femminista: thoughts of a feminist rhetorician

My left arm hurts more than usual tonight; I have an icky metallic taste in my mouth; my head feels like it has been filled with poisonous jello and epoxied closed. Yes, that's right; I'm sick again.

Well, I suppose it's a bit more complicated than that. It always is, isn't it? Today, I woke up entirely too early (though not early enough to be on time), pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, and drove, coughing and sneezing, down to Home Hospital. It always strikes me as ironic when one sickness inhibits my ability to take care of another one. Luckily, today I made it to the hospital, where the other irony struck me (never have liked golf)--I'm sick and I'm in a hospital but they won't be doing anything to make me feel better. In some ways, it's kind of comforting, having "the bug that's been going around." I'm normal people sick. I'm the kind of sick that I know will get better. I'm extra tired, but I know why and eventually, I'll feel better. The hospital thing--well, that's different.

First of all, this blog. I want so much to write in it. I compose entries in my head, but somehow the demands of the day draw me away from the writing. Living with chronic illness(es) puts a strain on my ability to even stand up sometimes and the frequent dizziness makes even the refuge of my laptop closed to me. These sorts of days make me the most depressed. Make me feel like a non-productive member of society, a slacker, a waste of resources, a social parasite. I don't contribute to the world in any meaningful way on these days. On these days I am a waste and I feel guilty for it. Hell, I feel guilty for writing about how guilty I feel. I get a sick feeling inside when these days and my lack of productivity causes things that need to be done to remain incomplete, or worse yet, not even begun. I know that once again I'll have to explain this failure and apologize for it, even though I had no control over it. I know that frequently the blessing of looking healthy and attractive will be a mark against me. Any happiness that I show will be catalogued as evidence that I am "faking it." That this is my version of the dog ate my homework. My attempt to make the best out of a bad situation, to enjoy the parts of life that I can, make me into a liar . Even though I know that I am not lying, that I in fact abhor lying, their doubt makes me feel like the moral equivalent of one. I become more depressed. I push myself harder to "prove" that I am capable and worthy. This push inevitably leads to more bad days, which then result in a failure to meet expectations. Again, I am believed to be less than them. I internalize that, shoring up my own feelings of inadequacy, and this vicious cycle begins again.

I refuse to be silent. To worry and avoid and fear speaking truth. I am not a shy person, certainly not a person who has trouble speaking her mind. But there are things that I keep hidden from the world. I'm a terrible liar, but a convincing actress. The name of my famous curtain calls--healthy cat. It's true; every day I perform the role of "normal." Not in the plain vanilla way. No one would ever accuse me of being boring or, to be honest, even normal in most of its senses. No, my performance of normal is much more specific, more "rocky road" than vanilla. I play the role of the fully able-bodied, healthy young woman. I have done so for almost twenty eight years. But now, as I prepare to enter the twenty-ninth year, I note that my costume is ragged at the edges; there are tears in the bodice and on the sleeves; my makeup is wearing thin; my hair falling out. This show cannot go on.

Struggling towards what, you ask. I'm not sure how to answer that question. One- I am struggling towards speaking in a public forum about all of the amazing changes that have happened in my life. I want to share them because I believe that they might be of value to others. I fear sharing them because of those people who, for whatever reason, feel the need to devalue and disparage things spoken from the heart. Two- where do I draw the line between my public life and my private life? I'm not one for secrecy. As a friend of mine recently, and quite aptly, pointed out: I am a "full-disclosure kind of girl." It's true that I find great value in openness and that closing myself off is what I can only describe as unnatural for me. Moreover, closing myself off is painful to me, while opeing myself is beyond liberatory.

Well, here I am again, being negligent in my blogging duties. I am awed by other academics who manage to post to their blogs regularly during the school year. I feel like I don't even have time to eat with everything that's going on. These other academic bloggers who can post daily, while I am edging closer to a monthly blogger, seem like superbloggers to me.

