Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

After a couple of weeks of nauseating symptoms and a half dozen doctor’s appointments, I was admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital under the advisement of the neurologist I visited Thursday morning.

Immediately after reviewing the images of my two MRIs, she sent me to get a CT scan. After reviewing the CT scan images with a radiologist, she then transferred me to the care of a neurosurgeon. The neurologist explained that they needed to conduct a couple of more tests, so I needed to be admitted to the hospital.

Now it seems like I should have gotten a huge clue when the neurologist admitted me to hospital and referred me to a neurosurgeon, but it didn’t. Though I use humor as guise for grief, I also use good old-fashioned denial. Denial will never go out of style.

With each doctor and each test, I knew the stakes were being raised, but I didn’t know what they were holding. With pokers faces firmly in place, they didn’t verbalize their concerns, but I heard it in their gentle tones and sympathetic eyes.

Also another red flag should have been how quickly the neurologist, radiologist, neurosurgeons were seeing me. The neurologist alone was booked solid for a month, but after an urgent call from my doctor, she saw me two days later. A heavy sought after neurosurgeon took my case within the same day as the neurologist. Why was I being passed along so quickly?

After being admitted to the hospital Thursday evening, I was told that I was going to have another MRI and an angiogram. I felt really at ease by the thorough investigative approach the physicians were taking, but at the same time, why did these doctors still have so many unanswered questions that they needed me to take even more tests?

I breezed through the 45-minute MRI late night Thursday, returning to a dark empty room, wondering why I was really even there. Though I have felt bad these last couple of weeks, my condition hadn’t worsened, yet I was hooked to an IV, blood pressure monitor, inflating and deflating pumps on my legs to help ward off blood clots and an EKG machine. I was strapped down to a bed, completely alone, in silence.

Luckily, my angiogram was scheduled first thing Friday morning, so I figured I would be out in no time. That is until I learned what an angiogram was. While prepping me for the procedure – mind you it morphed from a test to a procedure in the less than 24 hours – a young doctor explained to me exactly what the procedure would entail. Even then, I still couldn’t grasp it.

They would make an incision in my groin to access my femoral artery, in which they would insert a catheter to carry a contrast solution to my brain. This process will allow doctors to take pictures of my brain more vividly than an MRI could.

All the while, I would be awake, twilight anesthesia, this way they could monitor my cognitive state ensuring that I did not have a stroke during the procedure. Why would I have a stroke? The catheter could loosen up some plaque in my artery which could travel to my brain, causing me to stroke out.

I have been apologizing to my veins for the last two weeks. They are sore and really need a break.

Since Monday, July 19, the vein in the fold of my right arm has been poked twice to draw at least ten tubes of blood, poked another time to feed me two liters of IV solution, and again injected with contrast solution for an MRI.

Feeling extremely sorry for my bruised right arm, I have now sacrificed the vein my left arm. Just today it has been exposed to the withdrawal of seven tubes of blood, an IV and two doses of contrast solutions for a CT scan and another MRI. Now the vein running the length of my left arm is cursing me.

I guess I was pretty naïve to think that I would simply attend my MRI on Wednesday, with a quick and dirty appointment with the neurologist on Thursday. Yeah, not so quick, she liked me so much, she admitted me to the hospital.

I had been experiencing these symptoms for almost two weeks and no one admitted me yet, why would my Thursday visit be any different?

My admittance brought into focus the severity of the situation. Perhaps it was just the initial shock or downright denial, but I thought that this would simply be a series of outpatient appointments and treatments.

Though I tend to use humor as a personal coping mechanism and a way of making my loved ones feel calmer in a crisis, the terror has officially sunken it. With each injection, more fear was pumped into my veins. With each withdrawal of blood, I lose a small part of my spirit.

So now instead of sitting at home waiting, I am now at a hospital…waiting.

Waiting to get a test done, waiting for the test results, waiting for the doctor to read you the test results, the doctor telling you that they want to perform more tests. And repeat six times.

The last two weeks have been one big waiting room, defying the dimensions of space. If it’s not in an actual waiting room in a doctor’s office, an imaging center, or hospital, it has been in my living room, at my dining room table, in my bed as I lay in the dark hoping the stillness will quiet my impatient thoughts.

Waiting is patience. Patience is a virtue. I am not virtuous.

There is a terrorizing tension in waiting, especially when what you are waiting for “something” that can change the trajectory of your life.

I am in medical purgatory: an ambivalent in-between where things could go really good or really bad.

While I am rather confident that I will ultimately be just fine, the longer you wait, the more focused you become on the unknown. Variables begin shifting, what if’s begin compounding.

How is it possible to be terrified and optimistic at the same time?

I know I will be fine, but it’s just a matter of getting to fine.

And while the doctors are closer to filling in the blank, I will refrain from disclosing the cause for my big brain until all tests are confirmed and a treatment plan is determined.

I will say this though…It’s not a tumor. (Throwback to Kindergarten Cop if you didn’t get it.)

Sincerely,

Chaundra

P.S. I’m on some really good drugs right now, so excuse me if this doesn’t make sense.

Understanding the reason you want to write will save you a lot of time and frustration. I spent years sitting before a blank page, searching the keyboard and my soul for the right words. But I did not spend enough time searching for my reasons to write.

Love is not enough.

We have heard this expression spoken many times about relationships. As we get older, we begin to see this alone cannot sustain a love affair. Soon life will get in the way, distracting you from that initial attraction and causing amnesia of the thrill.

My love affair with writing has been as complicated as with any man I ever devoted myself to. Just as the faces of the men in my life changed, so did my writings. I drifted from spoken-word influenced poetry to journalism (newspaper, magazine, television) to travel writing to essays to e-books to blogging and back to essays and memoirs.

With each form, I was searching for not only myself, but my purpose. And while I was looking for the words to paint the imprints of my heart, I never once asked what my heart could offer. Like love, writing can be a selfish endeavor.

If for no other reason, writing can make you feel good. The release of pinned up emotion and nagging tension offers a calming effect that is not only refreshing but uplifting, allowing you to refocus your attention to what is most important in life–the now.

The next level of writing offers a method for rationalizing and reflecting. This deeper exploratory writing beckons the meaning of your life and the world around you. Writing becomes a way of excavating the truth beyond our shallow surroundings.

The next notch up is writing purely for self-expression, typically infusing release and reflection. This does not inherently require an audience but a desire to articulate and sift through the inner workings of your mind.

An offshoot of self-expression is the next writing domain: chronicling or recording what in this world is most sacred to you. Typically, the writer intertwines personal insight with the magnificence of nature, family trees, or cultural landscapes.

The next writing domain requires an interested audience to impart knowledge or pleasure. Most contemporary writings reside here, housing the vast majority of books, magazines, and blogs. This realm is adorned with flashing lights luring literary hopefuls to see their name in print and on checks.

The ultimate story of writing is to improve mankind, creating literary arts which permeates times and space. This literature is reveled and looked upon with the same discerning eye as an observer of Dali.

So what is your reason for writing?

I write because my soul aches at the faint notion of not writing. I write because if I don’t, my life will not be fulfilled nor fulfill. I write to make the world more beautiful.

No day elapses without a thought of writing, regardless if it’s achieved.

I now know the terrain of true passion, the unchartered land beyond intense want. I now know what love is, I know what life is, I know what writing is.