Little Posts: 'Today better than yesterday'

Time flies when indisposed. I’ve been overwhelmed by balancing the appointments and the health needed to do them.

Until my body started to fail, then it was all I could do to endure.

The worker was unable to hear my whispered calls for help, from my weak lungs. They set the fan to blow on me as I struggled to speak, to move, to do anything in my paralyzed body to let them know ‘I’m here, help!”

Time flows fast around the working eye, and I hear her shut the out door. I still couldn’t move anything except my eyelid. But I could feel the lung deterioration, progressing into diaphragm breakdown.

I held on. I endured. For an hour or more there was an explosion from my limbs and torso of nerve pain, perhaps it is what locked up the diaphragm, or sprained it.

To lie there, unable to move, with Linda having a work day, not home for three hours, that is just something to bear. But when the pain came, unable to moan, unable to move, and too terrified to close that eye and let go, then it was a fight. I would not fall silent into that dark night. I told myself that I must hold on. I hallucinated, thinking I was in a war, wounded, left behind.

I prayed. Mostly thank you’s for the people known, for the time I’ve been able to spend with Linda, and others. My life seemed very short now. All my plans and hopes of what to read or see, or emails I hoped to write or read seemed so far away. I thought about it all, “Darn it” I thought, and I sipped what air I could.

I did it. I held on until Linda came home, my lips moving over and over, ‘help me’, ‘help me.’

She leaned over and and I could see part of her face with my eye. She said, “Looks like you’ve had a TIA” (TIA is a mini stoke). I couldn’t see a way out or through this. I kept saying, ‘I love you’ until I was sure she had read my lips.

I didn’t want her ever doubting what I was most thankful for, or what mattered. I couldn't see a way out of this, a way back to the diminished life I am thankful to have.

Linda promised to watch over me and my breathing. So I risked sleeping, but how much I did of that, and how much was hallucinations due to the pain, and lack of oxygen is hard to tell. Linda noted that the breathing was shorter, shorter and erratic while I slept. So weak I could not drink. So Linda used a straw to suck up Gatorade then hold it with her finger on top before dripping the drops into my mouth. I needed the calories to try and get some basic function. Late hours but I still couldn’t move, drifting in and out. The bed was raised so I could swallow the mouthful of Gatorade, then lowered so I could breathe. My stomach was bloated from air swallowed in sleep. This air was squeezing my lungs, stopping them from inhaling.

I was able, then, to take the breakthrough pain pill with Linda putting it in my mouth, and dripping in Gatorade. My jawbone snapped out of the hinges by my ear, as it had for the last 10 hours. The pain had made most muscles locked in extreme tension.

Take your arm, make a fist and squeeze as hard as you can. Feel that tension in your muscle? Remember what a leg cramp feels like. Imagine a cramp going on for an hour. Impossible? Not if it is paralyzed that way, locked with muscles in full contraction for nine hours.

There are things we think are unbearable until they are endured. 'Longsuffering' the bible calls it. Thank goodness the Fentynal had been increased last week.

As the calories grew, things got a bit better, which also meant worse. The muscles started to drop, to release. My body relaxed, and it was like I was being pressed in medieval days, a board on me, with stones added. The only muscles that moved were the ones which twitched uncontrollably from the lactic acid which had built up.

I was faint, dizzy, but I could move my head, and I was starting to get parts of my body back. Linda put my legs, knees up, then swung me so they were off the bed. A tilt of the torso and I fell forward, Linda catching me, as we stagger, my one leg under control, to a cool room.

My hands and lips purple from lack of oxygen, but I started to be able to breath, a little deeper as I cooled down and every bit of calories. It took another three hours. Linda had been caring for four hours. I never would have gotten that care in a care home. But I slowly started to get better.

I couldn’t control my arms well, they would twitch and go in and out of spasm from the hours of muscle tension. I let my head loll on the headrest.

Linda put what we did down in the ‘solutions’ book, because we know neither why it work nor why my lungs declined so severely and so quickly. But it worked, and we hope if that happens, it will work again.

Please, never let it happen again.

