Where To Go From Here.

So. Still very excited about this. Wow. It will be great to have the finished copy in my hands, and I am going to be attacking the mailman on a daily basis until I get mine.

The books are still available, did I mention that? And we can make more, even. You can overturn a cardboard box and sell them in your front yard along with Kool-Aid, if you so desire. I plan to do that myself.

Hell, do that and I'll make you a T-shirt on Cafepress. "I'm Not Just Your Garden-Variety Neurotic Smartass...Either."

Or something. Maybe we could have a contest. Sell ten books and I will send you some free shit.

Sell twenty books and I will hitchhike to your house and perform sexual favors. Sell fifty and I will be your live-in love slave. I'll wear a ball gag and a leather harness and you can smack me on the ass with a riding crop while calling me your little internet slut.

Aaaaaalrighty then.

The doctor visit did not go exceptionally well.

I stumbled into the office, near tears already from a night of zero sleep, a throbbing headache, and pre-doctor nerves that could cut glass, and after the standard five-minute neuro exam that involves balance tests and reflexes and various taps and raps and feats of strength, he sat down and started to write prescriptions.

More fucking drugs.

"So what's going on?? What is causing all this?? Am I having some kind of damn epileptic reaction or something?"

"No." *scribbles*

"Then what-"

"Let me finish my notes." *scribbles*

*sits*

"This is all due to the headaches. We need to treat the headache. I have told you before, this is all due to the headache, and once we treat the headache, everything will fall into place from there. We need to increase the Topam@x again and add another medication, and give it more time."

*teeth-gritting silence*

"This should help. Really, I'm less worried now than I was when you called. They're probably less seizures than spasms."

"I wet my pants."

"Probably a spasm. Just try this for a while and see if it helps."

No tests, nothing.

Forgive me if I feel that this is a bit of a blowoff, and that my cheap-ass Medicaid may be the cause. Falling on the floor and losing consciousness while simultaneously losing control of my bladder, vomiting, and breakdancing just doesn't seem like a fucking spasm to me. Staring off into space and "losing time" doesn't, either.

The man either doesn't give a shit, or my crappy insurance doesn't enable him to give a shit. Something. This just doesn't seem right. I am losing capabilities, and I refuse to believe that this is normal or "just a headache".

The drastic increase in Topam@x may help. It is probably going to leave me pretty damned stoned for a while, but maybe it will help. Even so, no tests? No EEG to see whether there is anything weird going on? No MRI to see whether any damage has occurred?

I just don't understand why the neuro doesn't seem to be taking this seriously, because it seems pretty serious from this end. It feels very serious indeed, and as far as all of this being caused by the headache, I don't get it. I have felt foggy ever since the major (not)seizure, and that can't be right.

The severe headaches began in 2000, and the vision loss began then, too. How is it that this headache, which I have been treated for on and off since the year 2000, has caused vision loss, balance problems, spasms, cognitive problems, temporary paralysis, and all this other blippity blah blah, now including seizures that are apparently not seizures but sure fucking look, feel, and act like seizures, can do all of this? Also, how is it that this headache, this Super-Headache, this migrainous disease that apparently is no big fucking deal, keeps getting progressively worse by the year in spite of the mountainous amount of drugs I am taking??

Is it just me, or does this all seem very counter-productive?

Is it just me, or does it seem like we might be barking up the wrong tree?

After tossing me some samples of a twenty-dollar-per-pill medication that my insurance has since refused to pay for, he informed me that the sharp increase in Topam@x will be good for me, since "you've put on a few pounds, and you could stand to get that off."

Oh, hell no.

True, I have indeed put on a few pounds. Taking large amounts of sedatives and being too jacked up to do much but sit around and eat and sit and sit and eat and sit will do that to you. Should I lose it? Yes, indeedy, and I will, as I generally do. However, when I am going to the neurologist to see a man about a brain, a brain that is fairly fucked, a state of fair fuckdom that has left me very obviously frazzled, I really don't think I need to hear about my fat ass.

I mean, never mind the fact that I'm hobbling in with a cane and am shaking like I have motherfucking Parkinson's, my thighs are getting a little chunky, and that's just not going to fly.

Sometimes I think the doctor is in cahoots with my parents.

Then he looked at me and my short-sleeved shirt and my scarred-up arms and said, "So, are you still seeing that shrink?"

