithely to himself, but my cheekbone and eye-socket-bone (? I don't think it even matters that I don't really know) have been pushed (kicked?) into my face.
When will I get surgery, doc?
"We have a three-week window."
Obviously it's the sooner the better, for me, doc.
"Why don't you come to see me again in a week."
I managed to narrow him down to a promise to phone me within a few days with a surgery date.
Really, once you're in hospital and they put you under, it doesn't matter to me much what they do, as long as they fix you and it doesn't hurt too much afterwards. I am squeamish to the extent that I don't really want to know exactly what they're doing. As long as they can do it successfully, and as long as I don't have too many days like this in between, waiting around with my face-bones forced into places they shouldn't be.
There are a lot of good things about my situation. There is one big bad, but there are a lot of consolations and could-have-been-worses.
I am fairly confident it will (or the worst of it will) all be over by a week on Friday, anyway. That's only a fortnight out of my life, total.
miss wonderstarr
16:16 / 11.09.06
Sorry to take this thread back, but they told me today that not only are they going to cut my face "extra-orally" instead of through the mouth ~ this is stupid but I feel having scars across my face is a blow to someone who was always known at least as "quite pretty" ~ but because all the fractures are near the eye, I might lose vision in that eye.
Funny I don't feel anything about it anymore. It has almost gone beyond a joke for me. On the bus home I was thinking I'd better really make the best use of two eyes for what could be their final three days... really look hard at things... but now I feel quite calm about it. Maybe it hasn't computed for me. I almost feel this is an Imaginary Story in comics.
I know they have to tell you everything that might happen, and it doesn't mean it's a huge risk, but still it is a pretty big thing to risk. Of course I signed the consent forms anyway. What else can you do.
At least having one eye wouldn't keep me from doing my job, so I wouldn't lose work or anything. I suppose that's some reassurance.
The doc told me the scar would probably fit into the creases under my eye. I don't have creases under my eye, I told her. (You cheeky mare.) Then I watched silent TV showing 9/11, and kept silent. I thought: I know I'm strong but just how strong is the world asking me to be?
Maybe I'll just get some really nice sunglasses like Matt Murdock.
miss wonderstarr
16:58 / 11.09.06
It's true ~ these will be deliberate scars, not like someone just rashly slashing at me with a knife. I'm sure they will look at me in theatre and say to themselves "this one's a looker, go careful Jim."
I don't know for sure if the loss of sight in left eye is just something they have to say... I didn't ask them for a percentage chance of the risk, and I suppose I didn't want to know if it was a slim or 50:50 option, but it's a bit weird at the best of times to sign your consent to something that says "loss of vision". It's an obvious risk, really, when they are doing so much work around the eye, which is already not properly supported by the "orbit" and hasn't been for 11 days. Needless to say, my eye's now feeling a bit queasy at the thought, whereas before I felt it was fine.
I don't know if I'm dealing really well with this, or in really mild shock. I think I should have a cup of tea and read this whole thread of misfortunes to make me feel better.
It's very kind anyway that so many of you have posted so quickly in response. I still feel guilty about dominating the last couple of pages of this thread, but I do appreciate the support. However, I would hate to prevent anyone else from spilling their misery here just because it doesn't involve eyes.
miss wonderstarr
21:47 / 11.09.06
Thanks for this good advice. I kind of figured they had to say the thing about loss of vision, but I know from experience of previous facial surgery that they don't always say it, and it's a hell of a thing to just be told in conversation. And I was thinking today along the lines you suggest, xk ~ this whole experience is showing me what I can deal with. To be honest, I'm quite impressed with myself for being so calm and for rebounding after every bit of blithely-delivered bad news to a state of relatively-upbeat equilibrium, within a day or so. It's just... what else can you do, really. And other people are suffering far worse than me. Within privileged terms, my experience is a bit of a shocker, but to some people, this kind of shit probably becomes a way of life.
I am surprised I haven't cried (or come remotely close to crying, except during "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" live last week) once... I suppose I am being strong for my family, really. I kind of hope it will come at some point. Maybe when they put me on morphine. If I could do something like putting my fingers down my throat and make myself cry, I might. But I'm not going to try to push it by finding my saddest songs or anything.
miss wonderstarr
10:06 / 18.09.06
Hello everyone. I did post post-op, but I suppose this almost became my pre-surgery thread for a while so it might be the best place to update now. Not because I like to whine but because people were thinking of me and might not want me to just vanish into limbo.
As I think I said elsewhere (a Late Shift I added to), I was apparently a tougher and longer job than the docs anticipated. The surgeon came to see me on Saturday morning and treated me to another faint-inducingly gruesome run-down of exactly what they'd done, and how bad it had looked beforehand. I could, of course, see for myself how bad it looked afterwards. Eye swimming in blood, face ballooned out on one side from the intra-oral incision, steristrips plastered over stitches, stuck down with gunk. In my face, mesh, pins, metal plates.
You know on moisturiser adverts, where they insist that the skin around and under the eye is so delicate it needs special treatment, with super-expen ointments designed just for that area, and very, very light patting with the tip of your little finger as you smooth the stuff in? That's where I was cut open. Perhaps the most sensitive square inch of skin on your whole body (though I can think of alternatives). So you can imagine ~ that smarts.
