Running away doesn't seem to work

I think, that underneath it all, I knew that stopping drinking thirteen years ago was more than telling myself that taking a drink, simply so I wouldn't smell the booze on his breath. Now, today, as I'm screaming for a place, a way, to run away from a life I'm finding intolerable, I think I'd gladly drink myself senseless just to avoid feeling what I'm feeling now.

They say you should never "run away," but rather you should "run toward." That's all very nice, but what do you do when there is no place to run to, and no way to get there if it did exist? The ubiquitous "they" have never had an answer to that question, at least not one I've found.

So here I sit, having to grab a damn pill bottle to try to keep my throat open enough to breathe, my mind marginally functional. If it were just I, it would be me in bed with the covers over my head and to hell with the rest of the world. But it isn't just me. It's two dogs, and a son who has never finished growing up no matter how hard he tries. So the dogs have to be taken out for walks, the bread has to be baked, and a way must be found to pay for rent, utilities, insurance, food, and the other necessities like toilet paper and detergent. The cost of everything keeps going up, but my income doesn't.

I have dreams, ever so often. But usually someone or something happens to slam the door on them. Most of the time my fingers or toes seem to be in the door when it smashes shut, so I hurt twice... once for the dream destroyed, once for the actual physical pain.

If you are able to live a drug-free life, I envy you tremendously. I have ten medications I must take every day, plus the one I take when things reach the point where I'm ready to run away completely and all the doors are closed. One medication is to keep me alive, one is to fight anemia, and the rest are to control pain. Living with chronic pain can be done, and the life can be pretty decent when you live within your known limits.

What can cut you down is the periodic pain that stabs or crushes or burns into you, a pain that need not be if only things were different. You see, with some pain environmental conditions can be the causative agents. For me it is the cold. More than twenty years ago, when I routinely froze my hands and feet getting to and from the 121 EVAC hospital where I worked, I thought nothing of it. Numbness, pins and needles, then thawed and holding me up just fine for my shift. It was just part of being in a very cold place in winter, and I thought little of it until about five years ago. It was then that my feet started turning into blood blisters during the winter, and my hands seemed to go from "just fine" to "hurt like hell" from simple things like scraping ice off the car windows. I didn't know what it was, or even that the two things were related. It was a PBS show on climbers of Mt Everest that gave me my first hint of what was actually wrong with my hands and feet.

Much to my shock, there was not a single doctor at the VA Medical Center who knew anything about residual damage from cold injury. Now, three years later, there isn't much change ... but the Neurology team is working very hard to come up with something, with anything, that can help control the pain of what is called "peripheral neuropathy." It's difficult, having to balance drug ineractions, and my system's reaction to certain dosages of medications, and deciding whether the side effects are worth the decrease in pain that might occur. Yes, I said "might"; it's a fact that pain caused by nerve damage, like pain caused by neural problems in the brain, is very hard to control. There is no diagnostics program you can plug onto my right big toe and read where the short circuits or pain loop resides, no way to do a pain scan and remove the causative agents, no way to reboot my brain in safe mode so I can be reloaded without the processor flaws.

The pain got bad last night, after I took the dogs out. It was so bad I wanted to scream, but close neighbors would have called the cops. So I dumped the pain on a fellow female Army veteran, filling a long email message with the feel of crushing bones, the agony of someone driving a table knife between the knuckles on the back of my hand, twisting it until the agony burns clear to the backs of my eyeballs. I knew she'd understand and that last night she was stronger than I was. She understands because Desert Storm has left her with chronic pain, among other things. She understands, because she has fought the VA system trying to get the bureau-rats to admit what is wrong with us is as a direct consequence of us volunteering to serve our country. Ask any veteran who has dealt with the VA, and they'll tell you the Army/Navy/Marines/Air Force are good training for VA, especially the "Hurry up and wait!" aspect; it also was good training for the battles we have to go through. The only problem we have is that with the "enemy at home" we're not allowed to raid their HQ and take them captive, nor shoot them on sight. I truly doubt those people who specialize in saying "No!" are aware of how lucky they are, lucky that we their victims don't actually come after them.

The pain is more or less under control now, the pill bottle I climbed into seems to have helped the mental agony somewhat. But the idea of Thanksgiving and the holidays to come is unpaletable ...

Wow! I just won $1,000,000 from ... NOT!!

Dear PCH,

Please stop torturing me. Stop telling me that I can be your next millionaire or ten millionaire or dream prize winner.

I don't need to be reminded of what I don't have, what I need, and what would be nice to have. Those facts slap me in the face of reality each day -- whether I like it or not.

Please stop implying that if I won a "one time lump sum of $4millionplus” I could be the happiest person in the world, because it isn't true.

The things I really want and the things I need would still be beyond my reach if I were rich as Bill Gates, Donald Trump and the Sultan of wherever all lumped together.

Your millions can't
-- straighten my spine, put in new disks, and ease the pain
-- repair my lungs and diaphragm, undo the damage of chronic pulmonary embolisms
-- bring back the feeing in my hands, feet, arms, and legs
-- strengthen my neck so I can hold it up at the end of each day
-- buy me corrective plastic surgery I need
-- remove the blood clot from my brain and stop the headaches
-- make it possible for me to enjoy a finely prepared meal
-- let me awaken each morning pain-free
-- take away the fears and pains that caused the PTSD I live with
-- give my children the self-confidence I apparently wasn't able to
-- provide me with eight hours restful sleep for even one night
-- help the world to understand and respect me for who I am
-- bring me a compassionate, caring, loving companion
-- allow me to look forward to a future of great possibilities
-- bring back the special people and special places I've lost
-- guarantee that the world will be a better place anytime ever

So please, stop teasing me. Stop allowing those nefarious "If I won that maybe I could ____" teases to enter my life based all upon the fact that my initials fall somewhere between A and Z. Stop flaunting hints at hope in the middle of hopeless situations, hints of independence in the middle of total dependence upon a frigid rigid bureaucracy.

