failure to eject: tom's of california again; the dubious conclusion of the blood-clot saga; and life without oral medication

On the plane back to San Francisco, a Virgin America flight ("Not just for virgins anymore!" they happily announced as we were boarding), I watched a show about girls fighting over the affections of some rappers. They slapped each other, declared each other "nasty hoes," and delivered heartfelt monologues about their feelings and emotions, many of which pertained to hairstyles. I watched with rapt attention, seeing as I had six hours to kill and was trying to keep myself awake until the landing time of 3 am EST. Intermittently I checked back to the screen with the little plane making progress over a Google map of the country. West Virginia. Indiana. Kansas. Colorado. Nevada. California. California. California. The plane icon paused for a terrifyingly long time over a dot indicating That City Where I (May) Teach.

I was seated in an exit row, in a seat that had a large paper sign affixed to it with electrical tape: DO NOT SEAT PER CODE 2039JF8&*&NS. I had spent some time wondering why my seat had this big sign on it -- perhaps because it did not have a headrest? -- and had considered that perhaps it was some sort of ejectable. Seemingly frozen over That City Where I (May) Teach, it occurred to me that this would be a particularly poetically cruel place for the plane to eject me; how I would, upon landing, have to take the CalTrain the rest of the way (since, after all, one would land effortlessly -- and near a train station -- from a height of 37,000 feet). Instead, I failed to eject.

It's been a theme lately, cf. early December's blood-clot scare. As you may recall, despite my extreme leg pain, I laughed off the idea that I might have a blood clot, but then a trip to the doctor suggested it could be a real possibility. I had an ultrasound that showed no clot, but the pain wouldn't go away. You probably won't be surprised, if you've ever dealt with doctors yourself, that at that point I was roundly dismissed and told to just "keep an eye on it." It turned out that it was pretty easy to "keep an eye on it," since I couldn't walk and therefore the leg was basically right in front of me all the time. A few days in the Fort staring at my leg and moaning, grading, and letting the Bay bring me bagels, made me extremely depressed. It turns out that being able to walk is one of the most amazing privileges of all time. I've been walking for about ten days and now the leg is starting to hurt again in the same way. Go figure. I've got my "eye on it." Or whatever.

And as for life without oral medication? This is day four. I was weaned off of the steroids over an eight-week period to prevent withdrawal, but I was able to go off of the other drugs cold-turkey. The beginning of the withdrawal period was not enjoyable. I've been on oral steroids pretty much nonstop for over 17 (!) years. Every time I came down a milligram I felt like I simultaneously needed something and was losing something. Like I could feel something pouring out of me (I sweated up an equatorial storm) and also a hole forming where it had been. I was exhausted. I didn't know what I wanted. Well, I knew what I wanted, but I didn't know what would help that I was allowed. I guess now I know why they call it a drug. (How like our interactions with so many people!)

The jury is out on how this will go. To be rid of the toxic oral medications and their long-term effects is doubtless a good thing, but it has yet to be seen whether I can continue to keep my "healthy person" performance up to the caliber I like without their help. The Humira shots seem to be pretty effective, and I'm taking birth control for ovulation-related fevers (Crohn ladies, check this shee out if you haven't -- except beware the supremely terrifying breast growth. (I now feel like I'm wielding cannons that might unexpectedly fire at any moment, killing innocent civilians and damaging local wildlife.))

I am Currently Tom's of Maryland

But back to San Francisco tomorrow, when a more responsible daily posting schedule will be resumed.

Reports to look forward to, either with dread, glee, or your usual brand of impassive dismay:

-Life without oral medication: Now I know how the other half lives; they are squirrelly; they are bored

-Practical jokes involving urine: apparently, they're still going on

-What happens when it's discovered that you don't have a blood clot after all: sent by doctors on a pleasant ferry voyage to hell

-Getting canned and its discontents: Is it fun? Probably answer is no

Thanks for your patience, Crohns.

too clot to handle

Well, what do you know. As it turns out, my preferred method of calmly walking (read: hopping) in to see the doctor today, "like a normal person," wielded me a nice trip to the creepy, Baby-Jesus-laden Catholic hospital. It turns out that indeed I probably do have a blood clot in my leg after all. So much for my overactive imagination. Thanks, Internet!

It had been a long time since I'd had an ultrasound. I forgot how much it hurts when the technician forcibly palpates whatever it is they're ultrasounding. "Gah," I said the first couple times. Then, after a while, I said, "Ow, Jesus." Then, looking around the room: "I mean, sorry." Several tiny Jesuses peered down boredly at my leg from the wall. Some were on the cross and some had just been born. It was kind of like a medical diorama. "My legs," the Jesuses seemed to say, "are going to be waaaaay worse off than your legs. Just sayin'."

