yevlax

(This is my first blog entry in a long time, I wrote it before going to the hospital this past weekend. I'm working on another one about the hospital visit, 'Little White Room')




Little Blue Room: Anemia & Hope



I get off the tarc bus, pause, and take a deep breath. I haven't been to therapy in a couple of weeks, due to a nicely erratic schedule and immediate health issues. It's been even longer since I've blogged.

I walk across the road and start counting my steps towards the little blue room.


***

I have to rest at least once on my way over, sitting on stone barrier that reads 'LOUISVILLE, SEMINARY'. I was planning on going to stop by Mr. Tree, but there are other folks on the benches near him. He is busy holding court today, I will bother him some other time.

I walk down into the building where the little blue room is, and sit down to catch my breath again in the waiting room. It is twenty minutes before my therapy appointment. After a few minutes of resting, I get out my notebook to scribble down some things to discuss in the session, including some goals I had agreed to make for the future. I flip past scribbles about gaming nights, scribbles relating to law office, training and finally scribbles about bus addresses before settling on a blank sheet or three that will become therapy scribbles.

My therapist greets me and lets me in the room.


***

Last week I went to visit my nephrologist, Dr. Ouseph, for the first time since February. I do not have a general practitioner, and having been without medical insurance since February, hadn't seen it possible to get one. In my last few weeks, Rachel has helped me find some small government programs here and there to scrape by (one of which I used up when my foot was in intense pain a few weeks ago), and my Dr. told me to come on in. I got the sense that I really should not have let my blood-work go unchecked for so long.

I learned from my phlebotomist in Dr. Ouseph's office that my blood-work there was being handled by a separate company, LabCorp. So while my actual Dr. was understanding of my dire situation and was urging me to get blood drawn, the labs themselves would result in another fat bill to pile on next to the foot x-rays. I am getting very nervous about the sudden accumulation of medical bills with no financial outlet to them. This is the kind of thing that caused me to have near-suicidal thoughts earlier this year when The Crash happened, although I'm handling it a little better now.

My Dr. told me that the dayquil I was taking for my fatigue didn't really have anything in it, and she expressed a lot of concern over the scabs on my forehead. I told her about the scab that was hidden under my beard as well, and she said she was worried that it was skin cancer. She made arrangements to get me into a clinic that would let me come in for scale, although it could take months. The next day when I was called and informed that my fatigue was from anemia, I was a little relieved. Skin cancer isn't all that serious, right?

Don't they just saw off a piece of skin here or there?

***

I sit down in the little blue room and get out my scribble-book. My therapist begins with the usual questions, the same kind I'd hear during the week from friends. How have you been? What have you been up to since I've seen you last?

The last time I'd seen her I'd had some very happy news that I was excited to share. Jaime offered to let me intern and their law office, had offered to train me as a paralegal. I lept at her offer, even after I learned it wouldn't be a paying gig and I wasn't really sure what she was asking me yet. Their law firm is in the middle stages of growth, and she needed some help at the rate they were going. Thoughts of having a job, no, a career...swirled around in my head. I didn't really want to be a lawyer, but I'd never set out to film shows at a Catholic church once a month either...but it was steady work that kept my mind glued together.

After a couple of weeks at the law office I'd gotten my own cards with my full name on them, and had gotten several compliments from Jaime which made my ego do a little dance. I started to believe I could actually do this, that I could hang on for a year or two and then I'd be in great shape...much better shape than I'd ever been in the dozen years before this. Paralegal. And later, Electronic Records Keeper. That sounds impressive. and it would pay nice too, when I worked my way up to that point.

I began having pleasantly outlandish visions of myself in my own place again, surrounded by computer screens and artwork for various projects I'd be working on. I had visions of seeing Jaimes face on a billboard as I rode the bus to work, and she would be much more pleasant to look at than the current crop of disability attorneys in the city. I had visions of none of us being stressed out about money, because the law firm was successful, and I had played a part in helping the firm grow in size by handing out my little black cards to folks I'd met on the bus, or elderly relatives of the people I'd met with my mad networking skillz. I was going to have something to be proud of again.

I imagined myself 'whole'. I don't think Jaime realized just how excited her offer made me. This was much, much more exciting than waiting several years on a SS case in which I would still be a bohemian cripple even after I won. This was a much, much, less depressing fate.

As happy I was with this new development, I was getting very annoyed at these ongoing sinus infections or whatever was zapping my strength, because I was going to need my energy to get all of these things accomplished. I needed my energy now more than ever.

Then I found out, that shortness of breath wasn't sinus infections, it was anemia.

***

My head is clouded from the fatigue, and I confess to my therapist that my memory is foggy of events between now and our last session, other than the over-riding thoughts about training to be a paralegal at the law firm. I think I ran a game with my boys too, at Gerards apartment. I expressed amazement that he was still hanging out with us. I was certain he'd have run off with a third wife by now.

I tell my therapist about my doctors visit, and the more detail I give I noticed she is looking at me with increasing concern. I remember my doctor was looking at me with increasing concern while examining me. I do not have a mirror nearby, but I am curious as to how I look, and sound. My own voice sounds slightly alien to me right now, via the new hearing aids that Vocational Rehab purchased for me.

I tell my therapist that this past weekend I was in such bad shape that I could barely dress myself or get up from my floor-bed to use the bathroom. I tell her how much it depressed me to be immobile again so soon after the foot incident, but I was proud of the fact that I was 'only' depressed and did not have a panic attack this time around.