For some reason too they left the plastic "tap" in the back of my hand and the drip in the back of my wrist for 20 hours, so when they wrenched these inch-long tubes out of my veins on Saturday morning that kind of hurt too. The shower I tried to have half an hour later, one-handed, trying to avoid the reflection of my face in the mirror, was perhaps the most miserable shower of my life.
So for two days now ~ it's hard to keep track of time ~ I have been pretty much hurting. Clogging my body up with antibiotics and painkillers, which seem to make everything taste bitter.
I came to a realisation. I'd been telling myself it would all be sorted out on Thursday, that I only had to wait until Thursday. Face caved in? All be fixed on Thursday. Constant pressure and numbness against the nose? All over on Thursday. I was telling myself that as soon as I went into hospital, it would be over.
I had to tell myself that, I can see. Thinking of it as a two-week process with the Thursday deadline was something I could deal with.
I looked at a calendar last night and realised that all those white, blank days from the 1st of the month up until now were wiped out because of this. And then that all those white blank days until the end of the month were wiped out, too. That September 2006 had been decimated. That my September 2006 had been
turned
into
shit.
Then the thought I had pushed away nudged back: that individuals, other human beings had turned a whole month of my life into shit. That this had been done to me, by people.
I'd been pushing that away because there was no point in anger ~ it was helpless, victim's anger. I pushed it away again. There is no point in entertaining the thought. I'd been thinking of this thing that had happened to me as if it was a force of nature, an act of god, instead of something three human beings did to me. I went back to thinking of it that way. There is no advantage in the alternative.
Last night I considered: this month, this event, might be a decisive landmark in most people's lives, if it happened to them. It was an incident of turning-point, life-changing proportions. I had been playing it down (over in a fortnight, fixed by Thursday) and dealing with it that way. I had been getting through it. But the scale of it ~ my face reconstructed with metal, during 3-4 hours of surgery ~ a whole month written off... my eye almost destroyed... the scale of it was starting to stretch around me, as if I'd discovered its true perspective. I think my bloody eye watered then, with shock and self-pity.
But things always look worse at night.
Today I am getting through it again, hour by hour.
miss wonderstarr
15:25 / 18.09.06
Am I being a bit "bloggy" on here? I don't mean to be bloggy. It struck me re that earlier post that maxillofacial ("max fax"! it sounds very femme. you also get baggy plastic knickers and anti-embolism stockings to wear, along with a backless gown) surgery had made me write like Alan Moore, and not in a good way ~ very melodramatically.
miss wonderstarr
10:15 / 20.09.06
Good points, thank you. I was going to post yesterday about an interesting parallel I'd found to the Temple "fasting" thread, which I read in full ~ about how this kind of lengthy experience involves change to your body and a slightly changed relationship with your body.
Your insides, I mean, as well as the rapidly-mutating canvas of your face (mine has been undergoing a new abstract artwork process ~ just as two and a half weeks ago I watched my eye heal, so now I've been peeling off gunked up steri-strips and looking at the stitches and the incision, and thinking about what's gone on under the skin).
Having taken an unspellable chemical diet of antibiotics and painkillers for a few days solid, my kidneys started to really ache and protest (they are not good kidneys anyway), so I laid off the painkillers. Then at 4am the pain woke me up, and I lay there for a bit thinking "listen to what you body's telling you!", experiencing the twin pulls of pill-processing organs under strain, and the constant tugging and aching around the eye, before making an executive decision and taking half the painkiller dose.
I have been continuing on the minimum painkillers I can manage, since. In a way I'm probably healthier now than I was, as I haven't had much caffeine or alcohol recently. You can get kind of sick of smoothies though.
Anyway my pill-diet ends on Thurs morning, which is also when the stitches come out, and I'm pinning some hopes on the idea that the stitches are part of what's hurting. Sometimes I consider that if in any situation outside this one, people had cut my face open around the eye and in the mouth, shoved metal in and sewn it up, it'd be barbaric torture that you wouldn't expect to really get over within four days.
I don't feel too, too bad so I was avoiding this thread for my own benefit. But I realise it's become a bit of a story now! and that in some ways, people on Barbelith have shared the downs and... downs of that story as it's unfolded over the last almost-3 weeks.
Funnily enough I don't look too bad. It seems like all the pain stuff is inside. I think I'll wait until I feel physically more normal before weighing up how I feel psychologically and emotionally (just now I am still pretty uncomfortable walking down the street, even by day, even in company) and then see what support I should get for that.
miss wonderstarr
19:45 / 21.09.06
Well, I think the story is going to be over soon unless something super-bad happens to me. I had the stitches out today, which hurt like billy-o , but after a couple of hours of extreme tenderness, it seems to have eased off onto a quite OK plateau. The slit under my eye is just astonishingly close to the eye, maybe 3 mm away ~ you wonder with horror what would have happened if the surgeon coughed at the wrong moment ~ which is good in terms of near-invisibility (vain!) but as I said, it's probably one of the most super-sensitive places on your whole body.
I have a totally dead zone on my face, across the cheek and upper lip, but apart from it feeling really weird to touch, and odd when drinking, I guess that's not really an area you need nerves in. The nerves may be killed there permanently; I don't blame them. I looked at a photo I took of my face last week and I was horrified by how I'd become used to something that really looked like a special effect ~ entirely caved and zombie-hollow around the eye. There was a nub of wrong bone sticking out at one point, kind of wedged under the skin... like a rock. I guess that was the corner of the "orbit", the eye-socket bone, at the wrong angle. I honestly don't quite know how I brought myself to wash it every night: although actually I do, thinking about it. I used to tell myself, it's still your face.