So now I have been sent home to wait for news.

Honestly, I couldn't make up the excuses that keep me from grading.

hypochondria, or another john le carre bust lodges itself in my extremities

A few months ago, I was convinced I was having a heart attack. Convinced. I was absolutely terrified. I hobbled terrifiedly down Valencia Street. Every step was awful. Michelle and Nate and Frannie, their dog, were coming up from the opposite direction. We had planned this interception. They, although a social worker, a mechanical engineer, and a dog, are my de facto doctors.
"Can you raise your arm?" Michelle asked.
I could not. Pure unadulterated terror!
It was, then, Michelle confirmed, a pulled muscle.
Uh... ahem.

This Friday the back of my upper calf started hurting a lot. It felt like a severely pulled muscle. I hadn't done anything strenuous recently (except grade a couple hundred exams about avatars in a row) but as you know, Crohns, it's not uncommon to have some weird pains just because. Because it is pleasing to Hermes or whatever. With some considerable walking* it felt better. But the pain was still intense. It became even more intense yesterday. I couldn't bend it all the way or straighten it all the way. I couldn't put weight on it. I had a weird flamingo-standing-position thing going on. It hurt while I was trying to sleep on the luxurious Fort chaise lounge during my three-night sleepover with Top Houseguests Jen and Wayne. Today, after they left, it started weirdly pulsing and tingling and turning colors. Was this a reaction to too much grading? Then I couldn't feel it at all. I hastened one-leggedly toward the hypochrondriac's prized location and second home: to the Internet, which informed me it could likely be deep vein thrombosis and I should go to the emergency room. The blood clot was going to go to my lungs or heart and kill me, causing great upset to my parents as well as probably other family members, a stench in the Fort, abandonment to Phillip, unresolved grades for my students, and a major downturn for the seltzer-water industry. High-grade panic! Panic! Panic! Panic!

"Should I come over there?" asked the Bay, who was at work.
I was slightly hysterical ("Uh, hello? Are you breathing?") but still not ridiculous enough to respond yes. Making people leave work is certainly not a thing you will ever see this Crohn do, especially not for what will undoubtedly turn out to be a small macrame John Le Carre bust stuck in my calf. In addition, the emergency room is expensive and dumb. That is not a place for hypochrondriacs. That is a place for people who have been shot.

On the other hand, when I was 17 and had a bad stomachache, it turned out to be gall stones and hepatitis. I was in the hospital for a while. I got morphine! And when I was 9 and had a bad stomachache, it transpired to be Crohn's Disease. Boy, did that one turn out.

Then again, when I thought I was having a heart attack in the fall, I had only pulled a muscle.

This is the problem when you are a Crohn or similar sort of person: You're constantly worried that the things that feel wrong are seriously wrong with you, because a lot of the time they are. But if they're not -- if they are just likenesses of John Le Carre embedded in your limbs -- then you're just perpetuating the bad name we already have as pansies and alarmists. I hate that bad name. I hate it, you know?

Tomorrow morning I will go to the regular doctor's office, calmly, without any preconceived notions, like a normal person, with my sometimes-numb, sometimes-painful oddly colored wildly pulsing and tingling leg (I am calm; I am not freaking out) where I will learn that this is a common side effect of too much grading coupled with visions of albino alligators and petting starfish and eating mainly oatmeal.

*Jen, Wayne, and I went to the Cal Science Academy, of which I am now a member, which means, Bay-area friend, I can take you for free. Penguins. Albino alligators. Outer space. You and me we're going.

the greasy wriggling pug of grading

Last night I dreamt that I and the Bay had somehow come into the ownership of a rather large, enfattened pug named Michael (I know; but there's no accounting for the subconscious) and that we took him on the Muni with us, off-leash. Michael was inconsolable on the Muni, like most Muni riders are, and wanted to wriggle away, greased-hog style. "Michael! Sit!" I continually shouted through the car. It was packed in there and people were not in a good mood. In order to avoid his squirming away through the crowds, the Bay had to hold him like a baby, or a sack of root vegetables. "Michael! Michael! Sit!" I barked. It must be how Janet Jackson felt for her whole childhood.

Simultaneously the Bay apparently dreamt that we had come into possession of a rottweiler that we found on the street (great idea, the Bay's subconscious! why, a vicious homeless animal... let's take it home). The rottweiler was so ferocious that no muzzle could contain its wrangling maw, and only I -- confident dream Kara! -- could control it. (This is the kind of dream I would like to have, but instead have to content myself with dreams about fat pugs named Michael wriggling away from me on the Muni. I am pretty sure Michael represents the mountains of grading I have left to do. That's right: the greasy wriggling pug of grading.)

