📌An excellent article about resilience is in The New York Times

Several weeks have past and it is time to come back to words.I had been trying to divert myself from life via an on-line digital photography class. Sometimes images are more soothing than verbal ideations. Sometimes we have to be, well, non-verbal. But don’t worry, I yak to friends on the phone in my effort to make sense of my world, as well as your world.

For weeks I had Robert on one side of my brain: that is ongoing. However, I didn’t see him for two weeks in preparation of mind and body for a double lumpectomy. Which was driving the other side of my brain crazy. Or as my surgeon says, a mini lumpectomy of a site which appears to have been a “papilloma,” and a regular lumpectomy of a site of undefined origins. Said lump, which by the way, wasn’t one; (in my boobage issues there has never been a lump), is somewhere on a pathologist’s slide, poking at me, occupying my obsessive thoughts  due to lack of information. My hope is that when this is over, by next week’s post-op visit, I can run away from that fearful part of the brain and just put this all to rest. Each day that I tick off the calendar represents a day closer to the truth. That slide under a microscope. Pre-truth is not easy. You can quote me on that.

The first part of this journey was last Tuesday when my dear friend M. took me to an appointment where, under MRI while seated in a chair, a tracking Scout was placed in the boobage of question; it is a localization device the size of a grain of rice, which transmits sound and marks a specific location. Years ago the poor boobage was stabbed on the site with a WIRE and a paper cup was placed on the end to ward off a crash before surgery. Now a doctor can locate the site by waving a wand and hearing beeps. Kind of like looking for metal on the beach but not as much fun.

This was the third part of the procedure, preceded by a Covid test and a visit to the doctor for clearance.

The final part was last Thursday to track down and remove the marked culprits via the Scouts, requiring what I thought was to be “twilight sleep” (à la colonoscopy). But when the anesthesiologist approached me and offered GENERAL anesthesia, I recoiled. Who wants that? The doctor told me it would be easier. I picked easier, fearing if my choice were wrong I’d never be able to collect myself and get back to my beloved friend, R.’s, car.

I was on the table, I went out. I was told after the fact that I was thrashing and screaming that I was still awake! (That’s always been a nightmare of mine-having surgery and seeing and hearing it all). I had no recollection of said activities nor how they pumped me up with valium and God knows what to calm me down. Post-surgery, I had a talk with the doctor to whom I thought I was having a rational conversation, and she told me I was too out of it and I’d have to wait for her to perform another surgery and we’d talk later. All I could think of was I couldn’t drink the ginger ale and that my hairband was gone.

I remember she said “it went well.” Nothing is “well,” however, until one has a clean bill of health and a good pathology report.

Post-op was nothing short of lousy for hours. Whatever cocktail was pumped into me left me with a memorable hangover, but by the next day (sister stayed) I was able to function with a minimum of pain.

So let’s talk about the brain. If you (I’ll speak of myself) have one major thing going on, it is all consuming. Then when the other side of the brain-occupation kicks in, the first brain issue seems to fade into the background. So I tell myself: the Universe is telling you that there is nothing you can do for Robert, take care of yourself already! Focus on YOU. I believe in the distinct possibility of this happening.

In addition, I am in a dispute with a business that has been occupying my frontal lobe. The guy is a crook, I was NOT thinking, I was intimidated, shrunk back into the child-me who was compliant and a good girl: I had a broken patio chaise which was part of a set and didn’t want to throw it out. I found a guy on the net whom I trusted, he sent a henchman immediately to pick it up and took a check for over $400, paid in full no receipt. The woman who interacted with this creep was not working on four cylinders—the other four were floating over Robert somewhere in the nursing home.

Two weeks went by and a non-English speaking shy henchman delivered the chair to the front porch: the seat had been fixed but the screw apparatus had a missing part and the back of the chair was flapping off on one side. He kept calling his boss, I kept yelling tinto his phone. He looked mortified.

