Leaving

Then after you're inspired and soothed by the destruction and erasing power of the salt waves, you go home weeks later and discover highway-sized tunnels of emptiness all throughout your body. 

When your dad is dying and you can't be there...

When it looks really dark, and you sit on the couch inside because it is too dark to go outside, you should get up anyway.  Go out into the dew-chilled grass at the edge of the cliff, and the sound of the Pacific waves will wake up the part of your brain that you thought had gone to sleep 2 hours ago along with everyone else in the house. 

It is dark.  But it is not too dark to see the white edges where the water becomes foam and the salt becomes bubbles and together they make the roar that drowns out the part of your day where real people saw imaginary nemeses.  The anger of the waves will soothe the peace in your soul and vice versa.  You will hear it and you will see it, even when you thought it was too late. 

But more than sight or sound is smell.  You will inhale and it will be a deliverance and knowing and assurance all at the same time.  Take it in, all the way down to your alveoli, and then use it for something good before the oxygen in the salt air is used up and you must exhale the day.

7/22/16

fiction

cheek down on sun-warmed cement
lying on her belly, she felt nine years old

(remember getting out of the pool and warming up on the edge?
one ear down, chlorine-flavored droplets
drying as soon as they hit?)

head still, silent tears coursed down
pooling between her freckled, weathered, notnineanymore cheek
and the scraped/stained concrete

trying to answer back normally
as unbelievable comments about mostly-eaten peanut butter sandwiches
and more believable comments about hummingbirds landing on heads
lit like bumblebees and took off again

she forced two deep breaths
like aspen leaves holding on

in, out, in--
but she wouldn't let it back out
or else the notyetsummer breeze would carry away
all the years before today

--t. scarlet

Dead Weight

I get out of the bath, hoisting myself up with hands on the sides, to sit on the edge.  Once I'm steady there, I grab hold of the dead weight of my right leg and slowly lift it up and over, setting my foot on the floor.  Then I pivot, hold the weight of my body up with my arms again as my left leg follows, careful not to put any weight on my right leg.

I look down at my thighs, both weak and withered.  As pain increased over the summer, my ability to use my legs steadily decreased--for months now no squats, no hiking, not even walking more than absolutely necessary.  That was all before surgery, but since then (even just in 3 weeks), the atrophy in my right leg is stunning.  My quad had to be detached and re-attached, and I haven't yet regained feeling in it.  When I stand up (weight on my left leg, of course) and let my right leg straighten, fire rages from my iliac crest to my knee.

Looking down at my scrawny excuse for a leg suddenly revives the fear that has been lurking but unacknowledged--that I'll never walk again.  I can't face it head-on right now, so I push fear to the side and get angry.  I'm mad at society that prizes lanky legs and holds emaciation as the desired runway look.  It has become so normal to diet and deprive and spin and run and zumba, all with the focus on reducing and shrinking and losing.  I know that there are those who would sign up voluntarily to accept doses of this pain if it would just make them thin.

Some would exclaim over how good I'm looking these days.  I must be doing well if I'm skinny, right? That can only mean that I have my life in balance, right? I can't believe how many stupid, shallow assumptions we make of each other based on these outward things, but we all do it all the time.  I don't think that most people guess by looking at me how pain steals appetite and replaces it with a stinging smolder.  My significant loss of muscle and weight is not an achievement to a smaller size--it is loss of strength and independence and competency.

I know I am envied for my thin legs, but I would trade them in a second for limbs of any diameter if they were strong, capable, and without this torment.  It is March and gray and muddy and rainy, and what I wish for is legs that could take me up a slippery, pebbly trail through dripping branches.  They would carry me up to see the spring thunder-melt coming down out of the mountains in the form of Snow Creek Falls or Copper Falls or Kootenai Falls.

So please do not envy my physique for a second.  Go run up and down a flight of stairs a few times--not because it will burn 30 calories, but because you are strong and competent and you are able.  I beg you to not believe lies about your body that make you feel worthless--don't you see how powerful your body is?  Don't devalue it because some idiot somewhere chooses bony limbs to represent beauty.

I'm working on being thankful (I have so much, still!), and trying to have hope that maybe by the end of the summer my legs will be back to doing their job.