And my left eye is swimmy. Again, the "hammock" of muscle, as the registrar explained in grim detail until I almost fainted in front of a group of medico students, was forced and warped under and against those wrong-angled bones. (I'm just sharing the grimness here! I'm v squeamish myself.) My vision kind of pulls focus on the left eye occasionally, but if I give myself rests from reading and so on, it seems alright.
Anyway the good news for me is that I have finished my diet of chemicals and chalk, three huge pills with every meal, and starting now, six days after surgery, I should be able to get my body working on normal things again instead of medical junk. I am feeling more myself already. I sat in my grandparents' garden this afternoon looking up through a leaf arrangement at a sky tinted deeper blue by my sunglasses, and could feel quite content.
Of course this story won't really end as I will just merge back into the broader context of Barbelith, and continue as, always I suppose, a survivor. But I do very much thank everyone who has travelled this with me ~ who have given me support on here and pm ~ as it went down and down and as I started what I hope is a steady climb back to my... dubious former glories.
miss wonderstarr
14:34 / 03.11.06
Hi, miserable thread. You remember me! I had all that stuff going down a couple of months ago about... well, faceknives actually. Face broken by three strangers kicking me in it; rearranged painfully and stitched up by surgeons over 5 hours. Anyway, I know I don't seem miserable when I post about superheroes, but sometimes I feel it, especially in the middle of the night.
However, I was staying well off this thread, being strong, recovering very slowly. Scars healing, swelling possibly going down a bit after 7 weeks; numbness something you can deal with. Still not going out after dark, and very unhappy about even walking home from the train station at 5.30pm these days.
But this week the doc told me he advised that they do the surgery all over again. (Not the cheek admittedly: the eye, where I have a metal plate under the "orbit" and another in the brow bone, and two scars around it).
As I'd begun suspecting, they didn't do a perfect job of it first time round. You can't blame them really, as my face was doubtless swollen and was obviously fucked up, so just getting the eye roughly in position was an achievement. However, roughly in position isn't really good enough as a rest-of-your-life prospect. As my face gets back into shape, my left eye literally looks like the wrong side of Two-Face. The iris is a couple of millimetres lower, the eyelid doesn't shut, the whole shebang bulges out. It looks fucking freakish to me, and even though I accept not everyone will think it's quite so bad, I can't believe everyone doesn't register it at least subconsciously.
The doc confirmed my semi-paranoia anyway, saying he'd have the surgery if I was me, and that the eye is really not in the right position. Which is a good thing ~ better than having him tell me I was imagining it, and leaving me to pay for private cosmetic arrangements.
But this means that I have to go through (almost) all of it again... and it wasn't a nice experience, as I recorded here. The scars are healing now, sure, but they're going to be cut open again in about 5 months. The swelling's kind of getting better, but in 5 months I'm going to have my face opened and wrenched around again. I'm fairly physically strong again now, but I'm going to be pumped full of anaesthetic, then morphine, and stitched up again, and reduced to a wincing, aching, shivering victim for at least another week of post-op recovery. The time in hospital itself, of course, is truly grim... waiting, puking, having taps and tubes shoved in your veins.
And that's assuming the surgery would restore my eye to "normal", ie. make them look similar. Which isn't too much to ask, I think.
So, you know. Not better yet. Psychologically, on another level, I'm still really experiencing knock-on paranoia and anxiety about anyone who looks slightly suspect, and don't much like being out on my own. To a metahuman like me, counselling seems the last option ~ stupidly perhaps I see it as a kind of giving in, a failure to deal on my own ~ but I've got to the stage now when I want to get some. I suppose you can ask your doc to refer you to a counsellor? I can't realistically go on handling all this shit, and I don't like offloading onto people around me... I feel I'm burdening and boring them. I know that's not how it is, but it's how I feel.
miss wonderstarr
21:01 / 03.11.06
Thanks everyone. I will have to read this thread through, to establish if going through my local doc (who is OK) would be the best option, or through Victim Support (whom I haven't contacted before).
I know my feelings about counselling are quite common, and I know the counter-arguments. Maybe I'm just slightly the wrong generation to see counselling as, I don't know, a right everyone deserves, and a support most people might want at some point in their lives, rather than an admission of "defeat". I know it's not that, really, but another part of me says it is. When I was growing up, only people like Woody Allen saw counsellors. Americans, neurotics and rich people.
Apparently gangsters have therapy these days though.
Yeah, I'm sure a 2nd bout of surgery will upgrade me to some extent... it couldn't make things worse (well, it could I expect. You have to sign that thing saying you accept you could go blind) though I'm not sure I could get a guarantee that it would get me back to "normal". I just kind of wish I was my normal, mostly-symmetrical self. If I have to get cut up and have metal replaced in my face to get closer to that, then yeah it's the best option, but I... kind of wish this had never happened in the first place. My life "before" 1 September (how sad to see your life in terms of before and after, like that) wasn't perfect at all, but at least I had the face I was born for, what God or genetics gave me, rather than a face badly smashed in and imperfectly reconstructed.
miss wonderstarr
16:12 / 17.11.06
Hello miserable thread. This isn't really a miserable post, but an update. I got to see my medico today and asked to be referred to a counsellor. He was actually really nice about it, incredibly decent and took just the right tone: he told me he wanted to see me again first to get to know me better, rather than make a recommendation based on ten minutes. He was the appropriate combination of grave and sympathetic, and most useful of all, I think, seemed to understand where I was coming from when I said counselling was far from my first and easiest option, and that I'd waited two and a half months before doing this because it wasn't really my "way", but I wanted to take this stuff outside my immediate social circle. As a guy in his late 50s I think he could probably identify with that himself.
