Intentionally Breaking Mirrors

Today was the first time in weeks my head let me go to the gym. It doesn’t like me to have a cocktail and it doesn’t like to go to the gym. It also doesn’t like me to chew or lie down or think or sleep or even hardly smile and raise my eyebrows.

But I took a blue pill last night and after awhile it seemed like I could see better, my eyes were more in synch, and I got some paperwork done and though I could not sleep for a long time my head did not force me to get up with its usual antics of hissing and popping and fizzy pressure and pain and dragging down lizard tail in the belly making me feel queasy.

So when I got up today I had clocked in many hours of lying supine, a thing my head had not allowed much of this past week.

And last night when I was able to think a bit more clearly I got a big infusion of hope because I thought what if we have all been wrong all along and the severe head pain is just a symptom of the other disease and maybe I am closer to a diagnosis than ever before.

And I had also read about an occipital nerve block and got very excited that maybe I could get something like that.

And I decided to return to the local doc to tell her that maybe we had missed something. Let’s start over. Let’s pretend I am a new patient with a blank page. That for many years I had been having severe periods and then three years ago head pains which seemed like classic menstrual migraines began and that they were so bad they would wake me up in the middle of the night. Then in Fall 2007 I am in sudden acute back right shoulder pain and it is so severe that after days of pain and night sweats and delirium I end up at ER where my BP which has always been low and normal, has shot up skyhigh. They do x-rays and give me injections in my legs to treat the pain. But the severe pain lasts for months, for over a year. Then in Fall 2008 I tried bp pills to try to reduce menstrual migraines and severe periods but three weeks in some spiking head pain and upper right ab pain lands me in the ER, with again, sky high bp. The upper ab pain never really goes away though after a few months it reduces. But since Fall 2008 I have rarely been without a headache and/or signs of aura. Then in Fall 2010 I develop a bizarre right sided head pain which leaves me dizzy and blacking out, unable to eat, think, drive, anything. It is the most disabled I have ever been in my whole life.

So what is this?

I think I am on some spectrum between scleroderma and porphyria.
Is there a disease in which the tendons or ligaments rip off from their attachment sites? Because that almost feels like it would explain my right sided back, shoulder, ab, neck, skull pain.

I will show her my MRI results and see what she thinks and ask her to review the Lost Cameo in the CT scan.

I begin to believe that maybe progress can be made. I have not given up hope. It had just gone dormant. The hope had just been sucker-punched by the pain.

I was on the stair-climber at the gym today and my heart rate was hitting 170 and I turned to my mate and smiled and said “If I die, just tell everyone I was happy. It’s true. I lived happy and I died happy.”

And of course I did not die at the gym. I had a great and hopeful work-out.

I am now wearing a Curious George band-aid~ but that is the next part of the story.

We came home, driving past the gorgeous flocks of greater scaup and the large gathering of swans who were floating and wading on the Navesink River, and while I was preparing our lunch of hard boiled eggs and blueberry blintzes, I caught Kaboodle.

And also Kit her sister who is sadly being held hostage to keep her company and also warm as they snuggle in this dog crate in the garage.

But don’t think success was a happy occasion. I was afraid Kaboodle the Fox was going to break her teeth trying to get out as she bit the metal bars as hard as she could. As soon as I got door closed she went crazy feral ballistic and threw herself against all sides and the ceiling and then tried to chew her way out. We spent some hours gently pushing her back and shushing her.

I caught her at 2:30 today, Sunday. Now at 6 pm she has quieted and has eaten some of the tuna I have pushed through the bars. We are warming the garage and will move Kit and Kaboodle in there and at some point I will try to open the door enough to give them proper dinner and water and a litter pan.

Right after catching her I called the vet and he answered and I asked to be put on a waiting list in case any times open up before Wednesday and he said that he might be able to get her in Tuesday and he will call if that is possible.

Meanwhile during all those antics, Shaka the mother who is filled with more kittens, sat wary on the fence eyeing the whole production. And then Beezle the winter kitten appeared, ran up on to the deck and pressed his face to the glass crying at the top of his lungs. He is a loud hungry beggar and he is a primary reason I don’t like God or Nature. It is unkind to make a baby animal in the heart of winter. Though he was blessed with extra toes and a very thick coat and a weird plumped out body.

I opened a can of wet food and put it out on the deck. He ran at me screaming and began eating. I petted him. This has only happened once before, when he was this hungry and I got my hands on him in his hunger. This is the kitten who was forty feet up a tree in our yard in November, and whose Mom climbed it to nurse him and try to get him down, and he wouldn’t come down. He began crying all day and night, and I finally on Day 5 I found a tree company to get him down. I held him in this same crate in the garage for two days and he was a crazy, mad, sad, terrified, aggressive little bobcat, and when I couldn’t find anyone in the world to take him, and his Mom sat in the yard on the fence all day crying for him, I hosted a reunion. They ran to each other and ran off like wild little horses reunited.

So Shaka came up on deck but didn’t get a bite before Beezle sort of chased her off and hogged all the food. So I opened a second can for her to get some. And when I came back inside, there was blood everywhere. I had not felt a thing. And I always tell everyone be so careful those lids are like razors. And indeed, I sliced myself good.

Meanwhile, our cat Blue hangs around the front looking like a green eyed goblin and Tiger moves around wondering why he hasn’t had any food and where did his two sisters go? We see him later stalking a squirrel. Tonight I will grab him and bring him in garage and feed him with his sisters.

My mate and I had a cathartic and satisfying time yesterday cleaning out the garage. We disposed of a large broken mirror the last owners had left here, and also the remains of the furnace pipe that had exploded and sounded like a car hitting the side of the house. This was after several repair people had told us that furnaces don’t explode. And then it did.

So now I am proposing we rename Shaka Zulu, the Queen of all these Cats. When we returned from Kwazulu Natal in Africa in the Fall of 2008, she had moved into our yard. I thought she seemed such a fierce warrior. But I think now it is time to name her after a nun of chastity. Enough is enough. We are trying to hang a sign on the backdoor that says, “Closed for business.” We want to board up under the playhouse where she brings the kittens but right now we are concerned the possums are hibernating under there and we don’t want to trap them.

So how does one wean a kitten piñata? A cat who is always pregnant? Like creating world peace, it may be impossible. But we endeavor to try. Spring will bring baby rabbits and mice and birds and we hope she can go back to her wild way of eating. We hope that someone will invent a cat birth control and that we can dart her.

As for the best case scenario with Kaboodle, we hope she won’t escape, that she will not break her teeth trying to get out, that she will not test positive for diseases, that she will survive surgery, and recover without any problems.

Well, so then we went and took the dog to the ocean and picked up a ricotta, tomato, and basil pizza and now I write to you.

I do give great thanks for the god and nature who makes the miracle that I can hold the flesh of my finger together and someday soon it will re-knit. It has I imagine, already begun.