a Fool in April

Not funny.

The thing in my head played a trick. When I woke up it had moved to the left side. This was not at all an amusing prank. I had hoped the pain of March would not follow me into a new month.

I had gone to bed at 4 am and woken up with severe head pain at 9:45, in this new strange left sided way, a place it never really is, though now it was also seeming to refer to the right.

I live in shock at how bad the pain is.

(For the past five days I had been considering the ER with its horrific bright lights and sharp needles and clattering noises and loud smells. The pain had become like a cloud in the right side of my head, and a bullet in the left. It seemed it was going to kill me.)

And what of the 8 am alarm? I vaguely recall hitting snooze about a hundred times, though it was far off, like a dream one cannot remember.

When I drove to the neurologist it was sleeting. The world was one long jarring pot hole. I left her office in as much pain as I went in, and was dejected.
The labs were normal. Next stop, steroids.
Is this all there is? Are there no answers?

I stopped and got a hot chocolate and had the rx filled.
Will I get worse on prednisone? I hope and pray not.
I had to take it in my twenties after shellfish-induced anaphylactic shock.
The first 24 hours were a comatose stupor but then I was so elated to be alive. Then I started the steroids and pretty soon everything became bleak and I began to wonder why they had saved me, just so I could wish to be dead. That was how the color and meaning bled from everything when I took those pills.

I can't really afford for the cure to be miserable. But I am hoping maybe it will help. I will try to start them tomorrow. Unfortunately I have that three week trial of antibiotics in recent memory and they only seemed to make me worse.

Woman who runs with wolves became woman who naps with cats.

I retired to my writing room. The room was very warm. I turned off all the lights. Tiger and Kit were nabbed, and we spent the late gray afternoon breathing quietly in the same small space. It was peaceful and though my head was in pain, I felt my mind drift.

My notes of the day had read, "Please Dr. Raab have a plan. Please help me get away from the pain."
and " Oh meaningless pain, I dont want you, but now you are me."
and "This is the worst April Fool's joke of all time."

In the evening my mate and I had dinner and then we went to the Oyster Point Hotel where there was an art show of Olympia's paintings. The goddesses were there and they greeted me with happiness. They have a play group and they invited me to join. (These are the women with whom I did some yoga and poured paint last Friday night in Long Branch. )Olympia wore a white dress like a cloud come down from the mountains, with great high heels and jewels. Where is the artist? I had asked the goddesses. Someone had said, "Downstairs in a hot white dress." Yes.

When Olympia is doing myofascial treatment on me she is working, and she is so nondescript as to be almost invisible. No make-up and her clothes are soft and monochromatic, and I have my eyes closed most of the time anyway. This was also wonderful to see her in her full glamour.

(My own glamour has been missing a long time. Too much hospice care, too much death, I think. I hope to learn how to adorn myself again in the near future. When my Mom came to stay with me when I was so ill in the Fall, I did get some fabulous eyeshadow glitter so that is a start.)

And now what about the body? I need to replace its pain with fabrics and flowers and ornaments and birds.

And we met Patrick, whom I had met just yesterday, in a strange situation in a bank, and had looked for him in a parking lot afterwards, to tell him I was sorry. But that is another story. He was wearing a necklace of red and black beads and badger claws. In a month he goes to Cameroon to help people have their sight restored.

Many beautiful and mysterious moments happened in the brief time we were all standing around. I was back in the dream of my real life, not trapped undeground.

Just looking at Olympia's paintings makes me feel better. The elements. And something happens, it is as if I am living my real life again since she has come into my world. As if I am back with my girlfriends in Seattle and the stars and oceans have aligned a certain way. Or maybe it is that the alignment allowed this.
There are perhaps better ways to speak of it.

The best that I can tell you is that my pain tonight is the least it has been in over a week. It is moving offshore, like a storm going out to sea.
I wonder if a large part of it is that at both a soul and cellular level I need that company of my kindreds to generate my life force. I believe this is true. Oxytocin, endorphins, opiates...love, laughter, hope.