Sunday March 21, 2004: close to the fire
It's been a quiet few weeks.
Well, not loud on the personal-writing front, anyway. My LJ has largely been a collection of gaming writing, as we work our way to the conclusion of the story and I write down a bunch of it, because I'm also beginning to write the start of the story. By the time I get back to where we are now, I'm likely to have forgotten most everything we did, so I'm trying to keep it current now.
But, on the "everything else" front...it's been a little bit quiet.
Sort of.
See, about a year ago, I found out that my cervix wasn't going to get into Harvard. (This is a code phrase for "I came back with a slightly abnormal Pap smear".) Six months later, my Pap came back clear.
In February, I went in for a routine checkup, and found out that the abnormality was back, and worse this time. Bad enough that they weren't going to wait and see what it did, they were going to treat it as soon as they could.
Which is how, on St. Patrick's Day, I found myself in the Surgery Center at the Polyclinic, an IV running into my hand, the elbow tingling as they ran drugs into me to put me to sleep.
I'd been in the Surgery Center before, so it wasn't a strange enviornment, which was good. They did a LEEP, which basically means they took the skin off of my cervix with an electrified loop. I woke up, and there were warm blankets and nice people and toast with jam. Fortunately, I react reasonably well to anesthesia these days, and so about a half hour after I woke up I was all ready to walk around. Not that they let me up for another twenty minutes, but I was pretty much ready to go. I craned my head and watched my vital signs on the minitor, experimented with raising and lowering my heart rate, fiddled with the blood pressure cuff, and generally acted sort of bored.
They *almost* didn't let me get up, because my blood pressure was the lowest I'd ever seen it--98/38. (I usually run 115/68ish.)
The nurse, coming by to check on me, asked me if I was a runner. "Um, yes, why?"
"Oh, usually the people we get in here with resting heart rates below 50 are."
They finally let me up, my blood pressure went up enough for them to consider me good for walking around, and Bryan and Laura had arrived to pick me up a few minutes earlier, so I went down to their house. There was pho, and then I spent the rest of the day alternately napping and watching TV and snuggling. And in the evening, I was feeling pretty good, so there was conveyer belt sushi. Greg joined us for that, as well, which was nifty.
I felt very loved and well taken care of. I still do, as a matter of fact. They're both so sweet to me, and I'm starting to actually trust that's not going to suddenly change.
I'm not used to stability. I keep coming up against places where I have a lot more baggage than I realize; reactions that I'm waiting for and just don't get, reflexes that only push against thin air. And I wait for some of my own issues to kick in, and they're just...not. My social energy has remained consistently high, I descended into depression but only slightly and I've since wandered back out, and I've gotten a few things straightened out in my head.
It's funny, how you can go along for years beleiving that what you're doing is all right, and then look back later and go, "Actually, I was drowning all that time...and not in a good way."
So. We start from here, start from the good core of things--my family, my loves, the ghosts of my past that mostly stay in their boxes these days, my dreams and hopes for the future.
And spring is finally here.
Let's see what happens this year, shall we?
On Valentine's Day, we took family pictures.
A few of my favorites:
Bryan, me, Laura, Greg
Graham and Bryan fiddle with the cameras
Laura, Bryan, and me
Laura and I
Bryan and I
I'm glad we got to have the picture session. Now I want pictures of the *rest* of us. Muahahahaha. Nobody can escape my camera! Or, er, something.
I'm healing. I keep being ambushed by naps, but this is actually a good thing; it means that my body's actually for once demanding the rest it needs to recover from something. As far as I can tell, the healing process from the LEEP is going stunningly well. I'm not happy about that "full pelvic rest for two weeks" thing, becuase it means exactly what you think it might mean. Not only no penetration of any sort, but no orgasms at all.
Wow, I'm going to be cranky by the time I'm done with the two weeks. I can already tell. What with spring finally being here, my libido's wandering up and saying hello, and i'm having to go, "hey could you wait for another week and a half?"
The Wednedsday that I'm finally off pelvic rest should be entertaining, though.
Today, I'm baking corn muffins in the morning and then going down to Laura and Bryan's for gaming. We're having ribs tonight, which should be good--Laura and I are dangerous when we watch Good Eats together. We were sitting around, watching Alton Brown make potato salad and then ribs, mmmm'ing along and Laura said, "Hey, I think we have a menu for Sunday."
And, lo, we did.
I've been distributing copies of the mix CD trilogy I made between November and February, and the reactions have been universally good. I'm pleased; I like all three of them, and the test is that I can put any one of them in the CD player in the car and listen to it all the way though. There are no songs I regret putting on, nothing I'd change. It's been a long time since I made one CD I liked so well, much less three.
The music part of my brain is small, warped, and quiet; but it what it does it does well.
It's funny, to rediscover that, along with so many other things.
I feel like, in some way, I'm starting to become who I already am. The winter has been a long slow awakening, and now I come to spring and I'm really most excellently happy. I keep thinking, "I can't possibly be this lucky, can I...?"
And that silent voice that is so familiar to me laughs at me, and says but you are.
And she's right.
One last note:
Sometimes, it's the little things that make me happy.
Sitting on the edge of my bathtub on the first really nice day of spring, mother-naked, eating a mango. The juice running down my face and chest, drying a little in the breeze from the open window.