Anyway, he said there were a few different possible angles we could take (again, a decent way of talking about it) ~ mental health, or post-traumatic stress. I didn't mind that, because it made me feel like a kind of vet. Not a pussy-cat doctor; an ex-soldier.
Then this afternoon my boss phoned to discuss a secret promotion he wanted to sort out for me. A lot more work and duty of course, and I'd have to apply for it, but it would be "manicured" for me. (I'm not sure if that's the word he meant.) So... not a bad day's result, all told.
Oh and in between I sat in Tiffany & Co. Audrey Hepburn was right about that. You do feel nothing bad could happen.
miss wonderstarr
18:49 / 04.12.06
My doc saw me for all of five minutes on Friday and palmed me off with some form designed to assess whether I'm depressed. I told him at a glance I could fill it in on the spot, but he wanted me to take it away. Although this made me feel even more palmed off, actually it was quite useful ~ in a depressing way ~ because every day I keep scribbling out the ticks under "2" (= I feel this bad thing some days) and ticking again under "3" (= I feel this more than half the days), with some of the categories edging towards 3 (= nearly all the time).
So my form looks like something James Dean or Kurt Cobain would have scrawled ~ it looks like a depressed person's form.
Doc asked me if I felt I was depressed. I said I would hesitated to call it that, because I felt the term was used too casually and has a strict medical definition. He thought that was fair enough. However, I think I am now coming under the medical definition. It sucks! It actually feels like... a black heavy thing wrapping around you and sucking the energy, pushing you down. Like a monster not part of you.
Ironically, I suspect that though a lot of me is pissed off cause I think I should be "strong" enough to resist it, a small part of me is probably almost objectively interested in the changes I'm going through.
I don't know why I'm feeling worse now. It feels as though it's connected to the cold and the early nights, but maybe that's just me trying to make some conceptual sense of it. Maybe it's because it's been three months and my eye is still ghastly deformed (as of course it will remain) and I've still got the surgery to go through again, and I still feel horrible when I'm on the street after dusk. And individuals did this to me.
The worst is ~ well, not the worst perhaps, but a new unwelcome addition ~ people at work have now been commenting that I seem down. Work had been my focus and positive place ~ a zone where I was useful, responsible, smart, competent. Now it seems my mask is slipping there.
miss wonderstarr
19:03 / 04.12.06
Gosh I should have done some research.
Depression Basics
Some people say that depression feels like a black curtain of despair coming down over their lives. Many people feel like they have no energy and can't concentrate. Others feel irritable all the time for no apparent reason. The symptoms vary from person to person, but if you feel "down" for more than two weeks, and these feelings are interfering with your daily life, you may be clinically depressed.
I feel kind of "genuine" now!
miss wonderstarr
19:11 / 04.12.06
I wonder why I never actually typed "depression" into Google before. It is like seeing myself described there in detail.
miss wonderstarr
20:46 / 04.12.06
I don't know... it feels like it's not "me" doing it, but the world doing it to me. Like it's not within my power. Maybe that's really shifting responsibility, but I feel like the world would have to change for me to feel better: I was OK ~ I was fine! ~ and this was done to me.
The kicker is that the worse I feel, the more I feel that all this shit has been done to me, that I'm being assaulted again, repeatedly, in different and deeper ways, month upon month, as if ripples are circling out from the first explosion that smashed my face and eye, and keep hitting me again and again, months later. So everything bad that happens is like that incident doing it to me again and again... beating me again and again.
Now I know the positive response would be "I won't let that kind of shit beat me." I have been trying so hard to take that fighting attitude. I guess it's as though suddenly it's tipped the balance, and the walls are breached, and... black water's flooding in, or Orcs are storming the human stronghold with the defence finally breaking down. (I played the Two Towers PS2 game last night. It made me feel quite sad!)
miss wonderstarr
21:30 / 04.12.06
Thanks for those posts. I will read them and take them in properly.
Meanwhile I'm digging the internet confirmations I've found.
Online Depression Screening Test
Brought to you by the
NYU Department of Psychiatry
Your answers show the presence of prominent depressive symptoms.
Seriously it is better somehow to feel you've got something "genuine" and real, even though I wouldn't necessarily want to broadcast it (and wouldn't want to reveal it at work, which is why the incidents above troubled me, as though it's seeping through. I don't think a reputation for depression would really help me at work. I know it shouldn't prejudice anyone, but I think it would.) More secret identity stuff. Sometimes I wonder what structures I'd apply to make sense of my life if I hadn't read superhero comics for most of it.
I do feel like a VET somehow, like a survivor of the war against crime. Or the war of crime against me (two burglaries, two car robberies, three attempted muggings, two serious assaults).
