Monthly Archive for March, 2008

Combined Response

Published
by
JoanofArc
on March 31, 2008
in General Chatter
. 8 Comments

This is a combined response-

Nurse McDreamy was sweet. I wasn’t so certain talking on such a personal level to a client was such a good thing but then I guess it was hospital practice cause a tech/nurse/whatever that broke up w/ her boyfriend did too. Some stuff about him I didn’t blog about for the sake of keeping the entry less than novel length but all in all he seems like a nice guy, seems sweet, lives virtually around the corner. His main “flaw” is that he’s a he.

I don’t want to have to be flown to a hospital if I need to go. I don’t want to be so far away from everything that I need a passport just to get to the nearest hospital ya know. Nor do I want people to have to backpack to get to me. In other words, I too like the country not the outback.

The jackass that was so upset about the dye is just that, a jackass. He forgot the human aspect of his job. I got lucky w/ Dr. House though. She was cool. That’s really her name, Dr. House. I tell ya, I thought that was the funniest thing…unfunny is that the hospital cafeteria refused to serve liver pâté on brioche after 11PM. WTF?

I’m home, resting up, sipping tea, coughing up things and such… No therapy for me today. I need a bit more time before stepping out into the world. So, for now it’s just me, the sheets, 2 cats and Cappy. My vacation was soooo not supposed to go like this dang it!

Alive and Kicking

Published
by
Austin
on March 30, 2008
in General Chatter
. 3 Comments

Well, I didn’t make it to my scheduled intake. I had to go in around 11pm the night before. Cappy went off to the sitters and the girls stayed here. When I got to the ER I tried to tell them what was going on but my oxygen level was low, I couldn’t catch my breath and I was tired. I could do about 2 or 3 words at a time then I was worn out. Within minutes they stripped me down and had me on a bed. Six or seven medical personnel converged in. I remember thinking, Dear Lord, they’ve forgotten there’s a human being ALIVE under them. Don’t they know anything about being gentle? Can’t someone at least close the curtains so the other ER patients don’t see my naked butt?

One person was taking my blood pressure on one side, another doing the same on the right. As I thought about how many people were seeing me butt naked a woman walked in and said, “My name is Dr. House.” I started laughing…or tried to anyway. It took a bit but I said, This (gasp, cough, gasp) is so (gasp, cough, cough) going on (cough, cough) my blog. They all started laughing then it was right back to business. An IV was started and a second doctor with a name not so memorable came in to consult with the first doctor. (I really do have to be dead to stop joking.)

Within minutes an EKG was being run. A few minutes later I was getting an MRI. That’s when things soured a bit. Instead of the dye shooting into the IV the dye shot out of the IV onto my face. The dye machine then popped and spilled a steady stream of dye onto my face. Now, there I was laying on my back, arms above my head holding onto the bar when I got sprayed in the face. I kept my eyes closed because I didn’t want to see what it was. I didn’t know if it was blood or dye. I didn’t want to see. I just kept my eyes closed. The tech rushed over and apologized for….get this..apologized for wasting expensive dye like that. In the middle of his number crunching I told him to please wipe my face. A second tech rushed over and apologized up and down as she cleaned me off. He kept talking about how expensive the test is. I told him they had me in a vulnerable position and it felt like someone just peed on me. I wasn’t concerned about the money. He stayed there and held the IV so that the dye could go in correctly. Heck, no sense in wasting more money right? I told him before they did the test again he’d need to cover my face because I wasn’t up for another accident. All the while he’s going on and on about money. Finally I told him to shut up. He didn’t, he was nervous, anxious about the machine blowing like that. I was anxious about being in perfect conditions for a flashback. He rolled me back to my area, I caught my breath and things went well from there.

Mostly while in the ER the night was rather slow. There were few people occupying the beds. Most of the employees talked about how dead it was. I guess that’s why I got special attention from Nurse McDreamy. I talked to several techs about their personal lives. One lady broke up with her boyfriend while on duty. She was crying at my bedside. I told her she was worth more than that loser anyway. I told her a few jokes then the admittance person came in. I talked to her about her boyfriends band, her two dogs, her cats and a few other things.

