Medical Week, "Relax" (an odd term), and my dance.

Well, I am heading into a “medical” week and a “medical leave” at the same time. Which seem rather contradictory as one is supposed to give me more energy (medical leave) and one sucks the energy right out of me (medical appointments and tests, like the 90 minute one tomorrow – I have seen butchers treat a steak with greater care and concern than some of the EEG staff I have been…um….tested by). Have someone tell you not to move while they strobe light you early in the morning for say, 90 minutes and see how you feel; is punching someone a seizure? I find it no surprise that in this tarot deck, the Nurse or Medical is the High Priestess!

See, Linda keeps going on at me about how I am suppose to do this thing called “relax.”
I say, “You mean write a blog?”

“No, just relax, chill.”

“Respond to all the comments?”

“Relax!”

I look at her puzzled, “Train for the race on Sunday?”

“No, just take it easy, take some time off.”

I cock my head to the side in confusion, “Make a list of postcards to send out? Find the postcards to send out. Write the BBC. Organize the letters and emails I haven’t yet written back to, organize the gifts I need to write letters thanking for, organize what I should sell to make some money for Seattle, put the stuff I have organized on ebay?”

“Chill!”

I dunno, I think we need someone over here with a thesaurus as there definitely seems to be a communication difficulty! I am supposed to go up to Badminton tomorrow, and not having had anything dislocated this week (woo hoo, first time in three weeks!), I “should” be going!

Of course, what is Linda doing tomorrow, “I have to get to task with all the medical stuff I have gotten behind on, and then write up a blog post about it.” She already wrote a quick post, just keeping people up to date. I peeked a little and went, “What fundraising?” And she was, “What about some copies of your book, do you have any left. We could sell those for X.”

I was into that, “Yeah, and if they want my signature in blood, it will be X amount, and if they want my signature in MY blood it will be X+Y amount…”

Linda, “This is why I don’t talk to you about things like this.”

See, she is all holding out on me because I KNOW there is the annual Xmas party which includes spouses coming up where I get to meet all the NICE people who send her emails that make her not sleep (and not get paid! Because she is disabled!). And I think she knows that I have been practicing. I was saying a few months ago to another epeeist, that we could kill more people with an umbrella once trained than with a competition epee (they BEND when you strike the throat!). I am just saying, sometimes a girl in wheelchair with known seizure issues has spasms, and if she is holding an umbrella, well, I hear that there are lots of choirs looking for male alto’s and soprano’s. Think of me as a rolling career opportunity: You mess with Linda, you get a new career (and medical treatment). So she has not told me when or where the Xmas party is. This creates a small problem in my plan. Arg!

The truth is that I would like to laugh, but I need Linda to laugh too. I would like to have true and unfettered joy, I want to look like this (well, except not looking quite like if any guy comes to talk to me is going to get picked up for statutory something). I mean the whole openness of enjoyment. I don’t know how long it has been since I have had that. It has been a long time, and I know for Linda as well. Someone very close, who I trusted, emailed Linda without my knowledge and told her that really, she should send in an email apologizing to all those bosses, and that she was under stress and sort of promise to be different once she gets back – like what, bark when she gets abused? So even now, Linda has to stand up, for her RIGHT to stand up; which is what got her pay docked, her vacation days removed and all sorts of fun and joy. In fact right now, it seems the doctor who diagnosed her disability is so angry at her employers (you know, an arm of the BC government), that I am not sure if the College of Physicians and Surgeons isn’t going to sue them. But if Linda just promises never to do it again, and never to come to the hospital when I am taken, and never get career advancement until she puts me into a home, and never go to a medical or specialist meeting even though she is the only one empowered to make medical decisions, or go to Seattle (as she is now stripped of vacation….but not in retaliation…I am sure!), then maybe it can all go back to where she is just belittled, and treated lesser because of her orientation. Yeah, the higher ups must know best, right. That whole “No harassment or discrimination in the workplace policy" is just there for show, everyone knows that.

Sorry, got to calm down a bit. This is usually when I start having nose bleeds or dance the funky chicken. I am a little scared and on defence and a little not trusting of anyone. I wonder why. Good week for a bunch of medical tests…not!

But what I really want, is to have a day or a week where I can be what I was. I talked to Linda about taking the “Dr.” off my name. She said she knew I fought all those years for that, she wants me to keep it. I told her, I don’t have the capacity I had, I cannot WRITE a syllabus from scratch; some days, teaching 90 minutes maybe, but maybe not, if I have some absance seizures. In fact, I don’t know, when I get home some days, if I left all my money or what I bought on the counter. Today, some things I ordered arrived. I didn’t remember ordering them. I vehemently denied I ever ordered them. I went back on my records and yes, just over eight days ago I ordered them.

I had a dream the other night, that I went up to badminton but I was dressed underneath with my epee gear, and I convinced my volunteer to take me in my chair a few blocks on, and showed up at fencing practice. I got her to help me stand (since I can’t feel anything, as long as I keep moving, I can’t feel the damage I do to myself when I stand….or when I fall). And I was fencing again, not well, but getting a point here and there. Another point in epee, who would have thought that is what my dreams are, but they are. I want to be free, I want to be what I trained to be. I have been having nightmares, where each night a different part of my life is destroyed. In last night’s nightmare I was a teacher but the kids wouldn’t listen, they destroyed my books. The previous night my bookstore, I couldn’t find it, then when I found it, the stocking was all wrong. The previous night I lived in a UK town but couldn’t find my home, couldn’t find a B&B or hotel to take me in. How do I set goals when I don’t know how much more my brain will be damaged? I did 55 postcards, this weekend. I slept little, I wrote with purple and blue hands, I kept going until 4:30 am, and then up early, because this WAS my dance, my art, what goal I had left to finish. Living is not enough for me. I don’t know what is.