Mmmmmmmmmmm.
Well, not loud on the personal-writing front, anyway. My LJ has largely been a collection of gaming writing, as we work our way to the conclusion of the story and I write down a bunch of it, because I'm also beginning to write the start of the story. By the time I get back to where we are now, I'm likely to have forgotten most everything we did, so I'm trying to keep it current now.
But, on the "everything else" front...it's been a little bit quiet.
Sort of.
See, about a year ago, I found out that my cervix wasn't going to get into Harvard. (This is a code phrase for "I came back with a slightly abnormal Pap smear".) Six months later, my Pap came back clear.
In February, I went in for a routine checkup, and found out that the abnormality was back, and worse this time. Bad enough that they weren't going to wait and see what it did, they were going to treat it as soon as they could.
Which is how, on St. Patrick's Day, I found myself in the Surgery Center at the Polyclinic, an IV running into my hand, the elbow tingling as they ran drugs into me to put me to sleep.
I'd been in the Surgery Center before, so it wasn't a strange enviornment, which was good. They did a LEEP, which basically means they took the skin off of my cervix with an electrified loop. I woke up, and there were warm blankets and nice people and toast with jam. Fortunately, I react reasonably well to anesthesia these days, and so about a half hour after I woke up I was all ready to walk around. Not that they let me up for another twenty minutes, but I was pretty much ready to go. I craned my head and watched my vital signs on the minitor, experimented with raising and lowering my heart rate, fiddled with the blood pressure cuff, and generally acted sort of bored.
They *almost* didn't let me get up, because my blood pressure was the lowest I'd ever seen it--98/38. (I usually run 115/68ish.)
The nurse, coming by to check on me, asked me if I was a runner. "Um, yes, why?"
"Oh, usually the people we get in here with resting heart rates below 50 are."
They finally let me up, my blood pressure went up enough for them to consider me good for walking around, and Bryan and Laura had arrived to pick me up a few minutes earlier, so I went down to their house. There was pho, and then I spent the rest of the day alternately napping and watching TV and snuggling. And in the evening, I was feeling pretty good, so there was conveyer belt sushi. Greg joined us for that, as well, which was nifty.
I felt very loved and well taken care of. I still do, as a matter of fact. They're both so sweet to me, and I'm starting to actually trust that's not going to suddenly change.
I'm not used to stability. I keep coming up against places where I have a lot more baggage than I realize; reactions that I'm waiting for and just don't get, reflexes that only push against thin air. And I wait for some of my own issues to kick in, and they're just...not. My social energy has remained consistently high, I descended into depression but only slightly and I've since wandered back out, and I've gotten a few things straightened out in my head.
It's funny, how you can go along for years beleiving that what you're doing is all right, and then look back later and go, "Actually, I was drowning all that time...and not in a good way."
So. We start from here, start from the good core of things--my family, my loves, the ghosts of my past that mostly stay in their boxes these days, my dreams and hopes for the future.
And spring is finally here.
Let's see what happens this year, shall we?
On Valentine's Day, we took family pictures.
A few of my favorites:
Bryan, me, Laura, Greg
Graham and Bryan fiddle with the cameras
Laura, Bryan, and me
Laura and I
Bryan and I
I'm glad we got to have the picture session. Now I want pictures of the *rest* of us. Muahahahaha. Nobody can escape my camera! Or, er, something.
I'm healing. I keep being ambushed by naps, but this is actually a good thing; it means that my body's actually for once demanding the rest it needs to recover from something. As far as I can tell, the healing process from the LEEP is going stunningly well. I'm not happy about that "full pelvic rest for two weeks" thing, becuase it means exactly what you think it might mean. Not only no penetration of any sort, but no orgasms at all.
Wow, I'm going to be cranky by the time I'm done with the two weeks. I can already tell. What with spring finally being here, my libido's wandering up and saying hello, and i'm having to go, "hey could you wait for another week and a half?"
The Wednedsday that I'm finally off pelvic rest should be entertaining, though.
Today, I'm baking corn muffins in the morning and then going down to Laura and Bryan's for gaming. We're having ribs tonight, which should be good--Laura and I are dangerous when we watch Good Eats together. We were sitting around, watching Alton Brown make potato salad and then ribs, mmmm'ing along and Laura said, "Hey, I think we have a menu for Sunday."
And, lo, we did.
I've been distributing copies of the mix CD trilogy I made between November and February, and the reactions have been universally good. I'm pleased; I like all three of them, and the test is that I can put any one of them in the CD player in the car and listen to it all the way though. There are no songs I regret putting on, nothing I'd change. It's been a long time since I made one CD I liked so well, much less three.
The music part of my brain is small, warped, and quiet; but it what it does it does well.
It's funny, to rediscover that, along with so many other things.
I feel like, in some way, I'm starting to become who I already am. The winter has been a long slow awakening, and now I come to spring and I'm really most excellently happy. I keep thinking, "I can't possibly be this lucky, can I...?"
And that silent voice that is so familiar to me laughs at me, and says but you are.
And she's right.
One last note:
Sometimes, it's the little things that make me happy.
Sitting on the edge of my bathtub on the first really nice day of spring, mother-naked, eating a mango. The juice running down my face and chest, drying a little in the breeze from the open window.
Mmmmmmmmmmm.