I will start blogging regular as I can get out of bed. I’ll show pictures and write of Sakura-con and the trip as I have the ability and strength, if that is okay. I thought I ‘had’ to do the BIG Sakura-con blog, but now I’ll do ‘little posts’.

I worked today a little on my new birthday goal: some new disabled parking spaces in Victoria. There is no rule in Victoria, BC for blue badge spaces so no one makes them. The workers call for me. I talk to owners. I have more owners to go, then the council, and try to win over one parking spot at a time. Right now, there are several thousand street parking spots, and 28 disabled spots in Victoria. Every parking spot in every lot is a gift for all.

But that is another ‘small post’. I’m glad to here. Here is good, today better than yesterday.

Burma VJ: underground journalism in a Saffron Revolution

The forbidden name, one which will get you 12 years in jail? No, not Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Award laureate and winner of the 1990 Elections with 80% of the vote (the only elections in 20+ years until last week). Winning the election against the Junta Generals got her arrested, and 20 years of house arrest. But, the name which is feared the most: Rambo. Yes, Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo.When Health Care workers and 500 medics from the Mae Tao Clinic secretly hike jungles to villages to treat amputees from land mines, teach women how to delivery babies and do operations they take with them the most banned movie in Burma, Rambo IV.

“You wanna die for something, or live for nothing?” is Rambo’s catchphrase in the film and one you hear a lot from those who go on the six month missions of health care from Thailand into Burma where 1 in 12 women die in childbirth and 1 in 3 children die before age five. Mae Tao Clinic was set up after the 1988 protest clamp-down. Rambo IV is set in Burma, and avidly watched by villagers on portable screens brought in by medics, which shows a big name action hero fighting back against the brutality of the Junta Generals on the Burmese people (of course Rambo is there to save the WHITE careworker, but hey…). Generals don’t take criticism well. These medics are now seen as ‘enemies’ of the state and are regularly shot, wounded or killed on treks, trips in and out and if found in villages. They have treated 800,000.

I watched Burma VJ, a documentary on high risk journalism taking place in Burma to keep a media voice alive. For me, I have been fevered and out of it, off and on, realizing that my ability to control my body and energy are beyond me. So much for my hopes of daily blogging, but I still hope for three times a week, but right now must, like a sailboat in a storm, go with where I am blown, looking for the times of calm. I give what bits of me I can, as much as I can.I haven't given up.

In Burma VJ (video journalism), which has won over 40 awards, the DVD is centered around Rangoon, it tells the story of how for 19 years, since the 1988 uprising, there has been no large demonstration. The 1988 demonstration uprisings against the Generals was joined by all of society including police but ended when the Army opened fire in deliberate and systematic attacks, killing over 3000 civilians. Now, with secret police everywhere, getting anyone to talk politics is impossible due to a belief that they will ‘noted’ and taken away in the dead of night, or attacked there and wrestled into the back of a truck. Having a camera is dangerous and filming on digital camcorders have to be done from hiding in the armpit or in a bag. ‘Joshua’ and his mentor has a group of journalists who film and then upload by satellite to Sweden, or smuggle it over the border to Thailand for editing and rebroadcasting back into Burma: DFB The Democratic Voice of Burma.

Joshua covers protests in 2007, done by committed individuals who know they might have at most 4-5 minutes before their banner is destroyed and they arrested. Protests increase when the Generals double the price of petrol/gas in a single day. One brave activist woman comes, surrounded by male friends, who link around her to resist the secret police. Single voices speaking up for those who dare not. Joshua follows too close and his camera is seen. He is taken to the police station where his camera is seized and he is released, to try to get him to lead them to others. Joshua has to leave Burma, setting up a remote headquarters on the border to co-ordinate placing photojournalist and editing footage. His reporters have the secret headquarters, plus a series of safe houses, and a connection of cell phones.

Suddenly the individual protests get a giant boost as the Buddhist monks appear in crimson and saffron, marching barefoot and with bowls upside down, to say they will take no rice from the Generals. The monks, all 400,000 have gone on strike, as they feel the government is hurting the people, and the religion, spurred by the beating of monks in a rural town. They want an apology from the government.

