This Blog Has Moved

I hate to say ‘good-bye’ to this site, but I must move my blog to a location where I can accept ads and make a few pennies.  Aside from that monetizing piece, this hosting site has been everything I wanted.  I’ve stayed for 350 posts with no regrets.  Now you will find me writing at http://essiewb.blogspot.com. 

Peace.

Essie

Harsh Words, Soft Beehive Hat

Yesterday was a hard day.  I won’t call it a bad day, because in the end we accomplished what was necessary, but it was hard. 

We made some decisions yesterday, as a family, about a direction for our near future.  We set out to put those decisions into action.  In the process, I walked a long way in stifling heat, waited patiently for service, and explained the circumstances that led to us being there.  Then I tried to ask the questions that would educate us about necessary procedures and what we could expect in the future.  In return, someone half my age greeted me with disdain and told me I should be “nice”.  I contemplated that for a moment, then asked the person if they were saying I had not been “nice”.  The reply was that I wanted a special service and should “at least be grateful”.   

I am being deliberately obtuse about the particulars of this encounter, but trust me when I say that the “special service” I requested was only the lifting of a deadline, and I was asking to pay my own money for something that should be available to everyone in Tennessee.  I am afraid to be more specific in this public forum.

I was shaken by this encounter.  It was humiliating.  Degrading.  It made me go home and question myself, look in the mirror to see what about me was so offensive that I could engender a negative reaction just by being there.  I saw a short, fat, light brown-skinned woman with close-cropped hair and glasses.  In private, I cried.  I didn’t know that I am still so vulnerable to that kind of ugliness.

In my teen years, I would have hurt myself after that experience – literally beating myself up for not being “acceptable”.  In my 20s I would have made a long, loud, eloquent rejoinder and demanded to see the person in charge.  In my 30s I learned tact, and my response would have been modulated, but still extremely voluble.  Yesterday I was at a loss, because I have not dealt with such a blatant approach in a long time.  My guard was down, so I met it with puzzlement and quiet.  I returned to my home and quietly did housework. 

Last night I knit until my hands hurt.  I worked out my hurt with my needles, relishing the solid metallic clash of one against the other, making something that I love out of the hatred that I met. 

I just learned an Estonian cast-on that is very stretchy and decorative.  The video where I learned (Nancy Bush teaches the technique) is here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frc5_9AIVy0.  It is very similar to traditional long-tail cast-on, and it didn’t take me long.  I used it as the brim for a hat.  Having extra stretch at the forehead edge is always nice.   

This is the “wrong” side.  Still pretty. 

The hat is a new design, my Beehive.  The yarn is Karabella Supercashmere, about 110 yards (a little less than one and one-half balls).  I cast on a purple one this morning, to repeat the pattern.    I plan to do a couple more in organic cotton.  I love the design, and it feels and looks soft, very flattering. 

Design and knit – my dose of healing.

Peace.

Wendell Potter, My New Hero

I have a new hero.  His name is Wendell Potter, and he is a quiet-spoken, unassuming, middle-aged, white man-a native Tennessean-who is a former insurance company executive.  When he stopped working for Cigna he began to speak out, telling Americans what he saw and did during his more than 15 years in the private health insurance industry. 

I heard him first on the Bob Edwards show on National Public Radio.  The interview was so riveting that I sat in my car in a 95-degree garage to hear it to the end.  I dared not miss a minute of the education he was providing.  Since then I have looked further at his associations and his work in informing the American public about health care reform and the role that private insurance is taking in trying to prevent it from happening.  I find this man to be unassailably credible, primarily because he had nothing to gain (and much to lose) by leaving his cushy insurance job and becoming a truth-teller for his fellow citizens.  He is a man motivated only by the desire to right the wrongs that he has witnessed, and help provide decent health care for all of us.  Those motives are pretty doggone clean when you set them beside the profit motive that all those private insurers are living by. 

It takes courage to hear the truth.  We should all be courageous citizens, tireless in our quest for truth and compassion and dignity for all Americans.  About 99 percent of the time, this seems too flighty and idealistic and just plain difficult.  About 99 percent of the time, we want a quicky sound bite, an extra $10 in our pocket, and the feeling of belonging.  We prefer to feel that our local elected officials (and I’m talking east Tennessee and everywhere that a public option is being opposed) are batting for us and we don’t have to pay too much attention or take up a sign and walk the line for ourselves.  Unfortunately, that is not the truth.  Our local officials don’t want health care reform.  They want to continue to have friends and contributors in the private health insurance industry.  They don’t mind suspending reality to stick to the proscribed script, telling us that health care reform will be bad for us and that the current system is what we want and need. 

When Barack Obama mounted a campaign for president of this country, something happened to me.  I woke up.  I felt something that I thought died with Bobby Kennedy’s assassination.  I felt personal commitment and a sense of responsibility, and I stopped plugging my ears and started writing letters.  I also felt that-just possibly-my words and votes and actions had some small impact here. 