LDN and Crohn's?

Low doses of Naltrexone, an opioid receptor antagonist that's usually used for managing alcohol dependence and opioid dependence, is now undergoing primary studies to test its effectiveness in treating autoimmune disorders like Crohn's, as well as a number of other illnesses. The general idea is that its capacity to quickly stabilize the immune system makes it a natural fit for autoimmune illnesses, in which the immune system fails to distinguish the difference between "self" and "non-self." It seems like potentially promising news, and yet I can't say that this video doesn't terrify me.

feces, and the return of the Lord of Interruptions

There is mouse feces in my building's laundry room. Not just like a little spray of feces here and there, but as though someone shipped in large burlap bags of mouse feces and just gaily released their wares all over the laundry room. ( "Theeeere we go! Perfect!") The benefit of doing my laundry in the Fecal Zone, as I have taken to calling it (are you hearing an edited version of Kenny Loggins's "Highway To The Danger Zone" in your head right now? You're welcome!), is that I don't have to rent a car to wash my clothes.

This afternoon on the street I ran into a man with whom I went on a hyperactive, absurdly stressful date over two years ago.* On the date, he talked like a maniac while I smiled serenely and drank three whiskeys in a row to his one beer. For hours he spoke. After a while, I gave up trying to interact and just listened and drank. He spoke about spackling and, as I recall, the intense life of his sister, a school hall monitor, who was getting hassled in the hallways for being a suckup and having a "bad jacket." When he called me for a second date I was very surprised, as he had literally heard not a word from me on the first one. I told him I was busy with having recently moved to California, but that I wished him all the best and hoped to see him around. How untrue that last part, which I didn't have the opportunity to reflect upon until today. I wasn't going to say anything to him on the street today -- we were waiting across the street from each other, at a stoplight, and heaven forfend more stories -- but he stopped me in the middle of the intersection and asked if he could walk me to my destination so he could tell me his exciting piece of news.
Oh no, I thought. "Sure!" I said. After all, I'm no douchebag.
What was the exciting piece of news that has befallen my erstwhile date? He's figured out how to grow corn in his kitchen.
"Ah!" I said.
"You have to get a very, very, very deep planter," he explained.
"And don't you have to have very tall ceilings? And a lot more heat than we..."
"Not if your planter is deep enough," he assured me.
"Wow," I said. "Have you successfully grown this corn yet?"
"Don't second-guess me," he said.
We walked a little way in silence.
"Gone on any good dates recently, ell-oh-ell?" he asked after a little bit.
"Did you just say LOL aloud?" I asked.
"I might have." More silence. "So have you?"
"Actually, no," I said.
"Done with dating."
"Uh, yeah, in a manner of speaking," I said. "Actually, I --"
"Life of solitude."
"Well --"
"You know, when we hung out that night a couple years ago, I was really struck by how solitary you seemed."
"Solitary?" I asked. "Like single? Well, we were on a date."
"No, just solitary, like you wanted for no company in the world." (Or maybe just wasn't able to get a word in edgewise.)
"That's nice," I said.
"I mean it as a high compliment. I like that in people." (You would have to, since you've probably not heard a word uttered by another human being since the election of Herbert Hoover.)
"Thank you. Actually, I --"
"It was great to see you, Kara; I'd love to walk you the whole way, but I actually need something in the Walgreens, so I think I may peel off here."
"Okay, good to see you t--"
"Glad to see you're still the same. Still, you know, on the move, still doing things, solitary."
"That's me -- on the move, doing things, solitary."
He waved jauntily and disappeared into the Walgreens, hopefully never to be seen again.

*After announcing to Abby how glad I was that this kind of thing never happened to me.

showerbag of the stars

My horoscope for tomorrow (not, however, WP) informs me that I am a complete and utter douchebag, that I should know better than to be so argumentative, so touchy, so demanding, and so "wily" (not sure where that part came from). That I hurt the feelings of others to no one's benefit, including my own. That I am malicious and selfish.

Uh, which seems like less of a horoscope than just an outright reaming.

Unfortunately, however, I think this time the reaming is deserved.

I am a douchebag and I feel awful about it. Just. Awful. Really, really, really awful.

Stars, stop knowing me so well.