My voice said: UNACCEPTABLE! So when Shy Guy got the criminal boss on the phone, this “Furniture Doctor,” that I gave him the chair that way, I blew up. If I HAD given it to him that way, shouldn’t it have been fixed? The chair also has gashes in the powder coated finish on an arm. The bastard tried to gaslight me and I realized that this guy was actually the pimp for repairers throughout the area, probably a few states and whoever fixed the chair lost a 5¢ part, a securing cap for the bolt, and just returned the damn thing with another ailment. The chair was taken back. Weeks went by. My son wrote a GOOGLE review. The Boss Bully said we were trying to ruin his business, and my little chair is being held hostage. Son called a few times, we recorded the interaction and it was left with our message that if he wants to talk to ME he can call back. The criminal would no longer talk man-to-man with my son. I didn’t get a call.

Son wrote a letter to a local television station that deals with this kind of crap, but I have no idea if the station is doing this sort of consumer thing during Covid. I am stalling calling him back, dealing with this bully. But it is irking me like crazy.

And guess what? When I am irked and distracted I do not focus on Robert.

Who I saw yesterday, after twenty-six days.
He was still there, in his bed, staring up at the television. This time my son came, he wanted to share some good news: he finally popped the question to his girlfriend!

Robert, E. proposed to C., isn’t that nice?

Yes.

So there we were were again, blathering to Robert, sometimes we just all stared at one another. I say things over and over, I ask what he is thinking. I get nothing. I was hoping for a miracle. You know, I think I told you about it last time: I come to visit and  he is sitting up in bed, wearing his reading glasses, plowing through The Times, telling me about articles he’d thought would be of interest to me. He’d be cracking jokes, forming puns, his friends would be surrounding him and having a laugh about the days of whenever. But when I enter the room the photo behind him doesn’t match his one-hundred-five-year-old-looking-face that is attached to a possible 100 pound body in the bed. He is not reading the Times. He is not cracking jokes. He is not even surrounded by friends. He is, alone, trapped inside of himself. But, he did respond to a question I didn’t think he would answer: Do you have a favorite drink? To which he said, “I don’t have a favorite drink.”
A full sentence response is a bigger gift than a one word utterance, which is a bigger gift than no utterance.

So I visit Arthur, in the next bed and go through Robert’s closet and keep finding other people’s clothes. There are still things missing. Arthur says his brand new sneakers that were by his bed disappeared immediately.

I am reminded of my chair.

People keep asking me how I manage, how I get through all of this, how they loved to read my open words. I am a writer of “confessions.” I have discovered over a very strange life that writing helps me. It doesn’t matter if I am read or not. I need to put the words in front of me to make sense of what is behind them.

I go to therapy, it feels like my whole life has been a long chat with someone or other. It was always an intriguing journey doing the news of the week in review. In digging deeper. Now, I am working on a project with the best of all the therapists I have had: I have been dividing my life into five segments and reviewing what had happened, and what I have learned.

When I was a youngster I was bullied by a group of girls in my class. One day in gym class, during a volleyball game, they were trying to provoke me, implying I was fat, that I was less than adequate. “Look at how her skirt swishes!” was their best observation. I was nine years old. I said nothing, I did not react. I deflected the knives but believe me I was bleeding.  Somewhere along the line of teasing, I developed a wicked sense of humor. I was quick, I could make people laugh!

I was tormented by another religious group, I was bullied at camp having borrowed another girl’s bathing suit for an riflery match. “She better not stretch it out,” one voice behind me, said. What I did stretch out were the points for my team, I beat a bunch of boys and won the match. I was fat-shamed in my young married twenties. And in looking back over so many years, at many photos, I realized that I was not obese, but I was smarter despite feeling stupid, more evolved, more sensitive and empathic than most people. I survived every painful attempt at shame and guilt. I survived loss after loss. People around you who have their own issues can suck you in and make you doubt yourself, just like the chair guy did. They want to pull the rug out from under you and make you fall, take the advantage and assume power over you. make YOU feel weak.

So, I have learned that even though I haven’t completed the exercise, during every part of my life I have somehow, and I am truly not even sure how, developed, some kind of life-force that pushes me forward, that says, OK, bring it on!, That doesn’t give up. That says, you can do this. Over the years I have lost many people whom I have loved. Loss has probably been the worst theme of my life.

But one thing I have learned is that developing friendships is the yin to the yang of loss.

So what’s a patio chair?

📌The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

The previous post is here

The next post is here