Monks are sacred, and in appearing, they are untouchable, as they are the only group so large that the government is scared of them. And the line of monks goes as far as can be seen, walking while the people applaud. Joshua is in telephone conversations with the Monk leaders in what will be known as the ‘Saffron Revolution’. DFB journalists approach the monks, but they are turned away in belief they are secret police. But in that exact moment, the secret police, hearing a DFB journalist identify himself, attack. The monks, immediately defend, linking in non-violent shields to protect the journalist. From that point on, the monks and DFB work together. This 2007 uprising gets larger day by day until the monks, a huge column of them, march to the house where Aung San Suu Kyi is guarded by layers of guards, roadblocks and army to stop anyone from seeing her, under ‘house arrest’. She greets the monks at the door and DFB records and transmits: Burma gets to see the first image of the ‘heart’ of Burma in years. Change will happen? Suddenly the video shot by DFB is the only footage of this remarkable revolution.

The government waits, but then decides to target the monks, and as things start to turn ugly, the journalist who have been with them are targeted (Soldiers shout, "Find the Cameras!"). Abruptly all internet in and out of Burma is cut. A curfew is imposed along in an announcement that night from speakers on telephone poles. Plus, the city is told, it is now illegal for five people to meet or be together in any one place. Will the monks come the next day? Will this stop the protests? DFB, with the satellite link, still broadcasts images and footage, running on CNN, BBC, and other international agencies. This is underground journalism: the years of training to take footage learned from Thailand journalists, Joshua spreads out photojournalists around an event to get footage in case one or two of them is caught, and the images get out. At the secret headquarters they watch the videos of a dead monk upload to the satellite, hoping it gets out before the government traces the signal, or raids them.

If you want the whole story, first hand of the Saffron Uprising and the coverage of it (including interviews with monks in the extras) you need to rent or buy the DVD (it has only grossed just over $130,000). But toward the end Joshua is heading covertly into the mountains of Burma to walk secretly all the way back to Rangoon, to rebuild DFB.

DFB is still here, with footage of Aung San Suu Kyi release last week AFTER the Elections where the military government’s created party won the majority of the votes (surprise!), with monitoring from ambassadors from North Korea. Many, many accounts of villages where the army coming in, telling the elder to have everyone turn out for ‘voting’, the names written down and then the army leaves without the villagers being asked who they want to vote for.

In an odd sidebar, Suu Kyi was a week from serving her full sentence and release in 2008 when an American citizen, a Christian, swam the lake to approach and entered the house from the water saying ‘He had been sent by God.” The military used this as an excuse to add 18 months to her sentence. So please, no more missions from God okay?

I wondered, “How does a Government employ SO many secret agents, plainclothes agents, police and military?” Answer: Oil, Natural Gas and China. Much like the USA vetoes any sanctions or actions passed in the United Nations against certain favorite countries, China does the same for Burma. For the citizen in Burma they can’t understand why the United Nations doesn’t come in, after more than 23 years. Natural Gas counts for half of Burma’s exports, most to China, also oil drilling and pumping occur with a host of countries including North Korea, China, and Australia and companies like Chevron.

I recommend Burma VJ, the documentary even if you have no interest in Burma’s politics or history simply to see how to organize an effective alternative media under the most oppressive situations (five people gathering is illegal?). For now, the government has said today that complaints against the elections is a 3 year prison sentence. The journalists caught all get life sentences, as there is no greater crime than filming what goes on. This obviously makes Burma a poor tourism attraction. Watch the DVD just to see some acts of incredible journalism, as one photojournalist barely escaping death multiple times in a day, being targeted by solders but continuing to bob up from behind a wall to get a few seconds of films. Filming behind a bush as the the trucks arrive and the soldiers pour out. In one case, a journalist calls from inside a ‘trap’ (a group of protestors surrounded by army with guns), his camera gone, he begs Joshua to record his verbal narration which occurs with screams and shots in the background until the phone suddenly cuts off.

“Better to die for something than live for nothing.”

Diego my dead bat, personal 'loot' from Hawaii, a week of poor health and 'small pleasures'

Thank you for the responses. I left myself vulnerable in honest feelings and you responded in kind, thank you. I have not been around on-line because Tuesday until today I was having a lot of blood loss in my lower intestinal tract. So between that and recovery, I was trying to decide how far to let it go before I went to the hospital and today I stabilized so I am very happy.