I already made a blog entry today.  I don’t want to be political all the time, nor do I intend the major subject of this blog to change.  But when I listen to Wendell Potter in this interview with Bill Moyers, and recall a conversation in a doctor’s waiting room just a few days ago, a woman confused about the implications of health care reform, but angry at her husband’s impossibly expensive prescription regimen, I have to come back to this topic.  As in Jeremiah 20:9, when he has a message that must come out: “…but His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, and I could not,” I feel the urgency and pressure of dispensing this message.

Here’s Wendell Potter:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QwX_soZ1GI.  Please take the time. 

Peace.

The Count

17 and 1/2 pills.  I hadn’t counted in a while, and I was a little surprised.  It is truly distilled to a minimum: 

1.  Prednisone takes five tablets right now, a 5 mg and four 1 mg, to make up my 9 mg dosage.  I am on a very slow, gradual taper.  In two more weeks I can decrease by 1 mg.

2.  Three vitamins, B12 for my mostly meatless intake, folic acid for the two medicines that deplete it from my system, and D to replace the action of the sun that I must avoid.

3.  One nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory, for my osteoarthritis.  Helps with pain, too.

4.  A low-dose diuretic for the swelling, and potassium to replace what it depletes.

5.  A beta blocker for the chronic tachycardia that I’ve had since my diagnosis.

6.  Two antidepressants, one of which helps tremendously with the lupus and fibromyalgia pain.

7.  Over-the-counter antihistamine.  I am allergic year-round, crazy when you consider I’m on prednisone daily.

8.  One pain pill, still on minimum dosage with as-needed use.

9.  Low-dose aspirin to prevent the crazy blood-clotting that I experienced a few years ago. 

Periodically I need to lay it out, pill by pill, and convince myself that every bit of this regimen is necessary.  The alternative is to start dropping off pills and wait for the consequences, something my training and experience discourages.  I understand the aversion most people have to taking so much medicine.  This is not, however, polypharmacy.  Polypharmacy refers to mindlessly throwing prescriptions at problems without considering necessity, interactions, or possible alternative therapies. 

That’s the pills, folks, just the pills.  Still on weekly injections of methotrexate, and the rituximab infusions every four to six months.  Also on diet with very few animal products, as much exercise as I can tolerate (including our new Wii), and positive thinking. 

This inventory will have to do.  I have to go deal with a stinky, disobedient dog.

Peace.

Hiding Bodies

I started a post and stored it away after the first paragraph.  That’s unusual for me.  There are some topics that cannot be approached here.  Recently I had a discussion with a friend who encouraged me to write fiction.  I had mentioned my reluctance to write about one area of my life, and she reminded me that, with disclaimers, all of your people can appear in your writing.  It is hard for me to consider that, because my life has been an open book, but not hiding things or lying about them is not the same as putting them in print.  It doesn’t matter if it was me or a fictional Sally Ann.  If I witnessed a murder, and write about it, the guilty guy is gonna come looking for me. 

Okay, that was a little dramatic.  I’ve never witnessed a murder.  I’ve never even come across a dead body in the woods.  All through my teens and early twenties, bolstered by the piles of mysteries I read, I was sure I’d stumble across a corpse.  I felt that it was in my future, and I tried to steel myself for it.  If I hiked, I peered beneath the brush for the exposed purple toes or mangled face that I had imagined.  I looked in the corners of elevators and under trains for bodies, too.  I couldn’t understand how Agatha Christie’s characters could experience multiple murders in a small hamlet in England, or the psychiatrists in Jonathan Kellerman and Stephen White’s books could have repeated encounters with terrible crimes-way more than their fair share!-and I had no bodies to trip over. 

You can see this fascination in my choice of television.  Mysteries far outweigh all my other viewing hours, including Criminal Minds, NCIS, CSI in all its cities, Monk, Psyche, Law and Order, Bones, the Mentalist, and those wonderful reruns of Matlock and Murder She Wrote.  And yes, I still read mysteries, just more gory and complicated.  Think Patricia Cornwell’s medical examiner series, and Pearl’s The Dante Club.

In the past two weeks I’ve completed, packaged, and mailed three custom orders.  I have one more pending, to be knit while I continue my baby blanket series.  I’ve started a small idea notebook, as I want to keep future knits in mind, including the yarns that I foresee for specific projects.  One of my baby blankets that is in progress is a crochet blanket in Queensland Soft Wave, a sweet DK cotton that gets softer as you work with it.  This particular one is blue and cream stripes, moving quickly on a size F hook.  It began on a whim, fueled by a need to rest my shoulders and hands from knitting movements.  It’s going to be lovely. 

I took knitting to the movies tonight, but was spellbound by Julie and Julia, which moved quickly and kept me laughing, with no need for distraction.  You’ve probably already read a review.  The acting was splendid, reason enough for going.  The story (all true) was also good, and I empathized with the women longing for an endeavour that was useful and fulfilling.  I reached that point after retiring from medicine, and was extremely fortunate to reach for the craft that now keeps me busy and happy. 

Now I am tired.  This day is finished.

Peace.