It's a bad day to be a Libra.

the editing process at work

Click to enlarge.

in which CalTrain, as Verizon of Trains, enables a miraculous moment in teaching

CalTrain, in a guest appearance as the Verizon of Trains, had a computer meltdown today that resulted in trains delayed for several hours. There I sat on the CalTrain as hours and hours elapsed. Until my computer died (that's right, the delay outlasted the battery), I wrote. Then I ate half a pack of Listerine PocketPak strips (a delicious breakfast). Then I started worrying. For example, there was the small matter of the classes I was riding the CalTrain so as to be able to teach. As the hours continued to pass, it became increasingly clear that I would not make it to my office hours. Then it became clear that I was going to miss most or all of my first section. People on the train were starting to take off their shoes and borrow food from one another. Several ass-kissing sorry-I'm-late phone conversations with bosses were overheard. Two apparent strangers began watching Simpsons episodes on a laptop. People asked the conductors if we could just get off and walk along the tracks. No, said the conductors, we couldn't leave the train, for our own safety. Ties were loosened. I nervously rubbed off my eyebrows. Shit was getting resigned.

Even more complicated was the fact that today was the day my students were going to do the debate they had been preparing for. The debate is set up so that a group of students run and moderate it; my presence, therefore, isn't explicitly pivotal to its success, but still it seemed distinctly awful to not be there. Who doesn't show up to teach their own class (unless, I guess, they're trapped on a train)? Plus, who the hell is going to enact an entire debate without the person who's evaluating it there to watch them? (Stay tuned for the incredible answer to that question.)

My bus pulled up to That University Where I Teach about fifteen minutes before my first section was going to end. I made unglorious, nongraceful haste toward the classroom (have you ever tried to run with a heavy messenger bag on? let's just say the ass-slapping factor is not flattering), pretty much sure I would find it completely abandoned.

But no.

There they all were -- all of them -- well underway with what seemed to be a very heated debate, the moderators asking questions, the debating groups making notes and collaborating and making their speeches and rebutting. They had done the whole thing on their own, seemingly just for their own benefit. They had taken their own attendance and signed it (what the fuck? even I don't do that). They had organized their own time management to allow both groups ample time for argument and rebuttal. These superstars had kept notes for me -- not, mind you, part of the assignment in any way -- about everything I had missed. And when I walked in, after their high-larious Rudy-genre slow-clap had subsided (some of them have recently become avid fans of the slow-clap, and I'm not going to lie, it alarms me a little), they just kept going. Not only did they keep going, they did it masterfully. I couldn't have been more impressed if they'd started to build a ten-ton butter sculpture of Ryan Seacrest in the middle of the classroom.

I just sat there in the corner and watched them until they were done.

It was more or less one of the best moments ever.

the sickeningly happy life of a boll weevil amongst the swans of men

In the past week, I have flown on four different planes: San Jose to Phoenix to Columbus to Washington to San Francisco. All for the love of a turkey. The final plane was delayed for several hours because it had been struck by lightning (do you feel a little bit like Thomas Edison right now? because I do), which gave me opportunity to find out that all of the very gracious people lounging around the gate area with me were not simply gracious, but also happened to be the entire company of the San Francisco Ballet, returning to San Francisco from a tour. While we waited, they enacted ferocious splits on the floor of Dulles Airport and sat in circles playing Uno, or otherwise slept with creepily upright posture against walls, listening to iPods. Some ate healthful-looking sandwiches featuring sprouts. I read short stories and gobbled a tube of nuts with my sharp incisors, finding it hard to avoid considering that I am truly a boll weevil among the swans of men.

It was delightful, of course, to see my family. In Ohio, I slept at my grandma's house on my dad's childhood twin bed, which rolls like one is traveling on the freaking open sea. I also had the honor of participating in my aunt & uncle's Columbus neighborhood Turkey Trot as a member of Team Turtle, the dubious quadruped of my father, my sister, my cousin Erin, and myself, whose loping and moping made us the uncountered stars of the voyage ("Good God, do we have to -- it is morning it is not a time for trots"). In Maryland, I slept next to Bis'l-the-Crohns-Dog with her head on the pillow like a person, baked to my heart's content, and naturally, worked the entire time. And I signed (!) my contract (!) with Narrative (!), which means my story is now for real going to be published (!) (right is wrong and wrong is clearly right; next thing you know Phillip is going to be cast as Odette and Odile in Swan Lake).

But I was immensely pleased when that final plane delivered me and the entire company of the San Francisco Ballet back to San Francisco. I had greatly missed its residents -- even Phillip, who was observed tossing a dessicated turkey carcass, doubtless the remainders of his solitary holiday meal, out the window of the Fort as I walked up to the building. Even my students, whose outrageous "can't turn the paper in on time" excuses have now risen to the level of "I'm sorry I can't turn in the paper on time today; I have been unexpectedly thrown in jail and do not know when I will be released Sent From My iPhone."

I have done basically nothing of note today and yet I think I have maybe never been so weirdly happy.
I am sure it has something to do with the company I keep.