Maybe whatever helps me make sense of it and feel a bit better is worth keeping. If it makes me feel a little more deserving of the label and helps me make sense of (helps me justify) the way I'm feeling to consider myself as a war veteran, then I guess, stupid as it may seem, I should stick with that.
Posting on here has helped too. Making a small kind of "art" out of all this crap.
miss wonderstarr
21:40 / 04.12.06
I also have a bit of trouble convincing myself that I should feel this bad. I kind of thought I'd get over it a while back. (The ongoing eye stuff... the fact that the eye is fucked and needs more ops is maybe one of the main factors that refuses me any closure). I mean, a guy I know saw his wife die this year. I walked past his office, with the door ajar, and saw him in there on his own on my way out of work. Whenever I see him, I think he's dealing with something way worse than me. I know it shouldn't work on a scale, but things like that make me resist the right to feel sorry for myself, or proud of myself for, you know, surviving at all.
And because I've been trying to deal with it, I think people around me mostly think it wasn't such a big deal, too. Which is what I wanted, cause I got tired very soon of people asking "how are you DOING" and not wanting a quick "fine!" but a full update. I don't want to be viewed as a victim. But the other side of that is, everyone outside my very immediate circle thinks I'm probably over it and dealing with it incredibly well, and that maybe it wasn't such a huge thing in the first place.
Well... clearly some thinking to do about this. I guess the doc will look at my form and accept that I'm a genuine case, and then I'll have to wait for some medicine or counselling or both.
miss wonderstarr
19:38 / 06.12.06
It seems those depression forms are quite "on-trend" at the moment. After seeing the doc on Friday with my form I am going to buy some clothes, have a manicure, see if I can get a massage, because after all that's what I'd tell a friend to do if they were going to the doc about depression. Oh yes.
miss wonderstarr
10:12 / 08.12.06
ha ha the doc has read my form and referred me to a "walk-in clinic" in the area of South London with the 3rd highest level of muggings, stabbings and shootings. Then I walked away from the doc's muttering to myself "fucking mental health...I'm not a fucking mental health case" and wanting to hit myself in the side of the head with my left fist, the one with the ring on ~ until I realised I looked exactly like a mental health case, and laughed so hollowly it was like falling down a well.
miss wonderstarr
10:12 / 08.12.06
If I feel less mental in an hour I will still go shopping.
miss wonderstarr
16:29 / 08.12.06
I ordered something pink from Pink, but it felt like pretending. Every time I plan something for the new year I feel I might not be here for it ~ that I am going to skip out and not be around to collect on it. Today I can muster up a front of positive energy for ten minutes at a time. The rest of the time I felt I was walking like a ghost. Dressed entirely in grey, though I only realised that later; it wasn't planned. Walking through malls. Walking past Christmas displays and people. Thinking about walking off a bridge into water, or in front of a train. Feeling like I was already dead.
miss wonderstarr
16:37 / 08.12.06
I almost wanted to cry in the grey cavern of a tube station (and I never cry). I wanted to curl up in a cinema and lie down until I was discovered. I am in fog. My new passport photo, stuck with me for the next ten years, obviously features my fucked eye. My curfew starts about now every day, at 3.30. My outside world ends about now.
Sorry but I just don't have anywhere else convenient to write this shit down.
miss wonderstarr
02:22 / 09.12.06
Thanks for those posts and sorry if I caused an awful lot of concern. I was going through a low, and like I said, there is no other obvious place for me to get it out ~ I don't have a blog or anything and I don't find it as easy to tell anyone around me. It comes out too upset or angry at them, and I usually feel more frustrated because I can't quite make them understand or get the response I wanted.
I have certainly experienced a slump in the last week. This ironic result, after 3 weeks of patiently seeing the doc, that my "prize" is a walk-in mental health clinic in an area I'd far rather avoid ~ that the early morning surgery appts and the questionnaire won me the right to join anyone wandering in off the street ~ knocked me down further. And the whole passport photo business was just like seeing my current moment frozen as "me" for ten years.
I have felt like hitting and hurting things including myself. I found myself looking at knives and suddenly realising in surprise that I'd been idly considering how I'd stick one in my stomach. I've never done that kind of thing before so I have no history of self-harm and it's a line I wouldn't cross lightly, but it is certainly coming to mind as almost a reasonable-seeming thing to do now.
But... I haven't posted much on here when I feel OK. I have only been posting when I feel a need to spill the bad stuff. What I wrote above was like a dip to minus 8, when I'm normally at something like minus 4 (with minus 10 being despairing, zero being more like my old self).
So it wasn't invented, exaggerated or entirely exceptional, but it wasn't how I feel all the time. I don't think I am genuinely on the brink of harming myself. But I really am in some kind of psychological trouble, I think. It's really quite astounding the way this thread bears detailed, real-time witness to my decline, through various little landmarks ~ from the day after it happened, to all the minor disappointments, hardships and unpleasant surprises that have sent me further down. My posts on this thread describe the disintegration of someone whole and happy into this undermined, semi-disintegrated state I now occupy.
I did want to express how I felt, but I didn't want to really worry anyone. Well, maybe I did want a bit of attention too, and maybe that was irresponsible. I feel more stable and alive now, though of course sub-normal, as usual. Anyway I will read the thoughtful messages to me above, properly, and consider what you've said.
miss wonderstarr
02:24 / 09.12.06
a near constant desire to self harm and just feel something?