Since I have someone here that can make sure I’m still breathing they let me come home late. I don’t have another pulmonary embolism and my heart filter is doing just fine. Basically I needed some breathing treatments and heavy antibiotics.  I also had a high fever. I shook so badly while trying to break that fever. My goodness, it wasn’t pretty. Basically I had a heck of a lot of tests run, spent a lot of time talking to staff members, ate little, slept little, shook with fever and flirted a bit. That’s where Nurse McDreamy comes in. Note: When on morphine I’m not totally opposed to guys hitting on me…as the following entry will show………

Home

Published
by
Austin
on March 29, 2008
in Relationships
. 3 Comments

I say home stands on a hill that runs into another hill, that touches one shade of green and smoothly transitions to another. It’s a quiet place carpeted with plush green grass and sprinkled with wild flowers. I say when I look at the ceiling of my house I can see the stars and smell the fresh air as clearly as the good meal cooking in my kitchen. Home is a fairy tale you see on TV where a family of cardinals nest outside the picture window and where purpose is as clear as the open blue sky and as mysterious and wondrous as the stars in their heavenly home. It’s a fairy tale but I want it, I told him. I want squirrels to dash up and down the trees, a dear to graze in the yard from time to time. Most of my annoyance should be someone’s milk cow that’s wondered into my yard. That to me is living. It’s a fairy tale kind of life, but I want it. No, there won’t be two and a half kids running around, just me on a nice piece of land.

He says he needs the city. He needs the lights, the noise, options is what he calls them. He likes seeing tons of people, going to ball games, golf tournaments, night clubs, dinner formals and anything else his big city offered. He says he can see green grass and hear crickets on television. As he held my arm and I shuffled along beside him in my too large robe and lips blue from low oxygen saturation I told him HDTV doesn’t give you the feeling I’m talking about. He insisted he’d take the city over country air any day. He was sure I’d never left this city. I didn’t say differently. All I know is, on every land my feet have ever come across the only time they walked comfortably was when that land was open, full of trees, full of life and mostly void of concrete.

I wanted to ask him why he’s here in this so called city. Anyone that travels from where he use to live is either running from something or to someone. He didn’t come here for educational opportunities. He didn’t come here for some huge job, after all, he was assisting me to the restroom. What are you doing here in small time USA?

Yes, eight hours of conversation, of likes and dislikes, ideas and beliefs can give you a feeling you’ve never quite felt before. I admitted in a different place, a different time, a totally different frame of mind we could have hung out. I hope you enjoyed your golf game, thanks for thinking about me at the driving range. I’ll be thinking of you as I listen to the crickets in my little home in this “little city.” That is a privilege sir because most guys I wouldn’t give a second thought.

Austin

Pneumonia - Not A Girl’s Best Friend

Published
by
Austin
on March 27, 2008
in Art and General Chatter
. 5 Comments

Flower BasketPneumonia is not a girl’s best friend but sunflowers are. Too bad I didn’t get sunflowers instead of pneumonia. I can’t believe this either. So, tomorrow I go IP so they can pump me with their voodoo medicines and probe me with their crazy machines. Captain Crunch will be with his babysitter and the girls will be here with my roommate Barney Fife. God help them!

I figured something out. Pink makes me feel better, as do sunflowers. So I grabbed my pink blanket, put on my pink fluffy slippers, grabbed the pillow with the pink ruffled sham and plopped on the love seat. Happy camper I was. I’m about to make some tea and go right back to the love seat.

First let me introduce to you “Flower Basket”. This little picture here was done a few days ago. She’s just holding a basket with purple buds in it while standing in a field. She’s just come from picking wild flowers in her private paradise.

Later tatters, I shall talk to you all in just a few days.

Austin

Now I’m Dog Sick

Published
by
Austin
on March 27, 2008
in General Chatter and Humor
. 2 Comments

I told the chick my sense of humor never really leaves. I could be on my death bed and still crack jokes. But was I joking as I made my list of “I’m dog sick demands”! Who knows. But I do have a list of demands. See, it’s really hard to deny a sick person what they ask for. I tried to tell ~E~ that while pregnant her chances of getting away with stuff are great. She should take advantage of being pregnant. I even sent her a list of things to pull and blame on the pregnancy. Now here I am, not pregnant but sick…and not for 9 months either. However, like pregnant people sick people are easy to feel sorry for and we get away with murder too. Soooo, I feel my situation should be milked for all it’s worth.