Basically something like the fresh made peanut butter cookies with peanuts in them must have had a shell. The shell irritated my upper intestine and Friday I had IBS clean-out. I stopped it with Florastor which unknown to me, captured most but not all of the unprocessed and very sharp shell pieces and then bonded to an intestinal wall, creating a blockage. Meanwhile the other pieces came down and when I decided to go to the bathroom for dump o the day on Tuesday what came out instead was blood. I had to find and isolate the pieces, then help the blockage to leave the intestinal wall, have that come down, which opened up all the cuts and fissures as the blockage was processed through. Boring, and embarrassing stuff. Also puts a crimp in reading all the yaoi when I have to have my fingers/hand up my own ass all the time. Little less ‘fun fantasy’. Ow.

So, let us forget that and return to normal gothness where I am the magic goth girl who doesn’t sweat, and of course never would fart or eat and is always pale and like a vampire gets my nutrition through drinking...the blood of virgins! Well more like Virgin Smoothies. And like Sherlock Holmes I take my opium and play my violin, ah, why are there no murders of interest......>

I wanted to show you my pre-Halloween travel plushie, which is the Skelanimal Diego, the Bat. The pillow is a micro-fleece and very fuzzy and soft, works great as a travel pillow, then you unzip it, and TADA, our friend Diego the Bat (with his little fangs and wings) emerges and the back zips closed giving you a huggable plushie. The plushie is about 16-18 inches high, so the pillow is over a foot wide and great for your head. I got him off Akadot for $24. I think they still have Jack the Rabbit there (I also got Kit the Kat – I love my dead skelanimals!).

Also in Hawaii I did get one loot for me. I was talking in the market with the woman whose uncle brought in jade for her to sell. She and her father and grandfather had been connected to the Big Island and Plantations for many generations. Her father had lived here and retired here. Her uncle and cousins came and went. She sold mostly bracelets of symbols – Hawaiian Petroglyphs with different meanings. I will let you get which one I got and post the picture of it next time (a prize for anyone who gets it!). I noticed this one item which was very different than the rest. It was, she said, Ivory, and for the women. Here it is. Well, as you may have noticed, it is a snuff bottle which puts it pre20th century, and with the engravings of the mountains, kimono’s and fans, it is for those who would travel to the ‘cooler summer house/palace’ which would be in the mountains. It is not elaborate enough for a daughter of royalty nor it is something a middle class woman would have, but some woman of leisure, like a lady-in-waiting. It was very affordable and I verified that it is ivory and intact.

It turns out it is the last of her Father’s lifetime collection. She sold most of it to a dealer or two but had this left over. I could not understand what was wrong with it that they should leave it behind. I ended up talking to the dealer who bought much of the collection and the Father had collected EROTIC snuff bottles of (I am somewhat guessing the date) 1770-1850. This was not erotic (of which I have no interest in carved erotic snuff bottles) and for woman, not men, smaller and thus left behind. The daughter was thus convinced that it was not valuable and charged very little for it, as it was the off season and no one had looked at it. I however was very glad to have a museum style piece from something I saw on the Antique Road show which now resides in my Ossuary by my desk. I was fortunate that I could afford it, the price of a couple McDonald’s meals and the snuff spoon was in perfect condition as was the stopper. I cannot tell if it is Korean or Chinese, I think the style of the Kimono is Chinese.

So that was my ‘loot’ – since I had to bring it back to Canada, I did not publish this while I was in Hawaii (not sure the rules on old Ivory). It is Ivory which I am against the killing of animals now for Ivory, but would not pass up a nice scrimshaw piece if I saw on in a garage sale. This being a snuff bottle of an upper class female from Asia was too much of a connection to my heart to say no. I think it is beautiful.

With fall and autumn here, those of us with chronic illness’ take our pleasures as ‘small pleasures’, the energy to have a cup of coffee out of the house, the ability to go out and see something. I have been worn down this week, and will not go out tomorrow, but I hope Sunday. And I want to try to catch up on emails and responses to the last blog as my ‘small pleasure’. I hope this weekend brings ‘small pleasures’ and good days or good hours to many.