I really didn't understand this impulse before, and now I really do.
miss wonderstarr
15:23 / 09.12.06
I feel kind of better today, thanks. Don't much know why. I did a load of exercise, press-ups like at cheerleader camp, and that "hurt" in a useful way.
Today I feel like if the stupid doc and mental health system is going to waste my time, I will just sort myself out. Next time I feel like I did yesterday, I think I'll just call Samaritans.
Thanks again for the care and support everyone ~ I know it's genuine and it surprises me (in a good way of course) that I'm enough of a presence here for people to really be concerned and want me to stay around. I'm more like on minus 2, today.
miss wonderstarr
12:58 / 10.12.06
Last night I watched Rambo: First Blood and actually identified with troubled depressive Rambo! (who is, I realised, a precursor of and probably major influence on Jack Reacher.) Like Rambo, I am going for a run today. I used to run the streets maybe five days a week, even after dark ~ I figured I was going with a power that would stop anyone from giving me any hassle. Since the "incident" I've only managed once a week, during Sunday daylight hours, but it is a run to and all around a park, including big hills, so I think it does some good. It keeps you in touch with the changing seasons and the shifts in nature, standing on top of a hill, tramping on cold mud, plowing through clouds of your own breath.
You know it struck me ~ before going to the doc I actually felt generally better. Since telling my family about the depression tick-list and so on, I get my mum phoning up all worried and about to cancel holidays so she can come and look after me, and making well-meaning but not-so-helpful suggestions. I don't feel better at all now I've been diagnosed depressed. Now everyone who knows is treating me like a china-doll case. "You're ILL, you have to get better!" Christ! Of course they mean it for the best, but being stuck in some national health marble-run or mousetrap-game, sent semi-competently from one agency to the next like a helpless patient, is making me feel more like a victim.
Nevertheless this is just how I feel at minus~two on my made-up scale.
miss wonderstarr
15:10 / 10.12.06
Exercise! the good type of self-harm!
miss wonderstarr
22:01 / 11.12.06
~~~~~
I am going to try the mental health "walk-in" tomorrow, as recommended, and see how it works out for me. I've looked it up online and it doesn't look quite as shabbily slapdash as I'd imagined, ie. it does have five proper psychotherapists or something.
I honestly feel my physical injury ~ my eye which was operated on because it had to be done within a certain window, but which they have positioned grotesquely wrong ~ is a big factor in how I feel emotionally. My eye has to be sorted out before I can (literally really) feel like myself. In the meantime the battle is not to get so low that I want to damage myself, or damage people around me with my problems and reactions, or damage my lifestyle because I can't work properly... things like that. This is still going to be a limbo for me but it's how I handle this unpleasant in-between period that counts.
Maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on THE EYEBALL... honestly though, if it was you. If your eye looked like Harvey Dent's bad side. If it can be fixed, I think I can get normal. If not, then honestly, I really don't know how I could go through life with such a fucked-up deformity. I know that's probably vain and trivial, but it's very hard to look at yourself in the mirror and feel disgusted.
miss wonderstarr
18:24 / 12.12.06
That all seems very true, xk. My "mental health clinic" experience today was a dry joke ~ it was some frosted-glass, barred-window institutional block down some dodgy backstreets. I had to go lamely up to the counter in a semi-crowded waiting room and say "my doctor told me to come here... about depression."
She told me they only had one "person" in today ~ I guess this was one therapist or whatever ~ and she was still seeing her first "person" (patient I guess), so they wouldn't be able to see me today. Come back Thursday!
Like many people, I have a job that doesn't permit me to jaunt around to mental health clinics twice in a week. So I don't think I'll be going back. I got a pretty bad feeling about it, to be honest. The whole routine with the doctor and his referrals was making me feel too much like a passive victim ~ and making me dependent on a health system that clearly isn't up to sorting me out or supporting me. I guess it was good to do it, but it wasn't making me feel better.
miss wonderstarr
12:40 / 16.12.06
thanks everyone. I am keeping up the good fight. Had some more passport photos done yesterday after having my hair cut ~ ten years of presenting myself to customs looking like a cubist-eyed, new romantic style soldier but it's better than the snaps I had in the middle of depressive slump a week ago. Now my grandma's phoning me saying she wants to pay for me to have therapy. I mean I count myself lucky to even have one grandma of course, but... you know, it's the kind of phone call people get in Woody Allen movies. I said I'd think about it. I guess I can't say I'll take the money instead and buy eyepatches or something.
miss wonderstarr
13:58 / 22.02.07
I think I owe it to this thread to post something off-topic. It was around December, I think, that I hit one of the deepest emotional lows of my life. There was one Friday I posted here feeling like I was 80% dead and might as well go the rest of the way. A couple of times shortly after that, I was really close to self-harm, something I'd never done before.
I'd like to thank those who posted then for your support and... your faith, really. I think it was id's post in particular that ze would be honored to meet me one day that made me feel more worthwhile in a significant way ~ that someone online could feel that about me.