My life has been a crazy mix of illness, teaching and writing. I still haven't kicked the sinus infection that I got in the beginning of September and in the past two weeks or so, it has manifested as spells of vertigo. Being unable to stand or sit up well makes it very difficult to get any work done. Luckily, my BFF drove all the way from Georgia to visit me and I was able to enjoy her company. Our animals were perhaps less than thrilled, but they're starting to grow on one another. Who knows, by Christmas they may be pals and instead of my cat, Beloved, terrorizing Mel's beagle, Mary, they can join together in terrorizing my sister's dog. I'm kidding...sort of. I'm a little worried about my sister's husky, Coyote, being around Beloved. I'm sure that he's a great dog and sweet to humans, but he is, well, biologically trained to dislike cats and perhaps view them as lunch? This concerns me. Beloved's pretty fierce but I don't know how she'd do against such a large dog. I don't want her to spend the entire vacation under the bed or have to shut her in a room to protect her.

I've been thinking about my previous post and their melancholy nature. There are a lot of things in my life that suck, but there are also things that make feel amazingly lucky. I have the most wonderful best friend who is always there to listen to me, make me feel better, and offer to do physical harm to those who hurt me. (She's kidding, of course...well, sort of.) Of course, I would do the same for her 'cause she's my best friend soulmate. I have a mother who cares about me and supports me regardless of my decisions. I'm lucky to have all the friends that I do. For years friends like Nicole, Jen, Muhannad, Faris, Josh and Tim have always listened to me when I needed to talk. They're always happy to hang out and have fun but even more significantly, they still want to be with me on the days when I'm less fun to be around, when I'm sick or depressed because I've been sick. My sister supports me from several thousand miles away. These people are my version of the team that chronicbabe.com talks about. They help me remember my strengths when I am feeling weak.

My previous post about my physical problems didn't fully capture what sucks most. Part of it is that people are sometimes put off by what they perceive as odd or picky behaviors. Lately, I've experienced this even more so because every time I go out to eat I have to give the server a pop quiz on recipe contents and food preparation before I can order. Damn, they put wheat in everything! Because I don't look sick and because it seems like I'm just trying to be difficult, people jump to erroneous conclusions that can be hurtful. I'm a perfectionist and an overachiever, two difficult roles for any person but even more so for the chronic babe (or dude). I managed for a long time to do as much as, as well as, and sometimes more than my peers, but all of that has taken its toll and my body can't take it anymore.

The thing that sucks most about having a ton of physical problems is that you never know if someone doesn't want to be with you or doesn't want to be with your issues. I've had a horrible couple of days with my illness(es) and I didn't even want to do anything tonight. But I did and I just wish that I could have had some reinforcement on being in the least bit desirable because trust me when I say that you rarely feel desirable when you're in my body. Maybe to some people I look like I feel it but I rarely do. The thing is when you feel terrible you try to look your best. Somehow it mediates, at least somewhat, the pain of being the way that you are.

All day I've been thinking about the chronicbabe.com entry on crappy days and how we just have to deal. I have had one of those days. I really wanted to get some work done today but I woke up exhausted, tried to go back to bed without success, finally got up dragging myself about the house. I've been visiting my mother for the summer and I really wanted to clean her house for her today but I couldn't garner the energy to do it. I thought I'd try coffee and some academic work instead. I should have just taken it easy and done something nice for myself but I refused to let my body dictate my schedule and continued with part of my plans for the day. The problem with that strategy was that it only served to frustrate me more since it took me three times as long to do everything because I wasn't at my best. I didn't get as much done as I wanted to and instead of being proud of what I did accomplish, I've been feeling guilty and disappointed for what I didn't get done.

I've recently stumbled across a new line of pill-storage products being carried by the SC/NC natural foods supermarket chain, EarthFare. The products are called MedSun (a name that brings a smile to my lips, a rare occurance on the topic of medicine)and they offer a fairly wide assortment of pill carrying cases. After a bit of searching, I found their website MedSun which contains a complete list of their products along with ordering and distribution information. Unfortunately, the site itself is a bit annoying. It's done in Flash and unfortunately the form gets in the way of the function. It's quite slow and to spare you a little of that frustration I looked at some of the distributors and Whole Foods is one of them. Since I couldn't actually find any product information on the Whole Foods website, this will only be helpful if you have a Whole Foods Market in your area. However, I did find another site that offers online ordering and seems to carry the full-line of MedSun products. There doesn't seem to be any way of viewing products by manufacturer, so you'll just have to poke around to find the different options. Here's a link to the seven day pill compact with timer which is the one that I am trying out right now.