I compiled the list of demands before my oxygen level hit an all time low preventing me from putting two cells together to come up with a manipulative scheme. I like to plan ahead. I’m a thinker ya know? So, this is my list for this bought of sickness which has taken a turn in just a matter of hours. Soooooo, I’ll be going in tomorrow morning to get check out. I should be home in the evening sometime. When I return home I expect to see all of the following on my doorstep. If you must charter a plane to get these items here on time then so be it. But everything should be on my doorstep no later than Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time. Consider yourself notified.

  • Rum Raisin Häagen Dazs ice cream (Please let Beauty wrap this. She always goes crazy with the tape and pretty much water proofs everything she sends. She’ll do great with sending the ice cream via the mail.)
  • Lavender and Vanilla fabric softener for my warmed blankets and fluffed pillows.
  • Homemade chicken soup. Don’t come to me with Campbell’s! I’m dyin’ here, I want the real thing. (You hear that Julie The Garden Lady? The real thing, an Amish version would be preferable.)
  • Ice pack with a sunflower decal
  • One French maid in full costume fully certified as a masseuse - You know who you are, see ya when you get here sweetie :-)

Really though, it takes more than bronchitis or whatever this has developed into to take my sense of humor away. I really would like to have the French maid though. That would be so awesome!!!

ta ta for now,
Austin (livin’, laughin’ but not lovin’)

Dream Therapy: Why Are You Smiling? 1of2

Published
by
JoanofArc
on March 26, 2008
in Abuse, Dream Therapy, Dreams, Mental Health, PTSD and Segments
. 0 Comments

I sat in my grandmother’s dinning room adjacent to the kitchen, the lights were rather low. The kitchen was mess because a family gathering had just ended. Several family members stepped out for a bit leaving me and one other person in the house. We chatted for a bit about how I planned to leave my chocolate milkshake for someone named Sheila. As the other person, whose face I never really saw, talked about Sheila the patio door in the dinning room burst open. A young white male ran in disheveled, panicked. Then the front door burst open and Sheila ran in looking for the young man. They seemed to be playing tag but the young man was certainly not enjoying himself. He ran into the living room and sat in the chair by a picture window with heavy dark green curtains that successfully blocked the view in and out. Sheila ran up to him and punched him in the face a few times. She was laughing. The other family member and I watched in horror but didn’t stop her. I told the family member I wasn’t about to give a chocolate milk shake to an abuser so I dumped it in the sink. As I came back I heard the young man tell Sheila he knew it was his fault because he was smiling. While trying to convince her to stop and that he wasn’t mad he accidentally smiled again. Sheila responded by punching him in the face several more times saying, “You gonna smile again? You want to smile again?”

Commentary:

The young man symbolized my cousin, the woman hitting him my aunt. My cousin use to get in trouble for smiling. They’d ask him what he was up to. He use to sit on the stairs at the grandmother’s house listening to everyone talk. If he smiled he got in trouble. The beatings he took on those stairs always went without much uproar about it. The aunt tore into him from an early age up until the time she left him and his sister in the house and moved to Florida with her new husband. The house was paid for yes but they were only teenagers, not ready for the responsibility of keeping a house, paying the taxes on it, ect. In the dream the cousin was about 17 years old and looked nothing at all like he actually does. The aunt didn’t look anything at all like herself either. It was very typical for the only repercussions of beating your child to be something simple like “you can’t have desert.” Hurting your child was normal, not something they cast you out of good standing for. I suppose that’s why the only real denunciation for her actions was to deny her a chocolate shake.

Dream Therapy: What Are You Smiling About? 1 of 2
Wednesday, March 26, 2008-4:10PM EST
Dream Therapy: What Are You Smiling About? 2 of 2

Dream Therapy: Why Are You Smiling? 2of2

Published
by
JoanofArc
on March 26, 2008
in Abuse, Dream Therapy, Dreams, PTSD and Segments
. 0 Comments

The idea behind dream therapy is to re-write nightmares and make myself the victor instead of the victim or simply write an outcome I can live with. If I were to re-write this dream the young boy would come bursting into the dining room still disheveled but met with concerned family members. The dream would go like this:

Begin re-written dream -

What’s wrong?
I smiled. She’s coming in the front door.
Go in the kitchen and stay.
I’d follow behind him with the phone in my hand. Aunty C, you need to go home and calm yourself down or I’m calling the police.
Aunty C tests the boundary, lunges for me and begins punching the teenage cousin who happens to be several years older than myself. I quickly dial 911. Several minutes later police cruisers show up. They’re met with a very tired and very bloody aunt who is standing over the dead body of a young man. She’s tossed to the ground and cuffed. The medical team pronounces the young man dead at the scene and handle the situation according to protocol. As they lift the young man’s body onto the gurney to take him away I can’t help but wonder how history has changed. One life taken before it was supposed to end changes things, for the good or the bad but it changes things. The front door closes. I give my statement and two family members are lost to me.