Oh, here we go.

"Yes."

"How often?"

"Biweekly."

"And how is that going?"

"OK, I guess."

"And, the depression?"

"It's not great, you know, but it's OK. I'm OK. I think most of it is largely due to this condition and the fact that I can't-"

"-Because really, I think you get a little worked up, you know. I think you get a little agitated. And I think you get a little nervous. And I think half your balance problems are due to your being afraid. You get nervous."

Well yes, I do get a little nervous. It does make me nervous to walk around when my head tends to connect rather rapidly with walls and floors and other unyielding objects that cause my skull pain.

Somehow I think that this is less of a psychological malady and more, oh, completely fucking rational.

I suppose that once one has been outed as a Person With Psychological Issues, one can never tuck oneself back safely into the closet without doctors throwing jabs every now and then. It's to be expected. Still, I would rather not feel as if every concern and complaint I utter is automatically suspect of being In My Crazy Little Head.

My head is crazy, no doubt. I'll be the first to admit it. I am a first-class, neurotic-ass, sketchy little head case. Sure. Bring your serotonin spray and please don't get within three feet of the cage.

However, this is one area of my life in which I am not allowing my stupid body issues to run the show. If I was, I wouldn't be taking a plethora of medications whose fact sheets screamed "WEIGHT GAIN INCREASED APPETITE BLOATING LETHARGY FATIGUE SOMNOLENCE FAT FAT FATTY FAT". It's been hard.

It's been harder than I care to admit. In the beginning I had to hand over all medications to my mother and ask her to dole them out to me like Nurse Ratched so that I would take them and not pitch them or spit them, puke them, hide them, stuff them into potted plants, or wash them down the drain.

Still, I have taken the useless fucking pills, even though they've almost never worked, even though they've mostly seemed counter-productive at best.

I've managed to change my sleeping patterns, going from a very happy insomniac freak who read a book or two per night and went down as the sun came up to a woman who is out by midnight at the latest and can't make it through twenty pages of a damn comic book.

I've given up the lion's share of my caffeine and aspartame load, and I've even cut down on my smoking quite a damn bit. I am trying, here. It may not always seem that way to the naked eye, and it undoubtedly does not seem that way to my new favorite reader Karen, who feels that DCFS should come and take my son away and lock me in a closet somewhere (heh), but I am indeed trying.

The suggestion of nerves smacked of "Woman, enough with your premenstrual hysteria. Go take a 'lude and a Midol and calm your ass down, you're fine," or perhaps, "Look, Crazy, go get your crazy butt some more Effex0r until you can act properly and stop running into my office at the slightest provocation, because I am a Busy, Busy Man, and your piddly problems are irritating me," and it pissed me off.

Perhaps I am overreacting, and I truly hope that I am.

Either way, the whole thing really left me agitated and wondering whether maybe a second opinion might be the way to go here, even though it is going to be difficult if not impossible to come by due to the fact that Medicaid is not going to take kindly to the idea of yet another expensive neurologist on the tab.

I left the office, biting back both a flood of stupid, stupid, childish tears and a whole big lot of questions that would have no doubt swirled together into one big "WHYYYYYYY???" had I even attempted to verbalize them, and then I went off on DC the entire way home, ranting and raving and screaming and bitching as he soothingly agreed and told me that the doctor was an asshole.

DC is like human Prozac. You'd never think he'd be capable of it, because he's such a road-raging little pissy bitch when he gets going on one of his temper tantrums, but when someone else is having a temper tantrum he's the most understanding person to have around, bar none.

We then went home and had some truly terrifyingly amazing sex, which is better than Prozac, picked up the J-Man, who needed some Prozac after running wild with friends all day, and watched movies and ate ice cream all night, which will probably do nothing for the size of my huge, giant, doctor-frowned-upon ass.

He asked to read this page, so we flipped around for a while, and since he is a vain, egotistical Leo he only wanted to read the shit about himself, of which there isn't very much.

"That wasn't so bad."

"Yeah, but God, half of it was all cheesy and fucking disgustingly sappy."

"Was not."

"Yeah, and I said you were hot, and now you're going to have a swelled head and go around thinking you're hot, and you read the comments, and other people said you were cute, and you're going to really be ridiculous with thinking you're good-looking. Don't go thinking you're all hot shit now."

