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I've probably never been sicker than I was in 2009. Hospital stays, liver doctors, neurologists, colonoscopies and triple groin biopsies! X-rays and scopes and ultrasounds and diets! Two months of partial leg use, one month disuse of right arm, eight MRIs, one MRI accident! Fifteen IVs, over three hundred needle sticks, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Oh baby, is that a good look: Enjoying some hospital hematomas in March
2009 was an extremely crappy year, I'm not going to pussyfoot. But it was also an extremely lucky year. You don't need to hear all about it now; you already did. But suffice it to say I'm here, you're here, we're all here. And if you want to swing by the Fort, I will open the door with either one of my functioning arms, walk down the stairs with my two functioning legs, greet you at the gate, and promptly eat whatever food you have in your bag with my functioning gastrointestinal system. Oh man, is it good to live how the others live.
But how did this happen? How did the sickest year of my life end in remission? Is it a miracle of medicine? Ha. Hee. Ho. ....No. It is because of all the friends who lent me books, who ferried me around in their automobiles, who sat in shopping-mall basements calling emergency rooms with me and drove me to work in San Jose; who made soup and brought ginger ale; who came to my infusions with me; who regaled me with stories of their personal lives when I had no personal life to speak of; who told me I was doing great when it took me 50 minutes to walk a city block to meet them; who, in sum, continued to be my friends when there was no me with whom to be friends.
And most of all because of Juan, who spent a whole month of her life on a certain chaise lounge, manually moving my legs, pushing my wheelchairs, toasting raisin bread, keeping an ear out when I was in the shower, and taking her professional phone conversations in my bathroom, which she called her "phone booth."
Juan and me on Halloween, cleverly disguised
It isn't medicine that makes you better. It's other people.
So for --- in that respect --- an amazing, incredible, unparalleled, absolutely superb 2009, thank you. And here's to another one just like it.
Love,
Kara
Yesterday, waiting to board my flight back to San Francisco, I saw long-lost friend MG gazing dully at the departures board. MG and I ran and trained for the SF Marathon together in 2007, but since then our pace group has sown its seeds across the earth and fallen out of touch. (Case in point, MG moved to LA, then back to SF, and I didn't even know he was gone.) I picked my way over to him through the sea of screaming babies. Greetings! Delight! Exchange of confessions that neither of us is long-distance running anymore! It turned out that MG and his partner were sitting two rows behind me. We sampled Virgin America's chat system, which felt vaguely seedy. A message popped up on my screen:
Chat with Seat 7C: You come here often?
The women on either side of me, in the window and aisle seats, eyed my screen with suspicion.
Me: I'm a high flyer.
Chat with Seat 7C: Would you like some of my mother's homemade baklava?
I don't know whether the women thought this was a euphemism or what, but somewhere around Hour 5 of the flight, when I thought I was reading but was apparently asleep, MG breezed by and dropped a Virgin America barf bag full of baklava onto my lap, over the head of the woman in the aisle seat, who was apparently awake. What he had neglected to check before depositing the baklava, however, was if anyone had previously used this barf bag. They had. A few pieces of hardened, chewed gum rested comfortably below the baklava. If I weren't already a person with no immune system in a tin capsule filled with recycled air, I may have risked it. I didn't. But it was worth it to see the look on the face of the woman next to me as I opened the packet and exclaimed, "Mmm, baklava!"
Congratulations, you've survived the Holidays, Part One. More on the dubious hurtle-montage that is said holidays before long, but in the meantime, an announcement. A suggestion. A heralding, if you will.
Check out the San Francisco launch of this superb publication (if I do say so myself!), where you can read a debut short story, "Miracle," by the fantastically talented San Francisco writer Ruth Galm. You can say you read her when. You can say you read her in 2009. You will be glad.
Do you live in the Bay area? Have you ever lived in the Bay area? Have you a short piece of fiction regarding the Bay area that is burning the proverbial hole in your J-pouch? Send it on in; we are accepting unsolicited manuscripts with tidings, comfort, and joy. Guidelines can be found by clicking the link above.
Hurrah!
Guys, I'm so into this list of holiday drink recipes. So into it. At least half of these could easily be made nonalcoholic for all your Crohnsian (or otherwise alcohol-averse) needs. If I had obscure ingredients like sachaca, Seville orange, and cubed pineapple here --- all right, maybe canned pineapple isn't chief among the world's obscure goods, but if you have Crohn's, it might be --- I would totally pour myself a Regent's Punch. Because you can trust us: We're all Regents here.