There's no physical change to my cubist eye, but after several more trips to the medics, or more accurately a series of waiting rooms, I am on course to getting a custom-made mold for my bad eye so the socket will be the same size and shape as the left. Of course, they have to open me up to fit that, so the same old story of drips, jabs, stitches, morphine, scars and so on; but it's surprising how positive a person can feel about getting surgery, in the right context. The doc said it might not get me 100% back to the way I was, but it will be an improvement. The fuck-off huge frankenstein plate in my eyebrow, with actual nails in it, will also be removed. Might be able to shut my eyelid normally after that.
Anyway. When counselling let me down, I had to fix myself up, and actually it was liberating to know I couldn't rely on the health service. I realised I had to do what I've always done and draw on my own personal strength and resources. I haven't felt anything like that low, since late December.
Maybe I'll update again when my eye gets sliced open once more but I wanted to report something positive, and to show that this thread genuinely helps people.
miss wonderstarr
14:32 / 22.02.07
I also want to tell everyone who is low on here to hold on of course, and to accept the love, support and advice of the good people helping you out on this thread. I do think it can help. The posts and private messages I received because of my contributions to this thread genuinely bolstered me through a hard time.
miss wonderstarr
22:21 / 22.02.07
The physical thing is still very much ongoing, but I am way more emotionally stable and positive. I feel I can already count this as an achievement to be proud of in my life ~ a positive reflection of who I am, what I can deal with, what I can handle ~ rather than a horrendous monument (I'd been thinking I could only ever look back at 2006 as "that year everything was ruined"). Of course, surgery is miserable, painful, bleak and potentially dangerous, and I am not really under the illusion that it will repair me 100%, but to be honest I am quite proud of myself for climbing back out of the pit.
miss wonderstarr
23:27 / 24.04.07
This isn't so much miserable for me as beyond-grim-into-absurd, right now. But I feel like writing it down.
I've had this incurable, life-threatening kidney disease all my life. The "incurable", "life-threatening" bits are official tags that again, almost make me laugh because they sound so grim, but are true. As of today the clinic is also calling it "chronic".
Anyway, generally it has just been something I knew I had, which every so often has caused me some trouble ~ with the prospect of dialysis and transplant as some inevitable shadow in the future that I didn't think about closely.
This year I think it's all going on a bit of a slide. My kidney function has declined 5% (from 60 to 55) in 6 months, a rate which by my maths would get me down to a problem 20% in 3.5 years. My blood pressure is high enough to worry the docs. I've got an almost constant vague ache in the kidneys, less than "pain" most of the time, more like "unpleasant awareness".
Today, getting fed up of this notion that you wait until your kidneys have fucked up down to 20%, then hook up to a machine and wait for a major operation, I asked if you couldn't take control of this process and have the bastard organs out pre-emptively. They are "massive" (technical term again) with cysts that have spread to liver and pancreas. They are, in my mind, alien monsters in my body. A normal healthy person's insides are obviously no oil painting, but mine must look like a fucking surrealist nightmare. WORSE YET my massive kidneys are starting to make me feel fat.
"Do you notice your kidneys pushing your belly out?" she asks cheerfully.
"I thought I was just putting on weight."
"No, that's your kidneys pushing at your stomach!"
"... oh, OK."
Anyway, today after a lifetime of pushing away this "transplant" idea constantly ahead of me into the future ~ that future being at first long-term, then creeping up to middle-term or even potentially fairly-near term, they told me the truth about transplants ~ the sort of thing I could have looked up online and which I'm sure everyone else knows.
(By the way, dialysis isn't so bad apparently, you just have to have a fucking machine in your house and sit hooked up to it every night! "Most people on dialysis have a... an OK sort of life, not too terrible!"
I wish I'd never asked about that, either. But doc, I don't want to be that kind of transhuman ~ I want to be the groovy type of replicant, not someone who sits with tubes coming out of them and into some big medical kit.)
Here's the story. My body is fine with the monster diseased kidneys spreading cysts over other organs. However, it would constantly try to reject a new kidney. For the rest of my life! So they'd put me on immuno-suppressants for life, which would lower my resistance to the new kidney, and to every other infection and illness. Specifically, cancer. But never mind, the doc said, with that offhand pragmatism they have ~ skin cancer you'd notice pretty quickly on your face, or you could get someone to check your back regularly. They'd screen you regularly for bowel cancer, as you'd be going into hospital regularly for the rest of your life.
And there was me stupidly thinking of it as transplant, then all sorted out with a new existence. The truth is that they don't give you a transplant until not having one would be a worse option than signicantly lowering your resistance to bowel cancer.
"Like the lesser of two evils," I helpfully offered.
She beamed. "Yes!"
Like I say, it's almost too ridiculous to feel bad about. I'm one of those squeamish people who tries not to think about what's going on in their body, and doesn't want the details of operations, so I've just never asked until now. And the answer is the kind of mean joke you can only raise your eyebrows and shake your head at.
"Oh yeah, and there's a 50% chance I'd pass this down to any children I had, right?"
"That's right!" Brightly.
OK thanks... bye!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
miss wonderstarr
23:41 / 24.04.07
The truth is that rather than miserable I feel a bit stupid for not finding out about this before.
And that I'm pretty washed-up, health wise. A surrealist left eye and H R Giger internal organs. I feel bad about this the way I'd feel bad about anything untidy, messy and broken. That's why I asked the doc today ~ I thought that despite the unpleasantness of a major operation, it might be better to get it over with and have it fixed, and put it all in the past.