Periacetabular Osteotomy (i.e. giving up in order to move on)

It's overwhelming to start at the beginning and explain how in the world I got to the point of agreeing to have my pelvis sawed apart.  My diagnosis was congenital hip dysplasia (oh! there is an explanation for 15 years of hip pain!), which means the socket was too shallow.  The femoral head (ball) was only halfway covered by the acetabulum (socket).  So no matter how much strengthening, stretching, prayer, exercise, rest, turmeric, meditation, yoga, hot tubbing, or margaritas I tried, I could not change the physical structure of my hip.  The amount of daily pain I was in was becoming increasingly restrictive, to the point that walking into the grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk was near impossible.

My diagnosis and referral to a hip dysplasia specialist came from a non-surgical rehab specialist (a person whose entire job it basically is to help people avoid surgery through physical therapy)!  This surgery (periacetabular osteotomy) was the only thing that could correct my problem.  I pursued opinions from multiple other sources--both within the typical medical field and alternative medicine.  After repeatedly getting the same answer from varying specialties, I was beginning to come to terms with the idea of this solution.

Up until the day before surgery, I fought repeatedly to have peace about this.  I would wrestle with all the reasons why this was crazy, there was NO WAY I was going to have this done.  Then I'd go through all the alternative options (really, there was only one: continue to lose function and then almost definitely need a complete hip replacement in another few years, which only lasts about 15 years, and has a myriad of other problems for someone of my age, activity level, congenital structural problems, etc).  Really, for the past 2 or 3 months, this was a daily process of wrestling with being in denial that I couldn't fix myself.  There was literally nothing I could do--no exercise or training regimen that would whip this slacker body of mine into shape. 

"Okay.  I have to do this.  There is no other option."
"That's crazy!  There is no way I can go through that."
"But it would be worth it to be able to walk again, right?"
"There has GOT to be some essential oil or pyramid sales nutritional drink that would fix this."
"Stop complaining.  Buck up. Get on with it."
"Nuh-uh.  I'm gonna yoga the heck outta this."
"Face the facts.  You've tried EVERYTHING else.  It's gonna be a year of recovery, and then you'll be back to fully functional.  Quit whining."



I had dozens (hundreds?) of people praying for me as I went into surgery.  The day before, I met with the anesthetist to discuss sedation.  I was thrilled to find out that I didn't have to go under general anesthesia--so much of the miserable first 24 hours after my back surgery last year had to do with coming out of GA.  He said this surgeon preferred his patients to have a spinal block, which meant I'd just be paralyzed from the waist down.  Then he said that I could choose my level of sedation.  Wait--what?!  Like choose whether I want to be knocked out or not?  What lunatic would want to remember any of that surgery?

Okay well I guess there were too many people praying for peace, because sometime between my pre-op appointment on Monday and starting the IV on Tuesday, I came to a place of utter surrender. I had strength to quit my kicking and screaming, stopped my internal fight of feeling like I was being dragged by my heels, and accepted it.  "Let's do this! If I really truly can't just exercise more or rest more or stretch more, whatever, then FIX ME ALREADY!!!"

So I went in to the operating room mostly awake, listening to the nurses confirm my vitals and answering "yes" when the surgeon asked if I was ready for this.  The anesthetist had told me that the surgeon didn't want me asking questions, and that he would sedate me more if I was talking.  I was anticipating a bone saw, but I wasn't prepared for the mallet.  The ischium and pubis were broken with a mallet and chisel, and the ilium was sawed through.  I guess I asked about that, or maybe that was just my mental limit, because I don't remember the rest. I was out when they repositioned the joint, and  I was out when they put the screws in (just in the ilium, by the way! they just leave the breaks in the other 2 bones to heal without stabilization--what!?!). 



It's not like I'm a fearless unflappable daredevil.  Reading back over what I just wrote makes me absolutely sick to my stomach.  Reflecting on it very long makes me want to hurl.  But for some reason, I guess it was important for me to not just mentally give consent for this, but to be physically present and awake for the act of giving up the fight.  I cannot fix myself. 

The resignation continues.  I'm in bed, waiting for my bones to heal.  I cannot speed the process in any way.  This goes against every particle in my being--there is always something to BE DONE!  But now all I can do is just be still and trust in the unhurried work being done by a meticulous Surgeon through the body's wondrous production of osteoblasts--stitching and mending and sculpting and reassembling.