And we deserve a drink. What are you drinking to? Please don't be drinking GoLitely. Or if you have a colonoscopy tomorrow and you are indeed drinking GoLitely, and therefore drinking to your colonoscopy, be sure to have some really excellent seltzer water tomorrow, the kind with the bubbles large enough to eclipse the Earth.
As for me, I think I'll drink to:
1) The fact that my baby brother was admitted to an upstanding midwestern institution of higher learning. Big OH, represent! Big DL, represent! I know what you're thinking: But DL isn't a state! Correction: It's not a state right now. But by the time Daniel is done it might be.
2) Beyonce. I understand I have now mentioned Beyonce in two consecutive posts --- does this border on thought-stalking? --- but for some reason I completely missed the Beyonce train when it first pulled into the station. To continue this troublesome train metaphor just a little further, but also in a truthful manner, I was probably on the CalTrain. Her music is kind of horrifying and kind of amazing all at once, my favorite kind of thing since I apparently can't take amazement in unadulterated doses.
3) My first-ever writing residency! Me big winner! The Adventures of Rejection Man continue in 2010... in Washington State! ...Do I disturb you? Very well, I disturb you.
4) Two days until serious Big MD time with Bis'l, the Crohn's Dog, whose favorite drink from the above list would undoubtedly be the Tom and Jerry.
Just when you think you've tricked yourself into eating a large bowl of romaine with a few pieces of deli turkey on it for lunch, then you have to go and spy the bag of chocolate Hanukah gelt on the table, a mail-gift from Juan. That's right, I ate money for lunch. I ate gold coins. Hanukah, you're just a bad holiday, all around.
Now that my intestines are full of cash, what more can I tell you. Let's see. In no particular order.
1. I had my fourth (count 'em: one, two, three, four wow I'm playing with fire) Tysabri infusion on Monday. With the exception of a cranky nurse who labeled me "uncooperative" for requesting a certain vein for my IV, and a clown dressed in scrubs and playing Christmas music on an accordion while lightly swaying (trying to block this out), all went fine. Do you ever feel like you're living on borrowed time? So does that clown.
2. A fat fetish is sweeping San Francisco. Men are upgrading from small to medium, from medium to large, and from large into the great beyond. Why? Because they're worth it. Why settle for a girlfriend who can fit into your local mailbox when you can have a girlfriend who can crush your local mailbox? I ask you. In the past week my attendance on outings with male strangers has been requested yea, thrice. What's going on here? Is 1980s Ricki Lake the new Beyonce? Shaking the sidewalk beneath me with each word, I thrice demurred.
3. This morning at the gym, the single television was airing The Price is Right. Does it feel wrong to you every time you see Drew Carey on there? Me too. He's not nearly smarmy enough to be hosting that show. The man on the treadmill next to me was clearly rapt. He kept pumping his fist intermittently. At first I thought maybe he was just excited about his mileage or something, but then I discovered that his fist-pumps coincided with the price-reveals on the show. The man vicarously won a handheld video cam, a bar set, and also aaaaa newcar! I vicariously won a cheese wheel. I will say this about The Price is Right: ...Cheese wheel? The prizes are getting way better.
4. With all the news coverage recently about how unsafe our water is, this might not be a bad time to consider filtering your water. Of course, the news coverage doesn't reveal anything new, and in full disclosure, I've been happily gulping down tap water for decades. Then again, since we don't have any immune systems, it might not be a bad idea to get one of those Britas that all of your germaphobe friends have had for years while you chuckled derisively from your tap-water corner, feeling vastly superior.
5. Finally, the San Francisco cold snap ("cold") and rainy patch appears to be over, just in time for my departure to the icy climes of the Big MD. Nonetheless, I insist on continuing to wear my rain boots, heavy winter coat, hat, gloves, and tube scarf just in case. I can't imagine what I'd do if I lived in a real climate. I guess I just can't ever leave San Francisco.
It's so cold here that I went out today in a tank top, a long-sleeved shirt, a turtleneck sweater, a leather jacket, a pea coat, a scarf, a hat, and gloves. That's right, it was a high of forty-nine degrees here in San Francisco today, and those of you who remember the Hercules of Weather I once was in my east coast days may now promptly shut it.
The real problem, however, is not the out-of-doors. It is the indoors. At night it is around thirty-three degrees, and Fort Phil Collins, delightful bunker though it may be, fares poorly in the cold. First of all, it is unheated. Secondly, it has eight windows, which is a lot for a studio. And thirdly and perhaps most relevantly, it is open to the air, thanks to a 1920s-style "icebox" that is my pantry --- a sort of closet that opens out onto a screen that, in turn, opens out onto the night sky. And if you were wondering, no, that closet does not have doors that completely close. When the wind blows, they have been known to burst open unannounced, anticlimactically presenting the Fort's terrified occupants with a view of cans of tuna fish! rotini! and powdered Gatorade! So much for ghosts.
