Episode 16: FAIL!!! Part Deux

See Part One for the prequel.

The first time I noticed something wrong, I was working part-time at a community college and commuted over an hour to the closest university with graduate programs in English.  There, I took two courses and taught two sections of Freshman English.  Of course, I was also a single mom with two boys, the older one just entering his teens.  My schedule was tough.  I described it in a Christmas letter, to which one person responded, "It sounded like a cry for help."

But I was thrilled.  I was doing what I was meant to do.  Yes, teaching caused me extreme anxiety, but over time I got more comfortable in the classroom and even had some amazing classes.  But I was feeling awfully tired.  "My stamina is so bad," I thought, but I had no idea why.  I was only thirty-seven.  I wasn't overweight and, as far as I knew, I was perfectly healthy.  Why did I feel as if I were walking under water most of the time?

Episode 15: On Being an Underling

I spent a lot of years in college to get away from being the “underling” in an organization.  I’d experienced that subtle apartheid as a secretary in a corporate DC law firm, and I did not like it.  Here I am experiencing it again, some twenty-five years later after two master’s degrees, and I still do not like it.  But the question is:  How important is my ego?  Not nearly as important as it was when I was twenty-eight, naïve, and idealistic—important enough then for me to enroll as a freshman at a state university when I was thirty.  Now, I have to be practical.  I can’t tell them to kiss my rosy red ass and quit.  Obviously, the “Little Me” inside me is annoyed and somewhat aghast.  The “Big Me” sees it as an interesting point in my career—and my life--and a time to reflect on my own reactions to this ego hit.

Episode 14: FAIL!!!

A better ending for the previous year could not have been had.  In my mailbox today lay the last sentence of a bitter chapter (Chapter 7) in my life: a court order granting my bankruptcy.  Oh, the consequences of the triggering event are not over with and never will be, but now at least I can look toward a brighter day with a hope that has been difficult to conjure since September 2008.  I’m starting over financially—not completely with a clean state, as I’ll still be paying student loans—but I’m okay with that, other than the interest gauging me every minute.  Somehow it seems apt that higher education and I remain tied together, despite our bitter divorce.  I owe so much to ol' H.E., personally and intellectually. Yet higher education is why I’m bankrupt in the first place ... one of those dichotomies in life than can never fully be reconciled, so to speak.

Episode 13: Dream Messages, Leg Lumps, and Mycophilia

No doubt this episode will sound hyperchondriac-ish, a charge my son lodged against me not long ago—but that one had no merit, as what I described to him had been confirmed by medical tests.  Hypochondria means:
 “extreme depression of mind or spirits often centered on imaginary physical ailments" (Merriam-Webster Online).  

When the conditions are real, and confirmed by lab tests of Western science (the only valid knowledge base on the planet, according to most people I know), the charge of hypochondria falls on its face.  I'm one of those folks whose body is waging a war on itself--but I'm also one of those fortunate folks who tends toward optimism.  I really want to hang around for a while, without being sick.  Others seem to think I enjoy these weird health conditions, but au contraire,  I miss the me who used to be full of energy and verve.  

Episode 12: Blood Sludge for Turkey Day

I’m still getting the hang of this polycythemia thing.

You see, my blood is too thick. Too many red blood cells. That makes my blood turn to sludge, and sludgy blood is not good. Not only does it put me at higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and pulmonary embolism, it makes me feel as if I’m full of sludgy blood, which means every cell in my body feels heavy and slow and, well, sludgy.

You’d think that feeling would be easy to recognize. The thing is, it’s insidious. I start feeling bad and, because I’ve had fatigue problems for the past few years, I just accept it, even as it gets worse than usual. And then I finally realize, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got that thick blood thing, too … maybe it’s time to get drained.”

Episode 11: Discouragement

Discouragement: the scourge of chronic disease.

I do my best not to wallow in it; I try to push it away when it comes crawling in, like a fog under the door. Even when I’m immersed in it, I hate it. I’m afraid of it. I worry that it’s right, and I’m wrong, and one day I’m just going to have to give in to its seduction.

Yet I’d be lying if I pretended it didn’t happen.

It’s not something I like to talk about. As bestselling author Laura Hillenbrand says about chronic disease, “I didn’t want to talk about it very much because I had the experience of being dismissed and ridiculed.” No one wants to hear a sob story, and persons with chronic disease can look perfectly healthy most of the time, so the inability to apply the stamina of most persons our age to our lives becomes suspect in others' eyes.  Better to only imagine people think you're faking, not to see it in their eyes.

Episode 10: Happy Halloween with Some Creepy Plants and Critters

[Feel free to skip my asides.  I talk too much on this show!  I'll try to mark my tangents with brackets.]

Halloween barely registered with me this year.  Long gone are the days when my kids went out trick-or-treating or I went to parties in Elvira costumes.  [I figured I had the best possible chance of being beautiful when I could disguise my natural appearance with wigs and tons of makeup.  I never had the slightest interest in looking scary, as many of my more confident friends enjoy.  If I were ever to dress up again, I'd want to go as Morticia.  Carolyn Jones as Morticia was the ultimate feminine role model--socially aware, compassionate, smart, and sexy.  Oh, and beautiful.]

But Mother Jones gave me an idea .... Why not report on the creepy plants and critters I've encountered in my yard and elsewhere over the years?  This can be my contribution to Halloween this year, and the Great Pumpkin should be pleased.  Unlike pumpkins, though, most of these species won't be found here in Appalachia at this time of year.