I suppose the bottom line is that she told me it won't ever actually be fixed, even post-op: I will always be fucked, health-wise. It won't ever all be in the past ~ it'll always be ongoing. I'll always be going into clinics for screenings and always taking pills, post-op just the same as I am now, pre-op. That's the new thing I learned today.
To be honest it makes me feel like, rather than decline into one or other form of half-life, I might as well die at age 50. Maybe I am more affected by this than I thought. Maybe it's that I've just had a whisky.
miss wonderstarr
23:44 / 24.04.07
Thank you Olulabelle. I don't know why I write this stuff on here really, except that it just helps to have somewhere to write it ~ and it helps to make something, you know, positive ~ a little bit of writing, a couple of decent turns of phrase ~ out of this kind of hopeless, headshaking prospect.
miss wonderstarr
23:48 / 24.04.07
And Stoatie. Thanks!
It's not all bad. It makes me want to have a worthwhile and fun life. It makes me want to cut my life short before all the bad shit really kicks in, but that's just a fantasy on my part, I expect. It just makes me feel better to think I have some control, and that I could decide to live a really good 45 or 50 years, then just draw a line under my time on the planet. I doubt I'd do that, but it helps me to think I have some decision, some agency.
I'm going to duck out of this thread now before it becomes a(nother) wonderstarr whinge-fest
miss wonderstarr
13:31 / 25.04.07
Thanks guys ~ it still makes me smile a bit that the disease PKD is of course the name of the author of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"
The idea of kidneys being cloned from my own genes seems the most positive option, but I don't know how close they are to doing that: otherwise, it really does seem like going from one relative misery to another, different but equal misery.
It makes me feel a bit sad to be in the kind of situation where people cheer you up with stories of someone similar who has an OK sort of life, and can do most stuff! and most of the time, is mostly normal and seems quite happy! That's not to be ungrateful at all to anyone on this thread; it's just honest, and selfish, that I feel it's a shame I'm destined to have this kind of chin-up, it could be worse, you'll only be on a machine for 2 hours a day, and most people in your situation can still keep a job type of lifestyle.
It could be worse, and by the sounds of it, it's just long-term inconvenience, usually-bearable pain, and mildly upsetting, low-level miserable medical involvement for the rest of my life rather than anything more severe and damaging, but I still feel a bit... pissed off about it.
I do feel that it's quite positive to try to make the most of your life while you're still basically OK, if you know your quality of life is probably going to deteriorate. And it's no doubt better to know well in advance, so you can do all that stuff like write novels (although actually, writing is probably one of the key things you could still do while in and out of hospital and hooked up to machines.)
Thanks again everyone, I shall re-read some of the longer comments and advice.
miss wonderstarr
19:44 / 25.04.07
I have the most amazing ego I think: I am determined that some basic sense of self will pull me through, and that I should do it with as much style as I can manage. I believe superhero comics are to blame.
Anyway I feel better today, thanks everyone.
miss wonderstarr
13:43 / 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.
miss wonderstarr
17:57 / 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.
miss wonderstarr
00:05 / 21.05.07
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.
miss wonderstarr
17:37 / 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.
miss wonderstarr
09:51 / 31.05.07
Well, guys, I'm going in. My next eye operation should be first thing tomorrow, so I am expecting a call this morning to tell me when to arrive at the ward today. I was almost (almost) looking forward to it, earlier in the week, because of the (I hope) positive and long-awaited outcome, but now it's closing in and getting a whole lot scarier. Some aspects of it really hurt, last time.
But you have to suffer to be pretty. I'd be glad to think some of you are thinking of me as I try to sleep in the ward tonight, and as I go thru it tomorrow.
miss wonderstarr
18:07 / 02.06.07
thanks guys. It wasn't too awful ~ a benefit of having had similar ops three times before is that I was able to be more pro-active and politely assertive, because you realise the ward staff keep contradicting themselves and each other, and aren't sure what's meant to be going on, and that you have to sometimes take things into your own hands. So in a real What Would Reacher Do move this morning I sneaked off (bleary, unsteady) to demand my own medication from the pharmacy instead of waiting 3 hrs for a porter to bring it. Little things like that help you feel more in control of a situation where you're mostly very vulnerable.
spent most of yesterday in and out of drugged sleep, on mixed ward with extremely noisy visitors and a burberry boy opposite shouting into his phone ("MUM! bring me some fuckin food, the shit they've got here's orrible!" "OI! how's you, boy? I'm in the fucken HOSPITAL innit? Yeah it's shit, full of old people!") complaining to the nurses ("WHY? WHY? can't I wear me own clothes? WHY? I ain't wearin that") or playing GTA Vice City on ps portable ("YOU FUCK WITH ME, I BREAK YOU! BRAPBRAPBRAP buddabudda budda".)
oh well it's all good for the novel I'm sure!
left eye is bruised to hell again, swelled up, bloody, stiched, so I have no way of knowing if it's ultimately improved, but you have to hope so. If I try to see with both eyes, I get such double vision that two pills on the palm of my hand look like four equally-solid pills, so I'm having to just use the good eye and cover the other.
antibiotics, anti-nausea chemicals, morphine, painkillers currently feel like they're seeping out of my pores, making my mouth taste weird and my body smell odd.
however... that's over for now, again. I can only hope it is finally sorted. thanks it was very nice to see people's kind thoughts on my return |
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