Each night I have been opening my drawers and hauling all my clothes out. Then I pile them on top of my bed and crawl underneath. I sleep under underwear, hose, towels. Anything around. Last night, also magazines. I fear that when Gael Garcia Bernal gets here, there will not be room for him beneath the debris (and anyway, he would probably turn tail in search of warmer quarters, or one where doors do not burst open in the wind, revealing groceries). Fort, I love you, but I need you to heat up so Gael Garcia Bernal will stay here.
Returned from the cafe where I was intermittently working on the novel and cooing (literally cooing, like a pigeon) at a dachshund enrobed in a casual piece of purple knitwear, and where BW was intermittently doing something related to philosophy (it's philosophy, so that's the best I can do) and playing some computer game involving bubbles and towers, I was greeted by an enormous defrosting pile of black bananas. Sometimes I hate my former self.
My self of this morning, as I recall, was sick of seeing those erstwhile frozen black bananas in the freezer each day, so ignobly did they obscure one's way to the vodka. So before heading out to the liver clinic, my morning self put them on the counter to defrost, and there they absolutely were this afternoon when I returned from the cafe, looking for all the world like a mound of turds. There was no choice but to make cinnamon chocolate-chip banana bread. A double batch, because I obviously don't know how to buy bananas for one.
My kitchen is a small, somewhat operationally unwieldy kitchen, that often involves stacking things on top of other things in order to make even a turkey sandwich. However, this does not at all explain how I managed to crack three eggs not over the bowl, or even the counter, but right over the middle of the floor, where the rug is. Three. How my depth perception could be so off escapes me. (This morning at the liver clinic my doctor informed me that if I ever observe myself turning yellow, bruising easily, or feeling confused, to call 911. Um, 911.)
Annoyed, I decided to take a break. I would check the mail. After all, eggs are easier to clean up once they've hardened, right? Sure. Let's go with that. This is probably the first day of mail in months that has not yielded some medical bill or other. Small but not insignificant pleasures! Instead, there was just one envelope. A thin envelope. In the return-address corner, the address of a residency to which I'd applied in October. I opened it, expecting the usual "sorry, lots of applicants, apply again, best of luck with your work" spiel. No. This letter had taken the time, as one of its forbears had done, to inform me that my already-published story was "disturbing in a way [I] might not have intended" and that I might "revisit the story to investigate ways [I] might more diplomatically express the experience of illness for young people." What in the world is it about that story that offends people so much? Am I not a diplomat? I am a Libra, after all. Weird though it may sound, this makes me strangely happy. You know, what's so wrong with stories being war? Straight to the top, baby. Apparently offending people all the way.
When I got upstairs, the eggs were still there on the rug, gelling. 911.
If you'd like to make some of your own banana bread, here's the recipe I used, courtesy of Orangette.
The Thanksgiving holiday concluded, I have returned to San Francisco apparently five pounds heavier, much of which seems to have accumulated in my right hand. Remember that time when my hand blew up to the size of Mount Olympus, and there was gadolinium trapped in it, and I couldn't use it for six weeks? And everyone cheered? I woke up this morning to discover the same hand in the same condition. And everyone cheered. Now, here's the confusing part: If the five pounds are in my hand, how are they also in my waist? And apparently (this morning, cartoonlike, I literally popped off a button) in my chest?
I think when I popped off the button, my shirt knew I am going to That University Where I Taught this evening, my first reappearance since May. Clothes seem to know that when they are headed to that dubious locale, unfortunate events may befall them (to speak nothing of the unfortunate events that may befall their wearer). TUWIT was a site of many, many wardrobe disasters, both my own and those of others, the most notable of which included:
a) two chest buttons of a buttondown shirt rocket into the outer atmosphere unbidden; solution: wear heavy coat through 3 hours of lectures in 70-degree weather, sweat copiously while students exchange weird looks and enjoy a light afternoon breeze
b) hem of pants unravels, trailing foot-long strings in wake; solution: tape pants, color black, with masking tape, receive titters from fashion-forward female students
c) skirt is way shorter than it seemed at home; solution: ungainly tugging, reprise long-coat wearing, this time looking more like a flasher than ever before --- respectfully abstain from exclaiming "ha-CHA!" and flinging coat open
Anyway, praise baby Jesus, those days are over. I can now have my wardrobe crises right here in my own Fort. I guess I have to lose five pounds now, too. What a drag. Time to start those finger exercises.
Oh baby, is that a good look: Enjoying some hospital hematomas in March
Juan and me on Halloween, cleverly disguised