End re-written dream –

One might ask why it is I chose to kill the cousin in the dream. I wrote it that way to give history a change. The same man beaten mercilessly, raped, tortured and humiliated grew up to himself be an abuser. One life to save the suffering of others, I’m okay with that. My cousin had choices the same as I have choices and any other survivor has choices. He fell to statistics. Since I’m able in dream therapy to make the outcome anything I choose I chose to change history, to make sure he never got his hands on one more child. If only we could re-write history this easily.

Dream Therapy: What Are You Smiling About? 1 of 2
Wednesday, March 26, 2008-4:10PM EST
Dream Therapy: What Are You Smiling About? 2 of 2

Not Quite Dog Sick

Published
by
Austin
on March 26, 2008
in General Chatter
. 3 Comments

I can’t believe I have a cold or something nasty. Congestion, stuffy head, fever so I can’t rest….hang on, that’s a commercial. I should get some medicine so I can sleep like I did before I had… ????? oops, that’s a commercial too, the same one in fact. I must be delirious.

I nursed a migraine for days but now I’ve got this going on. I’m going to sleep now. Yeah, it’s 6:09AM and I’m just now climbing into bed but this IS my vacation. … like I put off sleep only on vacation time. Who am I kidding…again with the delirious babble.

I’m sleeping now,
later tatters,
Austin

Aussie Conversations: Down A Twisted Road

Published
by
JoanofArc
on March 24, 2008
in Humor and Relationships
. 3 Comments

Three cups of coffee, two girls and a guy sitting in the living room having a perfectly nice time then one friend decides to take the conversation down a twisted road. I’m sipping my mocha coffee (that would be a tad bit of almond extract, chocolate syrup and vanilla extract) when this conversation ensued:

Male friend: It occurred to me the other day that my therapist is my bitch.

Aussie: (cleaning the coffee spit up on her shirt) What?

Male friend: Yeah, I pay him by the hour. He says what we do is up to me. That makes him my bitch. I’m his pimp.

Aussie: Oookayyyy…

Female friend: No, that makes you his John. The insurance company is his pimp.

Aussie: I know that’s the truth.

Male friend: Well he’s still my bitch.

Aussie: See, this is exactly why you have years upon years of healing left to do. You’re one sick puppy you know that?

Although we do have meaningful conversations during dinner or while having coffee sometimes theres a break in reality for things such as the above. Even so we all went back to sipping as if the man hadn’t just strayed off the path and went right down Strange Street, took a left on Twisted Road then parked on Out of His Mind Lane. I fear he may stay parked for awhile. LOL

Aussie Conversations: Down A Twisted Road
Monday, March 24, 2008-4:17PM EST

People Like Me

Published
by
JoanofArc
on March 24, 2008
in Dissociative Identity Disorder, Mental Health, PTSD and Relationships
. 4 Comments

The follow up to Aussie Conversations: Down A Twisted Road has more to do with associating with survivors than it does with the strange happenings at my place. My therapist asked me if it’s helpful to associate with people like me. While I can look forward to off the wall outbursts with non-survivors and people not in the mental health system I don’t have the same connection and unspoken understanding that I have with survivors, people with DID and people with PTSD.

I told my therapist that yes it is helpful to be with people like me because I know when in the company of a person with PTSD certain things are a given. Being with others that have the same condition lets you relax a bit. No one is going to jump from behind anything for the sake of a quick scare prank. No one is going to come in the room wearing a mask of Frankenstein. We are careful because of our own issues not to simply walk up behind one another or stand behind one another. There are certain things that are simply a given that people with PTSD wouldn’t do to another person. It lets you relax.

When it comes to associating with others that have DID it can be very complicated but also rewarding.

Continue reading ‘People Like Me’