"Whatever. I have fans."

"No you don't. They were just being nice because they feel sorry for me, because I have an ugly boyfriend."

"WHATEVER."

"Heh. At least I didn't put your naked ass on the internet. Check it out."

"Oh my fucking GOD!"

"I KNOW!!!"

"Holy SHIT. I would KILL HER."

"Yeah. I know. It's great, though."

"If you did that to me I would set up my own page and devote the rest of my life to documenting every embarrassing thing you ever did."

"You're a little late. Anyway, don't go thinking you get to read this all the time, now."

"WHY NOT? What are you writing about me???"

"I don't just write about you. God. I will write more, though. I'll write about how you have some fucked-up OCD shit and have to arrange the condiments on the table at restaurants."

"Shut up."

"And eat toast so that it's a perfect square."

"Shut UP."

"And the lone nose hair."

"SHUTUP."

I'm so glad he doesn't have a stupid web diary.

Late last night after more sex and more sex, which will doubtless be the thing that kills me, because really I am in no shape for this shit, what with the fucked-up brain and the horrible giant ass and all, I lay there twitching and hoping like hell that this doctor isn't just blowing me off and throwing drugs at me to shut me up, because I am kind of enjoying the moments in which I forget about how shitty my brain is working.

I am enjoying lying in DC's arms at night when we're able to steal a night, skin cool from the fan, watching his lips move a little in the candlelight or the brown-gold hair falling over his face.

I am enjoying watching the J-Man in the pool, growing more and more tan with every passing day (how a child of mine, even a half-Cuban child, can be this tan never ceases to amaze me - we compare forearms nightly and he gloats) as he goes a-splishin' and a-splashin' while I sit in the long deck chair that needs new springs (probably due to my horrible giant ass) and read Toni Morrison or just doze. He is stretching toward the sun like the orange tiger lilies in the back yard and is three, four inches taller every day (or maybe I am shrinking in the face of his robust health?). It's amazing to behold.

I rent old movies for the J-Man that don't involve obnoxious cartoon characters in hopes that he will fall in love with the same strange and beautiful things I used to love, and he does - Labyrinth with the lovely, lovely David Bowie in tights and the awesome, awesome hair that I wanted so, so badly, and the glitter! And the eyebrows! And the clothes! And every little girl probably wanted to be Sarah a little, and I guess I did as well, but in my heart of hearts I wanted to be David Bowie too, and still do. Dance, magic, dance! Woo! We love us some Labyrinth and there is some Serious Bowie Get-Down going on Up In Here. The Dark Crystal is in effect, too, which the J-Man likes although everyone is growing really tired of my Skeksie imitation.

Then there is DC again, and the giant eyes with their lineless, limitless green irises swallowing me whole, respite and nepenthe. Please, please, don't stop looking at me when I am tired, sleeping, old, ugly, shattered, dead, just keep looking with those eyes and I will be OK, I have no choice.

Small moments - finding out the book is en route, finding the most kick-ass ice cream in the universe (Baskin Robbin's nutty Coconut, MY GOD, so good), the cat bringing me items to throw for her to fetch while I am confined to the bed during the worst of it, which is hilarious; something small but significant I though I'd lost found, something I thought I'd never have blossoming.

In many ways I'm very, very happy right now. I don't want to be sick. I don't want to be sick and ruin it all, and I don't want to put my life in the hands of someone who doesn't know that all of those things above, these few small puzzle pieces that help to make up my life, are precious to me. They're not essential to the continuation of mankind or crucial to the development of civilization or even all that important to this household, as far as the grand scheme of things; but I would like to know that I will be around to enjoy things like this for a while - not in bed, not passed out on the couch, not in the basement with a cold rag on my face and a howl in my throat, and not in the hospital with a headache-induced stroke.

I would like to know that this is going to get better or at least that it isn't going to keep getting worse, and I would like to lose this undertone of fear.

What it will take to get that accomplished I'm not sure, but I think it starts with a second opinion.

Time to get on the horn and start honking.

Again, if you've received your copy of the book, drop me a line! I'd like to eventually set up some kind of message board type thing for feedback, so hopefully I will have that up soon.

Happy Wednesday.

3:21 p.m. - 2004-07-07
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