I tell my therapist that if I had normal medical insurance, I would have gotten a shot of something called 'proscript' (spl?), for the iron deficiency, and that I can vaguely remember having one shot of this stuff before my insurance was cut off back in February. I suppose I was supposed to have more shots of this since then, and I was supposed to have my cumadin levels checked on a regular basis too, but blood-work costs money that I do not have. I tell my therapist that I got some iron pills from the drugstore on my own without telling my doctor and starting chugging them in a mad attempt to make up this proscript shot that would otherwise give me normal iron levels in my blood again. I tell my therapist I can't tolerate laying on the floor in a useless heap and I'm just trying to do whatever it takes to survive.

I tell my therapist that I'm still getting by by the skin of my teeth on government programs, and if I can just stay alive another year or so I think I will be in good shape. Just another year or so. I've already come this far with nothing, another nothing year of nothing won't hurt too bad.

Right?

***

Wanting to focus on happier fare after being steered into medicals, I told my therapist that I had written down some goals for myself, both short term and long term, like we had made plans for the last time I was there.

One of my short-term goals is of course, trying to stay healthy. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to accomplish this, but I know that Dr. Ouseph is trying to make arrangements for me to get into a clinic eventually and that may help my medical bills. Or at least allow me to monitor my blood levels on a semi-regular basis.

I also wanted to accomplish a related goal of compiling a list/database of all the programs in the city that people like me can use to get by while they wait out their disability cases. I had asked Jaime if I was allowed to give clients advice on where to go for help with their personal and survival issues, and she said I could (I just can't give legal advice, but advice on food stamps is okay). I wanted to do this for myself and for personal reasons as well as doing it for the law office. I know how frightening it can be to try to survive in this situation and I had to learn how to get by on my own, without much public information available.

I also really loved the idea of pursuing a career in electronics record keeping. Like I said earlier, I don't particularly want to practice law, although I'm finding my internship very fascinating. However, I think I have a knack for keeping and examining records. I've become fairly well organized over the years just from playing tabletop rpgs (seriously...this is one of the few translatable job skills I could have gotten out of that, meticulously keeping character-binders, quest records, etc.). Jaime is putting me in charge of keeping up with evidence, and she has pointed out that translating records from paper to cyberspace is a valuable skill that is only going to increase in demand as time goes on. I thought this could really lead to a well-paying career in something I'd enjoy, and it might even help my artistic ambitions...after I've maneuvered my way around records for so long, I could instinctively do research for my stories. Need to know what the name of a 17th century Turkish warlord for this short story? I'll look over in the Library of Congress, I saw something about that while I was looking up cloud servers last week.

I talked about my creative dreams, and how I'd like to have them as a hobby while I do 'money work'. My therapist mentioned that in the past when I brought some art or a project I was working on in for her to see, my mood was usually much better. This is true. I don't get a chance to discuss that kind of thing with anyone else in my outside life. it makes me happy and calms my nerves to be working on something. I promised to bring something in for show, for next time.

I went on to talk about more material things I'd hoped to get in the future, as these were the forefront of my mind (squatting on a couch and later a mattress for over a year tends to make one daydream of having ones own place someday, for example). My therapist stopped me at this point, and told me she couldn't help but notice, there wasn't anything in these future plans about...a 'partner'?

This is the third time my therapist has asked me about that part of my life, and I usually brush it aside with 'I'm broke', or 'I have too much going on in my life right now to worry about that'. It is the closest she comes to upsetting me (although she certainly doesn't mean to). I'm not really ready to discuss it yet with her, even after months of therapy. In previous sessions I keep talking about a theoretical 'plateau', and I keep telling her that soon as I reach my plateau, I will be ready to talk more about my past and more personal things than day-to-day survival. I cannot afford a reckless relationship on top of everything else I'm dealing with, or to be reminded of how little I have to offer a woman right now.

It might take me a very long to get to that plateau. I was certain I'd be there by now.

***

I leave therapy, and try to pace myself to the bus stop on the other end of campus. What was once a routine walk that I could make without blinking is now an obstacle course. I know in my head that had I not taken those iron supplements on my own, I'd never be able to get this far. I have to pause twice during my walk, once near Mr. Tree, and another time at the bottom of a hill where I drop my backpack and brace myself up against a pole to catch my breath. I have reschedule therapy so often nowadays, that I don't remember what time the bus comes by. I do know that it takes about an hour to circle back around to the stop at the seminary. I know it takes me at least ten minutes to get to the stop at a normal pace, and I am being slowed considerably by anemia weakness right now.

In between breaths, I look up from the pole I've braced against, to the top of the hill. I see the bus making a short pause at the tarc stop sign, and continue on it's journey to the roads beyond.

"Shit," I muttered to myself.

***

After taking another twenty minutes to rest and walk, I drop my backpack and sit cross-legged, in the grass ,near the bus stop at the seminary. There is no 'tarc bubble' or benches there, which strikes me as odd because I've met a few elderly folks there. The seminary is located in a nice neighborhood, so it's unlikely that a tarc bubble would be subjected to vandalism.

I think about a lot of things in the hour it takes the bus to circle back around to this stop. I think about my plateau that is so far away. I sit there cursing my anemia and wonder how long its going to take to get proscript, or if I can eventually magic this fatigue away with iron supplements. I think about what I'm going to do to get to and fro to the law office. I think about how I'm going to get everything done without over-exhausting myself.

Eventually, the #29 came around again, and took me home. When I arrive, I sit in Brian's chair for several minutes to get back enough strength to take off my shoes, and collapse into sleep on my mattress on the floor.