Publishers Clearning House, I want you to realize that your money might be nice to have – as far as it goes – but money can't buy happiness, and teasing someone when he or she is down is just plain dirty pool. Some of the cruelest words ever written are: Enter today for your chance at ______________________

moi

Schiavo ... what legacy?

Although the media coverage has switched from Florida to Vatican City, I received an e-mail today with the subject line of "Another Perspective on Terri Schiavo Case." The message was simply a link ... which I did not follow.

I wrote an e-mail response, but decided not to send it. Blogging it is less likely to hurt someone who I want to stay on decent terms with.

* * * * * * * *

Re: Another perspective on Terri Schiavo Case

I don't want to listen or read any more about it. I've had it with know-it-alls and the Bush brothers' interference in private lives, and public religious displays.

My advice has always been "Carry your faith with you, but leave your religion at home" ... yet now I hear people saying they want to give tax dollars to "Faith-based organizations" meaning "recognized religion," while mouthings about "The Sanctity of Marriage" are used to actually justify the serious consideration of a Constitutional Amendment to make a civil contract -- originally instituted for the purposes of record keeping and revenue generation -- unavailable to certain people because who those people are doesn't fit what certain religions consider to be a proper definition of human being, human citizens due the same rights and respect due all other citizens.

What kind of world do we live in that a body, with less brain-to-body mass and self-awareness than a lizard, can be the center of a decade long interference into a marriage involving the courts, legislatures, the media, and religious fanatics? What kind of a world do we live in where one civil contract is accompanied by an admonishment to parents to "get out of the way because these two adults now lead a life separate from you," yet where those same parents can use every court in the land to stick their noses and opinions where they are not welcome and do not belong? What kind of a world do we live in when I am afraid to do something with specific judgments required -- a "Living Will" -- when I could end up actually 'brain alive' and be forced to exist with sensory deprivation and the resultant mental/emotional hell of insanity because doctors are arguing over what I meant when I filled out the form? And can I trust my son with a Durable Medical Power of Attorney, when I know he doesn't want me to ever die and might just believe the lies a doctor tells him?

There is a reason to be afraid -- VERY afraid -- in this country, as a direct consequence of the Schiavo case. If you believe in a God that can be prayed to, it might be a good idea to start asking for lightning bolts and other quick clean deaths for those few who know so very well what is good for we in the 'unwashed and ignorant, unenlightened, masses' ... because what's going on in various centers of government power today makes the Taliban Regiem in Afghanistan look positively open, free, and respecting of individual self-rights and humanity.

---------------------------------

And no, I will not debate on any of what I've said. I believe what I believe, I do not need to justify that to anyone else, I do not wish to shove my beliefs down anyone's throat, and what I say is simply to provide an option for others to have a new starting point on what they think -- something they can choose to ignore totally.

Crying Wolf ... ?

Our current national chief executive holds office although the polls show that the majority of people in this country think his first term was a failure. He also has set records by having the lowest approval rating of any President elected for a second term.

I think he's aware of those facts, because he seems to be working at making himself indispensable.

I knew it was coming, but it came a bit earlier than I thought it would: Less than a month after the Iraq election, new "Terrorists are out to get us" reports were made to Congress and other (dis)interested parties. Is this supposed to make us want to keep the status quo in DC? That appears to be the case. It's that ol' "Don't change horses in the middle of the stream" approach.

But anyone who has lived with chronic fear will tell you that things reach a point where piling stuff up higher won't make a difference, or will actually end up 'flooding' the mind -- and the danger is simply discounted or ignored. It's not "crying wolf" because the danger is real, but when all that is offered is reminder after reminder of an unchanged and probably long term risk, we turn off and tune out. After so many sirens go past the window, we stop noticing them... that is human nature.

Is he -- or his father's advisory team -- smart enough to actually use that ploy, actually work to make us forget that we now have hundreds of thousands more enemies of 'America' and Americans that ever before, enemies created by invading, and killing, and considering women and children "collateral damage?" [I honestly think that is mere coincidence, the fact that his need to remain essential to America has caused him to approve an approach that could have the additional benefit of us forgetting to remember what's really going on.]

Dumb Move of The Week: Naming a career diplomat to manage, integrate data from, and prepare budgets for fifteen (or was it 18??) different intelligence agencies.

The greatest danger for this country is the citizenry turning a blind eye to the very real dangers this country is facing, both foreign and domestic.

This is NOT your grandmother's blog

At one time I had a newspaper column. It wasn't big, it wasn't syndicated, but once in awhile I did get "hate mail" -- which means that at least someone was reading it. When the holding company syndicate wanted to make what was "mine" into "theirs," we parted company. The editor was sorry to see me go, but he knew where I was coming from.

Now there are times I want to scream from the rooftops, and times that I truly hope The Patriot Act (oxymoronic) doesn't pop up and bite me in the behind for saying what I believe to be true. My "at home" life includes paying attention to the news program -- DWTV and BBC included, so I can have a chance at only a semi-biased reportage.

There is no guarantee just which irking or frustrating thing will show up here. The only thing I can promise is that I hope it won't be boring.